Abstract

This was what Heidegger said to his Japanese enquirer in “A Dialogue on Language,” which, however, concluded on a note bespeaking much more of convergence than of divergence. Yet the difficulties which lie in any comparative study of two thinkers belonging to such distinct and independent traditions as Heidegger and Wang Yang-ming remain great and many. First of all, as Heidegger himself pointed out, we have the language hurdle. Chinese as well as Japanese lacks a clear verb to be; the Chinese language in particular organizes its uninflected words solely according to word order and the placing of particles. Such a language seems to defy logical analysis and forbids an exact translation of the term, “Being.” How is common ground to be found in such a case?