Episode #216 ... The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism - Kyoto School pt. 1 - Nishitani

hello everyone I'm Steven West this is philosophies this thanks to everyone who supports the podcast on patreon patreon.com this I hope you love the show today so since about episode 2011 we've been talking about the work of Frederick nche and the Fallout of him supposedly smashing all the idols from the history of Western philosophy with a hammer well the guy we're talking about today is actually comically in line with basically everything we've been talking about on the show since we did that episode he's a man who was a big fan of n's work in fact as The Story Goes he used to carry around a copy of thus spok Zar auster with him pretty much everywhere he went in the early stages of his life more than that he's a man who traveled all the way to Germany to study under the professorship of Martin heiger during the 1930s and even more than that he's a man that was the principal chair of philosophy and religion at Kyoto University for more than 20 years a position where he deeply engaged with the mystical tradition of the West we just talked about with a special focus on the Theologian Meister ehart see it's like I planned it or something that the man we're talking about today is a member of what's now become known as the famous Kyoto school out of Kyoto Japan the guy we're talking about today went by the name of kg nishitani now one of the first questions you might have here is what is the Kyoto school and a lot of people might say back to you describing the Koto School saying something like well these are Eastern thinkers that are engaging with Western ideas primarily existentialism where they then blend this East West into a nice Cornucopia of interesting stuff for everyone out there to enjoy but I'm here to tell you A lot of people that are fans of of the Kyoto school would hate for it to be described in this way and my first instinct at the beginning of this was I was going to talk about the problem of trying to reduce these thinkers down into broad categories like East versus West and my first instinct was to spend some time talking about that at the beginning of this but rather than grind the pace of ...