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JAY GOULDING
THE FORGOTTEN FRANKFURT SCHOOL:
RICHARD WILHELM’S CHINA INSTITUTE
Abstract
Between 1925 and 1932, the University of Frankfurt housed
Richard Wilhelm’s China Institute. A diverse compendium of
international scholars passed through the Institute during these
years. This article explores philosophical and historical interactions
among Wilhelm, Carl Gustav Jung, and Martin Buber who
contribute to the understanding of Daoism through philosophy,
psychology, and religion, respectively.
I. I NTRODUCTION
When scholars think of the history of the University of Frankfurt,
they often triangulate on the philosophical writings of Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse because of
their contributions to the Institute of Social Research (Institut für
Sozialforschung) or the Frankfurt School for short.1 In the 1920s
and 1930s, the University of Frankfurt not only cultivates these
thinkers but also acts as a vortex of international communications
both East and West. The scholars supportive in the formation of the
Institute of Social Research such as Walter Benjamin, Paul Tillich,
and Erich Fromm are involved at one time or another in East Asian
thought. Karl August Wittfogel has expertize in China’s political
economy.2 Two other Frankfurt scholars of Chinese philosophy and
religion are Richard Wilhelm and Martin Buber. In addition to the
Institute of Social Research, Frankfurt supports a China Institute
(China-Institut) directed by Wilhelm. Although the Institute is
destroyed during World War II and most of its documents lost, we
can still piece together contributions to Chinese and comparative
philosophy.3
JAY GOULDING, Professor, Department of Social Science, York University.
Specialties: Daoism, hermeneutics, phenomenology. E-mail: jay@yorku.ca
Journal of Chinese Philosophy 41:1-2 (March–June 2014) 170–186
C 2015 Journal of Chinese Philosophy
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THE FORGOTTEN FRANKFURT SCHOOL
II. W ILHELM
AND
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J UNG : A NIMUS and A NIMA
From 1928 to 1932, Frankfurt is a hotbed for philosophical inquiry.4
While Martin Heidegger entertains Chinese and Japanese scholars at
Freiburg and Marburg, including philosophers Xiong Wei 熊偉, Shen
Youding 沈有鼎, Tanabe Hajime 田邊元, and Kuki Shūzō 九鬼周造,5
Wilhelm attracts Chinese thinkers to Frankfurt, including the Buddhist abbot Tai Xu 太虚, the poet Xu Zhimo 徐志摩, and the historian
Hu Shi 胡適.6 Tai Xu is a premier Buddhist thinker. In 1912, he establishes the Association for the Advancement of Buddhism and in the
1920s publishes the journal The Voice of the Sea Tide.7 Born at the end
of the Qing dynasty, he merges various sects of Buddhism including
Huayan Zong 華嚴宗 (Flower Garland) and Tiantai Zong 天台宗
(Celestial Platform). He encourages Chan Zong 禪宗 (Chan Buddhism) and Jingtu Zong 淨土宗 (Pure Land).8 For the contemporary
world, he believes that only anatman (not-self) removes the temptations of private property.9 From 1918 to 1929, he tours Asia, Europe,
and the United States. At Wilhelm’s Institute, he speaks on ‘‘The New
Movements in Buddhism’’ (Die neue Bewegungen im Buddhismus).10
Meeting Xu Zhimo in Beijing, Wilhelm invites him to Germany. Xu is
a promoter of ‘‘East and West’’ (Ost und West), the motto of the China
Institute. Hailed as ‘‘the most promising of the young poets,’’11 he
studies at Cambridge University. Ambassador to the United States
from 1938 to 1942, Hu Shi’s ‘‘Some Modest Proposals for the Reform
of Literature’’12 illustrates classical Chinese forms of literature and
poetry in everyday language. At the China Institute, he speaks on
‘‘The Art of Storytelling in China’’ (Erzahlungskunst in China).13
An ordained Protestant minister, Wilhelm arrives in Qingdao 青島,
Shandong Province in 1899. Despite his original missionary role, Wilhelm embraces Chinese culture, studying language and philosophy,
while not baptizing a single Chinese person.14 He studies in Beijing,
where his son Hellmut is born and educated. In 1911, he cofounds the
Qingdao Confucian Society with Lao Nai-xuan 劳乃宣 (1843–1921), a
scholar related to Confucius (Kongzi) (孔子) and an expert in Daoist
yoga. Their friendship spawns a German translation of the Yijing 《易
經》(Book of Changes).15
Shortly after Lao’s death, Wilhelm returns to Darmstadt’s School
of Wisdom (Schule der Weisheit) where he meets Carl Gustav Jung.
Already known in Europe as a China scholar,16 Wilhelm makes a
lasting impression on Jung, who writes a preface to translations of the
Yijing and a commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower (Tai Yi
Jin Hua Zong Zhi 《太乙金華宗旨》).17
For many years, Jung paints mandalas which he sees as ‘‘cryptograms concerning the state of the self’’:
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In them I saw the self—that is, my whole being—actively at work. To
be sure, at first I could only dimly understand them; but they seemed
to me highly significant, and I guarded them like precious pearls. I
had the distinct feeling that they were something central, and in time
I acquired through them a living conception of the self. The self, I
thought, was like the monad which I am, and which is my world. The
mandala represents this monad, and corresponds to the microcosmic
nature of the psyche.18
In 1928, after painting one mandala of a golden castle, Jung asks
why its color and appearance are so Chinese. Shortly thereafter, he
receives Wilhelm’s translation of the Daoist alchemical book, The
Secret of the Golden Flower. Jung recognizes this ‘‘synchronicity’’ as
‘‘undreamed-of confirmation of my ideas about the mandala and the
circumambulation of the center.’’19 Jung’s central notion of synchronicity is motivated by Wilhelm’s work.
In his memorial address for Wilhelm, Jung explains his pastime of
casting yarrow sticks, reading Yijing and contemplating the relations
between psychic and physical events. These coincidences or ‘‘acausal
parallelisms’’20 of Daoist mysticism seem to affirm his psychoanalytic
judgments of patients’ behavior. At Jung’s request, one such patient
who is hoping to marry, casts his sticks. The Yijing confirms Jung’s
diagnosis of a mother complex: do not marry a powerful maiden. Jung
remembers a meeting with Hu Shi in the 1930s where he discusses the
Yijing. Passing it off as superstition, Hu adds that ‘‘a friend’’ once
asked a Daoist priest for an oracle. It was correct. Jung writes:
‘‘Remembering the well-known story of the ‘good friend’ who does
everything one does not wish to do oneself, I cautiously asked him if
he had not profited by this opportunity.’’21 Hu recalls that he too
asked a question and the oracle was right. Jung senses that Hu appears
‘‘uncomfortable’’ with these queries but sees a nonbeliever being won
over by his clever questioning. Although Hu seems skeptical about
Daoist mysticism, he plays a Chan Buddhist trick on Jung. ‘‘Not laying
bare’’ (bu shuopo 不說破) is a traditional Chinese ploy that Hu often
promotes. By not explaining too clearly, a Buddhist monk teaches students to discover on their own.22 Hu’s doubt results in making Jung’s
conviction more solid. Ironically, Jung strays far from Daoist philosophy by ‘‘scientizing’’ Chinese mysticism.
On first meeting, Jung views Wilhelm as a wholly Chinese person
‘‘in outward manner, as much as in his way of writing and speaking.’’23
Wilhelm seems torn by his return to Germany. Jung visualizes a struggle between Wilhelm’s conscious Western appearance and unconscious Eastern spirit. According to Jung, this schism leads to
Wilhelm’s death in 1930. A dream confirms Jung’s synchronistic suspicions: ‘‘At my bed stood a Chinese in a dark blue gown, hands crossed
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in the sleeves. He bowed low before me, as if he wished to give me a
message. I knew what it signified.’’24
In October 1928, Wilhelm gives a series of lectures at the China
Institute, attended by Jung, Buber, and others. In discussing the classical Chinese soul, Wilhelm interpolates Jungian ideas with the phenomenological layerings of Chinese thought: Confucianism, Daoism,
and Buddhism. Retaining this tripartite grid throughout his writings,
he produces thumbnail sketches which are both accurate and provoking. Addressing these three philosophies in terms of yin-yang 陰陽,
Wilhelm proposes: ‘‘According to the Chinese concept of the world,
all phenomenal existence is conditioned by two polar contrasts, the
contrasts of light and dark, the positive and negative, or yang (陽) and
yin (陰). In the metaphysical realm, the contrast appears as life and
death.’’25 When confronted with the question of death, Kongzi 孔子
responds to a follower: ‘‘While you do not know life, how can you
know about death?’’26 Kongzi renounces religious doctrines in favor
of the ‘‘doubt and tension’’ of everyday life, where ‘‘personal dignity’’
and the ‘‘inner imperative’’ stimulate ‘‘a free shaping of moral behavior independent of mankind’s two greatest enemies, fear and hope.’’27
Wilhelm refers implicitly to ‘‘the Five Constant Virtues of Confucianism’’ (wu chang 五常)28 from the Four Books (Sishu《四書》) and the
Five Classics (Wujing《五經》): ren 仁 (humanity/benevolence), li 禮
(courtesy/etiquette), yi 義 (right conduct/duty), zhi 智 (wisdom/knowledge), and xin 信 (faithfulness/fidelity).29 The upright person weighs
the intricacies of virtues in issues of everyday life. In Mencius’
(Mengzi《孟子》) example, li (decorum) declares that women and
men must not publicly touch hands. Yet, a man exhibiting yi (duty)
would obviously save his drowning sister-in-law by grasping her hand.
Ren emerges as yi mollifies li.30 Hence, the phenomenal crossings of
Chinese virtues create a locus for a junzi 君子 (a person of upright
character).
Concerning Kongzi’s ‘‘wings’’ of the Yijing, Wilhelm contextualizes
the following view of death: ‘‘These wings present the concept of a
phenomenal world of polarity that may be designated as Heaven and
Earth, or light and dark.’’31 His Jungian inspired translation reads:
‘‘Going back to the beginnings of things and pursuing them to the end,
we come to know the lessons of birth and death. The union of seed
and power produces all [living] things; the escape of the animus [and
the sinking of the anima] brings about the decay of life.’’32 Regarding
hunpo 魂魄, the Chinese word for soul, Wilhelm etymologically
divided it into two parts: hun 魂 and po 魄. Arising consciousness (animus, hun) is a yang 陽 principle which ascends; waning consciousness
(anima, po) is a yin 陰 principle which descends.33 Kongzi sees death
when: ‘‘The animus escapes, and the anima sinks into the depth.’’34 In
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this rendition, Wilhelm creates a Chinese phenomenology of the
body. The components of the soul interweave into mutually conditioning, oppositely charged, linked pairings, a ‘‘polar tension’’ that generates ‘‘a type of rotation.’’ This yin-yang 陰陽 rotation is housed in the
body: ‘‘The body disintegrates in death, and simultaneously the deception of unity ceases.’’35 Wilhelm perceptively outlines the polar tensions of Confucian virtues as they intersect through a vertical
phenomenological chiasm of Heaven and Earth. This complements
his horizontal phenomenology of Confucian virtues in everyday life.36
The cycles of birth and death, ascent and descent, death and renewal
are described as follows: ‘‘The broken-down remnants of death nourish the succession of life, and in this way organic components transfer
to new life. This results in the widespread Chinese concept that it is
the soul of the land that permeates man.’’37 Wilhelm cherishes the
Chinese image of joyous return when retelling an anecdote concerning
Xu Zhimo’s homecoming words: ‘‘Here this earth, here these rivers,
here these trees; this is my flesh and blood, from this I came, from this
I live, and now I am home again!’’38
Turning to the Daoist layerings of life, the Chinese view substance
not as ‘‘mass’’ but as lines of energy.39 Here, Wilhelm refers to qi 氣 as
living energy-force. For Laozi 老子, life and death are like water.
Water falls from heaven and evaporates to return to the clouds. Life
and death move like the passing of water. Whereas Confucian virtues
balance the rhythm of moral decision, Daoism balances the coming
and passing of life. In stretching the phenomenal body to include the
worlds of heaven and earth, the Daoist tries to ‘‘walk together with
sun and moon . . . that will endure as long as sun and moon endure;
and whosoever has reached the state beyond becoming lives eternally.’’40 The Confucian is concerned with living a good life while the
Daoist is concerned with living a long life.
In explicating the Chinese Buddhist position on death, Wilhelm states:
‘‘A person at birth is not a substance, but a fusion of states of mobile
matter. It is something like a whirlwind that whirls up dust.’’41 A person
passes through the stages of life, maturity, love, sickness, and death. The
whirlwind is invisible when it has no dust to collect. As the whirlwind
enters new regions, it once again collects dust. Hence we have an endless
cycle of birth and death. We can easily link the image to Zhuangzi’s 莊子
‘‘whirling wind’’ and ‘‘hollows made empty.’’42 In describing Tibetan
Buddhism, Wilhelm explains: ‘‘Death spreads peace over the human
face when, for the moment, the world of appearance disappears. Nothingness, which nonetheless is beyond Something and Nothing, appears
momentarily. If the deceased succeeds in remaining with this instant he
has reached Nirvana.’’43 Few can reach this realm but only drift into
dreams somewhere between substance and psychic states.
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Although he has few guidelines for translating The Secret of the
Golden Flower and although the original text itself is fragmented,
incomplete, and deceptive,44 Wilhelm should be commended for his
efforts. The first printing is from the eighteenth century Qing dynasty
during the reign of Emperor Qianlong 乾隆. With only a thousand
copies produced in 1920, Wilhelm brings one to the West along with
the 1794 alchemical text, The Book of Consciousness and Life (Huiming Jing《慧命經》).45 In his 1929 commentary on Golden Flower,
he interlaces Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism which essentializes his Frankfurt lectures: ‘‘Confucianism sees in ming (命), life, a
heaven-made law to which man must adapt; Taoism (Daoism) takes it
as the multi-colored play of nature which cannot evade the laws of the
Tao (Dao 道), but which is yet pure coincidence; Chinese Buddhism
sees it as the working out of karma within the world of illusion.’’46 Wilhelm’s phenomenology of the body demonstrates how human bodily
form is a homologue of the universe (xiao tiandi 小天地), literally ‘‘a
little heaven-earth’’: ‘‘So, according to the Confucians, the inner
nature of man comes from heaven, or, as the Taoists express it, it is the
phenomenal form of the Tao.’’47 Each individual body encloses a lifeforce which connects with ‘‘a central monad.’’ In ‘‘bipolar’’ fashion,
the life-force separates into human nature (xing 性) and life/fate
(ming 命). In explaining the Chinese etymology, Wilhelm writes:
The word for human nature (hsing [xing 性]) is made up of those for
heart or mind (hsin [xin 心]), and origin, being born (sheng 生). The
heart (hsin), according to the Chinese idea, is the seat of emotional
consciousness, which is awakened by the five senses through unreflecting reactions to impressions received from the external world.
That which remains as a substratum when no feelings are being
expressed but which lingers, so to speak, in a transcendental, supraconscious condition, is human nature (hsing). . . . Human nature
(hsing), as an idea undoubtedly related to logos [kόgο1], appears
closely knit with life (ming) when entering the phenomenal world.
The character ming really signifies a royal command, then destiny,
fate, the fate allotted to a man, so too the duration of the life-span,
the measure of vital energy at one’s disposal, and thus it comes about
that ming (life) is closely related to eros [ἔqx1].48
Hun (animus) rises to shen 神 (heavenly depository) while po
(anima) falls to gui 鬼 (earthly depository). Heaven is collected under
the Yijing trigram qian 乾 and Earth is collected under the trigram
kun 坤.49 These movements of the soul play out against the phenomenal intertwinings of human nature (xing) and life/fate (ming). Human
nature as a substratum is linked to kόcο1 and life as the world of fate’s
desire is linked to ἔqx1. Neither kun nor qian, ming nor xing, po nor
hun, gui nor shen can exist without each other. This is a succinct review
of a yin-yang principle interspersed with Western psychological and
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philosophical terminology. Here, Wilhelm uses Chinese philosophy to
subtly teach his own theories of Jung’s animus and anima. Despite
clutching to the Western enlightenment impulse to divide up these
linked opposites, Jung learns much from Wilhelm’s presentations.
The preceding can be summarized in the following chart:50
female element
earthly trigram Yijing
life, ἔqx1 (eros)
earthly ghost-soul, anima
depository of ghost-souls
yin 陰
kun 坤
ming 命
po 魄
gui 鬼
—
—
—
—
—
yang 陽
qian 乾
xing 性
hun 魂
shen 神
male element
heavenly trigram Yijing
human nature, kόcο1 (logos)
heavenly soul, animus
depository of heavenly souls
Even though he feels the 1928 Frankfurt lectures are not Wilhelm’s
best, Jung admires the effort to bridge the gap between East and
West.51 In his comments on Golden Flower, Wilhelm quotes Goethe:
‘‘Orient und Occident, Sind nicht mehr zu trennen.’’52 ‘‘East and West
can no longer be kept apart,’’ is another slogan which Wilhelm utilizes
at Frankfurt’s China Institute. Jung’s Western ideas of animus and
anima are shaped by Wilhelm’s Eastern interventions. In his commentary on Golden Flower, Jung retells Wilhelm’s logic in translating hun
(arising consciousness) as animus: ‘‘the term ‘animus’ seems appropriate for hun, the character for which is made up of the sign for ‘clouds’
and that for ‘demon.’ Thus hun means ‘cloud-demon,’ a higher breathsoul belonging to the yang principle and therefore masculine.’’53 Jung
also inspects the translation of po (descending consciousness):
‘‘‘Anima,’ called p’o [po], and written with the characters for ‘white’
and ‘demon,’ that is, ‘white ghost,’ belongs to the lower, earthbound,
bodily soul, the yin principle, and is therefore feminine.’’54 Formerly,
Jung uses anima in an analogous way to the Chinese po. Anima is not
transcendental but ‘‘within the range of experience.’’ After much
investigation, Jung sees anima as: ‘‘a feminine figure in the unconscious, hence the feminine name: anima, psyche, Seele. The anima can
be defined as the image or archetype or deposit of all the experiences
of man with woman.’’55 For his own purposes, Jung prefers to connect
the Chinese hun with kόcο1 which aligns with ‘‘clarity of consciousness’’: ‘‘just as hun corresponds to hsing [xing], translated by Wilhelm
as Logos, so the Eros of woman corresponds to ming, ‘fate’ or ‘destiny,’ interpreted by Wilhelm as Eros.’’56
In the above, Jung is proposing his view of Western psychology: animus is a depository of male principles in the female unconscious and
anima a depository of female traits in the male unconscious. Wilhelm,
however, is speaking of Chinese thought. Traditional Daoist philosophy might not make Jung’s divisions because male/female and physical/psychic are eternally bonded in and through each other. But from
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Jung’s standpoint, ancient societies are dominated by masculine components and make little room for the feminine psyche. The West is
dominated by the conscious while the East is dominated by the unconscious. What the West discovers through psychology, the East discovers through ‘‘psychic states.’’57
Contrary to Jung, Daoist thought might not split the mind into conscious and unconscious but envisions a seamless connection of the
unreal and the real, as in Cao Xuejin’s 曹雪芹 Qing dynasty novel, The
Story of the Stone (Shitou Ji《石頭記》), also known as The Dream of
the Red Chamber (Hong Lou Meng《紅樓夢》).58 Wilhelm’s creative
application of anima as a feminine soul manifests itself in the old Chinese word mei 魅 (demon, evil spirit). Today, the expression meili 魅力
(enchantment) means literally, the power of a demon and is applied to
seductive women. Combining ‘‘ghost’’ (gui 鬼) and the ‘‘eighth of the
twelve Earthly Branches’’ (wei 未), mei depicts the mythical hamadryad tree nymph.59 A short branch at the top of the tree character can
also indicate ‘‘still growing’’ and ‘‘immaturity,’’ as in the Japanese
usage.60 It thus retains some idea of a not yet grown feminine-natured
spirit with an impish, erotic persona. Hence, we see its etymological
connection to the gui 鬼 (depository of ghost-souls) of Golden Flower.
III. F RANKFURT
IN
C ONTEXT
One of Richard Wilhelm’s celebrated students is Karl August Wittfogel. Early on, he reads Wilhelm’s translations of Daoist classics and
later studies Chinese language at Frankfurt. Although he takes an
interest in Buddhism years before and gives lectures on Eastern religion, his major concern is political economy.61 Jonathan Spence, an
acclaimed Chinese historian, writes of Wittfogel’s academic accomplishments. Although Spence sees him as yet another world systems
builder (along with Georg Hegel, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Oswald
Spengler) who wants to find a place for China, Wittfogel learns Chinese well enough to read original documents, lives in China for a number of years and bases his analysis on those experiences which include
meeting key political leaders.62
The celebrated Frankfurt theologian Paul Tillich and eminent psychologist Erich Fromm are introduced to East Asian thought long
before their famous 1950s encounters with Japanese ambassadors of
Zen Buddhism, Suzuki Daisetz 鈴木大拙 and Hisamatsu Shinichi 久
松真一 who also dialogue with Heidegger.63 Tillich attends Wittfogel’s
lectures and Fromm interacts with Wittfogel in the Institute of Social
Research project on authority and the family. He writes to Wittfogel
in China concerning a rethinking of Freud.64
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Most certainly, Martin Buber plays a significant role in the East
Asian education of the University, teaching religion and philosophy.
As a kingpin in intellectual life, his translations of Zhuangzi’s 莊子
parables (1910) and Pu Songling’s 蒲松齡 eighteenth century ghost
stories and love stories (1911) are pathbreaking works.65 Martin Heidegger reads both Buber’s and Wilhelm’s Daoist translations.66 When
Buber meets Tillich in 1928, he has already heard of Tillich’s jaiqό1
(kairos). Maurice Friedman, biographer of Buber, compares Tillich’s
‘‘right moment’’ with Buber’s ‘‘narrow ridge.’’67 Both represent the
betweenness of thought or living on the edge of metaphysics and the
everyday. As Friedman writes: ‘‘In the most powerful moments of dialogue, where ‘deep calls unto deep,’ the narrow ridge, on the far side
of the subjective ‘inner’ impression and on this side of the objective
‘outer’ event, is the place where I and Thou meet, the realm of
‘between.’’’68 Wittfogel, Tillich, and Buber embrace ‘‘the between’’ of
East and West in their interactions with Wilhelm’s China Institute.
Although Walter Benjamin is mostly concerned with Judaic mysticism,69 he would most likely be acquainted with the Zhuangzi《莊子》
translations. In 1914, Benjamin becomes friends with Buber, who commissions him to go to Moscow.70 Benjamin’s primary source of interest
in China comes from Bertolt Brecht and Franz Kafka. In 1934, he comments on both Brecht’s and Kafka’s versions of Laozi.71 As Benjamin
writes, Brecht understands Laozi’s philosophy as essential: ‘‘The manifestations of the friendliness of the world are to be found at the hardest
moments of existence: at birth, at the first step into life and at the last
one, which leads out of life.’’72 Brecht’s imaginary conversation between
Laozi and Kafka finds Kafka as Laozi’s ‘‘disciple.’’ But Brecht ‘‘rejects’’
Kafka. This implicitly echoes Laozi’s wuwei 無為 (nonaction): the best
leader does not lead. Benjamin recalls Brecht’s story from the Zhuangzi
regarding the twisted tree that escapes the burden of usefulness and consequently lives out a long life. Similarly, Kafka’s ‘‘Next Village’’ to which
few venture since they are content with their own rustic longevity is Benjamin’s example of Laozi’s pious nonaction.73
IV. B UBER ’ S D AOISM : P ARABLE
AND
M YTH
In a provocative book, I and Tao, Jonathan Herman recounts Buber’s
work on Zhuangzi predating I and Thou as a ‘‘comparative mysticism.’’ Herman recalls his first paper on Buber and Daoism where he
suggests: ‘‘I had detected a thematic resonance between Chuang Tzu
(Zhuangzi) and I and Thou years before I had ever heard of Buber’s
Taoist (Daoist) studies . . . Taoist enlightenment is characterized by
‘an intense personal freedom, where individuality and integrity are
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maintained without the threat of egoism.’’’74 Knowing little Chinese,
Buber utilizes English translations and possibly the assistance of a visiting Shanghai professor. His rendition of Zhuangzi reads: ‘‘‘Cultivate
oneness,’ answered Confucius (Kongzi). ‘You hear not with the ears,
but with the understanding; not with the understanding, but with your
soul. But let the hearing stop with the ears. Let the work of understanding stop with itself.’’75 Buber’s ‘‘Afterword’’ stands as a fundamental rejection of the Western enlightenment. Standing against the
technically rational, administered world, Buber’s makes this pronouncement: ‘‘In its primordial state, the Eastern spirit is what all spirit is in the primordial state: magic.’’76
Buber explores how the West marginalizes magic while the East
retains it. But in the East, there is a balance: ‘‘Between the teaching
and the religion, leading from the one to the other, stand parable and
myth.’’77 Under the spell of the enlightenment, the West misreads Dao
for nature, reason or energy. Trying to think the ‘‘imperceptible’’ is the
problem of the enlightenment. Attuning to Dao (道) is aligning to a life
worth living, rather than living out someone else’s life in an overly
administered world of rules and regulations. This realization prompts
Laozi to resign his post and leave the city. Zhuangzi does not physically
leave the city but asks readers to vacate by way of his parables. Buber
holds a heavy conceptual grip on the movement between Laozi and
Zhuangzi and between oneness and parable: ‘‘The parable is the
engagement of the absolute into the world of things. The myth is the
engagement of things into the world of the absolute. . . . For the naked
oneness is silent.’’78 Speaking in parable begets myth which reveals and
conceals the world of things and the absolute. Laozi’s ‘‘naked oneness’’
is still—an internal horizon; Zhuangzi’s parable is mobile—an external
horizon. Speech is embodied in ‘‘things, events, and relations.’’ The
world becomes our body of both invisibility and visibility. The person,
who names the Dao, does not speak the true Dao. Therefore, Laozi’s
silence is ‘‘on the way to the parable’’: ‘‘Like the life of Lao Tzu
(Laozi), so too his teaching is the most concealed for it is the most without parable. . . . Man speaks his words as the Logos speaks man.’’79
Buber’s discussion of Heraclitus’ kόcο1 and the translation of Dao
as ‘‘path,’’ ‘‘way,’’ ‘‘speech,’’ or ‘‘kόcο1’’ doubles the transcendent into
the everyday; Dao and kόcο1 are connected: ‘‘Yet its (Dao’s) linguistic
atmosphere is related, in fact, to that of the Heraclitian Logos, given
that both transplant a dynamic principle of human life into the transcendent.’’80 Comparatively, the relation between Dao and kόcο1 echoes throughout Heidegger’s later writing.81 As Heidegger relates:
The word ‘‘way’’ probably is an ancient primary word that speaks to
the reflective mind of man. The key word in Laotse’s (Laozi) poetic
thinking is Tao (Dao), which properly speaking means way. But
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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, logos (kόgο1). Yet Tao could be the way that gives
all ways, the very source of our power to think what reason, mind,
meaning, logos properly means 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 of this, 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 all things along and
makes way for everything. All is ‘‘way.’’82
In the modern world, the translation of Dao as ‘‘path’’ or ‘‘way’’ is
conventional. In the ancient world, Dao has the sense of ‘‘speech’’ in
special circumstances, such as dao gujin 道古今 (speaking of past and
present; telling tales) or dao gu 道故 (telling a story).83 Wilhelm,
Buber, and Heidegger are well aware that the Chinese bible often
translates kόcο1 as Dao.
Buber’s analysis employs mystical language to explain the mystical.
He looks for neither system nor structure but simply to let things be.
Systematized speech and conduct limits itself within a horizon of symbolic logic. Zhuangzi utilizes dreams and metaphors to delimit this
horizon through a poetic which does not retell the facts but disrupts
them in order to promote life to be lived. Hence, Daoism lives in both
the cultivating of stillness and in the joy of parable and mythmaking.
Both Laozi and Zhuangzi embrace a poetic way of thinking. The
approaches which Buber sparks at Frankfurt are rich in poetic dialogues of East and West as stimulated by Wilhelm. As well, Buber is
close friends with Herman Hesse, an associate of Wilhelm who himself
joins Frankfurt’s faculty in 1924. Wilhelm keeps Buber abreast of the
Chinese events at the university in 1925.84 Buber, Wilhelm, Hesse and
Jung most assuredly brainstorm on Chinese philosophy in these years.
Buber’s debates with Carl Jung stretch well into the 1950s.85
For the 1928 fall conference of the China Institute, Buber presents a
paper, ‘‘China and Us.’’ In it, he underscores the timeliness of Daoist
‘‘nonaction.’’ In echoing Laozi, Buber insists: ‘‘The ‘success’ of nonaction is ‘invisible.’’’86 In respect to their writings on Zhuangzi, Herman views both Kuang-ming Wu (Wu Guangming) (吳光明) and
Buber as ‘‘kindred spirits’’: ‘‘The former (Wu) is representative of a
. . . trend to argue that any attempt at systematization—any analysis
that seeks a supposedly philosophical position underlying the document is ultimately untrue to both the original intent of the author and
the actual history of the text.’’87 Wu, as a radically hermeneutical
thinker, adopts Zhuangzi’s ‘‘evocative indirection’’ whereby
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metaphors do not simply stand in for something else but disassociate
us from our own whereabouts. Herman quotes Wu’s 1982 Chuang Tzu
(Zhuangzi): World Philosopher at Play: ‘‘In metaphorical indirection,
the author does not state but, by silences or by irrelevancies, evokes in
us the desire to create something significant ourselves. Sometimes the
author states things so obviously atrocious that they provoke our own
discoveries in the light of what is said, and often in revolt of what is
said.’’88 Phenomenologically speaking, Wu explains the intertwining
of Zhuangzi’s text as ‘‘clusters of thought [that] co-mirror, co-imply
into layer after layer of meaning . . . a co-deepening co-resonance; to
enter its pulsing rhythm is to enjoy life.’’89 As a Chinese communicative body, Zhuangzi’s ‘‘quoting and misquoting’’ of stories and myths
recalls Laozi’s ‘‘heaven’s net’’ (tian wang 天網). Zhuangzi animates
life through dreams and metaphors. Both Buber and Wu, in their
respective approaches to Zhuangzi, supplement the rational systems
of the West through a poetic which does not retell the facts but benefits from their disruption through promoting a life to be lived in the
splendor of contradiction and paradox.
V. C ONCLUSION
The impact of East Asian thinkers in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s
has a lasting effect. Both Heidegger and Buber attempt translations of
Laozi’s Daodejing in the 1940s: Heidegger completing eight chapters
in German and Buber finishing eight chapters in Hebrew.90 Today,
Wilhelm’s 1923 translation of the Yijing is respected as one of the
most authoritative. At Wilhelm’s China Institute, global scholars are
drawn into a whirlwind of interactions. Coupled with Buber’s contributions to Asian thought, Wittfogel’s empirical work on China and
Jung’s presence, Tillich, Fromm, Benjamin and others are exposed to
a creative environment. In the 1928 Frankfurt lectures, Wilhelm
teaches the Daoist wisdom that he learns in two decades in China:
The rhythm of life is simply entrance and exit. Entrance is birth, exit
is death. And because the rhythm of entering and leaving takes place
continually, Laozi says:
See, all things however they flourish
Return to the root from which they grew.91
Having studied the Frankfurt School of Social Research for several
decades, followed by several decades of East Asian philosophy, solidified overall by the hermeneutic phenomenology of Heidegger, I discovered hidden intersections at Frankfurt that are otherwise
unknown. In the 1970s, it was Heidegger’s celebrated student Hans-
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JAY GOULDING
Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) at McMaster University in Hamilton,
Canada who first pointed me to the hermeneutic method of comparing
ancient Greece and classical China. Over this time, I have met a rare
few from the Frankfurt tradition of political philosophy that knew that
a China Institute existed at all at their university. Likewise, only a
handful from the psychology tradition knew that Jung had participated in Wilhelm’s lectures at Frankfurt. I have known even less who
were aware that at Frankfurt, Buber supervised translations of Chinese Daoist classics. It is Heidegger’s hermeneutics of discovery and
disclosure that allows me, in the first place to begin to assemble these
thinkers through phenomenological layerings of different but convergent traditions of thought. As such, I discovered Frankfurt’s forgotten
China Institute. It is here that a unique intersection between philosophy, psychology and religion appear in the personages of Wilhelm,
Jung and Buber. Hence, the scholarship at Frankfurt becomes an
important but nearly neglected grounding for Chinese scholarship at
Freiburg and Marburg.
YORK UNIVERSITY
Toronto, Canada
Endnotes
Acknowledgment of Legal Copyrights and Intellectual Credentials: I wish to thank Professor Chung-ying Cheng for his valuable comments over the last many years at conferences in both United States and China. For the first twenty years of my academic career, I
studied the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research and ancient Greece. For the next
twenty years, I studied ancient and contemporary China and Japan. Over the entire
period, I engage the hermeneutics and phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, stimulated
by contact with Han-Georg Gadamer at McMaster University, Canada in the early 1970s.
This article is a culmination of the mutual enfolding of these traditions. I also wish to
acknowledge the kind remarks and thoughtful questions of the Editor-in-Chief and the
blind-reviewer.
1. Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance, trans. Michael Robertson (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
1994).
2. See Karl A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957).
3. See Lauren F. Pfister’s excellent review of Hartmut Walravens’ ‘‘Richard Wilhelm
(1873–1930). Missionar in China und Vermittler chinesischen Geistesguts (Missionary
in China and Mediator of Chinese Spiritual Wealth),’’ Journal of Chinese Philosophy
36, no. 3 (2009): 493–8.
4. Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 34.
5. Graham Parkes, ‘‘Rising Sun over Black Forest: Heidegger’s Japanese Connections,’’
in Heidegger’s Hidden Sources: East Asian Influences on His Work, ed. Reinhard May
(London: Routledge, 1996), 81–82, 93. See Jay Goulding, ‘‘Xiong Wei (熊偉): Chinese
Philosophy and Hermeneutic Phenomenology,’’ Zhexuemen《哲學門》(Beida Journal of Philosophy) 5, Special Issue (2004): 116–30. The latter is an English-language
edition, celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Department of Philosophy, Beijing
University (Beijing Daxue 北京大學).
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183
I welcome the enthusiastic comments from the Editor-in-Chief in his close reading of
the article. His question is how does Heidegger fit in? Indeed my scholarship revolves
around Heidegger and his East Asian interlocutors. Heidegger’s phenomenology
seeks to make visible the invisible. As a guide to my thinking, I would not have been
able to ‘‘dis-cover’’ Frankfurt’s forgotten China Institute or ‘‘gather’’ its three divergent thinkers without Heidegger. Both Chinese and Japanese scholars migrate to
both Freiburg and Marburg in the 1920s and 1930s. Yamanouchi Tokuryū 山内得立
studies Husserlian phenomenology with Heidegger in the early 1920’s, and later lectures Greek thought at Kyoto University; Tanabe Hajime 田辺元, another Kyoto
School mainstay concentrates on Heidegger’s ontology and nothingness; Kuki Shūzō
九鬼周造 dialogues with Heidegger on the Japanese idea of iki いき, and in 1933 publishes the first book on Heidegger, The Philosophy of Heidegger (Haideggā no tetsugaku ハイデッガーの哲学); Watsuji Tetsurō 和辻哲郎 explores existential philosophy;
Nishitani Keiji 西谷啓治 studies in Germany from 1938 to 1940, and again in 1964 and
1972, concentrating on Buddhist emptiness and Heidegger’s nothingness; Tezuka
Tomio 手塚富雄 stimulates Heidegger’s 1959 ‘‘A Dialogue on Language: Between a
Japanese and an Inquirer’’; the Zen monk Hisamatsu Shinichi 久松真一 conducts a
colloquium with Heidegger on ‘‘Art and Thinking’’ in 1958; Tsujimura Koīchi 辻村公
一 pursues a comparison of Zen and Heidegger’s phenomenology; Xiong Wei 熊偉
studies with Heidegger in the 1930’s and supervises the translation of Being and Time
(cunzai yu shijian 存在與時間) into Chinese in the 1980’s; Hsiao Shih-yi 蕭師毅 begins
a translation of Daodejing h道德經i with Heidegger in the 1940’s; and Chang Chungyuan 張鍾元 from University of Hawaii finishes his own Daodejing translation with
Heidegger in the 1970’s. The Chinese scholars generally focus on dao 道 as a way of
meditative practice interpenetrating with Heidegger’s weg (way) of hermeneutics and
phenomenology, and his path breaking interpretations of the ancient pre-Socratic
Greek kócο1 (laying, saying, waying). Heidegger learns about Daoism and Buddhism
as he interrogates the relationships between Being and being, Being and Nothing, and
Being and Time. His near monastic life-style draws him closer to the wisdom of Daoism and Buddhism. Along the way, these conversations help shape his idea of Lichtung (the clearing) where beings are illuminated. From Xiong Wei in the 1930’s to
Hsiao in the 1940’s to Chang Chung-yuan in the 1970’s, Heidegger’s concern with Chinese philosophy and especially with dao influences his studies of kócο1. Therefore, his
understanding of hermeneutic phenomenology and ontology are conditioned by
interaction with Chinese thought. What Heidegger implicitly learns the most from
Chinese thinkers is the idea of yin-yang 陰陽 polarity. Being does not have to win out
over being or Being does not have to conquer Time. The two parts of the pairing can
be mutually conditioning, eternally linked and oppositely charged as in yin and yang.
Together they are co-constitutive, co-resonating, and equiprimordial. This constitutes
the dao. China’s long history of the complementarity of Daoism and Buddhism helps
him understand this possibility. Conversely, Chinese interaction with Heidegger sets
the stage for the introduction of hermeneutic phenomenology into East Asia that still
has its impact today. As a result of my scholarship and others, the above is well known
and quite visible. However, the Chinese scholars at Frankfurt’s China Institute are virtually unknown and otherwise invisible. The purpose of this article is to illuminate
their interactions with three Western scholars, namely Wilhelm, Jung and Buber.
Indeed Heidegger and Jung read both Wilhelm and Buber’s translation of Chinese
Daoist classics. Hence, the East-West scholarship of Freiburg and Marburg are inextricably interwoven with that of Frankfurt. Also, I welcome the perceptive comments
and questions raised by the blind-reviewer. Rather than attempt a pan-historical
account of East-West encounters which would be a hefty book length study, this article explores a unique moment that history forgot, namely the development of the lost
China Institute at University of Frankfurt in the 1920s and its philosophical gathering
of three kingpin thinkers: Wilhelm, Jung, Buber. The article focuses on an alternative
spotlight – not ‘‘the history’’ of the China Institute as a collection of dates and facts
but the question of the opening of a concealed convergence. Following Heidegger as a
‘‘thinker of history’’ (Geschichtsdenker) rather than an ‘‘historian,’’ I attempt to
restore history itself to its inexplicability (Unerklärbarkeit) as Heidegger might say.
184
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
JAY GOULDING
Most of history avoids history by speaking of itself as the past. Phenomenological history is not past but futural.
It ‘‘springs up’’ or ‘‘emerges’’ (geschehen) as an ‘‘event’’ (er-eignis) that stands before
us as that which comes into view. Hence, the article brings into view three primary
scholars whose independent works can still be collectively recovered through their
unique interpenetrations. Since almost all the documents regarding the China Institute were destroyed during the War, I am employing Heidegger’s hermeneutics as a
type of phenomenological historiography to make visible the invisible. As Wang Bi 王
弼 (226–249 CE) reconstructs the lost Daodejing h道德經i from fragments, I reconstruct the lost China Institute from fragments. See my feature article, Jay Goulding,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/china_review_international/v014/14.1.goulding.html
Rudolf G. Wagner, The Craft of a Chinese Commentator: Wang Bi on the Laozi; A
Chinese Reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi with Critical
Text and Translation; Language, Ontology, and Political Philosophy in China: Wang
Bi’s Scholarly Exploration of the Dark ([玄學] Xuanxue)’’ China Review International
no. 1 (2007): 61–67. I have also reconstructed the nearly forgotten Collegio dei Cinesi
(The Chinese Institute) at Naples in the 1700s. Whereas the philosopher Gottfried
Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716) was influenced by the China scholar and Jesuit
Priest Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) was influenced by
an equally knowledgeable China scholar Father Matteo Ripa (1622–1746). Ripa
resided at the court of Kangxi 康熙, Emperor of China’s Qing 清 Dynasty. When Ripa
sailed back to Italy, he arrived with copper engraved world maps and garden vistas,
Chinese poetry, and a handful of Chinese scholars. These events stimulated Vico’s
1725 Scienza Nuova (The New Science) and his image of a world which could give rise
to the ancient past in the present. See my chapter Jay Goulding, ‘‘Society,’’ in New
Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. 5 ed. Maryanne Horowitz (New York: Charles’
Scribner’s Sons, 2005), 2238–2241.
Salome Blumhardt Wilhelm, ed., Richard Wilhelm: Der geistige Mittler zwischen
China und Europa (The Spiritual Midway between China and Europe) (DüsseldorfKöln: Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1956), 339, 374–5.
Kenneth Ch’en, Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 457–60.
Roger J. Corless, ‘‘History of Buddhism in China,’’ in Buddhism: A Modern Perspective, ed. Charles S. Prebish (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1975), 191–2.
Roger J. Corless, ‘‘Chinese Buddhism and the Communist Regime,’’ in Buddhism: A
Modern Perspective, ed. Charles S. Prebish (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1975), 208–209.
Wilhelm, Richard Wilhelm, 355.
Kirk A. Denton, ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature,
1893–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 515–6.
Hu Shi, ‘‘Some Modest Proposals for the Reform of Literature,’’ in Modern Chinese
Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945, ed. Kirk A. Denton (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1996), 123–139.
Wilhelm, Richard Wilhelm, 339.
Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, revised ed., trans. Richard and
Clara Winston (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), 375.
Richard Wilhelm, the Preface to The I Ching or Book of Changes, trans. Richard Wilhelm, rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1967), xlv.
Richard Noll, The Jung Cult (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997), 56–57.
Jung, the Foreword to I Ching, xxi–xxxix. See Jung, the Commentary on The Secret of
the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life, trans. Richard Wilhelm (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1962), 81–149.
Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 196.
Ibid., 197. For a painting of the golden castle, see Jung, The Red Book, Liber Novus,
ed. and introduction Sonu Shamdasani (London: Norton, 2009), image 163.
Ibid., 374.
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21. Ibid.
22. Hu Shih (Hu Shi), ‘‘Chan (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and Method,’’ Philosophy East and West 3, no. 1 (1953): 21. Compare Youru Wang, ‘‘The Pragmatics of
‘Never Tell Too Plainly,’’’ Asian Philosophy 10, no. 1 (2000): 8–9.
23. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 375.
24. Ibid., 377.
25. Richard Wilhelm, Lectures on the I Ching: Constancy and Change, trans. Irene Eber
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 135.
26. Quoted in Ibid., 137.
27. Ibid., 137.
28. Richard J. Smith, China’s Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty, 1644–1912 (Boulder:
Westview, 1994), 140–2.
29. Tun-yi Chou, ‘‘An Explanation of the Diagram of the Great Ultimate,’’ in Sources of
Chinese Tradition, comps. William Theodore De Bary, Wing-Tsit, Chan, and Burton
Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), I:458.
30. Smith, China’s Cultural Heritage, 145.
31. Wilhelm, Lectures on the I Ching, 138.
32. Ibid., 138.
33. Ibid., 138–40.
34. Ibid., 139.
35. Ibid.
36. Jay Goulding, ‘‘Kuki Shūzō and Martin Heidegger: Iki (いき) and Hermeneutic Phenomenology,’’ in Why Japan Matters!, eds. Joseph F. Kess and Helen Lansdowne
(Victoria: Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives, University of Victoria, 2005), II:680–1.
37. Wilhelm, Lectures on the I Ching, 140.
38. Ibid., 141.
39. Ibid., 142.
40. Ibid., 146.
41. Ibid.
42. Kuang-ming Wu, The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 136.
43. Wilhelm, Lectures on the I Ching, 147.
44. Thomas Cleary, trans., The Secret of the Golden Flower (New York: Harper Collins,
1991), 3–5, 134.
45. Wilhelm, The Secret of the Golden Flower, 3.
46. Ibid., 13.
47. Ibid., 12.
48. Ibid., 13.
49. Ibid., 18.
50. Compare Cary F. Baynes’ diagram in Wilhelm, Secret of the Golden Flower, 65.
51. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 376.
52. Wilhelm, Secret of the Golden Flower, 10.
53. Carl Gustav Jung, Alchemical Studies, trans. Richard Francis Carrington Hull
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 39.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., 40.
56. Ibid., 41.
57. Ibid., 39–43.
58. Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone: The Golden Days, trans. David Hawkes (London:
Penguin, 1973), I:55.
59. Robert Henry Mathews, Chinese-English Dictionary, revised ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1944), 620.
60. Kenneth G. Henshall, A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters (Tokyo: Charles
E. Tuttle, 1990), 249.
61. Gary L. Ulmen, The Science of Society: Toward an Understanding of the Life and
Work of Karl August Wittfogel (New York: Mouton, 1978), 16.
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62. Jonathan D. Spence, The Chan’s Great Continent: China in Western Minds (New
York: Norton, 1998), 212–3.
63. Paul Tillich and Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, ‘‘Dialogues, East and West: Conversations
between Dr. Paul Tillich and Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi (Part One),’’ The Eastern Buddhist 4, no. 2 (1971): 89–107,‘‘Dialogues, East and West: Conversations between
Dr. Paul Tillich and Dr. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi (Part Two),’’ The Eastern Buddhist 5, no.
2 (1972): 107–28. See Erich Fromm, ‘‘Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis,’’ in Zen
Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, Erich Fromm, D. T. Suzuki, and Richard DeMartino
(New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 77–141.
64. Hannah Tillich, From Time to Time (New York: Stein and Day, 1973), 143. See
Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas, trans. Ian Portman and Manuela Kunkel (New York: Continuum, 2000), 94.
65. Buber, Chinese Tales. See Jonathan R. Herman, I and Tao: Martin Buber’s Encounter
with Chuang Tzu (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
66. Parkes, ‘‘Rising Sun over Black Forest: Heidegger’s Japanese connections,’’ in
Heidegger’s hidden sources: East Asian influences on his work, Reinhard May (London: Routledge, 1996) 79, 108.
67. Maurice Friedman, Martin Buber’s Life and Work: The Middle Years, 1923–1945
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), 99.
68. Ibid., 281.
69. Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the
Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 200.
70. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings: 1913–1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W.
Jennings (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 1:498, 500.
71. Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht (London: New Left Books, 1977), 70–4. See
Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings: 1927–1934, eds. Michael W. Jennings, Howard
Eiland, and Gary Smith (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1999), II:786, 805.
72. Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, 74.
73. Benjamin, Selected Writing, II:805.
74. Herman, I and Tao, ix–x.
75. Martin Buber, ‘‘The Text Translation: ‘Talks and Parables of Chuang Tzu,’’’ in
Herman, I and Tao, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996) 25.
76. Buber, ‘‘The Commentary: ‘Afterword,’’’ in Herman, I and Tao, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 69.
77. Ibid., 72.
78. Ibid., 73.
79. Ibid., 78.
80. Ibid., 83.
81. Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York:
Harper and Row, 1969), 36.
82. Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 92.
83. Mathews, Chinese-English Dictionary, 884.
84. Irene Eber, introduction to Chinese Tales, by Martin Buber, trans. Alex Page (New
Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1991), ix–xii, xxi.
85. Buber, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation between Religion and Philosophy (New
Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1988), 78–91, 133–7.
86. Martin Buber, ‘‘China and Us,’’ in Pointing the Way: Collected Essays, trans. and ed.
Maurice Friedman (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), 125.
87. Herman, I and Tao, 124.
88. Quoted in ibid., 12.
89. Kuang-ming Wu, The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang Tzu (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 23.
90. Paul Shih-yi Hsiao, ‘‘Heidegger and Our Translation of the Tao Te Ching,’’ in Heidegger and Asian Thought, ed. Graham Parkes (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1987), 93–103. See Herman, I and Tao, 203.
91. Wilhelm, Lectures on the I Ching, 144–5.