Overview

The enormous influence of Martin Heidegger's thought in Japan and China is well documented, but many comparative studies of Heidegger's own thought have proceeded on the assumption of the little influence from East Asian sources. Reinhard May's remarkable study shows that Heidegger drew some of the major themes of his philosophy - on occasion almost word for word - from German translations of Chinese Daoist and Zen Buddhist classics. He argues that Heidegger also involved himself in influential conversation with Chinese and Japanese scholars over the years. May concentrates on a series of close textual comparisons of passages from Heidegger's major writings with excerpts from translations of Daoist classics and a collection of Zen translations with which Heidegger was known to be familiar. May discovers striking similarities in vocabulary and phrase structure that he argues are too numerous to be coincidental. There is also a detailed discussion of Heidegger's 'Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer', and for the first time in English, a translation of the account given by the scholar with whom Heidegger had the 'dialogue'. The complimentary essay by Graham Parkes sketches a hitherto overlooked aspect of Heidegger's intellectual development by examining several key figures in Heidegger's Japanese 'connection'. Amongst these are Kuki Shuzo, who subsequently introduced Heidegger's ideas to Jean-Paul Sartre. May's work provides a challenging and controversial interpretation of Heidegger's thought, and existing more Eurocentric studies of Heidegger's work will now demand to be seen in a new light.

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Reviews

... makes a significant contribution to the growing body of work that explores the intellectual connections between early twentieth-century German philosophers and Chinese classical texts on the one side and contemporary Japanese philosophers on the other... May's meticulous intertextual study and comparative reading of Heidegger, ... not only traces Taoist influences in Heidegger's work, but, furthermore, encourages contemporary scholarship to acknowledge the indebtness of European philosophy to non-European sources... The tension created by Heidegger's seeming loyality to the Greco-European tradition and his silent indebtedness to Chinese and, as Graham Parkes has argued convincingly, Japanese sources encourages a rethinking of the philosophical canon and the traditional delineation of philosophical traditions. -Gereon Kopf, Philosophy East & West, January 2001 At the same time as Heidegger was reaffirming the singularity of the Western metaphysical tradition, he was quietly trading on the side with the East, as did so many of his predecessors. With Graham Parkes splendid translation and introduction of Reinhard May's remarkable book, our understanding of Heidegger will never be quite the same again. -David Wood, Vanderbilt University

... makes a significant contribution to the growing body of work that explores the intellectual connections between early twentieth-century German philosophers and Chinese classical texts on the one side and contemporary Japanese philosophers on the other... May's meticulous intertextual study and comparative reading of Heidegger, ... not only traces Taoist influences in Heidegger's work, but, furthermore, encourages contemporary scholarship to acknowledge the indebtness of European philosophy to non-European sources... The tension created by Heidegger's seeming loyality to the Greco-European tradition and his silent indebtedness to Chinese and, as Graham Parkes has argued convincingly, Japanese sources encourages a rethinking of the philosophical canon and the traditional delineation of philosophical traditions. <br>-Gereon Kopf, Philosophy East & West, January 2001 <br> At the same time as Heidegger was reaffirming the singularity of the Western metaphysical tradition, he was quietly trading on the side with the East, as did so many of his predecessors. With Graham Parkes splendid translation and introduction of Reinhard May's remarkable book, our understanding of Heidegger will never be quite the same again. <br>-David Wood, Vanderbilt University <br>

Author Information

Reinhard May is Lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf., Graham Parkes, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii, is Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University.

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