Abstract
The affinity between Kierkegaard’s thought and Japanese thought has often been commented on; but there has been less emphasis on how this affinity manifests itself historically. It is obviously not simply a matter of Japanese thought having discovered Kierkegaard since the Danish philosopher’s works appeared. The previous chapters in this book, along with the following two chapters on Hakuin and the samurai, show clearly that comparisons can be made with Japanese writers and traditions from well before Kierkegaard. In the preceding chapter James Giles drew comparisons between Kierkegaard’s idea of the purity of heart and Dōgen’s idea of the realization of things as they are. In this chapter I will also draw comparisons between Kierkegaard and Dōgen, although in a different way. My concern here is with Kierkegaard’s attempt to resolve the perceived duality of the personal life and the ethical life and the relation that this bears to Dōgen’s depiction of non-duality.
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Notes
Shah, Idries, The Way of the Sufi ( New York: E.P. Dutton, 1970 ) p. 78.
Kierkegaard, Either/Or trans. Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin, 2004) p. 54. Further references to this work will be given in the text.
Daniel Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: the Heart of Jewish Mysticism (San Francisco, California: Harper, 1996) p. 32. Further references to this work will be given in the text.
Lao Tzu, The Way and its Power: the Tao Te Ching and its Place in Chinese Thought, trans. Arthur Waley (London: Unwin, 1987 ) p. 174.
Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) p. 320. Further references to this work will be given in the text.
Buber, Martin, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Macmillan, 1987 ) p. 11.
Bohm, David, Wholeness and the Implicate Order ( London: Routledge, 2000 ) P. 9.
Graves, John, The Conceptual Foundations of Contemporary Relativity Theory ( Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1971 ) p. 216.
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© 2008 Ian Mills
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Mills, I. (2008). Aeterno Modo: the Expression of an Integral Consciousness in the Work of Kierkegaard and Dōgen. In: Giles, J. (eds) Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230589827_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230589827_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-55284-5
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