Eugen MACKO
In philosophical circles it is generally acknowledged that Heidegger had an extraordinary influence on modern Japanese thought, even more than on German thought. Many Japanese students studied with him in Marburg and later in Freiburg, among them several important philosophers and professors at Kyoto University.
It would be interesting to consider the following questions: Why did Heidegger have a greater influence in Japan than in Europe? Did the Japanese with the help of their own tradition better understand the new dialogical and ontological thinking? Is the aggressively dialectical manner of persuasion in classical European thought an obstacle to experiencing today's fundamental problems for mankind?
In seeking answers to these questions, this paper follows Heidegger's dialogue with his Japanese student and tries to discover the implications for East-West dialogue, which was relevant and necessary even then and is all the more so today. How Heidegger's Japanese "mere" student after a few exchanges of words is immediately able to immerse himself in the dialogue in which Heidegger resolves first the bilateral opposition of professor and student and then the opposition of two cultures by adopting the other's position, thereby avoiding the opposition of a dialectical manner of persuasion, thus making the exchange more fluid. The student, too, understood this immediately and an exemplary dialogue developed in harmony between two people and between two distant, and yet in human terms very close cultures of East and West.
Following the example of that dialogue we should in general question the possibility and capability of engaging in dialogue using only the European dialectical manner of persuasion; it shows the necessity of repairing that deficit by learning from other cultures.
In present experience there is a growing awareness of the faster development, with a greater ability to synthesise, of Eastern cultures, compared with the slowing development and often stagnation development of cultures in Europe. The former development of various European cultures in dialogues in and with other continents (America, for example) has already lost its currency to the dialogicality with Eastern cultures.