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ABSTRACT
This article attempts to enact a creative confrontation (Auseinandersetzung) between Heidegger and Sikh spirituality. Heidegger’s idea of confrontation did not stay the same throughout his career. It goes through multiple transformations. The earliest iteration of this idea in the 1930s can be linked to his ethno-centrism. In the Black Notebooks, Heidegger performs a confrontation with himself, which marks his attempts to go beyond his prior position. Later in the 1960s and 1970s, Heidegger gets a glimpse of what a different confrontation might look like. However, he fails to enact it. This failure can be located in his inability to build a profound connection between his quest and non-European traditions. The article concludes with a fleeting glance at what such a connection between Heidegger’s quest and Sikh spirituality might look like.
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Notes
1 Heidegger, Contributions, 12.
2 Heidegger, Ponderings VII–IX, 330.
3 It should be noted here that Lawrence refused to function as a mere tool of the British imperial adventures and even walked away from an honor ceremony, leaving the King of England with a medal in his hand.
4 Cited in, Losurdo 104.
5 Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, 65. (hereafter IM).
6 Heidegger, IM, 65.
7 Heidegger, IM, 64.
8 Fried and Polt, Translator’s Introduction to IM, xiii.
9 Heidegger, IM, 66.
10 Heidegger, IM, 159–60.
11 Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign, 287.
12 Heidegger, Being and Truth, 73.
13 Heidegger, Being and Truth, 74.
14 A conventional translation runs along these lines: “War is both the father of all things and the king of all things, and on the one hand it shows forth the gods, on the other, human beings; on the one hand it makes slaves, and on the other hand, the free.” Being and Truth, 72 n2.
15 Heidegger, Being and Truth, 76.
16 Heidegger, Being and Truth, 75. Heidegger’s view on the human difference has a striking resemblance with connection between Hindu caste system and its cosmology. The different castes are said to be of different social rank and status because they originate from the different body parts of Brahma: Brahmins from the mouth, kshatrias from the arms and the chest, Vaishyas from the stomach and finally the Sudras from the feet. According to Beahmanical system, a person’s caste is determined according his/her karma during the previous incarnations. Therefore, people born in lower castes must submit to the divine will and perform their duties the ancient laws prescribed them.
17 Heidegger, Nietzsche: Volumes I and II, 4.
18 Heidegger, What is a Thing, 120.
19 Gasché 106.
20 In some of his interviews, Levinas comes surprisingly close to this view: “I often say, though it's a dangerous thing to say publicly, that humanity consists of the Bible and the Greeks. All the rest can be translated: all the rest - all the exotic - is dance.” Mortley 18; “The arrival on the historical scene of those underdeveloped Afro-Asiatic masses who are strangers to the Sacred History that forms the heart of the Judaic-Christian world.” Levinas 160; “But under the greedy eyes of these countless hordes who wish to hope and live, we, the Jews and Christians are pushed to the margins of history, and soon no one will bother any more to differentiate between a Catholic and a Protestant or a Jew and a Christian, sects that devour one another because they cannot agree on the interpretation of a few obscure books.” Levinas 165.
21 Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, 152.
22 Heidegger, IM, 40.
23 Heidegger, IM, 40–41.
24 Heidegger, Parmenides, 41.
25 Heidegger, Parmenides, 41.
26 Heidegger, Parmenides, 41.
27 Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, 241.
28 Heidegger, Ponderings II–VI, 39.
29 Heidegger, Ponderings II–VI, 200.
30 Heidegger, Ponderings II–VI, 380.
31 Heidegger, Ponderings XII–XV, 154.
32 Bernasconi notes,
The Eurocentrism, antisemitism, and racism of many of the canonical names of Western philosophy, including figures of the stature of Locke, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche, are now well documented, as is the fact that many of the standard responses, such as the “child of his/her time” defense or the denial that the statements at issue are central, are frequently applied without legitimacy. We know that the complicity of many of the major figures from that tradition with the evil of, for example, the enslavement and oppression of people of African descent in the Americas was extreme even by the standards of the time. So the question that has to be posed is not only that of how we relate to Heidegger but also that of how we relate to the Western philosophical tradition more generally. (Bernasconi 171)
33 Ma, “On the Double Role of Going-Under” conference presentation.
34 Heidegger, Sojourns, 25.
35 Davis.
36 Ma and Brakel 548.
37 Heidegger, The Want of Holy Names, 263.
38 Heidegger, The Want of Holy Names, 264.
39 Ma and Brakel 531.
40 Heidegger, The Want of Holy Names, 264.
41 Nagley 221.
42 Although the word has Sanskrit roots, it received a particular connotation in Sri Guru Granth Sahib. विरह [ viraha ] [ vi-raha ] m. abandonment, desertion, parting, separation (esp. of lovers), absence from (instr. or comp.) Lit. MBh. Lit. Kāv. lack, want (ifc. = lacking, with the exception of) Lit. Kāv. Lit. Kathās. Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary.
43 Sri Guru Granth Sahib, 1379. Translation mine. For an alternative translation, see: Talib 2756.
44 Nietzsche 225.
45 Nietzsche 225–26.
46 Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking, 52.
47 Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 27.
48 Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, 135–36.