Lao-Zhuang and Heidegger on nature and technology

Journal of Chinese Philosophy

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 19-38

  Parkes, Graham ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34547552956     PISSN: 03018121     EISSN: 15406253     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1540-6253.00104     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. For a devastating account of the assault on the natural environment during the Mao era, see Judith Shapiro, Mao's War against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
2. After the present essay had been sent to the editor, I came across Daoism and Ecology: Ways within a Cosmic Landscape, edited by N. J. Girardot, James Miller, and Liu Xioagan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), which contained several essays to which I wish I had been able to refer
3. See my "Thoughts on the Way: Being and Time through Lao-Chuang," in Graham Parkes, ed., Heidegger and Asian Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), 105-144, and especially the sections "The Nature of Nature," "Back to Nature," "Authentic Use," and "Technology versus Ecology." What follows is only an introductory overview and not the close reading of individual texts that an in-depth comparison would require
4. Indeed limitations of space preclude consideration of the following relevant essays of Heidegger's: "The Question concerning Technology" (Die Frage nach der Technik)
5. "The Set-up" (Das Gestell)
6. "The Danger" (Die Gefahr)
7. "The Turning" (Die Kehre)
8. and "Science and Reflection" (Wissenschaft und Besinning)
9. Correlations between the macrocosm of the state and the microcosm of the body are central to Daoist thinking: see Kristofer Schipper, The Taoist Body (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993) especially the chapters "The Inner Landscape" (pp. 100-112)
10. and "Keeping the One" (pp. 130-159)
11. For references to breathing, see Laozi 10 ("concentrating the breath"), 16 ("maintain tranquility in the center"), 55 ("for the mind to egg on the breath is called violent"), 56 (mysterious sameness/profound union)
12. and Zhuangzi 2 (Ziqi's breathing-induced trance), 6 ("the breathing of the True Man is from down in his heels"), and 7 (where Huzi speaks of "impulses coming up from my heels")
13. For practice in physical skills, see Laozi 54 ("cultivating the body leads to genuine power [de]"), and Zhuangzi 12 ("By the training of our nature we recover the Power" [IC 156]), as well as the stories concerning consummate practitioners of physical skills in chapters 3, 13, 19, and 22
14. For the Laozi I follow for the most part the translation of D. C. Lau, Tao Te Ching (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1982), modifying it on occasion in the light of other translations, and abbreviating references as "L" followed by the chapter number (Wang Bi text rather than Ma Wang Dui)
15. The other translations I find most useful are Robert G. Henricks, Lao-tzu: Te-Tao Ching (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993)
16. and Hans-Georg Möller, Laotse: Tao Te King (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1995)
17. For Zhuangzi I use the rendering by A. C. Graham in Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters (London: Unwin Hyman, 1981), abbreviating references as "Z" followed by the chapter number, adding in the case of the outer chapters IC followed by the page number of Graham's translation
18. For some of the ecological implications of the philosophies of these thinkers, see my essay "Voices of Mountains, Trees, and Rivers: Kūkai, Dōgen, and a Deeper Ecology," in Mary Evelyn Tucker and Duncan Williams, eds., Buddhism and Ecology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 111-128
19. Though translations from Heidegger are my own, references will be made in the body of the text, to extant English translations and then the original German texts, by way of the following abbreviations: B - "Building, Dwelling, Thinking," in Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper, 1971), 145-161 /
20. "Bauen, Wohnen, Denken," in Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1967), 2:19-36
21. DT - Discourse on Thinking, translated by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York: Harper and Row, 1966) / Gelassenheit (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959)
22. IM - An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959) /
23. Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1966)
24. OM - "Overcoming Metaphysics," in The End of Philosophy, translated by Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1973) /
25. "Überwindung der Metaphysik," in Vorträge und Aufsätze, 1:63-91
26. QT - "The Question Concerning Technology," in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper and Row, 1977) /
27. SZ - Sein und Zeit, 11th edition (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1963). Where subsequent references give pagination rather than a section number, it is of the German edition, since this is given in the margins of both English translations
28. T - "The Thing," in Poetry, Language, Thought, 165-86 /
29. "Das Ding," in Vorträge und Aufsätze 2:37-59
30. WT - What is Called Thinking?, translated by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper Collins, 1968) /
31. Was heisst Denken? (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1964)
32. WL - On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1971) /
33. Unterwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen: Rowolt Verlag, 1965)
34. For evidence of the influence of Daoism on Heidegger's work, see Reinhard May, Heidegger's Hidden Sources: East-Asian Influences on His Work, translated by Graham Parkes (London: Routledge, 1996)
35. See, especially, Heidegger's second book on Kant, Die Frage nach dem Ding (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1962)
36. What is a Thing?, translated by W. B. Barton and Vera Deutsch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967)
37. Heidegger may have been aware that Nietzsche went beyond his customary perspectivism to a view similar to that of the Daoists in the chapter "Before Sunrise" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: see my essay, "Nature and the Human 'Redivinized': Mahāyāna Buddhist Themes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra," in John Lippitt and James Urpeth, eds., Nietzsche and the Divine (Manchester, U.K.: Clinamen Press, 2000), 181-199
38. I follow the customary translation of wan-wu as "ten thousand things," with the reminder that the process worldview of the Daoists and their frequent use of wu as a verb should encourage us to read "thing" in a verbal or processual sense
39. See also Laozi 3, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 22, 24, 29, 32, 36, 41, 46, 60, 63
40. As Roger Ames puts it: "The notion of 'self in the locution [ziran] has a polar relationship with 'other.' " "Putting the Te back into Taoism," in J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames, eds., Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989), 120
41. The story of the huge gourd at the end of Zhuangzi 1 illustrates the restricted nature of the perspective of utility and the dangers of getting stuck in any one perspective
42. Heidegger's opposition to humanism, owing to its neglect of Being, is most explicit in the well-known "Letter on Humanism" in response to Sartre's championing of humanism
43. Michael E. Zimmerman, Contesting Earth's Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 121. The third chapter of this excellent study includes a comprehensive discussion of Heidegger in relation to deep ecology
44. Heidegger, SZ 70
45. For a fuller discussion of this issue, see "Thoughts on the Way," 110-120, and the "Epilogue" to that essay
46. Zimmerman, Contesting Earth's Future, 115-117
47. and David Farrell Krell, Daimon Life (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1992), part 1, "Advanced Zaology," 33-134
48. "Existential-ontologically the not-at-home must be conceived as the more primordial phenomenon [than feeling at home in the world]" (SZ 189)
49. See also Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life (New York: Dell, 1966), 232
50. Kah Kyung Cho, Bewusstsein und Natur sein: Phänomenologische West-Ost-Diwan (Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 1987), chapter 2, "Ökologische Suggestibilität in der Spätphilosophie Heideggers," which is a fine treatment of ecological themes in late Heidegger from a perspective aligned with Daoism
51. For a discussion of Heidegger's use of these terms, see Reinhard May, Heidegger's Hidden Sources, chapter 4, "Dao: way and saying."
52. Robert G. Henricks, "Introduction" to Lao-tzu: Te-Tao Ching, xxvii
53. The sage is said to "empty the minds of the people" in the interests of better government (L 3), and the exhortation to emptiness at the beginning of chapter 16 seems to be associated with meditative techniques
54. This reading, suggested by Wang Qingjie, puts the comma after the second occurrences of di, tian, and dao rather than the first (Ren fa di di, fa tian tian, fa dao dao, fa ziran), and takes the second occurrence of each term as a verb rather than a noun. See Wang Qingjie, "On Laozi's Concept of Ziran," Journal of Chinese Philosophy 24/3 (1997): 291-321, 297
55. Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1985), 66-67
56. For some reservations about the way deep ecology has taken over Dōgen's ideas, see my "Voices of Mountains, Trees, and Rivers."
57. See, for example, Heidegger, WT 73/69 (1951-1952). It is not generally appreciated that Heidegger was an advocate of "letting," and especially of sein-lassen (letting-be) from the time of Being and Time: see especially section 18, and the discussion in "Thoughts on the Way," 119, 127
58. Martin Buber, Reden und Gleichnisse des Tschuang-Tse (Leipzig: Insel/Verlag, 1921), 133. A great deal of what is said in the Conversation about the Gegnet ("region" -equivalent to "Being") and things resonates with Buber's Zhuangzi, and especially with his "Afterword."
59. Dschuang Dsi: das wahre Buch vom südlichen Blütenland, translated by Richard Wilhelm (Munich: Eugen Diederichs, 1969 [first published 1912]), 136
60. For an insightful treatment of this issue, from a perspective consonant with Daoism, see Peter D. Hershock, Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to the Information Age (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999)
61. For an excellent account of this phenomenon, see "Division Two" of Michael E. Zimmerman, Heidegger's Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, and Art (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1990): "Heidegger's Critique of Productionist Metaphysics," 137-274
62. As suggested by Hans-Georg Möller in his commentary to Laozi 11 (p. 170). These three things are surely also images of the human being, which just as much needs emptiness in order to function