Ежегодник Япония (Jan 2021)
The Metaphysical and Ontological Basis of Martin Heidegger’s and Eihei Dōgen’s Teachings: Marking the Problem Field of Comparative Philosophical Study
Abstract
The article presents an overview of some of the most general directions of problem statement in comparative research of Heidegger’s and Dōgen’s teachings. Proceeding from the attitudes of methodological character common for both thinkers towards the gnoseological and ontological positions, the author pays special attention to the problems of discursive and suggestionistic thinking, subject-object dichotomy, substantiality of existence, true and phenomenal being, nature of time and temporality. Dōgen and other Chan/Zen thinkers’ tendency to reject analytical, discursive thinking was accompanied by an active appeal to the suggestive language of artistic images. This attitudinal rejection of conceptual thinking was determined, on the one hand, by the need to overcome the framework of the established Buddhist dogma that impeded the development of living Buddhist thought, and, on the other hand, by the affirmation of the non-substantiality of existence, the identity of phenomenal and absolute being. According to Dōgen’s idea, the notion of substance and identity generates a subject-object dichotomy, illusive from the Buddhist point of view, which can only be overcome in the state of satori 悟り enlightenment. A similar situation can be found in the methodological guidelines of Martin Heidegger, who, in his project of destruction of ontology, seeks to overcome and rethink the concepts of Western metaphysics that have become rigid and lost their original meaning and, in his later works, refers to the language of suggestive thinking. Heidegger’s phenomenological approach to the analysis of fundamental structures of human existence in Being and Time is also focused on overcoming the subject-object dichotomy and completely removes the problem of substance. At the same time, both thinkers are characterized by ontological orientation of philosophical thinking: both Heidegger and Dōgen are focused on the problem of truth of being and human attitude to it. This ontological installation also reveals a number of substantive parallels, which are expressed in a similar interpretation of existence through the phenomenon of time, as well as the similarity of understanding of the structural basis of time.
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