From the 1920s to the 1960s, Martin Heidegger on several occasions referred to the early Greeks’ encounter with what he called ‘the Asiatic’ (_das Asiatische_). Meanwhile, he was also concerned with a sort of ontological power of destruction and ruination that according to him should be understood in the Greek sense, which he also called _das Asiatische_. In this article, I first sketch the contributions made by Asian/African traditions to the origin of Greek philosophy and highlight Heidegger’s own recognition of (...) it in the 1920s. Second, I examine Nietzsche’s remarks bearing on the early Greeks’ intricate bond with the Asiatic, which is formulated in terms of a distinction between the ‘Dionysiac Greeks’ and the ‘Dionysiac barbarians.’ Third, I scrutinize Heidegger’s relevant statements—especially those in the 1930s—in the light of Nietzsche’s influence on him. I argue that two different meanings of the Asiatic are at play in Heidegger’s thought: One is the _Greek Asiatic_, the Being-historical Asiatic; The other is the _alien Asiatic_, ‘the most foreign and most difficult’ Asiatic, which has been overcome by the Greeks. Fourth, I show that in the 1960s Heidegger seems to consider a sort of conflation of these two meanings—a conflation that remains fraught with tension. (shrink)

This essay in the comparative metaphysic of nothingness begins by pondering why Leibniz thought of the converse question as the preeminent one. In Eastern philosophical thought, like the numeral 'zero' (śūnya) that Indian mathematicians first discovered, nothingness as non-being looms large and serves as the first quiver on the imponderables they seem to have encountered (e.g., 'In the beginning was neither non-being nor being: what was there, bottomless deep?' RgVeda X.129). The concept of non-being and its permutations of nothing, negation, (...) nullity, etc., receive more sophisticated treatment in the works of grammarians, ritual hermeneuticians, logicians, and their dialectical adversaries variously across Jaina and Buddhist schools. The present analysis follows the function of negation/the negative copula, nãn, and dialetheia in grammar and logic, then moves onto ontologies of non-existence and extinction and further suggestive tropes that tend to arrest rather than affirm the inexorable being-there of something. After a discussion of interests in being (existence), non-being and nothingness in contemporary metaphysics, the article examines Heidegger’s extensive treatment of nothingness in his 1929 inaugural Freiburg lecture, 'Was ist Metaphysik?', published later as 'What is Metaphysics?' The essay however distances itself from any pretensions toward a doctrine of Metaphysical Nihilism. (shrink)

A number of different kinds of negation and negation of negation are developed in Indian thought, from ancient religious texts to classical philosophy. The paper explores the Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya, Jaina and Buddhist theorizing on the various forms and permutations of negation, denial, nullity, nothing and nothingness, or emptiness. The main thesis argued for is that in the broad Indic tradition, negation cannot be viewed as a mere classical operator turning the true into the false, nor reduced to the mainstream Boolean (...) dichotomy: 1 versus 0. Special attention is given to how contradiction is handled in Jaina and Buddhist logic. (shrink)