Fabian Heubel, Being and Between. Reflections on Comparative and Transcultural Philosophy, EACP ONLINE EVENT: COMPARATIVE, POST-COMPARATIVE, OR TRANSCULTURAL? CHINESE PHILOSOPHY AND NEW METHODOLOGIES, July 23, 2021 (original) (raw)
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This essay argues that comparative and transcultural philosophy are interdependent, and so opting for only one of the two is an impossibility. The comparative approach persists as long as we distinguish identities and make differences. As long as people do not speak only one language, the need to move between different languages and to translate, and thus the need to relate and compare different possibilities of philosophical articulation, will remain. Any attempt to free oneself from the problem of cultural identity is doomed to failure, as it leads to further entrapment in the very same problem. Comparative philosophy works with more or less fixed identities, transcultural philosophy transforms them and thereby creates new identities. Those two approaches combined constitute what I call intercultural philosophy. In this essay I try to explain the relation between comparative and transcultural philosophy by connecting François Jullien’s “comparative” and Martin Heidegger’s “transcultural” understanding of “Being” (Sein) and “Between” (Zwischen). In part 1 I argue that by turning Between and Being into opposing paradigms of Chinese and Greek thinking, respectively, Jullien causes both to become more or less fixed representatives of different cultural identities within a comparative framework: Greek thinking ossifies into traditional metaphysics, and Chinese thinking ossifies into the non-metaphysical thinking of immanence. Part 2 argues that Heidegger takes a decisively different direction. He explores the Between in Being, and even makes an attempt to think of Being as Between. Heidegger’s invocation of “Greekdom” is undoubtedly Eurocentric. But, ironically, Heidegger’s “Greek thinking” is less Eurocentric than Jullien’s “Chinese thinking”, because he discovers the “Chinese” Between in the midst of “Greek” Being. Part 3 touches upon the task of speaking about European philosophy in Chinese terms. While modern Chinese philosophers frequently speak about Chinese philosophy in European terms, Heidegger’s work points to the possibility of speaking about European philosophy in Chinese terms. Because Jullien and Heidegger both connect Greek and Chinese thought, it seems to me that the discussion of their different approaches is helpful in clarifying perspectives for intercultural philosophy between China and Europe. Keywords: Being, Between, comparative, transcultural, intercultural, ontology, breath-energy (qì 氣), identity, Martin Heidegger, François Jullien
Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy, 2023
Jullien’s writings mark an important step towards overcoming the Eurocentric narrowness of academic philosophy. However, his understanding of ideas like “intercultural alterity” and “interculturality” remains deeply problematic and ultimately hinders rather than enables the necessary conversation between “European” and “Chinese” thought. In what follows, I address the limitations of Jullien’s “detour through China” and propose a way of overcoming them through a reformulation of the between (inter-) and the construction of an alternative concept of intercultural philosophy whose historical condition of possibility is hybrid modernization. To this purpose, it is necessary to distinguish two aspects of the intercultural: a comparative aspect and a transcultural aspect. Evidently, two perspectives of intercultural philosophizing often understood as mutually exclusive are thereby connected. Given that the difference between intercultural and comparative philosophy is harder to pin down, contrasting intercultural and transcultural philosophy seems to be a valid theoretical possibility. Another possibility is the reconception of intercultural philosophy that rethinks the between (French: l’entre, German: das Zwischen) and its significance for understanding the intercultural.
Thinking in Transition: Nishida Kitaro and Martin Heidegger Elmar Weinmayr
Philosophy East and West, 2005
Two major philosophers of the twentieth century, the German existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger and the seminal Japanese Kyoto School philosopher Nishida Kitaro are examined here in an attempt to discern to what extent their ideas may converge. Both are viewed as expressing, each through the lens of his own tradition, a world in transition with the rise of modernity in the West and its subsequent globalization. The popularity of Heidegger's thought among Japanese philosophers, despite its own admitted limitation to the Western "history of being," is connected to Nishida's opening of a uniquely Japanese path in its confrontation with Western philosophy. The focus is primarily on their later works (the post-Kehre Heidegger and the works of Nishida that have been designated "Nishida philosophy"), in which each in his own way attempts to overcome the subject-object dichotomy inherited from the tradition of Western metaphysics by looking to a deeper structure from out of which both subjectivity and objectivity are derived and which embraces both. For Heidegger, the answer lies in being as the opening of unconcealment, from out of which beings emerge, and for Nishida, it is the place of nothingness within which beings are co-determined in their oppositions and relations. Concepts such as Nishida's "discontinuous continuity," "absolutely self-contradictory identity" (between one and many, whole and part, world and things), the mutual interdependence of individuals, and the self-determination of the world through the co-relative self-determination of individuals, and Heidegger's "simultaneity" (zugleich) and "within one another" (ineinander) (of unconcealment and concealment, presencing and absencing), and their "between" (Zwischen) and "jointure" (Fuge) are examined. Through a discussion of these ideas, the suggestion is made of a possible "transition" (Ubergang) of both Western and Eastern thinking, in their mutual encounter, both in relation to each other and each in relation to its own past history, leading to both a self-discovery in the other and to a simultaneous self-reconstitution.
Thinking in Transition: Nishida Kitaro and Martin Heidegger by Elmar Weinmayr
buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw, Philosophy East and West, 2005
Two major philosophers of the twentieth century, the German existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger and the seminal Japanese Kyoto School philosopher Nishida Kitaro are examined here in an attempt to discern to what extent their ideas may converge. Both are viewed as expressing, each through the lens of his own tradition, a world in transition with the rise of modernity in the West and its subsequent globalization. The popularity of Heidegger's thought among Japanese philosophers, despite its own admitted limitation to the Western "history of being," is connected to Nishida's opening of a uniquely Japanese path in its confrontation with Western philosophy. The focus is primarily on their later works (the post-Kehre Heidegger and the works of Nishida that have been designated "Nishida philosophy"), in which each in his own way attempts to overcome the subject-object dichotomy inherited from the tradition of Western metaphysics by looking to a deeper structure from out of which both subjectivity and objectivity are derived and which embraces both. For Heidegger, the answer lies in being as the opening of unconcealment, from out of which beings emerge, and for Nishida, it is the place of nothingness within which beings are co-determined in their oppositions and relations. Concepts such as Nishida's "discontinuous continuity," "absolutely self-contradictory identity" (between one and many, whole and part, world and things), the mutual interdependence of individuals, and the self-determination of the world through the co-relative self-determination of individuals, and Heidegger's "simultaneity" (zugleich) and "within one another" (ineinander) (of unconcealment and concealment, presencing and absencing), and their "between" (Zwischen) and "jointure" (Fuge) are examined. Through a discussion of these ideas, the suggestion is made of a possible "transition" (Ubergang) of both Western and Eastern thinking, in their mutual encounter, both in relation to each other and each in relation to its own past history, leading to both a self-discovery in the other and to a simultaneous self-reconstitution.
Martin Heidegger and Oriental thought: confrontations
Heidegger became interested in Eastern thought, due to his attempt to overcome the conceptual expression characteristic of the Western metaphysical tradition. Everything suggests, however, that this attempt derives from the Christian experience of his early years, which would decisively influence his thinking. In fact, the conception of the human essence as relation to the Being, in terms of comprehension in his Existential Analytic and in terms of thinking in his later work,-has a striking structural analogy to the relationship between the biblical God and his creature. In both cases, the human being is freedom and openness to a gift. In this sense, Heidegger's mature thought displays more differences from than similarities to the Zen-Buddhist mysticism and Eastern thought in general: being X nothingness, finite X infinite, on the way X at the end, acceptance of a gift X identification with the absolute foundation.
Review of Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel Fundamentals of Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy
After decades of development of comparative and intercultural philosophy, a significant amount of comparative work has constituted a reliable database for people to have a profound reflection on the foundation of this subject. MA Lin and Jaap van Brakel’s book is a remarkable reflection of this kind. It is not only a study of the philosophical foundation of intercultural philosophy, but also an intercultural research that encounters numerous data from different cultures and traditions to support the central claim of the book: it is not necessary to speak the same language or assume the same notion of philosophy with a set of universal concepts in order to do intercultural communication.
This article engages moments in Heidegger's work where interality is discussed, even though Heidegger does not use the term explicitly. It reveals understudied parallels and resonances between Heidegger's work and Chan Buddhism, and points to the probability that Heidegger's fundamental ontology may well be a precursor of the emerging line of inquiry called interology.
This Thinking Lacks a Language: Heidegger and Gadamer's Question of Being
Martin Heidegger's preparation of the question of human existence was the focus of his seminal work Being and Time, first published in 1927. This paper refers to Heidegger's phenomenological work through Heidegger's colleague and friend Hans-Georg Gadamer to focus on how Heidegger prepares the question of Being and the problem of language in his later work. In his conversation with the Japanese scholar professor Tezuka, the meaning of language in the west appears to restrict an understanding of Being by conceptualising it ad infinitum. To the Japanese the simple term " what is " appears to be closer to Being because it does not attempt to conceptualise it. Therefore, Heidegger, Gadamer and Tezuka's discussion about ontology concludes that language does get in the way of understanding Being.