Abstract
With a focus on the question of visuality in Heidegger's sustained involvement with Daoist and Zen thought, this paper discusses the interchange between Heidegger and Hisamatsu at a 1958 colloquium. In light of the key concerns – visuality, art, and the empty origin of manifestation – it interrogates three texts,“The Origin of the Work of Art,”Parmenides, and“Art and Space,”concerning visuality, the play of the glance, writing, space and place, and the Graeco-Asian though of phainesthai. In conclusion, it addresses the opening for a philosophical consideration of abstract painting that these analyses provide.
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References
M. Heidegger, “Only a God Can Save Us: The Spiegel Interview (1966),” in Thomas Sheehan, ed., Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker (Chicago: Precedent Publishing Inc., 1981), p. 62. I wish to acknowledge Jennifer Anna Gosetti's insightful commentary on the present paper, which I presented at the 1980 Heidegger Conference meeting. I have learned much from her commentary which stresses the complex indecidability of listening and visuality for Heidegger, with particular reference to the short texts collected in vol. 13 of the Heidegger Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1975–). This edition will henceforth be referred to as GA.
M. Heidegger, “Aus einem Gespräch von der Sprache,” Unterwegs zur Sprache, GA 12, pp. 81–146.
L. Alcopley, ed., Listening to Heidegger and Hisamatsu (Kyoto: Bokubi Press, 1963). This book was published in a numbered edition of 800 copies. It will here be referred to as HH. I am thankful to Professor Miles Groth for the information that L. Alcopley was the nom de plume (or de pinceau?) for Alfred L. Copley, whom he describes as a New York biotheorist and artist, and whom he had the good fortune personally to meet. He also informs me that Heidegger's contribution to the colloquium is reprinted in Hartmund Buchner, ed., Japan und Heidegger (Sigmaringen: Thorbeke, 1989), pp. 211–215. Although the text of HH is trilingual throughout (German with Japanese and English translations), I have made my own translations from the German. In general, translations from the German, unless otherwise acknowledged, are my own.
From a letter by Heidegger to Alcopley (undated), on the occasion of the publication of Einsichten, a book of poems by S. Bröse, with drawings by Alcopley, dedicated to Heidegger on his 70th birthday (Freiburg: Eberhard, 1959). The letter is reproduced, in part and in facsimile, in HH.
Heidegger treats this issue in his 1942 lecture course on Hölderlins Hymne “Der Ister”, GA 53, Pt. I, sections 3 and 4, and the “Review” following section 5.
See Yasuo Yuasa, “The Encounter of Modern Japanese Philosophy with Heidegger,” in Graham Parkes, ed., Heidegger and Asian Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), pp. 153–174. On Heidegger's relationships with Japanese scholars, see also Graham Parkes. “Rising Sun Over Black Forest,” in Reinhard May, Heidegger's Hidden Sources: East Asian Influences on his Work, Graham Parkes, trans. (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 79–117. It should be evident to the reader that Parkes, as author, editor, and translator, is the pioneer in this largely uncharted area of scholarship. In this study, I give Japanese names in traditional order (surname preceding the given name); but I use the (reverse) Westernized order for citations in the Notes.
GA 53; see sections 9 and 21–23.
Heidegger, “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,” Holzwege, GA 5, 39.
GA 5, 49f.
Ibid.
GA 5, 53.
Otto Pöggeler, “West-East Dialogue: Heidegger and Lao-Tzu,” in Heidegger and Asian Thought, 49. See also Pöggeler's further discussion of this interrelation in his The Paths of Heideggger's Life and Thought, John Bailiff, trans. (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1997), ch. 4, section 1.
In metaphysical aesthetics, it is precisely the Sinnbild structure which privileges the work of art over the thing of use, and which therefore is important to the constitution of “great” art.
GA 5, 21.
See Heidegger's discussion of world-disintegration and world-loss in “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,” in the section “The Work and Truth.”
As quoted by Jean-Claude Frère, Leonardo (Paris: Terrail, 1994), 192. I am grateful to Amina Sharma for bringing this book to my attention by making me a gift of it.
M. Heidegger, Parmenides, GA 54, 119. I leave out of discussion Heidegger's diatribe against the typewriter, which has probably already done enough to obscure the importance of his discussion of writing.
GA 54, 125.
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Fóti, V.M. Heidegger and 'The Way of Art:' the empty origin and contemporary abstraction. Continental Philosophy Review 31, 337–351 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010018130238
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010018130238