 The question of how to open up an existential path to the place of absolute nothingness was particularly acute given the prevalence of the pendulum swing between two extremes endemic to modernity: on the one hand, an extreme reification of the subjective ego together with a corresponding objectification and technological manipulation of things; and, on the other hand, a reactive nihilism which threatens to nullify the very reality of both the self and things. For Nishitani, humanism and science were incapable of overcoming this dilemma of reification vs. nullification; in fact, they had helped create it. In an age of secular egoism and nihilism, how could an experience of the place of absolute nothingness take place?