The Mysterious Relations to the East

References

• See Lin Ma and J. van Brakel, “Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue“, Philosophy East and West 56 (4): 519–566, 2006. The general conclusion of this paper is that Heidegger's primary concern, in the context of his central tenet that Being has been forgotten and that the Ge-stell has been dominating the whole globe, is to prepare for the inception of the other beginning, which is possible because of the occurrence of the first beginning with early Greek thinkers. Because of his exacerbating worry about the Ge-stell, as well as his limited and yet sustained exposure to East Asian thought, Heidegger has entertained the idea that ancient Asian traditions, insofar as they remain unaffected by the Ge-stell, might be of help for the enactment of the other beginning.
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• Heidegger, “Anaximander's Saying“, in Off the Beaten Track, trans. Julian Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002), 242–281, p. 245; “Der Spruch des Anaximander”, in Holzwege, GA 5, 1977. Henceforth A.
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• “Letter on Humanism”, in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998), 239–276; Wegmarken, GA 9 1976, 313–364. Henceforth LH.
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• Heidegger, “Hölderlin's Earth and Heaven“, in Elucidations of Hölderlin's Poetry, trans. Keith Hoeller (Amherst NY: Humanity Books 2000), 175–207, p. 200; “Hölderlin's Himmel und Erde”, in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung, GA 4, 1996, 152–181. Henceforth EHP. This essay originally appeared in the Hölderlin-Jahrbuch, vol. 11 (1958–60).
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• Heidegger writes in the “Letter on Humanism”: “As the destiny that sends truth, Being remains concealed. But the destiny of the world is heralded in poetry, without yet becoming manifest as the history of Being. The world-historical thinking of Hölderlin that speaks out in the poem “Remembrance” is therefore essentially more primordial and thus more significant for the future than the mere cosmopolitanism of Goethe. For the same reason Hölderlin's relation to Greek civilization is something essentially other than humanism. (LH 258/339)
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• Peter Trawny, Heidegger und Hölderlin oder Der Europäische Morgen (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2004), p.125.
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• Florian Vetsch, Martin Heideggers Anfang der interkulturellen Auseinandersetzung (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 1992)
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• Heidegger, “Hölderlins Dichtung ein Geschick“, in Zu Hölderlin—Griechenlandreisen, GA 75 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann 2000), 349–365, p. 357. Henceforth HDG. I shall discuss this passage later again in the section “The mysterious relations to the East”. Here I focus on the words “the foreign” and “Morgenland”.
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• In another study I have provided detailed exposition of Heidegger's discussion of “journey to the foreign”. See Lin Ma, Heidegger on East-West Dialogue: Anticipating the Event (New York and London: Routledge) 2008, pp.79–89.
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• Quoted in Marco Brusotti, “Europäisch und über-Europäisch: Nietzsches Blick aus der Ferne“, Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 66 (2004), 31–48, p. 47.
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• Heidegger, The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans. D. F. Krell, in Nietzsche, vol. II (San Francisco: Harper & Row), 132. “Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen”, in Nietzsche, Band I (Pfullingen: Neske 1961), 255–472, p. 395.
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• Heidegger, Parmenides, translated by A. Schuwer and R. Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); Parmenides, GA 54 (1982). Henceforth P.
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• The German original reads: “Wird dieses Abend-Land über Occident und Orient hinweg und durch das Europäische hindurch erst die Ortschaft der kommenden anfänglichen geschickten Geschichte?”
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• J.L. Mehta, “Heidegger and the comparison of Indian and Western philosophy“, Philosophy East & West 20 (1970), 303–318, p. 312. From the context of his article, it is clear that Mehta uses the word “world-historical” in the ordinary sense of the word. Also see Mehta, Martin Heidegger: The Way and the Vision (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 1976), 464.
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• R. Ohashi, „Heidegger und die Frage nach der abendländischen Moderne—ausgehend von einem Text Tschuang-Tses”, in Thomas Buchheim, ed., Destruktion und Übersetzung: Zu den Aufgaben von Philosophiegeschichte nach Martin Heidegger (Weinheim: VCH Verlagsgesellschaft 1989), 129–139, p. 130.
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• K.K. Cho, “Der Abstieg über den Humanismus: West-Östliche Wege im Denken Heideggers“, in Hans-Helmuth Gander, ed., Europa und die Philosophie (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann 1993), 143–174, p. 158f.
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• A similar idea is embodied in statements such as, “Does the occidental still exist? It has become Europe. Europe's technological-industrial domination has already covered the entire earth” (EHP 201/177).
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• Das abendländische Gespräch”, in: Zu Hölderlin—Griechenlandreisen, GA 75 2000, 157–196, p. 157.
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• On another occasion I have addressed the controversial event of Heidegger's engagement with Hsiao Shih-yi in an attempt to translate several verses from the Daodejing. For a discussion of Heidegger's mention of the word dao in two of his essays, and of instances of his citation from five chapters of the Daodejing in six pieces of his writings, see Lin Ma “Deciphering Heidegger's Connection with the Daodejing”, Asian Philosophy 16(4) 2006, 149–171.
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• K.K. Cho, op. cit., 151.
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• Heidegger, Hölderlin's Hymn “The Ister”, trans. W. McNeill and J. Davis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996, p. 4; Hölderlin's Hymne “Der Ister”, GA 53 1983, 3. Henceforth HHI.
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• Robert Bernasconi, “On Heidegger's Other Sins of Omission“, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 69 (2) 1995, 333–350), p. 345.
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• See Lin Ma, op. cit., pp.100–118.
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• Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowinng), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1999), 307; Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), GA 65 1989, 436, henceforth CP.
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• Cf. CP §85–87, §95–100.
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• CP 4/5; my translation. Emad and Maly's translation “the one and only first beginning [zu dem einzig einen und ersten Anfang]” obscures the implication that there is only one first beginning.
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• J. L. Mehta, Martin Heidegger: The Way and the Vision, p.459.
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• G. Parkes, Heidegger and Asian Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 1987).
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• G. Parkes, “Rising sun over black forest: Heidegger's Japanese connections“, in Reinhard May, Heidegger's Hidden Sources: East Asian Influences on His Work, trans. G. Parkes (London: Routledge 1996), 79–117, p. 104.
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• Vetsch, op. cit., 28f.
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• Rainer Thurnher„Der Rückgang in den Grund des Eigenen als Bedingung für ein Verstehen des Anderen im Denken Heideggers”, in Hans-Helmuth Gander ed., Europa und die Philosophie (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann 1993), 129–141, pp. 138–39.
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• Willfred Hartig, Die Lehre des Buddha und Heidegger. Beiträge zum Ost-West-Dialog des Denkens im 20. Jahrhundert (Konstanz 1997), 19.
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• Ibid. 19.
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• Other scholars who provide similar readings of this passage include Jean Beaufret, “[no title]”, in Vittorio Klostermann, Dem Andenken Martin Heideggers. Zum 26. Mai 1976(Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann 1977), 10–23, p. 18; Walter Strolz “Heideggers Entsprechung zum Tao-te-king und zum Zen-Buddhismus”, in Sein und Nichts in der abendländischen Mystik, edited by W. Strolz, (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder 1984), pp. 84, 89; Reinhard May, Heidegger's Hidden Sources: East Asian Influences on His Work, trans. Graham Parkes (London: Routledge 1996), 47f; Trawny, op. cit., 186. More recently, following Parkes's suggestion, Blocker and Starling explain “the few other great beginnings” in terms of the “multiplicity of philosophical beginnings”, and regard Heidegger's remark as unequivocal evidence that he is emphasizing “the importance of the transcultural” (H. Gene, Blocker and L. Starling Christopher, Japanese Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press 2001, p.170f). They quote Heidegger's relevant text from the English version of May's monograph.
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• O. Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger's Path of Thinking, trans. D. Magurshak and S. Barber (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International 1987), 186.
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• Pöggeler, “West-East Dialogue: Heidegger and Lao-tzu“, p.68; also cf. p.56. In the same article, Pöggeler also suggests that “contrary to Hölderlin, Heidegger distinguished the Greek from the Oriental” without going into any detail (p.54).
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• R. Bernasconi, “Heidegger and the invention of the Western philosophical tradition“, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 26 (1995), 240–254; p.250.
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• Heidegger, “The Thing“, in Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by A. Hofstadter (New York: Harper 1975), 163–186, p. 176; “Das Ding”, in Vorträge und Aufsätze, Teil II, (Tübingen: Neske 1967), 37–55, p. 50, 51. Henceforth T.
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• In “The Thing”, the role of Greece is not prominent. However, insofar as Heidegger's depiction of it is very similar to his account of the artwork in “The Origin of the Work of Art”, which is heavily focused on Greece, Young in his article on the four-fold calls the things that thing “mini-Greek-paradigm artworks”. Julian Young, “The fourfold”, in Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, second edition, ed. Charles B. Guignon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006), 373–392, p. 386.
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• Heidegger, “Über den Anfang“, GA 70, 16.
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• Fóti, “Mortals within the fourfold and the Hölderlinian figure of man“, Philosophy Today 37(4), 1993, 392–401, p. 392.
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• According to Fóti, Heidegger's thematization of the earth, or the thing, is not unproblematic (op. cit., 398f).
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