Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue

Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West DialogueAuthor(s): Lin Ma and Jaap van BrakelSource: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Oct., 2006), pp. 519-566Published by: University of Hawai'i PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4488052 .

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HEIDEGGER'S COMPORTMENT TOWARD EAST-WEST DIALOGUE

Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel Institute of Philosophy, K. U. Leuven

I. Introduction

Broadly speaking, there have been three approaches adopted by scholars writing on Martin Heidegger in relation to Eastern thinking. The first approach may be called a study of the impact and influence, either of Heidegger's philosophy on the intellectual development of a number of Asian scholars contemporaneous with Heidegger or of Asian thought on Heidegger's way of philosophizing. The impact of Hei- degger's philosophy on Japanese scholars has been well documented in various publications, particularly those in the German language.1 According to Yuasa Yasuo, "There is probably general agreement that among philosophers in the contemporary world Heidegger has left the greatest as well as the most continuous influence on philosophy in Japan" (Yuasa 1987, p. 174; cf. Ohashi 1989b).

Representative of this approach is the work of Reinhard May. In his monograph Light from the East: Heidegger's Work under East Asian Influence (1989, 1996),2 May undertook an unprecedentedly thorough investigation of the extent to which Heidegger may have drawn inspiration from East Asian thought. May aimed to demonstrate that this influence had an unparalleled significance, in that in some cases "Heidegger even appropriated wholesale, almost verbatim, major ideas from the German translations of Daoist and Zen Buddhist classics."3 May's claims and argu- ments have been received quite well in the academic world. His English translator Graham Parkes endorsed May's views and enhanced them with a "complementary essay" written in a similar spirit (Parkes 1996). In his "Translator's Preface" Parkes

says that due to May's discoveries, "a chapter of the history of modern Western ideas

may have to be rewritten" (May 1996, p. x). A number of articles have appeared that either follow up May's way of comparative textual analysis or take his claim as the

proper guiding principle of research.4 Heidegger himself was well aware of the alleged similarities between his thought

and Asian ideas. On more than one occasion he drew attention to the fact that a Japanese translation of "What Is Metaphysics?" (H 1929) appeared as early as 1930, and that the East found this essay easier to accept than the West. In a letter to Roger Munier dated July 31, 1969, he says:

The reaction to the piece in Europe was: nihilism and enmity to "logic." In the far East, with the "nothing" properly understood, one found in it the word for being. (H 2003, p. 88)

Philosophy East & West Volume 56, Number 4 October 2006 519-566 519 ? 2006 by University of Hawai'i Press



Sometimes it is Heidegger himself who creates the impression that there is a sort of kinship between his philosophy and Asian thinking. In "A Dialogue on Language" (H 1953/1954), from time to time he pronounces through the mouth of his Japanese interlocutor that his thought is more easily understood by referring to Asian ideas. The following are some examples:

j: ... I see more clearly as soon as I think in terms of our Japanese experience. (p. 12/ 98)

j: As far as I am able to follow what you are saying, I sense a deeply concealed kinship with our thinking. (p. 40/136)

j: We Japanese do have ... an innate understanding of your kind of reserve. (p. 50/ 149)

The second approach to Heidegger's Asian connection consists of an attempt to account for the congruence between Heidegger's thinking and Eastern thought by trying to draw analogies between the two. Heidegger's philosophy has been studied in comparison with Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Dogen, as well as with a few, contemporary Japanese philosophers.5 Among the exemplary works is Joan Stambaugh's "Heidegger, Taoism, and the Question of Metaphysics" (1987), in which resonances between Taoist ideas and Heidegger's key terms Weg (way) and Gelassenheit (release) are discussed.6

The third approach addresses the relevance of Heidegger's thinking to the foun- dation, initiation, and orientation of intercultural or comparative philosophy. Most of the contributions in this area are written in German and have hardly been noted in

English-language academic circles. Several commentators have ascribed a unique role to Heidegger's philosophy in the context of global intercultural philosophy. In the opinion of Willfred Hartig, Heidegger spares no efforts in exploring the possibilities of dialogue between the West and "the few other great beginnings" (H 1959a, p. 201/177), namely the Indian and the Sino-Japanese world (Hartig 1997, pp. 14, 19). According to Florian Vetsch, Heidegger provides an account of planetary unifi- cation on the basis of different traditions going back to their roots and contributing in various capacities to thwarting the danger of modern technology (Vetsch 1992, p. 85). Eckard Wolz-Gottwald sees in Heidegger's work the "beginning of a 'creative' intercultural philosophy as a third way" (Wolz-Gottwald 1997, p. 99). Klaus Seeland argues that Heidegger presents an "intercultural comparative hermeneutics" in resorting to non-European philosophy for the sake of opening up a new or an "other" beginning for Western metaphysics, which has been mired in a hopeless dilemma (Seeland 1998, pp. 33, 253).

Obviously, most authors offer Heidegger's thought a favorable reading. Only rarely does one decipher the relevant passages in Heidegger's corpus with a critical eye (we shall discuss these passages in subsequent sections). And even then the final assessment is ambiguous. For example, in a critical and highly cynical article titled "lm Westen nur Neues" (In the West only new things), A. W. Prins ends with the ambiguous comment that "for the project 'Heidegger and intercul-

520 Philosophy East & West



tural philosophy' the title 'Thinking on the Way' is justifiable in every respect" (Prins 1996, p. 97).

The present essay overlaps more with the issues arising in the third approach than with those in the first two. Our primary purpose is to ascertain Heidegger's comportment toward East-West dialogue in the light of his philosophical concerns and orientations. The word "comportment" translates the German word Verhalten, which originally denotes conscious or unconscious behavior in regard to individu- als, animals, and substances. It is also applied when the behavior in question is the "taking of an attitude" or stance with respect to, for example, a country or govern- ment. The phrase "taking of an attitude" has the connotation that one's attitude does not always remain one and the same, that there are always changes and modifications involved relative to different situations. It also has the implication that, instead of indicating a static mental state, an attitude that is to be taken is more closely related to one's particular choices, for example what one chooses to study and what not, where one prefers to travel and where not. One of the cognate words of Verhal- ten is Verhaltnis, meaning "proportion, relationship." The correlated transitive verb verhalten means "to hold back, restrain." Hence, sich verhalten implies "to restrain oneself," as well as "to relate oneself to, to comport oneself." In Being and Time, Heidegger often speaks of (sich) verhalten zu Seiendem (H 1927, p. 192, passim), that is, comportment toward beings, or relating oneself to beings.

In this essay, we shall investigate how Heidegger relates to the issue of East-West

dialogue: what remarks he makes, what action he takes, and whether there are modifications to his attitude. To use the word comportment instead of attitude seems to be more apposite for this purpose. We shall consider relevant presuppositions at play when Heidegger confronts East-West dialogue, one of the most essential but most often ignored questions for philosophers living in the contemporary pluralistic world. We shall decipher many of Heidegger's ambiguous and perplexing remarks or gestures by restoring them to their proper context.

The assessments concerning the pertinence of Heidegger's ideas to new types of

syncretic philosophy in the new era have their basis primarily in quite a number of remarks Heidegger made, from the 1950s onwards, in his philosophical writings, lectures, correspondence, or conversations in relation to the necessity, importance, or (im)possibility of East-West dialogue. Since almost all of Heidegger's relevant articulations are brief or sketchy, and occur on various complex occasions in an in- cidental or fleeting way, they demand careful investigation and critical evaluation before any assertion is made with respect to the meaning, intention, and implication of these articulations.

Some authors seem to be insufficiently thoughtful in quoting "evidence" from authoritative contributions without checking the original reference or context. This has led them to drawing speculative conclusions on the basis of a few highly ambiguous and multi-interpretable "facts." The following is an example of such a dubious thirdhand or fourthhand citation. In his influential 1987 essay "West-East Dialogue: Heidegger and Lao-tzu," Otto Paggeler wrote:

Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel 521



Heidegger himself maintained, moreover, that from early on he had worked with Japa- nese scholars, "but had learned more from Chinese." In 1946 he collaborated with a Chi- nese scholar on a translation into German of the Laozi, but they completed only eight of the eighty-one chapters. (P6ggeler 1987, p. 50)

For the remark he makes in the first sentence, P6ggeler gives the source as page 102 of a paper by Hans Fischer-Barnicol (1977).7 This remark is repeated in many publications with the same reference given. In fact, if one reads Fischer-Barnicol's own text, it is very clear that Heidegger did not in any case say such a thing. That from early on Heidegger had worked with Japanese scholars "but had learned more from Chinese" is no more than a passing remark made by Fischer-Barnicol himself.

Another inaccurate quotation is the citation of P6ggeler by Reinhard May in support of his central argument:

Heidegger has more than any other European philosopher initiated dialogue between the West and the Far East. (May 1996, p. 7; P6ggeler 1987, p. 76)

This is only the first half of PFggeler's remark, which continues:

... and yet, he takes up on his path the motives of the great traditions only in such a way that he incorporates them whole into his current point of departure-into the necessity into which his thinking is forced. (P6ggeler 1987, p. 76)

May has completely, and perhaps deliberately, ignored P6ggeler's important qualification to his observation.

The present essay will proceed in the following way. After briefly sketching the relevant parts of Heidegger's project of overcoming metaphysics and its relation to his views on modern technology, we assess how the emerging interest in East Asia in Heidegger's later writings has to be understood in the broad context of his philosophical project. We investigate how Heidegger's relevant observations have to be understood in the light of both the narrow and the wide context: what they do not mean and what they do or could mean. Trying to avoid either over-interpretation or

under-interpretation, we conclude that what these observations do not mean is that

Heidegger would have intended to contribute to East-West dialogue as it is "nor-

mally" understood or broadly spoken of, that is, as a serious dialogue or exchange between Eastern and Western thinkers in the current world situation. We propose that what Heidegger's references to East Asian thought could mean is that, for various reasons, Heidegger may have considered including in his dialogue with "past thinkers" (H 1953/1954, p. 30/123) not only pre-Socratic Greek philosophers but also a "few other great beginnings that belong with their Own to the Same of the

beginning of the in-finite relationship" (H 1959a, p. 201/177), of which the works of Laozi and Zhuangzi are relevant examples. We consider that our investigation is relevant to any research in comparative philosophy with respect to Heidegger. Hence, the present essay can be seen as a study in "meta-comparative-philosophy."




II. Overcoming Metaphysics, Ge-stell, and "The Other Beginning"

One of Heidegger's central concerns is the project of overcoming metaphysics (H 1936-1946). According to Heidegger, Being showed itself for the first time to the Greeks. However, Being has not been thought through and has been forgotten. What results from this "forgottenness" is a history of metaphysics in which Being shows itself in an oblique and distorted way. This makes a transformation of metaphysics an urgent necessity. The task of overcoming metaphysics involves an exploration of the essence of language and a confrontation with the essence of modern technology.8

To Heidegger, the contemporary era of modern technology inevitably unfolds from the history of Being, which finds expression in the evolution of Western philosophy:

"Philosophy" is in its essence so originally Western, that it carries within itself the history of the Western world. Out of this alone technology has arisen. There is only one Western technology. It is the succession of "philosophy" and nothing more. (H 1943a, p. 3)9

At the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s, Heidegger reiterated from time to time that the essence of modern technology is not something technological; rather, it resides in enframing: "The word Ge-stell names the essence of technology" (H 1949a, p. 65). Heidegger uses the term Ge-stell, which is usually translated as "enframing" ("the gathering unity of all ways of positing" [Weisen des Stellens] [H 1969, p. 60/366]), to represent a particular expansionist enclosure of all beings, which are turned into utter availability and sheer manipulability. Beings become "standing reserves" (H 1969, p. 61/368) or a "calculable resource" (H 1959a, p. 202/178), always ready for the call of technological purposes.10 Further- more, Heidegger stresses that man is also inevitably subject to the sweeping power of das Ge-stell:

Is it that Being itself is faced with the challenge of letting beings appear within the horizon of what is calculable? Indeed. And not only this. To the same degree that Being is challenged, man, too, is challenged, that is, forced to secure all beings that are his concern as the substance for his planning and calculating; and to carry this manipulation on past all bounds. (H 1955-1957, p. 35/99)

As time moves on, Heidegger's anxiety about the state and development of the

contemporary "interstellar-cosmic space" or "present-interstellar-world" (H 1959a, pp. 200-201/177) keeps on increasing. This is reflected in such sayings as "the meaning of being is thus measurability" (H 1969, p. 53/355) and "[c]ybernetics becomes a replacement for philosophy and poetry" (ibid., p. 63/370). Typically, in the very last letter, dated April 11, 1976, published in Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges 1910-1976 and addressed to the participants of the tenth Hei-

degger colloquium held in Chicago, Heidegger makes the following remark:

In the age of a world civilization stamped by technology, forgottenness of Being is op- pressive in a special way for the asking of the question of Being.... The rapidly increas-




ing efficiency of these [organized machinations of modern technology] drives the forgottenness of Being to the extreme and thus makes the question of Being appear irrelevant and superfluous. (H 1976, p. 3)

However, Heidegger's stance toward modern technology cannot be pinned down as a simplistic protest and criticism. Technology is ultimately a way or mode in which the totality of beings is revealed. This is because there is an intrinsic relation between the emergence of modern technology and the destiny of Being:

Technology is in its essence a destiny within the history of being and of the truth of being, a truth that lies in oblivion. For technology does not go back to the rEXvTrl of the Greeks in name only but derives historically and essentially from rEXVTi as a mode of

aAcf•eEv:v, a

mode, that is, of rendering beings manifest. (H 1946b, p. 259/340)

This destiny can be described in terms of "danger": "The destining (Geschick) of

revealing is as such, in every one of its modes, and therefore necessarily, danger." This "destining reigns in the mode of enframing" and is "not just any danger, but the danger; ... [W]here enframing reigns, there is danger in the highest sense." (H 1953a, pp. 331-333/27-29)

The danger consists of the threat that assaults man's nature in his relation to Being itself, and not in accidental perils. This danger is the danger. It conceals itself in the abyss that underlies all beings. (H 1946c, p. 221/295)

To Heidegger, "destining" and "danger" are the two terms that capture most

precisely the nature of enframing as the essence of modern technology. It is out of historic necessity that technology grows out of the history of Being, whereas the dan-

ger refers to the fact that man may be denied access to a more originary revealing and to the experience of the call of the primal truth. By presenting the essence of

technology as a way of revealing that is a destining (sending), Heidegger builds up an essential connection between the promiscuous phenomena of technological appliances and development on the one hand and the key concept of the history of

Being on the other. The "danger" at the same time represents a critical and indis-

pensable occasion where Being can be revealed. In Heidegger's view, the renewal of thinking and metaphysics is made possible

precisely by the very culmination of the age of technology. He finds that H61derlin's verse vividly captures this sense: "where danger is, grows the saving power also" (H 1953a, p. 333/29). A decade later, in Identity and Difference, he remarks:

Viewed from the present and drawn from our insight into the present, the step back out of metaphysics into the essential nature of metaphysics is the step out of technology and technological description and interpretation of the age, into the essence of modern technology which is still to be thought. (H 1955-1957, p. 52/118)11

The strategy Heidegger recommends for combating the danger threatening Dasein in its essential nature is to urge for "a very long sojourn, in the enactment of which the other beginning of thinking always remains only an intimation, al-

though already decisive" (H 1936-1938, p. 3/4; emphasis added).12 Thinking is a




recollection of Being. Just as thinking is historical, for Heidegger language is also historical (H 1946b, pp. 259/341, 261/342). The destiny of Being comes to language in the words of "earlier thinkers" (H 1953/1954, p. 31/124). It is only from within that a transformation is possible. The Greek thinkers initiated "the one and only first beginning" (H 1936-1938, p. 4/5).13 "We," the posterity of the people of Being, should pursue more originally what the Greeks had thought. The dialogue with the Greek thinkers of the one and only first beginning is an essential preparation for "the 'other' beginning" (H 1936-1938, p. 4/5).

The first beginning needs to be repeated. However, this cannot be an exact repetition (H 1936-1938, p. 39/55). As he wrote much later, in a letter to Kojima Take- hiko dated August 18, 1963:

The step back does not mean a flight of thinking into bygone ages, and least of all a re- animation of the beginnings of Western philosophy. (Buchner 1989, pp. 224-225)

Nevertheless, "each new beginning of philosophy is and can only be a repetition of the first-a regurgitation of the question: what being might be-a saying of the truth of Being" (H 1936b, p. 34). At the same time, the "step back," the "leap into be-ing" (H 1936-1938, p. 7/9), should be "a genuine leaping ahead into the future" (H 1937/1938, p. 97/110).14

Ill. The Implication of "European-Western Philosophy"

There is a certain ambiguity about Heidegger's phrase "the first beginning." On the one hand, such an expression seems to refer to the historically concrete beginning of "European-Western philosophy." On the other hand, Heidegger stresses that this term should not be simplistically taken in a literally geographic sense.15 In the essay "On the Essence of Truth," he writes:

The originary disclosure of beings as a whole, the question concerning beings as such, and the beginning of Western history are the same; they occur together in a "time" which itself unmeasurable, first opens up the open region for every measure. (H 1930b, p. 145/ 190)

Similarly, in the "Letter on Humanism" written in 1946, Heidegger stresses that the essence of Hilderlin's use of "homeland" should not be associated with anything nationalistic:

The word [homeland] is thought here in an essential sense, not patriotically or national- istically, but in terms of the history of being.... even the West is not thought regionally as the Occident in contrast to the Orient, nor merely as Europe, but rather world-historically out of nearness to the source.... The homeland of this historical dwelling is nearness to being. (H 1946b, pp. 257-258/338)16

One may notice that the terms "homeland," "historical dwelling," and "nearness to Being" are all synonyms. The expression "'time'... itself unmeasurable" from the previous citation should be understood, to use Heidegger's terminology, both in the




epochal or world-historical (seinsgeschichtlich) sense, and in the literal or ontic sense, namely the ordinary sense of space, time, and history, at the same time.

Given Heidegger's many explicit statements that only the Greek and German

language are intrinsically the only proper languages of philosophy,17 it is difficult to believe that he is not thinking of any concrete historical entities or events when he is

employing such words as "German" or "the West" (das Abendland).18 Consider the

following illustrative passage from the Der Spiegel interview:

SPIEGEL: Do you believe that the Germans have a special qualification for this reversal [of the Western tradition]? HEIDEGGER: I am thinking of the special inner relationship of the German language with the language of the Greeks and their thinking. This has been confirmed for me today again and again by the French. When they begin to think, they speak German; they as- sure [me] that they could not get there with their own language. (H 1966, p. 113/679; translation modified)

To Heidegger, the German language is endowed with a unique significance because of its inherent relation to Greek. This is highlighted through a comparison with the French language. It is hard to believe that the German language as mentioned in the remark above is a reference only to something that is ontological or epochal, rather than to the German language as normally understood and used. Similar considerations apply to other statements or expressions of Heidegger's such as: "the French and the Germans [are] neighbors" and that both together constitute "the most essential part in the historical-cultural formation of the West" (H 1937b, p. 15); Amer- icanism is "[u]nhistorical, and therefore catastrophic" (H 1942, p. 143/179); "the essence of Western humankind" (H 1942, p. 43/51); "Western-Germanic historical Dasein" (H 1934/1935, p. 134); and so on. All these references should be understood, we suggest, both in the epochal/ontological and ontic senses simultaneously.

IV The Journey Abroad

In connection with his elucidation of H61derlin's poetry, the theme of "homecom-

ing" (H 1941/1942, p. 190) comes up from time to time in Heidegger's writings. To the poet, "the journey abroad to the foreign land remain[s] essential for the return home" (H 1943c, p. 108/83). Obviously, the journey abroad is necessary only in relation to the event of homecoming. It should also be noted that to Hdlderlin and

Heidegger the journey to the foreign land is not an arbitrary reference to some alien

region. The foreign land refers specifically to the Greek world, and the homecoming is importantly related to the German world. This point is clearly stated in the follow-

ing passage from Hilderlin's Hymn "The Ister":

That foreign, of course, through which the return home journeys, is not some arbitrary "foreign" in the sense of whatever is merely and indeterminately not one's own. The foreign that relates to the return home, that is, is one with it, is the provenance of such return and is that which has been at the commencement with regard to what is one's own and the homely. For HSlderlin, the Greek world is what is foreign with respect to the historical humankind of the Germans. (H 1942, p. 54/67; italics original)




Although the journey abroad may extend to where "the people of India" dwell (H 1943c, p. 108/83),19 the Greek world will constantly assume the principal importance:

[T]he land of the Greeks, in distinction to one's own homeland, remains the first to be greeted and, in the departure of the journey to the turning place of the journey, also the last to be greeted. (H 1943c, p. 163/141)

Just as "language speaks solely and with itself alone" (H 1959b, p. 111/241), the journey of the poet is almost a solitary undertaking.20 The journey abroad is the route necessarily to be taken for the sake of coming home. The passage through the foreign is a process necessary for the "homecoming in one's ownness" (Heimkehr ins Eigene) (H 1941/1942, p. 190). One "must find in an encounter with the foreign, whatever is fitting for the return to the hearth" (H 1942, p. 125/156). At the ontological level, there could be a "historical dialogue with the poets of the foreign land" (H 1942, p. 55/69). This is the dialogue between H61lderlin and Sophocles. Except for this, nothing like a dialogue is taking place between different traditions. Moreover, the foreign is always kept at a distance:

For only where the foreign is known and acknowledged in its essential oppositional character does there exist the possibility of a genuine relationship, that is, of a uniting that is not a confused mixing but a conjoining in distinction (figende Unterscheidung). (H 1942, p. 54/68)

V Confrontation with the Asiatic

In the 1930s, Heidegger spoke on various occasions of the Auseinandersetzung between the great beginning of Western philosophy with "the Asiatic."21 It is not easy to find a corresponding English word that can convey the wide-ranging meaning of the German word Auseinandersetzung. In the main we translate it as "confrontation." Other possible translations include "struggle," "contest," and "controversy," as well as "conversation" or "dialogue." One may obtain a clue to deciphering the

implications and overtones of the word Auseinandersetzung in the following excerpt from Heidegger's lecture course "On the Essence of Human Freedom":

[Auseinandersetzung] is a bringing [of] the other and thereby also oneself to what is primary and originary. This is the essence of the matter and is automatically the common cause of both parties, so we do not need to make up afterwards or aim at a subsequent alliance. Philosophical confrontation is interpretation as destruction. (H 1930a, p. 198/ 292; emphasis original, translation modified)

Some writers have assigned a central role to Auseinandersetzung in Heidegger's philosophy (Fried 2000). Here we are concerned with the usage of this term in passages such as the following:

[T]he Greeks did not become what they always already are by being enclosed in their "space." It is only on the strength of the sharpest but creative Auseinandersetzung with




the most foreign and most difficult-the Asiatic-that this nation grew up in the short course of its historic singularity and greatness. (H 1937b, p. 21)

Although such a mention of the confrontation with the Asiatic seems to indicate that

Heidegger attaches a certain degree of importance to the role of the Asiatic, there is no suggestion of a dialogue or any sort of interaction on equal terms. It is wrong to see the experience or confrontation with the Asiatic as a constitutive part of the first

beginning. Besides, when he comes to this question, Heidegger always represents it as something that has to be overcome. In a lecture on H61derlin's poetry in 1934, he says:

This, as we might say, Asiatic imagery of destiny, has been overcome in H1lderlin's creative thought [because he doesn't think of destiny as fate]. A first, and of its kind un- repeatable overcoming of this Asiatic "Fatum," was achieved by the Greeks, and, in fact, it was "at one" with the poetic-intellectual-stately development of these people. (H 1934/1935, p. 173)22

In the lecture course titled Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, he also speaks of the Asiatic as something to be overcome:

For the great beginning of Western philosophy, too, did not come out of nothing. Rather, it became great because it had to overcome its greatest opposite, the mythical in general and the Asiatic in particular, that is, it had to bring it to the jointure of a truth of Being, and was able to do this. (H 1936c, p. 146/252)

From Heidegger's "European-occidental-grecian" arche-being perspective, the only thing Asian thought might be able to contribute would be to function as an aid for Heidegger's path of thinking.23 It might have an important role to play for the sake of the German people's "homecoming" and initiating "the other beginning," but it is kept at an enormous distance from what is the German's own. As other writings of Heidegger from the same period make clear, each people should look after their own destiny. For example:

Each creative understanding between people presupposes the genuine proudness of these peoples (V61ker), who should have the courage to work towards their own destiny.... the measured pace of courage for self-determination. (H 1937b, pp. 16, 21)

In addition, it is notable that sometimes Heidegger specifically relates "the great beginning of Western philosophy" and its "confrontation with the Asiatic" to the German Dasein. In his lectures on H61derlin, he remarks:

The name Heraclit ... is the name of an originary power of Western-Germanic historical Dasein, more particularly in their first Auseinandersetzung with the Asiatic. (H 1934/ 1935, p. 134)

VI. Asien

Just as Heidegger's expression "European-Western philosophy" is ambiguous, there cannot be an easy reading of other expressions such as asiatisch, ostasiatisch, Orient,




das Osten, or Morgenland. Difficulties of interpretation are sometimes exacerbated by English translations-as when, for example, das Abendland is translated as "the entire West" (H 1937/1938, p. 96/109), and Morgenland as "Orient" or "antiquity."24 One needs to be aware that in some of his writings Heidegger is following H61derlin in using Morgenland and Asien as labels for Greece,25 as the following passages from his notes on "Hilderlins Dichtung ein Geschick" demonstrate:

The foreign, however, is in the first place, Greece, as it is for all essential poets from the Abendland. Hdlderlin often says "Asia." ... The rising water, the mouth, which calls,- that [is what] the source follows. From Asia to Europe and back, from Morgenland to the Abendland, from land to land....

We; the poets; the word, that which destiny has sent us (das Zugeschickte), that which is to be said says, that which unifies Asia and Europe, Morgen- and Abendland, while it "is" "over" them (weil es <iober> sie <ist>>), only [thus] supporting and enabling their fateful/ historical (geschicklich) hidden essence.... (H 1945-1946, pp. 357-358; emphasis in

original)26

Obviously, in the context of discussing H61derlin's poems and letters, Asien does not refer to East Asia. Although the word Asien should primarily be taken in its ontological significance, ontically it may refer to Greece, the Middle East, even "the Indies," but surely not East Asia, because "[i]t is where the Indies are that the journey turns from the foreign back toward home" (H 1943c, p. 162/140).

For this reason, the oft-cited passage in the "Letter on Humanism"-"We have still scarcely begun to think the mysterious relations to the East that have come to word in Hilderlin's poetry" (H 1946b, p. 257/338)-should not be taken as involv-

ing a reference to East Asia. Here "the East" (das Osten) may extend as far as "the Indies," but not any farther.

Depending on the context, Asien, Orient, Morgenland, and so on may be more or less ontological-an issue that warrants further study. Consider the following passage in the "Letter on Humanism": "even the West is not thought regionally as the Occident in contrast to the Orient, nor merely as Europe, but rather world-

historically out of nearness to the source" (H 1946b, p. 257/338). Here "the West" is to be taken ontologically, whereas "Occident" and "Orient" are associated with the literal, geographical sense. Another passage runs as follows:

Will this Evening-Land away from Occident and Orient through the European become the place of the coming, more primordially destined, history? (H 1946a, p. 245/300; translation modified)

One cannot take for granted here, as some scholars have done, that "Orient" refers to "the East," including East Asia.27 Only the Evening-Land (Europe?), insofar as it is grounded in the Morning-Land (Greece?-in Auseinandersetzung with "Asia"?), has the potential to become the (newly commenced) Morning-Land:

According to this essential origination of aletheia, the Occident (Abendland) is the not yet decided or delimited landscape of the earth upon which an evening (Abend) is descend-




ing, which as evening essentially takes its beginning from the dawn and therefore har- bours in itself the morning of this landscape. (H 1942/1943, p. 147/219)

One should avoid isolating citations from Heidegger from the context in which they occur and then interpret them at face value. We suggest the following typology of

Heidegger's use of these expressions, with a view to their interconnections and their place in the larger picture of Heidegger's thinking.

1. In the 1930s to 1940s, Heidegger on several occasions remarked that Greek philosophy developed in Auseinandersetzung with the "Asiatic" (see section 5). Hei- degger seems to have re-engaged in an Auseinandersetzung with "Asia" in the 1960s in some fleeting moments (see section 15). In the context of speaking of the Auseinan- dersetzung with the "Asiatic," the terms Morgenland, Orient, and Asien never refer to East Asia.28 Only after the 1950s did Heidegger come to use the term ostasiatisch.

2. When discussing Hilderlin's poetry, both Asien and Morgenland refer to Greece (see sections 4 and 6).

3. There are passages where Heidegger speaks of the "danger from the East" in a quasi-political context (see section 7) or where, at least prima facie, "the East" seems to be a label for the "mysterious Other," which gives it a touch of exoticism.29

4. Quite a different context occurs when Heidegger engages himself, briefly but

quite a number of times, with the writings of Laozi and Zhuangzi (see section 8, "The Chinese Connection").

5. There are a number of brief remarks in conversations or interviews concerning Zen Buddhism (section 13).

6. Another different context is when in the 1950s and 1960s he speaks about Indian philosophy (not covered in the present essay).30

7. From the 1950s onwards, Heidegger on a variety of occasions laments that he has no access to the languages of East Asia (section 9).

8. Finally, from the 1950s onwards, Heidegger seems to ponder the possibility of East-West dialogue. (The relevant texts will be discussed in the latter part of the present essay). In these cases he uses the terms ostasiatisch, or East-West (dialogue), and sometimes China or Japan, but never does he employ the word Asien.

VII. Cultural Malaise

At the beginning of a lecture titled "Europe and German Philosophy," delivered on

April 8, 1936, at the Hertziana Library of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Rome, Hei-

degger makes the following remark:

Our historical Dasein experiences with increasing urgency and clarity that its future is facing (gleichkommt) a stark Either-Or salvation for Europe, or [alternatively] its own destruction. But the possibility of salvation requires two things:

1. Shielding (Bewahrung) European people from the Asiatic (dem Asiatischen).

2. Overcoming its own rootlessness and disintegration (Aufsplitterung). (H 1936b,

p. 31)31




Further on in the same lecture Heidegger discusses in detail what is needed "to

prepare and initiate the great turning of European history" (ibid., p. 33). However, this discussion concerns only the second aspect; the first aspect as mentioned in the quotation above, "shielding European people from the Asiatic," is not given an elaboration. As a result, this single remark lacks the context for its proper interpretation. It can be seen as implying something similar to the phrase "confrontation with the Asiatic." Nonetheless, the word Bewahrung conveys an overtone of keeping the Asiatic at a great distance, whereas the word Auseinandersetzung entails something like an engagement.

We suggest that the phrase "shielding European people from the Asiatic" be interpreted in relation to the intellectual conditions of Heidegger's times in the first half of the twentieth century, which are characterized by a prevailing cultural malaise in Europe, particularly in Germany. In 1952, Heidegger wrote, retro- spectively:

Even in the decade from 1920 to 1930, the European world of ideas could not cope any longer with what was then looming on the horizon. What is to become of a Europe that wants to rebuild itself with the stage props of those years after World War I? A plaything for the powers, and for the immense native strength of the Eastern peoples (ungeheure Volkskraft des Osten). (H 1951/1952, p. 67/71)

Already, in Being and Time, Heidegger describes the fallen state of Dasein as

"confin[ing] its interest to the maniformity of possible types, directions, and stand-

points of philosophical activity in the most exotic and alien of cultures" (H 1927, p. 43; emphasis added).32 As Heidegger sees it, this superficial interest in other cultures indicates the forgottenness of Being.33 In order to overcome the prevailing rootlessness and disintegration, Europe would have to go back to its own beginning, instead of seeking salvation with non-Western thinking.

In lamenting the prevailing "lack of thought" and the need "to say something that is essential and truly thought out" (H 1951/1952, p. 29/30), Heidegger is not satisfied to remain a Hamlet in a world out of joint. Throughout his life he spared no efforts in trying to bring life back to philosophy by raising anew the question of

Being and to reaffirm the word philosophia as the "birth certificate" of Western his-

tory, of the "contemporary epoch of world history" (H 1956, p. 35/34).

VIII. The Chinese Connection

Heidegger's familiarity with parts of the translated works of Laozi and Zhuangzi cannot be disputed. On the occasion of a discussion among a small circle of acquain- tances belonging to the "Club zu Bremen," following the delivery of his lecture "Vom Wesen der Wahrheit" (1930b) on October 8, 1930, he read out Zhuangzi's famous parable about the happiness of the fish, from the translation of Martin Buber.34 In one of his early essays on Halderlin Heidegger remarks that "the distinction between Being and beings is mentioned in Lao-Tse in the eleventh saying of his

Tao-Te-King"35 and then cites the whole of chapter 11 from the Daodejing.36




On the wall of Heidegger's study hung two parchment rolls with Chinese callig- raphy. They contained, respectively, two lines from chapter 15 of the Daodejing, written at Heidegger's request by Paul Shih-yi Hsiao, the Chinese scholar who coop- erated with Heidegger in translating parts of the Daodejing in the Summer of 1946 (more on this below).37 In a letter to Hsiao on October 9, 1947, Heidegger "translates" (Ober-setzt) these two lines as follows, the last sentence departing far from the original:

Who can be still and out of stillness and through it move something onto the Way so that it comes to shine forth? Who is able through making still to bring something into Being? The Tao of heaven.38

In the Freiburger Vortrige of 1957, immediately after citing H61derlin, Heidegger quotes one line of Laozi's chapter 28 from Victor von Strauss' 1924 translation: "Wer seine Helle kennt, sich in sein Dunkel hallt" (Whoever knows his light will remain covered in his darkness) (H 1957, p. 93).

In the same year, Heidegger wrote, in Identity and Difference: "[Ereignis] can no more be translated than the Greek logos or the Chinese Tao" (H 1955-1957, p. 36/ 101). In the essay "The Nature of Language," Heidegger composes a long passage in which the word Tao occurs five times. What follows is an excerpt from this passage:

... Tao could be the way that gives all ways, the very source of our power to think what reason, mind, meaning, logos properly mean to say-properly, by their proper nature. Perhaps the mystery of mysteries of thoughtful Saying conceals itself in the word "way," Tao, if only we will let these names return to what they leave unspoken, if only we are capable of this, to allow them to do so.... (H 1957/1958, p. 92/198)

In the lecture "Traditional Language and Technological Language," delivered in 1962, Heidegger writes:

What is the meaning of the supremacy of the useful over the useless? Instead of discussing this question itself, we will listen to a text from the writer Dschuang-Ds', one of Lao- Tse's students.... (H 1962b, p. 131/7)39

Following this remark, Heidegger recounts Zhuangzi's parable about the useless tree. In a letter to Ernst Jonger dated May 29, 1965, when the latter was leaving on his journey to East Asia, Heidegger cites the whole of chapter 47 of the Daodejing.40 Heidegger also cites two lines from chapter 15 of the Daodejing in a letter to Andrea von Harbou on August 6 of the same year.41

There is no doubt that Heidegger is one of the few famous philosophers who took serious notice of some non-Western philosophers. However, it is one thing to have an acquaintance with or an interest in or even to appropriate something, say, of Asian thought; it is quite another thing how one comports oneself toward it, that is, how one evaluates it according to one's frame of mind; and it is yet another thing how one would respond when confronted with the issue of East-West dialogue.

Notably, scholars of Asian origin who make a study of similarities between Hei-

degger's thinking and that of Lao-Zhuang outnumber Western scholars.42 As early as




1974, Chung-yuan Chang asserted in his translation of the Laozi, "Heidegger is the

only Western philosopher who not only thoroughly intellectually understands but has intuitively grasped Taoist thought" (Chang 1975, p. 138). More recently, Wing- cheuk Chan has commented that "it is undeniable that Heidegger's concept of the 'Fourfold' (Geviert) can be traced to Lao Tzu's concept of the 'Four Greatness[es]' in chapter 25 of the Tao Te Ching," and that in introducing the concepts of "mirror-

play" and "ringing" into the "fourfold" Heidegger is "influenced" by Zhuangzi (Chan 2003, pp. 5, 6).

There are also some critical or skeptical observations. In one of his early publications, Chung-ying Cheng made some negative comments regarding the commonly alleged resonances. He claimed that Heidegger did not realize the freedom and cre-

ativity of the Tao and suggested that Heidegger should give up his own style of writ-

ing and become a student of Zhuangzi or Laozi to learn a new language (Cheng 1978, p. 339). Similarly, Charles Wei-hsun Fu (1978) commented that it is quite easy to integrate Heidegger's thought into Taoism, but it is not the case the other

way around. More recently, Chan-fai Cheung remarked, "I regard the relation between Heidegger and Taoism as being over-interpreted and exaggerated" (Cheung 1998, p. 156).

Heidegger's most sustained effort to engage with ancient Chinese thought was his collaboration with Paul Shih-yi Hsiao in 1946, in which the two spent a number of summer afternoons translating passages from Laozi. It is interesting to see their re-

spective comments on this collaboration.43 In a letter to Heidegger on August 6, 1949, Karl Jaspers says that he seems to "have perceived something of the sort in Asia" similar to Heidegger's thinking about Being, the clearing (die Lichtung) of Be-

ing, the reversal of man's relation to Being into Being's relation to man, and so forth. In his reply six days later,44 Heidegger says:

What you say about the Asiatic is exciting: a Chinese [i.e., Paul Shih-yi Hsiao] who came to my lectures on Heraclitus and Parmenides in 1943-1944 ... likewise found resonances with Eastern thinking.

It can be seen here that Heidegger is aware that resonances with Asian ideas are eas-

ily to be found in his thought. Nevertheless, he avoids an explicit endorsement of this view. Following this, he cites a Western source for these resonances and thus

downplays the role Asian thought may have played in the formation and development of his thought:

The resonances presumably have an entirely different root. Since 1910 the master of reading and living, Eckhardt, has accompanied me.

With reference to his involvement in the translation project with Hsiao, Heidegger explains:

I remain sceptical where I am not at home in the language; I became even more sceptical when the Chinese, who is himself a Christian theologian and philosopher, translated with me a few words of Lao Tze. Through questioning, I came to realise how alien the whole nature of language already is for us; we then gave up the attempt.




Hsiao, on the other hand, was worried whether Heidegger really wanted to understand Laozi, or to read into it what he had already contemplated himself, or simply to find inspiration for relevant expressions. Hsiao writes: "I could not during our work together get free from a slight anxiety that Heidegger's notes might perhaps go beyond what is called for in a translation" (Hsiao 1987, p. 98). Hsiao sounds quite happy with the fact that the project came to be stalled.

P6ggeler, probably the most reliable commentator on Heidegger's engagement with Lao-Zhuang, may be right in ascribing a considerable significance to Hei- degger's Chinese connection:

Even though the translation of the Daodejing did not get far, the confrontation attempted between the beginning of the Western tradition and the beginnings of a great East Asian tradition transformed Heidegger's language in a critical situation and gave a new orientation to his thinking. (P6ggeler 1987, p. 52)

However, in another essay published two years later, P6ggeler suggests that although the influence of Heidegger's attempt to presence (vergegenwartigen) Laozi's characters resulted in the replacement of logos by tao as the name for Weg and Hei- degger suspected that the "picture-signs" in the Laozi should be understood as analogous to his own notion of interconnected "basic words" (Grundworten), "eventu- ally Heidegger broke off his concern for/with Laotse," and looked for possibilities of the other beginning in Europe, for example in the paintings of Paul Klee.45 How- ever, Heidegger's interest does not completely disappear. According to a document from Heidegger's Nachlag, Hartig says that during Chang Chung-yuan's visit to Hei- degger on August 18, 1972,

They discussed the Chinese language in which a sentence can be written without subject and without verb. Heidegger was pleased that in Chinese being and thinking are identi- cal, as with Parmenides.46

IX. Heidegger's References to East-West Dialogue after 1950

Before 1950, Heidegger's project of overcoming metaphysics was dominated by the

urge to go back to the beginning of the unique Western philosophical tradition. If other traditions had a role to play, at best they could only serve as a tool for the German people's homecoming. In 1952 Heidegger wrote:

The style of all Western-European philosophy-and there is no other, neither a Chinese nor an Indian philosophy-is determined by this duality "beings-in being." (H 1951/ 1952, p. 224/228)

One may wonder whether this can be read in a positive vein, suggesting that, yes, of course, there is no Chinese or Indian philosophy, but this implies that there is or might be Chinese or Indian Heidegger-type thinking.47 One year later Hei-

degger spoke of "the inevitable dialogue (GesprIch) with the East Asian world" (H 1953b, p. 158/41), and hoped to be able to give "the assurance that European- Western saying and East Asian saying will enter into dialogue (Gesprich) such that




in it there sings something that wells up from a single source (einzige Quelle)" (H 1953/1954, p. 8/94). There might even be "a few other great beginnings" (H 1959a, p. 201/177), or (again) a "confrontation with the Asiatic" (H 1962a, p. 228). There is no doubt that these references to the East Asian world or to a dialogue between East Asia and Europe are significant. However, their precise implications are very complex. We suggest that one has to proceed with caution here. In most cases these statements appear as a kind of brief note to the ongoing discussion. When citing Heidegger's mention of East-West dialogue, scholars often omit the context in which it occurs. A good example of this is the following. In his lecture "Science and Reflection," after two pages of introduction in which he gives his views on modern science and globalization, Heidegger says:48

Whoever today dares, questioningly, reflectingly, and, in this way already as actively involved, to respond to the profundity of the world shock that we experience every hour, must not only pay heed to the fact that our present-day world is completely dominated by the desire to know of modern science; he must consider also, and above [all] else, that every reflection upon that which now is can take its rise and thrive only if, through a dialogue with the Greek thinkers and their language, it strikes root into the ground of our historical existence. That dialogue still awaits its beginning. It is scarcely prepared for at all, and yet it itself remains for us the precondition of the inevitable dialogue with the East Asian world. (H 1953b, pp. 157-158/41; emphasis added)

The text then continues briefly with the nature of the needed dialogue with Greek thought and poets. There is no further reference to East Asia. Most of the rest of the text is a discussion of the nature of modern science, focusing on notions such as "theory," "reality" (das Wirkliche), and "object" (Gegenstand), discussing their ety- mological roots in Greek and in translations from Greek to Latin.

It is important to note four things in order to obtain a convincing interpretation of what Heidegger means by pointing to the "inevitable dialogue with the East Asian world." First, mention of "the East Asian world" occurs only once in this text. Hei- degger neither comes back to it nor provides any explication as to the import of this rather abrupt reference.49 Second, the phrase "inevitable dialogue with the East Asian world" occurs immediately after stressing the necessity of a "a dialogue with the Greek thinkers." Third, the dialogue with the Greeks, which is a precondition for the dialogue with the East Asian world, "still awaits its beginning." Fourth, both the "inevitable dialogue with the East Asian world" and "a dialogue with the Greek thinkers" are preceded by an easily overlooked but highly significant reference to das Ge-stell. Heidegger speaks of it in relation to the "world shock" that is experienced every hour. Das Ge-stell and the dialogue with Greek thinkers often constitute the context of Heidegger's brief references to East Asia. Citing isolated phrases such as "the inevitable dialogue with the East Asian world," without considering them in connection with their context may give a misleading impression of Heidegger's ultimate concerns.

In any case, Heidegger is certainly not advocating an East-West dialogue as this expression is usually understood. The idea of an East-West dialogue in which both




sides engage in consultation and commutation with a readiness to adjust each other's positions and view remains absent from Heidegger's thought. Or perhaps it is not possible for this kind of dialogue to be accommodated in his philosophy, which exalts the question of Being as the supreme question of philosophy, which is Western in its origin and nature.

Heidegger would not feel uneasy about the absence of such an idea of East-West

dialogue. To him, an "ordinary" dialogue would be all too superficial or would simply amount to a reification of traditions, especially the Western philosophical tradition, and a reduction of the supreme value embedded in traditions. This is why Heidegger's mention of East-West dialogue can only make sense insofar as it is

regarded as part and parcel of his project of overcoming metaphysics, going back, which is at the same time going forward, to the only first and great beginning, namely the (prehistory of the) Greek philosophical tradition.

X. The Inaccessibility of East Asian Languages

Heidegger's thinking on the issue of East-West dialogue centers on the character of East Asian languages. On the one hand, he repeatedly expresses his concern that he cannot read (ancient) Chinese or (modern) Japanese.50 For example, in a letter to Medard Boss dated June 30, 1955, he says:

Today I am amazed that years ago I dared to give the lecture on language. The greatest omission belongs to the fact that the possibility for a sufficient discussion about the East Asian languages is lacking. (H 2001, p. 251/316)

His concern about his ignorance of East Asian languages is also evident in another remark, made in a letter to Hellmuth Hecker dated February 16, 1955:

That Buddhism and not less so Chinese and Japanese thought need a completely different interpretation, which is free from 18th and 19th century images, needs no further elucidation given my concerns about classic philosophy. However[,] I miss the presuppositions for both. (Hecker 1990, p. 91)

A decade later, in a letter to Keikichi Matsuo dated June 20, 1966, Heidegger writes:

Because we Europeans usually fail to have a command of the Japanese language, unfortu- nately the necessary mutual understanding comes from one side only. (Buchner 1989, p. 228)

In a letter to the organizers of the conference "Heidegger and Eastern Thought" held in 1969 (see section 16), he says something similar:

[W]ith few exceptions there is no command of the Eastern languages either in Europe or in the United States. (H 2000b, p. 721)

On the other hand, Heidegger is intrigued by what he calls "the ever exciting relation (identity?) of picture and script in the ancient Chinese paintings."5' In a letter to Emil Pretorius52 dated April 6, 1955, he writes:




One theme appears to me to be inevitable: Speech and Writing; here become evident the essential questions of the East-West dialogue; questions of signification and image in the widest sense can be brought into the open. (lIsseling 1992, p. 329 n. 3)

Furthermore, on many occasions he posed questions in great earnest to his Asian visitors bearing on their languages in one way or another.53 In "A Dialogue on Lan- guage," the Inquirer asks the fictitious Japanese visitor:54

What does the Japanese world understand by language? Asked still more cautiously: Do you have in your language a word for what we call language? If not, how do you experience what with us is called language? (H 1953/1954, p. 23/113)

In opening a discussion on a Colloquium held on May 18, 1958 (Shinichi Hisamatsu was among the participants), Heidegger insisted that they limit themselves to "pre- liminaries" such as the question,

Do you have a word for 'art' in Japan?: ... Is there a Japanese word for what we call art? (Alcopley 1963, p. 48)

Finally, according to Medard Boss, Heidegger took an interest in Indian thought and the Sanskrit language. In a letter on March 12, 1960, Boss requests Erna M. Hoch, who was in India, to ask some questions about Sanskrit and Indian philosophy on Heidegger's behalf with an Indian specialist. Boss writes:

These days, when Heidegger comes to stay with me, he shows more and more interest in Indian thought. He regrets in particular that he has no knowledge of Sanskrit. He now has asked me to inquire what would be the Sanskrit of some fundamental terms and concepts. Above all, he wishes to know whether the Sanskrit language can distinguish between "Sein" and "Seiendes." (Hoch 1991, p. 251)

Heidegger was well aware that there existed great differences between the grammar of Chinese and that of German, and that Western metaphysics "very early on, in the form of Occidental 'logic' and 'grammar' seized control of the interpretation of language" (H 1946b, p. 240/314).55 Therefore, it is somewhat surprising that if his interest in East-West intellectual relations can be traced back to the 1930s, and he considered the different structure or essence of East Asian languages as philosophi- cally relevant,56 instead of taking sufficient initiative to learn a bit more about these languages, for many years Heidegger should have remained contented with merely complaining that he had no access to the original East Asian texts, as if the alleged otherness of these languages had already preempted him from making an effort to learn them.

XI. A Dialogue on Language

Heidegger's essay "A Dialogue on Language: Between a Japanese and an Inquirer" (henceforth, "the dialogue") is the only writing where Heidegger seems to have addressed the question of East-West dialogue at length (H 1953/1954).57 Kah Kyung Cho describes the dialogue as "a serious attempt to [achieve] an West-East dialogue




about the essence of language," which "definitely occupies a special place in the annals of European philosophy" (Cho 1993, p. 149). May asserts that the dialogue "can rank without hesitation among the richest and most significant texts of Hei- degger's to have appeared up to now" (1996/1989, p. 11). It is true that a number of passages in the dialogue point toward the topic of East-West dialogue. For example, while immersed in his remembrance of his lifelong reflection on the question of language and of being, the Inquirer remarks:

I do not yet see whether what I am trying to think of as the nature of language is also adequate for the nature of the East Asian language; whether in the end-which would also be the beginning-a nature of language can reach the thinking experience, a nature which would offer the assurance that European-Western saying and East Asian saying will enter into dialogue such that in it there sings something that wells up from a single source. (H 1953/1954, p. 8/93)

In Parkes' view, this passage explicitly shows that Heidegger seriously addresses East-West dialogue (Parkes 1987, p. 213), while at the same time "expresses doubts as to the very possibility of such a dialogue" (Parkes 1996, p. 103). There are some similarities between the passage just quoted and another one from "On the Question of Being," written one year after "A Dialogue on Language":

No prophetic gifts or gestures [talents and demeanor] are needed in order to realize that planetary building will bring about encounters with which neither of those involved today are able to cope. This is equally true for both the language of Europe and that of East Asia, and is true above all for the realm of possible dialogue between them (ihrer m6gli- chen Zwiesprache). Neither is able on its own to open or to found this realm. (H 1955, p. 321/424; translation modified)

In focusing on the phrase "the realm of possible dialogue between [the language of Europe and that of East Asia]," as most commentators do, one may easily overlook the fact that the main idea of this remark is to say that nobody, neither "the language of Europe" nor "that of East Asia," is up to the task of dealing with Ge-stell.58 If Ge-stell could be overcome, then "the realm of possible dialogue between them" will be opened up in a mode analogous to that in which "there sings something that wells up from a single source," as described in the dialogue. This futuristic vision lacks a temporal or historical dimension.

As pointed out in section 9, the broad context of Heidegger's occasional mention of East-West dialogue in the 1950s shows that it should be read in the light of his concern about the planetary Ge-stell and the need for a dialogue with "past thinkers" (H 1953/1954, p. 30/123), notably with Greek philosophers. In the meantime, "interpreting properly what earlier thinkers have said" (p. 31/124) is not a sim-

plistic return to pre-Socratic thinking. This means, as Heidegger explains, "to pursue more originarily what the Greeks have thought, to see it in the sources of its essence"

(p. 39/134). As the text says, it "speaks historically precisely in its attempt to reflect on the nature of language" and "speaks out of a thinking respect of the past" (p. 34/ 128). Heidegger's reference to East Asian or Japanese thought in the dialogue should




be seen against this background. One may speculate that Heidegger's Japanese interlocutor is only invited to join the project of pursuing "more originally what the Greeks have thought" (p. 39/134).

By giving "A Dialogue on Language" a misleading subtitle, "Between a Japanese and an Inquirer," and by speaking of a concern whether there can be a nature of

language "which would offer the assurance that European-Western saying and East Asian saying will enter into dialogue" (H 1953/1954, p. 8/93), Heidegger gives the impression that his essay is to be concerned with the issue of East-West dialogue. But step by step Heidegger turns the essay into an elaboration of his own philosophy of language, and thus turns an alleged "ordinary" intercultural conversation, as thwarted by the danger of the prevalent planetary Ge-stell and the metaphysics inherent in European languages, into a "true dialogue," which shows us the path to the single source, to "the region where the essential being of Saying is at home" (49/148).

XII. Dialogue at a Deep Level

As reported by Tezuka Tomio (1903-1983) in "An Hour with Heidegger," during their conversation Heidegger remarked that "East and West must engage in dialogue at this kind of depth" (Tezuka 1955, p. 62).59 This remark needs to be evaluated in the context of pervasive hints towards the "single source" in the dialogue (H 1953/ 1954, p. 8/93). Heidegger may well have said something like this in their actual conversation, although there is no passage in the dialogue that resembles "engage in dialogue at this deep level." The question is what this dialogue at "this kind of depth" would be like.60 Perhaps one could get a hint of the answer by connecting it with what Heidegger writes in the dialogue, as articulated by the Japanese interlocutor:

Professor Tanabe often came back to a question you once put to him: why was it that we Japanese did not call back to mind the time-honored beginnings (ehrwardigen Anf5nge) of our own thinking, instead of chasing ever more greedily after the latest news in Euro- pean philosophy? (H 1953/1954, p. 37/131; translation modified)

Proceeding from a conception that there exists a radical difference between the

European world and the Japanese world, Heidegger seems to be suggesting in this remark that the primary task of thinking for the Japanese is to try to retrieve their own tradition. This seems to be analogous to Heidegger's advocacy of the West

going back to the great beginning of its philosophy. There are, however, a number of complexities involved in this recommendation. First, the phrase "time-honored

beginnings" is not an exact equivalent to the "great beginning" (H 1959a, p. 201/ 177).

What is more crucial is that, to Heidegger, a true dialogue (ein eigentliches Gespr~ich) is not a dialogue in the ordinary sense. As early as 1936, in the essay "Holderlin and the Essence of Poetry," Heidegger claims that "the unity of a dialogue (eines Gespr4chs) consists in the fact that in the essential word there is always manifest the one and the same (das Eine und Selbe) on which we are unanimous




(worauf wir uns einigen)" (H 1936a, p. 57/39; emphasis added; translation modified).61 The expression "one and the same thing on which we agree" denotes the same thing that the phrase "single source" in the 1953/1954 dialogue does.62

At the outset of his essay "The Way to Language," Heidegger refers to the title of Novalis' poem, "Monologue," and says that this title "points to the mystery of language: language speaks solely with itself alone" (H 1959b, p. 111/241); "language is monologue" [ibid., p. 134; emphasis original). The event of appropriation (Ereignis) whereby the belongingness of language and humanity is shown forth presupposes the "one and the same thing" on which there is already agreement. To Heidegger, a true dialogue cannot be arbitrary and contingent at all.

Some scholars read into the dialogue a proposal for an intercultural new beginning. However, Heidegger's stance toward East-West dialogue can only be appreci- ated against the background of his understanding of what a true dialogue involves. It can be seen that a true dialogue could possibly happen only between Being and Dasein or man, or between Being and Heidegger. Since it is not man but language that speaks, and "language is the house of Being,"63 a true dialogue is better called a

monologue of Being itself. If dialogue for Heidegger can only be initiated from within the house of Being, if

"authentic saying" can only be "the constant prologue to the authentic dialogue of

language" (H 1953/1954, p. 53/152), then one can only speak of a dialogue from house to house insofar as the East engages itself in the project of retrieving Being from within the One House of Being as elaborated by Heidegger's thinking. Heideg- ger probably would not worry about whether his view would involve features of Eurocentrism, because to him the Other is invited to join the European (or Heideg- gerian) project. Klaus Held expresses such a view in the following, where "European thought" is used at the ontological level:64

Other cultures, too, will thereby have a chance-their first real chance-to preserve their individuality, not in raising barriers against European thought, but in participating in the process of European self-criticism. (Held 1995, p. 16)

XIII. The Japanese Connection and Zen Buddhism

One may discover some other intimations about Heidegger's comportment toward East-West dialogue by examining his meetings or correspondence with Japanese philosophers. It is significant that on the few occasions when the topic of East-West di-

alogue arose, it was always introduced by the Japanese interlocutor, who expected Heidegger to share his insight on this subject, but Heidegger almost never took the initiative to enter into a discussion about it.65 When it came up, Heidegger's response was either to resort to vague platitudes without committing himself to its

exploration, or to try to avoid talking about it by changing the subject. For example, during a conversation with Shinichi Hisamatsu on May 18, 1958, in response to Hisamatsu's mention of the "coming-together of East and West," Heidegger appears to ascribe a significance to it. However, in saying that "such a coming-together of




East and West is more important than economic or political contacts," Heidegger does not seem to have taken Hisamatsu's concern seriously (quoted in Bucher 1989, p. 191). It is improbable that Hisamatsu should have felt a satisfactory re-

sponse in hearing nothing more than that "[w]e would not make any progress if we looked upon economics and politics as the starting point" (ibid.).66

In the secondary literature examining Heidegger's relation to Asian thought, and especially in those writings where it is argued that Heidegger is a rare case of a famous Western philosopher touching on issues of intercultural or transcultural philosophy, references are often made to brief remarks by him such as, for example, his comment concerning Suzuki's book on Zen Buddhism: "if I understand this man [Suzuki] right, this is what I have wanted to say."67 Similar remarks occur in Hei-

degger's meeting with Bhikku Maha Mani, a monk from Thailand (details below). One should be wary of giving too much weight to these remarks.68 Petzet is defi-

nitely right in stating that it would be a mistake "to attempt a direct equation of Zen with Heidegger's many paths of thinking" (Petzet 1983, p. 167).

There is a substantial body of literature discussing similarities and/or dissimilar- ities between (Zen) Buddhism and Heidegger's thought.69 The stress on similarities is

predominant, and some Japanese philosophers claim that Zen Buddhists can well learn from Heidegger. Considerable differences have also been noted.70 For exam-

ple, Tsujimura Koichi said that there is an intimate kinship, although not yet suffi-

ciently elucidated, between Heidegger's thought and Zen Buddhism. However, embedded in the kinship is a deep chasm (tiefe Kluft) that separates Heidegger from Zen Buddhism.71

In the essay "Todesdialektik," written for the Heidegger Festschrift on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Tanabe Hajime says:

[I]n [Heidegger's] thinking a meditation on death had become central to philosophy and supported it from the ground up. I could not help feeling that I had now found a way to the philosophy I had been seeking. (Tanabe 1959, p. 94)

Ohashi Ry6suke (1989b, p. 26) has drawn attention to the fact that this text is originally the second part of Tanabe's essay "Ontology of Life or Dialectics of Death," which has been published in Japanese. The first part is highly critical of Heidegger. Nevertheless, this part was not contributed to the Festschrift. In a first draft with the subtitle "A Confrontation with the Heideggerian Ontology," Tanabe develops his

"Philosophy of Death" in confrontation with the so-called Heideggerian "Ontology of Life."

According to Willfred Hartig, Heidegger's discussion with Bhikku Maha Mani, on December 5, 1963, is "one of the most important encounters between original Buddhism and the Seinsdenken of Heidegger" (Hartig 1997, p. 189). However, Har-

tig fails to notice a number of disturbing aspects of this encounter that resist any neat scheme of interpretation. First, the ideas expressed by the Thai monk when being asked about the Buddhist view of technology were somewhat simplistic. This fact struck both Heidegger and Heinrich W. Petzet, Heidegger's friend and the inter-

preter of this conversation.72 Second, Mani's position as a Thai monk and a profes-




sor, along with his appearance, demeanor, and way of speaking, obviously exerted a considerable impact on Heidegger, so much so that one cannot help wondering whether Heidegger was charmed by Mani's personality. For example, Heidegger had always refused to appear on television, but Mani caused him to change his mind. We would suggest that when reading some of the frequently quoted passages from Heidegger's conversation with Mani these disturbing aspects should be kept in mind. Consider the following excerpt of the part of the discussion that was published in the Gesamtausgabe (see H 2000b, pp. 590, 592-593):

HEIDEGGER: Without being touched by Godliness the experience of God is void. MANI: Come to us, to our land! All of us shall understand you.

Mani said that nothingness is not nothing. HEIDEGGER: That is what I have always been saying, all my life. MANI: Come to us, to our land, we shall understand you. HEIDEGGER (to the interpreter): Please tell him that all the fame in the world means nothing to me when I am not understood and find no understanding. Therefore, not only do I thank you but I have experienced in this dialogue a confirmation, which has rarely come my way before.

Heidegger's last statement sounds like an exaggeration in suggesting that Mani was one of the very few people who could understand his philosophy. Perhaps what he intended to emphasize was the extent to which he had been misunderstood by Eu-

ropean philosophers. Besides, Mani says twice, "Come to our land! Everybody will understand you there." It is not implausible that this is just a polite offering on Mani's

part before coming to Europe to meet "the philosopher." It is possible as well that he had planned to say that "nothingness is not nothing," regardless of what Heidegger would say at the moment of their meeting. Soon after the discussion with Heidegger, Mani left his order and later was found working for an American TV station-much to Heidegger's chagrin (Petzet 1983, p. 181).

XIV The Beginning of the Infinite Relationship

In a lecture elucidating Hilderlin's poem "Greece," delivered for the first time in

1959, Heidegger remarked:

In its essential beginning, which can never be lost, the present planetary-interstellar world condition is thoroughly European-occidental-grecian. However, the supposition reflects on this: What is changing can do so only out of the reserved greatness of its beginning. Accordingly, the present world condition can receive an essential change or, for that

matter, preparation for it, only from its beginning, which fatefully determines our age. It is the great beginning. There is, of course, no return to it. The great beginning becomes present, as that which awaits us, only in its coming to the humble (das Geringe). But the humble can no longer abide in its occidental isolation. It is opening itself up to the few other great beginnings (den wenigen anderen groBen Anf.ingen) that belong, with their own character (ihren Eigenen) in the sameness of the beginning of the in-finite relation




(in das Selbe des Anfangs des un-endlichen Verh~ltnisses) in which the earth is contained. (H 1959a, p. 201/177; translation modified)

This is the only passage where, in addition to speculating about re-initiating the first beginning for the sake of overcoming the Ge-stell of the present planetary-interstellar world, Heidegger speaks of "the few other great beginnings." On Hilderlin's verse (cited at 1959a, p. 195)-

A great beginning can come Even to the humble

-Heidegger engages in a long discussion concerning the great beginning. The phrase "the few other great beginnings" occurs at the end of a paragraph that is part of a three-page section. A number of scholars have attributed to the occurrence of "the few other great beginnings" here a significance for East-West dialogue.73 However, it is not obvious that these two are necessarily connected. Heidegger says:

The humble is the occidental. Greece, however, the oriental (das Morgenlhndische), is the great beginning that may possibly come. The humble is, however, only insofar as it becomes that to which the great beginning can come. Can it still come? (H 1959a, p. 201/177; emphasis added)

Note that in this passage Greece is labeled "the oriental" and described as "the great beginning that may possibly come." This allows for a reading according to which it is more appropriate to associate "the few other great beginnings" with the unique bond between the Evening-land (Germany) and the Morning-land (Greece). This reading is more consonant with Heidegger's overall way of speaking in this lecture. Because technology developed out of the first beginning, another beginning can only come by this Evening-land becoming the Morning-land:

Must Europe ... first become a land of an evening from which another morning of world- destiny prepares its rise? Our question does not pass over and beyond Europe, but back into its beginning. (H 1959a, p. 201/177)74

In any case, the expression "the few other great beginnings" must have meant something unrelated to "East Asian" (ostasiatisch).75

From another perspective, there could be a favorable reading. Since "the great beginning" is outside history, the a priori possibility of other beginnings cannot be denied. This may explain why, on some occasions, Heidegger says such things as the following:

And who of us can decide whether or not one day in Russia and China ancient traditions (uralte Oberlieferungen) of a "thinking" will awaken, which will add in helping to make possible for man a free relationship to the technological world? (H 1966, p. 111/677; emphasis added)

It is possible that Heidegger may have entertained the idea that there is a need to turn to a dialogue with "past thinkers" of other traditions, after "a dialogue with the




Greek thinkers, [which] still awaits its beginning" (H 1953b, p. 157/41).76 However, when it comes to a dialogue with other traditions, this is always accompanied by Heidegger's worry that Eastern thought does not grant access. Consider the following passage:

Definitely this does not mean that the ancient world of the Indies, China and Japan remained without thought (sei gedanken-los geblieben). On the contrary, the logos- character of Western thought demands that if we would dare to touch these alien worlds, we should first ask ourselves whether we were capable at all of hearing that which was thought there. (H 1957, 145 ff.)

In order to start a dialogue with past thinkers of other traditions, Westerners should listen to these other traditions. This can only be done through their language. From his lifelong experience Heidegger is well aware of how problematic translation is re-

garding ancient Greek. Hence, he laments on many occasions that East Asian lan-

guages are not accessible to him (see section 10). In addition, owing to the even more serious problem of Ge-stell, even contemporary East Asian thinkers no longer have access to their own tradition. The last-quoted passage continues:

This question becomes even more urgent [burning], because European thinking is also threatened with becoming global (planetarisch) in that contemporary Indians, Chinese and Japanese can usually bring to us what is experienced by them only in/through our European way of thinking. Thus from there and from here everything is stirred around in an enormous hodge-podge, in which one cannot distinguish anymore whether the ancient Indians were English empiricists and Laotse a Kantian. (H 1957, pp. 145- 146)

However that may be, even if this dialogue with "past thinkers" of other traditions could take place, it could only be a dialogue in the Heideggerian sense (that is, "lan-

guage is monologue").77

XV The Reoccurrence of the Theme of "Confrontation with the Asiatic"

In addition to Heidegger's references to East Asia after 1950, the theme of "confrontation with the Asiatic" reoccurs from time to time in his later writings. This may have to do with his increasing worry about the devastating and ever sweeping power of Ge-stell. After his trip to Greece in 1962, Heidegger wrote in his "travel story," Aufenthalte:

The confrontation (Auseinandersetzung) with the Asiatic was a fruitful necessity for the Greek Dasein. For us today, and in quite a different way to a far greater extent, it is the verdict of what the fate of Europe will be, and that which calls itself [the] Western world ...

With the hourly changing blueness of heaven and sea the thought arose whether for us the Orient might be a "rising" of light and enlightenment, [or] whether [it is] not rather [that] only historical, fabricated, and artificially sustained lights are deluding [us] with false hopes of the appearance of a revelation coming from there....




Once, the Asiatic brought the Greeks a dark fire, whose flames gave brightness and measure to their poetizing and thinking. (H 1q962a, pp. 228-229)78

A few years later Heidegger wrote, in a foreword to the 1968 Japanese translation of his lecture "Zur Frage nach der Bestimmung der Sache des Denkens" (H 1965):

By thinking the clearing and characterizing it adequately, we reach a realm that can perhaps make it possible to bring a transformed European thinking into a fruitful confrontation (fruchtbare Auseinandersetzung) with East Asian "thinking." Such a confrontation could help with the task of saving the essential nature of human being from the threat of an extreme technological calculation (BeeRechnen) and manipulation of human Dasein. (Buchner 1989, p. 230; emphasis added)

The "fruitful confrontation with East Asian 'thinking,"' as well as "the inevitable

dialogue with the East Asian world" (H 1953b, p. 158/41), may be an indication of the idea that the historic "confrontation with the Asiatic" that happens at the "first

beginning" may/should be projected into the (epochal) future.79 However, at best the role that "other beginnings" may play is of a possible aid in saving the human Dasein from the threat of Ge-stell. Whatever this futuristic "confrontation with the Asiatic" may entail, in general it is subject to the view regarding East-West relations that Heidegger expressed in the following, during his interview with Der Spiegel:

It is my conviction that a reversal can prepare itself only in the same place in the world in which the modern technological world originated, that it cannot happen through the adoption of Zen Buddhism or other Eastern experiences of the world.... Thinking can be transformed only by a thinking that has the same origin and calling. (H 1966, p. 113/ 679)

XVI. The Hawai'i Symposium

As far as we know, Heidegger's last remark alluding to East-West dialogue in writing appears in his letter to the organizers of the symposium "Heidegger and Eastern

Thought," held at Honolulu, Hawai'i, on November 17-21, 1969. Addressed to Pro- fessor A. Borgmann, part of this letter was read out by Winfield E. Nagley, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hawai'i, to the conference participants in his introductory address, and published as the first piece in the special issue of Philosophy East and West, with the title "Introduction to the

Symposium and Reading of a Letter from Martin Heidegger" (Nagley 1970, pp. 221-222).8o Nagley cites the following passage from Heidegger's letter:

Again and again it has seemed urgent to me that a dialogue take place with the thinkers of what is to us the Eastern world. The greatest difficulty in this enterprise always lies, as far as I can see, in the fact that with few exceptions there is no command of the Eastern languages either in Europe or in the United States. A translation of Eastern thought into English remains-like every translation-a makeshift. May your conference, however, prove fruitful in spite of this precarious circumstance. (Nagley 1970, p. 222)




This passage has been taken as yet another example that confirms the view that

Heidegger cherished a great concern for an East-West dialogue. According to Hwa Yol Jung (1987, p. 237), referring to the participants of this conference,

[T]he conferencees expressed a strong sentiment that not only might Heidegger serve to build a bridge between East and West but also [that] his thought might, more importantly, serve as the basis of uniting world philosophies.

However, it is significant to note the following. Heidegger attributes the "greatest difficulty" for a dialogue to take place with the "thinkers of what is to us the Eastern world" to the lack of command of Eastern languages in the West. This seems to be a somewhat thoughtless remark because most participants in this conference were at home in both Asian and European languages. Normally speaking, the language barrier is a pragmatic problem and does not represent an absolute gap for communica- tion across different languages. What stands behind the accent Heidegger puts on

linguistic obstacles is most probably his thought concerning the planetary Ge-stell, instead of the fact that what constitutes Heidegger's linguistic repertoire does not yet include ancient Chinese. Furthermore, it would not be honest on the part of Hei- degger to make the claim that he knew absolutely nothing about Asian languages. As a matter of fact, Heidegger's knowledge of Asian languages certainly exceeded mere familiarity with their appearance (see section 10).

The full text of Heidegger's letter was only published in the year 2000, in volume 16 of the Gesamtausgabe. In reading out Heidegger's letter, dated July 4, 1969, to the conference participants, Nagley left out the last paragraph, where Hei-

degger says:

Now in regard to the words of welcome and introduction for which you ask, I have to appeal to your kindness to excuse me for not honouring your request. From all sides I am receiving requests of this kind so that I have to refuse every one of them in order not to offend somebody. (H 2000b, pp. 721-722)

Heidegger declined the invitation to write "the words of welcome and introduction" for the conference, which was organized to honor him on the occasion of his

eightieth birthday. Even though Heidegger's age may well have excused him from

attending the conference, he could have sent a short address if the subject of East- West dialogue was of great concern to him, and the particular theme of this conference should have made it the most suitable occasion for him to do so.81

After all, around that time, Heidegger did comply with a number of similar requests from other parties. In 1969, the same year when the Hawai'i conference was held, he spoke "a word of thankfulness" to the meeting in Messkirch celebrating his eightieth birthday (Buchner 1989, p. 169). Heidegger did write letters of greetings to the participants at two conferences in the United States in 1966.82 As late as 1974, he wrote "a word of greetings" for the 500th issue of the Japanese journal Risd and

yet another greeting to the participants of a symposium held in Beirut in November 1974 in celebration of his eighty-fifth birthday.83 Finally, as late as 1976, he sent

greetings to the participants at the tenth Heidegger colloquium in Chicago.




The 1969 letter is the last published text in which Heidegger mentions East-West dialogue. In letters after that date his recurrent concern is with Being and modern technology. Typically in the letter he wrote in 1974 for the Japanese journal Ris6 (published in its first issue for 1975), there is no reference to East-West dialogue, or to a Heidegger Rezeption in Japan for that matter. Heidegger uses the occasion to reiterate his views concerning the planetary Ge-stell:84

The age of technological-industrial civilization holds a steadily increasing danger, whose foundations are thought about all too little.... Presumably modern world civilization is executing the transition to the final phase of the epochal destiny of Being in the sense of a determination of Being as the unconditional orderability of what is, including being human (der unbedingten Bestellbarkeit alles Seienden, das Menschen mit inbegriffen). (H 2000b, p. 744)

XVII. Concluding Remarks

An answer to the question "What defines Heidegger's comportment toward East- West dialogue?" has to be multifaceted. There cannot be a definitive answer, not only because the path of thinking is always under way, but also because this specific topic seems to be in itself a Holzweg that intersects with a number of other Holz- wege and Wegmarken in Heidegger's thought. This is particularly the case during the 1950s.

In Heidegger's philosophical writings, correspondence, and conversations from the 1950s and 1960s, the issue of East-West dialogue surfaces a number of times, and on a few occasions he refers to Laozi and Zhuangzi. Nevertheless, more frequently he expresses his concern with the inaccessibility of East Asian languages. On the basis of the examination conducted in this paper, we suggest the following: first, Heidegger's primary motivation, in the wider context of his idea that Being has been forgotten and in his concern with the Ge-stell, is to prepare for the initiation of the other beginning, as embedded in the first great beginning, which occurred among the early Greek thinkers.

Second, because of his increasing worry about the Ge-stell, as well as his limited and yet constant exposure to Asian thought, Heidegger may have seriously considered a number of related issues: the process of engaging with classical thinkers from the Chinese tradition, particularly with Laozi and Zhuangzi; the need for a dialogue with the East after Europe had renewed its "beginning"; and the need for a "repetition" of the Auseinandersetzung with the Asiatic that had made the birth of the first beginning possible. In the meantime, Heidegger seemed constantly to despair of the possibility of these undertakings. This is because, to him, East Asian thought may not be accessible because of the language barrier. Moreover, owing to the spread of the Ge-stell, classical East Asian thought may not be accessible even to

contemporary East Asian thinkers. Confronted by these conflicting considerations, Heidegger may have found it difficult to decide whether or not to provide a philosophical discourse for the a priori possibility of East-West dialogue.




Notes

The following conventions have been adopted here for citing works by Heidegger: the letter "H" followed by a year plus page number refers to Heidegger's writings. Since it is rather important for our purpose to indicate at what time Heidegger expressed a certain view, the year mentioned is the year when Heidegger first made the statement (in some cases a range of years is indicated, following the bibli- ography in Denker 2000). The list of references gives the details of the work or edition cited. When possible we have cited English translations (with "translation modified" indicating important modifications); when only the German source is available, all translations are ours. Page numbers are given with the page number of the English edition followed by the page number of the German edition-for example, "(p. 12/98)." In most cases the German edition referred to is the Gesamtausgabe, hereafter cited as GA. Many of the passages which we cite from Heidegger's works contain different degrees of ambiguity (and of awkwardness of translation). Be- cause of the limit of space, in this paper it is not possible to explicate all of them in detail.

1 - See, for example, Buchner 1989 for contributions by Ohashi, Yuasa, Tsujimura, Tanabe, Kuki, Nishitani, Suzuki, Tezuka, Hisamatsu, Kawahara, Watanabe, and Kojima.

2 - The original German title of May's book is Ex oriente lux: Heideggers Werk unter ostasiatischem Einfluss (May 1989). Parkes translates this as Heidegger's Hidden Sources: East Asian Influences on his Work (Parkes 1996). The phrase "hidden sources" is adopted from Heidegger's essay "Winke": "If the language of human beings is in the word, only then is it in order. If it is in order, then the assurance of hidden sources (verborgenen Quellen) hints at her" (H 1941b, p. 33). The Chinese translation of May's book, titled Heidegger and East Asian

Thought $ ~ -4,E ,-

, translated by Zhang Zhiqiang ••,. (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 2003).

3 - May 1996, p. xviii. The most convincing suggestion of May's is that in the

"Dialogue on Language" (H 1953/1954), which will be discussed in sections 11 and 12, Heidegger imaginatively borrows phrases, without acknowledg- ment, from Benl 1953-a long paper on Seami Motokiyo and the spirit of the No play. May's thesis is not beyond dispute, yet in this article we shall not engage in a detailed discussion in this regard.

4 - Exemplary publications are Chan 2003 and Wohlfahrt 2003.

5 - On Heidegger and Dogen see Heine 1985, Parkes 1987b, and Stambaugh 1990. For Heidegger and Laozhuang see section 8. On Heidegger and contemporary Japanese philosophers see Weinmayr 2005 on Nishida Kitarb, and Thompson 1986 and Dallmayr 1992 on Nishitani Keiji.

6 - A recent example is Chan 2003, referred to in section 8.




7 - In the article "Heidegger and Japanese Thought: How Much Did He Know and When Did He Know It?" Parkes, on quoting Fischer-Barnicol 1977, p. 102, appears to have sensed something fishy about this remark: "This is an extraor- dinary remark for Heidegger to have made-and perhaps a revealing one-in view of the fact that none of his Chinese visitors came close, as philosophers, to the calibre of Tanabe, Miki, Kuki, or Nishitani" (Parkes 1992, p. 406 n. 68). However, in the part of the main text to which his note refers, Parkes stresses the importance of Japanese thought to Heidegger: "Even at this stage of the

investigation, the conclusion is unavoidable that Heidegger was less than generous in acknowledging how much he learned from the East-Asian (and especially the Japanese) tradition" (Parkes 1992, p. 400). However, in the long article attached to his English translation of May's work, probably under the influence of May, Parkes does not seem to be suspicious about this remark alleg- edly cited from Fischer-Barnicol, and explains that "the Chinese" should perhaps be a reference to the ancient Chinese thinkers whose work he read in translation. Other writers, who assert that Heidegger himself maintained from early on that he had worked with Japanese scholars "but had learned more from Chinese," obviously via P6ggeler, include Bilimoria (1991, p. 7), Cho (1993, p. 149), May (1996, p. 8), and Zhang (1998, p. 311).

8 - The formulations in which Heidegger talks about language and technology are remarkably similar. Some examples: "the essence of technology is by no means

something technological" (H 1953a, p. 311/7); "the essential being of language cannot be anything linguistic" (H 1953/1954, pp. 24-25). We postpone the discussion about the essence of language to a later section.

9 - Cf. Heidegger's other similar remarks: "metaphysics first begins to achieve its supreme and utter triumph in our century as modern machine technology" (H 1942, p. 53/66); "The name 'technology' is understood here in such an essential way that its meaning coincides with the term 'completed metaphysics"' (H 1936-1946, p. 75/79); "as a term for the metaphysics of the atomic age" (H 1955-1957, p. 52/118).

10 - To quote Heidegger's words, "Being is re-arranged and synchronised, and rep- resented on the epistemological models of European metaphysics and science" (H 1951, p. 76/232).

11 - The same idea was repeated a decade later (H 1969, p. 61/367).

12 - References to "first beginning," "other beginning," "another beginning," and other similar locutions occur frequently in From Enowning (H 1936-1938, ? 6, ? 20-31, ? 81-101, passim). In his lectures on Nietzsche from the same

period (1937, 1939) "the other beginning/commencement" is also mentioned in several places (H 1961, 1:259, 470, 480, 657; 2:29, 471).

13 - Heidegger writes elsewhere: "Epochally thought, the beginning of the epoch of

being lies in what we call 'the Greek.' This beginning, which is itself to be




thought epochally, is the dawn of the destiny in being from out of being" (H 1946a, p. 255/338).

14 - The early Heidegger speaks of "leap into the world" instead of "leap into be-

ing": "we somehow leap into another world, more precisely, we manage for the first time to make the leap into the world as such" (H 1919, p. 53/63).

15 - Among others Rainer Thurnher has drawn attention to this point (Thurnher 1993).

16 - Already in 1939 Heidegger had written a note on the philosophical misinter- pretation of "homeland" (Vaterland) in H61derlin's writings (H 2000c, pp. 277-278); see also "Das abendlkndische Gesprach," in H 1946-1948, p. 167.

17 - For example: "Only our German language has a deep and creative philosophical character to compare with the Greek" (H 1930a, p. 36/50). "For along with the German language Greek language (in regard to the possibilities of thinking) is at once the most powerful and most spiritual of all languages" (H 1935, p. 60/61).

18 - Although we follow most other scholars in rendering Abendland and its conge- neric word abendlkndisch as "the West" and "Western," we are aware that in

doing this much is left unsaid (see section 6).

19 - "But now to the Indies," in H 1943c, pp. 160-163/139-141, citing Hblderlin; cf. H 2000c, p. 19.

20 - The complexity concerning the issue of language will be discussed in section 12.

21 - There is a certain degree of ambiguity about the designation of "the Asiatic" (see next section). Most commentators take it to refer to the Middle East. We

suggest that Heidegger uses expressions such as "das/dem Asiatische(n)" in the ontological sense. Serving as a general label for the mysterious Other, it does not have a particular geographic connotation.

22 - On "Fatum" compare: "For it was the history of the Morgenland (morgenlindi- sche Geschichte) that allowed itself to get bogged down in fatalism" (H 1937a, p. 132/395; translation modified).

23 - The phrase "European-occidental-grecian" appears in the essay "H61derlin's Earth and Heaven," in H 1959a, p. 201/177.

24 - Actually there does not seem to be an alternative translation for morgenlkn- disch except "oriental." In translating one of Heidegger's lecture courses on Nietzsche, David Krell renders morgenlhndische Geschichte as "the history of

antiquity" (see the citation in note 22).

25 - PRggeler says, "contrary to Hi6lderlin, Heidegger distinguished the Greek from the Oriental" (1987, p. 54). However, it is not clear what P6ggeler means by "the Oriental."




26 - See also H 1943c, p. 162/140, "the southern land, which stands for Greece," and H 1946-1948, p. 141, which says that H61derlin thinks of Hellas as mor-

genl/indisch. Heidegger and H61derlin's use of Morgenland and "land of the south" does not seem to be very different from Nietzsche's use of morgenlin- disch, which involves a reference to nineteenth-century orientalism. Nietzsche wrote that the Greek provided the synthesis of everything morgenlindischen and therefore "the beginning of the European soul" (quoted in Brusotti 2004, p. 47).

27 - Ry6suke Ohashi seems to suggest that this passage provides support for saying that Heidegger's idea is that the "Morning land," that is, the Greek world, can

only be reached "via" East Asia (Ohashi 1989a, p. 130).

28 - Compare also the passage in "Das abendlindische Gesprich" where Heideg- ger speaks of "destiny (Geschick) leading spirit (Geist) in its wandering from the Orient into the Occident" (H 1946-1948, p. 157).

29 - As to the latter, see H 1946b, p. 257/338, cited above. In "A Dialogue on

Language" (to be discussed in sections 11 and 12) he remarks, in relation to the film Rashomon, "I believed that I was experiencing the enchantment of the Japanese world, the enchantment that carries us away into the mysterious" (H 1953/1954, p. 16).

30 - This question was raised in particular in discussions with Medard Boss in the 1960s (H 2001, pp. 178-180; see also Boss 1987, p. 9, and Mehta 1977).

31 - Other possible translations for the German word Bewahrung are "saving," "guarding," and "preserving."

32 - In The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Hus- serl makes a similar remark (Husserl 1935, pp. 279-280).

33 - As is well known, Heidegger's views on Technik were influenced by Ernst

JOnger. Heidegger's notes on JOnger's Der Arbeiter and other works are exten- sive (see H 2004). But Heidegger was quite critical of JOinger's travels to/ through exotic places (Vetsch 1992, pp. 73-82)-a form of adventuring com-

pletely different from the H61lderlin-type journey abroad. See Heidegger's letter to Jiinger mentioned in note 40 and the use of words such as "Abenteuer" and "Sentimentalitit" in a brief note, "What Ernst JOnger Isn't Seeing" (H 2004, pp. 264-265).

34 - As recorded by Petzet (1983, p. 24) and repeated throughout the secondary literature. Cho (1987, p. 307) takes this as strong evidence for Heidegger's early connection to Daoism. For several more anecdotal reminiscences ih which

Heidegger mentions Laozi see Petzet 1983, pp. 59, 73, 169, 212.

35 - Heidegger's original words are "Genannt ist das Sein in diesem Unterschied [i.e., im Unterschied zum Seienden] bei Lao-Tse im elften Spruch seines Tao-

Te-King" (H 1943b, p. 43).




36 - Heidegger uses the translation by Alexander Ular, but makes a number of modifications. For example, he changes "erwirkt das Wesen" (of a house, of a wheel) into "gewdhrt das Sein," and provides his own rendering of the last two lines, possibly under the influence of the translations by Victor von Strauss and Richard Wilhelm:

Das Seiende ergibt die Brauchbarkeit. Das Nicht-Seiende gew~hrt das Sein.

The Chinese original is:

These two lines have been offered very different renderings by various transla- tors. In a discussion of Heidegger's use of passages from Laozi, the following English translation has been suggested (Ma 2006):

Where something is present, there [one] makes a basis for adapting. Where nothing is present, there appears an actual use.

Wohlfahrt (2003) has made a detailed comparative study of Heidegger's thought and Laozi's chapter 11.

37 - See Petzet 1983, pp. 168-169, and Hsiao 1987.

38 - For the facsimile of this letter see Parkes 1987, p. 103.

39 - Chan comments thus: "in overcoming the instrumental conception of technol-

ogy, the later Heidegger is concretizing Chuang Tzu's thesis that 'the useless has its use"' (Chan 2003, p. 14).

40 - Heidegger Nachlag, catalog number 85.3/7 (Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Mar- bach). See also Petzet 1983, p. 182. Somewhat surprisingly, Heidegger changes Jan Ulenbrook's "to see the tao of heavens" into "to see the entirety of heaven" (den Himmel ganz sehen).

41 - Ibid., catalog number 94.143.2/7. Heidegger cites the same two lines as in the letter to Hsiao, but now using the translation by Jan Ulenbrook.

42 - Scholars of Asian origin are Chan (2003), Chang (1975, 1977), Cho (1992, 1993), Ohashi (1989a), Zhang Shi-ying (1992), and Zhang Xianglong (1996, 1998, 2004). Among Western scholars are Parkes (1987a, 2003), Poggeler (1987), and Wohlfahrt (2003).

43 - Some scholars have speculated whether Heidegger's cooperation with Hsiao

might have been due to "therapeutic" motivations, since this happened at the time when Heidegger was suspended from academic activities, see Plggeler 1987, p. 51, and Hartig 1997, p. 157. This event is surrounded by conflicting statements, including the suggestion that the translation project never took

place (for discussion, see Cheung 1998 and Zhang Xianglong 1998).




44 - The following three citations from Heidegger's letter to Jaspers are quoted from

Heidegger et al. 2003, p. 172/181-182; emphasis added, translation modified.

45 - "Er hat den anderen Anfang aus dem Europiische selbst herauszufinden gesucht, z.B. in den Bildern von Paul Klee" (P6ggeler 1989, p. 11 n. 3). In the discussion that ensued (Buchner 1989, pp. 206-207), P6ggeler's view was

supported by Buchner and Biemel. The latter added the skeptical remark that

Heidegger had "soon given up" the project of meditation on Laozi.

46 - Hartig 1997, p. 152. It remains unclear who wrote this document and whether it was authorized by Heidegger. At the time the present article was written, the

Nachlag, by order of the Heidegger family, was closed to consultation until further notice.

47 - Saying that there is no Chinese or Indian philosophy leaves open (or perhaps even emphasizes) the possibility that there may be / might have been Chinese or Indian "Heideggerian" thinking. As usual, the addition of a reference to (East) Asia is added as an afterthought without any elucidation or context. Be- cause Heidegger connects this duality with the idiosyncracies of the grammar of the Greek and other European languages in the detailed discussion of the

duality of beings/Being that precedes this passage, an obvious suggestion to

put forward might be that because of the very different "grammar" (if one may use that word) of ancient Chinese, the latter lends itself to thinking that is not bound in the sphere of this duality. But nowhere in Heidegger's writings does he say anything to this effect. In this connection compare Lohman 1972 on the

ontological (in)difference and "Being-features" of ancient Chinese.

48 - Hartig cites this (and many other) passages without providing any context. Cho (1992) and Ohashi (1989a) give a detailed and sophisticated interpretation of this passage, but do not say anything about the context.

49 - Concerning the last part of the citation, Parkes (1992, p. 396) remarks that Hei-

degger adds it "almost in passing." In contrast, Cho suggests that the passage is an "announcement" of the 1953/1954 dialogue: "Ein halbes Jahr danach was es dann endlich so weit" (Cho 1992, p. 203).

50 - When asked in a conversation with Hecker (on August 30, 1952) whether he had engaged himself with Eastern philosophy, Heidegger replied: "Hardly. The linguistic difficulties with the translations are too big.... To the Chinese and Japanese world I have simply no access" (cited in Hartig 1997, p. 269). This is reported by Hecker from memory.

51 - This is said in a letter to L. Alcopley in 1959 (Alcopley 1963, p. 37). The Ger- man original runs: "immer wieder erregende Zusammenhang (Identit~t?) von Bild und Schrift auf den alten Bildern Chinas" (H 2000b, p. 562; the date is not given). L. Alcopley is the nom de plume of Alfred L. Copley, a biotheorist and artist. Also see the discussion in Buchheim 1989, where Buchner and

Poggeler mention Heidegger's interest in Japanese brush painting in the 1950s




and 1960s-Heidegger was looking for the "hanging together" (Zusammen- hang) of picture and poem, sign and word (Buchheim 1989, pp. 206-207). Heidegger's familiarity with Japanese art is also noted by Petzet (1983, pp. 169-170). Tezuka and Tsujimura testify that Heidegger had a lively interest in the poetry of BashO (Yoneda 1989, p. 94 n).

52 - Emil Pretorius was the President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts who had invited Heidegger to give a lecture in a series with the title "Of Language."

53 - Nishitani Keiji reports that Heidegger "questioned him on Zen Buddhism" (Nishitani 1976, p. 193). Chang (1977, p. 419) was questioned on the Zhuangzi.

54 - According to Tezuka's account of their discussion: "He then asked me: 'In Jap- anese there is presumably a word for language so-called; what is the original meaning of this word?'" According to Tezuka, Heidegger also asked: "'Which words in Japanese are the customary terms for appearance (Erscheinung) and essence (Wesen)? I don't want technical terms. Can't one express these ideas in words that are used in everyday speech?"' (Tezuka 1955, pp. 60-61).

55 - Heidegger reiterates this point on several occasions. See H 1935, pp. 56-57/ ? 17, and H 1951/1952, pp. 220-223/224-227.

56 - Cf. Heidegger's remark, in a conversation with Hellmuth Hecker on August 30, 1952: "With our logistic-grammatical conceptual apparatus there are many words [when translating Chinese or Japanese] which we can not grasp sharply" (Hartig 1997, p. 269).

57 - The German title is "Aus einem Gesprich von der Sprache: Zwischen einem

Japaner und einem Fragenden." Parkes (in May 1996, p. xvii, and Park 2005, p. 333 n. 2) has suggested that Gesprach is better translated as "conversation." However, in What is Called Thinking? Heidegger uses the word Konversation in a negative connotation, as contrasted with Gesprich (H 1956, p. 43/42). He also uses such words as Zwiesprache and Auseinandersetzung. There are not sufficient English translations for all these words with these subtle distinc- tions. Hence, we follow the existing translation "dialogue."

58 - In the dialogue, Heidegger stresses the danger of explaining Japanese notions in German (e.g., in conversations he had with Kuki Shozo in the 1920s and with Tezuka Tomio in 1954). As a consequence the text of the dialogue has

suggested to many readers that "the danger lies in the concealed nature of

language" (H 1953/1954, p. 21). However, as one of us has shown in another

paper (Ma 2005), for Heidegger the danger of distortion caused by explaining a notion in a different language belongs properly with the European languages only. Apparently there is no such danger working in the other direction. Why? Because European languages have been tainted by the history of Western philosophy. The danger Heidegger is referring to is of a special sort, intrinsically linked to the history of Being and Western metaphysics, as well as modern

technology.




59 - Heidegger said this when Tezuka mentioned "the open" as a possible translation of ko (emptiness).

60 - There exist three German translations of Tezuka's Japanese text. Reinhard May's translation is: "Ost und West mUssen in einer derartigen Tiefe zu einem Gesprich finden" (May 1989, p. 93). Hartmut Buchner translates: "In einer solchen Tiefe mOssen sich der Osten und der Westen im Gesprich treffen" (Buchner 1989, p. 177). The translation by Oshima Yoshiko (in Vetsch 1992, p. 193) does not mention the word Gesprich: "Osten und Westen mOssen in dieser Tiefe besprochen werden." As the actual conversation took place in German and Tezuka recorded it from memory in Japanese, it is somewhat dubious for May to comment, "This sentence of Heidegger's ... was recounted word for word by Tezuka" (1996, p. 14).

61 - Another similar saying: "If there is to be one conversation, the essential word must remain related to what is one and the same. Without this relation, even a quarrel is impossible" (H 1936a, p. 57/39).

62 - Cho has suggested that Heidegger believed he had found the single source (einzige Quelle) in the word dao, "in diesem, chinesischer als chinesisch gedachten Wort Tao" (Cho 1992, p. 311).

63 - Cf. H 1946b, pp. 239/313, 243/318, 274/361; 1946c, p. 232/310; 1953/1954, pp. 5/89, 22/111, 24/115; 1955-1957, p. 39/104. Elsewhere we hope to address the bearing of Heidegger's well-known saying that language is the house of being on the issue of an East-West dialogue. In "A Dialogue on Language" Heidegger writes: "Some time ago I called language, clumsily enough, the house of Being. If man by virtue of his language dwells within the claim and call of Being, then we Europeans presumably dwell in an entirely different house than East Asian man" (H 1953/1954, p. 5).

64 - The same point is made in Held 1993, p. 103, with explicit reference to

Heidegger.

65 - The first paragraph, which Heidegger added, by way of introduction, to the 1968 Japanese translation of H 1965, might be considered an exception (in Bucher 1989, p. 230).

66 - As mentioned in the introduction, there is no other country where Heidegger's philosophy has been more influential than in Japan. Some Japanese philosophers stress the relevance of Heidegger's philosophy for achieving "homecom-

ing" with Zen Buddhism, for example Oshima Yoshiko (1985, p. 16) and Tsu-

jimura K6ichi (1969, p. 165), but this seems to bear very little on the issue of East-West dialogue.

67 - An example can be found in the opening speech by Nagley (1970) at the 1969 conference on Heidegger and Eastern Thought (to be discussed in section 16).




68 - Poggeler is one of the few scholars who have drawn attention to this point (P6ggeler 1987, p. 49).

69 - There seems to be a competition between scholars who see more similarities between Zen Buddhism and Heidegger (see, e.g., Hirsch 1970) and those who see more similarities between Laozi and Zhuangzi and Heidegger (e.g., Cho and Zhang Xianglong).

70 - According to Marion Heinz (1989), the most important difference is that Zen Buddhism does not historicize itself. Hence, its notion of "absolute nothing" differs to a great extent from Heidegger's "nothing." Further, Buddhism does not assign a special position to human beings, a point apparently noticed by Heidegger himself (Petzet 1983, p. 183). See also Hirsch 1970 and Stambaugh 1991.

71 - "Dann mOite es also eine Verwandtschaft zwischen Heideggers Denken und dem Zen-Buddhismus geben? Ja! Es gibt eine sehr innige, aber noch nicht gen~gend geklkrte Verwandtschaft, in der es doch eine tiefe Kluft gibt" (ip Wisser 1970, p. 27).

72 - Heidegger's command of English was rather poor. For a detailed account of the conversation, see Petzet 1983, pp. 166-181; Petzet was present at the encounter.

73 - Parkes (1992, p. 397) writes: "The opening anticipated here must at the very least be an opening to the 'great beginning' of East Asian thought, wherever one locates it." Other commentators who give a similar reading include Hartig (1997, pp. 14, 19), May (1996, pp. 47-48), Mehta (1976, p. 469), and Vetsch (1992, pp. 28-29). Bernasconi (1995, p. 344) takes a skeptical position. Al-

though Pbggeler does not refer to this passage explicitly, he speaks of "the beginnings [Heidegger] finds for the West in ancient Greece and for the Far East in Lao-tzu" (P6ggeler 1987, pp. 56, 68).

74 - About "over and beyond Europe," see note 27.

75 - After finishing this essay, one of us put forward a somewhat different reading according to which the few other great beginnings refer to the fourfold (Geviert) heaven, earth, god, and man (Ma, 2006).

76 - It may take "centuries" (Heidegger et al. 2003, p. 172/182) or "300 years" (conversation with Hellmuth Hecker cited in Hartig 1997, p. 269) for the East- West dialogue to commence; also cf. the remark about "300 years" in H 1966, p. 110/676.

77 - Cho (1993) has suggested that "the dialogue on language" should be read as a Heideggerian dialogue with Anaximander and Laozi.

78 - For Heidegger "the transformation of the heavenly fire" is associated with "the transmission of the oriental to the occidental" (H 1946-1948, p. 141). On the

ambiguity of "oriental" see section 6.




79 - Cf. note 76.

80 - The title is misleading. All sources that we know assume, incorrectly, that the excerpt published in Philosophy East and West is the full text of the letter, for example Denker 2000, p. 270, item 1969i; Groth 2004, p. 163 n. 96, 260 item 72; May 1996, p. 5 n. 20.

81 - Probably because of this refusal, Heidegger was contacted again. In yet another letter to Prof. Borgmann, dated October 29, 1969, Heidegger agrees that his previous letter written on July 4 could be read out at the conference and printed as a message of "special greetings and thanks to the participants of the conference" (H 2000b, p. 722). Nagley did not mention this second letter.

82 - Symposia held on the philosophy of Heidegger in Pittsburgh on October 15- 16, 1966, and in Chicago on November 11-12, 1966 (H 2000b, pp. 650, 684).

83 - The text of both "words of greetings" written in 1974 is exactly the same except for the opening sentence.

84 - Similarly, when thanking Tsujimura for his speech at his 1969 birthday symposium in Megkirch, there is no mention of East-West dialogue. Heidegger avoided responding to Tsujimura's remarks concerning Zen Buddhism, saying instead, "In [the middle of] this world civilization/culture we stand. This fact concerns the confrontation of thinking. Meanwhile this world civilization has reached the entire earth. Hence our need/distress, Mr. Tsujimura, is the same as yours" (Buchner 1989, p. 166).

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Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue