2.2 It is possible to show the influence of East Asian ways of thinking in another, similar context: namely, in the lecture The Thing’ from 1950. A passage from Chapter 11 of the Laozi reads, in Wilhelm’s translation: ‘The work of pitchers consists in their nothingness [Nichts, wu]’ (51). Von Strauss translates: ‘The use of the container [Gefäss] accords with its non-being [Nicht-sein] ‘(68; cf. 204-6).’ The first part of the lecture on the thing engages this issue in several passages. Heidegger speaks of a jug, saying: ‘The jug is a thing as container [Gefäss]’. Also: ‘The thingly character [Dinghafte] of the thing, however, does not consist in its being a represented object, nor can it be determined at all in terms of the objectness of the object’ (PLT 167/VA 2:39).

The question of the thingly character [Dinghaftigkeit] of the thing had been raised earlier (1935 and 1936) in ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ in connection with the lecture course on ‘The Thing’. In the later lecture Heidegger continues the elucidation begun in the mid-1930s by following Laozi 11, in so far as he paraphrases as follows: ‘The thingly character of the container [Gefäss] does not in any way consist in the material of which it is made, but rather in the emptiness [Leere] that does the containing [fasst]’. Recall that in the ‘Conversation’ it is said that ‘emptiness is. the same as Nothing’ (WL 19/US 108).