Heidegger on Eastern/Asian Thought

This Element elucidates the metamorphoses of Heidegger's comportment toward Eastern/Asian thought from the 1910s to the 1960s. With a view to the many meanings of the East at play in Heidegger's thinking, it considers how his diversified 'dialogues' with the East are embedded in different phases of his Denkweg. Various themes unexplored previously are examined: Heidegger's early treatment of near Eastern traditions and Islamic philosophy, his views on alien cultures, the 'primitive Dasein' and the 'mythical Dasein,' and his meditation on Russianism's deeply rooted spirituality and its recuperative possibilities for the West. Finally, this Element reveals how Heidegger opened the promise of a dialogue with the East and yet stepped back from the threshold, and how his move from the Occidental line of philosophizing toward the Oriental line is integral to his shift from the guiding question of “Being” to the abyssal question of 'Beyng.'