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Planetary Thinking/Planetary Building: an Essay on Martin Heidegger and Nishitani Keiji Author(S): Evan Thompson Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol

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Planetary Thinking/Planetary Building: an Essay on Martin Heidegger and Nishitani Keiji Author(S): Evan Thompson Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol Planetary Thinking/Planetary Building: An Essay on Martin Heidegger and Nishitani Keiji Author(s): Evan Thompson Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Jul., 1986), pp. 235-252 Published by: University of Hawai'i Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1398773 . Accessed: 28/09/2014 11:15 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Hawai'i Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy East and West. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 142.103.160.110 on Sun, 28 Sep 2014 11:15:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Evan Thompson Planetary thinking/planetarybuilding: An essay on Martin Heidegger and Nishitani Keiji In The Questionof Being, Martin Heidegger writes that we are ... obligednot to giveup theeffort to practiceplanetary thinking along a stretch of theroad, be it everso short.Here too no prophetictalents and demeanorare needed to realize that thereare in storefor planetary building encounters for whichparticipants are by no means equal today. This is equally true of the European and of the East Asiatic languagesand, above all, for the area of a possibleconversation between them. Neither of thetwo is able by itselfto open up thisarea and to establishit. What is thepractice of planetarythinking? What is therelation between philo- sophyand thisthinking? Heidegger'scall forplanetary thinking occurs as partof his attempt to readthe Westernphilosophical tradition as a whole.Although the truth of philosophy is not dependenton thehistorical actuality of theWest, philosophy is, forHeideg- ger,essentially Western discourse. In WhatIs Philosophy?,he writesthat The wordphilosophia tells us thatphilosophy is somethingwhich, first of all, determinesthe existenceof the Greek world.Not only that-philosophiaalso determinesthe innermostbasic featureof our Western-Europeanhistory. The oftenheard expression"Western-European philosophy", is, in truth,a tau- tology.Why? Because philosophyis Greekin itsnature; Greek, in thisinstance, means that in originthe nature of philosophyis of such a kind that it first appropriatedthe Greek world, and onlyit, in orderto unfold.2 I wish to discusshere the natureof thisclaim, especially in its relationto the projectof planetarythinking. We mustrealize first, however, that these state- mentsare not an argumentfor Western superiority; they are, rather, an attempt to thinkthe nature of philosophy,the "field" on whichit originates.As Jacques Derrida explains:"It is simplythat the foundingconcepts of philosophyare primarilyGreek, and it would not be possible to philosophize,or to speak philosophically,outside this medium." 3 Heidegger'sconception is, then, a philo- sophicalone: it is a conceptionof theform or eidosof a cultureand theessential relationof philosophyto thatform. For Heidegger,metaphysics consists from the beginning in a determinationof Beingwhich he calls the "ontologicaldifference." Metaphysics establishes itself by establishinga differencebetween beings and Being;metaphysics is thisdif- ference.At the same time,metaphysics does not thinkthis differenceas dif- ference,but looks to thecomponents of thedifference instead. Put anotherway, metaphysicsdoes not thinkBeing as such,immediately conceiving Being within an oppositioninstead. Metaphysics comes to understandBeing as theuniversal groundof all beings,and at thesame time as theground of itself, the highest being. This determinationof Being(what Heidegger calls "onto-theology")is an event in thehistory of Being,which marks the forgetting of Being.Metaphysics does not thinkits own ground;it is the "oblivion of Being." Heidegger'sproject of Evan Thompsonis a doctoralstudent of philosophy at theUniversity of Toronto. PhilosophyEast and West36, no. 3 (July,1986). © by the Universityof Hawaii Press.All rightsreserved. This content downloaded from 142.103.160.110 on Sun, 28 Sep 2014 11:15:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 236 Thompson thinkingBeing as suchmeans, then, a dismantlingof thestructures metaphysics has erectedin orderto reachtheir ground.4 His call fora planetarythinking is inseparablefrom this project, for if metaphysics is essentiallyWestern discourse, and ifmetaphysics is necessarilyoblivious of its own ground, then the attempt to thinkthis ground confronts the limits of Westernthought. Heidegger'sreading already requires a distancefrom or displacementof the Westerntradition. One mustnot confuse,however, this general displacement witha steppingout ofthe tradition, as ifthis were simply possible. This displace- mentcomes about as a displacementof the traditionin the discourseof the tradition,and so is everywhereproblematical. Philosophy can no longertake itselffor granted; we do not know if thepath we treadleads to theclearing or leaves us lost in the forest.Heidegger would "step back" frommetaphysics so thatits essence(the ontologicaldifference) could be thought.But what is the natureof thisstep? Where can we stepwhen the notion of position has become suspect? To be cast adriftfrom one's mooringsis bothliberating and disorienting,and is a conditionof the thinking we are searchingfor. We senseour limits and appear to be open fora conversationwith other traditions. Indeed, it is at thispoint that we occasionallyfind an awarenessof non-Westerntraditions in thewriting of philosophy.One thinksof Heidegger'sdialogue with the Japanese5 and, more recently,Derrida's comments on phonocentrismand theChinese language in his developmentof the problematicof writing,in Of Grammatology.6These at- temptsare a step forwardfrom much of the provincialismin philosophical writing,and yet theyare everywhereambiguous: on the one hand, thesedis- cussionsdisplace the narrativein whichWestern culture is the finalreference point.On theother hand, we cannotforget that the formulation of this displace- menthas onlycome about because of theassertion of theidentity of philosophy and thediscourse of a particulartradition. This identificationis neversubjected to criticismand justified,even in confrontationwith other traditions, but is presentedas if it were perfectlynatural (the forceof the so-called tautology "Western-Europeanphilosophy"). This identificationrests, furthermore, on the ontologicaland epistemologicaldivision of "East" and "West," whichis also neverquestioned; the contoursof what Edward Said calls "imaginativegeo- graphy"inform philosophical texts no less thanproper "Orientalist" ones.7 In thevery displacement of Westernculture, at preciselythe moment when binary oppositionswere to be questioned,a logicof Same and Other,centre and margin, is perpetuatedin whichthe non-Western becomes merely another name forthe margin,the blank space, theOther. The reificationof geographicalboundaries not onlyimpoverishes philosophy, but all of language,for it makes traditions appear self-enclosed,with no gaps and passagewaysamong them. At issue,then, is ourunderstanding of difference and a logicof same and other. To take accountof differenceimplies a criticalattitude to our understandingof our own tradition,one whichincludes questioning the identificationof philo- This content downloaded from 142.103.160.110 on Sun, 28 Sep 2014 11:15:05 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 237 sophyand Westerndiscourse. This claimhas, of course,already been countered on historicaland comparativegrounds. Many scholars are concernedwith showingthe importanceof other traditionsin the developmentof Western philosophy,and withcomparing philosophies in differentcultures. Although theseinvestigations are essential,they do not quite reachthe problems we face here.Comparative philosophy does not oftenreflect on theproblem of its own status,on the natureof comparativediscourse. Of course,these problems are always presentin the practiceof translation,but translationis still largely conceivedin a comparativeframework, one nothermeneutically subtle enough to accountfor the growingprocesses of confrontation,interference, accommoda- tion, and appropriationamong various traditions.The developmentof more complicatedhermeneutics cannot rest content with only historical and compara- tiveanalyses, for one ofthe tasks of comparative philosophy is, as HenryCorbin puts it (rightly,I believe,though in a differentspirit from the discussionI will pursuehere), "to enquireinto the form, here and there,of time lived, and thusof the advent of the conceptof somethinglike a history,and so of a historyof philosophy."8 In our case, beginningwith Heidegger,we must attemptto understandwhat the words "West" and "philosophyas Westerndiscourse" signifyphilosophically, in textsthat are philosophical;in otherwords, with how philosophyunderstands itself. Ultimately,of course,none of theseproblems can be separated.The herme- neuticactivity is alwaysconnected to certainproblems and texts,which in turn are foundin particulartraditions and communities.We mustbegin from where we findourselves, from a particularsituation or encounter,but we should not proceednaively, in isolationfrom broader, theoretical concerns. We shoulddraw on theresources of theHeideggerian
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