A broad question that interests me, although I am wary of giving voice to
it is Heidegger's own interest in Chinese philosophy. A number of books
have attempted to turn to advantage the comparisons between Heideggers
thought and the East. A good example is (I forget the title and author) a
work comparing Dogen's view of time to Heidegger's. However, such
comparisons are dangerous to make and, despite his interest in the I
Ching and (I have heard that at one point he tried to translate this work
into German)--see the comments in __Heidegger at 80__ on these
affinities, I would also question why he was reticent to elaborate more
fully an explicit relation between East and West or between his thought and
Eastern philosophy?
I have long been fascinated by the comment made at the beginning of the
essay "Science and Reflection (In __The Question Concerning Technology__):
"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 it yet it
itself remains for us the precondition of the inevitable dialogue with
the East Asian world." (158).
This statement may explain why the question of the "East Asian world"
cannot be broched as of yet, until man strikes at the "historical" ground
of his existence. Yet this "dialogue" is construed as "inevitable."
Obviously there is an affinity exists between the poetic, meditative
thought of the thinker with the accent on releasement into the open, and
Taosim. What I am more interested in is Heidegger's own reluctance yet
fascination with an "East" which cannot be elaborated in the schematics
that one can use for the history of Western philosophy with its history
of great thinkers . To what extent, if at all, is the "East" articulated
and how does this help us understand Heidegger's understanding of the
destining of the West?
Also, does anyone know more explicit information, sources on Heidegger's
involvement in Chinese and/or his study of Chinese?
Thanks
Doug.
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