GLOBAL CONVERSATIONSAN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE

ISSN 2434-5687

VOLUME II, NUMBER 01 / 2019

Publisher
Society for Philosophy as Global Conversation
EditorFrancesc Passani

Executive Editor
Tomokazu Baba

Consulting Editors
Fiona Tomkinson
Rossen Roussev

Issue Editor
Rossen Roussev

Art Director
Anastasya Tonkova

Editorial correspondence:
global.conversations.ph@gmail.com

Cover images© Monica Voykova
Cover Design
Anastasya Tonkova

ISSN 2434-5687

GLOBAL CONVERSATIONSAN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE

VOLUME II, NUMBER 01, 2019

Second Thematic Issue

Home and Journey Around the GlobeGLOBAL CONVERSATIONSAN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE
Volume II, Number 01 (2019)

Second Thematic Issue
Home and Journey around the GlobeTABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial
Introduction
Rossen Roussev

7-8

Philosophy and Journey
Philosophy as Journey
Tomokazu Baba

9-19

Thinking and Philosophizing as the Journey of Waying and Homecoming: Heidegger, Laotse, and Herodotus
Rossen Roussev

20-42

Home, Journey, and Literature
Lafcadio Hearn and Japan: From “Journey to “HomeFabien Durringer

43-59

Beyond Orientalist holism? The influence of East and Central Asian Thought on British
Literature in the Twentieth Century
Fiona Tomkinson

60-70

The Hyperlocal and the Global
Elastic Intimacy: The Inconspicuousness of the Hyperlocal
Nicholas Birns

71-84

Notes on Contributors
Announcement
Information for Authors

85
86-89
90

Introduction
GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume II, Number 01 (2019): 07-08

Editorial
Introduction
The second thematic issue of Global Conversations features articles in the areas of philosophy,
literary criticism, and interdisciplinary research. They were selected from the responses to ourcall fobmi ion on he b oadl defined heme of Home and Jo ne a o nd he Globe,
which falls into the general scope of interest of the journal in global philosophical thinking andcultural exchange.
The unifying idea of the issue was provisionally outlined in most general terms basedon landmark conceptual pointers from both Western and Eastern intellectual traditions,incl ding he o igina Ancien G eek en e of hilo o h , ce ain a ec of he ho gh ofthe 20th-century philosopher Martin Heidegger, and the key notion of the Ancient Chineseclassic of Tao Te Ching, also referred to as Laozi. As we know it, the first record of a conjoined
usage of philos and sophia i fo nd in He odo
Histories from the 5th century BC. Herodotus
uses there the verb philosopheîn () broadly in the sense of love to learn or desire tofind out and link i o a eling o e he o ld fo he ake of eeing i (I, 30). In a similarvein, the latter Heidegger relates way (Weg) and waying (from the Alemannic-Swabian wëgen
and Bewëgung) to language and thinking, as well as to the ineffable sense of the Tao of Laozi.
Heidegger has also designated the fundamental motivation for any thinking and philosophizing
with terms like the uncanny (Unheimlichkeit) and homelessness (Heimatlosigkeit), and he has
likewise discussed its ends in terms of home (Heim) and homecoming (Heimkehr).
In this sense, philosophy can be seen as a journey around the globe, which is at once
also homecoming. In our view, in this homecoming journey, philosophy takes essentially theform of a conversation, much like the one described by Herodotus between Solon and Croesus
in Sardis on the meaning of happiness, or like the one of exchange of differences of significanceon the level of culture. In this sense, understanding philosophy as conversation means
embracing differences of opinions that come from all levels of society and culture, as well asfrom all societies and cultures, to contribute to productive debates, insightful reflections, andpractical solutions.
The opening pair of articles focus directly on the thematic relation of philosophy andjo ne . In he fi one, Tomoka Baba e lo e he no ion of hilo o h a jo ne
drawing attention to he a ocia ion of kno ledge i h a el in he o k of ke fig e ofthe intellectual culture. He brings into his discu ion a ec of Pla o allego of he ca e,
Kan diffe en ia ion be een hilo o h aem and hilo o hi ing, Heidegge conceof home , Le ina en e of he need o e ca e , a ell a a n mbe of o he oin comingfrom thinkers such as Aristotle, Augustine, Petrarch, Hegel, Husserl, and Ritter, to identify aclo e ela ion of he en e of hilo o h
i h ha of jo ne . A ke elemen in Baba
perspective is he no ion of e odalgia , which he advances in a allel i h ha of no algiao ecae he Le ina ian need o e ca e a a e e i i e fo a el and thus forhilo o hi ing. Fo i a , he econd a icle e lo e he a ne of he me a ho ic of a ,home , and jo ne fo nde anding o eflec i e ac i ities of thinking and philosophizing.
I d ell o e a ec of Heideggea and home ela ed ocab la , he ec lia ela ionof Tao and Te the basic notions of the Laozi classic, as well as he a ocia ion of hilo o h

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i h jo ne in he work of Herodotus, to assert their interrelation, compatibility, andcomplementarity. In this way, the article also conveys an argument on behalf of the viability ofunderstanding philosophy by way of a metaphorical apperception a he jo ne of a ing
and homecoming .
The thematic focus of the next pair articles is broadly on the relation of home, journey,
and literature. In the first article, Fabien Durringer explores the intersections of the life andwork of the journalist and writer Lafcadio Hearn, which were marked by his remarkable journeyaround the globe from the place of his birth on the Greek Island of Lefkada through Irelandand the United States to Japan, where he eventually settled. The author analyzes the process
leading o Hea n deci ion o make Ja an hi home and link i o hi falling in lo e i hthe culture and the people of this country. A highly significant point that Durringer makes is
ha Hea n e e ience in Ja an, hich in i ed hii ing ha e e la gel in ended o makei c l e kno n o he We e n eade b ha ing hem nde ake a jo ne o he co nwith the means of literature, also led him to a reassessment of he presumed superiority of theWestern culture over its Eastern counterpart . In he econd a icle, Fiona Tomkinson explores
the influences of East and Central Asian thought on the British Literature from the last century
focusing on the cases of Iris Murdoch, Lawrence Durrell, and Ted Hughes. She ee M docha imila ion of An elm on ological a g men and Pla o idea of he Good h o gh Katsuki
Sekida’s concept of pure cognition, Durrell’s fusion of Buddhist, Greek Apollonian, and gnostic
perspectives to convey the interconnectedness of his characters, as well as Hughes’ invocationof elements of Hindu, Buddhist, and shamanic thought in his poetry to engage with theharshness of the issues of life and death, as questioning well-established precepts of the Westernculture while searching for alternatives in the Eastern culture. One of Tomkinson’s most astuteinsights is that while these authors may have thus aimed to counter an undue puritanism of theirown culture, they do not advance an ‘opposition’ but rather an ‘intertwining’ of elements of thetwo cultural traditions, which also appears to be the more complex sense that she would like to
see in the metaphor of ‘the silk road’ as ‘the fusion of Apollo and the Buddha’, rather than thatof the road to ‘holism’.
In the final article, Nicholas Birns offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the notionof hyperlocal, its aspects of ‘elasticity’ and ‘intimacy’, as well as its complex relation to notions
like ‘place’ and ‘identity’, drawing on sources from geography, music, art, literature, philosophy,
cultural and political history. Paying special attention to the period of ‘middle modernity’ (17001850), he brings into his discussion elements of the empiricism of Locke and Berkeley, themonadology of Leibniz, as well as the aesthetics of Kant among others, to differentiate thecharacter of the hyperlocal from any sense of parochialism, regionalism, nationalism, or
colonialism, furnishing numerous examples of European settlers’ experience, sense of identity,
and mutual reception with indigenous people in geographical regions like North America andAustralasia. A highly suggestive point that Birns makes is that while the resource of thehyperlocal is modest and is not to be overrelied on for purposes of ideology, its ‘elasticity’ is a
capacity that enables it to ‘operate on the scale of the global’ and thus to promote democracy
and internationalism.
We hope that these articles will incite your interest and contribute to the ongoing
discussions on the philosophical thought and cultural exchange of an ever more globalized
world. Thank you for your time!
Rossen Roussev

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Philosophy as Journey
GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume II, Number 01 (2019): 09-19

Philosophy and Journey

PHILOSOPHY AS JOURNEY
Tomokazu Baba
Abstract
Inquiry into truth is often compared to the figure of journey. In this sense, there
should be certain affinity between philosophy and journey. This affinity seems to be
widely accepted, although the reason for it remains unclear. This paper explores
what makes this affinity possible as well as the subtle difference between philosophy
and journey. In order to do that, first, with the help of philosophers on philosophizing and of the phenomenological description of philosophy, I attempt to describe
what is happening in our mind when we are philosophizing. Second, I will endeavor
to describe phenomenologically the experience of journey in an effort to lay down
its essential features. Finally, based on these phenomenological descriptions ofboth philosophy and journey, I compare their characteristics in order to isolate
what they have in common and uncommon, aiming to throw light on what makes
their affinity possible.

Introduction
Affinity of Philosophy and Journey
Inquiry into truth is often compared to the figure of journey. In this comparison, the inquirer isassociated with a traveler who aspires to reach the truth, which is seen as destination of his/her
journey. In Plato’s allegory of the cave, one of the inhabitants of the cave, being used to seeing
only shadows projected on the wall enabled by the light of a torch, goes outside to see the realityof the sun, which very much illustrates the soul’s travels to the world of the ideas, where it lived
before, to recollect memories of truth. This image of philosophical inquiry as journey becomesthe central idea for Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, where Spirit travels from the certainty ofperception (of now, here, I), to the absolute Spirit. This is nothing other than a phenomenological description of the human mind aspiring for truth as a long travel from a certain starting
point to a final destination.
This would not be without connection with the first usage of the Greek word “philosophein” recorded in Herodotus. The usage was related to “traveling the world for the sake

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Philosophy as Journeyof seeing it.” In the first book of Herodotus’ Histories, Croesus, who had welcomed Greek
Athenian Legislator Solon at Sardis, asked him,
Our Athenian guest, we have heard much of you, by reason of your wisdom and your wanderings,
how that you have travelled far to seek knowledge [philosopheon] and to see the world.1

Here we can observe the verb “philosophein” standing for travel. That is, the idea of travel isexpressed by the word which literally means love (philia) for wisdom (sophia).2
In the history of philosophy, we find a lot of stories (some of them anecdotal) about
philosophers that have to do with traveling. Plato’s teacher, Socrates, was not traveler himself,
but often dialogued with Greek speaking travelers coming from other cities. Plato travelled
twice to Sicilia to help Dionysius the II. Born in Italy, Thomas Aquinas taught in Paris after
having studied in Germany. Moses Maimonides, a Cordovan Jew, travelled through the North
African countries to Egypt to flee from the persecution of Jews. The Catalan philosopher Raymond Lull travelled through many Mediterranean countries to promote dialogue between religions. The French philosopher Descartes traveled a lot in his youth and throughout his professional life lived in several countries. About one year before his visit to Sweden, and one year
and a half before his death, he wrote to the Swedish Queen Christina, “one foot in one country,
and the other in another country, I find my condition very happy, in that it is free.”3 ImmanuelKant, known for having remained in his hometown Konigsberg throughout his life, knew a lot
about foreign countries to such an extent that he gave lectures in geography “for almost his
entire career.”4 He was, so to say, “traveler” through books.
Based on the above essentially empirical observations, one might suppose that travel
promotes philosophy, or that the experience obtained in travel helps doing philosophy, whichsuggests a certain affinity between philosophy and journey. However, as it is not immediately
clear how traveling helps philosophizing, or how travel itself relates to philosophy, we need tofocus on the question of this peculiar affinity between these two distinct kinds of human actions
or experiences. Indeed, they seem to be even contraries in the sense that philosophizing itself
does not require moving from one place to the other, whereas journey is, by definition, movingfrom one site to the other.
To address this question, I will examine, in the first section, what is happening in our
mind when we are philosophizing. Likewise, in the second section, I will examine what is happening when we are traveling. Finally, based on the results of previous sections, I will assertthat philosophy is journey “in its existential sense,” even if there are differences between the
two. More specifically, I will argue that whereas philosophy begins with ‘nostalgia’, journey
1

Loeb Classical Library, Herodotus I, trans. A.D. Godley, London / Cambridge, 1946, Book I, 30, pp. 33–35.
See also Rossen Roussev, “Thinking and Philosophizing as the Journey of Waying and Homecoming: Heidegger,
Lao-tse, and Herodotus,” Global Conversations: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture, Vol. II, No. 01 (2019), especially pp. 38-40.
3« un pied en un pays; et l’autre en un autre, je trouve ma condition très heureuse, en ce qu’elle est libre. » Lettre
à Christine de Suède, juillet 1648, quoted in Barbara Cassin, Nostalgie (Fayard / Pluriel, 2015), p. 7.
4
Robert B. Louden, “The Last Frontier: Exploring Kant’s Geography”, in Robert R. Clews (Ed.), Reading Kant’s
Lectures (De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston, 2015), p. 505. The phrase is quoted by Louden from “the dust jacket for
Natural Science.”
2

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begins with ‘exodalgia’, and that whereas ‘being-moved’ (in Heideggerian sense Cf. 1.3) comes
first in philosophy, it comes second in journey.
1 Phenomenology of Philosophy
1.1 What is philosophy? – Two types of answers
What is happening when we are philosophizing? This is a version of the more common expression of the question: What is philosophy? Here, it is interesting to look at the answers thatphilosophers gave to that question, because their answers could help us answer our question.
There are generally two types of answers to the question “What is philosophy?” Thefirst type stresses the contents of philosophy as “courses taught in the schools of liberal arts orin the faculty of philosophy,” or “what you can read in the history of philosophy.” This is often
regarded as “doxa” by philosophers who emphasize the act of philosophizing as being essential
to philosophy. For them, philosophy does not consist in the answers it gives to the question, but
in the very inquiry into the truth. In other words, to these philosophers, the answer counts forless than the question. Kant’s statement on what we can learn from philosophy is a good example of this type of answer. In his Critique of Pure Reason, he says,
Among all rational sciences (a priori), therefore, only mathematics can be learned, never philosophy(except historically), rather, as far as reason is concerned, we can at best only learn to philosophize.
(B865)
One can only learn philosophize, i.e., to exercise the talent of reason in prosecuting its general principles in certain experiments that come to hand, but always with the reservation of the right of reason
to investigate the sources of these principles themselves and to confirm or reject them. (B 866) 5

Here, Kant makes distinction between philosophy as system (or history, with some contents)
and act of philosophizing. He gives even a definition of the act of philosophizing as using thetalent of reason in following the universal principles of reason always under the condition thatwhen reason passes a judgment on something for which it does not have a right to do so, thisjudgement must be rejected. In other words, philosophy is not what we can learn as knowledge,
it is just the act of philosophizing. Kant’s perspective allows us to orient ourselves to the second
type of answers, namely, that philosophy is an act, rather than a system of contents. We canthus continue to observe philosophers’ comments on the definition of philosophy and to identify
their answers pointing to philosophy as act, as well as to a close connection of intellectual action
to emotion.
1.2 Plato, Aristotle – philosophy and passion
From the ancient Greek thinkers, we have inherited the view that philosophy begins with asense of wonder. Thus, in Theaetetus, Plato says, “for this feeling (pathos) of wonder(thaumazein) shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning (archē) of

5

Immanuel Kant, Werke IV Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Wilhelm Weischedel (hrsg.) (Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt
am Main, 1968), S.699-700. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer & Allen W. Wood (Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge / New York / Melbourne, 1998), p. 694.

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Philosophy as Journeyphilosophy.” (155d)6 Similarly, Aristotle details this process of beginning of philosophy as follows,
It is through wonder (thaumazein) that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions
about the greater matters too, e.g. about the changes of the moon and of the sun, about the stars andabout the origin of the universe. Now he who wonders and is perplexed feels that he is ignorant (thusthe myth-lover is in a sense a philosopher, since myths are composed of wonders); therefore if it
was to escape ignorance that men studied philosophy, it is obvious that they pursued science for thesake of knowledge, and not for any practical utility. The actual course of events bears witness tothis; for speculation of this kind began with a view to recreation and pastime, at a time when practically all the necessities of life were already supplied.7

Aristotle provides here elements for a phenomenology of philosophy, or of how we begin tophilosophize in our mind. According to him, philosophizing begins with wonder, stimulated by
the perplexities of not knowing. Knowledge is thus seen as pursuit for itself, without extrinsic
advantage, but with the help of “recreation and pastime.”
Here Aristotle seems to suppose that the pursuit of knowledge has an intrinsic advantage. Now Aristotle himself does not state what this intrinsic advantage might be, but wecan guess that it has something to do with a certain first emotion which is the cause of realization of our ignorance and subsequently of the pursuit of knowledge. The pursuit here indicatesa desire for the object of pursuit, whereas the need of it presupposes a non-possession of thisobject. It is indeed the awareness on the non-possession that arises a need, which is a state ofmind demanding satisfaction as in the cases of hunger or thirst. The need is a kind of passionin its original sense, which, as derived from the Greek pathein, is ‘suffering’). For its part, thisstate of suffering needs to be cured by the pursuit of knowledge, which, if successful, results in
an intrinsic advantage, namely, the satisfaction of the need of knowledge, which is also an
intellectual pleasure.
Aristotle’s description of the act of philosophizing can be compared to Husserl’s
phenomenological approach to consciousness, Because his description of “gradual progression”
of consciousness (along wonder, perplexities, realization of ignorance, pursuit of knowledge)
allows us to see what is happening in our minds when we begin to philosophize, although,unlike Husserl, Aristotle does not go through a process of epoche (by putting things in parenthesis to let things (Sache) appear themselves). For him, it involves a suffering from ignorance
and the ensuing need to relieve its pain through the pursuit of knowledge.
1.3 Heidegger and the Philosophy as Nostalgia
As for Heidegger, he says philosophy is originally pain. In a lecture on winter semester of
1929/30, Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics – World – Finitude – Solitude, quoting Novalis, he defines philosophy as nostalgia, in German Heimweh, literally, “home pain.”

6

Plato II Theaetetus Sophist, trans. Harold North Flower (The Loeb Classical Library, London / New York, 1928),
p. 55.
7
Aristotle, Metaphysics Books I-IX, trans. Hugh Tredennick (Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge / London, 1933), I.II, 6-11, 982b 12-25, p. 13.

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But what is the human, [what does it means] that at the core of his essence he philosophizes, andwhat is this philosophizing? What are we in it? Whither do we want to go? […] Novalis said oncein a fragment: ‘Philosophy is originally nostalgia (Heimweh), a desire to be home everywhere’. A
wonderful definition, of course romantic.8

This statement is similar to those of Plato’s and Aristotle’s in that it also points to the aspect ofpassion in philosophizing. He makes clearer this passive aspect, and puts it in relation to theverb greifen, ‘grasp’ in English. Philosophy is not something a teacher can teach by letting
students repeat after him or applying it, but needs, first of all, being moved (ergriffen) by what
the concepts (Begriffe) shall grasp (begreifen).9
Philosophy begins with being grasped by what the concept will grasp but has not yet
grasped. Being grasped (ergriffen) in German means being moved in an emotional sense, whichcorresponds to the state of passion (wonder and desire to know) that was discussed above. Here,
what Heidegger calls ‘nostalgia’ is just the desire to know, whereas its object of knowledge is‘home’ (Heim). In this sense, for him, very much as for Plato, the truth is something that we
knew before but subsequently forgot, and now we aim to discover again. That is, the pursuit ofknowledge (here the ontological truth of being) is to return to the home place which we left
before. As in the pursuit of ideas by the soul in the anamnesis of Plato, in this pursuit the act ofknowing is a recovery through discovery.
Regardless of other differences with Plato and Aristotle, for Heidegger the beginningof philosophy was also a passion, which is now called being-moved (Ergriffenheit). This state
comes from the fundamental mood (Grundstimmung) of Dasein, which he calls Anxiety(Angst).10 Thus, for Heidegger, philosophizing has its roots in the existential structure of thehuman being, and here, by using the word Heimweh, deliberately or not, he puts forward the
aspect of suffering.11
This aspect can be made more conspicuous with a note on the etymology the word
‘nostalgia’. The word is composed of two Greek words; nostos (return) and algos (pain). Thereis no such word in ancient Greek. It is a modern coinage which is used to describe medically a“home sick” person. There are two theories on its origin. According to the first one, the word
was invented by Jean-Jacques Haader of Switzerland in 1678 as a medical term equivalent to
the German Heimweh. According to the second, it was coined by the Alsatian Jean Hofer in1688 but again with the same designation, namely, a state of suffering associated with being far
from home. According to a medical report from that time, this sickness can be cured by returning to their home or even by hearing the cow bell of home village.12

8

Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik Welt – Endlichkeit – Einsamkeit, Gesamtausgabe Bd. 29/30(Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main, 1983), S. 7. My translation.
9
Op.cit., S.9.
10
Op.cit., S.10.
11
On Heidegger’s perspective on Novalis’ Heimweh, see also Rossen Roussev, “Thinking and Philosophizing as
the Journey of Waying and Homecoming: Heidegger, Lao-tse, and Herodotus,” pp. 33ff.
12
Barbara Cassin proposes a succinct report on the history and a reflection of the term. La Nostalgie – Quand donc
est-on chez soi ?, Pluriel, 2015, pp. 16-23.

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To sum up, philosophizing presupposes a peculiar type of suffering – the need to go
back ‘home’. ‘Home’ here represents a philosophical truth, which for Plato was associated withthe world of ideas, whereas for Heidegger with the “forgotten” truth of Being. In this sense, we
can associate our reaching the truth in our pursuits of it with a relief of our suffering. We need
to note, though, that these philosophers do not explicitly point to such a therapeutic effect ofphilosophy. Thus, we might as well say that such an effect could be equally felt by non-professional “philosophers” whose inquiry germinates in a discussion in a philosophical café.
1.4 Observations from a Philosophical café
Philosophical cafés are everywhere around the world. I also organize a philosophical café in
my town once a month. Participants would frequently say that the conversation was interesting
to them because they learned something (an idea) they did not know before the discussion. They
often pointed that through this kind of learning they were relieved from a peculiar type of suffering which they associated with individual or cultural values but lacked a necessary clarity
on it. Here is an example.
In 2018, we had a philosophical café in which we discussed personal “dreams” andtheir possible fulfilment in life in the future. As we began, some participants talked about theirown dreams, but others said that they do not have such dreams and appeared to be sufferingfrom the fact that they do not have what to fulfil in life. To be sure, this peculiar suffering
presupposes that they thought that they should have such a dream. Later on, as the conversation
went on, some participants began to notice this presupposition and to raise the question of how
we came to have such a feeling of obligation. In search of an answer, they reflected on the
education they had received in school and began to realize how their teachers or the way ofeducation imprinted on their mind a message like “it is better to have a dream to realize in one’s
life.”
This is how they understood the cause of this peculiar suffering they had, and we canrelate here that at the moment of uncovering this previously unkonwn part of their own selves,participants felt free.13 They felt emancipated from what oppressed them, their own assumed
values, which were originally foreign to them but became their own unwittingly. In his introductory book on philosophical dialogue, the Japanese philosopher and philosophical13

This process may at first appear to be similar to the experience of patients in the psychoanalytic practice, where
when analyzed via the methods of the psychoanalyst, they discover what is practically unknown to them in theirpersonal life history, which has been suppressed by an immemorable traumatic experience. However, psychoanalytic experience of this kind (discovery of trauma) and the experience in philosophical café are different in two
points. First, the facilitator in philosophical café does not play the same role as psychoanalyst. Second, the discovery of something forgotten in one’s personal life may not necessarily relate to a traumatic experience suppressedin one’s unconscious. With regard to the medical practice in psychiatry, I think that philosophical café is rather
closer, besides differences, to the so-called “open dialogue,” a psychiatric method which was developed in Finland
for patients with mental illnesses. This difference needs a more detailed exploration, though, and we would rather
reserve it for another study.

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Philosophy as Journeypractitioner Shinji Kajitani describes this feeling of relief and emancipation as intellectual but
also as “almost physical” one.14
This is a peculiar therapeutic effect of philosophy. Here, we need to ask, with regard
to the ‘truth’ of the professional philosophers’, what is the truth for participants in philosophicalcafés and whether this truth can be considered to be same one as Plato’s truth of the ideas or
Heidegger’s truth of Being. The ‘truth’ in the above-mentioned case of the participants in thephilosophical café would be, to be short, a discovery of a certain veiled part of the self. It is
identical neither with the Platonic idea nor with the Heideggerian Being. However, it can be
identified as ‘truth’ because it was pursued by inquirers; it was something hidden in thememory, forgotten secret of the self, which was discovered after inquiry.
Now we can briefly sum up our findings on the question of this first section; namely,
what is happening when we are philosophizing? First, we linked philosophizing to a sufferingfrom sickness, a sickness of knowing, which presupposes an awareness of a certain ignoranceof the knowledge that we pursue. Second, we also linked philosophizing to an attempt to curethis sickness through inquiry. And third, we associated the discovery of the ‘truth’ with therecovery from this sickness.
The next question we consider is If philosophy is this kind of therapeutic process,how does it relate to journey?
2. Phenomenology of Journey
2.1 Empirical observations
To answer this question, we need to ask first what is happening when we are traveling. This
will be a key element of our investigation of the experience of journey in this section. We willthen finalize our discussion on what philosophy and journey have in common.
In the ordinary English language, the word ‘travel’ is more widely used than the word‘journey’. ‘Journey’ can be used to mean ‘long travel’, but I do not see an essential difference
between the two terms here. There are in fact a number of English words meaning journey or
travel with regard to a specific destination or purpose, such as pilgrimage, sight-seeing, mission,
relocation, migration, etc.
Historically speaking, human beings have never stopped changing their places ofliving. In many myths or religious stories, various characters have been said to have traveled
for very long periods of time (including Abraham, Moses, Ulysses, Aeneas, etc). Sometimes
they travel for a war in foreign countries (Ulysses, Alexander the Great, crusaders, Napoleon,
U.S. army, “Blue Helmets,” etc); or they travel to propagate their teaching or ideology (Jesus,
St. Paul, Jesuits, Revolutionists, etc.); or they set out on a journey to visit some sacred place(Jerusalem, Mecca, Santiago de Compostela, Ise shrine etc.). People also travel for commerce,
which sometimes creates roads for travel like “silk road,” railway, highway, or low-cost airlines; and sometimes they are made to set out on a risky journey of immigration.
What these examples have in common is the aspect of moving from one place toanother, but the variations in its sense can be immense. We may assume that we travel from
14

Shinji Kajitani, What is thinking? – Introduction to philosophy from 0 to 100 years old [in Japanese], 2018. Here
we use the term philosophical practitioner for a person who engages in a philosophical practice such as philosophical café, philosophical dialogue in school, philosophical consulting, philosophical counseling, etc.

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home to another place and vice versa. But we, as homo sapience, have never returned to theplace where we were born, supposedly somewhere on the African continent. Likewise, some
immigrants have never gone back to their country of origin, which has transformed their identity to such an extent that, for instance, some Japanese immigrants in Hawai’i or in Latin America have forgotten their mother tongue. Whereas in the case of the nomads, for whom travelingis a part of their everyday life, journey itself has become a kind of home.
Amidst this motley mosaic of traveling examples, one can easily get lost without thehelp of elucidating concepts. We are therefore fully justified to search for phenomena of affinity
between philosophy and journey, and we will now focus, first, on travel from home, and second,on the experience of moving from one home place to another.
2.2 What is happening when we are traveling? – Phenomenology of Journey
To answer the question of what is happening when we are traveling, we need to clarify whathome is, as well as the experience of leaving home and arriving to another place. ‘Home’ canbe understood in wider than ordinary sense. For instance, when we get out of home to go toworkplace or school, we have in a sense not left it, as this is not actually traveling but commuting. That is, we understand ‘home’ in a wider sense that is not confined to the building we live
in. Instead, home represents the sphere of our everyday life, the world with which we are familiar, which is what in Being and Time Heidegger called being-in-the-world (In-der-Weltsein). It should be noted, though, that this sense of ‘home’ is different from what he called Heimin his above- mentioned lecture. Here, being-in-the-world does not have the sense of a geometrical or geographical space but that of the human being’s existential structure. The ‘home’ inthis existential sense is where we live and feel at ease. On the opposite side, when we are in thestate of anxiety, we are out of home (unheimlich). The world in this state becomes foreign tous, very much as when we get lost in a town, we feel anxious and the world appears as foreign
to us. On Heidegger’s view, anxiety (Angst) is the fundamental mood of Dasein.
In journey, we tend to feel this fundamental mood. This means that existentially weleave our everyday life world and our being-in-the-world becomes a world that is foreign to us.
This observation allows us to distinguish a mere travel from an existential travel. Traveling inan empirical sense can be either existential or non-existential. For example, even if we travel tothe other side of the earth, it is possible that we do not at all travel in an existential sense if wefeel at home throughout. Traveling becomes existential only when we are outside the ‘home’of our being-in-the-world. That is, we can travel existentially even when we remain in a house
we are living in, so long as we are in the fundamental mood of being solitarily separated fromthe world in anxiety.
It will not be an exaggeration to say that today we are living in a world where ‘mere
traveling’ has become easier whereas existential traveling more difficult. In many cities aroundthe globe, we find the same coffee shops, the same fast food or fashion chains, the same resort
hotel chains and free WIFI internet, which makes it possible for us to flee from our solitude,
for instance, by connecting to the same social networks. We can say that all these function as akind of shelter in the unfamiliar world we dwell during travel. Indeed, such a sheltering experience presupposes that the traveler is out of his or her familiar world. And yet, this is also what
the traveler wants – to exit his or her everyday existence and obtain some special experience

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which cannot be found in the familiar surrounding world, regardless of the uncertainty that it
can be found in this way.
We find one of the classical criticisms of the traveler in a passage in Augustin’s Confessions, to which the Italian poet of 14 century Petrarch paid special attention,
Great is this force of memory, excessive great, O my God; a large and boundless chamber! who eversounded the bottom thereof? yet is this a power of mine, and belongs unto my nature; nor do I myself
comprehend all that I am. Therefore is the mind too strait to contain itself. And where should thatbe, which it containeth not of itself? Is it without it, and not within? how then doth it not comprehend
itself? A wonderful admiration surprises me, amazement seizes me upon this. And men go abroad
to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, thecompass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by [et relinquunt se ipsos]…15

Travelers go out to find something wonderful in the great nature, and by doing so, they miss toheed at what is wonderful inside their own nature. For the author of the Confessions, the quest
for the truth of the mind is to unfold within our own self, not outside it. Petrarch went up to the
top of the mount Ventoux in 1335 with his favorite book Confessions. He sought to compare
the climbing of the mountain and the exaltation of the soul to the beatitude promised by the
Christian religion; at the top, he opened the book and read this passage in surprise.
The German philosopher Joachim Ritter gives an interpretation of this episode fromthe viewpoint of the history of ideas, considering it as one of the sources of the concept oflandscape.16 According to him, great landscapes will become destinations for travelers in thecourse of time. People then will go to foreign lands to see something wonderful in the great
nature, just as Petrarch did in the 14th century. This is surely the case in our time, and Augustine’s critical viewpoint, namely, that in traveling one turn one’s back on what is wonderful,
mysterious, foreign, or uncanny in the self, may still come to mind.
Taken together, Petrarch’s travel and Augustine’s critique are indicative that the notion of traveling is open to the possibilities to become a mere traveling or an existential traveling. But if travelers are not forced to travel (unlike refugees), they essentially aim at moving
away from their everyday life. They need to leave their everyday world and, in this sense, toreinvent their own being-in-the-world in order to satisfy this need. Still, this need is not just amere need of pastime and recreation – even if travel helps and, as Aristotle said,17 begins “withview of pastime and recreation”– as it has something more than that. Emmanuel Levinas called
it the “need to escape” – the need to flee from our own being when we feel shame or nausea.18
For him, this is not a simple state of mind. The need to flee my own being is not just a fact that
I am in a certain state of mind, but that this fact has a special weight for me. When we feel
15

Augustine, Confessions, Book Ten, Chapter VIII, translated by E.B. Pusey, (Project Gutenberg eBook, 2002)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3296/3296-h/3296-h.htm#link2H_4_0010 (2019.11.29)
16
Joachim Ritter „Landschaft“, Subjektivität ; sechs Aufsätze (1974), Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980, p. 144. Cf. Tomokazu Baba, “Déconstruction du paysage : Esquisse d’une problématique chez Jean-Luc Nancy” in Danielle CohenLevinas, Gisèle Berkman (eds.), Figures du dehors - Autour de Jean-Luc Nancy, Éditions Nouvelles Cécile Defaut,2012, pp. 311-326.
17
Cf. supra 1.2.
18
Emmnauel Levinas, De l’évasion, Le Livre de poche, 1998, pp. 96-123.

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shame or nausea, we feel this “weight of being” [poids de l’être],19 from which we want to flee.
To contrast the aforementinoned notion of ‘nostalgia’ as the need of homecoming, I would liketo call the Levinasian need of exit ‘exodalgia’. The word is composed by ‘exodus’ (exit) and‘algos’ (pain). Thus, nostalgia is the need to come back home, whereas exodalgia is the need togo out of home.
Travelers have this need of exit, exodalgia, before they start their journey. As exodalgia pushes people to travel, to recover from this “sickness,” they become travelers. In travelingin an existential sense, the world appears different from the one in our everyday life. The world
becomes first wonderful but foreign, strange, uncanny, and then the traveler feels isolated andestranged. This makes it possible to distance from, observe, and inquire into oneself in an existential sense, not to “pass oneself by” as Augustin said in his criticism of the traveler.
2.3 Answer to the Question of the Section
In this section, we tried to answer the question, what is happening when we are traveling? Aftersome empirical observations of traveling and various modes of travel in human history, we
focused on the very experience of traveling in the sense of leaving ‘home’. We made distinction
between mere traveling and existential traveling. The latter traveling can be understood as apeculiar kind of journey in which the world appears foreign to the travelers who feel out of their
existential ‘home’ in Heideggerian sense. In this sense, they feel isolated and find themselvesin a position of facing their own being. And yet, they needed this strange experience, as theyneeded a peculiar exit from their own existential home. We called this need ‘exodalgia’ anddescribed it as the opposite to nostalgia, which is the need to come back at home.
Throughout the process of this existential journey (exodalgia, travel, inquiry into theself), the travelers can rediscover their own individual and cultural values, as well as theirworldviews. This process is somewhat similar to what appears to take place in a philosophicalcafé.20 The participants in it can be seen as existential travelers. We can call this experience aphilosophical meta-cognition,21 which we can attain by virtue of a journey as existential traveling. This experience can be prompted also by a ‘mere traveling’ (to go abroad, for example),but it can also do without it. For instance, in his Persian Letters, Montaigne takes the readers
outside their “home,” which is the world of their Eurocentric and Christian values, by putting
them in the perspective of a Persian traveler in Europe. In this way, the European readers can
get out of their “home” by way of an existential traveling without actually moving in reality.
From our viewpoint, in this story, the reader, as an existential traveler, can be understood as
emancipated from his or her own ‘home’. That is, if they had exodalgia before reading it, they
could recover from this peculiar “sickness” upon reading it.

19

Levinas, op.cit, p. 121
Cf. supra, 1.4
21
On the notion of ‘metacognition’ and its relation to philosophy and self-knowledge, see Rossen Roussev, “Philosophy and the Transition from Theory to Practice: A Response to Recent Concerns for Critical Thinking, in
Telos, Vol.148, 2009, especially pp. 88-90, 93-94, 104-108.
20

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Conclusion
In this paper, I tried to answer the question What does the affinity between philosophy andjourney consists in? In order to find the answer, I undertook phenomenological descriptions ofboth philosophy and journey with the help of some notions of philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger, (1.2, 1.3), Augustin, Levinas, and Montaigne, (2.2). I also approached in thesame way the experience of the discussions in the philosophical cafés (1.4), as well as that ofjourney again (2.1).
As a result, we can now identify three characteristics that philosophy and journey havein common: 1) a “sickness of the soul” (Nostalgia and Exodalgia); 2) the act of relieving the
sickness (inquiry into the truth, getting out of “home”); 3) a therapeutic effect (discovery of
truth, finding something wonderful outside our everyday life or in a foreign world). This is why
we can assert that philosophy is a journey in an existential sense.
At the same time, our inquiry shows two differences between the experiences of philosophy and journey. First, philosophy begins out of nostalgia, whereas journey out of exodalgia. Second, the feeling of being-moved comes first in philosophy, whereas it comes second injourney. Philosophy is said to begin with wonder, 22 whereas in journey this feeling comes upon
the encounter with the foreignness of the world and of the self. In this sense, however, theprocess of journey appears to come before the feeling of wonder, which would enact any philosophizing (see the figure below).

Journey12exodalgia

traveling

Philosophy

3
4
foreignness/wonderwonderignorance/nostalgia

56inquiry

truth

Thus, in our sense, journey begins before philosophy. As can be seen in the figure above, there
is nothing in the 1st and 2nd columns for philosophy. This accords with Aristotle’s view that
we can do philosophy when all our other necessities (than philosophizing) are satisfied, i.e.,
when we have pastime.23 And, in reality, we cannot travel, if we have no time for it, if we are
not free from the obligations of our everyday life. In our view, the exodalgia, as the motivation
to leave our home and search for the foreignness of the world and of the self, precedes thenostalgia, which motivates philosophy. In this sense, we can say that journey promotes philosophy, whereas a mere traveling ends up in step 3, in just encountering what is foreign. The
figure also suggests that journey can become existential only when it goes through the steps 4,
5, 6 of philosophy. Whereas the initial need to get out of home can be prompted by a hunch ofphilosophical wonder. Otherwise put, exodalgia can be the precursor of nostalgia.

22
23

Cf. Supra 1.2, see the statements of Plato and Aristotle.
Cf. Supra 1.2, see the end of the quote from Aristotle.

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Thinking and Philosophizing as the Journey of Waying and Homecoming: Heidegger, Lao-tse, and Herodotus
GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume II, Number 01 (2019): 20-42

THINKING AND PHILOSOPHIZING AS THE JOURNEY OF WAYING
AND HOMECOMING: HEIDEGGER, LAO-TSE, AND HERODOTUS
Rossen Roussev

Wie weit der Mensch in seinem
eigenem Wesen uneinheimisch ist,
verrrät die Meinung, die er von sichhegt als demjenigen, der Sprache
und Verstehen, Bauen und Dichten
erfunden habe und erfunden habekönte.
The extent to which humanity is not
at home in its own essence is betrayed by the opinion human beings
cherish of themselves as those whohave invented and who could haveinvented language and understanding, building and poetry.
Martin Heidegger, Introduction to
Metaphysics

Abstract
Heidegger’s metaphorics of ‘way’ (Weg) and ‘home’ (Heim, House) offers a perspective for understanding both the epistemic and existential aspects of all thinking
and philosophizing. His senses of ‘way’ (Weg), ‘waying’ (wëgen, Bewëgung), and‘woodpaths’ (Holzwege) point to the epistemic character of thinking, whereas theones of the ‘uncanny’ (Unheimlichkeit), ‘homelessness’ (Heimatlosigkeit), and‘homecoming’ (Heimkehr) – to its existential motivation. Way as pathway andmethod, waying as clearing and way-making, and woodpaths as ways with noproper beginning and end link thinking and philosophizing to a phenomenology of
movement, or a peculiar type of epistemic journey. For its part, the uncanny stateof Dasein in ‘anxiety’ (Angst), later seen as the essential homelessness of the historical man, conditions thinking and philosophizing existentially along a “conquest

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Thinking and Philosophizing as the Journey of Waying and Homecoming: Heidegger, Lao-tse, and Herodotusof the earth” and the “cosmic space,” which would secure – upon a long waying –its anticipated homecoming.
Remarkably, a similar sense of waying and homecoming can be isolated in the
key concepts of Lao-tse’s Tao-Te Ching. Most generally, for Lao-tse, Tao is the‘way’ of all existence and Te stands for one’s individual adherence to that way.
While Tao remains “beyond the power of words” and is thus ‘wu’ or nothing, it
nonetheless designates the harmony and balance of all there is -- all beings. It isthus also the way of Te, of one’s mind and body, thinking and living, which dispels
all strife and tension to ensures one’s harmonious and peaceful co-existence withthe rest of the world. In this sense, Te can be seen as one’s ‘way’ to and one’s‘home’ in the harmony of Tao, whereas to the extent that Te becomes pressing in a
possible loss of Tao, an actualized Te as a search for Tao is also one’s ‘waying’and ‘homecoming’.
That thinking and philosophizing can be aptly apperceived within the metaphorics
of waying and homecoming, can be also attested by the first record of a conjoined
usage of ‘philos’ and ‘sophia’, which is found in Herodotus’ Histories. Herodotus
uses the verb ‘philosopheîn’ broadly in the sense of love to learn (a conjecture ofboth existential and epistemic meanings) and links it to traveling around the world“for the sake of seeing” it. Thus, in this primordial usage, philosophy can be seen
as a ‘journey’, which within our terms here can be seen also as including ‘waying’and ‘homecoming’.

In this paper, I explore the metaphorics of way (Weg, Tao), home (Heim, House), and journey(theōriā) to show its aptness for apperceiving our reflective activities of thinking and philosophizing. I draw mainly on the works of Martin Heidegger, Lao-tse, and Herodotus aiming at aperspective of understanding that captures both the epistemic and existential aspects of these
activities. Heidegger has used metaphorics of ‘way’ and ‘home’ extensively in his both earlyand later works – arguably in such way that the former can be seen as conveying the epistemic
character of thinking and philosophizing while the latter their existential motivation. Additionally, the multifaceted senses of the key concepts of Lao-tse’s classic Tao Te Ching can be fittingly appropriated along the same lines of thought as well. 1 And whereas a further support onbehalf of the metaphorics in question can be sought also elsewhere, perhaps the most suggestive
one can be found in the context of the first recorded conjoined usage of philos and sophia known
from Herodotus’ Histories, where philosophy is associated with ‘journey’. Thus, my exposition
will need to go through several steps: I shall first discuss Heidegger’s metaphorics of ‘way’ and‘home’ in relation to thinking and philosophizing in his both early and latter works; next, I
discuss key aspects of Lao-tse’s concepts of Tao and Te, which can be closely paralleled with
1

Here, I shall refer to the author of the classic as Lao-tse and to its tile as Tao Te Ching, or shall simply use Laozi(as it has become already a practice in light of the controversies surrounding its authorship and transliteration in
Latin). But when quoting specific editions in English, I shall use their respectively adopted transliterations for both
authorship and title. The same applies also for the usage of the terms Tao and Te. When repeatedly referring to aparticular translation, I shall use only the name(s) of the translator(s).

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Heidegger’s metaphorics of ‘way’ and ‘home’; then, I discuss the metaphorics of ‘journey’ inrelation to philosophizing in Herodotus’ Histories; and finally, by way of conclusion, I discuss
the overall apperception of thinking and philosophizing within the metaphorics of ‘way’,‘home’, and ‘journey’ within the perspective of the present investigation.
1. Heidegger’s early metaphorics of ‘way’
In Being and Time, Heidegger uses way (Weg) and other movement (Bewegung, bewegen) related metaphorics to point to the dynamic and non-fixed character of Dasein as existential subject. Unlike the apparently uniformic (and in this sense unchanging or static) character of theknowing ‘subject-consciousness’, which dominated the philosophical tradition prior to him,
Heidegger's Dasein is conceived of as inextricable from its existence and as intricated within
the world of change. Heidegger has thus characterized it phenomenologically as “Being-in-theworld” (In-der-Welt-sein),2 which in essence also meant that its existential dynamics could nolonger be ignored – neither in its epistemic aspirations, nor in its other cultural achievements.
In this sense, the unfixed character of Dasein can be seen as its undeniable and intrinsic characteristic, whereas its existential analytic, which Heidegger undertook in its magnus opus as
the initial task of any fundamental ontology, can be equally seen as an account of its dynamics.
As I see it, the unfixed character of Heidegger’s Dasein as existential subject can belegitimately sought throughout all its workings, but as far as its epistemic endeavors are concerned it becomes particularly evident along his metaphorics of ‘way’, which pervades Being
and Time through and through. Here, I shall attempt a certain dissection of this metaphorics
focusing on elements of Heidegger's vocabulary, which point – often quite literally – to an
irrevocable kinetic dimension of Dasein’s ‘Being-in-the-world’. In my view, this will help elucidate the role of the metaphorics of ‘way’ in Dasein’s epistemic aspirations, as well as in
Dasein’s thinking as a whole. One note of approach might be helpful for understanding theoutcome of my task here: I resort to using the expression ‘Heidegger’s metaphorics’, (eventhough he often uses ‘way-’, ‘movement-’, and ‘home-’ related words in their usual, literal, or
non-metaphoric senses in the German language), both because it is suggestive of the broader
phenomenological context of his investigation, in which the phenomena of existence – as philosophical phenomena – cannot be rendered in literal terms, and because Heidegger himself
often plays on etymological and rare senses of the terms he uses to convey his own meanings
together with the open-endedness of these phenomena. With this in mind, my investigation will
aim at dissecting his vocabulary in a particular way – along his metaphorics of ‘way’ and movement – while asserting the compatibility of its findings with his overall ontological perspective.
The three basic terms of Heidegger’s metaphorics of ‘way’ are Weg, bewegen, andBewegung. In Being and Time, their usage varies from literal to more abstract and metaphoric.
Thus, in the translations of John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson and Joan Stambaugh,3 the2Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson (New York, Hagerstown, San
Francisco, London: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962), pp. 78ff; Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemayer Verlag
GmbH & Co. KG, 1993), SS 52ff.
3
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996). When specifying the sense of Heidegger’s German terms in English below, I will take their meanings cumulatively as rendered in both of these translations. When pointing them in German, I will keep their respective conjugations in
the original text, if they have not been used in their main form.

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German noun Weg has been rendered as ‘way’, ‘method’, ‘path’, ‘avenue‘, ‘road’, ‘procedure’,‘pathway’, ‘route’, ‘by’, ‘means’. Similarly, the verb bewegen is rendered as ‘move’, ‘operate’,‘based’, ‘take place’, ‘engage’, ‘move along’, ‘be in motion’, ‘motivate’; whereas the noun
Bewegung is rendered ‘motion’, ‘movement’, ‘activity’. These usages may not surprise any
modern day language speaker, but they are indicative of the key role of the metaphoric of ‘way’
for rendering the workings of Dasein.
One very indicative example of this role in Heidegger’s vocabulary is the noun
Bewegtheit, which is rendered in the above mentioned translations as ‘movement’ and ‘being
moved’. Heidegger uses it specifically to describe the “falling” of Dasein as “the movement offalling” (die Bewegtheit des Verfallens), which is a “‘movement’ of Dasein in its own Being,”
or of Dasein’s “plunging out of itself into itself, into the groundlessness and nullity of inauthentic everydayness.”4 Bewegtheit in this usage is indicative of Dasein’s inner state, which may
not immediately have any perceptible expressions.
Another indicative example of Heidegger's metaphorics of ‘way’ is the adverb vorweg,
translated as ‘ahead’, ‘in advance’, ‘beforehand’, ‘ahead of’. A compound of vor (‘before’) andWeg (‘way’), Heidegger uses it in his discussion of Dasein as ‘care’ (Sorge), which is preliminary to his discussion of temporality, where it is taken to signify ‘ahead’ in the construction‘Being-ahead-of-itself‘ (Sich-vorweg-sein).5 For Heidegger, “Being-in-the-world is essentiallycare,” whereas, as ‘care’, “in each case Dasein is already ahead of itself.”6 Here, ‘ahead’ signifies metaphorically, for it points once again to Dasein’s inner world or experience. The metaphoricity of ‘ahead’ becomes more obvious in Heidegger’s discussion of time, which takes up
the non-stationary and unfixed character of Dasein as existence on a more fundamental ontological level. In his view, “temporality makes up the primordial meaning of Dasein’s Being,”and “care must use ‘time’ ... must reckon with ‘time’.”7 Dasein is subsequently characterized
as ecstatical, which in its literal etymological sense means being “outside-of-itself,”8 whereas
temporality is seen as “the primordial ‘outside-of-itself’ in and for itself.”9 Dasein is ecstaticalor ‘outside-of-itself’ in ‘Being-ahead-of-itself’, that is, as being oriented toward the future.
Thus, it is in no other way but as Being-ahead-of-itself that Dasein encounters itself as temporality – it begins temporalizing by projecting itself as future. Whereas, as temporality ultimately
remains “the primordial ontological basis for Dasein’s existentiality,” 10 (and thus for all
Dasein’s epistemic attainments), vorweg, which – along with the core of Heidegger’s vocabulary of time – alludes to ‘movement’ and ‘space’, can be seen as a key metaphor for thinking
and philosophizing.
In my view, Heidegger’s usage of ‘way’ related vocabulary in epistemic sense is mostsignificant for understanding Dasein’s capacity of reflection. More particularly, Wegräumen
has been used in the sense of ‘clearing away’ in relation to Dasein’s disclosure of ‘its own
authentic Being’ and the ‘world’,
4

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1962), p. 223; Sein und Zeit, S 178.
Ibid., pp. 235 ff.; SS 191ff.
6
Ibid., pp. 236-237; SS 191-193.
7
Ibid., p. 278; S 235.
8
Ibid., pp. 370ff; SS 323ff.
9
Ibid., p. 377; S 329.
10
Ibid., p. 277; S 234.
5

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If Dasein discovers the world in its own way [eigens] and brings it close, if it discloses to itself its
own authentic Being, then this discovery [Entdecken] of the ‘world’ and this disclosure of Dasein
are always accomplished as a clearing-away of concealments and obscurities, as a breaking up of
the disguises with which Dasein bars its own way.11

If knowledge here is to be associated with the ‘disclosure’ (Erschließen) and ‘discovery’(Entdecken) of Dasein and the ‘world’, it is achieved via ‘a clearing-away [Wegräumen] ofconcealments and obscurities’ and of the ‘disguises (Verstellungen) with which Dasein bars its
own way.’ That Wegräumen has been also used in a more literal sense as “moving [equipment(Zeug)] out of the way,”12 only makes its aptness as metaphor for thinking and philosophizing
more convincing, as it points to the wide range of its phenomenologically disclosive usage. It
is also very significant that this second usage has been associated with “Dasein’s making room
(Einräumung) for itself” and “the self-directive discovery of something like a region (Gegend),” which point to a certain “wither” (Wohin), that is, to a locus from where and space where
its handlings of equipment and workings as a whole unfold.13 It aligns once again the classic
phenomenological metaphorics of ‘knowing as seeing’ with that of ‘waying as thinking’, andcan be exemplified with Heidegger’s usages of verbs such as wegzudeuten (a compound verb
that can be literally transcribed as ‘way-to-point-to/expound/interpret’) and wegzuerklären (literally transcribable as ‘way-to-clarify/elucidate/explain’) in the sense of ‘explain away’.14
Some adverbs also fit handily in Heidegger’s metaphorics of ‘way’, even if in his usage
they do not significantly deviate from their common meanings in the German language. Thus,
weg (translated as ‘beyond’, ‘remote’, ‘out of the way’, ‘away from’, ‘far’, ‘distant’, ‘flightfrom’ or simply ‘away’), keineswegs, (‘by no means’, ‘not at all’, ‘certainly not’, ‘on no account’, ‘no’, ‘nothing’), deswegen (‘therefore’), and unterwegs (‘on its way’, ‘along our way’),
add to a strong metaphoric association between ‘way’ and ‘thinking’, even if they could not
attain terminological status. Thanks to the ‘way’ pointers in their etymology, their supporting
adverbial role becomes more apparent and suggestive, the more conspicuous that association
becomes in Heidegger’s core terminology.
The same is also true of much of his other ‘way’ vocabulary, including nouns, adjectives, and verbs, which while not necessarily having terminological status play a meaningfulsupporting role within the overall context of his early philosophical perspective. Here we countWegschiebenwollen (‘pushing away’), wegzuschieben (‘to shove aside’, ‘to put aside’), vorwegschiebt (‘shoving itself ahead’, ‘moves ahead along’), Vorweg-bereden (‘talking about
things ahead of’), Ausweg (‘way out’), Umweg (‘detour’), Bewegungsverhältnis (‘relation of
movements’), Vorwegnahme (‘anticipation’, ‘foreseeing’), Vorwegnehmens (translated as ‘inadvance’), weggenommen (‘taken away’, ‘removed’), vorweggenommen (‘taken for granted’,‘anticipated’), Wegsehen (‘look away’, ‘look for the next’, ‘looking-away‘), wegbringen (‘eliminate’, ‘remove’), Weglegen (‘laying aside’, ‘putting away’), Bewegungsart (‘downward
plunge’), Bewegtheitscharakter (‘character of movement’), Bewegungsbegriff (‘kind of
11

Ibid., p. 167; S 129.
Ibid., p. 420; S 368.
13
Ibid., p. 420; S 368.
14
Ibid., p. 320; S 275.
12

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motion’, ‘concept of motion’), abwegige (‘off the course’, ‘off course’, ‘off the track’,‘farfetched’), wegbewegt (‘moves away’), Abwege (‘sidetracked’, ‘wrong turnings’), Wegrichtung (‘direction’), wegschleicht (‘slink away’, ‘slip away’), hinwegzusetzen ('disregard’, ‘elevate itself over’), Wegweiser (‘signposts’, ‘guideposts’), wegbereitend (‘furthering’, ‘in a preparatory way’), Bewegungszusammenhang ('connectedness of motions’, ‘connectedness of
movements’), Revolutionsbewegung (‘revolutionary period’).
To conclude my discussion on the aptness of early Heidegger’s metaphorics of ‘way’
for apperceiving thinking and philosophizing, I shall draw attention to the penultimate paragraph of Being and Time,15 where he offers a certain sum-up of his entire investigation, which
I find to be keenly supportive of the goal of the present investigation,
One can never carry on researches into the source and the possibility of the ‘idea’ of Being in general
simply by means of the ‘abstractions’ of formal logic – that is, without any secure horizon for question and answer. One must seek a way of casting light on the fundamental question of ontology, andthis is the way one must go. Whether this is the only way or even the right one at all, can be decided
only after one has gone along it. The conflict as to the Interpretation of Being cannot be allayed,
because it has not yet been enkindled. And in the end this is not the kind of conflict one can ‘bluster
into’; it is of the kind which cannot get enkindled unless preparations are made for it. Towards thisalone the foregoing investigation is on the way.16

Heidegger’s point here is clear: despite the helplessness of the ‘formal logic’ and the lack of‘any secure horizon for question and answer’, ‘one must seek a way (Weg) of casting light on
the fundamental question of ontology’. One’s proper apperception of that ‘way’ can become
feasible ‘only after one has gone along it’, which essentially means that ‘going along the way’
is indispensable in this task. Furthermore, the necessity of the question of Being ‘cannot beallayed’ just because it has not been previously initiated – this question is so fundamental thata certain understanding of Being is always already presupposed in any discussion. But neither
can this kind of necessity be addressed without ‘preparations’ – they are necessary not only
because the question has not been previously isolated, but also because its character is such that
one cannot give an ultimate answer to it. In this sense, Heidegger’s investigation on the questionof Being remains a ‘preparation’ for its elucidation, which otherwise put means that it can onlybe ‘on the way’ (unterwegs).
The above quoted passage also neatly sums up our findings here so far. Our purpose inthis section was to explore the role of the metaphorics of ‘way’ in Heidegger’s early thought
and its relation to our reflective activities of thinking and philosophizing. We saw that the alignment of this metaphorics with these activities is not just an arbitrary juxtaposition. In fact, thevocabulary related to ‘way’ pervades Heidegger’s discussion of Dasein and its epistemic workings through and through. As a matter of course, its role can be seen in that – in the lack of ‘any
secure horizon for question and answer’ – it functions as an identifiable carrier of the epistemic
fundamentals of the existential analytic of Dasein. Along this metaphorics of ‘way’, Dasein is

15

I was prompted to this passage, as well as to work on the present paper, by Joan Stambaugh’s insightful discussion of the metaphorics of ‘way’ in her “Heidegger, Taoism, and the Question of Metaphysics,” in Graham Parkes(ed.), Heidegger and Asian Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), pp. 79-91.
16
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1962), pp. 487-488.; Sein und Zeit, S 437.

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seen as being constantly “underway” with “standing and remaining being only limit cases ofthis directional ‘underway’”;17 whereas its epistemic and ontological concerns remain inextricably bound with its peculiar existential dynamics. Finally, the above quoted passage also indicates that Heidegger thinks of ‘way’ not in the sense of a single, multiply applicable methodof knowledge, but rather in the sense of an epistemic journey which may or may not bring thedesired outcomes. It is in this latter sense, which is indeed essentially phenomenological, thatthinking and philosophizing are tied to the unicity of a way and can be most readily apperceived
as being on the way or as waying.
2. Heidegger’s latter metaphorics of ‘way’
In his later works, Heidegger’s concept of ‘way’ becomes more nuanced, even though clear
pointers to his view from Being and Time are unmistakably there. A thorough and extensive
study of its metaphorics is desirable and well-worth the effort, but it will remain beyond thescope of the present inquiry. For our purpose here, it will suffice to draw attention to some of
the insightful findings of Joan Stambaugh, who has offered a neat discussion on it in her previously mentioned article, bringing together Heidegger’s changing perspectives on the ‘way’ andLao-tse’s notion of Tao to bear on the question of metaphysics.
One of the first instances in Heidegger’s later metaphorics of ‘way’ Stambaugh draws
a special attention to is the brief untitled foreword of his Holzwege (Woodpaths),“Wood” is an old name for forest. In the wood are paths that mostly wind along until they end
quite suddenly in an impenetrable thicket.
They are called “woodpaths.”
Each goes its peculiar way, but in the same forest. Often
it seems as though one were identical to another. Yet it only seems so.
Woodcutters and forest are familiar with these paths. They know what
it means to be on a woodpath.18

What comes to focus here is the peculiar positioning of the ‘woodpaths’ in forests – they do notlead to an anticipated end but ‘end quite suddenly in an impenetrable thicket’. For Stambaugh,
Heidegger appropriates philosophically the ‘woodpaths’ as a metaphor that is indicative of his
own understanding of thinking. As she puts it, “the woodpaths express the fact that thinking isthoroughly and essentially questioning, a questioning not to be settled or ‘solved’ by any answer, a questioning that cannot calculate in advance the direction in which it will be led, letalone the destination in which it will arrive.”19
We can note here that for the latter
Heidegger ‘thinking as questioning’ is already a step aside from his assertion in the last quoted
passage from Being and Time that one’s proper apperception of a ‘way’ can become feasible‘only after one has gone along it’, even though in both cases he appears to maintain that forthinking ‘going along the way’ is indispensable. The difference is that ‘going along the way’ in
17

Joan Stambaugh, “Heidegger, Taoism, and the Question of Metaphysics,” p. 79.
David F. Krell (ed.), Basic Writings, revised and expanded edition (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 34; Martin
Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, 1950). For an alternative translation see
Martin Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track, edited and translated by Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
19
Joan Stambaugh, “Heidegger, Taoism, and the Question of Metaphysics,” p. 80.
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his early thought anticipates a more determined end – one that is signaled by the ‘fundamental
question of ontology’. Whereas along the metaphor of the ‘woodpaths’ such an end is less determined – they are known to lead only to an abrupt end, or in a sense – to nowhere. Thus,
thinking is here seen as an explorative ‘going along woodpaths’, which is accompanied by aclear sense of their limited routes. Indeed, as D. F. Krell and Stambaugh have noted, this determination of thinking is very much in contrast with the negative sense of the popular German
expression to which Heidegger alludes in the last sentence of this untitled forward, which is “tobe on the wrong track or in a cul-de-sac.”20 But it captures the different sense for which hislater thought appropriates the metaphorics of ‘way’ – the sense of a journey into the unknown.
Stambaugh also draws attention to something we already noted above as it had alreadybecome clear by the end of Being and Time, namely, that Heidegger’s sense of ‘way’ “hasessentially nothing to do with scientific and technological method,” because of his “polemic
against Vorhandenheit (presence-at hand)” as “objective presence.” 21 Indeed, Heidegger’s‘way’ is of a different kind – evading any objective presence-at-hand, it is somewhat paradoxically at once one that is particular and belonging to a ‘region’ (Gegend), as much as also one
that is constantly in the making. It is linked to the metaphor of the ‘woodpath’ but also with‘going along it’.
In this sense, ‘thinking as questioning’ is associated with going along a ‘woodpath’ asa way with an unknown end. Thinking is thus not confined to a well-established, pre-existent,
objective (even if unknown) way; it is associated with the very movement along the way, amovement that inaugurates both ‘thinking’ and ‘way’ at once, a movement that ultimately renders thinking as way, as much as the way as thinking, way of thinking, or way-thinking (DenkWeg). In a passage from What is Called Thinking? (to which Stambaugh also refers), Heidegger
puts it like this,Thinking itself is a way. We respond to the way only in remaining underway. To be on the way inorder to clear the way...
In order to get underway, we do have to set out. This is meant in a double sense: for one thing, wehave to open ourselves to the emerging prospect and direction of the way itself; and then, we must
get on the way, that is, must take the steps by which alone the way becomes a way.
The way of thinking [Denk-Weg] cannot be traced from somewhere to somewhere like a wellworn rut, nor does it at all exist as such in any place. Only when we walk it, and in no other fashion,
only, that is, by thoughtful questioning, are we on the move on the way [ist die Be-wegung]. This
movement is what allows the way to come forward. That the way of thought [Denkweges] is of thisnature is part of the precursoriness of thinking... 22

Thus, for the later Heidegger, thinking as ‘move on the way’ is essentially creating the‘way’, whereas in Being and Time the ‘way’ is very much presupposed and just needed ‘a20David F. Krell (ed.), Basic Writings, p. 34; Joan Stambaugh, “Heidegger, Taoism, and the Question of Metaphysics,” p. 80.
21
Joan Stambaugh, “Heidegger, Taoism, and the Question of Metaphysics,” p. 81.
22
Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, translated by Fred D. Wieck & Jesse Glenn Gray (New York,Evanston, London: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968), pp. 168-169; Martin Heidegger, Was Heisst Denken?,Gesamtausgabe I, Band 8 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, 2002), SS 173-174. German-text
interpolations here are added.

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clearing-away [Wegräumen] of concealments and obscurities’ and of all the ‘disguises (Verstellungen)’ which barred Dasein’s ‘disclosure’ of the world. This difference becomes more
apparent when in his later thought he apperceives the kind of ‘clearing’ that is needed to sustain
the ‘way of thinking’ along the metaphorics of wëgen and Bewëgung of old the Alemannic
Swabian dialect, which Stambaugh has called “Heidegger’s utmost effort to make an initiallysomewhat indeterminate thought, the way, as concrete as possible.”23 As he puts it,
To clear a way... across a snow-covered field, is in the Alemannic-Swabian dialect still calledwëgen even today. This verb, used transitively, means: to form a way and, forming it, to keep it
ready. Way-making [Be-wëgen (Be-wëgung)] understood in this sense no longer means to movesomething up or down a path [Weg] that is already there. It means to bring the way... forth first ofall, and thus to be the way.24

If the verb wëgen hear means ‘to clear a way... across a snow-covered field’, the derivativeBewëgung in this sense means ‘way-making’ or ‘to bring the way... forth first of all, and thus
to be the way’, and is clearly related to ‘movement’.25 Thus, thinking and reflection can be seen
as “entering into the movement of waying.”26 Or, otherwise put, for the later Heidegger, ‘thinking’ can be understood metaphorically as ‘waying’, as it is inseparable from the movement ofclearing, forming, and keeping of the ‘way’.
Another characteristic aspect of Heidegger’s later metaphorics of the way pointed by
Stambaugh is the relation between “call” (heissen) and “way,” which he also discusses in Whatis Called Thinking. There Heidegger writes that “in the widest sense, ‘to call’ means to set into
motion, to get something underway ... in a gentle and unobtrusive manner,” pointing that, traced
to Sanskrit, the Greek word with the same meaning keleuein “means not so much a command
as a letting-reach,... [and] has the assonance of helpfulness and complaisance,” as in “to invite.”27 Thus, for Heidegger, ‘thinking’ and ‘waying’ are bound as much together as with thenon-demanding character of ‘what calls for thinking’. This non-demanding and yet inviting
element of thought can be readily associated with the truth of Being, whose essence was understood as freedom or “letting beings be the beings that they are.” 28 It is also in line with
Heidegger’s view from Being and Time that the openness of the truth of Being becomes accessible via Dasein’s “resoluteness” (Entschlossenheit) ensuing from a Lutheran “call of conscience.”29 Thus, whereas ‘what calls for thinking’, ‘the truth of Being’, ‘thinking’, and ‘waying’ appear to come together in Heidegger’s thought through and through, it is his later23

Joan Stambaugh, “Heidegger, Taoism, and the Question of Metaphysics,” p. 83.
Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, translated by Peter D. Herz (New York, London, et al.: Harper &Row, Publishers, 1982) pp. 129-130; Martin Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache, Gesamtausgabe I, Band 12(Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, 1985), S 249. German-text interpolations added.
25
Joan Stambaugh, “Heidegger, Taoism, and the Question of Metaphysics,” p. 83.
26
Ibid., p. 84.
27
Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, p. 117; Martin Heidegger, Was Heisst Denken?, Gesamtausgabe
I, Band 8, SS 120-121.
28
Martin Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” in David F. Krell (ed.), Basic Writings, revised and expanded
edition, pp. 115-138; Martin Heidegger, “Vom Wesen der Wahrheit,” Wegmarken, Gesamtausgabe I, Band 9(Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann GmbH, 1976), SS 177-202.
29
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1962), pp. 341ff.; Sein und Zeit, SS 295ff.
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metaphorics of the way that makes the difference from his early thinking and that ultimately
renders thinking as waying in this explorative, open-ended, and in no way predetermined sense,
which we associated above with journey.
I shall draw attention to two more points that Heidegger makes, which shed additional
light on his later metaphorics of movement and waying. The first one is in his essay on Trakl
in On the Way to Language, where he dwells on the original meaning of the word for sensing,which in German, as in Latin, is also part of the etymology of the words for meaning (Sinn) andreflection (sinnen). In a sentence, which Stambaugh focuses on, Heidegger points out that theold word “‘Sinnan’ originally meant to travel, to strive after, ... to take a certain direction,” andthat its “Indo-German root sent and set means ‘way’.”30 Thus, sensing, thinking, and travelingare shown to have a common semantic genealogy that is traceable to the Proto-Indo-European
meaning of ‘way’. For us this means that in the context of the present inquiry ‘waying’ has beenshown to be a fitting metaphor for ‘thinking’ once again.
Stambaugh takes Heidegger’s discussion of Sinnan to be a prelude to her discussion of
his notion of Gelassenheit or releasement, (whose root lassen, meaning ‘letting’, already points
to the non-demanding character of thinking as waying, which we linked to the truth of Beingand his earlier notion of Entschlossenheit or resoluteness), but she also takes it as a pointer tothe sense of Lao-tse’s unsayable Tao.31 Heidegger himself has briefly discussed Tao in On the
Way to Language, and his insights there will make also that last point I would like to bring here
on behalf of the aptness of his metaphorics of ‘way’ for understanding thinking. The discussionin question is particularly germane to my endeavor here – first, because it throws light on both
Heidegger’s understanding of thinking as waying and its relation to the key notion of the TaoTe Ching classic; and second, because it very much sums up his view by bringing together thebulk of the findings of my inquiry so far. In Herz’s translation, it appears as the following two
paragraphs,
The word ‘way’ probably is a primal word that speaks to the reflective mind of man. The key wordin Laotse’s poetic thinking is Tao, which ‘properly speaking’ means way. But because we are prone
to think of way’ superficially, as a stretch connecting two places, our word ‘way’ has all too rashly
been considered unfit to name what Tao says. Tao is then translated as reason, mind, raison, meaning[Sinn], logos.
Yet Tao could be the way that gives all ways [der alles be-wëgende Weg], the very source of ourpower to think what reason, mind, meaning, logos properly mean to say – properly, by their proper
nature. Perhaps the mystery of mysteries of thoughtful Saying conceals itself in the word “way,”
Tao, if only we will let these names return to what they leave unspoken, if only we are capable ofthis, to allow them to do so. Perhaps the enigmatic power of today’s reign of method also, and indeed
preeminently, stems from the fact that the methods, notwithstanding their efficiency, are after all
merely the runoff of a great hidden stream which moves [be-wëgt] all things along and makes way
for everything. All is way. 32
30

Joan Stambaugh, “Heidegger, Taoism, and the Question of Metaphysics,” p. 85. This sentence has been omitted
in Peter D. Herz’s translation. Here is its original version in German: “‘Sinnan’ bedeutet ursprünglich: reisen,
streben nach... eine Richtung einschlagen; die indogermaniche Wurzel sent und set bedeutet Weg.” (Martin
Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache, Gesamtausgabe I, Band 12), S 49.
31
Joan Stambaugh, “Heidegger, Taoism, and the Question of Metaphysics,” pp. 84-86.
32
Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, p. 92; Martin Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache, Gesamtausgabe
I, Band 12, S 187. German-text interpolations added.

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The statement that ‘the word “way” probably is a primal word that speaks to the reflective mindof man’ is basically what the present inquiry endeavors to investigate and assert here, namely,that thinking is a kind of waying. Likewise, the claim that ‘because we are prone to think of“way” superficially, as a stretch connecting two places, our word “way” has all too rashly been
considered unfit to name what Tao says’ explains the more abstract choices of rendering Tao
as ‘reason, mind, raison, meaning, logos’. These choices align with the dominant sense of truthin the Western epistemic tradition as “adaequatio intellectūs et rei,” or as accordance ofknowledge or intellect to matter, which in non-theological terms becomes “the accordance (homoiōsis) of a statement (logos) with a matter (pragma),”33 and which prevents the rendition of
the ineffable Tao along the epistemic tangibility of the metaphorics of the ‘way’. By contrast,
Heidegger suggests that it is rather Tao, the ‘way’, that provides ‘the very source of our power
to think what reason, mind, meaning, logos properly mean to say’, something that we could
find out ‘if only we will let these names return to what they leave unspoken.’ In this sense, ‘theenigmatic power of today’s reign of method’ can be seen as being ‘merely the runoff of a great
hidden stream which moves all things’, just as the stream of the unspeakable Tao does – thestream that ensures that ‘all is way’.
We can note here that Heidegger’s discussion Tao renders it along the metaphorics of‘way’ and associates ‘thinking’ with the above indicated meanings of wëgen, Be-wëgung, andSinnan. Additionally, Tao, which “is beyond the power of words,”34 can also be seen as connoting the indeterminate sense of the ‘woodpath’ (Hozlweg), as well as the indefinite sense of
the meaning of Being.35 At the very least, Lao-tse Tao and Heidegger’s Weg appear to have theaffinity of ineffability, even if the fundamental sense of Lao-tse’s Tao may be more suggestiveof Heidegger’s Being.36 Thus, Heidegger’s discussion of Tao has put it once again to the fore
that, as a whole, his later metaphorics of the ‘way’ very acutely apperceives our reflective activity of ‘thinking’. And, if in this sense thinking is waying, that is, always on the way, and on
the way to language, the same is also true of the fundamental inquiry into the meaning of Being,
as well as of all philosophizing.
3. Heidegger’s early metaphorics of ‘home’
Heidegger makes his first significant employment of metaphorics of ‘home’ (Heim, Haus) in
Being and Time. His early ‘home’ related vocabulary is diverse and suggestive as a whole,
playing a key role in his existential analytic of Dasein, and specifically – in bringing to the fore
33

Martin Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” pp. 116-120; Martin Heidegger, “Vom Wesen der Wahrheit,” SS
178-182.
34
The Way of Life, According to Lao Tzu, translated by Witter Bynner (New York: The Berkley Publishing Group,1986), Ch. 1.
35

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1962), pp. 21ff; Sein und Zeit, SS 2ff. Martin Heidegger, Introduction to
Metaphysics, translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2000),
pp. 2ff; Einführung in die Metaphysik, Gesamtausgabe, Band 40 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann
GmbH, 1983), SS 2ff.
36
See Rossen Roussev, “Global Conversation on the Spot: What Lao-tse, Heidegger, and Rorty have in Common,”Global Conversations: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture, Vol. I, No. 01 (2018),
pp. 11-38.

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the existential motivation for Dasein’s thinking and philosophizing. Heidegger’s central term
here is unheimlich, rendered in English as uncanny, and it comes into play in his discussion of
Dasein’s Being as ‘care’ (Sorge), and more specifically – of ‘anxiety’ (Angst) as Dasein’s basic‘state of mind’ (Befindlichkeit).
For Heidegger, “in anxiety one feels ‘uncanny’,” whereas “‘uncanniness’ [Unheimlichkeit] also means ‘not-being-at-home’[Nicht-zuhause-sein]” – in contradistinction from ‘Beingat-home’[Zuhause-sein], which stands for Dasein’s “tranquillized self-assurance” in the worldof its “average everydayness” marked by the “publicness of the ‘they’.”37 In this sense, he also
maintains that Dasein’s basic state of “anxiety brings it back from its absorption in the ‘world’,”
individualizes it, and places it in “the existential ‘mode’ of the ‘not-at-home’[Unzuhause].” 38
As Heidegger sees it, “from an existential-ontological point of view,” compared to the “tranquillized and familiar” at-home of Being-in-the-world in everydayness, the not-at-home is themore primordial mode, which means that the former is an element of the later, and not viceversa.39 Thus, in his view, “uncanniness” is “the most elemental way in which thrown Dasein
is disclosed,” placing it “face to face with the ‘nothing’ of the world,” such that Dasein experiences “anxiety about its ownmost potentiality-for-Being.”40
Heidegger also links the uncanny Dasein in anxiety with the peculiar ‘call of conscience’, which makes possible Dasein’s own projection ‘upon its own potentiality-for-Being’[eigenste Seinkönnen]’,Uncanniness is the basic kind of Being-in-the-world, even though in an everyday way it has been
covered up. Out of the depths of this kind of Being, Dasein itself, as conscience, calls. The ‘it callsme‘ [“es ruft mich”] is a distinctive kind of discourse for Dasein. The call whose mood has been
attuned by anxiety is what makes it possible first and foremost for Dasein to project itself upon its
ownmost potentiality-for-Being. The call of conscience, existentially understood, makes known for
the first time what we have hitherto merely contended; that uncanniness pursues Dasein and is athreat to the lostness in which it has forgotten itself. 41

The call of conscience that enables Dasein ‘to project itself upon its ownmost potentiality-forBeing’ is triggered in uncanniness. The latter is a ‘threat’ to Dasein’s ‘lostness’ in everydayness
but it thus provides Dasein with the possibility for its authentic existence. The call, which comes‘out of the depth’ of ‘Dasein itself’, reveals Dasein to itself as ‘conscience’. Conscience for its
part is revealed as the ‘call of care’ and as what ensures Dasein’s knowledge and understanding:
The call is the call of care. Being-guilty [Schuldigsein] constitutes the Being to which we give thename of “care”. In uncanniness Dasein stands together with itself primordially. Uncanniness brings
this entity face to face with its undisguised nullity, which belongs to the possibility of its ownmost
potentiality-for-Being. To the extent that for Dasein, as care, its Being is an issue, it summons itself
as a “they” which is factically falling, and summons itself from its uncanniness towards its potentiality-for-Being. 42
37

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1962), p. 233; Sein und Zeit, SS 188-189.
Ibid., p. 233; SS 188-189.
39
Ibid., p. 234; S 189.
40
Ibid., p. 321; S 276.
41
Ibid., p. 322; S 277.
42
Ibid., pp. 332-333; SS 286-287.
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Understanding the call discloses one’s own Dasein in the uncanniness of its individualization. The
uncanniness which is revealed in understanding and revealed along with it, becomes genuinely disclosed by the state-of-mind of anxiety which belongs to that understanding. The fact of the anxiety
of conscience gives us phenomenal confirmation that in understanding the call Dasein is broughtface to face with its own uncanniness.43

For Heidegger, ‘the call of conscience’ is ‘the call of care’; it is the call of ‘Guilty!’ and of‘Being-guilty’, which is ‘given the name care’. It comes out of the ‘uncanniness’ of Dasein as
facing ‘its undisguised nullity, which belongs to the possibility of its ownmost potentiality-forBeing’. It is a call that ‘summons’ Dasein out of the ‘falling’ in which it is unindividualized as‘they’ and directs it ‘towards its potentiality-for-Being’.44 At the same time, ‘understanding thecall discloses one’s own Dasein in the uncanniness of its individualization’, and discloses it in‘the state-of-mind of anxiety’. Whereas ‘the anxiety of conscience’ attests that Dasein is in theface of ‘its own uncanniness’.
Early Heidegger’s metaphorics of ‘home’ could also be detected, even if not without
stipulations, in some rather trivial usages as well. Thus the German expression ‘von Hause aus’(literally ‘from the house out’ but most typically used to mean ‘originally’ or ‘innately’) appears
to point to a certain essential fundamentality in the meaning of the ‘house’, even though it may
remain transparent or void of any other significance in reading and translation. In the above
mentioned English translations, it has been rendered mostly ‘by its very nature’, but also ‘fundamentally’, ‘from the outset’, ‘from the very beginning’.45 Interestingly, the last two renditions translate the German phrase as emphatically placed in quotation marks by Heidegger himself, when he claims that Dasein’s capacity to “‘find’ that something is missing [fehlt]” is intrinsically tied with whether Dasein “were awaiting” that ‘something’ “from the outset.”46
Given the prevalent terminological usages of Heidegger’s early ‘home’ metaphorics, which inessence convey Dasein’s capacity to disclose the world in uncanniness, this usage here can now
be seen as a non-trivial one – as pointing to the character and essence of Dasein as a being forwhich the disclosure of the world (viz. the meaning of Being) is a concern ‘from the outset’,and equally – an ‘out-of-house’ concern, or a concern of ‘uncanniness’.
As a whole, the metaphorics of ‘home’ in Heidegger’s early thought carries the senseof the fundamental condition for Dasein’s thinking and philosophizing. His concept of uncanniness, which characterizes Dasein’s Being as care, points to the primary existential impulsethat sets in motion Dasein’s understanding of itself, its disclosure of the world, and its otherworkings. And, whereas uncanniness, as the existential feeling of ‘not-at-home’, may prompt
an inauthentic search for the ‘at-home’ of the world of everyday concern of the ‘they’, it is also
what opens Dasein to, and eventually triggers its ensuing search for, ‘its ownmost potentiality-

43

Ibid., p. 342; SS 295-296.
Cf. “Hearing the appeal correctly is ... tantamount to having an understanding of oneself in one’s ownmost
potentiality-for-Being – that is, to projecting oneself upon one’s ownmost authentic potentiality for becoming
guilty.” Ibid., pp. 333-334; S 287.
45
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1962), pp. 81, 171, 213, 407, 467; Being and Time (1996), pp. 52, 125,
158, 325, 380); Sein und Zeit, SS 55, 133, 169, 355, 414.
46
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1962), p. 407; Sein und Zeit, S 355.
44

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for-Being’. It thus opens the possibility for Dasein’s authentic concern with Being, which atbottom motivates all its thinking and philosophizing – about itself as an existential subject andabout its relation to the world.
4. Heidegger’s later metaphorics of ‘home’In his later thought, Heidegger links the metaphorics of ‘home’ to thinking and philosophizing
more directly. Already in his lectures from 1929-1930, he quotes a statement by Novalis: “Philosophy is really homesickness (Heimweh), an urge to be at home (zu Hause zu sein) everywhere.”47 Heidegger then elaborates,
Philosophy can only be such an urge if we who philosophize are not at home [nicht zu Hause] everywhere … Not merely here or there, nor even simply in every place, in all places taken together
one after another. Rather, to be at home [zu Hause] everywhere means to be at once and at all times
within the whole. We name this 'within the whole' and its character of wholeness the world.48

Heidegger offers his own reading of Novalis’ statement here: philosophy would be ‘an urge to
be at home everywhere’ if we are ‘not at home’ already. For him, ‘everywhere’ here means
neither ‘every place’, nor ‘all places taken together one after another’; it means ‘to be at once
and at all times within the whole’; that is, within ‘the world’. Heidegger’s point is that our ‘notat home’ motivates us to aspire ‘to be at home’, that ‘philosophizing’ begins with ‘not at home’and goes on searching for ‘home’; but it does not just search for a home or homes within theworld – it searches ‘to be at home’ with ‘the world’ or ‘to be at home’ within the world as awhole. In this sense, he thinks that “what Novalis names homesickness is ultimately the fundamental attunement [Grundstimmung] of philosophizing.”49 Thus, like the ‘not-at-home’ of theuncanniness of Dasein in Being and Time, the ‘not-at-home’ of homesickness here is seen as
providing the primary impulse for any thinking and philosophizing, but now Heidegger seems
to make more directly the suggestion that any adequate thinking and philosophizing needs toawaken it and maintain it in the pursuit of its ends.50
In Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger continues his usage of the metaphorics of‘home’ – most significantly by a new discussion of uncanniness, which could be seen as apeculiar expansion of the one that we know from his magnus opus. More particularly, he offers
his own reading of the first ode of the choir of Sophocles’ Antigone,51 in which he translates
the Greek word deinon (δεινόν) as ‘uncanny’ and identifies it as the most fundamental aspectof the human condition,

47

Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, translated by William
McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 5; Die Grundbegriffeder Metaphysik. Welt–Endlichkeit–Einsamkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983), S 7.
48
Ibid., p. 5; SS 7-8.
49
Ibid., p. 9; S 12.
50
For an insightful discussion of Novalis’ Heimweh, which can also be translated as ‘nostalgia’, see Tomokazu
Baba, “Philosophy as Journey,” Global Conversations: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy
and Culture, Vol. II, No. 01 (2019), pp. 12-14.
51
Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 156ff; Einführung in die Metaphysik, Gesamtausgabe, Band
40, SS 155ff.

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Manifold is the uncanny, yet nothing
uncannier than man bestir itself, rising up beyond him.

Heidegger sees the ode as depicting the human being as “the uncanniest of the uncanny” andas becoming such in the face of the “overwhelming sway” of beings as a whole.52 He identifies
two key senses of deinon – ‘terrible’ and ‘violent’, which he sees as transposed within the relation of the human and the sway, as well as as applying to both of them. As he puts it, “thedeinon is the terrible in the sense of the overwhelming sway, which induces panicked fear, trueanxiety, as well as collected, inwardly, reverberating, reticent awe”; whereas “the violent [dasGewaltige], the overwhelming [das Überwältigende] is the essential character of the sway
[Walten] itself.” 53 For its part, “humanity is deinon” both in the sense that it “is exposed to” theterror of the “overwhelming sway” and in the sense that it is “violence-doing.”54 But while theuncanny character of humanity is a response to the terror and violence of the overwhelming
sway, “because it is doubly deinon..., it [humanity] is to deinotaton, the most violent: violencedoing in the midst of the overwhelming.” 55 Thus, humanity is seen as uncanny (indeed ‘theuncanniest of the uncanny’) in the two identified senses of deinon, namely, ‘terrible’ and ‘violent’ (indeed ‘the most violent’), whereas its uncanniness is transposed along its relation withthe ‘overwhelming sway’ of beings as a whole and is at once provider and receiver of both
‘violence’ and ‘terror’.
It must be clarified, though, that for Heidegger the uncanny is not “an impression madeon our emotional states”; it is instead “that which throws one out of the ‘canny’, that is, thehomely, the accustomed, the usual, the unendangered.” 56 Furthermore, it is not a “particularproperty” that we assign “as if the human were something else in addition”; it is “the basic traitof the human essence, into which every other trait must always be drawn.” 57 It is thus not surprising that Heidegger will claim that “the saying ‘the human being is the uncanniest’ provides
the authentic Greek definition of humanity.” 58 This claim aligns with his previous position that
uncanniness is the primary impulse for any thinking and philosophizing, as well as that ‘thehuman essence’, as marked by its ‘uncanniness’, is to be singled out as the being which concerns itself with Being.
For the purpose of this paper, I shall draw attention to one more discussion of the metaphorics of ‘home’ in Heidegger’s later thought, which comes from the fourth volume of his
Nietzsche. In a remarkable passage there, he dwells on “homelessness” (Heimatlosigkeit) and“homecoming” (Heimkehr) as the modes of Being of historical humanity that motivate anddelimit all its putative success and essentialist searches,
The unfamiliarity of beings as such brings to light the homelessness of historical man within beings
as a whole. The “where” of a dwelling in the midst of beings as such seems obliterated, because theBeing itself, as the essential occurring of every abode, fails to appear.
52

Ibid., p. 159; SS 158-159.
Ibid., pp. 159-160; SS 158-159.
54
Ibid., p. 160; S 159.
55
Ibid., p. 160; S 159.
56
Ibid., p. 161; S 160.
57
Ibid., p. 161; S 160.
58
Ibid., p. 161; S 160.
53

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The partly conceded, partly denied homelessness of man with regard to his essence is replaced by
the organized global conquest of the earth, and the thrust into outer space. Homeless man – thanks
to the success of his management and ordering of ever great numbers of his kind – lets himself be
driven into flight in the face of his own essence, only to represent this flight to himself as a homecoming to the true humanity of homo humanus, and to make humanity part of his own enterprise.59

As in Heidegger’s discussion of uncanniness in Being and Time, here ‘the unfamiliarity of beings as such’ is also linked to the ‘homelessness’ of historical humanity in the face of ‘beings
as a whole’. In the state of ‘homelessness’, every ‘where’ remains ‘obliterated’, as ‘Being itself’, what is necessary for any knowledge and familiarity, ‘fails to appear’. At the same time,the ‘homelessness’ of humanity is seen as compensated via ‘organized global conquest of theearth’ and the cosmic space, which for Heidegger is a result of the ‘homeless’ humanity facingits ‘own essence’. This peculiar, compensating ‘flight’ of humanity to itself he now calls
straightforwardly homecoming. In his view, this is a ‘homecoming’ which humanity tends to‘represent’ as homecoming to its own ‘true’ essence, and thus to see itself as ‘part of its own
enterprise’. And though humanity in this way may lose itself into beings, (for the more it “requires beings, the less it craves for being as such” and is “even less inclined to heed Being
itself”),60 homecoming is for Heidegger still the enterprise that marks its way, as a way out of
its homelessness.
Heidegger’s latter metaphorics of ‘home’ is linked to that of Being and Time in that it
plays a key part in conveying the existential motivation for the self-discovery and the workingsof the existential subject. In essence, it is a continuation of the usage of his earlier ‘home’ related
metaphorics, which is now elaborated along its relationship to philosophizing, a discussion of
the notion of deinon in the ancient Greek culture, and the introduction of the notions of homelessness and homecoming. At this point, we can note that Heidegger’s notion of homecoming
appears to be most conspicuously indicative of the relation between his metaphorics of ‘way’
and that of ‘home’, whose aptness for the characterization of our reflective activities of thinking
and philosophizing we seek to demonstrate here.
For additional support to the claim that thinking and philosophizing can be fittingly represented within the metaphorics of waying and homecoming, I now turn to Lao-tse’s Tao Te
Ching.
5. Lao-tse’s concepts of Tao and Te
It is nothing less of remarkable that a very similar sense of waying and homecoming in relation
to thinking and philosophizing can be isolated in the classic of Tao Te Ching, whose authorshiphas been most commonly attributed to Lao-tse. I shall focus here on its two main concepts, Tao(道) and Te (德), as well as on their relation,61 aiming to identify aspects of their senses that
attune with those of the above discussed metaphorics of Heidegger’s.

59

Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volumes III and IV, edited by David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1991), Vol. IV, p. 248; Nietzsche, Bd. II (Phullingen: Günther Neske Verlag, 1961), SS 394-395.
60
Ibid., p. 248; S 395.
61
For a more detailed discussion of Tao and Te, as well as of other related aspects of the philosophical perspectiveof Laozi, see Rossen Roussev, “Global Conversation on the Spot: What Lao-tse, Heidegger, and Rorty Have in

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Most generally, in Laozi, Tao is understood as the ‘way’ of all existence and Te as
standing for each existing being’s adherence to that ‘way’. The sense that we get for Tao fromthe classic is that it remains “beyond the power of words” and thus could be rendered only as
wu (無) or ‘nothing’.62 Despite its essential nothingness, Tao is understood as the source of allexistence via its first more specific upshot – the creative power Qi (氣). Furthermore, Tao isunderstood as designating the harmony and balance of all there is – that is, all beings – via thetwo opposing powers Yin (陰) and Yang (陽), which are the first creations of Qi.63 Tao is also
fundamentally the ‘way’ of Te; that is, it is the ‘way’ of each being’s individual partaking in
the harmony of Tao, including in the case of the human being – of one’s individual existence,of one’s mind and body, of one’s thinking and living.64
For its part, Te, which has been typically translated as “virtue” but also as “at the coreof life” (Bynner), “[Tao’s] outflowing operation” (Legge), “particular efficacy” and “character”(Ames and Hall),65 has the sense of one’s diligent maintaining of one’s individual relation to
Tao and becomes particularly pressing in the case of an eventual loss of Tao. In practice, thismeans that its role is to dispel all strife and tension, which would be indicative of the loss ofTao, by an effortless action, we-wei (無爲), that ensures one’s return to Tao, viz. one’s harmonious and peaceful co-existence along the rest of the world. Te is thus the constant actualizationof Tao in one’s individual existence and is one’s individual way and end within the eternal
harmony of Tao. In this its sense, and from a slightly different angle, Te can be also seen as alocalized manifestation of Tao,66 which “denotes this vital potency for life” that finds its way
in the cultivation of the individual nurtured beings.67
We can now focus on how this understanding of Laozi’s notions of Tao and Te relates
to the Heideggerian terminology that was previously discussed. On my reading, each of the two
key terms of the classic can be seen as accumulating in one way or another the senses of
Heidegger’s metaphorics of both ‘way’ and ‘home’. This, of course, will need to be shown, but
it is largely due to the multifaceted senses of Tao and Te, which are at once general and openended enough to match and accommodate a good many of Heidegger’s onto-phenomenological
Common,” Global Conversations: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture, Vol. 1,
No. 1 (2018), pp. 11-38.
62
The Way of Life, According to Lao Tzu, translated by Witter Bynner (New York: The Berkley Publishing Group,1986), Ch. 1; cf. Daodejing, “Making This Life Significant,”A Philosophical Translation, English and Mandarin
Chinese Edition, translated and with commentary by Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall (New York: Ballantine
Books, 2003), Ch. 1.
63
Lao Zi, Dao De Jing, translated by Bruce R. Linnell (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018), Ch.
42; Rudolf G. Wagner, A Chinese reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi with Critical
Text and Translation (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003), Ch. 42; Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, Ch. 42.
64
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell (London: Frances Lincoln Ltd., 2015), Ch. 54;
Bruce R. Linnel, Ch. 54; Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, Ch. 54.
65
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, translated by Feng, Gia-Fu & Jane English, Vintage Books (New York, New York,1989), Ch. 51; The Way of Life, According to Lao Tzu, Ch. 10; The Tâo Teh King, or The Tâo and its Characteristics, in The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Taoism, translated by James Legge (Oxford: The Clarendon
Press, 1891), Ch. 51; Daodejing, “Making This Life Significant,”A Philosophical Translation, Ch. 51, Ch. 54.
66
Rossen Roussev, “Global Conversation on the Spot: What Lao-tse, Heidegger, and Rorty Have in Common,” p.
18.
67
Thomas Michael, The Pristine Dao: Metaphysics in Early Daoist Discourse (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), p. 63.

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projections. In this sense, whereas the multifacetedness of the key terms of Laozi does not allow
for their strict one-for-one rendition in Heideggerian vocabulary, it does allow us to seek acredible projection of the perspective of the short ancient classic into that of the multivolume
work of the 20th-century thinker, even as his terms may be seen as converging within fewer
terms of the classic.
Thus, it can be immediately noticed that, if Tao is understood as the ‘way’ of the harmony of all existence (and so also of coexistence) for each thing and every individual, and isthus understood as the way to be followed in a most general sense, Tao can be likewise also
understood as the ‘way of thinking’. We need to make it clear, though, that along Tao’s allinclusiveness ‘way of thinking’ here accumulates not only Heidegger’s early sense of a nonmethodical ‘way’ which needs to be gone ‘all the way’ and to keep the existential subject continuously ‘underway’, but also his later more nuanced understanding of ‘way’. As we alreadysaw, in its ineffability and essential nothingness, Tao remains as indeterminate as Heidegger’s
later metaphor for thinking – the woodpath (with its unclear and abrupt end). This is so evenwhen the particular beings come to terms with Tao in Te, because these beings can only beelements of Tao’s harmony, and in no way its determination; for they are in a way secondary,as they “came out of the womb of the matter.”68 Likewise, when actualized in its loss as a searchin Te and thus within a particular way of thinking, Tao becomes almost literally ‘way-making’.69 That is, Tao can be equally seen as including the later Heidegger’s choice of the old
Alemannic-Swabian Bewëgung as a metaphor for thinking as well. For us, this means that, even
if Laozi’s Tao – in its ineffability and essential nothingness – appears to resemble more closely
the character of Heidegger’s Being (that is, what for Heidegger underlays all thinking and philosophizing), its sense can be seen also as largely inclusive of that of Heidegger’s way of thinking. There should be no room for much surprise here – we are just prompted once again to
Heidegger’s note that “the word ‘way’ probably is a primal word that speaks to the reflective
mind of man.” 70
Now, in addition to its sense of ‘way’, Tao can be seen also as the ‘home’ for all existence and coexistence. For, as Tao ensures the harmony of all there is along the opposing powersof Yin and Yang, it is also where the individual beings aim to return along their Te. We need tonote here, though, that if Tao can readily accommodate Heidegger’s metaphorics of both ‘way’
and ‘home’, this is in no way indicative of any discrepancy in the perspective of Laozi. On thecontrary, as it was already pointed, the multifaceted sense of Tao allows it accommodate thesenses of a large number of Heidegger’s terms in a consistent fashion, including the ones of hisway, Being, way of thinking, woodpath, way-making, and home.
Similarly, the multifaceted sense of Laozi’s Te allows it too to consistently accommodate Heidegger’s metaphorics of both ‘way’ and ‘home’ – Te can be seen as being at once both
one’s way to and one’s home in the harmony of Tao. Te could be one’s individual way to Tao
when it is actualized when Tao is lost; Te could be one’s home in the harmony of Tao when it
68

Witter Bynner, Ch. 1.
In fact, this is how it has been rendered in the purposely philosophical translation of Roger T. Ames and David
L. Hall.
70
Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, p. 92; cf. Martin Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache, Gesamtausgabe I, Band 12, S 187.
69

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upholds one’s individual adherence to Tao. Indeed, to the extent that Te becomes pressing in a
possible loss of Tao, an actualized Te, as a search for Tao, can be also seen as one’s waying andhomecoming. Furthermore, Te, as upholding one’s individual relationship to Tao, would be
responding to Tao’s essential nothingness, wu, with an effortless action, wu-wei, which would
be indeed the right action that both ensures and marks one’s adherence to the harmony of Tao.
And finally, when actualized in the loss of Tao as the search for Tao, Te can be also seen as
inclusive of the senses of both Novalis’ Heimweh and the Greek deinon, which for the later
Heidegger had the character of uncanniness that fundamentally motivates all our thinking andphilosophizing.
Thus, in the perspective of the present investigation, we can conclude that, if when disturbed Lao-tse’s harmony of Tao and Heidegger’s ‘at-home’ of the existential subject can beaddressed reflectively by way of, respectively, a diligent upholding of Te and a concernful
search for home, (while the identification of wu-wei as the “Taoist equivalent” of Heidegger’s
Gelassenheit or ‘releasement’ still stands),71 the parallel between the two thinkers in understanding thinking and philosophizing as waying and homecoming will be essentially complete.
6. Herodotus’ metaphorics of ‘journey’
The last point that I would like to bring here in support of the view that thinking and philosophizing can be aptly apperceived within the metaphorics of waying and homecoming comesfrom the dawn of the Western philosophical tradition and, more specifically, from the context
of the first record of a conjoined usage of philos (φῐ́λος), and sophia (σοφῐ́ᾱ), which is found in
Herodotus’ Histories. In their independent usage, the Greek word philos, which comes fromthe verb philein (φιλεῖν) most commonly translated as ‘to love’, had the meanings of ‘loved’,‘beloved’, ‘loving’, ‘dear’ and ‘friend’, whereas sophia, most commonly translated as ‘wisdom’, more originally had the meaning of ‘skill’ and ‘ability to do something well’. In his
Histories, Herodotus uses the verb philosopheîn (φιλοσοφεῖν) broadly in the sense of love tolearn, (which indeed comprises both existential and epistemic meanings), and links it to traveling across the world “for the sake of seeing various lands.”72 In a scene describing a meeting at
the Ancient city of Sardis between the Athenian legislator Solon and the king of Lydia Croesus
the latter is said to have said,ξεῖνε Ἀθηναῖε, παρ᾽ ἡµέας γὰρ περὶ σέο λόγος ἀπῖκται πολλὸς καὶ σοφίης εἵνεκεν τῆς σῆς καὶπλάνης, ὡς φιλοσοφέων γῆν πολλὴν θεωρίης εἵνεκεν ἐπελήλυθας. 73

On A.D. Godlay’s translation this is rendered as,
Our Athenian guest, we have heard much of you, by reason of your wisdom and your wanderings,
how that you have travelled far to seek knowledge and to see the world.74

71

Joan Stambaugh,“Heidegger, Taoism, and the Question of Metaphysics,” p. 85.
Herodotus, The History Of Herodotus, translated by G. C. Macaulay (London and New York: MacMillan andCo., 1890), I, 30.
73
Herodotus, Volumes I and II, translated by A.D. Godlay (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press;
London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1975), I, 30.
74
Ibid., I, 30.
72

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On Macaulay’s translation it is,Athenian guest, much report of thee has come to us, both in regard to thy wisdom and thy wanderings, how that in thy search for wisdom thou hast traversed many lands to see them.75

On Tom Holland’s translation,
We have heard a good deal about you, my guest from Athens: you have a reputation as a wise andwell-travelled man, as a philosopher indeed, one who has travelled the world and always kept hiseyes wide open.76

On Gregory Nagy’s translation,
Athenian guest [xenos], we have heard much about your wisdom [sophiā] and your wandering[planē], how you in your love of wise things [philosopheîn] have traveled all over the world for thesake of a sacred journey [theōriā]...77

We can note here that the usage of philosopheîn in Herodotus is rendered different in translations, not least because it is still far removed from the later, markedly speculative, sense of‘philosophize’. Herodotus’ sense appears to be suggestive of a simple love to learn or a naturaldesire to find out something previously unknown, something that may not be specific, or something of which we may not have any clues at all. One thing about this usage is clear, though:philosophizing in this early sense is linked to ‘wanderings’, ‘seeing’, and ‘traveling’ throughout
the ‘world’.78
In the perspective of the present investigation, it is important to note that philosopheîn
is most immediately associated with θεωρία (theōriā) or ‘seeing’. In fact, while the Greek sophia is of unknown origin, there is a strong etymological connection between ‘wisdom’ and‘seeing’ in other Western languages. Thus, the German Weisheit and the English wisdom aretraceable to the Proto-Indo-Europen root weid- meaning ‘to see’, to which are also traceable
some of the senses of the German Weise and the English way. 79 In this sense, whereas theassociations of both philosopheîn with theōriā and ‘wisdom’ with ‘seeing’ can be considered
clear pointers to the sense of the 20th century’s phenomenological reflection, (about which
Heidegger himself has had much to say),80 they are also key indications of what I am trying todemonstrate here, namely, that thinking and philosophizing can be aptly apperceived in themetaphorics of waying and homecoming. In this regard, Nagy’s rendition of theōriā as ‘a sacredjourney’ appears to be most suggestive, as the sense of ‘journey’ is inclusive of those of ‘waying’ and ‘homecoming’. In this sense, journey can be seen as holding together waying and75

Herodotus, The History Of Herodotus, I, 30.
Herodotus, The Histories, translated by Tom Holland (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), I, 30.
77
Gregory Nagy, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours (Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 628.
78
See also Tomokazu Baba, “Philosophy as Journey,” pp. 9-10.
79https://www.etymonline.com.
80
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1962), pp. 49ff; Sein und Zeit, SS 17ff.
76

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homecoming in an inseparable unity – the unity which defines philosophizing most fundamentally as journey, and indeed the journey of waying and homecoming.
We can exemplify this point by a slight expansion of the context here – the usage ofphilosopheîn on Herodotus’ account is made in a discussion on the meaning of happiness, inwhich the affluent and powerful Lydian king was hoping to be confirmed as “the happiest ofmen” by the “wisdom” of the well-traveled Athenian legislator.81 That Solon’s wisdom surprised and did not actually satisfy the king is perhaps a cliché, (though one that may be well
worth considering); but that it was gathered in a journey across the world is a finding that isgermane and well-fitting within our discussion here. In its primordial usage, philosophy is seen
as a journey all along waying and homecoming.
7. In conclusion
The above discussion of Heidegger’s way- and home-related vocabularies, Lao-tse’s notions of
Tao and Te, and Herodotus’ association of philosopheîn and theōriā was meant to demonstrates
the aptness of the metaphorics of ‘way’, ‘home’, and ‘journey’ for apperceiving our reflective
activities of thinking and philosophizing. This aptness was initially detected within the respective perspectives of thought of each of these three authors, but was also traced in a cross-perspectival fashion – along their interlinkage in the perspective of the present investigation. By
way of conclusion, I shall now briefly summarize the interlinks of these metaphorics and theway they recapture thinking and philosophizing as the journey of waying and homecoming.
In Heidegger’s early work Being and Time, the metaphorics of ‘way’ is traceable along
a wide range of his usage of the German language, in which it enters the role of a carrier of thefundamentals of the existential analytic of Dasein. More specifically, it conveys the epistemic
aspect of the existential dynamics of Dasein presenting the latter as being that in all its workings
is constantly ‘underway’; it also plays a key part in Heidegger’s discussion of time, which is an
intrinsic element of that dynamics. It is important to note that for early Heidegger the sense of
the term ‘way’ is different from that of method for multiple application, even if it is essentiallyrelated to Dasein’s epistemic and ontological concerns. Instead, it is more akin to that of a‘journey’ which can be completed only if one is able to go through it ‘all the way’. In this sense,
thinking and philosophizing in Heidegger’s early thought reappear as a kind of epistemic journey, which is always unique on its own and which can only be completed by going all the way
along it.
In Heidegger’s later work, the metaphorics of ‘way’ is much more nuanced, even as its
association with epistemic journey remains intact. With the metaphor of the ‘woodpath’,
Heidegger has suggested that a ‘way’ is created by going along it and that it is thus a way withan unknown end. In this sense, ‘thinking’ is understood as ‘questioning’ and as ‘going along
the way’, whereas the ‘way’ is understood as ‘way of thinking’. Heidegger has also associated‘thinking’ with ‘clearing a way’, which suggests once again that ‘thinking’ is creating a way(its own way), and additionally – that it is maintaining it. Furthermore, he has traced the senseof the ‘call’ of ‘what calls for thinking’ to that of ‘setting in motion’ and ‘getting underway’,
and has also identified it as a non-demanding but rather inviting and letting one reach one’s
destination. In this sense, he has also discussed the old German word Sinnan (‘to travel, to strive
81

Herodotus, The History Of Herodotus, I, 30.

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after, ... to take a certain direction’), which is an element of the etymology of the German and
Latin words for meaning and reflection, and which points to a common semantic genealogy of
the words for thinking and traveling that is traceable to the Proto-Indo-European sent or set
meaning ‘way’. Finally, in a discussion of the ancient Chinese notion of Tao, Heidegger has
pointed to the inadequacies of rendering its sense in Western languages as ‘reason, mind, raison, meaning, logos’, suggesting instead that it is rather Tao, which literally means ‘way’, thatprovides ‘the very source of our power to think what reason, mind, meaning, logos properly
mean to say’. Thus, Heidegger’s elaborations on the metaphorics of ‘way’ in his later thought
too point – and in various ways – to the intrinsic relation between ‘way’ and ‘thinking’, andultimately affirm once again the former as a fitting metaphor for apperception of the latter.
Heidegger’s early metaphorics of ‘home’ is associated with the fundamental existentialcondition for Dasein’s thinking and philosophizing. Its central term uncanniness has come tostand for the basic existential impulse that sets ‘in motion’ and ‘on the way’ Dasein’s understanding of itself and its disclosure of the world. For Heidegger, uncanniness is the existential
feeling of ‘not-at-home’, which may prompt an inauthentic search for the ‘at-home’ in the worldof everydayness associated with the ‘they’. And yet, it may also open Dasein to ‘its ownmost
potentiality-for-Being’ and thus to the possibility for Dasein’s authentic concern with Being,
which is the fundamental epistemic concern that underlies all its thinking and philosophizing.
Heidegger’s latter metaphorics of ‘home’ is again associated with the primary impulseof the existential subject for its both self-discovery and disclosure of the world. In substance, it
is a continuation of his earlier usage of ‘home’ related vocabulary but is now elaborated onalong its relationship to philosophizing, a discussion of the notion of deinon in Sophocles, andthe introduction of the tropes of homelessness, homesickness, and homecoming. Here, the term
homecoming, which specifies ‘the flight’ of thinking and philosophizing that originate in uncanniness, has a special significance for us, as it appears most obviously to be bridging themetaphorics of ‘way’ and that of ‘home’. In homecoming, waying, thinking, and philosophizing
converge into an intrinsic unity, which Heidegger sought to uncover and bring forward throughout his philosophy by making use of the two metaphorics in focus here.
It must have become also already clear that the metaphorics of way and that of home,
both of which persist throughout Heidegger’s thought, are inevitably linked with one another.
Most generally, we can see their connection in that terms such as uncanniness, homelessness,and homesickness stand for what sets the existential subject in motion or on the way, which isessentially a way to home. In the philosophical thinking of Heidegger, the metaphorics of ‘way’
offers recognizable terms for connecting the structural elements of the epistemic aspect of the
dynamics of the existential subject, whereas that of ‘home’ offers ones that bring to light the
primary existential condition for that dynamics. But not only are the metaphorics of ‘way’ andthat of ‘home’ inherently linked to one another, they also aptly convey and ensure the understanding of thinking and philosophizing in Heidegger’s both early and later thought. Within
their terms, thinking and philosophizing can be apperceived as waying and homecoming. Thatis, they can be apperceived as and along the way of an epistemic journey, which is always
unique and which unfolds along the uncanniness, homesickness, homelessness, the search for
home, and homecoming of the existential subject.

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Thinking and Philosophizing as the Journey of Waying and Homecoming: Heidegger, Lao-tse, and Herodotus

Heidegger’s apperception of thinking and philosophizing as waying and homecoming
is also fittingly complemented by Laozi’s perspective on Tao and Te. Most generally, Tao,
which literally means ‘way’, is understood as the ineffable source of, and generally the ‘way’
to be followed by, all existence and harmony; whereas Te is the principle of one’s individual
relation and adherence to Tao, which become particularly pressing if Tao is lost. It is important
to note here that the senses of these concepts are multifaceted and that, whereas this may havemade them difficult to translate, it has also enabled them to carry the senses of multiple termsof the philosophical perspective of the Western thinker. Thus, they can be both shown to hostthe senses of Heidegger’s ‘way’ and ‘home’, even if in their own way. Tao can be seen at onceas the ‘way’ and ‘home’ of all existence; Te – as the ‘way’ and ‘home’ of one’s individual
existence. In this sense, when Te is actualized in the case of a loss of Tao, the search for Tao in
one’s Te can be seen – as in the perspective of the present investigation – as the journey of
one’s waying and homecoming.
Finally, the apperception of thinking and philosophizing as waying and homecoming is
also supported by the metaphorics of ‘journey’ used in Herodotus’ Histories in the context ofthe first recorded conjoined usage of philos and sophia. At the very dawn of the Western philosophical tradition, Herodotus uses the verb philosopheîn in the sense of love to learn, or desire
to find out, in a close association with theōriā or ‘seeing’. In the story of the meeting between
Solon and Croesus he narrates, philosophizing in this early sense is linked to ‘traveling for thesake seeing the world’. Now, as theōriā can also be translated as ‘journey’, it can also be seen
as inclusive of the senses of ‘waying’ and ‘homecoming’, which are in our focus here. And as
in this sense philosophizing is most fundamentally unveiled as journey, it can also be seen as
the journey of waying and homecoming.

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Lafcadio Hearn and Japan: From a “Journey” to “Home”
GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume II, Number 01 (2019): 43-59

Home, Journey, and Literature
LAFCADIO HEARN AND JAPAN: FROM A “JOURNEY” TO “HOME”
Fabien Durringer

Abstract
Following the theme “Home and Journey around the Globe” of the 2nd symposium
organized by the Society for Philosophy as Global Conversation, this article tries
to analyze how Japan, which started as a travel destination via a journalistic
assignment, became and remained, until the end of his life, “home” for the writer
Lafcadio Hearn. Assuming that the reader is not necessarily well acquainted withthis author, usually known in the field of Japonology, we start by describing in somedetail Hearn’s life and work. This thorough overview allows us in the second andthe third part to analyze two fundamental questions concerning Hearn’s life andwork: first, we try to understand how Japan, a destination meant to be a place of ajourney, could trigger Hearn’s desire to settle there; second, we analyze how thisdesire was sustained throughout his life. To answer our initial question, we describeand explain the process through which Hearn fell in love with Japan and how theJapanese, in return, showed their affection to him. In that part, we also tackle theproblem of Hearn’s childhood and teenage life, which enables us to understandhow a country like Japan, with its peculiarity in terms of people’s spirit, religious
faith, and beliefs, could match so well with Hearn’s personality. Past the initial
encounter, the passion and the delights of the first few years, which saw Hearn
marry a Japanese woman and settle his home there, we analyze how he kept his
desire to be in Japan and live in the long run. We show that this was rendered
possible through his position as a scholar and his rich work on interpreting Japanand its culture. Hearn was a committed person and his position as an intermediary
between West and East enabled him to question the presumed superiority of theWestern culture over its Eastern counterpart. Besides this commitment, anotherfactor, namely, the sharp insight of his writings on Japan, can also be seen as
sustaining his desire to remain in that particular country. By means of his essays
and stories, Hearn was indeed able to make its contemporary readers “undertakea journey” in Japan, and he played a crucial role in laying the foundations ofcultural analysis studies about this country that would flourish in the twentiethcentury.
Keywords: Lafcadio Hearn, biography, work, Japan, travel, home, culture

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Introduction“Journey” and “Home” are two words that seem to fit perfectly with Lafcadio Hearn’s both life
and work. As a déraciné (a rootless person) Lafcadio Hearn was in constant search of a “home”
during his entire life. Having already had an extraordinary life filled with moments of extreme
difficulties and numerous moves, Hearn finally settled down in Japan at around forty years ofage, where he founded a family and spent the rest of his life. During his fourteen years there hewrote many books about Japan, which nowadays are still considered among the best work ofinterpretation of the culture of this country and the life of its people.
To assess Hearn’s life and work in the light of “journey” and “home” we will need tostart with a presentation of who Hearn was and what he achieved in terms of writings. This firstpart will allow us to understand better the second one, which will focus on how Japan, where
he was sent on an assignment, became indeed his home, how the encounter with this country
made him fall in love with it, or more prosaically put, how the “chemistry” between him andJapan worked. The third part will focus on how Hearn kept his desire to stay in Japan, especiallyon his role of advocate and interpreter of the culture of this country, and on his literary capacity
to take his contemporary readers – through his writings – “on a journey” to this land.
1. Hearn’s life and work
1.1 Hearn’s life1
It will not be an exaggeration to describe Hearn’s life as “extra-ordinary.” Throughout thecourse of his entire life he lived on three different continents: Europe in his youth, America
from age of 19 to 40, and Asia – Japan – until his death when he was 54. He lived in at least six
different countries and a total of about fifteen different cities.2
He was born on the Greek Island of Lefkada or Leucadia to an Irish surgeon of the
British army, Charles Bush Hearn, and a Greek mother, Rosa Antonia Cassimati. His full namewas Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, his middle name deriving from Lefkada, the Island on which he
was born.
Lafcadio Hearn’s childhood and teenage years were in the main marked by a successionof abandonments. The first one came from his mother, described as “a young Greek woman,from a good family, but illiterate and very religious,”3 who initially moved to Dublin with him
in 1852 to her family in law. She left back for Greece two years later in the summer of 1854
mentally ill – having attempted suicide the previous year4 – leaving the little Lafcadio in thehand of his grand-mother’s sister, Sarah Brenane, a wealthy widow, who was to take care of
him until his departure for America. Hearn never saw his mother again upon her departure for
Greece. His father, on the other hand, was rarely home; he was assigned by the army first to the1

Most of the dates and facts for this biography have been taken from: Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey: The Lifeand Literature of Lafcadio Hearn (Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Japan Library, 1993); Edith De la Héronnière, “Lafcadio
Hearn: Une voix venue du plus intime de l’invisibilité,” in Lettres Japonaises (Paris: Pocket Revue des Deux
Mondes, 2014); Kyoto Gaidai, Bibliotheca Hearnania, Tokyo: The University Library (Kyoto University ofForeign Studies, 1997).
2
See Document 1 for a summary map of his life prior Japan, Document 2 for his life in Japan.
3
Edith De la Héronnière, “Lafcadio Hearn,” p. 12. Quote translated from the French by the author.
4
Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, p. 220.

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West Indies (Feb. 1850–Sept. 1853), then to the Crimean war (March 1854–July 1856), andfinally for India, in August 1857, the year that he divorced Lafcadio Hearn’s mother, to remarry.
He will never return from India, dying in 1866 from Indian fever on a ship to Suez.5
From 1857, when it was agreed between his father and his great-aunt that he would beraised as a Roman Catholic,6 until 1863, when he was sent by Mrs. Brenane to a Roman Catholic
English boarding School, Lafcadio seemed to have enjoyed a life “of cultured leisure with,critically, untrammeled access to books of all sorts.”7 A move to England after Mrs. Brenane
married Henry Hearn Molyneux, a clerk at the Admiralty, and his life in his new school near
Durham marked the start of a series of misfortunes.8 First, entering this boarding school
practically meant that Lafcadio was abandoned once more, this time by his great-aunt. He would
even spend his holidays there. Next, he became a victim of an accident that resulted in the lossof his eye during a game at the school. His healthy eye would eventually deteriorate, making
him all too preoccupied with poor eyesight. Finally, his great-aunt went bankrupt owing to somedisastrous financial decisions by her new husband.
Without enough money to finance the completion of his secondary education, Mrs.
Brenane withdrew him from school and had Lafcadio Hearn finish it in a day school in London,
where they both had found refuge in the house of the maid who had accompanied them all theway from Ireland.9
In 1869, a decision was made to send Lafcadio to America, in Cincinnati, whererelatives of Molyneux could help him move on with his life. Hearn’s arrival in New York andthe first few months that he spent there remain a mystery to his biographers. Some saw him
spending one or two years in misery,10 accepting little jobs to survive. But according to others,
he relatively quickly11 made contact with the people he was addressed to, reaching a person
named Henry Watking who offered him a job in the printing trade in Cincinnati. Eventually,making his own way through, Lafcadio was able to start collaborating as a journalist in the
Enquirer in October 1872 and joined it as a regular staff member in 1874.12 Although
recognized as gifted, the image of Hearn was that of an outsider.13 As a journalist, he wasprimarily writing articles out of news items that were very much gruesome and macabre, inwhich he would exert his literary talent, the one he would later on use to tell thrilling Japanese
ghost stories. Moreover, in his translation work he would venture on texts of the “unacceptably
salacious French Romanticism.”14 To add to his image of an outsider, Hearn married a Black
woman named Mattie Folley, despite the fact that it was illegal at that time. This marriage,
although short-lived – a few months according to Hearn himself – cost him his job at the5

Ibid., p. 230.
Ibid., p. 233.
7
Ibid., p. 16.
8Ibid., p. 16.
9Ibid., p. 267.
10
Edith De la Héronnière, “Lafcadio Hearn,” pp. 13–14.
11
Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, pp. 24–25.
12
Kyoto Gaidai, Bibliotheca Hearnania, p. 61.
13
Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, p. 17.
14
Ibid., p. 17
6

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Enquirer.15 And though his journalist talent landed him another job at Cincinnati Commercial
in 1876, his time in this city would nonetheless come to an end the following year, when, trying
to explain his move, he simply declared that it was time for him to leave Cincinnati.16
Document 1
HEARN’S LIFE BEFORE JAPAN
1. 1850 Birth in Greece (Leucadia or Lefkada)
2. 1852 Dublin
3. 1862 – 63 (Rouen ?)4. 1863 – 1867 Durham
5. 1867 – 1868 London
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
6. 1869 New York(21years)
7. 1870 – 1877 Cincinnati
8. 1877 – 1887 New-Orleans
9. 1887 – 1889 French West Indies (Antilles St Pierre)
10. 1890 New YorkEUROPE (19 years)

2
7

4

5

3

6
10

1

8
9

Drawn by the author with the following sources:
Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey: The Life and Literature of Lafcadio Hearn (Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Japan
Library, 1993)
Edith De la Héronnière, “Lafcadio Hearn: Une voix venue du plus intime de l’invisibilité,” in Lettres Japonaises(Paris: Pocket Revue des Deux Mondes, 2014), 11-29.
Kyoto Gaidai. Bibliotheca Hearnania. Tokyo: The University Library (Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, 1997).
https://fr.wikipedia.org (blank map).

His next destination will be the south, which seemed to have attracted him because of
its sunny and warm weather. His move to the south was also marked by an intention to moveaway from journalism and start a carrier in literary writing,17 while at the same time moving

15

Ibid., p. 48.
Ibid., p. 51.
17
Ibid., p. 56.
16

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somewhat closer to his Greek roots by dropping the name Paddy for Lafcadio.18 Nevertheless,during his stay in New Orleans journalism will remain his livelihood, working for the Item and
The Democrat for three years (from 1878 to 1881) and later on taking the post of TimeDemocrat’s literary editor in 1881. His period in New Orleans, very productive in terms ofjournalistic work, will also mark the start of his books publications among which one can quote
One of Cleopatra’s Nights (1882), Stray Leaves from Strange Literature (1884), Gombo Zhèbes(1885), Some Chinese Ghosts (1887), Chita: A memory of the Last Island (1889).
The year of 1887 was to become important for him in that after visiting the French West
Indies, he decided to return there the same year and to stay for almost two years.19Although,financially challenging, the two years spent there, provided him with material for other books,
namely, Two years in the French Indies (1890) and Youma (1890).20 Having ultimately gonebankrupt,21 Hearn decided to return to New York in October 1889, where he remained a few
months before boarding, in March 1890, on Abyssinia to embark on what was to become thebiggest venture of his life: Japan.
Hearn was originally sent there on an assignment by Harper’s Magazine, the idea of
which was conceived in a conversation with the art director of the magazine.22 Although Hearn
was not quite satisfied with the terms of the agreement, which were rather unclear, he decided
to go ahead with it. His interest in things Oriental had apparently won over his fears of theunknown and “prompted him to undertake the journey to Japan, where he arrived on April 4th
1890.”23
His agreement with Harper’s Magazine was soon to break, but with the assistance ofHattori Ichizô, a Japanese whom he met at the New Orleans Centenary Exhibition a few years
earlier in 1885, he managed to secure a post as an English teacher in the town of Matsue. It isalso at his arrival in Japan that he got to become acquainted with the famous British Japanologist
Basil Hall Chamberlain.24
His time in Matsue actually proved to be one of the happiest he ever had.25 Only fourmonths upon his arrival there, in 1891, he married Koizumi Setsu, the daughter of a traditional
fallen samurai family, who was 18 years younger than him. He will have four children with her,three sons (1893, 1897, 1899) and one daughter (1903), who was born just a year before his
death.26 In 1893, the birth of his first child will raise the question of Hearn’s citizenship. He
will find it wiser to ask for Japanese status even at the expense of dropping his British one. Two

18

Ibid., p. 17.
Ibid., pp. 94–95.
20
Kyoto Gaidai, Bibliotheca Hearnania, p. viii.
21
Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, p. 111.
22
Ibid., p. 130.
23
Kyoto Gaidai, Bibliotheca Hearnania, p. viii.
24
Ibid., p. viii.
25
This happiness is expressed in many of his early writings, especially in his two volumes book Glimpses ofUnfamiliar Japan. See Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (CN: Tuttle Publishing, 2009).
26
Kyoto Gaidai, Bibliotheca Hearnania, pp. 62–63.
19

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years later, he will be granted the Japanese citizenship and will adopt the name Koizumi
Yakumo.27
Document 2
HEARN’S MOVES DURING HIS STAY IN JAPAN (1890 -1904)
Date and place of residence
Job
Cause of change
ReporterfortheHarper’s
Ruptureof«contract » with the Harper’s
1. Yokohama
Magazine.
magazine; need of a job.
1890 (april – sept.)
Englishteacherinaschool.
Health (cold weather).
2.Matsue1890 (sept.) – 1891 (nov.)
English teacher in a school .
From the beginning financial strain on
3.Kumamoto
his post. Hearn not happy, unsecure
1891 (nov.) – 1894 (oct.)financially.
Reporter for the Kobe
Eye problem in dec.1894. Need rest.
4.KobeChronicle.
Cannot take a job for a year and a half.
1894 (oct.) – 1896 (sept.)
5.Tokyo1896 (sept.) – 1904 (april)

Lecturer at the Imperial
University of Tokyo.

6.Tokyo1904 (april)
7.Yaizu
1897 – 1904

Lecturer at Waseda
university.
Spend summer vacations
there (except 1903?).

2
3

4

7 1

University not wanting to renew thecontract. Arrival of Natsume Sôseki in
1904.
Death by heart attack on the 26th
September 1904.

5/6

Drawn and established by the author on the basis the following sources:
Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey: The Life and Literature of Lafcadio Hearn (Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Japan
Library, 1993).
Edith De la Héronnière, “Lafcadio Hearn: Une voix venue du plus intime de l’invisibilité,” in Lettres Japonaises(Paris: Pocket Revue des Deux Mondes, 2014), 11-29.
Kyoto Gaidai. Bibliotheca Hearnania. Tokyo: The University Library (Kyoto University of Foreign Studies,1997).
https://www.hist-geo.com (blank map).

27

Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, 192: “Yakumo means eight clouds and was the first part of the most ancient
poem extant in the Japanese language.” An English translation of this Japanese poem can be found in: Basil H.
Chamberlain, trans., The Kojiki: Records of Ancient Matters (Singapore: Tuttle Classics, 1981), pp. 76–77.

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Hearn’s life in Japan can be roughly divided into two main periods: the one before hesettled in Tokyo and the one after. Before being appointed as an English literature lecturer at
the Tokyo Imperial University in 1896, Lafcadio’s life in Japan was rather unstable. His firstyear in Matsue, though filled with joy and excitement in the discovery of Japan, would end up
in bad health due to the cold weather. With the help of Chamberlain, Hearn managed to obtain
the position of English teacher in Kumamoto, a city located more to the south and with milder
weather.28 The three years he spent there were not his best in Japan.29 He did not have the samerapport with the students that he enjoyed in Matsue, and his post was under constant threat for
financial reasons each of these years. Tired of this situation Hearn decided to quit this job in
1894, and in October of the same year he became again a reporter, this time for the English
newspaper Kobe Chronicle.30 Unfortunately, he had to put his work there to a halt because ofan eye’s neuritis. Compelled to rest in dark to cure his eye, Hearn would not work in thenewspaper for a year and a half, and only articles that he sent to Atlantic Monthly allowed him
to get by during this difficult times.31
During this period before Tokyo, despite his compelling jobs duties, Hearn started
publishing his major books about Japan. Each of these books is more or less related to a citywhere Hearn was residing at the time of its writing. Thus, his most voluminous work Glimpsesof Unfamiliar Japan, which was published in two volumes in 1894, corresponds to his stay in
Matsue. Out of the East (1895) is linked with Kumamoto, whereas Kokoro (1896) and
Gleanings in Buddha’s Field (1897) are attached to Kobe.32
The life of Hearn and his family significantly changed and became more stable when he
was offered the post of professor of “English Language and Literature” at Tokyo Imperial
University in 1896. For seven years, until 1904, he was to teach English literature with passion,
integrity, and a high sense of duty. 33 He was much appreciated by his students, who stood byhim protesting quite massively when his contract was not renewed in 1904.34 The circumstancesof Hearn’s dismissal were not quite clear, but he was soon offered a similar post of lecturer thesame year by Count Okuma, the founder of Waseda University, where he started teaching soonafter.35 However, in the meantime Hearn's health had seriously deteriorated, and after a firstheart attack on September 19th 1904, he would not endure a second one a week later and will
die on September 26th. His funeral was held on September 30th and was the first one to be
conducted for a foreigner under the Buddhist office. It was attended by forty professors, one
hundred students, and only three foreigners.36
During his Tokyo period, Hearn published a number of books on Japan. According tomost of his interpreters, his view on the country did not significantly change over time during
28

Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, 153.
Edith De la Héronnière, “Lafcadio Hearn,” p. 22.
30Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, p. 178.
31
Ibid., pp. 183–184.
32
Ibid., pp. 146, 160, 188.
33
Ibid., p. 202.
34
For the details of the atmosphere surrounding Hearn’s dismissal see Yônejiro Noguchi, Lafcadio Hearn inJapan, 1910, Reprint (Kamakura: The Valley Press Japan, 1911), pp. 137–145. Those pages are a transcript of thejournal of one of Hearn’s former student named Kaworu Osanai.
35
Kyoto Gaidai, Bibliotheca Hearnania, p. 63; Murray, A Fantastic Journey, pp. 298–299.
36
Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, p. 301.
29

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this period. The main difference was rather in the type of publications he produced, which were
now ghost stories, together with essays. His books of the period were: In Ghostly Japan (1899)
Shadowings (1901), A Japanese Miscellany (1901), Kottô (1902) and Kwaidan (1904), which
was his most famous collection of ghost stories. His best-known analytical book, Japan: An
attempt at Interpretation (1904), was published posthumously, whereas the last of his books to
be published was The Romance of the Milky Way (1905).
1.2 Hearn’s oeuvre: an analytical overview
Looking more closely at Hearn’s works, we can divide them into two periods: publications
before Japan and publications in Japan. As already mentioned, Hearn started publishing books
while in New Orleans. Except for two novels, which were fairly popular at the time, his otherbooks have very much varied in terms of their contents. His Japanese books would include
translations, short stories retold, proverbs, essays, and others, most of which were modeled on
his Two years in the French West Indies.
Document 3
HEARN’S MAIN PUBLICATIONS BEFORE JAPAN1882: One of Cleopatra’s Nights, and other Fantastics Romances (Translation of Théophile Gautier)1884: Stray Leaves from Strange Literature (Stories reconstructed from Anvari-Soheili, Baital, Pachisi,
Mahabharata, Pantchatandra, Gulistan, Talmud, Kalewala, etc.
1885: Gombo Zhèbes (dictionary of Créole proverbs)
1887: Some Chinese Ghosts (shorts stories)
1889: Chita: A memory of Last Island (novel)
1890: Youma, The story of a West-Indian Slaves (novel)
1890: Two Years in the French West-Indies (miscellanous)
1890: The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (Translation of Anatole France)
Source: George M. Gould and Laura Stedman, Concerning Lafcadio Hearn (Wroclaw: Leopold Classic
Library, 2016), 248-250.

Hearn wrote a total of 14 books on Japan, published over a period of a little more thanten years (1894-1905).37 His most famous books are probably Kokoro (1896), Kwaidan (1904)
and Japan: an Attempt at Interpretation (1904), although most specialists would consider hisother works as equally interesting and valuable because of Hearn’s ability to always surprisethe reader with the originality of his approach to the topic he treats or the story he tells. Overall,
any writing approach he adopted, whether analytical or literary (retold old tales or legends fromJapan, shorts stories, etc.), could become a valuable means to present Japan to the readers. In
this sense, for Hearn, drawing on sensations and provoking feelings were tools of writing on
the same par as ensuring understanding.
On the analytical side, he would either describe what he saw or heard, or draw oncollected written materials. Although typically classified as “analytical,” some of thesedescriptions or observations, which could have easily taken the form of a television
documentary in our modern world, tell stories of real people and events happening in Japan insuch a vivid, colorful, realistic, and at once brilliant style that they could be equally classified
as literature.
37

See Document 4.

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For his purely literary work, the materials (legends, tales, folk stories, etc.) were takenfrom old Japanese books, or heard directly from his wife.38He would use his story-telling talent
to recreate the atmosphere of some old legends or folk stories dear to the Japanese people. Thus,
he made it possible for the Westerners to get to know better the Japanese folk and legends at atime when direct translations were still very scarce.
Document 4
HEARN’S PUBLICATIONS ABOUT JAPAN
1894: Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (2 Vol.)—Matsue—*
1895: Out of the East: Reveries and Studies in New Japan—Kumamoto—Analytical, use of re-told
1896: Kokoro; Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life
stories scarce—Kobe—
1897: Gleanings in Buddha’s Field: Studies of Hand and Soul in the
Far East—Kobe—
1898: Exotics and Retrospectives—Tokyo—1899: In Ghostly Japan—Tokyo—Analytical with literature
1900: Shadowings
also (tales, legends, short—Tokyo—stories, etc.)
1901: A Japanese Miscellany—Tokyo—1902: Kottô. Being Japanese Curios, with sundry Cobwebs—Tokyo—1904: Kwaidan; Stories and Studies of Strange Things
Mainly literature (legends,—Tokyo—tales, etc.)
1904: Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation
Only analytical (mainly—Tokyo; posthumous—
religion)
1905: The Romance of the Milky Way, and other Studies and Stories
Analytical with literature—Tokyo ; posthumous—*
In brackets the place that the book could be attached to, according to where Hearn was living while writing it.
Established by the author on the basis the following sources:
George M. Gould and Laura Stedman, Concerning Lafcadio Hearn (Wroclaw: Leopold Classic Library, 2016),
248-250.
Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey: The Life and Literature of Lafcadio Hearn (Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Japan
Library, 1993).

Considering Hearn’s entire work, we can note that his first few books were more
analytical (1894-1898), while beginning with In Ghostly Japan he started using short storytelling much more profusely. Kwaidan (1904) and Japan: an Attempt of Interpretation (1904)
stand out somewhat as exceptions; the former consisting almost entirely of literature materials(ghost stories, legends, etc.) while the latter being an analytical, logically structured text.
38

Yônejiro Noguchi, Lafcadio Hearn in Japan, pp. 58–59; Murray, A Fantastic Journey, p. 278; Donald Richie,
foreword to Lafcadio Hearn’s Japan: An Anthology of His Writings on the Country and Its People, edited by
Donald Richie (Singapore: Charles E. Tuttle Publishing, 1997), p. 15.

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Document 5
A TYPICAL CONTENT OF HEARN’S BOOK
The table of contents of « A Japanese Miscellany Strange Stories, Folklore Gleanings, Studies Here &There» (1901)
Strange Stories
I. Of a Promise Kept
(Ugetsu Monogatari)
II. Of a Promise Broken(Izumo legend)
III. The Story of Kwashin Koji
Literature(Yasô-Kidan)
Re-told old Japanese ghost stories
IV. The Story of Umétsu Chûbei
(Bukkyô-Hyakkwa-Zenshô)
V. The Story of Kôgi the Priest(Ugetsu Monogatari)
Folklore Gleanings
I. Dragon-flies
Analytical: Ethnology
II. Buddhist Names of Plants and Animals
From existing materials.
III. Songs of Japanese Children
Studies from gathered materials
Studies Here & ThereI. On a Bridge
Analytical: Anthropology
II. The Case of O-Dai
From observation.
III. Beside the sea
Stories of real people that Hearn saw or heard about,IV. Drifting
stories of things Hearn experienced with the people,
V. Otokichi’s Daruma
observation of religious rites, etc.
VI. In a Japanese Hospital
Source: Lafcadio Hearn, A Japanese Miscellany: Strange Stories, Folklore Gleanings, Studies Here &There. The Writings on Japan by Lafcadio Hearn Vol.2 (Tokyo: ICG Muse, 2001).

As an example of the kinds of topics Hearn’s books treat, one can heed to the table ofcontents of A Japanese Miscellany (1901).39 This table illustrates perfectly the range of Hearn’s
typical work. He himself must have been well aware of the different approaches heused, because the table of contents is logically split (which is not the case for all his books)
between: 1) Strange Stories (literature: re-told old Japanese ghost stories), 2) Folklore
Gleanings (studies from gathered materials, ethnological work) and 3) Studies Here & there(Observations or stories heard from people, anthropological work).
2. Lafcadio Hearn: home in Japan
2.1 Love at first sight
Perhaps the best way to explain the strong bond of Hearn with Japan is to use the popular
expression “love at first sight.” Hearn literally fell in love with the country, its landscape, andpeople. In his essay My first day in the Orient,40 he associates Japan with the country of fairies
and declares his wish to purchase everything in Japan, even Japan itself,

39
40

See Document 5.
Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, pp. 1–22.

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The largest steamer that crosses the Pacific could not contain what you wish to purchase. For,although you may not, perhaps, confess the fact to yourself, what you really want to buy is not thecontents of a shop; you want the shop and the shopkeeper, and the streets of shops with theirdraperies and their habitants, the whole city and the bay and the mountains begirding it, andFujiyama’s white witchery overhanging in the speckles sky, all Japan, in very truth, with its magicaltrees and luminous atmosphere, with all its cities and towns and temples, and forty millions of themost lovable people in the universe.41

Through the quote we feel Hearn’s love declaration to Japan, understand how sensitive he wasto the beauty of so many things there, and how in turn he was able express this love so
beautifully in his romantic style. The marriage to Setsu Koizumi that will bind him to thiscountry and its people was naturally capping his feelings in his first years in Japan.
In return, to gain Japanese people’s trust, Hearn needed their appreciation. He certainly
got it and the Japanese would not have opened their hearts so much to him if they felt he had
not been the type of trustworthy person who could regard them positively. The key tounderstanding Hearn's positive reception by the Japanese is probably in his different attitude orstate of mind compared to other Western scholars.42 Many of the latter often consideredthemselves as coming from a superior cultural area, not only in a materialistic but also
intellectual and spiritual sense. Hearn was a different sort; he had this gentle, human side thatis so much appreciated in Japan. At the same time, he was also sensitive to the Japanesesuspiciousness to the typical sharp, purely intellectual person, that was running low on a humandimension,
I confess to being one of those who believe that the human heart, even in the history of a race, may
be worth infinitely more than the human intellect, and that it will sooner or later prove itself infinitely
better able to answer all the cruel enigmas of the Sphinx of Life. I still believe the old Japanese were
nearer to the solution of those enigmas than are we, just because they recognized moral beauty as
greater than intellectual beauty.43

Nevertheless, like in any relationship, Hearn’s feeling toward Japan had their ups and downs.
Sometimes they oscillated between love and hate, but somehow, as he beautifully explained ina letter to Chamberlain from March 1895, even in difficult times, his mind was able to change
easily to recover the Japan he loved,
I had a sensation the other day, though, which I want to talk to you about. I felt as I had hated Japan
unspeakably, and the whole world seemed not worth living in, when there came two women in thehouse, to sell ballads. One took her shamisen and sang: and people crowded into the tiny yard to
hear. Never did I listen to anything sweeter. All the sorrow and beauty, all the pain and the sweetnessof life thrilled and quivered in that voice; and the old first love of Japan and of things Japanese cameback, and a great tenderness seemed to fill the place like a haunting. I looked at the people, and I

41

Ibid., p. 7.
George Hughes, “Lafcadio Hearn: Between Britain and Japan,” in Rediscovering Lafcadio Hearn: Japanese
Legends Life & Culture, edited by Hirakawa Sukehiro (Midsomer Norton: Global Books Ltd, 1997), p. 76.
43
Lafcadio Hearn, Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life (Singapore: Tuttle publishing, 1972), p. 36.
42

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saw they were nearly all weeping and snuffing; and though I could not understand the words, I could
feel the pathos and the beauty of things.44

But whether he was in a phase of rejection or love of Japan, Hearn, as a Japanese citizen, wasa patriot who never failed to support his adopted country. In the wars against China (1895) andRussia (1904-05), he always supported Japan. Even more surprisingly, he was at odds with his
British friend Chamberlain regarding the treaty between Britain and Japan from 1894 which
abolished the unequal clauses of commerce. Chamberlain, backing Britain, was against it, while
Hearn supported it.45
Taking into account his new nationality and patriotism allows us to better judge thenegative feelings Hearn would sometimes have toward Japan: like any citizen, his feelings
towards his own country could vary. However, Hearn fundamentally felt, through his Japanesefamily, as well as for the reasons that made him fall in love with Japan, that his bonds to thiscountry were too strong to be broken and that it had definitely become home for him.
2.2 Childhood memories and empathy for Japan
Besides the “love at first sight” and all the factors we mentioned to explain the relation ofendearment between Hearn and the Japanese, most of his researchers would also consider hischildhood to have, in one way or another, played a part in conditioning his relation to Japan assomething special and appealing to his personality. What triggered what, and how things werestructured, consciously or unconsciously in Hearn’s mind will always be difficult todemonstrate, especially as he was an author who did not talk much about himself. But
everything that Japan represented in terms of its people (especially from lower classes), theirfaith and superstitions (relating to ghosts and death), their folk stories, their Buddhism, was for
Hearn an inexhaustible source of inspiration and something whose mere existence and presencearound him was fundamentally satisfying to his very being.
Perhaps his childhood upbringing, including the factor of his “abandonment” and theway Hearn was raised by Mrs. Brenane, played a crucial part in this respect. As Edith de La
Héronnière writes,[Mrs. Brenane]’s big dark house was terrifying the little boy [Hearn], especially at night when his
imagination and sensitivity made him see phantoms and devils in the dark. All his life he’ll believein ghosts. One looks for ways of healing his fear by locking him up in his room at night, which will
have the effect of increasing his fears and upset his hypersensitive soul.46

Other authors have also sought for a connection between the insecurities of his childhood andhis sympathetic perception of ghostly Japan.47
If his identification to his father seemed to have faded already in the United-States when
Hearn decided to drop his name Paddy (Patrick) to adopt Lafcadio (derived from Lefkada and44

Elisabeth Bisland, The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1906), Vol.
I, pp. 219-220.
45
Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, pp. 180–181.
46
Edith De la Héronnière, “Lafcadio Hearn,” p. 46.
47
Sukehiro Hirakawa, “Lafcadio Hearn: towards an Irish Interpretation,” in A Fantastic Journey: the Life andLiterature of Lafcadio Hearn (Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Japan Library, 1993), p. 2.

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referring to his Greek origins and his mother), Japan had been also the perfect ground for Hearn
to reactivate his repressed memories of all sorts linked to his painful relation to his mother.
Such a link can be detected in many of his portraits of women – mostly poor and religious likehis mother – that Hearn depicts in his stories. Japan had one advantage over other places where
Hearn had also met similar people: although poor, less educated and attached to their seemingly
primitive faith and superstitions, those people from lower classes that Hearn loved to portray,
were living, in his eyes, in the most refined culture, with seemingly impeccable values andexquisite manners. In this sense, Japan can be seen as entering the role of enhancing the imageof Hearn's repressed memories of his mother. In turn, Greece, which symbolized therelationship with his mother, can be thus seen as a key for understanding Hearn’s approach andsympathy for Japan.
Other authors (Murray, Hirakawa) also stress the importance of the period Hearn spentin Ireland.48 According to them, it is precisely because he spent his childhood in Ireland that hecould become very receptive to a world that would appear as pagan, with all its faiths andsuperstitions. Hearn had indeed a nurse who told him fairy tales and ghost stories when he was
as young as six years old.49 Thus, Hirakawa states that,
Brought up in Dublin, listening to many Irish folk-tales told by unspoiled peasant maids and servantboys coming from the countryside, Hearn was obsessed with the world of the occult. He wasprobably conscious of this Irish background which enabled him to enter into and feel the ghostly
Japan so well.50

In order to complete the whole picture of his childhood and the influence it could havesubsequently had on his deep sympathy towards the Japanese culture and people, one also needs
to heed to Hearn’s relation to Christianity and the Irish/ British Victorian gothic society. The
Gothic art and religious values have certainly contributed to Hearn’s taste for thrill and horror,51
as he progressively rejected the Roman Catholic way he was brought up. Although Mrs.
Brenane does not seem to have been as strict as some of his early biographers thought,52 shestill had an agreement with his father to raise him religiously as a Roman Catholic.53 Hearn’s
rejection of the monotheistic religion appears to have accelerated during the time he was a pupil
at the Boarding School in Durham. Harsh, strict, and austere education did not fit well Hearn’s
sensitivity. Consequently, the peculiar vacuum in his worldview that emerged upon his
rejection of Christianity was later on to be filled by the Buddhism. He became interested in
Buddhism during his stay in New-Orleans,54 and from this point onwards his attraction and love
for this religion will never lessen (quite significantly, Hearn was actually the first Westerner tobe buried in Japan according to the Buddhist rite).55 Questions relating to death, ancestor48

Sukehiro Hirakawa, “Lafcadio Hearn: towards an Irish Interpretation,” pp. 1-12; Murray, A Fantastic Journey,
pp. 33, 35.
49Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, p. 35.
50
Sukehiro Hirakawa, “Lafcadio Hearn: towards an Irish Interpretation,” p. 11.
51
Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, pp. 258–259.
52
Ibid., pp. 15–16.
53
See Note 6.
54
Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, p. 20.
55
Ibid., p. 301.

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worship, souls, reincarnation, which haunted him at the time, were best answered by thisreligion, which he cherished until the end of his life. A great admirer of Herbert Spencer, heoften endeavored to reconcile his evolutionary philosophy with Buddhism.56 Many of his“reveries” and speculations in his essays dealt with this topic. The cultural importance of
Buddhism in Japan, which stimulated his intellectual searches and provided him with pointers
to his own identity, had a major impact on Hearn’s deep sympathy and love for Japan.
3. Lafcadio, the committed and the go-between interpreter
3.1 A committed Hearn: some critical views of the WestAs we already saw in our first part, Lafcadio Hearn was not one of those Western critics whoviewed Japanese culture as inferior to theirs in terms of development. On the contrary, Hearn
took the Japanese civilization seriously and this helped him develop a critical mind toward what
the West was and had to offer.
His first criticism that he repeats throughout his writing is related to religion and faith.
For him, a monotheistic religion such as Christianity was not necessarily superior in this regard.
Hearn believed that Buddhism could be put at least on the same level as Christianity on boththe solutions it proposes for the salvation of the souls after death and the philosophical theoryof life it developed. For Hearn who believed in transmigration, Buddhism was actually superior
on both of these levels, which is why in his writings he had the willingness and the commitment
to explain the Buddhism and to make it appealing and worth considering in the West.
His second criticism of the West addressed the destruction of Old Japan through theprocess of industrialization. As Murray puts it, “Hearn used Japan as a mirror to show the Westits moral inadequacy.”57 During his poor years in the slums of London following the bankruptcy
of his great aunt, Hearn had already accumulated terrible memories of the industrial rampage
that modernization could bring about. In many of his writings (Horai58, The Japanese smile59,etc.), he would warn the West of the terrible consequences that industrialization would have on
the rural areas of Japan, this “ghostly” Japan that he loved so much. Witnessing the old
traditions and folk stories slowly disappear, Hearn acted with the urge to collect them. In thisregard, many researchers acknowledge the influence he had on the Japanese anthropologists,
notably on Yanagita Kunio, known as the father of Japanese anthropology.60 What Hearn feared
the most was – beyond the destruction of the traditional architecture and buildings of Japan – achange in the kind, congenial and sincere character and temperament of the people of the ruralarea, whom he cherished dearly.

56

Ibid., p. 20.
Paul Murray, A Fantastic Journey, p. 19.
58
Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, Tuttle Classics (Singapore: Tuttle Publishing,1971), pp. 171–178.
59
Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, pp. 539–561.
60
Ronald Morse, « Atelier-débat autour de Ronald Morse, traducteur américain de Tôno monogatari et de Tôno
monogatari shûi » [Workshop and debate on Ronald Morse, American translator of Tôno monogatari and Tôno
Monogatari Shûi] (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Centre d’Etudes Japonaises, Paris,
June 11th, 2015); Sukehiro Hirakawa, “Lafcadio Hearn: towards an Irish Interpretation,” p. 4.
57

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3.2 A precursor of Japanese cultural identity analysis
Lafcadio Hearn was an extremely talented analyst of the Japanese culture, and in many regards
he was one of the pioneers in the cultural studies that bore on the culture of Japan and theJapanese people in the twentieth century. His ability to make his contemporaries “take a journey
to Japan” by way of his writing was undeniable, and many important writers of his time,
including Stefan Zweig (1881-1942),61 Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929),62 and more
recently, Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987),63 had read his work. To illustrate the point of thisparagraph, without being exhaustive or too explanative, we would like to finish it by giving a
few examples of sharp insight from some of his essays drawn from two of his best books,
Kokoro and Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan:
-

-

-

-

-

In The Genius of Japanese Civilization,64 he explores the importance of the notion ofimpermanency. This notion, deriving from Buddhism, states that everything isephemeral and had a tremendous impact on the relationship the Japanese had with theirarchitecture (for instance, it explains the practice to replace the sanctuary of Ise every
twenty years). On a more psychological level, it helped them accept changes and things
that do not last.
In At a railway station,65 when reporting about a criminal who is about to be hanged forkilling a man, he describes a scene where this criminal apologizes to the child of thedead man. Here the importance of the act of contrition is suggested through this subtle
and beautiful description without much analysis. Contrition, apologies, capacity to bewell aware of the evil done, by begging a pardon, is still nowadays an important aspectof the Japanese society.
In A Glimpses of tendencies,66 a remarkable analysis about commerce at the time hewas living in Japan, Lafcadio shows us how talented Japanese people were to acquire
the knowledge of the Westerners and make it their own after taking the best of it. This
notion in the discourse of the cultural anthropology will be later known as iitoko tori.67
In The idea of preexistence,68 by explaining the notion of Karma (innen or inwa inJapanese) and the idea of preexistence in Buddhism, Hearn shows how such beliefs leadto determinism and resignation, two features that one can still find in the cultural identityof present-day Japan.
In his famous article The Japanese Smile,69 one particularly interesting part dwells upon
the inter-communication between the Japanese people. He introduces us to a way of61

Stephen Zweig, “Lafcadio Hearn,” in Lettres Japonaises (Paris: Pocket Revue des Deux Mondes, 2014), pp.
167–179.
62
Hugo Von Hoffmansthal, “Lafcadio Hearn,” in Lettres Japonaises (Paris: Pocket Revue des Deux Mondes,2014), pp. 161–165.
63
See back cover of: Lafcadio Hearn, Lettres Japonaises, translated by Edith de La Héronnière et Marc Logé
(Agora. Paris: Pocket Revue des Deux Mondes, 2014).
64
Lafcadio Hearn, Kokoro, pp. 8–39.
65
Ibid., pp. 1–7.
66
Ibid., pp. 120–154.
67
Roger J. Davies and Osamu Ikeno, eds., The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture(Singapore: Tuttle Publishing, 2002), pp. 127–133.
68
Lafcadio Hearn, Kokoro, pp. 222–226.
69
Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, pp. 539–561.

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speaking indirectly that is bound with the Confucian culture. “The indirect way of
conveying information is essentially Confucian. ‘Even when you have no doubts’, says
the Li-ki, ‘do not let what you say appear as your own view’.”70 This way ofcommunicating will be also analyzed later on by cultural anthropologists trying tounderstand how to communicate with the Japanese people. It will be indeed labeledaimai (Japanese word for vague, unclear, ambiguous or equivocal), a notion that will be
extensively studied and debated among researchers. Nowadays it is still a powerfulconcept for seizing intercultural communication with the Japanese people.
In Of a Dancing Girl,71 one of the most beautiful text of Hearn in our view, we are
introduced to the art of painting “landscape views and life studies” by itinerant painters.
Here Hearn underlines that in Japan “the Japanese artist gives you that which he feels—the mood of a season, the precise sensation of an hour and place; his work is qualified
by a power of suggestiveness rarely found in the art of the West[...] he is a painter ofrecollections and of sensation rather than of clear-cut realities; […].”72 All thissuggestive power in art is what later on Yasushi Inoue will call Kokoro no bunka, the“culture of the heart – or the mind – in an article read for NHK radio.73 This culture,
based on suggestion rather than full explanation, is still a powerful concept forunderstanding Japan. In the same essay, telling us a beautiful story of one of thisitinerant painters lost in a mountain and welcomed by a geisha in a isolated house,
Lafcadio Hearn will make us sensitive (without naming it) to the notion of On-gaeshi(reimbursement of a moral debt). The painter, who becomes famous in the years after
their initial meeting, later on accepts the request of the geisha who was now old to painther young, as she was when he met her for the first time, so that she put her picture on
the Buddhist altar next to her deceased husband. He accepts but understanding that she
was worried about not being able to pay him back, he will add: “‘Of that matter’, thegood painter exclaimed, ‘you must not think at all! No; I am glad to have this present
chance of paying a small part of my old debt to you. So tomorrow I will paint you just
as you wish’.”74 This is a typical example of what later on Ruth Benedict, in her famousbook The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, will develop as a moral based on debt.75

In these few examples extracted from Hearn's work, one can already identify key notions about
Japan that play parts in the cultural identity analysis: impermanency (The Genius of Japanese
civilization), the importance of forgiveness (At a railway station), the talent to acquire
knowledge or cultural items and make them Japanese (A Glimpses of tendencies), resignation

70

Ibid., p. 552.
Ibid., pp. 434–455.
72
Ibid., pp. 441-442.
73
Inoue Yasuhi 靖井上, “Kokoro no Bunka” 心の文化 [A Culture of the Heart], in Eigo de hanasu nihon no
bunka: Japan as I see it 英語で話す日本の文化：Japan as I see it [Japanese Culture in English: Japan as I seeit], translated by Don Kenny, edited by NHK Overseas Broadcasting Department, Bilingual Books (Tokyo:
Kodansha International, 2007), pp. 142-157.
74
Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, p. 452.
75
Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, 1967, Reprint, (US: Houghton Mifflin Company paperback,1989), pp. 114-131.
71

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and determinism (The idea of preexistence), the notion of aimai, or vagueness (The Japanesesmile), the importance of the heart-mind in the sense that the Japanese culture is focused on
one’s suggested feelings (Of a Dancing Girl), the notion of on or debt (Of a Dancing Girl), andso on. These concepts do not necessarily appear straightforwardly in Hearn’s works, but they
are suggested through either stories or explanations. This, in turn, has made of Hearn’s essays
a definite point of departure for the cultural anthropological discourse on Japan, whichdeveloped after World War II, especially in America.76
Conclusion
In this paper, upon a thorough review of his life and work, we were able to analyze how Hearn,
who went to Japan on a simple assignment, fell in love with this country and settled there forthe rest of his life. In a sense, his continuous attachment to Japan was a “love at first sight,” butit was also conditioned by a compatibility of the culture of this land with his character, which
could be traced back to his childhood. As a result, Japan and the Japanese people became thechoice of his heart; he settled there and made it home. Beyond the family and possible
materialistic reasons that tied him to Japan, Hearn remained – through his role of go-between
and his work – undeterred in his desire to stay in this country. By studying Japan and its culture,
Hearn came to the point of putting into question the superiority of the Western models. He also
wrote insightful texts that allowed his contemporary readers to discover Japan, which for its
part laid the basis for further cultural analysis of Japan.
To conclude, I will just quote Stefan Zweig who neatly summarized the chance that thefield of Japanese studies had with a great author like Hearn,
And that was the secret goal in view of which destiny had hidden Lafcadio Hearn, a goal for which
it had raised him. He was meant to tell us about unknown Japan; to tell us about all those little things,
with their own style, left in the shadow until now; those little “nothing,” so fragile, that many would
have left running away through their fingers; those ephemeral moments that the storm of time would
have taken away if he didn’t come on time; all those popular legends so full of meaning, thosetouching superstitions, those puerile and patriarchal customs. Catching this scent, picking up gently
this soft glare of the flower that had already been withering, that is what destiny had called him for.77

***

76

Ruth Benedict quotes Hearn in her famous book about Japan. See Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,
p. 303.
77
Stephen Zweig, “Lafcadio Hearn,” p. 175. Translated from the French by the author.

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Beyond Orientalist holism? The influence of East and Central Asian Thought on British Literature in the Twentieth Century
GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume II, Number 01 (2019): 60-70

BEYOND ORIENTALIST HOLISM? THE INFLUENCE OF EAST AND
CENTRAL ASIAN THOUGHT ON BRITISH LITERTURE IN THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY
Fiona Tomkinson

Abstract
The paper (which is part of a wider research project) discusses the way in which
three British/Irish authors, Iris Murdoch, Lawrence Durrell and Ted Hughes were
influenced by the philosophical and religious thought of East and Central Asia, by
the texts and spiritual practices from the traditions of shamanism, Hinduism, Shintoism and Buddhism. In different ways, all three authors considered the traditionsin question to be a serious alternative to more mainstream religious thought in theWest and also to the dominating paradigms of Western dualism and Western materialism.
My discussion of Murdoch centers on her relationship with the thought of
the Zen master, Katsuki Sekida, whose concept of pure cognition she discusses inMetaphysics as a Guide to Morals and which, I argue, she brings into connection
with her understanding of Anselm’s ontological argument and Plato’s Form of theGood. With regard to Durrell I will discuss the way in which he links Tibetan and
Zen Buddhism with Gnosticism in his major novels and in his philosophy. In thecase of Hughes, I will focus on the use in his poetry of Hindu, Buddhist and shamanic thought – in particular the influence of the Bardo Thadol and Journey to theWest.
With reference to all three authors, I will discuss a question raised by the
research of Edward Slingerland in his 2018 Mind and Body in Early China Beyond
Orientalism and the Myth of Holism – the question as to what extent these authors
are engaged in a flawed account of Eastern thought as a radical, holistic other. I
will conclude that the trope of anti-dualism in these authors is primarily a reaction
against the ‘puritanical’ aspects of their own culture which they rejected, and that
their engagement with Eastern thought is too nuanced to be confined within theparadigm of Orientalist holism.
The location of the 2019 Global Conversations conference in Bishkek foregrounds the conceptof the silk road.1 The work of Peter Francopan has recently rewritten world history (or perhaps
1This article is part of a study ‘The influence of Eastern religion on selected British authors’ which has received
grants from the JPS KAKENHI Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research (C) Grant number 19K00416

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one should say the Western conception of world history) in such a way as to place the silk roads
at its centre, not only in terms of commerce, but of the exchange and the fusion of ideas – ofglobal conversation and communication.
Among the many cultural effects of this interchange which Francopan documents, there
is one that is particularly symbolic of this intermingling: his account of the origin of statues of
the Buddha, which first originated, not in India or the Far East, as many people might imagine,
but in the region of the silk roads under the influence of Hellenistic art – more specifically,
under the influence of the statues of Apollo erected in the area in the wake of the conquests of
Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE. (The statue of the Buddha unearthed in the hills
around Bishkek in 2011 and initially dated to the period between the eighth and tenth centuries
witnesses how long the result of this fusion survived in the region of the silk roads).2 Francopan,
referencing the work of J. Derrett, claims that these statues were not merely a result of theinfluence of ideas from the West, but of a resistance to and competition with them – the cult of
Apollo was so powerful that Buddhists felt that they needed rival sculptures for their own temples and thus came to overcome their initial rejection of such images.
The silk road is also an appropriate metaphor for interactions between Eastern and Western thought – and my theme in this paper is the silk road which passed through the minds ofthree British authors engaged in an intellectual and spiritual interchange with ideas from theEast. The idea of the fusion of Apollo and the Buddha on the silk road would, I believe, havebeen fascinating to all three of them. It also symbolizes the way in which their work contains
elements of the ‘Apollonian’ Western tradition and ‘Buddhistic’ Eastern thought, establishinga dialectic between the two and creating images – perhaps images of the imageless – in which
the heritage of the East and of the West merge.
The three authors in question are Iris Murdoch, Lawrence Durrell and Ted Hughes, allof whom combined a deep knowledge of the Western literary and philosophical tradition witha deep fascination with the texts and spiritual practices from the traditions of shamanism, Hinduism, Shintoism, and Buddhism.
Durrell’s work is permeated with a longing for the mythical ‘Tibet’ of his childhood,and his masterwork, The Alexandria Quartet, repeatedly alludes to the Bardo Thadol or TibetanBook of the Dead; Ted Hughes was also fascinated with this work and makes repeated references to Buddhism and shamanism throughout his oeuvre; Murdoch, in Metaphysics as a Guide
to Morals, expressed the idea that we must stop thinking of ‘God’ as the name of a super-person
and that a ‘Buddhist-style survival of Christianity’3 could be the way to renew religious inspiration in the West. She also saw the idea of the transmigration of souls in Eastern religion as ‘asymbol of the unreality of the self’4 and her work is permeated with allusions to Japan andJapanese literature.
All three authors, like many of their contemporaries, shared a discontent with the alternatives of traditional Christian belief on the one hand and a physicalist atheism rejecting all
religion and spirituality as superstition on the other. All three could be said to embrace what in
the twentieth-century became quite a common position amongst Western intellectuals – that of2

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/1-5-meter-high-buddha-statue-unearthed-kyrgyzstan-105714426.html
Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (London: Vintage, 2003), p. 137.
4
Ibid., p. 139.
3

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speaking in terms of rejecting the dominating paradigms of Western dualism and Western materialism.
These terms are, in my view, somewhat misleading in that they implicitly assume that
Christianity in the West is necessarily Cartesian – which is actually far from the case – and inthat they imply that a non-dualist philosophical position leaves no room for a weak mind-body
dualism. In Durrell and Hughes, moreover, the trope of anti-dualism often took the form of areaction against the so-called ‘puritanical’ or prudish aspects of their own culture and a desire
for greater sexual freedom; it might be objected that they do not sufficiently engage with thefact that Eastern religion may also be ascetic and restrictive in this respect.
Questionable though some of the assumptions underlying the critique of the dualist/materialist dichotomy may be, it has been widely adopted as a trope by those in the West who wish
to express a new kind of worldview modelled on that of Eastern thought. However, those who
exalt Eastern thought may sometimes misrepresent it, and one way of so doing is to subscribe
to what Edward Slingerland has identified as the ‘myth of holism’, which he sees as a form ofOrientalism. Slingerland in his magisterial 2019 publication Mind and Body in Early China:
Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism shows the extent to which Western scholarshiphas been engaged in a flawed account of Chinese – and, more generally, Eastern – thought as aradical, holistic other. His use of the term ‘holism’ refers to ‘an absence of dualisms or dichotomies, such as mind-body, subject-object, or emotion-reason, that are thought to uniquely characterize “Western” thought’.5 For those subscribing to this myth, traditional Chinese thought isunable to distinguish the abstract from the concrete, the immanent from the transcendent, causefrom resonance, reality from appearance or essence from process. Slingerland pays particularattention to the attribution to Chinese thought of a strong mind-body holism which entails alack of psychological interiority, a lack of conception of the individual and no conception of
the soul, afterlife or “other world.” He refutes this position with meticulous documentation ofevidence for belief in the afterlife and mind-body dualism from the archeological and textual
record of early China.6
Slingerland does not, however, choose to engage in this work with discourses on the
East outside the field of academic sinology which might seem opposed to the ‘myth of holism’
in their focus on the spectral and the otherworldly – I am thinking in particular of Lafcadio
Hearn’s presentation of his adopted country in texts such as ‘In Ghostly Japan’ or ‘Kwaidan’.
The Japanese scholar Kaz Oishi has particularly emphasized Hearn’s fascination with spectrality in his recently published paper An “Exot” Teacher of Romanticism in Japan: Lafcadio Hearn

5

Edward Slingerland, Mind and Body in Early China. Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 1.
6
He also points out how those subscribing to the kind of linguistic constructivism which had dominated French
post-structuralist thought tended to jump to false conclusions as they favored interpretations of Chinese ideograms
which point to a way of experiencing reality completely different from Western paradigms. From the standpointof a naturalistic hermeneutics, he concludes that we all, as homo sapiens, understand ourselves in terms of at leasta weak mind-body dualism and that we perceive the world at roughly the same level of granularity – that is, we
see everyday objects and animals as coherent wholes – as rabbits, not as Quine’s gavagai: “It is perhaps conceivable that a sentient life form could solve the problem of catching rabbits by conceiving of them as a series of
temporal stages. This just does not happen to be the way in which Homo sapiens, the dominant sentient life formon the planet Earth, evolved to deal with the challenge.” (Ibid., p. 309)

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and the Literature of the Ghostly7. Contemporary scholars of Japanese Gothic also focus on
the ‘ghostly’ aspects of Japanese popular culture – the “Gothic in Japan” Symposium held at
Nagoya University on 13 January 2018 focused on the similarities between Western Gothic andthe ‘strange stories’ of the Japanese tradition.8 All this seems as far from the myth of a radicallyholistic other as can be – Western scholars are here either in the realm of discovering a common
tradition, or of constructing the East as a ghostly other – perhaps a little of both as is suggestedby the following passage from the chapter ‘At the Market of the Dead’ in Hearn’s Glimpses ofUnfamiliar Japan, where the author describes his feelings on seeing a poor woman praying at ashrine for the ghosts of dead children,
As I watch the tender little rite, I became aware of something dimly astir in the mystery of myown life—vaguely, indefinably familiar, like a memory ancestral, like the revival of a sensation
forgotten these two thousand years. Blended in some strange way it seemed to be with my faintknowledge of an elder world, whose household gods were also the beloved dead; and there is a weird
sweetness in this place, like a shadowing of Lares.9

My question, then, is where Murdoch, Durrell and Hughes, in their interaction with
Eastern myth and religion, fall on this continuum? Do they fall into what Slingerland sees as
the Orientalist-holist trap, do they construct the East as a spectral other, or is their position morenuanced? A slightly different way of putting the question would be to ask whether they present
Eastern thought in terms of transcendence or of immanence.
I shall argue that their work in fact presents an intertwining rather than an opposition ofEastern and Western themes and a complex interplay between transcendence and immanence.
I shall not attempt to cover the complete interaction of these authors with the Eastern tradition,
but will focus on one or two points of connection, which I hope to develop further in my ongoing research project. I shall discuss Murdoch’s interaction with the Zen master, Katsuki Sekida,Durrell’s interaction with The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ted Hughes’ fascination with thesame text and also his references to Chinese classic novel The Journey to the West, often known
to Western readers by the title of Arthur Waley’s translation, Monkey.
In Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Murdoch is involved in the philosophical projectof how ethics and spirituality can survive the demise of the belief in a personal God and anafterlife. Part of her answer to this question is to invoke the Platonic Form of the Good as areplacement for more personal conceptions of the divine. In this context, she draws on a versionof Anselm’s ontological argument which substitutes the concept of the Good for that of theGod. Just as Anselm began by believing in God rather than by understanding the reasons forhis belief, and so found already within himself a concept of God including the belief in His
Existence, so the Form of the Good must be initially experienced as something transcendent,
something outside the self, of which we nevertheless partake and in which we participate in the
Platonic sense of participation (μέθεξις) in the Forms.

7

British Romanticism in Asia, The Reception, Translation, and Transformation of Romantic Literature in India
and East Asia, ed. Alex Watson and Laurence Williams, Palgrave Asia Pacific and Literature in English Series,
2019, pp. 93-118.
8https://www.alexwatson.info/gothic-in-japan#!
9
Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2009), p. 90.

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In Chapter Eight of Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals we also find a section devoted toJapanese aesthetics in the course of which Katsuki Sekida’s concept of pure cognition is discussed. Although the connection is not explicitly made, her discussion of Plato and of Anselm
is revisited through Sekida’s concepts of pure cognition, in which we are given an account of
the same initial move into transcendence.
Murdoch quotes a poem used by Sekida in Zen Training (she says it is by Nansen,though it is actually a poem by Setcho commenting on the story ‘Nansen Views the Flower’),Hearing, seeing, touching and knowing are not one and one;
Mountains and rivers should not be viewed in the mirror.
The frosty sky, the setting moon – at midnight
With whom will the serene waters of the lake reflect the shadows in the cold?10

Murdoch interprets the passage in the following way, connecting it to traditional forms ofJapanese art,
The enlightened man returns to, that is, discovers, the world. He begins by thinking that rivers are
merely rivers and mountains are merely mountains, proceeds to the view that rivers are not rivers
and mountains are not mountains, and later achieves the deep understanding that rivers are reallyrivers and mountains are really mountains. The Japanese haiku is a very short poem with a strict
formal structure, which points, sometimes in a paradoxical way, at some aspect of the visible world.
It indicates that outer and inner, subject and object, are one, in a way which does not lose or subjectivise the world. Zen painting also combines a skill, born of long and strict teaching, with a throwaway simplicity. In a few strokes, the pointless presence, the thereness, of the plant, the animal, theman.11

In other words, in pure cognition (and in art arising from it) there is no separation of the subject
and object – subject-object distinction only arises in the second stage of the recognition of orreflection on pure cognition and it disappears again in the third stage.
In terms of ontology, this is a warning that we should not subscribe to the idealist position that the external world is nothing but the projection of the subjective mirror of our mind.
In terms of ethics, it can be translated into the awareness that it is goodness as a participation
in something beyond oneself that takes the mountains out of the mirror, and that goodness isthus both immanent and transcendent. This move corresponds to Murdoch’s adaptation, or one
might say, shadowing of Anselm’s ontological argument. The necessity of experiencing God
or the Form of the Good as something transcendent corresponds to Sekida’s pure cognition.
Reflection on the concept only comes as a second stage. There is a circularity here, but it is ahermeneutic, not a vicious circularity.
To condense Murdoch’s thought: it is through the pure cognition of Zen that we canexperience what she calls ‘a sort of ontological proof’ and achieve participation in the Form of

10
11

Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, p. 242.
Ibid., pp, 244-245.

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the Good. Her philosophical journey to the East is both a turning towards the transcendent anda celebration of the immanent.12
In Durrell, though there is less of an engagement with academic philosophy, there isalso a desire to fuse elements of Eastern thought with the Western literary an philosophicaltradition. Indeed, he saw this fusion as integral to the creation of his major works, The Alexandria Quartet and The Avignon Quintet. In an interview of January 12th, 1972 at the Universityof California in Los Angeles13, he speaks of Alexandria as Tibet and also speaks of the similarity between Zen Buddhism and Gnosticism – a major theme in The Quartet and Quintet. In
another interview published in Nouveau magazine littéraire he stated that his main aim was towrite a Tibetan novel, rather than a European one, and that he wished to combine the four Greek
dimensions which are the basis of our mathematics and of our view of matter with the fiveskandas of the Chinese Buddhists.14 The major way in which he does this is by advancing thetheory that discrete personality is an illusion (something his own characters frequently discuss)and by showing how his characters can be considered as aspects or limbs of one another. Yetat the same time his characters are powerful, charismatic, complex and fully realised charactersin the Western tradition of novel writing. There is thus a fusion of the Apollonian and the Buddhistic in the very structure of the novels themselves.
The novels also contain numerous images which subtly reference Buddhist texts, in particular the Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Bardo Thadol, which Durrell would have read in theedition of Walter Evans-Wentz with a preface pointing out similarities to the Egyptian Book of
the Dead. ‘The Book of the Dead’ was the working title for the first novel in the Quartet, ‘Justine’, and characters in the novels repeatedly refer to themselves as being as if dead, in anintermediate, limbo-like state. The Bardo tells us that if a dead person does not succeed inholding on to the light of the Tathagata, they are confronted on their journey with a number ofchoices between bright lights which they should embrace and dull coloured lights which should
be resisted. For example, on the first day of intermediate reality, all space arises as a blue lightand is followed by a vision of the Lord Vairocana on a lion throne. This moment is alluded toin the Quartet in the scene where the lovers Darley and Justine stand before the Chinese paintings in the Montaza Palace. Justine comments disgustedly: ‘The meaning of space’ and Darleysees – ‘simply a gaping hole in which the infinite drains slowly into the room: a blue gulf where
the tiger’s body was’.15 Dull red and dull yellow lights appear at other significant moments in
12

I discuss Murdoch’s use of Plato, Anselm and Sekida at greater length in ‘Murdoch’s Question of the Work of
Art: A Dialogue Between Western and Japanese conceptions of Unity (MGM Chapters 1 and 8)’ in Reading Iris
Murdoch’s Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. Edited by Nora Hämäläinen and Gillian Dooley, pp. 51-66.
13
The interview is recorded in the archives of the Communication Studies Department of UCLA and available on
Youtube.
14“Avec le Quintet d'Avignon j'achève un roman qui met en question la séparation de l'individualité […] Mon jeu
principal était d'écrire un roman tibétain plutôt qu'un roman européen. J'ai voulu tenter de faire la jonction entre
les quatre dimensions grecques qui sont la base de notre mathématique et de notre vue de la matière, et les cinq
skandas des bouddhistes chinois. (https://www. nouveau-magazine-litteraire.com/lawrence-durrell); “With The
Avignon Quintet I have succeeded in completing a novel which puts into question the separation of individuality[…] My main aim was to write a novel which was more Tibetan than European. I would have tried to make theconnection between the four Greek dimensions which are the basis of our mathematics and of our view of matterand the five skandas of the Chinese Buddhists.” (My translation.)15
Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet (London: Faber and Faber, 2012), p. 118.

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the text. Images of phosphorescence also appear at critical moments as in the scene when thecharacter Clea has a near-death experience after a harpoon accident when free-diving into phosphorescence. This can be taken as a symbol for the unreal nature of all phenomena according
to Buddhist philosophy. In the words of the Diamond Sutra or Immutable Sutra (which is also
quoted in Evans-Wentz’s introduction to The Tibetan Book of the Dead),
The phenomena of life may be likened unto a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, the glistening
dew, or lightning flash; and thus they ought to be contemplated.16

Clea seems to have attained a kind of enlightenment after her plunge into phosphorescence, but
she is also reborn as an artist, thus giving us another fusion of the Western Apollonian with
Eastern Buddhist thought.
As previously mentioned, Ted Hughes was also fascinated with the Bardo Thadol,which he first encountered when a student at Cambridge. In the autumn of 1959, whilst staying
for two months with Sylvia Plath in the writers’ retreat of Yaddo in upstate New York, he begana collaboration upon an oratorio based on the work with his fellow-resident, Chou Wen-chung,a Chinese composer who had settled in the US and whose work sought to integrate Westernand Eastern musical traditions. Wen-chung was to compose the music and Hughes was to provide the libretto.17 The project was never completed due to lack of funding,18 but the influenceof the Thadol can be traced throughout his work. Indeed, it can be said that the Yaddo projectmarked the rest of his poetic career. Jonathan Bate remarks that ‘it took Ted into territory that
he would make his own in almost all his later mythic works’19 and that the project was reworked
in Cave Birds. 20
In contrast to Durrell’s focus on the dull coloured lights of temptation, Hughes in his
engagement with the Bardo Thadol gives us concrete images of the fascination and horror of
the filthy womb-door which the deceased person should attempt to close in order to avoid rebirth and enunciates the horror of the cycle of birth, life and death (samsara). However, hisallusions to The Journey to the West lead us in the direction of the possibility of peace attained
within this strife. I shall argue that these two texts appear to complement each other: both areaccounts of sentient beings struggling with desire, caught up in violence and the cruel cycle ofrebirth – but in Hughes, the Bardo Thadol world remains in darkness and violence, whilst The
Journey into the West, though, paradoxically, alluded to in closer connection to the tragedies of
his life, is associated with moments of luminosity suggestive of the breakthrough into enlightenment.
Hughes’ libretto focuses on the moment when after many failed opportunities to breakfree of the cycle of rebirth, the deceased will see images of copulating couples, and (following
Oedipal logic) feel attraction to one member of the couple and repulsion towards the otheraccording to the sex in which they will be born. (In Hughes’ version, unsurprisingly it is the16

The Diamond Sutra, https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/religion/diamond-sutra/chapter32.html
Jonathan Bate, Ted Hughes: the Unauthorised Life (London: William Collins, 2003), p. 155.
18
Hughes’ working draft is now preserved in the British Library (BL Add MS88918/1) and a short reading from
it is available online at https://archive.org/details/TedHughesOnTheBardoThodol
19Bate, Ted Hughes: the Unauthorised Life, p. 155.
20
Ibid., p. 332.
17

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female attracting and the male causing revulsion.) The deceased have a last chance to avoid
rebirth through obstruction of the womb entrances, and then as a last resort, are advised onchoosing the best of possible womb entrances so as to be reborn as a god or as a human in aplace where the sacred teachings are respected.
This moment of evil karma and copulation leading to the womb-door is a key to muchof Hughes’ poetry in the early and mid-period works, particularly from the volume Crow onwards. Indeed, Crow, despite the more obvious Biblical and shamanic references, can be readas dominated by this concept. Here we are in the realm of the final Sidpa Bardo state in which
the deceased, having lost the opportunity to attain Nirvana and obstruct the doors of the womb,
is whirled around by karmic winds towards rebirth. It is there in ‘Examination at the Womb
Door’, which is, on one level, a poem about the failure of the soul in the Intermediate State toclose the door of the womb and to achieve liberation, though there is also, of course, a sense oftriumph in and on behalf of Crow as the stronger-than-Death survivor who enters the realm of
existence – perhaps not for the first time,
Who owns those scrawny little feet? Death.
Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death.
Who owns these still-working lungs? Death.
Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death.
Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death.
Who owns these questionable brains? Death.
All this messy blood? Death.
These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death.
This wicked little tongue? Death.
This occasional wakefulness? Death.
Given, stolen, or held pending trial?
Held.
Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.
Who owns all of space? Death.
Who is stronger than hope? Death.
Who is stronger than the will? Death.
Stronger than love? Death.
Stronger than life? Death.
But who is stronger than Death?
Me, evidently.
Pass, crow. 21

We find the same underlying image in other poems from Crow such as the womb-entrance poems ‘The Door’, ‘Crow and Mama’ and in the ghastly copulations described in ‘A
Childish Prank’ and ‘Apple Tragedy’.
Hughes’ poetry after Crow continues to be marked by the metaphorical connection ofwomb and grave. To quote some of many possible examples, in the poems from The Remainsof Elmet, ‘Emily Bronte’ and ‘Haworth Parsonage’ (poems undoubtedly marked by his visits
21

Ted Hughes, Collected Poems (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2003), pp. 218-219.

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to the area with Sylvia and Assia) Emily’s death is ‘a baby-cry on the moor’ and we are given‘Hills seeming to strain/And cry out in labour’.22 In ‘Adam and the Sacred Nine’, the strikingof an owl is described as ‘The womb opens and the cry comes’.23 The poem “Second Birth” inthe 1979 volume Earth-Numb gives an even bleaker aspect to Crow’s re-entry through the doorsof birth, showing how the imagery of the Bardo Thadol continues to recur twenty years after
the Yaddo project,
When he crept back, searching for
The womb-doorway, remorseful,
It was an ugly grave
Fallen in on bleached sticks.24

Leonard Scigaj in his 1983 essay ‘Oriental mythology in Wodwo’ (in ‘The Achievementof Ted Hughes’ ed by Keith Sagar) expresses the view that Hughes uses the Bardo and other
Oriental thought as a paradigm not for attaining the Nirvana of the Clear Light of the Bardo,
but to return to the world cleansed of over-dependence on rational analytic ego that divorces
man from nature’.25 Yet even this is something of a sanitised account of the recurring image ofthe filthy womb-doorway, the womb that leads to the grave, which is, I think, the dominant
image taken from the Bardo.
If we are to attempt to locate Hughes in terms of where he stands with regard to the‘holist fallacy’ of Orientalism, it is interesting to note that the Bardo is a text susceptible towhat Slingerland calls ‘theologically incorrect’26 readings, in that although Buddhism denies
the concept of the individual soul, it seems to be consonant with a weak-dualist folk-interpretation of a soul doomed to wander through the miseries of the intermediate state. The same may
be said of the folk interpretation of Buddhism in The Journey to the West, where we are presented with very physical accounts of the afterlife and of the frequently comical adventures of
the character ‘Monkey’ who is in a liminal state between enlightenment and his unreconstructedanimal nature.
Hughes’ most striking use of The Journey to the West is his quotation from it in theepitaph that he had placed on Sylvia Plath’s gravestone: ‘Even amidst fierce flames/The golden
lotus can be planted’. It has been said that Hughes in his lifetime attributed these lines to Hindu
scriptures; it is possible that Hughes had forgotten their original context. They also reference
Plath’s own poem ‘Epitaph for Fire and Flower’.27 However, the passage in question actuallyoccurs in The Journey to the West, at the point after Monkey has asked for the secret of Immortality and is given the following advice, which leads to his Illumination,
To spare and tend the vital powers, this and nothing else
Is sum and total of all magic, sacred and profane.
All is composed in these three, Spirit, Breath and Soul;
22

Ibid., p, 486.
Ibid., p. 448.
24
Ibid., p. 552.
23

Keith Sagar, The achievement of Ted Hughes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), p. 142.
Slingerland, Mind and Body in Early China, p. 279.
27
Sylvia Plath, The Collected Poems (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2018), pp. 45-46.
25
26

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Guard them closely, screen them well; let there be no leak.
[…]That is all that can be learned and all that can be taught. […]Even in the midst of fierce flames the Golden Lotus may be planted,
The Five Elements compounded and transposed and put to new use.
When that is done, be what you please, Buddha or Immortal.28

Here we have the concept of the luminous mind or prakṛti-prabhāsvara-citta, dwelling not only
within strife, but arising as consequence of it. The choice between being a Buddha and an Immortal can also be presented as a choice between Buddhism and Taoism, or between immanence and transcendence. The narrative of The Journey to the West shows Monkey on the pathto enlightenment, but he has many adventures on the road, including ejection from the Taoist
Heaven and confinement under the Mountain of the Five Elements29 – a name which refersback to the Golden Lotus passage. He is found there by the Bodhisattva Kuan-yin, who sees
the imprint of Buddha’s seal OM MANI PADME HUM, and recites the following poem.
Long ago performed in vain prodigies of valour.
In his blackness of heart he upset the Heavenly Peach Banquet;
In mad rashness he dared rob the Patriarch of Tao.
A hundred thousand heavenly troops could not overcome him;
He terrorized the realm of Heaven throughout its nine spheres.
At last in Buddha Tathāgata Monkey met his match.
Will he ever again be set at large and win back his renown?30

He will in due course be released and become a disciple and companion of Tripitaka on his
journey to collect Scriptures from India before finally attaining Buddhahood.
However, it is the episode of Monkey’s confinement which Hughes chooses to reference
in a poem from the 1980s, ‘Chinese History of Colden Water’, which begins with the line ‘A
fallen immortal found this valley’. The fallen immortal is lulled into a sleep which becomes ‘amigraine of head-scarves and clatter/Of clog-irons and looms, and gutter water/And clog-irons
and biblical texts’.31 Hughes seems to identify himself with Monkey here in his experience ofthe twin horrors of industrialisation and an oppressive, Puritanical Christianity. However,Monkey/Hughes wakes from this nightmare,The dream streamed from him. He blinked away
The bloody matter of the Cross
And the death’s head after-image of ‘Poor’.
Chapels, chimney’s roofs in the mist – scattered.
Hills with raised wings were standing on hills.
They rode the waves of lightThat rocked the conch of whispers

28

Wu Ch’Êng-ên, Monkey. Folk Novel of China (New York: Grove Press, 1984), p. 24.
Ibid., p, 83.
30
Ibid., p, 83.
31
Hughes, Collected Poems, p. 739.
29

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And washed and washed at his eye.
Washed from his ear
All but the laughter of foxes. 32

Pure cognition and enlightenment are thus achieved in the company of Hughes’ iconic creature,
the fox.33 It is also achieved in a violent manner which recalls the title finally given to Monkey,
that of Buddha Victorious in Strife, or Dòu-zhànshèng-fó.
Many of Hughes’ nature poems seem to celebrate a similar victory. This comes throughespecially strongly in the last section of an uncollected poem (or fragments) given the title
Caprichos in Keegan’s Collected Poems, which begins with the injunction ‘Nevertheless rejoice/Rejoice rejoice’, which is the ‘shriek’ of the heron. The poem does indeed invoke metaphorically the concept of ‘soul’ (atman) rejected by Buddhism, though also, metaphorically, it
leaves it behind. It is a poem which seems to give us an experience of Nirvana attained by abeing within the natural world and which also resembles a Chinese or Japanese artwork,
With the actual absolution of all hurt
In hydrochloric acids
The heron alights – folding a whole sky
The heron stalks – up to the knees in soul
Up to the crest in shimmering equipoiseSinging:
In the nothingness of man I delight and of all being34

To conclude, Murdoch’s fusing of the thought of Sekida with the philosophy of Anselm
and Plato as a path towards a this-worldly transcendence, Durrell’s use of images and concepts
from the Bardo Thadol in order to merge the task of the artist with the task of enlightenment,
and Hughes’ engagement with harsh reality through the brutal imagery of the Thadol and thetransplantation of Monkey to a gritty Yorkshire village all have something in common – theygather together elements of Eastern and Western traditions in a way which goes beyond theconstruction of the East simply as a holistic or as a ghostly other. In their fusion of the Buddhistic and the Apollonian, they can be seen as attempts to engage with the human predicamentof embodied beings caught in immanence and yet unable to escape from a sense of transcendence.

32

Ibid., p. 739.
Most famously represented in the poem ‘The Thought Fox’ from The Hawk in the Rain, Ibid., p. 21.
34
Ibid., p. 354.
33

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GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume II, Number 01 (2019): 71-84

Hyperlocal and Global
ELASTIC INTIMACY: THE INCONSPICUOUSNESSOF THE HYPERLOCAL
Nicholas Birns

Abstract
This paper outlines the hyperlocal as a new way of talking about place. Whereas
traditional rhetorics of particularity emphasized the uniqueness of a given place
and posited it as an object of indissoluble attachment, the hyperlocal seeks to promote an awareness of place that is elastic, intimate, and interstitial. Without resolving into interchangeability or placelessness, the hyperlocal disentangles place froman excessive adhesion to ascribed identity. I explore the relation of the hyperlocal
to place not only in geography but in music and art, where adjacency, continuity,and (in the visual arts) inversion provide a way that space can be meaningful but
also navigable. In the second half of the paper, I explore the relationship of thehyperlocal to colonization and globalization. The hyperlocal particularly flourished in the age of ‘middle modernity’, from 1750 to 1850, the age in the Northern
Hemisphere of progress, revolution, and democratization, but in the Global Southone of European hegemony, expropriation, and genocide. Thus, the hyperlocal
emerges as a register in which we can understand the aftermath of globalization
without imperial pomp or hyperbole.
I.. Outlining The Hyperlocal
These days, the conceptual contrast between the local and the universal is at a standstill. Bothhave been somewhat battered from where they were thirty years ago. The local – once embraced
by progressive forces as a rebuke to totality, as part of a “small is beautiful” aesthetic, and as
part of a resistance to mechanization and technology – now seems associated with revived organic nationalism and claims of racial individuality.1 The universal, which once portended – in
its avatar of a redemptive, saving, global cosmopolitanism – to be our contemporary version of
the sublime, now seems vacant, even vacuous, and to be too much of a tool for privileging theadvantaged and marginalizing the underprivileged.2

1

Greg Sharzer, No Local?: Why Small-Scale Alternatives Won’t Change The World (London: Zero Boks, 2012).
Adam Lupel, Globalization and Popular Sovereignty: Democracy’s Transnational Dilemma (London:
Routledge, 2009).
2

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In the wake of the political shocks of 2016, I began to conceptualize the idea of the‘hyperlocal;’ to redress the gaps between the universal and the local. Thinkers such as Naoshi
Yamawaki spoke of the ‘glocal’ as a kind of meeting-point between the global and the local, ahybrid solution that would have the best of both worlds.3 The problem here is that this works
only when the forces of global and local are benign; when they are malign (neoliberal corporatism on the one hand, organic nationalism on the other) the glocal appears flaccid. John Kinsella’s idea of “International regionalism” is an improvement over the glocal in that it is awareof the rapacious forces of industrial and technological destruction, and sees regionalism not justas staying within one place but as being dispersed and mutually informative.4 The major difference between international regionalism and the hyperlocal is that international regionalism
comes out of Kinsella’s deep love for and sense of dwelling in the Wheatbelt region of Western
Australia, a sense of dwelling he can then transfer, or imagine transferring, in various ways toother regions, either those he has experienced personally or those he can imagine experiencing.
I decided to use the word ‘hyperlocal’– a concept already widely used in media, graphic design,and to a certain extent in literary criticism.5 In media, for instance, ‘hyperlocal’ refers to news
targeted to a highly specific area, news which on the other hand is in many respects generic andis not laden with any specific affect or exclusivity regarding the place.6 The hyperlocal relationship to specificity is empirical and informational, but not laden with as an essentialist effectof locality as traditional rhetorics of place (particularly those emanating from what I would
argue is a vulgarized form of Romanticism) would have it.7 The hyperlocal is occasioned by asense of dwelling, but does not really draw from it. When I think of hyperlocal places, I thinkof the places I know. But at least in theory I could have grown up and lived in totally different
places and the elasticity and applicability of the hyperlocal would still be there.
The risk, of course, of this sort of interchangeability is that it can become generic andprocrustean, more of a cookie-cutter emplacement than an enabling index of variety. The key
to preventing the hyperlocal from relapsing into a kind of granular universalism is to emphasize
its elasticity. Elasticity – the ability to stretch, to extend, to remain the same while being also
different – is the property pursuant to the hyperlocal. It is the elasticity more than any other
difference in specific contour that explains the difference between the hyperlocal and the regional or provincial. One can express the difference between the provincial and the hyperlocal
by envisioning a shower door with a wheel that is stuck – as the wheel is stuck the shower door
remained provincial; once the wheel is free to move, it can become hyperlocal. The wheel remains a wheel, small, suited only to a specific task, not conscious, not really objectively important. But it can move. The contemporary singer Dar Williams, in her book What I Found In
3Nashi Yamawaki, Glocal Public Philosophy: Towards peaceful and Just Society In The Age of Globalization(Munster: LIT Verlag, 2016).
4
John Kinsella, Disclosed Poetics: Beyond Landscape and Lyricism (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2007).
5
Mariano Siskind, Cosmopolitan Desires: Global Modernity and World Literature in Latin America (Evanston:Northwestern University Press, 2014), p. 87; Ruth Livesey, Writing The Stage-Coach Nation. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2016), p. 7.
6Paul Farhi, “Taking Local Coverage to the Limit: 24 Hour Cable News,” The Washington Post, March 11, 1991.
7
Evan Gottlieb and Juliet Shields (eds,), Representing Place in British Literature and Culture, 1660–1830: From
Local to Global (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013).

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A Thousand Towns, has talked about how different localities can yet have their locality in common.8 I would add, though, that this locality-in-common becomes different in its elasticity andadjacency, becomes a mobile hyperlocal rather than an extrapolated or exported local.
Elasticity enables the hyperlocal not just to be about places in the sense of geographicalor territorial locales. If we think of place in Germany of the 1700s, we might well think of theKleinstaaterei. These were the small principalities that were Germany’s greatest curse in keeping the slowly decaying corpse of the Holy Roman Empire in a sort of suspended animation.
But the Kleinstaaterei were also, in the view of nationalist thinkers such as Johann Gottfried
Herder, Germany’s greatest blessing in that they kept alive the specificity endemic to the German dream.9 Yet the hyperlocal would look elsewhere for examples of the eighteenth-century
German specificity – to the porcelain-factories of Meissen, where specific, beautiful shapes
were made for specific aesthetic and practical uses.10 In Meissen, soft paste could be shaped
into a hard, alluring swan that could sit in the drawing room as an admired object, fixed in thatspace but also, in a select set of duplicates in other spaces, able to be moved around the houseor to other domestic spaces. In the Herder model, space is ethnically torqued and bound to acertain constricting definition of what it is to be a human; in the Meissen model, it is adaptableand defined within a space of relation rather than within an absolute identity.
So the hyperlocal can also pertain to space that is not a place: the aesthetic object, thescientific particle that we know makes up chemical elements or compounds but that it is hardto actually observe, the brushstroke in a painting, the musical note, the plinth or frame of abuilding. But to have the hyperlocal be everywhere would divest the concept of its pertinence,and I myself am looking at the concept through a certain lens. Though in one sense the hyperlocal is a concept valid in any sort of context, I am particularly interested in its manifestationin what one might call ‘middle modernity’, ‘the period between 1700 and 1850’. I focus on thisperiod because it saw what David Fausett terms “the closing of the global circle,” or the exploration of the entire world that saw every inhabited portion of Earth put into contact with eachother.11 Concomitantly, there emerged a kind of liminal space where the state was no longer
totally defined from above by (in theory, not actual practice) autocracy, nor (again in theory,
not actual practice) totally defined from below by democratic participation. We tend to thinkof this process of imperialism and the broadening of the participatory base as largely consistingof European expansion, but some of this was otherwise, (for instance the Chinese outreach into
Central Asia during the reign of the Chien Lung Emperor).12
Even as all parts of the globe were coming, albeit unequally, into social contact, and thelarge end of the scalar continuum was coming into view, the idea of the smallest possible unitof meaning also gained currency. This can be seen in two very different European philosophicaltraditions, the rationalist one stemming from Descartes and the empiricist one proceeding from8

Dar Williams, What I Found In A Thousand Towns (New York: Basic Books, 2017).
Leonard Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom (New York: Beacon Press, 1957).
10
Michael C. Carhart, The Science Of Culture In Enlightenment Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2007).
11
David Fausett, Writing The New World: Imaginary Voyages and utopias of The Great Southern Land (Syracuse:
Syracuse University press, 1993).
12
Xiuyu Wang, China’s Last Imperial Frontier: Late Qing expansion in Sichuan’s Tibetan Borderlands (Lanham:
Lexington, 2011).
9

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John Locke. The rationalist tradition became interested in the particular with the work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who postulated the monad as the elemental unit of all entities that sought
to grow, develop, or become complete.13 The hyperlocal’s relation to Leibnizian monadology
and the empirical datum positions the concept along the spectrum of distinctions in the eighteenth-century philosophy, which still govern any philosophical frameworks today. Like the empirical sense-datum, or the scientific particle that can be seen as empirically analogous to theempirical sense-datum, the hyperlocal is discrete, founded, yet without any especial content.
Gilles Deleuze’s construction of the Leibnizian monad as fold exemplifies the elasticity suggested by the hyperlocal, although the hyperlocal wants to hold on to the idea of the discretein-shape more than Deleuze does. 14 There is no difference not only between an English or
French sense-datum or particle but also one between one in a mountain or a valley, one apprehended in summer or winter. What becomes important here is that the major difference between
the empirical sense-datum and the scientific particle becomes that the particle, even though
hypothetical, is seen as objectively being, existing independent of us, but the empirical sensedatum, as in Berkeleyan immaterialism, depends on our experience of it and is processed by
the human perceptual sensibility, even if not yet – as in Kantian terms – as constituted by thatsensibility.15 Though I would not be so bold to claim any ‘objective’ existence to the hyperlocal,
the point of the minuteness the concept discloses is not in the impact it makes on our senses butby the way in which it makes external referents at once available but disposable, palpable but
inessential, discrete but not unique. In this way, the hyperlocal is more like the Leibnizianmonad, except that in Leibniz’s scheme the point of the monad is to be a building-block in adesignated grand design, whereas the hyperlocal assumes various combinations (through assemblage, combination, and juxtaposition), but does not preordain the resultant framework of
its accumulation.
This is all true as long as we see what one can call the positive hyperlocal, the hyperlocal
as circulation in the realm of the external. In the aesthetic or cognitive realm what I call thenegative hyperlocal comes into play and it is here that Kant, especially the Kant of the Third
Critique, becomes relevant. The negative hyperlocal is that which is not, but nonetheless still isin conjecture, in hypothesis; when Keats said ”heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard aresweeter,” there still is the phenomenological specificity in the unheard melodies (note plural)that the mind conceives, even though it does not hear them – not because they are too subtle
but because they are truly not there, but nonetheless they occupy the idea of a particular sliceof sensation.16 That Kant’s purposiveness tends towards a purpose, but never achieves one.
Kant’s purposiveness is on the way there but just never gets there. That sense of being-on-theway there but never getting there means it is (not) something, occupying a (non-) place. Here
Marc Augé’s theory of non-places comes into play.17 But whereas a non-place is a place vacant13

Nicholas Reacher, G. W. Leibniz’s Monadology: An Edition For Students (London: Routledge, 1992).
Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, translated by Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1992).
15
Yasuhiko Tomida, Locke, Berkeley, Kant From A Naturalistic Point of View (Hildesheim:” Olms Verlag, 2015);
J. O. Urmson, Berkeley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
16
John Keats, The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, ed. Horace Scudder (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1899), p. 134..
17
Marc Augé, Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity, translated by John Howe (London: Verso, 1995).
14

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NICHOLAS BIRNSElastic Intimacy: The Inconspicuousness of the Hyperlocalof meaning, negative hyperlocal place – bearing in mind that a hyperlocal place is a place that
can have meaning, but not necessarily always or constantly – is an imaginative particular placethat is given meaning by its imagined limitations, as in Kant’s aesthetic tendency that aims toachieve its purpose but is almost constitutively self-limiting itself in reaching it.
Musical notes can be seen as examples of negative hyperlocal places. Musical notes
exist when they are played on specific instruments, but of course on each instrument they willsound differently. Moreover, every performer will sound them differently, much as every artist
will paint bluer differently. Thus, although every pictorial rendition of a blue sky or every time
a musician pays B flat is an actualization, an instancing of the concept, it is never a concrete,conclusive manifestation of that concept. Likewise, B flat as played is never like “Bishkek,
Kyrgyzstan,” which is at least a plausible approximation of what the theoretical concept of that
may be. Even more importantly, though, a musical note really only exists in the notations on
the page the musician plays, or that the musician internalizes and expresses, and thus even heard
melodies, much less unheard, have that negative quality of never really subsisting in a given
node. Musical space is hyperlocal because a musical composition needs a range of notes, (thatis, the possibility of elasticity among multiple nodes of notes), to express itself. Thus both thespecificity of each individual note and the transposability of the idea of notation are vital tomusical performance. The musicologist Clive McClelland speaks of “strong psychological effect” of “moving the keynote around” which led to an easily achievable effect of “rapid modulation.”18 McClelland notes that this rapid modulation underlay, even if it did not epitomize, theefforts of later, Romantic period composers. These composers wrote in a less liquid and morechromatic way, to render musical instability.
But modulation must modulate something. It must range across a continuum which
is necessarily comprised of discrete points. And so a musical template can be seen as a set ofrhythms premised on discrete, if unmaterialized, points that can operate hyperlocally, so parochial as to perhaps become an instance of the universal, in the same way as the minute cansimply be an instancing. This is much what Harold Bloom meant when he noted that, in the
poetry of the era of sensibility (the pre-Romantic era), daemonization preceded kenosis, that abuilding-up of ‘the other’ preceded, rather than succeeded, an emptying-out.19 This sequenceof building-up, then emptying-out enabled a reflexivity of particular and universal that, asMichel Foucault pointed out, at once affirmed the given by naming the given outside itself.20
As a later eighteenth-century poet was to say, we can “see a World in a Grain of Sand/and a
Heaven in a Wild Flower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour.”21 If
we use the idea of the hyperlocal, though, to understand that experience about a range of closeand proximate points, both of place and affect, there is a broader continuity, which is not justthe connection between opposites but can be about modulation. In modulating between points
on a scale, continuity becomes more inclusive.
A commonly asked question is, How is the hyperlocal different from the provincial,parochial, or regional? When we speak of the provincial or the parochial, we are usually
18

Clive McClelland, Ombra: Supernatural Music in the Eighteenth Century (Lanham: Lexington, 2012), p. 32.
Harold Bloom, A Map of Misreading (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 105.
20
Michel Foucault The Order Of Things, translated by Alan Sheridan. (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 132.
21
William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” The Poems of William Blake (London: Pickering, 1874), p. 145.
19

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castigating something for being so minor, so insignificant, that we do not have to look at it,even though its size and scope would normally command our regard. To be told, for instance,that Scottish literature of the Victorian era is only provincial is very much like to be told that,
despite the fact that Scotland is clearly a good-sized, reasonably-populated place of objective
importance, you should not waste your time on its literature. On the other hand, if one is to saythat Scottish literature of the Victorian era is valuable because it represents a Scottish national
essence, an endemic ‘je ne says quoi’ of Scottishness that possesses its own organic zest andvibrancy, is to say that, despite its parochialism, it is important because it expresses a meaningavailable nowhere else. Because Scotland is defined in both models as a regional space, it is
not a hyperlocal space. The regional, whatever its formulation or to whatever extent it approaches the condition of being what Kenneth Frampton called a ‘critical regionalism’, is capable of becoming a nationalism. Sometimes it falls short of one aspect of the nation, as, in themodel that castigates Victorian Scottishness as parochial, there is an admission that Scotland,in size and heft, has every trait it would take to produce a vibrant national literature, except
somehow that the talent in this particular time period (no one would dare say the same about
the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century) lacked particular distinction. When I wasin the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia in 2015, it was carefully explained to me that there
was a strong regional—but not at all national—sentiment there. Unlike Catalan, Scottish, orQuébec nationalism, where Barcelona, Edinburgh, Quebec City would all be capable of being
national capitals, Hohhot was not willing. But this is not the same as saying it is not able. The
regional always possesses the potential of being a viable nation, even if that nation would end
up being a microstate.
The hyperlocal is what is too small to be viable as a region, and therefore is sufficiently
flexible to go beyond regionalism. This emerges with respect to the production of colonial spacein the Anglophone world between 1750 and 1850, concentrating particularly on Canada andAustralia, and how even as these colonies came into view as an agglomeration of regions, anidea of space at once more granular and more mobile than the regional spoke to issues such as
spirituality, indigeneity, and performance. A particular focus will be travel narratives that seemto be about visiting one big place, but in terms of their textual production end up being about
sundry little places that reverberate globally with a very different force than their regional
equivalents, but nonetheless reverberate.
II. The Hyperlocal, Monumental Form, and Colonialism
Settler colonies, in their relation to the colonizer, and modernity, in its relationship with whatcame before it, share a fundamental temptation. Paul Carter, in The Road to Botany Bay, distinguishes between imperial history and spatial history. Imperial history is topographical, universalizing, and Eurocentric; spatial history is experiential, local, and phenomenological.22
There are two issues here. One relates obviously to indigeneity: a European-derived spatial
history, performed by people of European descent claiming other people’s lands on their own,
may be decolonizing in one way, as in divesting itself of British viewpoints and presuppositions, but is not in another. This is a dilemma wrestled with by the great period of self-conscious

22

Paul Carter, The Road To Botany Bay (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1988).

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settler poetry in Australasia, the 1940’s and 1950s. For instance, the New Zealand Allen Curnow’s famous poem, “The Skeleton of the Great Moa in Canterbury Museum, Christchurch,”
Not I, some child, born in a marvelous year,
Will learn the trick of standing upright here.23

There is a semantic ambiguity at the heart of this poem, enacted by the comma after ‘Not I’;
the most apparent reading is to say that the child born in the marvelous year is from the future,
perhaps as a distant descendant, though the genealogical link is not explicit. But the comma
means the poet himself could also be the child, and that somebody not him, not that child, will
stand upright. Sticking, though, to the more apparent reading, the message of the poem is thatthe speaker is still too British – as Robert Frost would say, “still England’s, still colonial” toreally be a New Zealander, and that a future child, born in some sort of more hallowed or favored time, will be at home in New Zealand.24 But what would the Māori say about that? I do
not want to presuppose they would see a Pakeha man at home in New Zealand as not an advanceover one who is not, especially considering the existence of the treaty of Waitangi which gives
Māori at least some theoretical stake in the New Zealand polity. But I do want to know what
they would think, and that open question exposes the fact that the transition from imperial history to spatial history can never really be said to be done. Curnow’s poem expresses the mostprimal and, in the end, the most unrealizable goal of New Zealand nationalism – the yearning
for the white settler to feel uncomplicatedly at home there. But it is yet the New Zealand poem
in English that has travelled the most and become the most cosmopolitan. The problem withthe poem is that it assumes that the process of becoming can be all over, that, to use Curnow’sphrase, in some ‘marvelous year’ they will be completed, they will find their telos. And thisteleological thrust is monumental; it is annealing and invulnerable. Rather than perceiving acategorical, cathartic act of making-modern, making-sacred, the hyperlocal would look at spacethat is or can be realized, but is not necessarily.
The space of the scientific particle, a space uninflected by afflatus or numinous, is nonetheless a space that can, in being solicited by an active effort of faith, be envisioned as a Deist
plenitude. Here the contemporaneity of European colonization of the Antipodes and the
Middle modernity of science and liberalism is notable. Both a radical atheist in Joseph Priestley
and a fervent evangelist in John Wesley made transatlantic crossings between England and theUnited States, signifying that their ideologies were not bound to one particular space or locale,
yet that they were, though applicable to the New World, not uniquely invigorated by it. Wesley’s statement that ‘The world is my parish” can, mutaits mutandis, be adapted to the stanceof radical atheists like Priestley: such that their spaces are defined in, but not bounded to one
particular place or identity.25 Yet, to both, these places and spaces did matter; otherwise Wesley
would have said not “the world is my parish” but ‘the world is my world.”

23

Allen Curnow, “The Skeleton of The Great Moa In The Canterbury Museum, Christchurch,” in Collected Poems, edited by Elizabeth Caffin and Terry Sturm (Auckland: Auckland University press, 2018), p. 99.
24
Robert Frost, “The Gift Outright,” Robert Frost’s Poems (New York: Washington Square Press, 1971), p. 255.
25
Noah Guynn, ”Eternal Flame State Formation, Deviant Architecture, and the Monumentality of Same-Sex Eroticism in the Roman d'Eneas ,” GLQ (2000) 6 (2): 287-319.

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The hyperlocal-subsidiary distinction is also potentially able to be aligned with that between the temporary and the monumental. The monumental is enduring, imposing unusual
monuments, real or symbolic, that are erected, have the endorsement of popular sentiment or atleast political authority. But not only can monuments be a symptom of despotism, they canstand for an ossified canon or, as the recent issues with Confederate statues in the US suggest,
represent fasces of a society that many now wish to repudiate. In addition, as Noah Guynn
argues in his essay on the medieval Anglo-Norman Roman d’Eneas, the monumental can beused to marginalize. To honor, in his example, a queer valence that the powers wished to denyis part of its foundational narrative. Additionally, the monumental’s preservative capacities canalso freeze, anneal, and thus abject. In contrast, the temporary, even if it is necessarily ephemeral and even sometimes trivial, can navigate around the shoals of certainty and not be fixed ina formulated phrase. It is in temporal terms what the hyperlocal is in spatial terms.
In the Roman d’Eneas, argues Guynn, a pair of elaborate mausoleums,” are erectedduring the narrative “to commemorate the eradication” of two characters, Pallas and Camille –Camilla in Vergil’s original – who rove outside the accepted heteronormative boundaries fortheir gender.26 What would seem to be permanent gestures of honor serves just to ballast theinitial act of erasure; it is all in the nature of, as Edmund Wilson put it with respect to North
American indigenous people, apologies to the Iroquois, not at all disturbing the heteronormativeand Eurocentric hegemony that the text presumes. Even though the text Guynn analyzes is justa rewrite of the original Virgilian narrative, it is given a different valence not just by the way
the romance genre makes sexuality, and sexual deviation, more explicit, but by the fact that by
the year 1100 the two major eventual global colonizers, England and France, had already begun
what Guynn calls “state formation,” even if their borders and linguistic definitions were very
different from those of modernity. We tend to either – following Marx and modernization theory – see the impetus for colonization as beginning after 1500, or see it as not being present ina Europe that in the Marxist tradition was called “feudalist.” More recently, Giorgio Agamben
has seen ancient Roman law as the key gesture of sovereignty in the European tradition, but
Guynn comments that the later twelfth century saw the rise of the nation-state as a ‘boundedcollective subject.”27 We also have to remember that the Crusades, even if not mounted bynation states, were occurring as a mode of European expansion into Asian and non-Christianterritories. Thus the Europe that colonized the Americas and Australasia was already incipientin the era of chivalric romance. Indeed, as the work of Louise darkens has suggested, there issomething inherently medievalistic in settler colonialism, which is in that the medieval constitutes precisely the history the white settler colonies feel they lack. Yet the sense of disruption
and untimeliness that the medieval occasions in the modern can allegorize both the settler-colonial indecisiveness (Curnow’s speaker not quite feeling comfortable where he stands) and thesettler-colonial guilt over their usurpation of the lands of the indigenous people. Calling attention to the medieval or medievalistic within the Eurocentric is in a way decolonization backwards. In Guynn’s analysis of the Roman d’Eneas, Pallas’s tomb, constructed out of “the natural marvel of asphalt bitumen is ‘impenetrable’ but also porous.” In this sense, the monumental

26
27

Ibid., pp. 287-319.
Ibid., p. 112.

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when read properly can be seen as unfolding its own inherent temporariness, which at once it
seeks to suppress.
It would be easy to evoke “context” as an antidote to the monumental, but I refuse to doso because it has the same issue as modernization, secularization, Carter’s spatial history, Curnow situated Pakeha speaker, namely, of suggesting that once we contextualize something, we
solve it decisively. Thus I am sympathetic to recent work by Caroline Levine, Sharon Marcus,
and Rita Felski, who, coming from very different critical vantage-points, have been skeptical
about the suturing and enabling role context played in the historical and political criticism in
the 1980s and 1990s.28 The subsidiarity of context, the way it presupposes a pressing-down
ontology to the specific, and the way it is precisely locatable in space and time is its appeal, but
is also its limitation. In this way, my ideal reading of the Curnow poem anticipates the “marvelous year” in which whites can feel at home in New Zealand and not some determinate dateposterior to its 1943 composition, not 1989 or 2011, not even, say, 2036, but an apocalyptic
date never quite to be manifested. Rather than a flagrant or showy apocalyptic, this apocalyptic
would be asymptotic, convergent, and adjacent, acknowledging its own provisionality and limitation. Curnow later critiqued the history of this period of buying too much into New Zealand’s‘anti-myth’, and one of the mistakes that self-styled progressive and decolonizing thought haveoften made is to substitute an anti-myth for a myth, the modern for the medieval, the secular
for the religious, the spatial for the imperial, and just stop there. There might not be a ‘there’ tostop at or should not be. Robert Frost’s line “such as she was, such as she would become,” getsa bit closer to the ideal here in swerving away from a cathartic closure.29 In this light, the hyperlocal, which stresses both the radical specificity and the nearly infinite transferability ofplace, avoids the decisiveness, the immobility, the monumentality of context. The hyperlocal
has its limits, and can even be accused of modesty. It does not, and does not presume to, solve
problems like racial and gender hierarchies or the continued legacy of colonialism, although it
can call attention to their arbitrariness and potential impermanence.
One can compare the difference between the subsidiary and the hyperlocal, and to thedifference in shape and torque between the lake and the pond.30 The lake is permanent, mappable, an object of beauty. The pond is just ordinary, an object for use or minor adornment, forfishing or for decoration, and is seldom the centerpiece of a designed a landscape or a striking
feature of a natural one. Unlike the lake, the pond is seldom prominently featured on maps, andnot cross the horizon of someone whose perspective on the world is topographic or cartographic
in mode. Cities do not grow up along ponds; rivers seldom flow from them to the sea. Ponds
are often collections of rainwater that become situated and periodically replenished; they are
fragile and can easily be drained or dried. The pond is often brackish or fetid, and home tounglamorous creatures like frogs. But the pond is a constant and necessary feature of the landscape, vital for sustaining wetlands and ecological life style, for disclosing the intimacy and28

Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus, “Surface Reading: An Introduction. Representations, Vol. 108 No. 1, Fall(2009), pp. 1-21; Caroline Levine, Forms (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); Rita Felski, The Limits
Of Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
29
Frost, op. cit., p. 255.
30
Nicholas Birns, The Hyperlocal in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Literary Space (Lanham: Lexington,2019).

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adjacency of human life, animal life, plant life, and for what rune might be termed the geological or elemental life of dirt, stone, and water. The pond does not have to be valuable in itself,
but can lend value for others. Since much clay that is used both in manufacturing and as thematerial basis for sculpture or porcelain is found in ponds, ponds can have a role in the shapingof objects that were never near a pond. Ponds are thus inconspicuous, fungible, and elastic.
They do not differentiate decisively or melodramatically between the natural and thehuman, and they mitigate both the destructiveness embodied in the idea of the Anthropocene
and the grandiosity associated with the very idea of separating man from nature. If the hyperlocal is not always associated with the domestication of nature, if it can reflect the resilience of
nature and the way it possesses such integrity as to not to be fully disclosable or interpretableby the human, the hyperlocal does pertain to nature being nearby, but is not identical with nature, though neither is it non-nature. That is, the hyperlocal is all about the near-at-hand, theadjacent, the metonymic, the proximal, that which is not identical to A, and yet not opposite to
A either. It is close to the interstitial or the liminal, but the interstitial or liminal with a bite, atang, and above all specificity. This is important particularly with respect to indigenous people,
who at once lived intimately with nature but also, as Bill Gammage relates in The Biggest Estate
On Earth, actively shaped, cultivated, and even designed the lands in which they lived. Gammage points out that early English explorers and settlers of Australia compared the new lands
they encountered not to the wild parts of Europe, with its uninhabited or sparsely populated
forests, but to estates, parks, or prospects.31 The settlers promulgated the rhetoric of the Australian landscape as a terra nullius, an empty land to be seamlessly occupied by white suzerainty. Yet their own eyes, their own sensory impressions, instructed them that the land had
already been taken care of, shaped, cultivated acknowledged, in a rhythm where humans andnature acknowledged each other but did not claim or yield prevalence.
The Aboriginal writer Bruce Pascoe, in Dark Emu, has spoken further of “the intimate
cooperation between people and cetaceans” in terms of neither an antagonistic nor idyllic conception of humans and nature, but one of relationality, adjacency, proximity, modesty.32 This
modesty, modularity, and interpretability are also traits of the hyperlocal. If the hyperlocal is indenotative terms in between the global and the local, if in terms of scale it is beneath even thelocal, but so maneuverable and elastic as to operate potentially on the scale of the global, on
the level of affect the sublime is the opposite of the hyperlocal. Whereas the sublime calls forcataclysmic, catastrophic disruption and privileges the unrepresentable, that which cannot totally be described or explicitly rendered, the hyperlocal focuses on what is within the representable, between its lines, and seeks meaning in that which is so routine as to be usually dismissed
as obvious or beneath notice. It is not just a difference in the scrutiny of object or the methodology of access that is pertinent here but is also the tone in which the inquiry is conducted. The
hyperlocal abjures any insistence or stridency, and focuses on common, available, and comprehensible meanings, meanings that may be sufficiently out of the way as to require particularfocus but are never deliberately occult or obscure. This is important in the contemporary global
context when so much is made of distance and exoticism, whereas the nearby too can expose
31

Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate On Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (Sydney: Allen and Unwin,2013).
32
Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu: Agriculture or Accident? (Melbourne: Scribe, 2018).

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attempts at monumentality. Pertinent here is an anecdote I heard once in Australia. A local
theater-maker had staged a production of Oedipus Tyrannos in a nearby place associated withindigenous people. His portrayal of Oedipus was intended to embody the original sin of European arrogance, and its enactment – a form of post-colonial, cathartic repentance. But the gesture overwhelmed any contrition, becoming self-advertising and grandiose. Oedipus, as a figure, may be self-undoing and may represent a critique of Western attempts at knowledge. His
fate might represent guilt and abjection. But he is still a heterosexual, white male calling attention to his own arrogance in a gesture that, in a colonial context, has the potential to repeat thatarrogance. Settler-colonial subsidiarity can, against its best and manifest intentions, become
like this, perpetuating itself even when seeking some sort of metanoia. This arrogance is justwhat the hyperlocal can undo.
III. The Travelling Hyperlocal
There is another sort of colonial interaction that can be present even within and under overtlycolonial discourse, as seen in this episode from the narrative of the early Australian colonist
Watkin Tench,
Got to Rose Hill in the evening. Next morning walked round the whole of the cleared and cultivatedland, with the Rev. Mr. Johnson, who is the best farmer in the country. Edward Dod, one of thegovernor’s household, who conducts everything here in the agricultural line, accompanied us partof the way, and afforded that he estimates the quantity of cleared and cultivated land at 200 acres.
Of these 55 are in wheat, barley, and a little oats, 30 in maize, and the remainder is either just clearedof wood, or is occupied by ‘buildings, gardens, &c’. Four enclosures of 20 acres each, are planned
for the reception of cattle, which may arrive in the colony, and two of these are already fenced in.
In the centre of them ‘is to be erected a house, for a person who will be fixed upon to’ take care of
the cattle.33

In one sense, one could not get more colonial than this: the land is being cleared, the methods
and techniques and livestock of the colonizer are moving in. But, as much as Tench would likethe Platonic projection to govern what will happen, there is an element of randomness. The
house that will be erected for the person to take care of the cattle will be their house in terms ofoccupancy, if not of ownership. They will have necessarily, whatever their individual posture,a more intimate and immediate relation to the land at Rose Hill. Moreover, what is being transplanted here is not just European culture, but maize, a crop first cultivated for many millennia
by Amerindians before it became part of European global culture. Even as one indigeneity isplowed over, the idea of the non-European cannot be entirely eliminated. This is seen in thejournals of the early Canadian settler Susanna Moodie,
He had himself served his time as a midshipman on board his father’s flag-ship, but had left the navy
and accepted a commission in the Buenos-Ayrean service during the political struggles in that province; he had commanded a sort of privateer under the government, to whom, by his own account, he
had rendered many very signal services. Why he left South America and came to Canada he kept a
profound secret. He had indulged in very vicious and dissipated courses since he came to the province, and by his own account had spent upwards of four thousand pounds, in a manner not over33

Watkin Tench, 1788, ed. Tim Flannery (Melbourne: Text, 2009), p. 153.

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creditable to himself. Finding that his friends would answer his bills no longer, he took possessionof a grant of land obtained through his father’s interest, up in Harvey, a barren township on the
shores of Stony Lake; and, after putting up his shanty, and expending all his remaining means, hefound that he did not possess one acre out of the whole four hundred that would yield a crop of
potatoes. He was now considerably in debt, and the lands, such as they were, had been seized, withall his effects, by the sheriff, and a warrant was out for his own apprehension, which he contrived
to elude during his sojourn with us. Money he had none; and, beyond the dirty fearnought blue
seaman’s jacket which he wore, a pair of trousers of the coarse cloth of the country, an old blackvest that had seen better days, and two blue-checked shirts, clothes he had none. He shaved but oncea week, never combed his hair, and never washed himself. A dirtier or more slovenly creature neverbefore was dignified by the title of a gentleman. He was, however, a man of good education, of
excellent abilities, and possessed a bitter, sarcastic knowledge of the world; but he was selfish andunprincipled in the highest degree.34

The aristocratic wastrel Moodie describes is a world traveler, but for all the wrong reasons. He
has gone from England to Argentina to Canada leaving improvidence and incompetence in his
trail. And yet this is not just a case of a transcendental lapse in character, of a mind that canfind “its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”35 The experience
Moodie described is a Canadian experience, the potatoes he has failed to harvest are Canadian,and her circumstantial encounter with him is a Canadian encounter as well. It is not essentially
Canadian, but it still is Canadian; and the tone of mixed evaluation – granting his charm andpathos while chiding him for irresponsibility – is a kind of estimation this shabby gentleman
might never have received in his native land.
There have been attempts to discuss travel literature in the nineteenth century as if it
was independent of colonization.36 This might be true of, say, a Dickens visiting France, (although even there Anglocentric cultural attitudes are in evidence); but I refuse to accept that,say, a British man who travels for New Zealand and stays there for a couple of years and does
not decisively emigrate is not involved in colonization. Travel is voluntary and victimless, colonization is not just victimless but involuntary, and one of the illusions of talking about travel
literature as a separate category is that not only does it exculpate the travelers but also gives
them an agency they do not in fact have; whereas everybody on a colonizing voyage or expedition knows that, whatever their supposed individual agenda, they are there as a mobilized
instrument of state power. Even Susanna Strickland Moodie, who relates that her husband, thescion of an Orkney islands military family, “landed in Canada” a man not “overgifted with thegood things of this world” and that he and his wife aspired to “the emigrant’s hope of bettering
his condition.”37 Yet from the perspective of the British government, getting rid of precarious
people like the Moodies was weeding out potential dissidents, energetic, industrious subjects
who, if dissatisfied in the homeland, could cause trouble, as having enough agency to rebel andenough anxiety to feel dissatisfied. By having the Moodies emigrate, Britain could at once consolidate its grip in Canada and quell any incipient unrest in potentially unruly elements of its
own population. This does not ironize or impugn the Moodies’ genuine and autonomous
34

Susanna Moodie, Roughing it In The Bush: or, Life in Canada (London: Bentley, 1852), p. 371.
John Milton, Paradise Lost (New York: S. King, 1831), p. 21.
36
Tim Youngs, ed. Travel Writing In The Nineteenth Century (London: Anthem, 2007).
37
Susanna Moodie, op. cit., p. 7.
35

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aspiration to better themselves; but that their personal betterment was certainly not contrary toa course benefitting the British government means that their emigration is not a way of leaving
an empire, and thus there is really no way to decisively arrive as a non-colonizer. Susanna
Moodie’s bush and clearances become thus not a once-and-for-all site of subsidiary determinacy, but a series of eddying, hyperlocal glimpses of community and loneliness, uncultivatablewildness and uninspirational domesticity.
Colonization is just not libertarian. Nor can it simply postulate the autonomous individual
undergirded by what Russell West-Pavlov calls a “basic, underlying synchronicity of the taxonomic system.”38 The traveling hyperlocal, on the other hand, understands that an individual
who goes from Britain to New Zealand in the 1800s, whether they think of their journey as
migration or travel, is never evading the structures of power. What the travelling hyperlocal canachieve, though, is an encounter with place that at once acknowledges colonization, but does
not seek to erect a monumental settler edifice. The travelling hyperlocal is closer to the picaresque than the foundational, the episodic than the monumental; by acknowledging the European traveler is always, as Foucault said of Don Quixote, a “hero of the same,” it forestalls thecathartic, foundational colonial primal scene that, weirdly, both imperial history and certain
post-colonial gestures have seemed to emphasize.39 By emphasizing inadvertent and inconspicuous encounters with particularity the hyperlocal discourages the afflatus of subsidiarity. I do
not mean to argue against regionalism per se here. In Australia, regions such as Gippsland, New
England, and the Wheatbelt play vital roles in resisting a unitary national narrative and settlercolonial complacency, calling attention to the irrepressible diversity of terrain and culture. But
these regionalisms are not seeking a quasi-national afflatus. What John Kinsella calls “international regionalism” is a kind of localism that provincializes the global norm as it is asserting a
regional difference.
Kinsella’s critique of the so called “Antipodean actionist” and of the local activists who
can be “disturbingly territorial” argues that the answer to normative arrogance is not the decisively local, but a posture that can shuttle in and out of the local, and from local to local, affirming specificity but never harnessing particularity.40. Tench goes from farm to farm, finding
anchor but never lodgment, concreteness but never permanence. Much as in Anthony Trollope’s later Antipodean travelogue, a numbing series of lists and inventories hollows and vacates any sort of primal or cathartic possessiveness of the land. The passive accretion of thecareful indexer militates against the imperial gaze of the conqueror, against even the governmental impulse Tench thinks he is obeying, even if Tench himself certainly never escapes being
part of an imperial and colonial mission, is always a minor priest in what Stephen Muecke has
called the “magico-religious forces” of the secular state. Watkin Tench can find farm after farmin Rose Hill, but he can never find New South Wales or Australia, even as he is physicallythere. His overt colonialism and his tacit acknowledgment of his colonialism render an analysis
of his project down to the level of the hyperlocal, the sub-topographical.
38

Russell West-Pavlov, Temporalities (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 66.
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, translated by Alan Sheridan (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 51.
40
John Kinsella, Russell West-Pavlov, Temporariness On The Imperatives of Place (Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2018), p. 147.
39

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Even if the hyperlocal and the temporary forsake the visibility and impact – the relevance, one might say, of the subsidiary and monumental – they also renounce the hope, and thedanger, of making this decisive, once-and-for-all impact. But they do not demand the eradication of ionization of settler culture. So often, critiques of European imperialism operate by a“first in, last out” rule, whereby the European-derived settler culture of the colonies is castigatedas imperialist, while imperial culture itself is left alone. But neither Watkin Tench or Susanna
Moodie were fools or people bound to be swindled by history, and though not achieving theimpossible goal of a self-sufficient Canadian or Australian identity, they traveled further along
the road of self-critique than those who indirectly presided over their journeyings. Anotherexample undermining this rule is a recent historical novel of Australian settlement, Peter
Cochrane’s The Making of Martin Sparrow, where an Australian settler of convict backgroundflees from his own polity. Sparrow has, in Cochrane’s words, a “pliability” that enables him tosee beyond the alternatives in which his life has been framed.41 Here a more supple, more indeterminate, but above all still empirical sense of particularity is tactically equipped to assure
a plurality of reference and to at least sketch the projection of an interstitial zone between intentionality and impermeability, between projection and renunciation. The hyperlocal is thus
seen as supple enough not to deny any meaning even to cultural formations acknowledged as
invasive and appropriative.
To sum up: he hyperlocal abjures the genetic, is indifferent to claims of source and origin,and is blasé about teleology. We are far here from the once-and-for-all proclamation of themonumental and the subsidiary. And better off for it. The hyperlocal is experienced in many
places. Yet familiar and intimate with them. Helen Rosner remarked that the appeal of Anthony
Bourdain’s TV travel shows lay in the fact that he had visited the places he talked about frequently.42 Thus he was able to give the viewer access to these places, highlighting but not exoticizing them. Even though the viewer did not share either Bourdain’s lifestyle nor his accessto remote places – as the Australian novelist Michelle de Kretser pointed out in her book Questions Of Travel, many people who travel, like refugees or migrants, do so involuntarily – they
did not feel excluded. I experienced this myself when I saw Bourdain’s final show, on the East
Village, the New York neighborhood in which I have spent much of my life. I expected to easily
rebuke Bourdain as a colonizer and tourist, to mock his presentation of a Disneyfied and otheredversion of a neighborhood, with which I was familiar in an everyday sense. Instead, I was actually impressed by what he was able – within a short time span, and operating by certain generic conventions of style and medium – to apprehend about the place. The hyperlocal approach
does not prevail over a place or exhaust it. It brings the place in all its specificity forward to be
encountered by people from other places.
The hyperlocal is thus not an ideology. It is not the genesis or source of anything, it is
not talking about the beginning of a new era nor is it capable to, save the parent other than inaccretion and accumulation. The hyperlocal is like an undercarriage on which more developed
benign ideologies can ride. It is the inconspicuous basis for a plausible democracy and a livableinternationalism, linked by elastic intimacy.
41
42Peter Cochrane, The Making of Martin Sparrow (Melbourne: Penguin, 2018).
Helen Rosner, “Anthony Bourdain And The Power of Telling The Truth,” The New Yorker, June 8, 2018.

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Notes on Contributors

Dr. Tomokazu Baba is Associate Professor at Nagano Prefectural College, University of
Nagano. He received a Ph.D. from Hitotsubashi University (2008) and another one from theSorbonne Paris IV (2013). His research discipline include Contemporary Philosophy, Ethics,
History of Ideas, especially 20th century French and German Philosophy, Levinas andHeidegger. Email: joiespacieuse@gmail.com
Dr. Rossen Roussev i A ocia e Profe or in Con emporar Philo oph a S . C ril and S .
Me hodiUni er i of Veliko Tarno o. He ha been a Vi i ing Profe or a he Ka akh
British Technical University, Almaty, Kazakhstan, Assistant Professor at Kyungpook National
University, Daegu, S. Korea, and at St. John s University in New York. He also taught at the
University of Aktobe, the City University of New York, and Mercy College in New York. He
obtained his doctorate in philosophy from The New School for Social Research in New York(2005). His publications and interests are in phenomenology, philosophy of language, criticaltheory, and philosophy of culture. Email: r.roussev@ts.uni-vt.bg
Dr. Fabien Durringer is an Associate Professor (PRAG status) in Japanese studies at
the University of Orléans. He obtained his doctorate in economics from Hitotsubashi
University (2009) and the French "agrégation" qualification in "Japanese Language andCulture" (2014). His research disciplines on Japan include literature, history of literature,
cultural anthropology, and folk studies. The main focus of his research is on Lafcadio Hearn,
Yanagita Kunio, and Dazai Osamu. Email: fabien.durringer@yahoo.fr
Dr. Fiona Tomkinson is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Humanities at Nagoya
University, where she has taught since April 2017. Prior to that, she lectured in the English
Department at Yeditepe University, Istanbul (1997-2017), and also gave occasional
Philosoph cla e a Yedi epe and Bo a i i Uni er i ie . She holds a B.A. and M.A. in
English Language and Literature from Oxford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in
Philo oph from Bo a i i Uni er i . She has published widely in the areas of literature andphilosophy, and is currently researching the influence of Central and East Asian religion,
philosophy and mythology on British authors of the twentieth century, including Iris Murdoch,
Lawrence Durrell and Ted Hughes. Email: fgtomkinson@yahoo.co.uk
Dr. Nicholas Birns is Associate Professor at the Center for Applied Liberal Arts, New York
University, and author of Theory After Theory (2010), I Barbarian memory (2013), andContemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead (2015). He has contributed
articles to MLQ, Partial Answers, Exemplary, and many other journals. His book The
Hyperlocal In Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Literary Space will be forthcoming from
Lexington Books in late 2019. Email: nicbirns@aol.com

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Announcement

3rd International Colloquium
in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture

Global Cultural Encounters: Impacts and Inspirations
June 4-6, 2020

hosted by
University of Orléans, France
in conjunction with
the Society for Philosophy as Global Conversation

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On the Idea of the Colloquium
What would be a global cultural encounter? One more obvious way to think of it is that it is anencounter of different cultural traditions from around the globe, which becomes particularly
significant if it results in some productive impact. A less obvious way to think of it would bethat it is an encounter within the same cultural tradition, which results in a cultural impact of
global significance. To be sure, such impacts may vary in effects, of which inspirations are ofparticular interest, as they stimulate creativity, originality, and productivity in any form ofculture. They thus enhance and are true signs of the conversation between the cultural traditions
and between cultures in the broadest of senses.
We find numerous examples of both of these kinds of encounters almost everywhere in culture,including in philosophy, literature, and art.
Speaking about philosophy, Plato is said to have learned the story of the transmigration of thesoul one of his key doctrines while traveling to Egypt. This notion, however, which has
been also attributed to Pythagoras and to Orphic and Thracian belief systems, appears to beolder in Hinduism and other worldviews in South Asia, thus raising questions about possible
interactions between these cultures. For his part, Aristotle, in addition to his fundamental
influence on Western philosophy and Christian theology, has left his tangible mark also on early
I lamic he l g . In a diffe en ein, Nie cheeading f Hind i laf Man(Manusmriti) has affirmed his view of spirituality as the highest natural rank in the ways ofhumanity. Whereas their reception of key Western thinkers enabled Japanese philosophers like
Ki a Ni hida, Tanabe Hajime, Ni hi ani Keiji, and Wa ji Tec me
i h neperspectives on both Western and Eastern intellectual and spiritual traditions. Examples of thiskind of encounters abound in the rest of culture as well. Paul Gauguin
a in Tahi i, Lafcadi
Hea n m e Ja an, Cha lie Cha liniBali, Ma g e i e D a m e f m Ind china
F ance,Am lie N h mb e n
Ja an,
li just a few, all inspired artistic andliterary output that bears the marks of one culture left its stamp on another.
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Of the second kind of encounters, in philosophy we most immediately find the one of Plato andAristotle, which very much defined even if in divergence its problematic of interest for
millennia to come. In fact, in the Western philosophy such encounters have become its
cornerstones and can be traced in terms of influences, such as Aristotle on Aquinas; Hume on
Kant; Hegel on Marx; Marx on the Frankfurt School; Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on Heidegger;
Wittgenstein on neopositivists, Husserl on Heidegger and Derrida; Heidegger on Sartre,
Levinas, Derrida, and Rorty; Nietzsche on Foucault; or Freud, Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida on
literary criticism and feminist thought, among many others. They abound also in the rest of thec l e, i h infl ence
ch a Ma i e n Pica ; Pica
and B a e c bi m ncontemporary art; Bauhaus on architecture and visual arts; A. Warhol and R. Lichtenstein on
pop art; Stravinsky on contemporary classic music; or V. Nijinsky, M. Graham, and M.
Plisetskaya on contemporary dance, being only some of the examples.
In this sense, the topics of interest to the colloquium can be related but not limited to,- Phenomenology, existential philosophy, post-structuralism- Metaphilosophy, pragmatism, and communicative action- Language, thinking, and technology- Critical theory, literature, and art- Ethics, religion, and spirituality- Power, politics, and economics- Race, gender, sexuality, identity- Refugees, strangers, and outcasts- Community building, inclusion, and integration- Human person, health, and self-creation- Globalization, multi-culturalism, and the meaning of nationality- Trans- and cross-cultural horizons- Environment, common concerns, and common solutions- Radicalization, Populism, and Extremism- Poverty, Gentrification, and Biopolitics*Conference organizers will consider the completed academic articles of the conference
presentations for publication (after a review process) in the next issue of Global Conversations:
An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture, an online open-accessacademic journal inaugurated after the first conference of the Society for Philosophy as Global
Conversation in March, 2018.
*Target Audience: philosophers, faculty and students from related disciplines (e.g. humanities,
literature, art, journalism), artists, writers, as well as representatives of any area of creative
endeavor, with interests in cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary dialogue and research.
*Conference Fee: None.
* An optional cultural program and conference dinner will be organized.

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Abstract Submissions
We invite academic and art-project abstract-proposals within 300 words at
global.conversations.ph@gmail.com by April 1, 2020 (with early submission encouraged).
Artists who would like to participate in an art show could present one to three pieces of work.
Performing artists are asked to limit their act to 45 min; filmmakers to 2 hours.

* Selected participants are asked to register athttps://forms.gle/huDXikLXbqAbu8if6

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Information for Authors
Global Conversations is a peer-reviewed, open-access, electronic journal accepting highquality articles in philosophy, humanities, social sciences, or other fields, which advance theidea of global cultural awareness, exchange, and conversation broadly construed. It is aphilosophical journal in the broadest sense of the term open to any viewpoint, schoolorientation, intellectual trend, or cultural tradition. It welcomes in-depth philosophical andtheoretical discussions of relevant issues, as well as texts on issues in comparative
philosophy, critical theory, art criticism, cross-cultural investigations, interdisciplinary
research, or transcultural studies.
Articles are evaluated in terms of their merit, rather than size, though ones larger than 16,000 words or smaller than 4,000 words are generally discouraged. Article styling is inaccordance with the Chicago Manual of Style (footnotes only), with main text 1.15-spaced,
12pt Times New Roman font, one space after sentence, indented first line of each newparagraph (excepting the opening paragraphs of sections and divisions) without space
between paragraphs, footnotes and block quotations 10pt font, block quotations indented 1
cm from both left and right, same styling and spacing. Authors are expected to adhere togender-inclusive and diversity-sensitive language. Authors who do not have academic-levelcommand in English are asked to have their articles proofread before submission.
Paper submissions are accepted at global.conversations.ph@gmail.com. The provisionaltime for review is two months.

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