http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/
Mere coincidence that the SEP recently updated its entry on the Kyoto School? [Re: The question of its unintended contributions to WWII nationalism in Did Zen Ideas Create The Kamikaze?]
EXCERPT: [...] The third and central section of this article will treat what is generally considered to be the central philosophical concept and contribution of the Kyoto School, namely, their ideas of “absolute nothingness.” After discussing the ostensible contrast between “Western being” and “Eastern nothingness,” and after looking at some of the Eastern sources of the idea of absolute nothingness, I will discuss the topological, dialectical, phenomenological and existential philosophies of absolute nothingness developed by Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani Keiji, and most recently by Ueda Shizuteru .
The fourth section will address the political controversy surrounding the wartime writings and activities of the Kyoto School. The first wave of attention paid to the Kyoto School in the West in the 1980s largely ignored the political debate that had long surrounded the School in Japan. While this lacuna in Western scholarship was amended in the 1990s, notably with the publication of Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School and the Question of Nationalism (Heisig/Maraldo 1994), the political ventures and misadventures of the Kyoto School remain a highly contentious subject (see Maraldo 2006 and Goto-Jones 2008). In the final section of this article I will return to the question of the cross-cultural legacy of the Kyoto School as a group of thinkers that stood between—or perhaps moved beyond—East and West.
[...] After many years of studying Western philosophy and Eastern classics, alongside a dedicated practice of Zen Buddhism, Nishida [Kitarō] was the first major modern Japanese thinker to successfully go beyond learning from the West to construct his own original system of thought. [...] he obtained a position in the Philosophy Department of Kyoto University, where he went on to ceaselessly develop his thought and to decisively influence subsequent generations of original philosophers, including the two other most prominent members of the Kyoto School, Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962) and Nishitani Keiji (1900–1990).
[...] While the Kyoto School philosophers all devoted themselves to the study of Western philosophy (indeed they made lasting contributions to the introduction of Western philosophy into Japan), they also kept one foot firmly planted in their native traditions of thought.
[...] It would be misleading, however, if we were to think of the Kyoto School as merely putting a Western rational mask over Eastern intuitive wisdom. Nor would it be entirely accurate to think of them as simply using Western philosophical idioms and modes of thought to give modern expression to East Asian Buddhist thought. For not only is the Western influence on their thought more than skin deep, their philosophies are far too original to be straightforwardly equated with preexisting Eastern thought. Insofar as they can be identified as East Asian or Mahāyāna Buddhist thinkers, this must be understood in the sense of having critically and creatively developed these traditions in philosophical dialogue with Western thought. It should be kept in mind that their primary commitment is not to a cultural self-expression, or even to a dialogue between world religions, but rather to a genuinely philosophical search for truth.
The Kyoto School has become most well known, especially in the West, for its philosophies of religion. Indeed the reception of the Kyoto School in North America in particular has more often than not taken place in university departments of Religious Studies, where their philosophies of religion have frequently been viewed as representative of Mahāyāna Buddhism, specifically of the latter's Zen and Shin (True Pure Land) schools. While the exchange on these terms has been fruitful, this view can be misleading in two respects. First of all, even if, for most of the Kyoto School thinkers, a philosophy of religion is the ultimate arche and telos of their thought, it is hardly their sole concern. They address a full array of philosophical issues: metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, logic, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of history, philosophy of culture, ethics, political theory, philosophy of art, etc.
Secondly, even when their focus is on the philosophy of religion, they approach this topic in a non-dogmatic and often surprisingly non-sectarian manner, drawing on and reinterpreting, for example, Christian sources along with Buddhist ones. Even Nishitani, who did in fact come to identify his thought with “the standpoint of Zen,” adamantly refused the label of a “natural theologian of Zen.” He claimed that: “If I have frequently had occasion to deal with the standpoints of Buddhism, and particularly Zen Buddhism, the fundamental reason is that [the original form of reality and the original countenance of human being] seem to me to appear there most plainly and unmistakably”.
Kyoto School philosophy, therefore, should be understood neither as Buddhist thought forced into Western garb, nor as universal discourse (which the West happened to have invented or discovered) dressed up in Japanese garb. Rather, it is best understood as a set of unique contributions from the perspective of modern Japan—that is, from a Japan that remains fundamentally determined by its historical layers of traditional culture at the same time as being essentially conditioned by its most recent layer of contact with the West—to a nascent worldwide dialogue of cross-cultural philosophy....
