Art and Thinking

Abstract

Heidegger:1 We want to make the attempt, from our European standpoint, to grasp some essential aspects of art. The question of whether in our day and age still has a place is an urgent question for us. We want to begin the colloquium by asking how what we call East Asian understands itself. We want to ask very concretely-given the diversity of the East Asian world-whether one can speak of and the artwork in general there in our sense. Have you in Japan a name for art [Kunst]?Gundert: One could just as well turn the question around and ask whether that which we call is in the eye and mind of the East Asian. That is very often debated in Japan.Heidegger: In order to answer that, one would have to ask about the concept of in general. We are restricting ourselves here to a preliminary matter. Is there a word in Japanese for what we call art?Hisamatsu: The question can easily be answered. There has been in the modern (Western aesthetic) sense for approximately seventy years in Japan, and it is a translation. The Japanese have taken on all Western concepts, and they have rendered them with their own old roots. They have rendered Western concepts above all by means of compounds. So gei originally means as ability [Konnen] in general, skillfulness. The Western aesthetic concept of is, in contrast, rendered by the compound gei-jiz.Heidegger: What was there previously? Was it an image that was seen there in the artwork? What was the original experience of before taking over the European concept? This is what is interesting.Hisamatsu: There is another older word for art-an old Japanese word with a deeper sense that is uninfluenced by Europe. This is gei-do: the way of art. Do is the Chinese tao, which not only means way as method but has a deep internal relationship to life, to our nature [Wesen ]. Thus, has a decisive meaning for life itself.Vietta: Is this way of necessary for Zen Buddhism? Does Zen Buddhism have a need for at all? Why call the way? Why does Zen need at all?Hisamatsu: Ability in Zen means two things. On the one hand, the human is delivered from reality to the origin of reality through it; is a way in which the human penetrates [einbricht] into the origin. On the other hand, there is a sense in in which the human, after penetrating into the origin, returns to reality. The authentic essence of Zen consists in this return. This return is nothing other than the effecting [ Wirken], the putting-itself-into-work of Zen truth itself. The origin of reality is the original true life or Self. It is like the divine detachment [Abgeschiedenheit] from all attachment, being free of all attachment to form. This being free [Ledigsein] is also called Nothing. Everything just named is the same.Gundert: There are thus two ways in Zen. First of all, there is the way in a negative sense, in which reality is negated. This negative is the prerequisite for gaining the positive. Returning from this Nothing and bringing forth the living: this is what is essential in Zen art.Hisamatsu: Not to gain the origin but to let it come to appear itself-that is what is essential in Zen art. What is positive in the nature of Zen consists in this springing forth of the origin, in the emergence of the origin itself. That is the effect of Zen truth. The nature of Zen consists not in the way of getting there but in the way of return.Heidegger: I would like to refer to a conversation that I had with Mr. Hisamatsu in Vienna, through which we will be able to take a step further in regard to the question that concerns us here. European is essentially distinguished by the character of presentation [Darstellung]. Presentation, eidos, to make visible. The artwork, the configuration [Gebilde], brings into the image [Bild], makes visible. In the East Asian world, on the contrary, presentation is an obstacle-anything that is like an image [Bildhafte], the image that makes visible [das sichtbar machende Bild], implies a hindrance. …