Yet Heidegger shows that our objectifying worldview has become so habituated and ingrained in our everyday life that it is now difficult to see the natural world in any other way. This self-interpretation, says Heidegger, is “not only close to us — even that which is closest: we are it, each of us” (1962, 36, my emphasis). Heidegger will refer to this as the “totalizing” aspect of modern technology; it has become so dominant that it “drives out” (1977b, 27) any other way to understand or make sense of the natural world. One of the consequences of this view is an interpretation of nature as threatening and constantly in need of being subdued and controlled, resulting in a feeling of alienation, of not belonging or “being-at-home” on the earth, a feeling Heidegger associates with an anxiety that “has never been greater than today” (1999b, 97). The modern experience of ‘homelessness’ reveals the unique paradox of our ecological crisis. Scientific advances cannot solve our predicament because it is the scientific worldview itself that is the source of the problem. Replacing environmentally destructive fossil fuels, for example, with ecologically friendly energy sources like solar, wind, or geothermal does not create a ‘home’ because it does nothing to change the dualistic paradigm and our view of nature as a storehouse of resources. What is required instead is an ontological transformation in how we see ourselves, not as atomistic ‘subjects’ that master ‘objects’ but as situated and concerned ways of being that are inextricably bound to the earth. This is where the insights of existentialism play such an important role. By using our own lived experience as a starting point, we not only gain access to our own inherence in nature; we also allow the affective meaning and value inherent in nature to speak to us (Thomson 2004, 383).
For Heidegger, this Gestalt shift creates an opening for a radically new way of dwelling, one that is no longer mired in calculative attempts to control and manipulate the earth, but rather “lets (lassen) the earth be as earth” (1971, 224). Heidegger describes this kind of dwelling in terms of Gelassenheit, referring to a solicitous and attentive practice that “releases” or “lets go” of beings (1966, 55). Heidegger believes that in cultivating Gelassenheit we are able to free ourselves from our own objectifying tendencies and, as a result, free the earth from technological domination. It allows us to recognize that we are irrevocably woven to the transient and enigmatic interplay of nature and to see this interplay as our only home, one that needs to be preserved and cherished as such. This, however, does not mean Heidegger is espousing a kind of neo-Luddism that rejects modern technology in toto. He wants us to realize that the technological worldview serves an important function, but it is only one of many possible ways for us to interpret nature. The danger today is that this worldview has become totalizing and excludes all other interpretations; it “rules the whole earth” and turns it into a “gigantic gasoline station” (50). Heidegger will refer to this monolithic view as a “flight from mystery” because it covers over and destroys the possibility of recognizing our enigmatic interdependence with nature (1977a, 135). Thus, in contrast with the anxiety of ‘homelessness,’ Gelassenheit fosters a different mood, a sense of ‘wonder’ and ‘awe’ at our precarious enmeshment, and it opens up a way of dwelling that resonates to the original meaning of technology, a meaning captured in the ancient Greek word technê.
In ‘The Question Concerning Technology,’ an essay that has become a classic in environmental philosophy, Heidegger suggests that technê was originally understood in relation to nature or physis, which for the Greeks referred to the dynamic way in which beings are initially “brought-forth” (poiēsis) or come into being; it is “the bursting open of the blossom into bloom, in itself” (1977b, 10). Understood this way, technê refers to the human capacity to make or build things in a way that is in harmony or rapport with physis, that is, with how beings are naturally ‘brought-forth.’ The Greek craftsman, for instance, would build a bridge in a way that does not obstruct or destroy the natural flow of the river, but “lets the river run its course” (Heidegger 1977a, 330, my emphasis; see Young 2000, 37–38). Contrast this ancient interpretation with how technê is understood today, where the hydroelectric plant is built to force the river into a reservoir, into a resource waiting to be “challenged” and “set upon” by industry (Heidegger 1977b, 16). Gelassenheit allows us to recover the original sense of technê and the lost connection between building and dwelling. Indeed, Heidegger shows how the Old High German word for ‘building’ (bauen) is etymologically related to the word ‘dwelling’ (buan). But bauen is a word that “also means … to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for” (1977a, 325). Understood this way, to dwell is to build in a way that preserves and cares for nature as the primordial bringing forth of beings, a bringing forth whereby each thing is in a state of fragile and dynamic interplay with other things in a “primal oneness” (327). Dwelling protects this delicate web of relations by releasing it and letting it be.
Heidegger's idea of letting go of our anxious need to control and master the earth and the non-dualistic recognition of ourselves as bound up in the dynamic interplay of nature leads us to another aspect of existentialism's influence, namely, its impact on comparative philosophy and the legitimation of Asian thought within the mainstream philosophical tradition. In fact, it could be argued that Heidegger's work has been received more enthusiastically in the East than it has in the West. The first translation of Being and Time, after all, was in Japanese in 1951, over a decade before the book was ever officially translated into English or French. And in the subsequent years, Being and Time has been translated a full six times in Japanese, with another Asian language, Korean, offering three complete translations (Parkes 1990, 9; Ciocan 2005). And, in his later writings, Heidegger spoke explicitly of the need for “dialogue with the East Asian world” (1977b, 158) in order to combat the nihilism and destructiveness of modern technology. In the next section we will take a look at the affinities between existentialism and Eastern thought, focusing specifically on the tradition of Zen Buddhism, and how the two schools complement each other in fleshing out the nature of suffering and what it means to be human.
Self and dukkha
The most immediate and obvious connection between existentialism and Buddhism is the recognition of the anguish and despair at the heart of the human condition. This connection began to take shape in the early decades of the nineteenth century, primarily through the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), who drew on the Buddhist notion of suffering to develop his own view of how the ‘Will’ torments us through its ceaseless cravings and that it is only by extinguishing or letting go of these cravings that we can achieve some kind of solace or liberation. In a famous line from the second volume of his masterwork, The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer wrote, “If I were to take the results of my philosophy as the standard of truth, I should concede to Buddhism pre-eminence over the others” (1966, 169). And, with a significant debt to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche also expressed his admiration of Buddhism as a religion that is “a hundred times more realistic than Christianity” for its rejection of moral absolutes and its recognition of the human condition as a fundamental “struggle against suffering” (1990, 20). But the question of what exactly the existentialists mean by suffering remains unclear, and it is here that the insights of Buddhism are especially profound.