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THE ACTIVE MEDIATION BETWEEN ETERNITY AND HISTORY
IN TERMS OF TANABE'S DIALECTICAL LOGIC
Makoto OZAKI1
ABSTRACT. In the technological age human beings are self-estranged from their own authentic essence, and the paradigm shift is urgently needed for the establishment of a new era at which the last and ultimate God qua the other beginning is anticipated to arrive, as Heidegger points out. Behind the Heideggerian thought, Christian eschatology might be implicitly presupposed as its basic framework, and this insight may correspond to Buddhist eschatology as well. While western thinking is in search of Being as the origin of all entities, the eastern conception of Nothingness is regarded as the ground of being from which the universe comes. The origin of the universe is in dispute of modern astrophysics, and the relationship between Being and Nothingness is the subtle issue having been discussed since the ancient times in East and West. The contemporary Japanese philosopher Hajime Tanabe with Heidegger pursues the problem of the relation of time and eternity from the standpoint of Absolute Nothingness in confrontation with Hegel and Heidegger for advancing a synthetic unification of eastern and western traditions as the appropriate theoretical enterprise for the present world involved in the eschatological situation expecting the possible solutions for the further development of human culture in the future. In the following, a comparison between western and Buddhist thought is attempted to elucidate the relationship between eternity and history through the mediation of human individual action on the basis of the principle of Emptiness or Absolute Nothingness for a construction of the integration of eastern and western intellectual heritage mainly in terms of Tanabe's triadic logic of dialectic, touching upon the ethical values human freedom implies and great traditions have coped with as well as from the Neo-Aristotelian perspective of the triadic unification of the opposed elements of potentiality and actuality in the dynamic movement for the attainment of a synthetic ideal in reality. KEYWORDS: dialectic, beginning, process, eternity/history/action, triadicity
Contents
Introduction
1. The Last Time as the Hidden Beginning
2. The Whiteheadian Process
3. The Ethical Implications of Action
Conclusion
1 Sanyo Gakuen University, Okayama, JAPAN.
АКТИВНОЕ ПОСРЕДНИЧЕСТВО МЕЖДУ ВЕЧНОСТЬЮ И ИСТОРИЕЙ, С ТОЧКИ ЗРЕНИЯ ДИАЛЕКТИЧЕСКОЙ ЛОГИКИ ТАНАБЕ
Макото ОЗАКИ
АБСТРАКТ: В технологический век люди самоотчуждаются от своей собственной подлинной сущности, и требуется срочный сдвиг парадигмы для установления новой эры, с ожидаемым в ней появлением, как указывает Хайдеггер, последнего и окончательного Бога, который и произведет новое начало мира. Здесь христианская эсхатология, следуя за Хайдеггером, может предполагаться как ее базовая структура, и это понимание также может соответствовать Буддийской эсхатологии. Хотя Западное мышление находится в поисках Бытия как источника всех сущностей, Восточная концепция как раз Небытия рассматривается как основание бытия, из которого приходит Вселенная. Подобное происхождение Вселенной противоречит современной астрофизике, а связь между Бытием и Небытием - это тонкий вопрос, обсуждавшийся с древних времен на Востоке и Западе. Современный японский философ Хаджиме Танабе, как и Хайдеггер, преследует проблему отношения времени и вечности с точки зрения Абсолютного Небытия, и, уже в конфронтации с идеями Гегеля и Хайдеггера - что для продвижения требуется синтетическое объединение восточных и западных традиций, как раз в качестве подходящей теоретической инициативы для нынешнего мира в его эсхатологической ситуации, и с его ожиданиями возможных решений для дальнейшего развития человеческой культуры в будущем. В последующем, у Танабе, сравнение Западной и Буддийской мысли пытается выяснить связь между вечностью и историей посредством посредничества человеческого индивидуального действия на основе принципа Пустоты или Абсолютного Небытия - для построения интеграции Восточного и Западного интеллектуального наследия, с точки зрения триадической логики его диалектики, затрагивающей этические ценности, которые необходимы для человеческой свободы, и чего достигли великие традиции, включая нео-Аристотелевское Триадическое объединении противоположных элементов потенциальности и актуальности в динамическом движении для достижения синтетического идеала в реальной жизни.
КЛЮЧЕВЫЕ СЛОВА: диалектика, начало, процесс, вечность/история/действие, триадичность
Содержание
Введение
1. Последнее время как скрытое начало
2. Уайтхедский процесс
3. Этические последствия действий
Заключение
Introduction
The ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuang-zi says, "The end is identical with the beginning". This signifies that time is cyclic in character. According to Heidegger, only at the end of the first beginning of western history, the new, other beginning takes place and God becomes the true God. In the Buddhist idea of the Mappo era as the final time, human beings can restore their own Buddha-seed lost in the far past. Although the attained Buddha is the completion of the first beginning of its long saving history a la Heidegger, nevertheless, it is not yet ultimate, but penultimate. Something is still hidden within it. This is nothing but the other beginning, as it were. The other beginning, concealed in the depth of the first, does not directly and by itself appear in history. But, on the contrary, solely at the end of the first beginning, i.e., the eschatological Mappo era, the hidden beginning arises in history. The end returns to its eternal beginning and reveals its original essence in history through the self-negating mediation of human individual action as well as social practice in the form of extensive continuum in spacetime. Beyond the Hedeggerian confinement of finite history, history is mediated to eternity in and through the self-negation of human existential action striving to realize its eternal essence. Hajime Tanabe (1885-1962), the modern Japanese philosopher in the Kyoto School, explores the relationship between eternity and history, mediated by the human free subjective action, in terms of the dialectical logic, and this triadic structure of the scheme might be applicable to Christian and Buddhist thought in comparison with the view to integrating them in the possible form of the historical development.
In addition, As Prof. C.R. Maboloc remarkably points to the lack of authenticity in the modern age in relation to technological rationality, the ambivalent value of technology may depend on human freedom bifurcating into good and evil, and social transformation is to be mediated by the individual free action for the realization of human true essence, alienated by the dominating technological framework of the present world. As Heidegger anticipates the coming of the other beginning of a new era of history, the establishment of a new paradigm of thinking is required for the future global development of humanity. The Bodhisattva cooperative practice with others entails a social transformation in which realizing Emptiness is at the same time overcoming the individualistic self beyond the ego-centered pragmatistic tendencies of the current economic world. Further, we are now to be engaged in the urgent need of establishing environmental ethics on a global scale, instead of pragmatic capitalist policymaking on the part of hegemonic power. In this regard, classical ethical theories might be incompetent, and it might be our task to construct a new type of ethics appropriate to the present world from the Neo-Aristotelian bio-cosmological perspective. So, it might be highly relevant to redeem the human alienation from its original authenticity under the technological circumstances whereby people at large are unconsciously involved in deception rendered by the mass media under the implicit control of the political power. Thus, the resumption of human authentic essence from the self-estrangement along with the technological advance might be concurrent with the self-realization of human existence as the attained enlightenment.
Tanabe's logic of dialectic is influenced not only by Hegel but also by the Tendai Buddhist thought in which the three parties of phenomenon, Emptiness, and the unity of them are retained in the total harmonious balance as the development of the Indian Buddhist notion of Emptiness, elucidated by Nagarjuna, and this Tendai's doctrine of the perfect total harmony of the three parties based upon the principle of Emptiness is the fundamental logic of dialectic as the universal principle for all Buddhist schools beyond their differences. And hence, the influence which Tanabe's dialectic owes should not be restricted to the so-called Zen School in the narrow sense, but rather be duly understood as the universal logic of Mahayana Buddhism in general. This reflects the historical fact that main branch schools of Japanese Buddhism, including even Dogen, were commonly generated from the Japanese Tendai School as the matrix, and this is elaborated by Tanabe's later important work Introduction to Philosophy which contains new insights after the establishment of his own mature thought.
1. The Last Time as the Hidden Beginning
The Lotus Sutra, or even the Buddhist scriptures in general, presuppose the existence of intelligent living beings in the other worlds in the entire cosmos. For instance, the Amitabha or Amitayus Buddha in the western pure land far from our world is conceived of having no mythological fiction but reality. Even though it sounds as if it were mythological, it is viewed only from the horizon of our own actual world. Even though the Amitabha Buddha is real, however, that Buddha has no direct historical actuality or causality for us, human beings on this planet. The Amitabha Buddha is supposed to be a self-separated branch of the eternal Buddha in other world in the multi-verse. Some modern physicists also suggest the possible many worlds or other universes in the endless or cyclic universe beyond the horizon of our world. The universality of the eternal Buddha makes it possible to separate and divide Himself into many parts and bodies in a variety of worlds throughout the whole cosmic spacetime. Today many physicists do not deny the possibility of intelligent living beings in the multi-cosmos, though having not yet confirmed scientifically. According to the Lotus Sutra, when the historical Buddha Sakyamuni teaches the Lotus Sutra, all other Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in the other worlds throughout the entire universe come to his place in our world instantly together, including even the past Buddhas who ever perished but now resurrected. Today's astrophysics suggests the possible instant reach to the far apart area in the universe through a wormhole or something like a black hole. And the reenactment of the past in the present may correspond to A.N. Whiteheadian idea of the direct and indirect presence of the even remote past in the present.
The Buddhist scriptures also presuppose the existences of the three worlds in temporal succession, i.e., the past, the present, and the future. Even Plato speaks about the former life before birth and the coming life after death, i.e., transmigration. The Cambridge theologian McTaggart also asserts even Christian theology never denies the three modes of life in succession of time before birth and after death, suggesting the human inclination towards forgetting of the former lives after death.
The Tendai Buddhist doctrines also hold that those who have advanced in practice cannot forget their past lives, while those who are in the lower stage of practice forget. The British philosopher of religion John Hick, the renowned advocate of religious pluralism, much influenced by Buddhism, also says the reincarnation of a person in even other world in the cosmos after death. In general, Indo-Buddhist thoughts assume the existences of the past and future lives before and after the present life as well as the intelligent living beings in the universe or multi-verse. Hence, it might be not curious and surprising at all that the Buddha transforms himself into other modes of existence, as the self-negating activity of Emptiness itself in space and time. For Hegel, too, the Absolute self-manifests in the world history as the phenomena of essence; the Absolute does not exist apart from the relative human beings, the actual historical world.
According to the Lotus Sutra, particularly the 16th chapter of eternal life of the Buddha, the historical Buddha reveals his own eternal original essence in such a way that although the historical Buddha perishes, nevertheless, he is still imperishable and immortal. What does this mean? On the one hand, the Buddha perishes, and on the other, he never perishes but is immortal and eternal. This seems to be a contradiction on the surface. The key to resolve this dilemma is the principle of Emptiness, i.e., sunyata, which is neither being nor nothing but also both being and nothing as the dialectical synthesis of the opposites. Arising and perishing, life and death, are the opposed aspects of one and the same entity of the eternal Buddha; in other words, the eternal Buddha perpetually arises and perishes in the human or living worlds: the eternal Buddha comes to being and nothing many times in the worlds. Although the eternal Buddha is beyond space and time, nevertheless, he is always immanent in the actual worlds with the different forms and names. According to the Tendai interpretation of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha has the three kinds of bodies: the actual physical body, the spiritual intellectual body, and the eternal universal essential body. These three different bodies are ascribed to one body, and vice versa. Hereby one is three, and three is one, as in the case of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Whereas the Buddha as such is universal and eternal, he appears with the particular physical mortal body. This is the application of the self-negating movement of the principle of Emptiness to the human personal existential worlds. While the Buddha, the self-awakened enlightened person, composed of matter and mind, is perishable in the physical material aspect, he is still immortal and eternal. Despite his essential universality and eternity, the Buddha can appear in different places and times with other forms and names. This is the self-transformation or transfiguration of the Buddha himself. The Buddha can change himself according to the multi-purposes for the manifold living beings in the entire cosmos. The Buddha has the teleological intention to save those living existences that have not yet attained salvation or enlightenment. The teleological intentionality of the Buddha is crucial for the understanding of the appearance of the Buddha in the human world. The Buddha's long journey of salvation leading to full enlightenment is to be performed in cooperation with the unredeemed human beings. One never exists without the other. The principle of Emptiness is to be activated according to the Buddha's purpose for
saving human existence. Viewed from the perspective of the Buddha's grand plan of salvation, there are the two lines of salvation courses. While the fulfillment or completion of the hitherto prepared course in which those who have already been committed to the Buddha's activity of salvation come nearly to the final stage of enlightenment in the Buddha's life time and the succeeding periods of the two thousand years since the Buddha's passing, a new course of salvation or enlightenment should begin again for those who have never been getting in touch with salvation/enlightenment so far. Hereby human history is divided into the two periods: one is the old history, and the other is the new era. The present age is rightly the new history to inaugurate salvation or enlightenment.
Regarding the re-inauguration of a new history of salvation or enlightenment, the historical Buddha anticipates the Bodhisattva who is still deeply hidden at the bottom of the eternal Buddha. This is called the Supreme Conduct Bodhisattva as the disciple of the eternal Buddha. This means that the Supreme Conduct Bodhisattva as the symbol of the future action of saving power is none other than the Buddha himself. That Bodhisattva is another name and form anticipated for the future eschatological time, i.e., the Mappo era after the two thousand years period of the post-the historical Buddha. Even if so, why is this feasible? This is because the historical Buddha is essentially immortal and eternal, despite his finitude of the actual physical body. The self-revelation of the historical Buddha's essential eternity entails the return to his own eternal origin from which the eternal Buddha emanates himself into the eschatological future in the form of the Bodhisattva on the surface, despite his hidden eternal original essence. Here we can see that after the death of the historical Buddha Sakyamuni, who revealed his own eternal origin, projects himself onto the future in the anticipated form of the Bodhisattva. And this anticipated Bodhisattva is expected to be realized in the human form in the actual historical world. The Lotus Sutra predicts the appearance of the Bodhisattva in question in the concrete actuality of personal existence, who is essentially identical with the eternal original Buddha, despite the different name and other form. This is the transformation or transfiguration of the eternal original Buddha in the temporal process of the world history as the self-negating conversion of the Absolute on the same status as the principle of Emptiness itself.
The principle of Emptiness should be concretized as the fact. Truth should be incarnated in the factual actuality of a personal existence. Iwao Khoyama, one of the Kyoto School philosophers, the disciple of both Nishida and Tanabe, holds the standpoint of concrete fact of Japanese spirit implicitly influencing the formation of Japanese Buddhism as the underlying stream. In contrast to Indian and Chinese Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism places the emphasis on the factual actuality as concrete reality rather than mere abstract truth or principle which is aufgehoben, sublated or elevated to the actuality through the negative mediation of truth. Khoyama is distinguished from Nishida and Tanabe within the same academic circle in his elaboration of Buddhist thought based upon the Lotus Sutra. As Hegel insists, only at the end can the abstract hidden beginning be concretely realized fully. So, the historical Buddha returns to his eternal origin and recommences a new saving activity
for the future living beings upon the termination and completion of the old activity. Time is cyclic or even spiral in the self-developing movement of the eternal Buddha in and through self-negation in such a way that when the historical Buddha reaches the final stage of salvation, he also returns to his own original eternal essence deeply hidden so far in the primordial ground of the historical Buddha, and projects himself onto the eschatological future in the anticipated Bodhisattva form which is to be realized in history as the Aristotelian concept of entelecheia, i.e., the perfect realization of the unity in opposition of potentiality and actuality, in the end. In addition, it might be highly significant to take into consideration the reality of the eternal Buddha from the bio-cosmological perspective. Concerning the eternal Buddha revealed by the historical Buddha, there are two opposing interpretations: one is a hypothesis as an abstract truth, and the other a real event as the eternal return of the same. The former pertains to the standpoint of contemplation, whereas the latter is concerned with the active mediation of truth and fact, eternity and history, actuality and potentiality, driven to their dialectical unification through negation in a higher dimension.
2. The Whiteheadian Process
According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, space and time are neither independent of each other nor absolute as such, but a fourfold continuum with relativity in respect of movement. The black hall, the existence of which Einstein predicts, is not a pure space but both space and matter whereby even light vanishes and anything entered is unable to return any more due to its strong gravity as a property of matter. These facts show the triadic structure of bipolarity of space and time in a higher dimension of the unified continuum of them with the matter-movement. The far distant stars are recognized only through the human observation with the help of manipulating the devices technologically invented. The stars located in the distant space is no less than the past event observed from the present situation of human existence. Space is time, and vice versa; they are relative. There is no objective being apart from the human subjective consciousness.
Therefore, Whitehead analyzes the human experience into the two phases of the subjective act of becoming in the present mode and the objective being in the past mode with the integration of concrescence of them in the form of the triadicity of the bipolarity of subject and object as a dialectical synthesis. According to Whitehead, time is perpetual perishing of actual entities in the process of succession, i.e., supersession. Perpetual perishing presupposes perpetual arising, for it is impossible for an actual entity to perish without prior arising. Time has no its own reality but depends upon the flux of actual entities in succession. Actual entity has the double structure of the subjective perishing and the objective immortality which is the given datum for the succeeding occurrence of the subjective act of becoming in the formation of causality. Causality also has the duality of efficient and final or purposeful cause. The objective immortality refers to the past being devoid of the subjective immediacy of becoming. In other words, the past is not nothingness but remains as a stubborn fact operating its influence for the next arising of a new entity.
For Whitehead, appearance is nothing but reality, and reality is composed of the subjective becoming and the objective being which is called 'superject' as the superseded state beyond and might be comparable to Hegel's idea of Aufhebung, sublation, as the state in which the antecedent subjective action is turned out into the objective potentiality as the power of the past. Hence, the past as the objective potential being is real potentiality in distinction from pure potentiality like the Platonic eternal ideas as the universal forms to ingress into actuality externally. The occurrence of a unity of potentiality and actuality, i.e., concrescence as the final attained result of the self-realizing process, might correspond to the Aristotelian idea of entelecheia as the opposed unity of them in the dynamic movement. Whitehead's analysis of actual entity might resemble to Aristotle's analysis of becoming with respect to substance as the individual subject in contrast to Plato's transcendent eternal ideas beyond the actual imperfect world of space and time, though emphasizing the perishing aspect of actual entities which entails the objective immortality as the efficient causation.
In this regard, Tanabe, too, attempts at a dialectical synthesis of the transcendent eternal ideas and the actual phenomenal world through the mediation of the human subjective free action in the direction of realizing the future ideal in the present with a view to forming history. So, history is not merely the relative horizon of finite beings but also the immanent field in which eternal ideas are to be incessantly actualized in the way of negative mediation.
3. The Ethical Implications of Action
For Tanabe, eternity qua Absolute Nothingness is to be realized at each present through the mediation of the human subjective free action which is inevitably involved in the opposition between good and evil. The bipolarity of good and evil is to be superseded and sublated into a higher phase of the triadic synthetic dimension of the dynamic movement in and through self-negation and self-mediation. The human individual action plays the central role in achieving the ideal aim in the form of the unified event of the traditional past and the future-oriented ideality. This is the triadic relation of the individual subjective action, the particular socio-historical substratum, and the transcendent eternal universality in a dialectical way. As a result, history as the spatio-temporal extension is the place in which eternity and time are mutually mediated in self-negation through human freedom. With respect to freedom, Schelling makes a distinction between God as the purely undifferentiated identity of primal Being and human freedom capable of doing good and evil. In human existence the bipolar opposition between good and evil prevails, and hence human beings should strive to attain the triadic unification of them towards the future on their own effort of free subjective action.
Why does this occur? This is presumably because human history began with sin and evil, contrary to nature, and is still in the process of restoring the lost eternal unity of God and man as the reconciliation of them. For Hegel, nature is the self-alienated other form of Spirit, and Spirit returns to itself through the other mode of being. For Plato, time is the image or shadow of eternity (Tiemaeus), so history is no
less than the self-alienation of eternity whereby the original essence hidden in the primordial inception is to be resumed through the human subjective free activity. For Whitehead, actuality has the physical and mental poles, and the integration of the physical and mental side into a unity of experience is a self-formation as a process of concrescence. Human beings might be situated in the restless process of the self-realization of the eternal archetype to attain the restoration of their own original essential identity of good and evil in the end.
Even Hegel's idea of Substance as Subject does not mean the immediate identity of them, that is, the substance is not directly the subject, but rather that the subject comes second, according to S. Zizek. The Absolute has the radically ambiguous status, and this may correspond to the asymmetric double focusing structure of elliptic historical actuality in which the subject is at work as the process in which the substance implicitly presupposed as abstract universality becomes actualized in the form of the concrete universality, i.e., the entelecheia a la Aristotle. This is meant by the true as the whole, i.e., circular-process. There is only process and nothing underlying it. There is no substance apart from the process of self-manifestation of the subject's activation of potentiality as the retroactive effect. That is, only at the end is the implicitly presupposed beginning first realized as a cyclic return to itself.
In the ethical dimension of human existence, the antagonism or opposition between goodness and badness or evil is inherently lurked in the primordiality of human nature as the reflection of the inner split, distortion, difference, or the heterogeneous otherness within the Oneness of the Absolute which signifies the lack of its full self-identity as goodness. Here is the opposed moment of the radical evil as the inherent split, gap, or curvature within the Absolute as the asymmetry. This may echo to Tanabe's assertion of the antagonistic opposition between goodness and badness which is impossible to be reduced to either of them but is always involved in the perpetually negative conversion in the spiral historical process whereby essence appears in the self-negation through the mediation of the human subjective free action. There is no substantial self-identical Being but Nothingness itself qua the self-negating movement of Absolute Negativity the rest of which is badness.
According to Zizek, the One cannot achieve its full self-identity but contains the heterogenous Otherness, inner split, inherent gap within itself. The lack of self-identity of the One may be highly significant in view of explaining why there is evil in the human world. Even in Hegel, evil is self-sublated in negation into Absolute Being of God, resulting in absolute monism of goodness. Nishida, too, retains the self-identity of Absolute Being, seen from Tanabe's perspective, in spite of his alleged Absolute Nothingness as the self-identity in contradistinction, though being the shadow of the inner lack of full self-identity of the Absolute itself. Christian theology also remains absolute monism of God in which evil is regarded as a temporal absence or devoid of goodness as a mere appearance without its own reality. Tanabe, however, on the contrary, maintains the stark opposition between good and evil; evil is always accompanied by good, never vanishing into the opposed. This is presumably because Tanabe stresses the individual's subjective action of freedom in the ethical dimension of human existence in which the transcendent eternity is to be
partially and fragmentarily realized at every present moment of time, never bringing about the full totality at once, in contrast to Nishida's stance of intuition or contemplation of the Absolute in terms of the integral wholeness beyond relativity of the spatio-temporal structure of existence. Tanabe's emphasis on the social practice as well as the individual action in the ethical realm of human beings might disclose the shift from the ancient notion of substance as immutable being to the modern concept of subject of active movement supported by freedom which is always in tension with the dichotomic or bipolar opposition of good and evil as the primordially inherent properties of humanity as the relative existence from the outset.
Zizek compares Zen Buddhist position to Hegel; in the Buddhist principle of Emptiness there is neither good nor evil, they are Void and completely interdependent, and hence good has no priority over evil, whereas for Hegel Being still has priority over Nothing, negativity is contained in the self-mediating movement of the absolute Spirit which maintains a minimum of substantial identity... the substantial force underlies the interplay of phenomena [Zizek, 2013]. On this point, Zizek may be closer to Tanabe who criticizes Hegel for being entangled with the western tradition of ultimate reality as Being, inherited from Plato, Aristotle, rather than Nothingness, and this trend still prevails even in Heidegger and Nishida as well.
From Tanabe's perspective, even for Aristotle, the self-identical Being has priority over Nothingness, and hence evil is regarded as a limitation in quantity or devoid of the self-identical Being rather than the antagonistic opposition in quality in the strict sense. Tanabe never presupposes any transcendental Being prior to the given actual finite world from which starting, the individual existence is in search of eternity qua Absolute Nothingness in which there is neither good nor evil but they appear in opposition in the phenomenal world. In this regard, Zizek also refers to that in the total mediation of essence by its appearance, any transcendence of the eternal Idea over its actualization is discredited [Zizek, 2013].
The western tradition began with Being in distinction from beings or entities in the actual world of which Heidegger is in pursuit, while in the eastern tradition Emptiness or Nothingness as ultimate reality is prevalent. The modern Japanese philosopher Tetsuro Watsuji, the colleague of Tanabe in Kyoto and later affiliated with Tokyo University, constructs a systematic theory of ethics on the foundation of the Buddhist notion of Emptiness and Nishida's basic concept of Absolute Nothingness as the principle of human existence with the employment of the Hegelian dialectic in such a way that Absolute Emptiness or Negativity is perpetually to be self-manifested in the forms of the individual and the society alternately in the developing process of history. For Watsuji, too, however, there is no evil or bad which is not turned out into good in the end, only the suspension of the self-negating movement of Absolute Emptiness or Negativity is regarded as evil or bad, and in this sense his ethics is conceived of as a kind of absolute monism. For Watsuji, despite the reciprocal negation of the individual and the society, the priority seems to be placed upon the society over the individual, reflecting the Japanese traditional mentality of collectivism into which individuality is absorbed in the long run.
Zizek inverts the normal interpretation of Hegel's dialectic in such a way that the origin of evil is located not in humanity's Fall from God, but in a split in the heart of God himself [Zizek, 2013]. For Zizek, the Hegelian good is not the Absolute that mediates or sublates evil, but evil gets universalized and reappears as good (Zizek, 2013). Even the good is a self-negated or self-mediated evil. The failure of reality to fully actualize an Idea signifies the gap that separates the Idea from its actualization: the inherent gap within the Idea itself. That is, evil is ontologically prior to good, and good is the secondary integration of the excess or dissonance of evil; good is self-sublated and universalized evil in the inverted way from Zizek's viewpoint [Zizek, 2013]. Zizek's concept of the inner split or gap, i.e., the difference within the self-identity might be in some way another version of the double focusing elliptic structure of actual reality.
God Himself is, as it were, perfect as the symmetric circle in which there is neither good nor evil but solely the absolute self-identity of them, whereas in human beings spacetime takes place as the horizon of historical events with the asymmetric direction from the past to the future. This might be parallel to the before and after the so-called big bang of the universe, along with the enormously rapid expanding emergence of which the symmetry collapsed, i.e., the universe came from Nothing, as, for example, Lawrence Krauss asserts [Krauss, 2014]. Although human beings are symmetric between good and evil in original essence, nevertheless, their actual existence is affected by the rotating movement of the elliptically structured universe. That is, although the eternal original Buddha is none other than human beings themselves essentially, human beings should strive to resume their lost original unity with the eternal Buddha in the actual historical dimension, as alluded in the Lotus Sutra. Hence the original unity of man and God/the eternal Buddha is to be restored through the mediation of human subjective free activity of realizing their own eternal essence of Oneness with God/the eternal Buddha. For Whitehead, even God has the bipolarity of the primordial nature as the pure conceptual possibilities and the consequent nature as the fluent actualized world, implying the double focusing elliptic structure of the universe as well. The universe is attaining the active self-expression of its own variety of opposites- freedom and necessity, multiplicity and unity, imperfection and perfection [Whitehead, 1978]. Anyway, circle and ellipsis are the different aspects of one and the same thing. Therefore, God can become man in history for reconciling human beings with primal Being, presupposing God's existence from above, and the eternal Buddha is able to appear in the form of the Bodhisattva in the actual world for the realization of their own eternal essence in origin through their own action of freedom, revealing the hidden inner depth from below respectively.
Conclusion
Emptiness as the principle of change or transformation is the basic concept of Buddhist philosophy in general, and Nishida, Tanabe, Nishitani and others in the Kyoto School undertook to construct their own systems of thought based upon the underlying substrative spirit of Japanese intellectual history inherited from Buddhist
ideas in comparison to and synthesis with western philosophy. Particularly, Tanabe's grand project of a possible integration of Buddhism and Christianity may correspond to Heidegger's anticipation of the Last God in the post-Christian era as the other beginning of a new history. Heidegger's idea might be influenced by Nietzsche's idea of the eternal return of the same sharing with the Indo-Buddhist cosmology as well. Consequently, it might be cogently tenable to create a novel way of thinking appropriate for the future development of human culture on a global scale in terms of Tanabe's dialectic of self-negating conversion as the perpetual activity of Emptiness or Absolute Nothingness in combination with the Whiteheadian process conception of creative advance into novelty in connection with the past entity as objective immortality without subjective immediacy of becoming, and of the Neo-Aristotelian bio-cosmological notion of the dynamically unifying triadic movement of the opposed elements of potentiality and actuality, i.e., entelecheia, analogous to the Heideggerian central concept of Ereignis, event of Being, as well.
On the ambivalent value of human freedom, Christian theology with the propensity for monism of goodness, abolishing evil as unreal, and Buddhist philosophy rigidly retaining the antagonistic opposition of good and evil are divergent and remain to be resolved in terms of a synthetic logic of triadic unification of the opposed, touched upon by Tanabe's dialectic and the telos-driven movement of integration of heterogenous difference with the self-identity of Being through the mediation of self-negation in conversion for the purpose of achieving the due goal.
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