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Abstract

In his lectures on the Presocratic philosopher Parmenides from 1932, Martin Heidegger not only speaks about the “question of Being” (Seinsfrage), but also about the “question of the Way” (Wegfrage). This is understandable, because Parmenides distinguishes three ways. I would like to assume that Parmenides and Lǎozǐ ask both the “question of Being” and the “question of the Way”. In the case of Parmenides, Being can be said to take precedence, although the two attach very different, even opposite, meanings to it. For Lǎozǐ, on the other hand, the Way is in the foreground.

For Parmenides, only the first way (the way of Being) is walkable, whereas the second way (the way of Non-being) is not. The third way is a way that ordinary people take, the way of the “double-headed” (δίκρανοι). Heidegger says about them: “they have their heads here and there, and that without noticing the ambiguity and suspecting it”. They go without a way, “in errancy”: “their whole perception is a soon this way, soon that way, a going back and forth, directionless, criss-crossing – πλαγκτός – erring. […] They do not just go in errancy – they are constantly in it and cannot get out of it.”

But what is the errancy of the double-heads? And what is the relation of the three ways in Parmenides to the “Way” (道) referred to by Lǎozǐ? In this talk, I will try to argue that Lǎozǐ defends the third way between being and non-being, by transforming it into a Way that wanders between “being-without” (無/無在) and “being-with” (有/有在).

Bio

Professor Fabian Heubel is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Taipei. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Free University of Berlin. His main research interests include: comparative and transcultural philosophy, Classical and Modern Chinese philosophy, interpretations of Chinese philosophy in Western sinology, Critical Theory, contemporary German and French thought, aesthetics and philosophy of art.