What is the philosophical significance of Heidegger’s interpretation of the Japanese notion of kotoba (言葉) for Japanese philosophy? Was his conversation with Tezuka Tomio a real dialogue or not? To answer to these correlated questions, I elucidate Heidegger’s 1954 essay “A Dialogue on Language” by following a topological mode of thinking, and I inquire into the way-making of a “thinking conversation”. First, I problematize whether Heidegger engaged in a genuine dialogue with Tezuka. To that end, I distinguish the (...) hermeneutic horizon of the actual encounter between Tezuka and Heidegger from Heidegger’s essay which places Tezuka (the Japanese) and Heidegger (the Inquirer) in a fictional philosophical conversation. Second, I argue that Heidegger’s topological method of interpretating kotoba can be read as a poetic means of thematizing East-West dialogue. Third and finally, exploring the topological sense of kotoba, I engage with third generation Kyoto School thinker Ueda Shizuteru’sideaof“hollow words” of language, situated in a twofold view of the world. I conclude that the true character of Heidegger’s conversation with Tezuka can be identified neither in Heidegger’s “actual” encounter with Tezuka, nor merely in Heidegger’s “hollow” essay. Departing from Ueda’s account of kotoba, it appears that a genuine conversation with language can be located in the dialogue of actuality and hollowness, which finds it expression in poetic language. (shrink)

This book presents the first collection of essays on the philosophy of Ueda Shizuteru in a Western language. Ueda, the last living member of the Kyoto school, has fostered the East-West dialogue in all his works and has helped to open up the Western image of philosophy by engaging the Zen tradition. The book reflects this particular trait of Ueda’s philosophy, but it also covers all thematic fields of his writings. Contributions from both young and established (...) scholars and experts from Japan, Europe and the U.S. make this a unique introduction to and reception of Ueda’s philosophy. Readers will discover discussions of mysticism in the East and West, and consideration of modern philosophy topics including self-awareness, nature and poetic language. The book also presents a focussed look at language and nothingness, considering silence and nihilism. Chapters allow the reader to understand the timeliness of a thinking that mediates and transcends the dichotomy of East and West. This volume will appeal not only to scholars of Nishida, Japanese philosophy, mysticism and religious experience in Japan, but also to scholars of Western philosophy, especially those interested in Meister Eckhart, Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber. It makes an ideal introduction to Zen philosophy and presents important contributions to scholarship on language and experience. (shrink)

In this volume Martin Heidegger confronts the philosophical problems of language and begins to unfold the meaning begind his famous and little understood phrase "Language is the House of Being." The "Dialogue on Language," between Heidegger and a Japanese friend, together with the four lectures that follow, present Heidegger's central ideas on the origin, nature, and significance of language. These essays reveal how one of the most profound philosophers of our century relates language to his earlier and continuing (...) preoccupation with the nature of Being and himan being. One the Way to Language enable readers to understand how central language became to Heidegger's analysis of the nature of Being. On the Way to Language demonstrates that an interest in the meaning of language is one of the strongest bonds between analytic philosophy and Heidegger. It is an ideal source for studying his sustained interest in the problems and possibilities of human language and brilliantly underscores the originality and range of his thinking. (shrink)

Ueda writes in his Reading Nishida Kitarō (Nishida Kitarō o yomu) that to compare Heidegger’s entire thinking up to his last period with Nishida’s thought also up to his last period, including their multiple turns, would be “one of the most valuable paths to investigating the significance, potential, and problematics of Nishidian philosophy.” In this paper I examine the philosophy of Ueda Shizuteru through the juxtaposition of those two thinkers, of West and of East, who prove to (...) be significant for the creative unfolding of his thought: Martin Heidegger who had inspired much of phenomenology and Continental philosophy, and Nishida Kitarō who had inspired the development of Kyoto School philosophy and much of contemporary Japanese philosophy. The Heideggerian and Nishidian streams of thought, in their “placial turns”—Nishida’s “logic of place” and Heidegger’s “topology of beyng”—meet in Ueda as he reads each in light of the other’s terminology and concepts. Through his readings and appropriations that underscore their commonalities and differences, Ueda thus develops a compelling philosophy of place, world, and horizon, a thinking of being-in-the-twofold-world. The chapter thus examines the meeting of Nishida and Heidegger in Ueda. (shrink)

ABSTRACT “Meister Eckhart’s Mysticism in Comparison with Zen Buddhism” originally appeared as the concluding section of Ueda Shizuteru’s first book, Die Gottesgeburt in der Seele und der Durchbruch zur Gottheit: Die mystische Anthropologie Meister Eckharts und ihre Konfrontation mit der Mystik des Zen-Buddhismus. It was first published in 1965 as an expanded version of Ueda’s doctoral dissertation, which was written under the supervision of Ernst Benz at the University of Marburg. Ueda’s careful analysis not only illuminates (...) important points of affinity between Eckhart and Zen, but also explains why Eckhart’s mysticism cannot be simply interchanged with Zen Buddhism. To allow the reader to read for themselves, I kept all interpretative notes to a minimum. The text is translated from the most recent edition of the German text, published in 2018 by Verlag Karl Alber, and edited by Wolf Burbat. The German pagination is interpolated in bold throughout the text. (shrink)

In this paper, I explicate Ueda Shizuteru’s philosophy of the twofold being-in-the-world and the ethics he draws from it. Ueda provides an original reading of Nishida’s concept of pure experience and develops it together with an understanding of Nishida’s concept of place by combining it with the phenomenological notion of the horizon. This leads him to understand the world, or place wherein we are, as twofold, implying the semantic space or network of meanings within it, on the (...) one hand, and, on the other hand, the boundless or undetermined open which envelops the former as its other. Our being as being-in-the-world is thus also twofold in implying both sides of the horizon, inside and outside, whereby we are ontologically grounded but at the same time without ground in being suspended by the semantic emptiness and ontological nothingness lying beyond. (shrink)

On May 18, 1958, Martin Heidegger led a one-day colloquium in Freiburg on the topic of “Art and Thinking” together with Shin’ichi Hisamatsu, the Japanese philosopher and Buddhist scholar. The protocol of the colloquium, published in volume 16 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe, presents a conversation among the colloquium participants about art in the East Asian world. In this conversation, Heidegger is particularly interested in hearing from Hisamatsu about the conception of art present in the East Asian world prior to (...) the introduction of Western aesthetic concepts and about the relationship between form and formlessness in East Asian aesthetics. The conversation allows Hisamatsu to clarify for the participants what he takes to be the most essential features of Zen art and how these features compare with those found in modern Western abstract art. (shrink)

On May 18, 1958, Martin Heidegger led a one-day colloquium in Freiburg on the topic of “Art and Thinking” together with Shin’ichi Hisamatsu, the Japanese philosopher and Buddhist scholar. The protocol of the colloquium, published in volume 16 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe, presents a conversation among the colloquium participants about art in the East Asian world. In this conversation, Heidegger is particularly interested in hearing from Hisamatsu about the conception of art present in the East Asian world prior to (...) the introduction of Western aesthetic concepts and about the relationship between form and formlessness in East Asian aesthetics. The conversation allows Hisamatsu to clarify for the participants what he takes to be the most essential features of Zen art and how these features compare with those found in modern Western abstract art. (shrink)

人間の存在は元来「場所」的である。が、その「場所」の根本性格はどのようなものなのであろうか。私たちの存在が「世界の内にあること」と見られる場合、その世界そのものは「限りない開け」に於いてある。したがっ て我々の存在は「限りない開けに於いてある世界に於いてある」ことになる。この二重の「於いてある」は、二重性としては見えない構造のものであるが、我々の実際の生活の様々な領域の様々な営為にまで拡がる。本書は ハイデッガーの基礎存在論、ボルノウの空間論、エリアーデのヒエロファニー論、西田幾多郎の場所論、禅の十牛図などを手掛かりにして人間存在の基本的な構造を解明、考察する。.

dai 1-kan. Nishida Kitarō -- dai 2-kan. Keiken to jikaku -- dai 3-kan. Basho -- dai 4-kan. Zen, kongenteki ningen -- dai 5-kan. Zen no fūkei -- dai 6-kan. Dōtei "Jūgyūzu" o ayumu -- dai 7-kan. Maisutā Ekkuharuto -- dai 8-kan. Hi shinpi shugi -- dai 9-kan. Kokū/Sekai -- dai 10-kan. Jiko no genshōgaku -- dai 11-kan. Shūkyō to wa nani ka.

Time and being.--Summary of a seminar on the lecture "Time and being."--The end of philosophy and the task of thinking.--My way to phenomenology.

This essay seeks to understand the nature of both interpersonal and intercultural dialogue from the perspective of Zen Buddhism as it has been interpreted, in dialogue with Western philosophy and religion, by the central figure of the third generation of the Kyoto School: Ueda Shizuteru (1926–2019). It examines how Ueda develops a philosophy of interpersonal dialogue on the basis of Zen teachings and practices. In particular, it reveals how Ueda draws on Huayan and Zen Buddhist notions (...) of “host” and “guest” to unfold the dialogical implications of the tenth of The Ten Oxherding Pictures, kōan interviews, linked verse poetry, and the Japanese greeting of the bow. The final sections of this article then explore the implications for intercultural dialogue of Ueda’s account of human existence as dwelling in a “twofold world” through a circulating process of “exiting language and exiting into language.”. (shrink)

Heidegger hielt die unter dem Titel Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs angekundigte Vorlesung im Sommer-Semester 1925 in der Marburger Universitat. Er gelangte jedoch nicht mehr zur Ausfuhrung der zentralen Thematik. Der Themenkreis der Vorlesung ist mit der Nennung des Untertitels abgesteckt: Prolegomena zu einer Phanomenologie von Geschichte und Natur. Heideggers thematische Uberlegungen beginnen mit einer Kennzeichnung der Situation von Philosophie und Wissenschaft in der zweiten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts und stellen das seiner Deutung nach entscheidende Ereignis dieser Zeit heraus: den Durchbruch der (...) Phanomenologie als philosophische Forschung. Er untersucht ihre wesentlichen Entdeckungen, verteidigt sie gegen Missverstandnisse, um dann seinerseits Kritik vorzubringen, wo die Phanomenologie ihrer Forderung zu den Sachen selbst nicht gerecht wird. (shrink)

As the central figure of the third generation of the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy, UEDA Shizuteru 上田閑照 has not only followed in the footsteps of his predecessors, NISHIDA Kitarō 西田幾多郎 and NISHITANI Keiji 西谷啓治, but has taken several strides forward in their shared pursuit of what can be called a “philosophy of Zen.” The “of” in this phrase should be understood as a “double genitive,” that is, in both its objective and subjective senses. Ueda (...) not only philosophizes about Zen, he also philosophizes from Zen. Like Nishida and Nishitani before him, he has devoted himself to the practice of Zen as well as to the study of Western philosophy. However, what does it mean to speak, much less philosophize, about Zen experience? Ueda has in fact concentrated much of his attention on questions concerning the relation between Zen and philosophy or, more generally, between experience and language. Any development of a “philosophy of Zen,” Ueda recognizes, must begin with the question of what it means to “speak of experience.” What does it mean to express, that is, to speak from and about experience? This question has been at the heart of Ueda’s philosophical path from the beginning. His many works on this topic include a seminal early essay “Zen and Language,” later re-titled “The Language of Zen”, articles written in German including “Awakening in Zen Buddhism as a Word-Event”, and a recent article, “Language in a Twofold World,” which Ueda put together to represent his thought in a major anthology of Japanese philosophy. In these and other works, Ueda convincingly demonstrates that the question of the relation between language and experience has always been a pivotal issue for the Zen tradition itself. He also shows how this tradition can help us, in the wake of the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, to return afresh to this fundamental question. (shrink)

Diese Ausgabe enthalt auch die in dem seit langerem vergriffenen Band "Vier Seminare" 1977 erstmals veroffentlichten Seminare, die Heidegger mit sieben franzosischen Gelehrten und dem Dichter Rene Char in Le Thor (1966, 1968 und 1969) und Zahringen (1973) abgehalten hat. Der Band fasst die zu Lebzeiten Martin Heideggers veroffentlichten Protokolle der Seminare zusammen, die er geleitet oder an denen er teilgenommen hat. Die Beschaffenheit der Texte ist verschieden, denn die Protokolle sind auf unterschiedliche Weise entstanden, wozu die Nachworte das (...) Nahere mitteilen. Der einzige Text, der eine eigene Handschrift Heideggers wiedergibt, ist die als "Nachtrag" zum letzten der "Vier Seminare" hier erstmals veroffentlichte Erlauterung zu einem Wort des Parmenides mit kurzer Vorbemerkung "Die Herkunft des Denkens". Eine Besonderheit des Bandes bilden die Textbeitrage, die von Seminarteilnehmern stammen, unter denen Eugen Fink mit der eigenen Heraklit-Interpretation den herausragenden Anteil hat. Die mit Franzosen abgehaltenen "Vier Seminare" vermitteln beilaufig einige Einblicke in Heideggers Beziehungen zum geistigen Frankreich und zu seinen wohl wichtigsten Freunden (und Ubersetzern), von denen Rene Char und Jean Beaufret am bekanntesten sind. Heidegger begegnet dem Leser hier im Dialog, als Leiter und Partner im Gesprach, dessen Wiedergabe oft eine eigene Lebendigkeit aus dem jeweiligen Eingehen auf die Teilnehmer gewinnt. Dieser andere Duktus der Texte unterscheidet die Seminare vom Stil der Vorlesungen und der veroffentlichten Schriften. Die Nachworte geben Aufschluss uber das Zustandekommen der einzelnen Seminare und der fruheren Protokoll-Veroffentlichungen; sie enthalten auch Hinweise auf die Teilnehmerkreise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Japanese Philosophy in the Making 2: Borderline Interrogations by John MaraldoLeah KalmansonJohn Maraldo, Japanese Philosophy in the Making 2: Borderline Interrogations Nagoya: Chisokudō, 2019.Japanese Philosophy in the Making 2: Borderline Interrogations is the second in a series of three volumes featuring selections from John Maraldo’s work in Japanese philosophy over the years. The format might best be described as a hybrid text somewhere between (...) an edited collection and a single-authored book. All of the essays in Borderline Interrogations are updated versions of Maraldo’s own previously published works or records of unpublished talks. They are grouped thematically into five sections, with each section prefaced by a brief introduction to provide readers with context as well help them draw connections across the entire work. However, compared to the first volume, which was more or less unified via its focus on Nishida, this second volume offers a more disparate array of topics. This could be seen as a strength or a weakness, depending on whether readers approach the text expecting something more like a book or more like an edited collection. Hence, openness toward the hybrid format at the outset can help readers navigate the text and better appreciate its unique approach to philosophizing.In his introduction, Maraldo addresses questions of cultural borders and bridges, including issues of identity, translation, and disciplinarity. He selects the word “intercultural”—as opposed to multicultural, cross-cultural, or comparative—to describe the kind of philosophy developing in Japan during and after the initial impact of Nishida on the formation of the academic discipline at institutional centers in both Kyōto and Tōkyō. With this word choice, he invites readers to reflect on various Japanese philosophers’ engagements with German- and English-language texts. Familiarity with another language (whether this amounts to full fluency or basic academic competency) enables a style of philosophical conversation that Maraldo compares to a Gadamerian process of hermeneutic play. Crucially, the twists and turns of translation, or thinking across and between several languages at once, takes the lead in directing philosophical thinking, rather than the other way around. As Maraldo says, “What is [End Page 143] decisive is the moment of release from trying self-consciously to control all movement back and forth” (10). This interplay of multiple languages is a definitive feature of the intercultural philosophy that Maraldo associates with twentieth-century and contemporary Japan.He goes on to describe this kind of philosophizing via Ueda Shizuteru’s writings on the Japanese poem form of renku or “linked verse.” Such poetic practices are open-ended, allowing multiple participants to make creative connections arising from the ever-evolving context of the poem itself. The composition, in some senses, “lives” at this border between the verse just written and the verse yet to be added, being the sole property of neither verse’s author. So too, Maraldo suggests, does intercultural philosophy live at the border between various languages and intellectual traditions. Readers might appreciate thinking of the hybrid form of his collection itself on the renku model—various narrative and thematic threads do run through the book, but the work as a whole remains open-ended, marking a record of Maraldo’s own intercultural philosophizing over the many years of his career. It ends, but does not conclude, with a “cliffhanger” of sorts best appreciated with the conversational intercultural model in mind.Maraldo’s short introductions that precede each of the five sections of the book give ample context regarding the projects for which various works were written, Maraldo’s own interests at the time of writing, how his thinking has or has not changed over time, and so forth; but they do not go as far as they might in guiding readers to see the book’s larger themes. Hence this review will focus on bringing some of these themes into sharper focus.The opening section includes four essays on Watsuji Tetsurō’s ethical philosophy, the first of which is largely introductory, establishing the main concepts of personhood, community, and “betweenness” (aidagara 間柄) through a hermeneutic lens informed by Watsuji’s reading of Heidegger. The third and fourth essays are critical and constructive, respectively—the former... (shrink)

Besinnung (1938/39) ist die erste von jenen vier Abhandlungen, die im Anschluss an die Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) die Aufgabe ubernehmen, den Bereich des seinsgeschichtlichen Denkens, der in den Beitragen zur Philosophie seine erste Durchgestaltung als sechsfach gefugter Aufriss erhalten hat, als ganzen fragend zu eroffnen. Das als Besinnung sich verstehende seinsgeschichtliche Denken eroffnet die Lichtung des Seyns als Ereignis, worin sich die Entgegnung des Gottes und des Menschen mit dem Streit der Erde und der Welt kreuzt. Die Ereignung (...) der Entgegnung und des Streites geschieht als Austrag. Besinnung vollzieht sich aber als das Fragen der seinsgeschichtlichen Seinsfrage in der Auseinandersetzung mit der metaphysischen Seinsfrage. Weil die Besinnung nicht nur wie andere Schriften einzelne Fragen aus dem Ganzen des Ereignis-Denkens heraushebt, sondern dieses Ganze selbst fragend eroffnet, ist sie nachst den Beitragen zur Philosophie ein weiteres Hauptwerk des ereignisgeschichtlichen Denkens. Im Anhang kommt ebenfalls erstmals aus dem Nachlass ein 1937/38 geschriebener Ruckblick auf den Weg zum Abdruck, in dessen erstem Abschnitt Mein bisheriger Weg Heidegger seinen Gang von der Dissertation bis zu den Beitragen zur Philosophie uberdenkt. Im zweiten Abschnitt Uber die Bewahrung des Versuchten gibt er einen Uberblick uber seinen unveroffentlichten Nachlass, teilt diesen siebenfach ein in: Vorlesungen, Vortrage, Aufzeichnungen zu den Ubungen, Vorarbeiten zum Werk, Notizbucher, Arbeiten zu Holderlin, Vom Ereignis (Beitrage zur Philosophie) und fugt jedem dieser Nachlassteile ausserst aufschlussreiche Erlauterungen hinzu. (shrink)

Wie kein anderer Philosoph vor oder nach ihm thematisierte Heidegger die metaphysischen Denkschemata, die der abendländisch-neuzeitlichen Technikentwicklung zugrunde liegen. Auf verständliche Weise rekonstruiert dieses Buch Heideggers radikal metaphysikkritischen Ansatz vor dem Hintergrund seiner frühen und mittleren Schriften. Dabei wird nicht nur deutlich, wie sehr sein spätes Denken der Technik in Kontinuität zu seinem frühen fundamentalontologischen Projekt (und dessen Scheitern) steht, sondern es werden auch die Alternativen zum rechnenden Denken und Handeln in Kunst und Dichtung aufgezeigt. (Quelle: www.buchhandel.de).

A landmark discussion between two great thinkers, vital to an understanding of twentieth-century philosophy and intellectual history.

The question concerning technology.--The turning.--The word of Nietzsche: "God is dead."--The age of the world picture.--Science and reflection.

Offering a full-scale study of the theory of reality hidden beneath modern logic, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, a lecture course given in 1928, illuminates the transitional phase in Heidegger's thought from the existential analysis of Being and Time to the overcoming of metaphysics in his later philosophy. In a searching exposition of the metaphysical problems underpinning Leibniz's theory of logical judgment, Heidegger establishes that a given theory of logic is rooted in a certain conception of Being. He explores the (...) significance of Western logic as a system-building technical tool and as a cultural phenomenon that is centuries old. (shrink)

Heidegger — Nous allons tenter, en partant du point de vue européen qui est le nôtre, de saisir quelques traits essentiels de l’art. La question de savoir si l’art a encore une place quelconque à notre époque est à nos yeux une question d’une extrême urgence. Nous allons commencer le colloque en nous demandant comment ce que nous nommons l’art extrême-oriental se comprend lui-même. De manière tout à fait concrète, nous voulons demander –...

Martin Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy reflects his famous philosophical "turning." In this work, Heidegger returns to the question of being from its inception in Being and Time to a new questioning of being as event.

Hisamatsu — Je tiens à vous remercier très sincèrement d’avoir pris la direction du séminaire hier soir, malgré toutes vos obligations. Soyez remercié également pour votre hospitalité. Heidegger — Des personnes de plusieurs disciplines différentes étaient présentes. Ce n’était donc pas si facile. Hisamatsu — J’ai été très heureux que cela mène à toutes sortes d’échanges. Heidegger — Il faudrait consacrer plusieurs...

"[Heidegger's] greatest work... essential for all collections." —Choice "... students of Heidegger will surely find this book indispensable." —Library Journal Contributions to Philosophy, written in 1936-38 and first published in 1989 as Beiträge zur Philosophie, is Heidegger’s most ground-breaking work after the publication of Being and Time in 1927. If Being and Time is perceived as undermining modern metaphysics, Contributions undertakes to reshape the very project of thinking.

Die 'Beiträge zur Philosophie. Vom Ereignis' dürfen mit Fug und Recht nach 'Sein und Zeit' als das zweite Hauptwerk Heideggers bezeichnet werden. Denn sie enthalten nach der fundamentalontologischen Ausarbeitung der Seinsfrage in 'Sein und Zeit' die erste Durchgestaltung des seinsgeschichtlichen Weges derselben Frage. Das seinsgeschichtliche Denken entfaltet das Wesen des Seins nicht mehr im Überstieg (Transzendenz) über das Seiende auf dessen Wahrheit hin (Horizont), sondern im Vollzug des ereigneten Entwurfs aus dem ereignenden Zuwurf der Wahrheit des Seins. 'Ereignis' ist der (...) Name für die Zusammengehörigkeit der ereignend sich zuwerfenden Wahrheit und des ereigneten Seinsentwurfes das Da-seins. Die 'Beiträge zur Philosophie' sind das Werk, in dem sich das Denken der im 'Brief über den Humanismus' genannten 'Kehre' vollzieht. (shrink)

This is the first time that a seminal collection of fourteen essays by Martin Heidegger (originally published in German under the title Wegmarken) has appeared in English in its complete form. It includes new or first-time translations of seven essays, and thoroughly revised, updated versions of the other seven. Amongst the new translations are such key essays as 'On the Essence of Ground', 'Hegel and the Greeks' and 'On the Question of Being'. Spanning a period from 1919-1961, these essays (...) have become established points of reference for all those with a serious interest in Heidegger. Now collected for the first time in translations by an experienced Heidegger translator and scholar, they will prove an essential resource for all students of Heidegger. (shrink)

Discourse on Thinking questions that must occur to us the moment we manage to see a familiar situation in unfamiliar light.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Japanese Things and Words:An Answer to Heidegger's QuestionMichael F. MarraIt has been over thirty years since my high school teacher of philosophy, Professor Dino Dezzani, recommended a book from which to begin my study of philosophy: Martin Heidegger's (1889-1976) Unterwegs zur Sprache (On the way to language [1959]). Evidently he was aware of my interest in literature and thought that Heidegger's discussion of words, things, and (...) poetic language would give some sort of direction to my naïve and youthful questions of what literature is about and what I should hope to find in it.The impact that Heidegger's book had on this young student was much greater than my professor could ever have imagined. I would hardly have committed myself to the study of Japan were it not for my reading of "A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer," which appears in On the Way to Language. The dialogue is a fictional reconstruction of an actual meeting that Heidegger had with Tezuka Tomio (1903-1983), a Japanese scholar of German literature who visited the German philosopher in Freiburg at the end of March 1954.1 In the dialogue the Inquirer (Heidegger) formulates a central question that, in my opinion, should be of fundamental interest to anyone seriously concerned with the study of Japan. The question is deceptively simple, at least compared with the difficulty of coming up with the answer-an answer that, as a matter of fact, the reader will not find fully formulated in the dialogue. The question is: "What is the Japanese word for 'language' "? The Japanese visitor (Tezuka in Heidegger's recollection) appears to have been caught off guard, as we can see from Heidegger's parenthetical remark: "after further hesitation." Had Heidegger posed the same question to a Frenchman or an Italian, the answer would have been immediate: "langue" or "lingua." The challenge for Tezuka was definitely higher since he had a variety of words from which to choose. He could have used, for example, the expression gengo, a combination of two Chinese characters indicating "the speech of words." Instead, he used an ancient Japanese word derived from the native Yamato vocabulary: kotoba, which literally means "the foliage of speech."2There should be little doubt that Tezuka's choice was prompted by his desire to please Heidegger by playing the philosopher's own game-something that Tezuka totally succeeded in doing, as Heidegger's dialogue attests. Tezuka introduced a term that lent itself to etymological play-an enterprise very close to the heart of Heidegger, and one that was also very popular among Japanese thinkers.3 In fact, the expression kotoba incorporates the word koto, which means both "thing" and [End Page 555] "word" and which is found in the basic concepts of Japanese ontology: Mikoto (God, or "the honorable thing"), makoto (truth, or "the true word"), kotodama (soul, or "the spirit of words"), and kotowari(reason, or "the splitting of things"). The association of "words" and "things" in the Japanese word for "language" must have been of particular interest to Heidegger, who, four years before his meeting with Tezuka, had written "Das Ding" (The thing), a major lecture on the notion of things interpreted in light of the fourfold earth, sky, divinities, and mortals. In the dialogue Heidegger refers to this essay, in which "things" are presented in their objectified presence-the disparaged things that modernity and technology have dispossessed of their Being (Sein). Heidegger points out that never has the distance between things and Sein been as great as in modernity, when all distances in space and time have shrunk.4 Given the unflattering position that Heidegger had taken on the notion of "things," Tezuka was forced to come to the rescue of the Japanese word kotoba by endowing koto with the meaning of two Heideggerian keywords: "event" (kotogara) and "affair" (Sache). The thingly component of kotoba was not simply an objectifiable presence that can be counted, analyzed, and disposed of, but rather a poietic "act" that has the power to create a reality by transforming the named thing (koto) into a real thing (koto).In "A Dialogue... (shrink)

Volume 18 of Martin Heidegger's collected works presents his important 1924 Marburg lectures which anticipate much of the revolutionary thinking that he subsequently articulated in Being and Time. Here are the seeds of the ideas that would become Heidegger's unique phenomenology. Heidegger interprets Aristotle's Rhetoric and looks closely at the Greek notion of pathos. These lectures offer special insight into the development of his concepts of care and concern, being-at-hand, being-in-the-world, and attunement, which were later elaborated in Being and (...) Time. Available in English for the first time, they make a significant contribution to ancient philosophy, Aristotle studies, Continental philosophy, and phenomenology. (shrink)