Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Daoist Thought: Crossing Paths In-Between

6. Being(s) in Between

219 Chapter 6 Being(s) in Between The rationalism of the West has often been contrasted with the mysticism of the East, and this dichotomization has frequently been invoked to affirm the superiority of one tradition over the other. On many occasions, the hegemony of the West is deemed justifiable because the rationality that it purportedly appeals to entitles it to enlighten peoples whose mysticism is the mark of a more primitive form of philosophical consciousness. Hegel is one notorious example of a Western philosopher who peremptorily dismisses Chinese and Indian philosophical traditions due to their prerational understandings that can lay no claim to a comprehensive grasp of either reason or freedom. Ideas of subjectivity, which are the trademark of much of Western philosophy, are inadequately developed in Hegel’s view.1 The comparison between Laozi, Zhuangzi, Heidegger, and Nietzsche helps unsettle such rigid dichotomozations. Heidegger demonstrates that philosophy has always been motivated by the desire to think a whole that cannot be adequately defined and resists linguistic formulations. These mystical origins of philosophy have been driven underground by a tradition that impugns the unspeakable, overlooking the fact that philosophy could not have emerged without them. Heidegger maintains that even the rationalism of the West has mystical beginnings, and their forced obfuscation is reflective of an irrational desire to render everything subject to human control. He insists upon “beginning the beginning again” and repeatedly refers to the “other beginning of philosophy” in order to distinguish it from the Platonic and Aristotelian penchant for clarity and form. By ignoring its mystical element, Western philosophy helps to seal 220 Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Daoist Thought its own death warrant, for it cannot survive indefinitely without drawing sustenance from that which cannot be thought. Heidegger is one of the few modern Western philosophers to make the revolutionary suggestion that philosophy must celebrate the unknowable. His invocation of the gods in his later writings does not signify his abandonment of philosophy but rather represents his effort to revitalize a tradition that had become moribund because it had cut itself off from its wellspring. The Daoist thinkers Laozi and Zhuangzi also pay homage to a whole that cannot be fathomed. They insist that the unknowable Dao should be continuously evoked, although never defined. This is neither an unrealistic nor a world-denying posture since it is very reasonable to suggest that a finite human being cannot possibly grasp an infinite cosmos. Rather than encouraging withdrawal from the world, it inspires a transformed relationship to it. Instead of seeing things primarily through their separateness from each other, their interconnection is underscored. Such interconnection is both in particular beings and beyond them, and therefore the Dao is seen as transcendent and immanent at the same time. By correlating immanence and transcendence, the concrete world is imbued with wonder. While Nietzsche is often assumed to be the antispiritual thinker par excellence, this constitutes a misinterpretation stemming from the assumption that his disdain for Christian religion signifies a repudiation of spiritualism altogether. It is no accident that Eastern thinkers such as Nishitani have often been more receptive to the spiritual dimension of his thought than Western commentators who are more inclined to equate spirituality with Christendom. The idea of the eternal return exhibits a mystical understanding that is very close to that of Daoist thinkers, since it refers to a kind of wholeness rooted in the earth, and celebrates the interconnection between all living things. Like Laozi and Zhuangzi, Nietzsche admits that our sense of belonging depends in part upon our willingness to concede that we constitute but a small speck in an infinite cosmos. The sense of cosmic unity is not achieved through a kind of transcendent denial of the concrete world, but rather emerges from the affirmation of life’s interconnectedness. Nietzsche’s eternal return collapses the transcendent/immanent dichotomy and offers the paradoxical possibility of experiencing transcendence through an affirmation of the particular moment. It has often been claimed that Heidegger, Nietszche, Laozi, and Zhuangzi are all unethical thinkers because of the acerbic critiques they level against moral dogma. Nietzsche’s diatribes against Christian moral- Being(s) in Between 221 ism have led many commentators to presume that he favours a morally relativistic universe where anything goes. Daoist statements that good and evil are one and the same are also alleged to represent a...