China and the West

Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit [ID D19791].
Xiong Wei : Heidegger schreibt : "Die nächste Art des Umgangs ist nich das nur noch vernehemende Erkennen, sondern das hantierende, gebrauchende Besorgen, das seine eigene Erkenntnis hat… Das Hämmern hat nicht lediglich noch ein Wissen um den Zeugcharakter des Hammers, sondern es hat sich dieses Zeug so zugeeignet, wie es angemessener nicht möglich ist".
Genau so hat Zhuangzi in seinem Buch die Pflege des Lebensprinzips gelehrt und dafür das Ochsen-Zerlegen vom Koch eines Fürsten geschildert : "Der Koch legte Hand an, drückte mit der Schulter, setzte den Fuss auf, stemmte das Knie an : ritsch ! ratsch ! Alles ging wie im Takt eines Tanzliedes, und traf immer genau die Gelenke". Der Fürst sprach : "Vortrefflich ! Das nenne ich Geschicklichkeit !" Der Koch antwortete : "Das Tao ist es, was dein Diener liebet. Das ist mehr als Geschicklichkeit ! als ich anfing, Rinder zu zerlegen, da sah ich eben nur das ganze Rind vor mir. Nach drei Jahren hatte ich es soweit gebracht, dass ich die Rinder nicht mehr ungeteilt vor mir sag. Die Gelenke haben Zwischenräume, des Messers Schneide hat keine Dicke, was aber keine Dicke hat, dringt in Zwischenräume ein – ungehindert, wie spielend, so dass die Klinge reichlich Platz genug hat".
Heidegger schreibt :"Je weniger das Hammerding nur begafft wird, um so ursprünglicher wird das Verhältnis zu ihm, um so unverhüllter begegnet es als Zeug. Der gebrauchend-hantierende Umgang ist aber nicht blind, er hat seine eigene Sichtart, die das Hantieren führt und ihm seine spezifische Dinghaftigkeit verleiht". So hat sich der Koch auch geäussert : "Heutzutage verlasse ich mich ganz auf den Geist und nicht mehr auf den Augenschein. Der Sinne Wissen habe ich aufgegeben und handle nur noch nach den Regungen des Geistes. Geschickt folge ich auch den kleinsten Zwischenräumen zwischen Muskeln und Sehnen, von den grossen Gelenken ganz zu schweigen". Entsprechend betont Heidegger : "Das schärfste Nur-noch-Hinsehen auf das so und so beschaffene Aussehen von Dingen vermag Zuhandenes nicht zu entdecken. Der nur theoretisch hinsehende Blick auf Dinge entbehrt des Verstehens von Zuhandenheit". Deshalb hat der Koch aufgezeigt : "Ein guter Koch wechselt das Messer einmal im Jahr, weil er schneidet. Ein stümperhafter Koch muss das Messer alle Monate wechseln, weil er hackt"… Darauf erwidert der Fürst : "Vortrefflich ! Ich habe die Worte eines Koches gehört und habe die Pflege des Lebens gelernt".

Parkes, Graham. Intimations of taoist themes in early Heidegger [ID D19792].
A comparison of some major ideas in Being and Time [Sein und Zeit] with motifs in the Laozi and Zhuangzi will make clear some hitherto overlooked themes in Heidegger's early work, many of which have a remarkably 'taoist' tone to them. Conversely, the consideration of Heidegger's ideas may help to articulate some themes that are only implicit in the stylistically very different texts of the taoist thinkers. The discovery of resonances with taoist ideas in Heidegger's early works should make us take more seriously his assertions of the essential unity of his thought throughout its many phases, and also his claim to be the first thinker to have overcome the Western metaphysical tradition.
The idea of 'nothing', as one of the few candidates for plausible identification with the tao, is clearly central to taoist thought. Two important passages concerning 'wu' in the Laozi are in chapters 1 and 40. The Zhuangzi describes the tao as being on a deeper ontological level than the distinction between beings and non-being. We learn further that we are 'still in the realm of things' if we treat the tao as something or nothing. There is only one passage in Zhuangzi (ch. 12) in which the ultimate beginning is explicitly said to be nothing. If we develop the distinction in connexion with the Laozi between a 'relative' nothing, which might better be termed 'non-being', and an 'absolute' nothing, then we can perceive a significant congruence between the two taoist texts and Being and Time.
The distinction is perhaps best elaborated in Heidegger's terms, in whose thinking 'beings' (das Seiende) is intended so comprehensively that it includes what is referred to in Zhuangzi as 'something and nothing'.
What alone is not in the realm of beings is 'the absolutely other to all that is' – Nothing, das Nichts, or (since Heidegger ultimately identifies the two) Being, das Sein. It is this non-thing, of which we cannot even say that 'it is' (Es gibt Sein), that is equivalent to the tao as 'wu' in the Laozi and Zhuangzi.
Although the idea of 'das Nichts' does not receive a full elaboration until the essay What is metaphysics [Was ist Metaphysik, Vortrag 1929], it is central to the argument of Being and time. It is the abysmal ground (Grund / Abgrund) of the structural moments of being-in-the-world, on the one hand as 'the Nothing of World', and on the other as 'the Nothing of the possible impossibility of existence', i.e., the Nothing of death. In the chapter 'The Worldness of the World', Heidegger investigates the phenomenon of world in the ontological sense, beginning with an analysis of the being of beings encountered in the environment [Umwelt] of 'das Zuhandene', or what is 'to-hand'. Just as in Zhuangzi, 'When one has the proper shoes one forgets one's feet', so, for Heidegger, 'What is peculiar about what is immediately to-hand is that it simultaneously withdraws in its to-handness, precisely in order to be to-hand'.
Although one finds no explicit analysis of the phenomenon of World in taoist philosophy, there is an important passage in the Laozi where emptiness plays a corresponding role. In chapter 11 three kinds of thing are presented : a cartwheel, a jug and a room ; an in each case the purpose is to show that these implements are only 'to-hand' on the basis of an emptiness, a nothing, where there is a breach in the fulness of the material. Were there no hub at the centre of the wheel, it would be useless ; were there no hollow within the jug, it could not hold anything ; and were there no openings in the walls in the form of windows and a door, neither light nor occupants could enter the room. In a sense this chapter offers the inverse perspective on utility from the analysis in Being and time : in the latter the implement can be what it is only insofar as it stands out against a surrounding horizon of world ; in the Dao de jing the thing can function only on the basis of an emptiness within the implement itself. But in both cases the realization of a particular emptiness, lack or non-being within the world conduces to a realization of the Nothing that is the ultimate ground of everything. In the essay Das Ding Heidegger writes of a jug in a manner reminiscent of Laozi – and in both cases the jug (or wheel, or room) should be taken as an image for the human being. Were there in us no emptiness, we would not be able to be, as human beings, here (or there).
If one wanted to sum up the essence of taoist philosophy in a single proposition, it would be the injunction : 'Be natural'. To bring his being into harmony with the tao, man should accord with and be appropriate to the tao of 'tian', or the natural tao. And so the question concerning Heidegger arises : does the early work offer a well elaborated understanding of nature ? At first glance, the answer would appear to be no. The references to nature in Being and Time are relatively few. Being and Time has often been criticized for portraying Dasein's relation to nature in too utilitarian a manner – a supposed result of its author's over-enthusiasm for the possibilities of contemporary technology. Being-in-the-world is characterized as concern for beings in the world as to- and on-hand ; and even the authentic existence of the being for whom its own being is an issue relates to beings in terms of their utility. An when, in the course of a discussion of worldness, Heidegger writes, 'Dasein can disclose beings as nature only in a particular mode of being-in-the-world', it is clear that such a mode is not the everyday one. In general, nature is merely 'discovered along with' the disclosure of the world of factual Dasein.
Any impression that Dasein's proper attitude towards things is merely technological is dispelled by the essay On the origin of The work of art [Ursprung des Kunstwerks, 1935, 1937, 1950, 1960], a major concern of which is to describe a way of relating to things that is quite different from taking them as to- or on-hand. The work of art, whose essential nature cannot be appreciated if it is taken as an implement or an object of scientific investigtion, can be seen as a paradigm of things in general. Heidegger discusses three traditional understandings of the being of things, all of which perpetrate an 'assault' (Überfall) on the thing. Considering the essay as a whole, one could sum up the characterization of the thing by saying, for reasons that will become clear shortly, that the thing is essentially 'earthy' (erdhaft). The ideas of world (Welt) and earth (Erde), which are introduced here for the first time, are difficult. They appear to be quite primordial cosmic powers, and so it may help to interpret them in the light of the equally primordial powers of 'yang' and 'yin' from the taoist tradition. Heidegger speaks of 'the open of the world' ; world, like 'yang' is 'the self-opening openness'. But he repeatedly stresses that world and earth are not merely independent opposites, in which the dynamic interdependence of 'yin' and 'yang' is graphically portrayed.
The important thing to see is that the notion of earth as the self-withholding is what best characterizes the enigmatic character of the thing, and of beings in general. Even more important is to see that the enigmatic self-withdrawal that is a manifestation of the 'earthy' aspect of things is precisely what was found to be the primary characteristic of things to-hand in Being and Time.
If we consider the non-aggressive attitude towards things together with the earlier discussion of Zhuangzi's relativization of the anthropocentric perspective, we discover that the appropriate mode of being towards nature mentioned apparently so cursorily in Being and time does in fact receive a fuller characterization there – in terms of 'possibility' (Möglichkeit). To regard things within the world as to-hand is not, for Heidegger, in itself a bad thing : it is natural (and essential) for a being whose being is an issue for it ('dem es um sein Sein geht'). That 'is' (as in Zhuangzi) recommended is to attain a broader perspective, so that we can be open to the innumerable possibilities of every being.
Heidegger and Zhuangzi share an antipathy towards anthropocentrism and are concerned to wean us from this tendency – the latter by showing its limitations in comparison with the equally valid perspectives of other things in the universe, and Heidegger by maintaining that Being is the centre rather than man. They both demonstrate that nothing is inherently useful, that a thing is of use only in relation to other things and ultimately to a context that is itself no-thing. And they share the view that while the perspective of utility is not 'per se' pernicious, the tendendcy to become fixated in a particular perspective denigrates things by blinding us to their possibilities, and thereby improverishes our own experience.

Parkes, Graham. Thoughts on the way : Being and Time via Lao-chuang [ID D18270].
It is for good reason that Heidegger mentions the tao in the same breath as the Presocratic logos. A major ground for his openness to Taoist ideas is his becoming attuned early on the reading comparable texts in the form of fragments from the Presocartics. Of particular relevance in this context would be the writings of Heraclitus, the Western thinker closest in spirit to Taoism, and to whom Heidegger ascribes the deepest understanding of Being.
In the language of Sein und Zeit : Dasein projects in advance a world, a horizon of possibility in terms of which things can make sense to us and thus appear as things. And this is for the most part a horizon uf utility...
It is true that by the time of the essays of the mid-forties Heidegger had turned things around (a condequence of the famous Kehre) and developed a view that was less anthropocentric. In the later work, the appropriate attitude toward the 'thingness of the thing' is to let it suggest to us the best mode of approach. If we refrain from projecting a human horizon of world as the context or background against which to encounter things, we realize that things in a way generate their own worlds, and it is thought those atmospheres that we should approach them. That is all quite harmonious with Taoism – but the later texts can hardly be adduced to show that Heidegger was pursuing these lines of thought prior to the 'turning'...
It corresponds to the Taoist insistence that any thing is what it is only in relation to other things, that a particular is entirely dependent on its context. In fact Zhuangzi makes this point with specific reference to the idea of utility, in terms similar to those Heidegger uses to describe 'Verweisung', emphasizing that usefulness is nothing absolute but is always relative to a context. In the 'Autumn floods' chapter, Jo of the North Sea says : "A battering ram is good for smashing down a wall, but not for stopping a hole, which is to say that it is a tool with a special use". In the language of Sein und Zeit, the battering ram is 'something in order to' destroy a city wall ; it has a 'reference' to the entire relational matrix of sieges and fortifications. In filling a small hole the battering ram would be – because of its great mass, which suits it ideally for demolishing something firm – with respect to something fluid entirely useless. This 'relational dependence' of usefulness is made even clearer by the realization that what is useful depends for its utility on what is not being used. This point is exemplified by a passage from the outer chapters which invites us to contemplate our relationship to the earth, the ground on which we stand and walk. Zhuangzi is speaking to Hui Shi : "In all the immensity of heaven and earth, a man uses no more than is room for his feet. If recognizing this we were to dig away the ground around his feet all the way down to the Underworld, would it still be useful to the man ?" "It would be useless." "Then it is plain that the useless does serve a use"...
The idea of unusability serves a function in Heidegger comparable to the role of uselessness in Zhuangzi, insofar as it makes us pull back and contemplate the surrounding context and thereby lets us see the perspective of utility as a perspective. This kind of consideration counters the tendency to exaggerate the differences between Heidegger and Zhuangzi by making the latter look overly 'Anti-' and the former overly 'pro-instrumentalist'. There are, of course, from the thing's point of view, definite disadvantages in being potential 'Zeug' or 'good for something'. But for the Taoists the problem is less with the standpoint of utility 'per se' than with getting stuck in any single perspective. And surely Heidegger, with his emphasis on the ‘multi-dimensionality’ of Being, would, just as much as Zhuangzi, pray with Balke that we be kept from 'single vision and Newton’s sleep'...
In line with the Taoist emphasis on being-in-the world without being taken in by it, the models the Zhuangzi offers of people who are on to the tao are not sage-hermits who spend their lives meditating in isolation from the world, but are often artisans and craftsmen and others who have attained consummate mastery of certain psycho-physical skills – most of whom work primarily with their hands. Manuel dexterity, smooth, graceful, and effortlessly responsive, is a sign that one's power (te) has become fully integrated. The idea behind many Taoist stories is that if one can disconnect discursive thought and respond from the wosdom of the body, the hands will do their own kind of thinking.
In the early forties, as he became more concerned with the idea of 'Denken', Heidegger alluded to its relations to the hand by calling genuine thinking a 'Handeln', or activity. He soon began to refer to thinking as a 'Hand-Werk', a craft – but literally a work of the hand...
In the more global breakdown, things recede from us, and the hitherto unnoticed background (the empty horizon of World) comes to the fore and lets us see what it is all for : nothing. The full realization is then that the nothing of the world is also the nothing of the self.
Heidegger makes the connection between 'Angst' and death in the Second Division, revealing the nothingness of world to be – since 'Dasein is its world' – the nothingness of the self. His understanding of death as a constant presence within life rather than a state beyond and opposed to life is close to the Taoists'. Just as Heidegger emphasizes that 'our sight is too short if life is made the problem and then also occasionally death is considered', so Laozi remarks that 'it is because people set too much store by life that they treat death lightly'...
Since for both Heidegger and Zhuangzi there is already an awareness of the self, the question is whether eigher of their views involves a regression to a state of 'primitive' non-self-awareness, a simple acceptance of annihilation, a belief in transcendence and individual survival, or some further alternative.
There seems to be a difference between the Laozi and Zhuangzi on this point. The Taoists' emphasis on spontaneity and their praise of primordial naturalness might suggest that their ideal involves a total immersion in purely natural processes and a regression to a stage of quasi-primitive participation in the world, and some passages in Laozi which advocate 'returning to the root' and reverting to 'the uncarved block' reinforce this impression. Under these circumstances death would not be an issue, because there is not sufficient self-awareness or extension of consciousness beyond the present moment. On the other hand, the predominance of Taoist imagery about wandering above and beyond the dust and grime of wordly affairs and their concern with not being bound by things, taken together with the passages that seem to suggest that tao is at least in part transcendent to the world, inclines one to ascribe the Taoists' equanimity in the face of death to their having transcended the realm of life and death. Neither alternative, however, would characterize Heidegger's position...
In authentic dealings with things to-hand we see through the network of equipmental relationships to the ultimate 'Worum-willen' which gives them meaning – the empty horizon of World and death. With one eye on Nothing, an ear open for the voice of stillness, and one foot always already in the grave, we let the hand be guided by the power of Being. So that when he says that "In order to be able – 'lost' in the world of equipment – 'really' to go to work and get busy, the self must forget itself", he is speaking on two levels, referring both to the dissipation of the self into the world of its concern and to authentic dealings with things. In the latter, however, forgetting the self means opening it up to allow one's actions to be guided by the authentic self, which, itself nothing, is one with the northing of world...
Heidegger would no doubt want to go further and say that the felling of trees for lumber to build a cabin could still be an instance of authentic use of the wood. The question is at what point the use of a natural thing as 'Zeug' in such a way as to realize its possibilities with respect to human concerns begins to impinge overly on the unfolding of its possibilities when left to itself. Clearly the deforestation of an area of beautiful trees in order to mass-produce ugly furniture is something even the most social-utility-minded Heideggerian would not condone. At the other extreme there is no doubt that Heidegger would applaud a woodworker who himself seeks and finds the perfect tree for the chair he has in mind, and then proceeds to fashion it with thoughtful hands that respond to the uniqueness of the wood, so that its hidden beauty may shine forth to the füllest. One is tempted to say not just that the woodworker has helped the tree to become more fully itself, but has actually helped it to become more than itself.
There is a story along these lines in the Zhuangzi about the woodworker Ch'ing, whose bellstand was so beautiful as to be 'daemonic'. After going into the forest to 'observe the nature of the wood äs heaven makes it grow', he waits for 'a complete vision of the bellstand' before picking his tree and going to work. He is sufficiently open to the daemonic to be able to describe his working the wood as 'joining heaven's to what is heaven's'—by allowing the 'te' in him, his natural ability, to respond to the 't'e in the wood, its natural potential. It is characteristic, incidentally, of Taoism to prize especially a craft in which careful 'subtraction' rather than skilful composition is the art...
Zbhuangzi asks: "If you treat things as things and are not made into a thing by things [literally: 'thinged by things'], how can you be tied by involvements?". Put in Heideggerian terms: "If you let things (to-hand) be involved in the context of the ultimate possibility of nothingness, and allow your own nothingness to keep you from understanding yourself as something either on- or to-hand, how can you be taken in (benommen) by things in the world?" Correspondingly, Zhuangzi's 'What things things is not itself a thing' would elicit immediate assent from Heidegger. It is true that it is not until the later Heidegger that we hear talk of 'things thinging'; but it was not long after Sein und Zeit that he began to say that 'world worlds' (die Welt weitet) and 'nothing nothings' (das Nichts nichtet)...

STUDENT A [looking at the t'ai chi symbol hc has becn drawing in his notebook]
Since 'Riss' means 'line' as well as 'rift', it could also refer to the line between the yin and yang in the t'ai chi symbol and the outline [Umriss] bounding them. And since Heidegger further characterizes the 'Riss' as the image of the primordial contention of truth as the opposition between revelation and concealment, it would correspond to tao as the 'single ground' of the origin of the unity of yin and yang.
HEIDEGGER
[The issue of truth could not even come up] if the unconcealment of what-is had not exposed us to that clearing into which all beings stand and from which they withdraw. This clearing this open middle is not surrounded by what-is, but the illuminating middle itself surrounds—like Nothing, which we hardly know—all that is. Every being that is encountered maintains this strangely ambiguous presence, in that it always simultaneously holds itself back in concealment. In this way, self-concealing Being is illuminate.
LAO-TZU
Thc Way is empty, yet use will not drain it. Deep, it is like the ancestor of the myriad things. Abysmal, it only seems as if it were there. I do not know whose son it is. It images the forefather of the Gods.
CHUANG-TZU
The myriad things have somewhere from which they grow but no one sees the root, somewhere from which they come forth but no one sees the gate. Men all honor what wit knows, but none knows how to know by depending on what his wits do not know; may that not be called the supreme uncertainty?

Eckard Wolz-Gottwald : Eine spezifisch eurozentristische Grundausrichtung in Heideggers Denken ist schon in Sein und Zeit aufzuweisen. Hier warnt er noch explizit davor, dass das 'Verstehen der fremdesten Kulturen und die Synthese dieser mit der eigenen' zur Aufklärung des Daseins über sich selbst führen könnte.Es gehe um ein Verstehen, das 'einzig im eigensten Dasein' frei werden müsse. Er warnt davor, die eigene 'Geschichtlichkeit des Daseins' zu vernachlässigen, wenn durch ein Philosophieren 'in den entlegensten und fremdesten Kulturen' nur die 'eigene Bodenlosigkeit' verhüllt werde. Gerade nicht durch die 'Wanderschaft in die Fremde', sondern durch den Rückgang in die abendländische Geschichte, kann der abendländische Mensch zu seinem Eigenen finden.

Chung Chen-yu : Die 'Entschlossenheit' in Sein und Zeit ist die Vorform der Gelassenheit. Wenn Heidegger die Gelassenheit thematisiert, setzt er sich gleichzeitig mit seinem früheren Begriff der Entschlossenheit auseinander. Diese wird nicht verstanden als menschliche Entscheidung, sondern als 'das eigens übernommene Sichöffnen des Daseins für das Offene'.
Heidegger bestimmt die Naturdinge, verstanden als das nützliche Zuhandene oder das Zeug, als ontologisch primär, d.h. als dem Vorhandenen vorgängig. Später bestimmt er dann das nützliche Zeug im Zusammenhang mit der modernen Technik als den 'Bestand'. Für Laozi ist das nützliche Zeug das Gerät (qi). Das Ding ist nicht nur der vorgestellte Gegenstand, sondern das für den Menschen nutzbare Gerät. Heidegger betont die Beziehung des einen Zeugs zu anderen Zeug-en.
Heidegger stellt dar, dass Philosophie das Geschäft ist, die Kraft der elementarsten Worte zu bewahren. Der Mythos, der ebenfalls solche elementarsten Worte verwendet, verwendet damit keine irrationalen Ausdrücke, sondern bezieht sich mit dieser Ausdrucksweise auf die ursprüngliche Wahrheit. Auch Laozi und Zhuangzi verwenden gerne Ausdrücke aus der chinesischen Mythologie.

Jay Goulding : Xiong Wei's input in the translation of Sein und Zeit [Heidegger, Martin]. Cun zai yu shi jian [ID D19057] brings to shape a common ground between Western philosophical concepts and those of China. It also expresses the facility of the Chinese language for its own phenomenological thought. Although Xiong Wei's influence on Heidegger's circle was indirect in the 1930s, it had long-term effects. Xiong Wei visited Germany several times over a fifty-year period and spoke at Otto Pöggeler's 1989 Conference on hermeneutic phenomenology where he recalled his time with Heidegger. He was impressed by Heidegger's 'grace' or 'elegant manners', which acted to 'awaken one to think'. His whole life was 'opened up' by Heidegger's thought. He saw Heidegger's main contribution to 'show oneself his true self’' while 'in-der-welt-sein'. In this process, Xiong Wei saw 'Being' and 'Time' as co-constituitive relationships to understanding beings-in-the-world.
The translation of 'Lichtung' reveals the Chinese language's capacity for phenomenological thought. Xiong Wei's translation of 'Lichtung' underscores his deep understanding of Heidegger's intentions. The Chinese translation ias as illuminating as the German idea itself. The German 'Lichtung' holds the sense of brightness and clarity as well as the idea of lightness versus heaviness. Although Heidegger has in mind the idea of a clearing in the forest when he first employs this term.
Heidegger learned about Daoism and Buddhism as he contemplated the relationships between Being and being, Being and Nothing, and Being and Time. His near monastic lifestyle drew him closer to these philosophies than to Confucianism. Along the way, these Asian conversations helped shape his idea of 'the clearing' where beings are illuminated. Heidegger's concern with Chinese philosophy and especially with 'dao' influences his studies of 'logos'. What Heidegger implicitly learned from Chinese thinkers is the idea of a yin-yang polarity. 'Being' does not have to win out over 'being', or 'Being' does not have to conquer 'Time'. The two parts of the pairing can be mutually conditioning or co-Constitutive as in yin and yang. This constitutes 'dao'. China’s long history of the complementarity of Daoism and Buddhism helps Heidegger understand this possibility.
Chinese philosophy gently stimulates Heidegger's vision of an East/West dialogue with language/speech, Being/being, Nothing/being, and Being/time standing as topical polarities. 'Lichtung' serves as the between, the Void, the opening in which these pairings come to be and through which tey come to pass. Given Heidegger's fascination with Laozi, the idea of 'Lichtung' 'reaches insdie' to be 'clear and still', that it reaches ek-statically into the betweenness of Heaven and Earth, the Void where Nothing is more than nothing. In and through 'it' (Being), beings emerge. As such, Heidegger's 'Lichtung' is a 'place' between subject and object. The 'world' becomes a phenomenal body in which we live.