Nietzsche, Nishitani, and Laruelle on Faith and Immanence

2.1.1 Faith as Immanent Posture

The beginning of Laruelle’s explanation of faith is found in the connection with the core theme of immanence, a theme developed throughout his earlier works, especially in relation to and in distinction from Deleuze’s articulation of the same. Laruelle writes that he considers faith “to be precisely the intimacy or immanence of the ‘consubstantiality’ of Man.”^[32] Andrew Sackin-Poll adds this in his introduction to the translation:

The maxim for Laruelle’s clandestine theology is no longer ‘crede ut intellegas’ (St. Augustine), but could, instead, be ‘have faith in order to invent.’ From the perspective of this theology, faith is not, first of all, ordered by transcendent beliefs and dogmas but is an immanent experience or lived faith.^[33]

As Sackin-Poll suggests, to be defined as immanent provides several implications. First, faith as immanent means it is distinguished, of course, from transcendence. Second, it is, as will be discussed in the next section, distinguished from any beliefs or concepts – it is not propositional or confessional. This leaves us with a non-expressible or content-less faith; for those familiar with the history of thought, examples of content-less faith are possible, requiring Laruelle to further distinguish such forms:

Faith is not here a subjective and pietist experience, that is, individual and un-sayable; it is not an interiority opposed to the transcendence of religion. Faith is certainly not a ‘faith in man’ like Christian humanism, but faith ‘in-Man’—that is, faith as a human posture, other than via predicates. Man is not the subject of faith, but rather the real content of it.^[34]

Laruelle here provides the key term for his articulation of faith: posture. Faith is not something held or possessed by a person; it is essentially something embodied, or lived – it is the person who is able to be as a person, uncluttered by a conceptual prison. Sackin-Poll draws the potential connection between Pierre Hadot, and his idea of philosophy as a way of life, as a means of articulating what Laruelle has in mind.^[35] While there are major differences between Laruelle’s project and the classical philosophers who are the focus of Hadot’s work, the idea is perhaps apt, as it points to the overriding significance of the practical, of the “Lived.” Faith is not an intellectual achievement, nor, as in the above quote, a matter of “interiority.” It is a comprehensive practice, a way of existing.

Faith, therefore, is Laruelle’s approach for describing the person who achieves the immanence he champions, manifesting this as a posture. This necessitates, of course, defining immanence in the Laruellean way, even as the use of the language of faith and religion will require additional explanation to justify its inclusion. As indicated above, Laruelle’s immanence is a distinctive understanding of the notion popularized by Deleuze, and Marjorie Gracieuse provides an explanation as to the key difference between these two formulations. She writes that Deleuze’s employment of the term as a label for a certain “vital force” preserves a philosophical systematizing of reality, and thus a conceptual imposition, an approach that Laruelle hopes to avoid. In turn, Laruelle presents immanence as identical to human existence, as Gracieuse writes:

Whereas Deleuze presents immanence as a vital force or matter-energy that is not reducible to the finitude of a human materiality but is said of being itself as ‘non-organic life’, Laruelle refuses to apprehend immanence as an ontological infinite or vitalist absolute. Rather, the non-philosopher speaks of a finite immanence, which merges with humans as generic humanity and with the solitude of each human being, as immediately given and non-exchangeable individuality. What non-philosophy calls ‘the One-in-One’, ‘the Real’ or ‘radical immanence’ does not refer to life as an ontological principle, but simply designates the living identity of Man-in-person, both singular and generic, whose flesh and blood are unthinkable through the speculative and logical categories of philosophical thinking.^[36]

Deleuze’s notion of immanence is, thus, still philosophical; and it relies, in particular, on a notion of difference, granting at the same time an elite status to certain persons – philosophers. Laruelle’s immanence is difficult to articulate for this reason, as it is not reducible to a principle or “transcendental.” The “One” for Laruelle is not reducible to a term such as “non-organic life” as in Deleuze; rather, the “One-in-One” is the singular and generic human. It is all humans in their specificity, in their distinctive “flesh and blood” existence which is not possible to express, without distortion, in philosophical (or theological) approaches. The goal of this concept of immanence is an approach which will offer a suitable acknowledgement of the “ordinary man,” as Gracieuse explains:

This is the reason why Deleuzian immanence is just a partial and relative immanence for Laruelle, whose full experimentation remains reserved for the ‘initiated’ (i.e. the clan of philosophers). Once again, the ordinary man finds himself marginalized and expelled by philosophy’s self-enjoyment and self-sufficiency. The philosophical indifference to the real is reinforced, and becomes even more apparent when it comes to analyzing the political consequences of Deleuze’s philosophy.^[37]

There is a particular sensibility and concern in Laruelle’s critique of philosophy for any hierarchy or ranking – it is decidedly anti-Nietzschean on this point. Even in a category as seemingly basic or fundamental to all as “non-organic life,” Laruelle reads an ontological philosophical principle which inhibits, restricts, and distracts from ordinary man, preventing the disclosure of the Real.

It is for this reason that Laruelle speaks extensively of a certain vision – a “vision-in-One” – connected with his One and Real. Gracieuse explains:

If the undividable body is indeed for Laruelle the Real in person, it is not simply a ‘body without organs’, but a non-objectivising vision, a worldless identity within which Laruelle’s thought dwells and from which it refuses to get out. This is why non-philosophy is above all a ‘vision-in-One’ that apprehends the humanity of Man as an open, unfolded intimacy, as a secret that is so immediately obvious that it can but only escape the abstract mediations of philosophical logic.^[38]

To be the “man (of) faith” is to be the one who escapes these “abstract mediations” and lives in immanence.

2.1.2 Faith as Distinct from Belief

To be free from abstract mediations indicates that this faith (foi) is, of course, distinct from belief (croyance), with belief understood as propositions which are adhered to as in a confession of faith. This leads to a differentiation between three senses of faith, each of which appears throughout Laruelle’s work. First, there are two negative senses of faith: philosophical faith and religious faith. Philosophical faith is Laruelle’s suggestion that all philosophy (as opposed to non-philosophy) is a form of faith because of the transcendental or metaphysical assertions necessarily found within.^[39] Religious faith unsurprisingly follows the same pattern as philosophical faith, in that it is adherence to transcendental or metaphysical propositions as assertions. The third and sole positive form of faith is that which is introduced in Laruelle’s later turn to Christian thought, namely the faith of non-philosophy or non-theology. This is a different thing entirely, as Laruelle explains, to the forms of faith involving transcendental assertions:

Faith is rather a real or radical absence of belief, as we have said, thus also a ‘non-belief’ rather than an absolute rejection of any phenomena of belief….Faith ‘does-not-believe’ in belief rather than faith; it believes in the non-existence of belief.^[40]

Sackin-Poll adds this point: “In the context of theology, the faithful posture shifts the centre of gravity away from the sufficiency and totality of a dogma towards the faithful human. Faith concerns immanence, not transcendent beliefs or authoritarian uses of dogma.”^[41] Though Laruelle is most directly addressing religion in Clandestine Theology, his arguments extend equally from theology to philosophy; in this sense, it is not surprising that this content-less faith excludes both theism and atheism, secular philosophy and religious theology. The faith he is speaking of excludes all of this content. Laruelle explains:

The express or stated proofs for the existence of god are useless insofar as a redoubling of bad conscience or resentiment. They are, in any case, phenomena resulting from duplicity and belief, not the work of faith. No more than religions or theology, the existence of God does not need to be proven; there is a god, like there is religion, although neither is real. Even skepticism and atheism, under their philosophical form, often form an integral part of the inner life of religion. But they cannot determine faith as a Lived material and a formal a priori.^[42]

Faith as “Lived material” offers yet another term for this immanence Laruelle is describing. The faith here described removes concern for the reality of God from one’s life – the Man (of) faith will approach God in the way Laruelle describes in the axiomatic use of religion, without concern for the Real existence thereof, but with attention to how the concept God helps Man live in the faith he speaks of.

This criticism of faith includes what Laruelle identifies as previous attempts to avoid the problems of metaphysics through negative theology or “void” thinking, a step which will be particularly relevant in comparison with Nishitani. He explains:

Faith marks an adhesion neither to God and His intentions of love—this would be an ‘evident (or positive) belief’—nor to itself in a pure intention towards something, without an intended object (i.e. an empty intentionality), turning forever in the wind, as if the intentional relation were fulfilled by a rigorous empty-or void-relation, like contemporary philosophers, fearful of such positivity, often maintain.^[43]

Laruelle hopes to avoid the pitfalls he suggests exist with each position: the conventional positive approach of adhering to God and pursuing love, and the negative approach of an Eckhartian faith without content or even a Derridean approach through differance. As developed here and elsewhere, Laruelle suggests that even these “non-metaphysical” approaches through nothing, nothingness, or void all are either left “turning forever in the wind” or recreating implicitly a metaphysical perspective. The positive form of faith here articulated, however, is neither ineffective nor authoritarian:

On the contrary, faith is a Truth-without-truth, which makes possible an effect of truth that is inseparable from it—even if faith itself remains foreclosed to atheism, skepticism, and furthermore, to ‘truths’ and religious beliefs. This is condition for faith to work with such beliefs. The operation of faith is an immanent work.^[44]

This faith, therefore, will have certain effectual results. These will be discussed particularly in relation to Paul and Christ, but it is possible, I would suggest, to simply explore Laruelle’s treatment of ethics (or non-ethics) to see what the manifestation of this faith is – the influence of Marx is generally apparent in those instances.

2.1.3 The Axiomatic Use of Religion

This brings us to the axiomatic use of religion. Given that Laruelle’s faith is without philosophical or theological content, adhering to nothing, it is perhaps surprising to see Christian theology and scripture so well represented. The use of religion in this instance is, in many ways, merely pragmatic, as Sackin-Poll writes: “The words of Jesus provide, for Laruelle, formal models of understanding and interpreting the posture of faith.”^[45] That is, the use of scripture, and particularly the theology/philosophy of Jesus, is to help us arrive at the posture of faith and to better explain what this is. The religious articulations are of little concern, therefore, in themselves, as the goal is never a correct articulation but a certain form of living. At the same time, the denial of religion, or arguments regarding the non-existence of God, are equally unimportant and questioned in this method.

This leads to the distinction between the results of engagement with the material of religion. Conventional religious faith (belief) and Laruelle’s faith start from a similar place, within an immanent faith. They develop in different directions, however, where the non-philosopher’s faith resists development into religion:

Within a faith that has been converted or transformed into a religion, the risen Christ is understood in terms of an anticipated object. From this understanding follows an eventual appropriation of the risen Christ by a dialectic. When faith refuses such a conversion into religion, however, and, instead, uni-verses, then this gives rise to the non-religious. The non-religious accompanies, like an effect, the Man (of) faith, who grants this much like a grace that he has not received. The subject, moreover, can receive the call of the religious as a solicitation or an occasional cause, inviting him or her to the living memory and actions of Christ.^[46]

Faith, as the posture of immanence, is a starting point, and it is possible for this core faith to be taken in one of two directions. In the first direction, faith becomes belief and becomes a religion with its dogmatic arguments and understandings. In a faith of this sort, like Christianity for example, a doctrine like the “risen Christ” becomes a specific, future event, a specific conception of an event, a conception which is eventually subsumed into a philosophical/theological dialectic. In this movement, from event to remote conception of an object of faith, the person moves away from immanence, and faith loses its praxis and thus becomes belief.

Faith, however, can avoid this development and tend towards the “non-religious,” which, despite lacking the authoritative directives of religion, still holds a crucial effect for the Man (of) faith, working as a “grace.” By not becoming an object of faith, a controlled and conceptualized intellectual event, it is possible to communicate the practice of immanence, rather than communicating through an intellectual discourse devoid of praxis. Laruelle explains this impact:

Two affirmations must be held together in a unilateral manner: faith is without object but nevertheless brings about the non-religious on the occasion of religion. … Far from withdrawing or abstracting itself from the world, faith abstracts itself in such a radical manner that it thus transforms religion and emancipates the human subject.^[47]

Religion leads to the non-religious through faith, even as faith is without content; the result of this faith is the “emancipation” of the human subject. The religious thus has its uses. Even if the religion is in no way in itself to be affirmed, whether doctrinally or structurally, there is still an effect which comes out of an engagement with religion. As Laruelle explains, this is what differentiates his thought from a mere repudiation of all religion or philosophy:

This is why our enterprise ends not with the experience of a pure and simple negation of Christianity, that is to say, of belief, but with an objective uncertainty of faith that we oppose to belief, our material, an experience oscillating between the demand for fidelity and the indeterminacy of faith at least as cognizance of messianity or of grace.^[48]

If Laruelle’s approach were to make these sorts of systematic denials or approvals, then it would, of course, be a system of decision like all those other philosophies and theologies he is critiquing. It still may be. But on this point, the approach is not to assert a truth but to come to immanence using the resources of the system, in this case, Christianity.

The movement described here requires a shift to the axiomatic use of religion, and thus a shift in our approach to the scriptures. This is seen in the juxtaposition between seeing the words of the text as “axioms that decide Christ” instead of quasi-theorems which possess an “empirical validity that orders or regulates human life from the heavens.”^[49] The risk is that the stance of faith makes the shift into religion described above, as Laruelle suggests, “faith interpreting faith or auto-justifying itself.” Instead, Laruelle describes the alternative:

What matters here is a progress towards uni-version, that is, an operation tracing or establishing the sayings of Jesus as simple axioms and formulae, possessing an a priori concrete content understood to be ‘material,’ but human or immanent. They are thus able to engender the Word called, in this case, Christo-fiction, which undoes the philosophical presuppositions of Christo-centrism or Christology, underpinning multiple doctrinal variants.^[50]

The sayings of Jesus are able, therefore, to aid in the “undoing” of philosophy and theology, especially that of the Christian variety. The religion provides the undoing of itself, by undoing its own beliefs. This enables the arrival of the person at immanence by following the sayings of Jesus as axiomatic instructions rather than heavenly revelations, the latter being freighted with systematic connotations which eliminate the possibility of immanence. This is, as Laruelle suggests, the proper work of faith:

Even the Man (of) faith is not the proprietor of himself and, above all, not ‘his’ faith. The work of faith takes shape in the struggle against the Principle of Sufficient Catholicism, namely the Roman Church, and, in general, against every other minor form and variation: confessions structured in accordance with hierarchical institutions, through consecration or privilege, ministry or the Good….The only tradition in real time is the clonage by faith of a faithful subject and the primacy of the Risen over the Resurrection. This is the real content of the apostolic tradition insofar as it does not find itself confused with or distorted by history.^[51]

The tradition which is to be transmitted is thus this “undoing,” the coming to faith through clonage of one “faithful subject” to another. There is, therefore, no transmission of content or belief, but rather a transmission of a posture, aided by the axiomatic use of the religion.

2.1.4 Faith and the Possibility of the Real

One of the core features of Laruelle’s work is the defining of the relationship between thought/articulation and reality. For Laruelle, as Sackin-Poll writes, “There is no adequate relation between language and the Real. A symbol or name cannot exhaust the content of its referent.”^[52] The problem of philosophy and theology is that an adhesion between thought and reality is presumed not only possible but a feature of that philosophy or theology. Non-standard philosophy, on the other hand, denies any sort of sufficiency to these modes of thought. And yet, non-standard philosophy does not leave us in a position of perfect nihility, instead announcing an emancipation: “We are definitively free from the chains of language, which have been the instrument of our alienation, and not only in a philosophical manner.”^[53] The position of faith “bars the auto-sufficiency”^[54] of discourse; that is, it prevents the systemization which chains humans in language.

In this understanding, as Laruelle puts it, “Faith is the Real.”^[55] The posture of faith is the human freed from philosophical and theological theorizing restraining what they are individually and restraining as well the things of the world; the real of Man is not expressed in language but as living. Discourse is not dismissed, as Laruelle notes – there is even a place for the continued presence of metaphysics. But this metaphysics is subject to Man, rather than the inverse which is found throughout the world of philosophy and theology. This inversion is theo-fiction, and as Laruelle writes: “On the contrary, we practice a theo-fiction”^[56] – practice theo-fiction, rather than believing or assenting to it. Language can be used by the Man (of) faith, but the purpose is different, as Sackin-Poll notes of this distinction:

This limits the way language can be employed by the faithful, not in a skeptical manner, as something that cannot ever serve to signify—like a negative theology or apophasis—but precisely as an experimental application of terms in order to measure their effects.^[57]

The engagement with the Real by the Man (of) faith, therefore, allows not for a direct representation or retelling of the Real, but for an experimental evaluation – does this language lead to freedom from the chains of language? Language itself thus does not ever gain a reified status, but does gain an effectual status, based on its practical use.

2.2.1 Faith as an Immanent Posture

In one of many resonances with (and distinctions within detail from) Laruelle, this “Absolute Nothingness” or emptiness (śūnyatā) is “One” or “One and All.”^[59] For Nishitani, however, this absolute is not a transcendental claim, or at least does not function as an abstraction removed from or hidden behind what is immanent. Instead, this is understood in the field of emptiness, with the logic of the nondual, absolute nothingness, and the things of the world are both one and independent of each other. Nishitani explains:

This is the “One and All,” not as is contemplated on the field of reason, but as it is comprehended on the field of śūnyatā. This is, as noted earlier, not simply “being,” but being at one with emptiness; and, consequently, it is not an absolute unity abstracted from all multiplicity and differentiation in the world, but an absolute unity on the field where multiplicity and differentiation are absolutely radicalized. It means that an All that is nothingness-sive-being, being sive-nothingness is One; it means that on the field of śūnyatā all centers, each of which is absolutely independent, are essentially one.^[60]

The person who moves from the field of reason to the field of śūnyatā and embraces the world in this non-dual, non-subject/object manner is the one, in the language of traditional Buddhism, who has become enlightened. Nishitani is not recommending enlightenment in an uncritical sense, of course; but the philosophical perspective he recommends is emerging directly from the arguments of that tradition. And to understand existence properly is to be able to see it as nothingness-sive-being, recognizing as well that there is no “I” doing this seeing even as a self emerges.

Nishitani, as mentioned above, will employ religious traditions as a way of expressing his understanding, including Christian language. On the matter of immanence, he writes of the doctrine of the omnipresence of God, and a few of its implications. First:

The Christian must be able to pick up a single pebble or blade of grass and see the same consuming fire of God and the same pillar of fire, hear the same thunderous roar, and feel the same “fear and trembling” that Moses experienced.^[61]

God as omnipresent means, of course, that there is no distinction between things or places in terms of their presence of God. The Christian who holds this perspective and actually lives in light of this understanding would be a person who truly understands that this seemingly omnipresent, and thus, transcendent God is, in reality, perfectly immanent:

But to say that God is omnipresent implies the possibility of meeting God everywhere in the world. This is not pantheism in the usual sense of the word, since it does not mean that the world is God or that God is the immanent life of the world itself. It means that an absolutely transcendent god is absolutely immanent.^[62]

As Nishitani clarifies, this does not mean that individual things are erased and reduced to being merely “God” or “Absolute Nothingness.” They are “absolutely independent” in the field of śūnyatā as they are One. This understanding of immanence empties transcendence – there is no thing which is transcendent and can be pointed to, only what is immanent. This is where Nietzsche’s thought particularly reveals its influence on Nishitani. Citing a key passage from Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols, the final chapter of Religion and Nothingness returns several times to this principle: “Es gibt Nichts ausser dem Ganzen.” “There is nothing outside of the whole.” For Nishitani, this passage from Nietzsche establishes a turn away from the western conceptualization of history and time towards the “moment,” “der Augenblick” for Nietzsche, and “the home-ground of the present” for Nishitani.^[63] Sarah Flavel has traced the connections and distinctions between Nietzsche and Nishitani on the matter of time and is present in a pair of articles. She indicates the connection between Zarathustra’s “gateway” and Zen formulations of interdependence,^[64] and later connects Nishitani’s practice of Death’s-Head contemplation with Nietzsche’s “affirmation of the whole.”^[65] For Nishitani, then, the affirmation of the world requires the turn to the present in a manner which follows Nietzsche’s affirmation of the moment by Zarathustra.

Though many are likely to be suspicious of this invocation of God or the notion of an absolute which seemingly hides behind the scenes, Nishitani is quite clear about where our focus is to lie. If we, for example, begin to think of God or Absolute Nothingness as something which can be thought about, then we are not on the field of śūnyatā – we are failing to perceive things correctly. He offers this clarification particularly in the context of twentieth-century treatments of nothing and nothingness, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre, suggesting that each retains a degree of objectification of nothingness:

And as long this nothingness is still set up as something called nothingness-at-the-bottom-of-the-self, it remains what Buddhism repudiates as “the emptiness perversely clung to.”…Nothingness may seem here to be a denial of self-attachment, but in fact that attachment is rather exponentialized and concealed. Nothingness may seem here to be a negation of being, but as long as it makes itself present as an object of consciousness in representative form—in other words, as long as the self is still attached to it—it remains a kind of being, a kind of object.^[66]

The God who is omnipresent in all things can never be thought of as something outside of those things – there is no transcendent to be thought. God is always immanent, and this absolute transcendence is, at the same time, absolute immanence, never reducible to one thing or the other.

This leads to the discussion of faith; faith appears in Nishitani’s thought in multiple senses and contexts, both in its connection with Christianity and in Buddhism, and in both positive and pejorative senses. The distinctively positive sense is taken specifically from the Buddhist tradition, which speaks of faith in certain, carefully qualified, terms. Bret Davis’s article on faith in the larger Buddhist tradition highlights the existence of two notions in the Zengakudaijiten (Large Dictionary of Zen Studies), where there is “one at the beginning of the path, as ‘the necessary state of mind for entering the gate of the Buddha Way,’ and one at the end of the path, as ‘the ultimate state of mind attesting to the truth (shoshin japanese characters).’”^[67] Nishitani follows this track in his discussion of Buddhism, focusing on Nāgārjuna’s Awakening of Faith, and affirms the significance of the concept at both of the stages described above. He writes:

Yet even Nāgārjuna himself, who more than anyone else exhausted the intellectual path, remarked that you can enter the vast sea of Buddhist law by faith. To state that the narrowest faith is the only entrance to the vast sea of the Buddhist law means that in any event we must proceed step by step toward the place where we come to meet the “enlightened”—this place being faith in the “Buddha” who is the source of all “laws.” In Buddhism this movement is called the arousal of a single thought, the awakening of faith, or the awakening of the aspiration to enlightenment. Faith in its religious sense—movement into “vast faith”—means, to use Buddhist terms, that the self has awakened to enlightenment (correct perception) for the first time, or that this aspiration to enlightenment has occurred from within itself in a self-aware and experiential manner as “one single thought.”^[68]

The beginning of faith which is described here is identified as something very small: the belief that Buddhist teaching has the potential to lead somewhere beneficial for the person. What comes next, which Nishitani identifies as “the movement into ‘vast faith’,” is enlightenment, or at least the aspiration thereto; as he indicates that Nāgārjuna is emblematic of this movement, it requires that one has “exhausted the intellectual path.” This “vast faith” is no longer faith in the sense of belief in a teaching or doctrine. It is, instead, manifested as a way of life, something realized without assertion.

Nishitani makes another distinction between forms of faith in his Religion and Nothingness, again drawing from the Buddhist tradition. This time, the two forms of faith are identified as, first, the faith of the Buddha towards sentient beings, and second, the faith of the human. Nishitani then connects this understanding with Christian terminology, as well:

We find the concept of faith as a reality in this sense both in Christianity and in Buddhism. In Christianity, faith is considered to be a grace flowing from divine love. Buddhism distinguishes between “two types of profound faith.” Faith is seen in its primordial sense as the turning of the “Power of the Original Vow” (that is, the saving will) of the Tathāgata (Buddha) in the direction of all sentient beings. This is known as the dharma faith. When this, in turn, meets with the real awareness of sin by man, it becomes human faith. In Christianity, faith in Christ means both man’s witness to and appropriation of God’s redeeming love, and also God’s actualization of and witness to his own divine love in man.^[69]

Once more, this faith is developed in the direction of practice, and away from doctrine – at least, we should say, this is the way that Nishitani develops this idea. In particular, focusing on the Christian portion of this articulation, faith involves the “appropriation” of God as love, and God’s “actualization” in humans; that is, faith is not the confession of a doctrine, but is more significantly the realization of such a love in one’s life as one gives oneself in love, a living witness.

This prioritization of faith in the lived sense can be especially seen in Nishitani’s treatment of the apostle Paul in his essay, “Ontology and Utterance.” Nishitani argues that Paul’s speaking of the message of Christianity is for no other reason than to bring new life into the lives of the Christians who follow him, such that they could say, with him, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). Thus, for Nishitani, Paul’s transmission of faith is not the transmission of intellectual content, but rather the transmission of life. He writes, “This reciprocal giving-receiving is spoken of as the giving up in death and giving over (paradidomai, trado) of oneself, of one’s being and living, to another. From this traditio of life-death and death- life originates the tradition of Christian ‘life’ and ‘faith.’”^[70] This collapsing of the distinction between life and faith is crucial to understanding how Christianity functions, at least according to Paul’s approach. Paul teaches, but the goal is not the transmission of a doctrine, rather the handing on of the life/death of Jesus such that the person comes to new life. That this is something separate from doctrine is confirmed by the nature of the new life, as Nishitani explains: “But at the bottom of the transference of his life, that is, ‘faith,’ exists something untransferable, which is the mystical union originating Christ.”^[71] What is transferred is not a body of knowledge, but the single person’s union with Christ. Nishitani clarifies his understanding of mystical union in this piece, which is beyond our purview; but nonetheless, it is crucial to point to the union as the key concern, not the idea of a specific intellectual content. The Christian religion is Paul’s union with Christ, who lives in him, and the handing on of tradition is, therefore, the realization of the possibility of the next Christian’s enactment of the same union with Christ.

Faith for Nishitani’s Christian, therefore, is directed towards the realization of the immanence of God in all things, the realization of the divine love for oneself and as oneself; in this sense, faith is life, the true life of God manifest in the person’s own life. For the Buddhist, faith is the realization of the immanence of emptiness in all things, world and self, inclusive, at the same time as this emptiness is not a thing hidden within, but is the thing itself. This is suggested in part by Nishitani’s citation of Nietzsche’s claim that there is nothing outside of the whole,^[72] which follows Nietzsche’s critique of a transcendent God as a form of world denial. Emptiness does not point to something beyond all things, nor does it resolve the existence of all things into an explanatory unity.

2.2.2 Faith as Distinct from Belief

As just indicated, Nishitani’s articulation of faith relies on a similar distinction from belief as we witnessed in Laruelle and Nietzsche. This distinction is not made as concretely as we see in Laruelle, though it is clearly found in his work, as Davis concludes: “Faith, for Nishitani, is not a matter of belief in the supernatural or a transcendent afterlife, but rather a matter of returning to a life of naturalness in egoless community with all beings.”^[73] The primary location for this discussion is found in Nishitani’s “Emptiness and Sameness,” as well as Religion and Nothingness. In the former, Nishitani provides something of an overview of the history of belief, writing of the movement of the understanding of the religious viewpoint over time. As he writes, the starting point is with irrational beliefs:

In earlier ages known as primitive societies, the standpoint of archaic religious “beliefs” supported the entire surface of human life. Various kinds of “belief”—what the later science of religion distinguished from true religions as “magic”—flourished in different forms, producing magicians who recited spells and performed incantations.^[74]

It is crucial here to note that Nishitani is not being dismissive of these notions of religion; instead, he seems to lament the movement to distinguish religion from magic which occurs in modern Christianity and affirm that Buddhism has not drawn such a strict line. The reason he is positive, in a qualified sense, is that the core of all beliefs is a requirement of the occurrence of something illogical or absurd and to accept these experiences requires an “opening.” This opening is necessary to come to the place which is no longer restricted by reasoning, language, or thinking:

On the other hand, the “opening” of the world, as I will be mentioning later, is also the place where religious reality (in the different forms of mythology, revelation, mysticism, enlightenment, and so forth) “is given” as well as experienced. To this extent, it “goes beyond” the intellectual power of reason and comes after all logics.^[75]

It is in this open space that religious faith in its ideal sense occurs, where the “intellectual” is exhausted and faith becomes life. In this sense, preliminary beliefs or magical understandings of the world are not negative, but merely introductory. The opening of the mind is necessary for the opening of the heart, and it is this opening which Nishitani identifies with the “awakening” of Nagarjuna, and thus: “As I mentioned earlier, this is nothing but ‘faith’ in its religious sense. The opening of the religious world is a turning toward the original place where the opening of the ‘world’ is an absolute opening, and it is the opening of man’s heart.”^[76] From this place, Buddhism in particular, but also at least certain tracks within Christianity, develops the methods of self-awareness, which makes possible the “real self-awareness of reality.”^[77]

For this reason, metaphysical beliefs, propositions, confessions, and so on are not understood to be a part of the fully formed faith as Nishitani develops it. This distinction is seen in the critique he offers of subject/object, ego, and the active self, on which conventional notions of faith generally rely. He explains:

The acceptance of divine love is called faith. Although this faith remains throughout a faith of the self, it is fundamentally different from the ordinary sense of faith which posits the self as its agent. In ordinary usage, faith is an act performed by the self, immanent in the self, and arising from within the self as an intentionality toward some object. It is the same even when we speak of believing in oneself. In all its forms belief does not depart from the field of consciousness and self-consciousness.^[78]

Any form of belief, therefore – any propositional content held by a subject in the direction of a proposed object – is excluded from faith. This would be to remain in the field of consciousness, whereas Nishitani is pushing the movement towards the field of śūnyatā. On the field of śūnyatā, there is no subject or object, and thus, there is no acting subject, no “I” to say “I believe.” Instead, faith happens at the intersection of the self (differently understood) and Absolute Nothingness, articulated variously as God or Tathāgata.

Faith, as understood in the context of the new understanding of religion suggested by Nishitani (through his predecessor Nishida Kitaro), emerges from the field of śūnyatā…

In religion, however, faith comes about only on a horizon where this field has overstepped and the framework of the “ego” has been broken through. Sin comes to be realized within the self as a reality emerging from the one ground of being of the self itself and of all men, or of all sentient beings (sattva). So, too, must the faith that signifies salvation as a conversion from that sin be a Great Reality.^[79]

Religion in this sense is not about a body of doctrine; instead, it is about the “everyday mind,” a certain form of existence. Nishida’s articulation is consonant with Nishitani’s, emphasizing the immanence of the eternal (Absolute Nothingness, Nirvana, and God). He writes:

The religious form of life is that dimension of experience in which human existence itself comes into focus. It does not have a fixed content. It is the standpoint of all standpoints. Every claim of privileged content for it becomes mere superstition. Hence, religious creeds must always be taken as only symbolic. Religious creeds are only the immediate expressions of our historical life. With that qualification, religious symbols have their significance. But the goal of true religion should lie in grasping eternal life in its own immediacy in our lives.^[80]

Nishida, then, and Nishitani following him, employ the symbols of religion as a means of bringing people into the “dimension of human existence itself.” Buddhist teaching and doctrine are useful insofar as they help to bring about the standpoint of all standpoints, without any fixed content.

This articulation of religion, it is important to note, is not an empty “void” relationship. It does not reduce the self and existence to a nothingness which does nothing; instead, it is this standpoint of absolute nothingness which makes it possible for the self to actually be a self. The ego self is shown to be a falsehood, an illusion, but the symbolic doctrine of religion teaches both the absolute nothingness of all things and the particularization of the self as a single self, in its unicity. Nishitani explains:

In general, then, this sort of faith indicates the point at which the self truly becomes the self itself. The elemental realization of evil and sin, the field of nothingness opened up in that realization, and the acceptance in belief of the working of salvation all signify, each in its own way, the point at which the self becomes itself as something absolutely unique, the most “private” point in the self, the standpoint of the “solitary man” as Kierkegaard has it. Not only can no one else take the place of the self; but even the “self” of ordinary parlance, that is the self as “ego,” is equally incapable of replacing the true self.^[81]

In this realization of self as a non-ego self, the human itself is revealed. This is a reception of the “real self-awareness of reality,”^[82] which is, again, how Nishitani introduces religion. As he explains further:

The moment one pure act of faith springs up, this faith is constituted as a state of non-regression through which the believer enters a state of “right confirmation.” This is so because this faith is not merely a conscious act of the self, but an actualization within the self of the reality we have been speaking of.^[83]

This actualization is not the development of a new reality, but simply the realization of the already-existing reality now freed of illusion.

2.2.3 The Axiomatic Use of Religion

The previous section introduced the distinction between faith and belief and touched on the nature of religion for Nishitani. This sense of religion functions once more in a way with resonances to Laruelle; doctrines are used without any adherence to the doctrine for the sake of coming to the immanence of the self and the world itself. Nishitani is careful in his criticism of “popular” religion and does not dismiss it, though he hardly recommends adherence. Instead, he sees in the religious or the magical (or the artistic, it should be mentioned), the possibility of the opening of the heart to a space outside of the constraints of knowledge, reasoning, or language. In this section, I will focus on another element introduced in Laruelle’s axiomatic sense of religion, which is the emphasis on creativity, a theme also present within Nishitani’s work. The human self which is realized in faith is not a self according to a set notion of “human” or “man,” but is the individual self in its specificity. Religious doctrines which describe, therefore, the ideal person offer a movement which is necessarily criticized by Nishitani, as they make the movement from faith to dogma. On the contrary, Nishitani describes the creative process of new birth:

Faith as a realization of the love of God (actualization-sive-appropriation) necessarily evolves in the “love of neighbor.” When St. Paul uses the word theopneustos, (Gk. Characters) “inspired by God” (2 Tim 3:16), he does not mean that we have the Holy Spirit breathed into us, but rather that our very being becomes “God-breathed” through the breath (spiration) of God himself. This is the reality of faith and rebirth in faith. The ancients expressed a similar idea in the saying “The channel forms as the water flows.” That is, water does not flow into a ready-made waterway called “man” but flows freely in its own way, and so makes its own waterway called “the new man.” The reality of this rebirth, of this new creation is the absolute affirmation born out of absolute negation.^[84]

The person is formed by the flow of the water (God, symbolically) and is outside of the control of either the person or the religion as a whole. Attempts to contain or restrain this flow are, in fact, contrary to faith, relying as they would on the ego. This leads to Nishitani’s critique of intolerance, targeting particularly the Christianity of European history, and mostly excluding Buddhism from such behaviour. The reason for this intolerance emerges from an incorrect notion of faith, one which views faith in the negative sense as an act of the ego self, along with the notion of the personal God. He writes:

Intolerance here is essentially bound up with the fact that faith comes into being here on a personal standpoint: the standpoint of a personal relationship with a personal God. This is so because, in the last analysis, in religion the personal contains some sort of self-centeredness. Consequently, the faith of Christianity could not help setting off antagonisms from time to time between this self-centeredness and the other element of agape, namely, the love of neighbor.^[85]

This negative sense of faith/religion is bound up in the notion of the personal: I have a relationship with God, a relationship of subject and object; because I have this relationship with a certain object/notion, challenges to my understanding of that object are challenges to the relationship I am in. When a certain understanding of the personal God is under threat, therefore, all those who believe themselves to be in a personal relationship with that understanding feel themselves to be equally threatened. Contrast this with the notion of faith as “divine love” in Nishitani’s understanding: this faith does not rely on doctrine, dogma, or certainty – it does not even rely on a notion of love, but rather a manifestation in practice. As in the passage cited at the start of this section, grace forms the “new man” in whatever way it wishes, and the person who is receptive of this grace through faith does not accomplish this change through an action of their ego-self – the way in which they are formed is not up to them, if they have the faith Nishitani describes.

Nishitani’s article “Ontology and Utterance” addresses this tension directly; the concern here is with the challenge of understanding what Paul is saying in certain instances which seem to violate or otherwise challenge ontological philosophical and theological norms. He suggests that there is a “nonontological” core of religion which forms the foundation of faith. This nonontological core can manifest in certain utterances – religious sayings, in particular – which attempt to express the practice of faith. But instead of continuing in their existence as the non-doctrinal, non-dogmatic faith, there is a “bias inherent in such utterances to become dogmatic.”^[86] In this instance, Nishitani is most interested in Paul’s “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20) The philosophical and theological interpretations of this passage are various, but any interpretation distracts from the core purpose of the statement, which is not intended to be a doctrinal. The purpose is, instead, the handing on of the tradition of the apostles, which is, once more, not a body of doctrine, but a transference of “life-death and death-life.” Nishitani explains:

Tradition is not a mere empty repetition. The tradition of life in Zen is compared to the pouring of water from a brimming bowl into another without spilling a single drop. This is made possible only by the radical transference of life-death and death-life taking place between man and man. The sheer difficult of this task brings about formalization. Treachery creeps into the relation which ought to be the giving/receiving of the eternal life between man and man. The traditio of life can, at any time, turn into a falseness. But a true tradition is always creative…But at the bottom of the transference of his [Christ’s] life, that is, “faith,” exists something untransferable, which is the mystical union originating in Christ.^[87]

There is always a risk in this transference. Laruelle, I would suggest, will argue that Paul only teaches belief – faith in its negative sense – and does not have anything equivalent to this core transference of the self/Christ’s life as a non-doctrinal effort to be found. This will, again, be discussed shortly; more pertinent to this section is once more the vision of religion and doctrine suggested. The entire purpose of religion in the sense that Nishitani employs it is the transference of a non-doctrinal form of life in immanence coinciding with the “Real self-awareness of reality.”^[88] The development of this process into a formal religion or a body of doctrine is acceptable only insofar as the language is conducive to leading people on the path to faith; but in itself, the doctrine is not privileged, nor should it be static. Instead, as appears here once more, “true tradition is always creative.”

2.2.4 Faith and the Possibility of the Real

Finally, we come to the encounter with things as they are made possible by this faith. Nishitani’s philosophy is founded upon the notion of the standpoint or field of śūnyatā, contrasted from the standpoint or field of consciousness. To come to the standpoint of śūnyatā means a different sort of encounter with the things of the world is made possible. Nishitani describes this altered standpoint on multiple levels.

First, the self. Although Buddhist thought is often characterized as a form of self-denial, or lacking a theory of the self (anatman), Nishitani will argue that there is a self which is found in the field of śūnyatā, and this is the true self. He writes, “Faith, in contrast, marks the point at which the self is really and truly a solitary self, and really and truly becomes the self itself. At the same time, however, this faith is not simply a thing of the self, but takes on the shape of a reality.”^[89] Faith, again, and the self itself, are not concepts, but realities – they are manifest in life as an existence. This existence emerges out of the recognition that the self of the ego, the self of concepts and understandings, is a false self; this self is negated. At the same time as this self is negated, the real “solitary” self is affirmed, as it actually is in its singular nature: “This reality comes about at once as the absolute negation and the absolute affirmation of the solitary self.”^[90]

This self which emerges occurs as part of the process described as “conversion” in religious texts. It is this conversion which makes the encounter possible with things as they are. Nishitani explains:

We noted that even though all these things belong to us as our very own, they are real primarily in themselves, and only really become our own when we ourselves become their realization. In other words, only when they make themselves present to us in their suchness are we able to be aware of the self in them.^[91]

The negation of the self and the negation of all things (absolute negation) work with the affirmation of self and all things (absolute affirmation). In this unresolved relationship, things present themselves as they are, with Nishitani explaining this as the result of “non-attachment.” He writes:

All attachment is negated: both the subject and the way in which “things” appear as objects of attachment are emptied. Everything is now truly empty, and this means that all things are themselves present here and now, just as they are, in their original reality. They present themselves in their suchness, their tathāta-. This is non-attachment.^[92]

Much as in the case of Laruelle, this revelation of things as they are does not establish a simple return to philosophy as it was accomplished before. But there is a giving of things as they are which is part of the new form of lived existence made possible in this conversion.

This “giving” is the poetic form of existence – the poet is the one who is open to reality and thus receives from the world in a way different than others. In Nishitani’s article on the poet Basho, he references Kierkegaard’s three forms of existence, the poetic, the ethical, and the religious, and then argues that for a Japanese poet like Basho, there is no distinction between the poetic and the religious.^[93] The coincidence of religion and poetry is likewise developed in “Emptiness and Sameness,” where Nishitani writes:

This poetic approach implies a course of inquiry that never departs from experience but penetrates the source of experience. Such a course shares the same standpoint with religion. While digging into the ground of knowledge, religion also includes a tendency to overcome the standpoint of “knowledge.”^[94]

Experience is the key term here; Nishitani’s engagement with the term is grounded upon the development of the notion in Nishida’s thought, though deviating in key ways. The poetic/religious approach leads the person directly to “experience,” which is outside of the standpoint of “knowledge” – the experience is not the achievement of objective knowledge in any sense, and in fact relies on the overcoming of the perspective which would seek to analyse the world as a subject analyses an object. Instead, in this direct experience, the “real self-awareness of reality”^[95] becomes possible. Nishitani explains:

But when the limits of “art” appear in such a way, the opening far in the distance of such limits is, to say it simply, the horizon of “religion.” The appearance of reality as simply “reality,” beyond language and all its logos and reason, is the end of the way known as art and the beginning of the new way of religion.^[96]

Religion begins with this experience of the real – the way of faith is the coming to immanence. Nishitani further clarifies that “the experienced reality of actuality is originally always “something directly given.” Yet it is not given to our “consciousness” as a “representation.” Reality “is given” experientially to ourselves as one body and mind.”^[97] Through this religion, then, reality is non-representationally embodied – it becomes what one is, and thus one becomes, or is, reality itself.