Abstract

A power of thinking is often exhibited by its capacity for disclosing unnoticed presuppositions which we take for granted. The radicalness of philosophical thinking may be measured by its range and the penetrating depth of its disclosure. Dogen and Husserl as well as Nietzsche and Heidegger are radical enough in this regard. ;What are presuppositions? This question is answerable only in a manner unique to each thinker's mode of disclosure. Dogen and Husserl detected various presuppositions and explicitly called for standing on presuppositionlessness. Through the disclosure of the presuppositions of modern sciences as the "natural attitude," Husserl characterized phenomenology by contradistinction to modern sciences. I trace Husserl's path to the formation of phenomenology exhibited in The Idea of Phenomenology and Ideas I along with the explication of his key insights. ;The affinity between Husserl and Dogen has already been noticed by a few phenomenologists. I step forward and attempt to interpret Dogen's "enlightenment" as presuppositionlessness. I explicate two key fascicles of Shobogenzo, "Being-time" and "Genjokoan." Dogen's "forgetting the self," "dropping off body-mind," are interpreted as his call for presuppositionlessness and faithful disclosure of what we directly encounter. Dogen detects the tendency of our thinking to posit and cling to various stable constants. Dogen captures the being of beings as "being-time," taking-placeness-at-the-present. This problematizes an entire problematic which separates being and time. Dogen's insight for the eventfulness of the being is seen along with the explication of various views of time in Western philosophy and Heidegger's criticism of Descartes. Dogen's poetic and unusual expression is also understood from his insight into the inadequacy of our language and conceptual vocabularies which distortively stabilize the being. ;Unlike Husserl, Dogen's path to presuppositionlessness is not opened by changing a doxic stance. It demands one to drop off one's hold of constants centered on the self by practical engagement in "zazen." The primacy of practice in Dogen's "epoche" is understood in relation to his insight into the radical universality of hermeneutics, which is akin to Nietzsche's insight, the embodiment of knowledge, and authentic knowing as awakening