Davis: Dialogue with the East

I believe that a thoroughgoing study of Heidegger’s thought-path ultimately leads one in two directions: back to the Greeks and over to the East. Both of these orientations remain necessary: in order to read Heidegger one cannot circumvent an engagement with the tradition of Western philosophy; yet in reading Heidegger one is also invited to disengage from the metaphysical moorings of this tradition and open oneself to an encounter with the “few other great beginnings” of thought, and in particular that of East Asia. The “dialogue with the Greek thinkers” is, for Heidegger’s path of thinking, the “precondition for the inevitable dialogue with the East Asian world.” (DAVIS, 2007 p. xii)