Volume 1, 2010
Selected Essays from Asia and Pacific
Leung Po-Shan
Pages 367-387
從物的存在看歷史即現狀
View History as the Existing Situation from the Being of Thing
View History as the Existing Situation from the Being of Thing. The question of “What is a thing?” is closely related to that of Being. Heidegger had dealt with the research of thing repeatedly since 1919. The following article will show that, regardless of his inspiring thinking about “ready-to-hand” of thing in Being and Time, his research was more extensively developed in his later years at the end of 1940s. By exploring the possibilities of viewing a thing, Heidegger continuously attempted to reveal the serious limitation of Platonic tradition in the western philosophy. This article will analyze in detail the crucial role of History of Being in Heidegger’s understanding of thing through an example of jug. Heidegger in his piece not only suggests a change of attitude to view a thing, but also “viewing a thing” as not simply a passive activity. It is rather a kind of “step backward” of thinking, which means how to let the representative, analytical and interpretative art of thinking return to its pre-reflective, pre-conceptual and intuitive state of existence.