Lukas Heller

I am a PhD candidate in Global and Imperial History, studying the history of nihilism in late 19th and early 20th century Japan. 

My research focuses on how the meaning of ‘nihilism’ transformed over time as the concept was translated into Japanese, and appropriated by artists, philosophers, and ideologues for a variety of rhetorical purposes–– from its beginnings as a practical political philosophy for Japanese anarchists in the late 1880s’ to its eventual reconceptualization by the Kyoto School philosopher Nishitani Keiji in the mid 20th century.