Abstract

Although much has been written concerning the comparison between the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and various schools of Asian thought---particularly Daoism and Zen Buddhism---few if any scholars have to date undertaken such a comparison utilizing Heidegger's early lecture courses, delivered in Freiburg between 1919 and 1923. In this dissertation I endeavor to help fill this lacuna by examining these lecture courses in the light of their similarities to, and differences from, the ancient Daoist text, the Zhuangzi. My thesis is that while there are significant, and indeed surprising, similarites between the philosophy of the Zhuangzi and Heidegger's early philosophy of life , a growing rift develops between them when Heidegger begins to develop his philosophy of being. Heidegger's early concerns with life are gradually taken over by this concern for being, a shift that I term his "elision of life," such elision coinciding with the first developments of his concept of "ontological difference." I contend that it is this elision of life, as I interpret it, that ultimately separates Heidegger from the Daoism espoused in the Zhuangzi, and indeed in such manner that Heidegger's early philosophy of being finds no authentic counterpart in Daoism. ;Although my chief concern in this dissertation is with the period of Heidegger's thought between the years 1919 and 1922, I extend my analysis to include a brief survey of Being and Time, especially in light of the concept of authenticity, and find that this elision of life not only continues but intensifies. I suggest, then, that all of Heidegger's later thought, based as it essentially is upon this early work, is separated from Daoism by a profound divide, necessitating a re-appraisal of what has so far been a quite favorable comparison between such later thought and Chinese Daoism in particular