Die Logik des Absoluten und die Logik des Leeren – oder: die Durchsichtigkeit bei Hegel und das soku bei Nishitani
Ryôsuke Ohashi
Hegel-Studien Band 56 (2023)

Abstract: In this article, an attempt is made to compare, with reference to the theme
indicated in the title, Hegel’s logic, as the core of his entire philosophical speculation, and
Buddhist logic, which lays deep roots in the intellectual soil of the Kyoto School’s philosophy, as
represented by Keiji Nishitani. The term transparency, in the sense that it is used in Hegel’s logic,
and the soku of Buddhist logic stand as the focal point of this comparative treatment. In Hegel’s
Science of Logic, the term transparency first shows up at the end of the logic of essence and then
prominently in the logic of the Concept. The determinateness of the Concept-categories, and
indeed of all logical categories, is a thoroughly transparent shine, a difference that vanishes in its
positedness. This transparency itself is employed in the Hegelian logic without logical definition,
just like with the terms negation, transition, and mediation, as Kierkegaard once pointed out.
This element of transparency has nowhere been considered in past research on Hegel. Yet, this
element can be drawn out as the focal point in a comparative treatment of the Hegelian and
Buddhist logics. For in Buddhist logic, the word soku is used at such places where different states
of affairs are on level, and insofar as they are made transparent, with one another. For example,
there stands the most well-known saying of Mahayana Buddhism, which declares: “Emptiness is
soku appearance, appearance is soku emptiness.” At the point where these two terms intersect,
Hegel’s transparency and Nishitani’s soku, we see that the two overlap, and yet, at the same time,
they are separated by a gap in which what is peculiar to each becomes visible.

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