PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Book Reviews 305one regrets that these scattered observations do not evolve into a moresystematic critique.In the next section entitled “Prospectus,” Heisig puts the central partof the book in perspective. We find here in a summary format much of thecritical argumentation that was often only intimated before. The materialis excellent, making one wish Heisig had used it earlier where he couldhave developed it in more detail. “Prospectus” opens with an outstandingreview of the Kyoto School from several different angles. Heisig ranks theoriginality of the School fairly as below the greatest Western thinkers suchas Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, James, and Heidegger. He also observes thatcompared with their contemporaries such as Whitehead, Wittgenstein,Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, and Gadamer, the Kyoto School “looks likesomething of an anachronism. What is more, a great many ideas in thephilosophical tradition out of which Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani workedhave been rejected” (p. 264; that last statement is tantalizing, for Heisigdoes not enlarge upon it anywhere in the book). Similarly, their contributionto the traditional Buddhist studies has been negligible. Their originalitylies rather in “the appropriation of eastern ideas into western philosophy”(p. 260). Heisig notes that:Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani do not really belong to the historyof philosophy as we know it and under the assumptions that havedominated it up until now. Unless one is prepared to dismiss outof hand the idea of opening up western philosophy to the standpointof world philosophy, there is literally no place to locate theKyoto School properly. They have positioned themselves in aplace as unfamiliar to the eastern mind as it is to the western.The question of locating them in effect questions the way wehave located philosophies east and west. In this context, theirsis not a derivative contribution but something original andrevolutionary (ibid.).Heisig offers three good, although perhaps arbitrarily selected, suggestionsfor further research on the Kyoto School, by the same tokenpointing to the weaker spots of his own book: the relation between the threephilosophers, the connection between them and the historical transformationsof the day, and the central role of individual experience that theSchool holds up as the standard of truth and the foundation of philosophy.The last two points are particularly important since the disastrous engagementof the three thinkers in wartime events shows “the limits of aphilosophy oriented to the contemplative” (p. 263). Heisig then singles outthree topics as the suitable criteria for evaluating the place of the KyotoSchool in the world philosophy (pp. 265–266). The first is their polyvalentnotion of no-self, combining the soteriological, moral, and metaphysical