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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

OF EXPERIENCE AND BEING: APOPOS OF 
THIS AND THAT

AN ANALYSIS FROM DAOISM TO HEIDEGGER

SHEA DIVOLL

§ 1: TO BE

     “God is absolute nothingness. God is not, however, mere 
nothingness. An immovable unifying activity clearly functions at the 
base of the establishment of reality, and it is by means of this activity 

that reality is established.” 

––Nishida Kitarō 西田 幾多郎 in An Inquiry Into the Good

善の研究



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

§ 1.1: YELLOW-RED-BLUE

 I AM. Just two words. Two words so important, though, that 
they have come to mean God in one of the largest religions in the world.1 
The idea of Being2, of the I-am-ness, the you-are-ness, and the it-is-ness 
underlies the premises of philosophy in a few different ways. On one-
hand, much of language is structured implicitly around Being, the type 
of Being that lets humans describe things and people; it is the Being that 
says a certain cat is brown, or she is intelligent. Inasmuch as philosophy 
rests on the shoulders of language, it is thus subject to Being.Alterna-
tively, there are also more subtle questions that define a more tacit man-
ifestation of Being. What makes a being a being? How does a being be? 
Or, is the Being of different beings the same fundamental Being? Ques-
tions like these are, in part, the foundation of religion and philosophy. 
Consequently, it is reasonable to desire firm answers to the questions of 
Being, or at the very least, to inquire for a deeper understanding of Be-
ing. The man who perhaps spent the longest time addressing these que 
tions of Being was Martin Heidegger, a twentieth-century philosopher 
who laid the groundwork for most of modern philosophical discourse. 
By first explicating the context Heidegger arose in, then the philosophy 
he constructed, in addition to important ideas in classical Daoism, I will 
soon show how classical Daoist ideas like wuwei and equipmentality3 
seeped deeply into the works of Heidegger. Contrary to popular belief 
on the subject, I intend to demonstrate that Daoist sources had a clear 
influence on Heidegger’s early work, including Being and Time.

1 This refers to the use of “Ἐγώ εἰμί” in the New Testament of the Christian 
Bible. The phrase builds off of Exodus 3:14 in the Torah where God 
claims “I Am that I Am”, or in Hebrew, “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh”. Hence, at 
a very early point in the development of Western culture, inasmuch as that 
term is applicable, the idea of Being was at the forefront of religious and 
philosophical thought. See “Christianity” by Hogg et al or “‘I Am Who I 
Am’? The meaning of God’s Name in Exodus” by LeFebvre for a more in 
depth discussion of this topic.

2 From here on, I am going to use Heidegger’s convention of capitalizing 
Being, primarily because of its centrality to ontology and existence. The 
convention of capitalizing Being is remarkably similar to the convention for 
writing “God”; and to this end, Dr. Michael Sugrue’s lecture “Heidegger: 
Being and Time” on YouTube raises a fascinating point on how Heidegger’s 
treatment of the word “Being” mirrors a Christian’s treatment of the word 
God. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaobMHescwg.

3 Equipmentality is not in itself a classical Daoist idea. However, the paradigm 
of equipmentality that is later shown to be present in classical Daoism is the 
same paradigm Heidegger uses.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

§ 1.2: WANDERER ABOVE THE SEA OF FOG

 Born in the late nineteenth century, Martin Heidegger grew 
up in a Roman Catholic family in Meßkirch, Germany, whereupon he 
began training to be a priest in 1903. After leaving the program due 
to health issues, he shortly thereafter began to study the questions of 
Being. Heidegger found himself reflecting on the ontology of Aristot-
le, traditional Catholic theology, modern Protestant thinkers including 
Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Luther, as well as many other Western 
philosophical thinkers. By 1927, he published Being and Time (Sein und 
Zeit), and established himself as an important name in philosophy.

 A cursory glance through Being and Time, however, will raise 
some issues. Despite his elaborate education, we immediately see a stark 
contrast between his education and his philosophy. Consider the follow-
ing quote:

This undifferentiated character of Dasein's everydayness is not nothing, but 
a positive phenomenal characteristic of this entity.4  

Where did this diction and syntax come from? For Heidegger to have 
such a learned vocabulary in ontology, one would certainly assume he 
had an education which made him proficient in such terms. And in part, 
he did have some education in ontology, especially as he was a pupil of 
Edmund Husserl. Yet, if we follow the narrative of Martin Heidegger as 
a Catholic-turned-philosopher, it comes off as a non-sequitur for him to 
have such an emphasis strictly on Being. Although figures like Saint Au-
gustine come from a Catholic tradition and discuss ontology, Heidegger 
approaches ontology from a paradigm completely opposed to Christian 
education, rejecting and changing many premises Augustine would con-
sider fundamental. To emphasize my point:

4 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, ed. by John Macquarrie and Edward 
Robinson (108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK: Blackwell Publishers 
Ltd, 1962), 69, http://pdf-objects.com/files/Heidegger-Martin-Being-
and-Time-trans.-Macquarrie-Robinson-Blackwell-1962.pdf. The excerpt 
essentially means that Dasein, which translates roughly as Being-there, 
is not less relevant because of how worldly it is, rather it is more defined.
However, the quote was only provided to demonstrate the vocabulary of 
Martin Heidegger.



38

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

The Interpretation in which the “not-yet––and with it even the uttermost 
“not-yet”, the end of Dasein––was taken in the sense of something still 
outstanding, has been rejected as inappropriate in that it included the 
ontological perversion of making Dasein something present-at-hand. 
Being-at-an-end implies existentially Being-towards-the-end.5 

Again, there is room for a reasonable amount of creativity and ingenuity 
on Heidegger’s part; nevertheless, his turn toward the ideas and concepts 
of Being and Time appears out of left field. However, this is only sur-
prising under the paradigm highlighted thus far of Heidegger as a Chris-
tian-turned-philosopher––and yet this is precisely the wrong paradigm. 
Although Heidegger commonly wrote on traditionally “Western” dia-
logues,6 he did have significant Eastern influences, especially Daoism. 
For instance, “Heidegger’s ‘A Dialogue on Language between a Japa-
nese and an Inquirer’ (1959) confirms that this engagement [with Dao-
ism] goes back to as early as 1921,”7 which is far before the publishing 
of Being and Time. Furthermore, at a dinner party in the 1930s,Heideg-
ger asked his host for Parables of Zhuangzi (Reden und gleichnisse des 
Tschuang-Tse), which he then gave a garrulous speech on.8 In some of 
Heidegger’s later works, he created the word Weg to mean a path or way, 
and it has striking similarities to the Chinese Dao (note that Heidegger 
himself compared Weg to the Greek hodós).9 Additionally, he cited the 
Laozi 老子 many times throughout his papers. Not only this, but he was 
so well acquainted with Daoist texts that he intentionally utilized paral-
lelism between his writing and early Daoist texts. In one text, “Heideg-
ger’s ‘Geheimnis aller Geheimnisse’ is a reference to xuan zhi you xuan 

5 Heidegger, Being and Time, 293. Here, Heidegger is discussing how Dasein 
relates with Being-towards-death and Being-towards-the-end, which is a 
bit out of the scope of this paper. Like the above excerpt, this is included 
strictly to emphasize the writing style of Martin Heidegger.

6 In terms of published works, Heidegger directly addressed Western 
philosophers in Kant and The Problem of Metaphysics in 1929, Nietzsche 
in 1961, Hegel’s Concept of Experience in 1970, Hegel’s Phenomenology 
of Spirit in 1988, Parmenides in 1992, Plato’s Sophist in 1992, Heraclitus 
Seminar in 1993, Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of 
Pure Reason in 1997, and Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle in 
2001.

7 Eric S. Nelson, “Heidegger’s Daoist Turn,” Research in Phenomenology 49, 
no. 3 (2019): 363, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26843235?seq=5.

8 Ibid.
9 Tobias Keiling, “Way (Weg),” in The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon, ed. 

Mark A. Wrathall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 813-
814; Nelson, “Heidegger’s Daoist Turn,” 363.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

玄之又玄”10 from the Laozi. All in all, there is significant evidence de-
veloping the connection between Martin Heidegger and Daoism, espe-
cially classical Daoism (to the extent that the Laozi and Zhuangzi 莊子11 
are pillars of classical Daoism).12

§ 1.3: THE SCREAM OF NATURE

 With an understanding of Martin Heidegger’s academic back-
ground, I will now give a selection of passages from Being and Time 
that are useful in later understanding how he may have had “hidden” 
sources.13

 Heidegger believed that the question of Being was central to 
philosophy. Thus, the primary concern for his philosophy was the pri-
mordial question of Being and the lack of an authentic approach to this 
question. To understand this exigence:

The question of Being aims therefore at ascertaining the a priori 
conditions not only for the possibility of the sciences which 
examine entities as entities of such and such a type, and, in so 
doing, already operate with an understanding of Being, but also 
for the possibility of those ontologies themselves which are prior to 
the ontical sciences and which provide their foundations. Basically, 
all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of 
categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its 

10 Nelson, “Heidegger’s Daoist Turn,” 365. “Geheimnis aller Geheimnisse” 
means the “mystery within the mystery”, however the meaning changes 
significantly depending on the base language.

11  It may be worth noting here that although the Zhuangzi is historically said 
to be written by a figure named Zhuangzi, historians actually consider it an 
anthology with many sections by different authors. I will herein refer to the 
authors of the Zhuangzi as the single person named Zhuangzi, because this 
is useful in discussing the book and is valid insofar as the authors can all be 
approximated by a single name.

12 It is worth noting that my use of Daoism, and even classical Daoism, in 
reference to Heidegger could be too broad. Explicitly, Heidegger interacted 
with the Laozi and Zhuangzi exclusively, leading Graham Park on page 13 
of “Thoughts on the Way” to refer to Heidegger’s Daoist influences as the 
works of Lao-Zhuang. So, although I may reference Daoism and classical 
Daoism, when referring to Heidegger, I am more so talking about the Lao-
Zhuang authors.

13 This is an allusion to an interesting book about Heidegger’s relationship 
with East-Asian philosophy called Heidegger’s Hidden Sources, East-Asian 
Influences on his Work by Reinhard May.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of 
Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task.14

 
Essentially, the Being of beings is a concern for Heidegger, and the at-
tempt to understand this is a nearly impossible task; as each approxima-
tion of true Being is coming from a being and a web of presuppositions 
surrounding Being. Thus, an authentic mode or system of ontology is 
concerned with the Being of beings, while an inauthentic one would per-
vert the meaning or purpose of ontology, often resulting in onticology.15

 The lack of a sufficient answer to the questions of Being has, in 
Heidegger's account, been due to the lack of bias-free approaches to the 
question. The pre-Socratic philosophers such as Anaximander, Heracli-
tus, and Parmenides had discourses in ontology which (at least in Heide-
gger’s opinion) were free from negative linguistic and cultural assump-
tions.16 Thus, in ontology, this meant that the pre-Socratics started from 
the point of view that we exist and built out what that means from there. 
However, following Socrates, and especially following Plato with his 
Theory of Forms, the assumptions philosophers made in ontology began 
to shift. Instead of considering what it means to exist right now, many 
philosophers started from the assumption that there is an afterlife, and 
found the meaning of existence to be a combination of the afterlife with 
the current life, the divine with the sublime, or something of that sort. 
This was only magnified by the growth of religions such as Christianity 

14 Heidegger, Being and Time, 31. The emphasis in this quote is directly from 
the source, it is not mine.

15 The term “onticology” is a play on Heidegger’s distinction between the 
ontological and the ontic. Contrary to its popular use, Heidegger used ontic 
to relate something to a being, while ontology regarded the Being of a 
being. Thus, I am presenting onticology as the study of being, rather than 
Being.

16 See Glenn W. Most, “Heidegger’s Greeks,” (n.d.), 85, https://www.bu.edu/
arion/files/2010/03/Greeks-Most.pdf. Most highlights Heidegger’s pre-
Socratic influence by describing the nature in which Heidegger adopted 
specifically non-Platonic and non-Aristotelian ideas from the ancient 
Greeks, going as far as calling the Greeks as Heidegger’s “Pagan Gospel”.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

and Islam, which both further propagated this mode of ontology.17 For 
Heidegger, Being-towards-divinity or Being-towards- transcendence 
was necessarily skewing ontology; as he believed that ontology should 
start from the most fundamental aspects of Being, then build up. Due 
to the historical prevalence of the aforementioned religions (and their 
proselytizing nature), Western philosophers often interpreted divine and 
out-of-this-world notions as being fundamental aspects of Being - even 
when a more fundamental aspect would stem from simply Being-in-the-
world, thus “polluting” Western ontology.

 Hence, the starting place of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy 
is his rejection of most of Western ontology and the need for a com-
pletely new foundation of ontology. First, Heidegger’s philosophy 
requires a new word––Dasein.18 Dasein roughly translates as “Be-
ing-there,” which represents the fact that a human’s understanding of 
Being only exists insofar as they understand Being through the lens of 
a human being’s Being. As a construct, Being itself is inaccessible.19 
Thus, Dasein represents this underlying sense of Being-as-experienced, 
in contrast to Being proper:

Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather 
it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is 
an issue for it. But in that case, this is a constitutive state of Dasein&#39;s 

17 The Six Enneads by Plotinus began the thought-system of Neoplatonism, 
which led to the Western focus on forms of ontology which do not prioritize 
Being itself. Neoplatonism in Relation to Christianity: An Essay by C. Elsee 
is a good resource for understanding how Neoplatonism affected Christian 
theology during Christianity’s formative years. For Islam, see Neoplatonism 
and Islamic Thought edited by Parviz Morewedge to understand this 
dynamic. More precisely, John 3:16 of The Bible is a good example of 
Being-towards-divinity in Christianity; and for Islam, The Qur’an 29:64 
likewise endorses Being-towards-divinity. In both cases, the holy texts 
advocate for the afterlife being the purpose of this life, and thus ontology 
from these frameworks starts with framing humanity’s existence in terms 
of pursuing the afterlife, when in fact there is a current life we could frame 
ontology in.

18 Though Dasein can be translated as “Being-there”, and it is translated as 
such once in the above text, I will leave it untranslated for the majority of 
the essay because a translation only serves to misrepresent the context for 
which Heidegger invented the word.

19 The inaccessibility of Being is still a topic in contemporary literature, 
as the incredible work of Thomas Nagel in What Is It Like to Be a Bat? 
emphasizes the limitations of ontology. No amount of scholarship could 
uncover the similarities in the Being of a human and the Being of a bat. As 
a fact, there is no basis for understanding what it is like to have wings, what 
echolocation as a sensory perception feels like, etc.



42

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

Being, and this implies that Dasein, in its Being, has a relationship towards 
that Being–– a relationship which itself is one of Being.20

Referring back to his critique of historical Western ontology, Heideg-
ger would argue (and to an extent did argue this in other places)21 that 
the object of Being, whose subject is Being (Dasein), was omitted from 
most of Western tradition in exchange for studying ontic entities, simple 
modes of Being, and Being-towards-divinity.22

 Being and Time, in addition to creating the framework for un-
derstanding Dasein, also highlights complementary concepts in ontolo-
gy, including Thrownness (Gerworfenheit), ready-to-hand (zuhanden-
heit), as well as present-at-hand (vorhanden). Thrownness23 refers to the 
human condition in which a human being is “thrown” into existence 
without proper consent on entering this life and with no choice in where 
they are born, when they are born, their personality, etc. Given the mag-
nitude of this condition and its universality, it is a key aspect of Dasein 
and is alluded to in context here:

Dasein has forgotten itself in its ownmost thrown potentiality-for-Being. 
This forgetting is not nothing, nor is it just a failure to remember; it is 
rather a 'positive' ecstatical mode of one&#39;s having been––a mode with 
a character of its own.24

Thus, one consequence of the intensity of Thrownness is that Da-
sein integrates the Thrownness to such an extent that it forgets 
to remember its more authentic Being, or as Heidegger says, po-
tentiality-for-Being takes precedence. The concept of Thrownness 
also corresponds well with the classical Daoist text entitled the 
Zhuangzi, and that correlative will assist in deepening our

understanding of Thrownness later.

20 Heidegger, Being and Time, 32.
21 See Heidegger’s Philosophy of Religion: From God to Gods by Ben Vedder 

for more details.
22 For the sake of brevity, I will have to skip over much of the characterization 

of Dasein given by Heidegger, and will assume this background is 
sufficient.

23 Geworfenheit is referred to as Thrownness because this is the academic 
consensus for the best translation of it. Some other translations include 
dereliction and dejection.

24 Heidegger, Being and Time, 339.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

 Next, the idea of ready-to-handness is also similar to ideas 
in the Zhuangzi, and thus a discussion of it is warranted. First, 
consider a person about to locomote to their nine to five job. They 
step into their car, presumably listen to music or a podcast, or per-
haps just enjoy the present moment while driving, and they soon 
arrive at work. The car’s Being, though on one level is simply 
an ontical expression of car-ness, manifests to the person as an 
instrument of the immanence of soon being at work. The phaínes-
thai (φαίνεσθαι) of the car’s Being to the person is hence not as a 
car-in-itself ontically but rather as the ready-to-be-usedness of a 
tool. This ready-to-be-usedness is what Heidegger calls ready-to-
handness:

The ready-to-hand is not grasped theoretically at all, nor is it itself the sort 
of thing that circumspection takes proximally as a circumspective theme. 
The peculiarity of what is proximally ready-to-hand is that, in its readiness-
to-hand, it must, as it were, withdraw (zurückzuziehen) in order to be 
ready-to-hand quite authentically. That with which our everyday dealings 
proximally dwell is not the tools themselves (die Werkzeuge selbst). On the 
contrary, that with which we concern ourselves primarily is the work––that 
which is to be produced at the time; and this is accordingly ready-to-hand 
too.25

By this, he means that the most authentic ready-to-handness (thus 
the best definition for the term) is an object which is fully with-
drawn from one aspect of itself (namely the aforementioned ontic 
being) to be used as the essence of a tool.

 Meanwhile, present-at-hand also coincides with ready-to-
handness. While something ready-at-hand is currently available 
as a tool, an object present-at-hand exists in the world simply as a 
being but is able to become ready-to-hand if an instrumental par-
adigm sees it. This is because once someone with an instrumental 
view sees this present-at-hand object, it is no longer just ready to 
be or exist; instead, it is now ready to be used. Regarding objects 
present-at-hand:

25 Heidegger, Being and Time, 99.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

To entities such as these, their Being is 'a matter of indifference' or more 
precisely, they 'are' such that their Being can be neither a matter of 
indifference to them, nor the opposite.26

Hence, the principal focus of an object present-at-hand is the isness of 
itself. More precisely, it is the pure isness, to such an extent that neither 
Being nor non-Being is a concern. 

 With an understanding of a few Heideggerian concepts from  
Being and Time, I will now give a similar background of classical Daoism. 

§ 2: OR NOT TO BE?

 
“Those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know.” 

–– Laozi 老子 in Laozi 老子

§ 2.1: THE GOD OF SPINOZA

 Classical Daoism27 (4th century B.C.E to 9 C.E.)28 refers to the 
very beginning of the Daoist belief system in China. In this period, clas-
sical Daoism was subject to two separate segments of Chinese histo-
ry, existing during the Warring States Period 戰國時代 (from the birth 
of Daoism until 221 B.C.E.) then the Former Han dynasty 漢朝 (from 
206 B.C.E. until the end of classical Daoism in 9 C.E.)29 During these 
two eras, classical Daoism is well- characterized by the wealth of liter-
ature coming from this epoch, where essential texts included the Laozi, 
Zhuangzi, Guanzi 管子, Huainanzi 淮南子, Lüshi Chunqiu 呂氏春秋, 
and the Huangdi sijing 黃帝四經.30

 Hereupon, I will take any practice or thought system focused 
on the cosmological idea of the Dao 道 to be relevant to our discussion 

26 Heidegger, Being and Time, 68.
27 In the discussion of Daoism, the topic of translation is at the forefront of the 

conversation. For consistency, I will use the Hanyu Pinyin translation style 
over the Wade-Giles translation style for this essay. However, for the sake 
of clarity, I will also include any important terms from Daoism in Chinese 
the first time I use them.

28 Adrien Stoloff, “HU 3900 Mysticism Nei-yeh (Inward Training),” Worcester 
Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, 2024.

29 Stoloff, “HU 3900 Mysticism Nei-yeh (Inward Training),” 2024.
30 Ibid.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

and moreover to be a reasonable approximation for Daoism.31 The Dao 
is often translated as “the Way” or “the Path”; however, to best avoid 
projecting preconceived notions for interpreting the Dao, I will simply 
leave it as “the Dao.” Hence, emphasis will be placed on how the early 
Daoist texts characterized the Dao and not on a linguistic translation. To 
this end, we can now characterize the Dao:

The One is the most valued of all things. No one knows its source. No one 
knows its manifestations. No one knows where it starts or where it ends. Yet 
the myriad things take it to be their progenitor. The sage-king imitates it to 
keep his nature intact, to fix his life span, and to issue orders.32

Thus, as the Dao is one, any following characteristics will importantly 
be one aspect of a whole part, which when analyzing Heidegger, will 
be relevant. There is also a normative claim made here implying that a 
“good” person has a nature imitating the Dao, inasmuch as a sage-king 
is a good person. Additionally, the Dao is ineffable33 as seen in the Laozi 
here:

The way that can be spoken of  
Is not the constant way;  
The name that can be named  
Is not the constant name.34

In this context, the Dao is not only ineffable, but its ineffability implies 
its divine essence, which connects well with the conception of the Dao 
as both transcendent and immanent. Next, the Dao has intimate connec-
tions with the concepts of nothingness and creation. To begin to see this, 
consider the passage from the Laozi:

Its upper part is not dazzling;  
Its lower part is not obscure.  
Dimly visible, it cannot be named  

31 The idea of trying to separate Chinese concepts of religion and philosophy is 
yet another controversial issue; because there may be a tendency of Western 
academia to superimpose Western concepts (like religion and philosophy) 
onto Eastern belief systems, I will avoid characterizing Daoism and related 
concepts where it is unnecessary, and will choose more broad terms such 
as “belief systems”. This is all to say that the categorization of Daoism is 
not as important as the ideas present in Daoism, so Daoism is going to be 
conceived of as a belief system in pursuit of authenticity.

32 Lüshi Chunqiu, 111 as quoted in Adrien Stoloff, “Laozi 1,” Worcester 
Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, 2024.

33 Stoloff, “Laozi 1,” 2024.
34 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, tr. by D.C. Lau (London: Penguin, 2003), chap. 1.



46

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

And returns to that which is without substance.  
This is called the shape that has no shape, 
The image that is without substance.  
This is called indistinct and shadowy.  
Go up to it and you will not see its head;  
Follow behind it and you will not see its rear.35

First, notice how the shape is characterized as the shape that has no 
shape. Ontologically the Dao is the ontological entity that is comprised 
of the negation of ontological value; as in Being.36 The Dao is the mani-
festation of the Being of non-Being. It is a real thing; it does have a head 
and tail, but the head and tail are not visible. If the Dao’s meaning is 
unclear, the idea of a shadow is illuminating. In many ways, a shadow is 
not a tangible thing, it is simply an absence of a tangible thing, that 
is light. Thus, in the same way that a shadow is a being distinguished 
by and composed of non-Being, so too is the Dao the Being of non-Be-
ing. Although a philosophy or religion of nothingness, or the Nothing,37 
could seem to be in vain, the Laozi also addressed this:

Thus what we gain is Something, yet it is by virtue of Nothing that this can 
be put to use.38

In Daoism, the concern is not the uselessness of Nothing because of the 
existence of Something; rather, the concern is that Something is use-
less without Nothing. Insofar as an essence for the Dao is uselessness, 
uselessness is affirmed as being a positive thing in the paradigm of the 
useless tree in the Zhuangzi:

 After Carpenter Shi had returned home, the oak tree appeared 
to him in a dream and said, ‘What are you comparing me with? Are 
you comparing me with those useful trees? The cherry apple, the pear, 
the orange, the citron, the rest of those fructiferous trees and shrubs - 
as soon as their fruit is ripe, they are torn apart and subjected to abuse. 

35 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 14.
36 Even when outside the Heideggerian framework, I am still going to 

capitalize Being to denote the context that the idea of Being requires as an 
ontological entity, and emphasize the difference between Being and the 
everyday use of being.

37 Similar to the convention for Being, I will capitalize terms like Nothing and 
Nothingness to emphasize their different meaning from everyday use, even 
when not discussing them directly in relation to Daoism or phenomenology. 
Furthermore, Nothingness as a concept can be likened to a religious ideal 
of God in the same way Being can, which is in part why the concept 
meontology exists.

38 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 11.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

Their big limbs are broken off, their little limbs are yanked around. 
Their utility makes life miserable for them, and so they don’t get to 
finish out the years Heaven gave them, but are cut off in mid-journey. 
They bring it on themselves - the pulling and tearing of the common 
mob. And it’s the same way with all other things.’    
 ‘As for me, I’ve been trying a long time to be of no use, and though 
I almost died, I’ve finally got it. This is of great use to me. If I had been of 
some use, would I ever have grown this large? Moreover you and I are both 
of us things. What’s the point of this - things condemning things? You, a 
worthless man about to die - how do you know I’m a worthless tree?’39

 
Here, the text carefully establishes the merit of uselessness while also 
taking care not to conflate worthiness with usefulness––part of the value 
of the Dao is in uselessness. Meanwhile, as the Dao is transcendent and 
immanent, it is paradoxically useful and useless. Thus, the usefulness of 
Nothingness is made manifest in Daoist cosmogony, which is explained 
by:

The way begets one; 
One begets two; 
Two begets three; 
Three begets the myriad creatures.40 

The Dao (“the way” in this passage) has already been shown as a cos-
mological force that relates to Nothingness, so the fact that the Dao is 
the center of Daoist cosmology means that Nothingness is a pivotal part 
of Something; that non-Creation is a center of Creation; and later, that 
non-Being is a pivotal aspect of Being. We furthermore see it character-
ized as xu 虛 (empty), yuan 淵 (deep), zhan 湛 (dark), jing 靜 (still), yao 
窈 (dim), ji 寂 (silent) and liao 廖 (void); leading to the realization of the 
Dao’s essential action being wuwei 無為 (non-action).41

§ 2.2: THE CREATURES OF PROMETHEUS

 Now engaged in the Daoist paradigm, we are prepared to begin 
tackling the core concept of wuwei. As mentioned earlier, wuwei is the 
39 Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi Basic Writings, tr. by Burton Watson (New York: 

Columbia University Press, 2013), chap. 4.
40 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 42.
41 Stoloff, “Laozi 1,” 2024.



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essential action of the Dao, which leads to many implications for the 
meaning of wuwei. First, wuwei is traditionally translated as “effortless 
action” or as “non-action,” both of which may necessitate some explana-
tion. Although it more closely translates in English to “non-action” from 
a linguistic perspective, the phrase non-action has the wrong connota-
tion for the meaning of wuwei (which is why I will leave wuwei untrans-
lated). Instead, “effortless action” better depicts the idea that wuwei is 
still an action, but it is an action that is not forced and is in harmony with 
the Dao. Although wuwei will be left untranslated, it can be thought of 
as connotationally meaning effortless action and denotationally meaning 
non-action.

 In most of the aforenamed classical Daoist texts, wuwei is a 
staple for understanding the Daoist worldview and the relation of the 
Dao to humanity and existence. Similar to the Dao, wuwei is better un-
derstood by seeing all the ways it is characterized rather than trying to 
fit it into a one-sentence definition. For instance, Xunzi 荀子 discusses 
wuwei as “an ideal way to ‘walk the path.’”42 From this definition alone, 
there is the interesting conclusion that the essential action of the Dao is 
the manifestation of the ideal way of experiencing the Dao (calling back 
to the definition of the Dao). Hence, using wuwei as an intermediary 
step, we learn that the Dao as a cosmological and mystical idea has an 
essential action of interacting with itself, further compounding its mysti-
cal nature. The Laozi also describes wuwei by describing the never-act-
ing of the Dao: 

“The way never acts, yet nothing is left undone.”43 

At face value, this is a characterization of the Dao (the Way). However, 
as the way never acts, the text is characterizing the Dao as having wuwei, 
and by virtue of having wuwei, nothing is left undone. Thus, returning to 
the discussion of effortless action versus no action, wuwei must be asso-
ciated with some action as nothing is left undone;  however, it is also not 
excessive action - again lending credibility to the translation of wuwei 
as effortless action. Furthermore, wuwei is a virtue present in the sage:

Hence the sage says, I take no action and the people are transformed of 
themselves; I prefer stillness and the people are rectified of themselves; I am 

42 Adrien Stoloff, “Mind Like a Mirror: Toward a Modern Understanding of 
Classical Daoist Wuwei,” PhD diss., (Brown University, 2019), 115, https://
repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:918791/.

43 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 37.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

not meddlesome and the people prosper of themselves; I am free from desire 
and the people of themselves become simple like the uncarved block.44

Here, there is an emphasis placed on the lack-of-action aspect of wuwei, 
or more appropriately, the lack of improper action, insofar as adjectives 
like meddlesome are included to develop the nuance of wuwei advocat-
ing for a lack of improper action and not a lack of any action. This aspect 
of wuwei is present in sages, and thus the Laozi is making a normative 
argument for the value of acting in harmony with the Dao via wuwei. 
This harkens back to the passage on the Dao, which asserts that sage-
kings are in tune with the Dao; thus, having a nature imitating the Dao 
is both good and wuwei.

 To leave the realm of abstractions, contemplate a more palpable 
illustration of wuwei. Suppose you are a Daoist, and there is a loud argu-
ment on the train you are riding.45 The fight is actively escalating, and it 
appears increasingly likely that the man in the fight is going to physical-
ly hit the woman he is fighting. Only a few options come to your mind. 
For one, there are plenty of other people on the train, and this argument 
is not your problem, so let the fight happen and move on with your day. 
Conversely, be a hero! Imagine the news clips showing a valiant paragon 
saving a woman from domestic abuse by gallantly fighting the abuser! 
But, what is the most Daoist way to react? How could you react with 
wuwei? In this exact scenario, a New York man responded by eating po-
tato chips to de-escalate the scenario.46 Rather than reacting in a forced 
way (as in by picking a fight), which could put more people in danger, 
the bystander decided to step between the two people fighting; confusing 
the potential abuser enough to fully quell the situation. Furthermore, the 
bystander did not choose to do nothing, mirroring the fact that wuwei is 
not “doing nothing”. Instead, the man took action, but not excessively, 
and in turn, this man exemplified acting with wuwei.

 Briefly returning to wuwei as classical Daoists described it, wu-
wei is the action of Tiān 天 (Heaven) and Di 地 (Earth), and therefore, it 
is the optimal life path, which is vital to lifelong health and happiness. 47 
With such a broad definition, there are countless valid explanations and 

44 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 57.
45 Stoloff, “Laozi 1,” 2024. The idea of the ensuing narrative warrants full 

credit to Professor Stoloff.
46 See the video “Man breaks up subway fight while eating potato chips” by 

WPTV News - FL Palm Beaches and Treasure Coast at https://youtu.be/
hR5cfTVkf-0?si=rHAreMgFQVEebTea.

47 Adrien Stoloff, “Wuwei in the Zhuangzi 2” Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 
Worcester, MA, 2024.



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understandings of wuwei, not limited to the definitions provided herein.

§ 3.1: HOW MUCH LAND DOES A MAN NEED?
 
 The confluence of Being and Time with classical Daoism is a 
topic that has largely been both understudied and unacknowledged. Giv-
en the breadth of ideas I would like to incorporate in this section, I will 
first make explicit the general formatting of this chapter. By and large, 
I aspire to unveil places where Being and Time exhibits direct proof 
of Daoist influence and to begin an open discussion on the similarity 
of certain concepts in Being and Time and classical Daoism. This will 
be accomplished by directly presenting the praxes of my argument in 
the implied order, where the beginning arguments are direct proofs of 
Heidegger’s Daoist influences, and later arguments become nuanced 
discussions showing how classical Daoist ideals arise in Being and 
Time, regardless of the intentionality on Heidegger’s part. To that end, 
the preponderance of evidence suggesting direct Daoist sources in Being 
and Time ought to establish the plausibility of the similarities between 
the Heideggerian and Daoist worldviews as stemming from Heidegger’s 
direct inspiration from Daoist manuscripts.

§ 3.2: TWICE TWO MAKES FOUR 

 To set the stage for the magnitude of Daoist ideas in Being and 
Time, I will first present an excerpt which, even if hyperbolic, should 
help understand the view some of Heidegger’s colleagues had on his 
work: 

Ito Kichinosuke [伊藤吉之助], one of my teachers at university, studied 
in Germany in 1918 immediately after the First World War and hired 
Heidegger as a private tutor. Before moving 20 back to Japan at the end 
of his studies, Professor Ito handed Heidegger a copy of Das Buch vom 
Tee, the German translation of Okakura Kakuzō’s The Book of Tea, as a 
token of his appreciation. That was in 1919. Sein und Zeit (Being and 
Time) was published in 1927 and made Heidegger famous. Mr. Ito was 
surprised and indignant that Heidegger used Zhuangzi’s concept without 
giving him credit. Years later in 1945, Professor Ito reminisced with me 
and, speaking in his Shonai dialect, said, ‘Heidegger did a lot for me, but 
I should’ve laid into him for stealing’. There are other indications that 



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Heidegger was inspired by Eastern writings, but let’s leave this topic here. I 
have heard many stories of this kind from Professor Ito and checked their 
veracity. I recounted this story at a reception held after a series of lectures 
I gave in 1968 at the University of Heidelberg at the invitation of Hans-
Georg Gadamer. Japanese exchange students attended these lectures, and I 
explained that there were many other elements of classical Eastern thought 
in Heidegger’s philosophy and gave some examples. I must have said too 
much and may even have said that Heidegger was a plagiarist…48

 
 For context, the quotation above is from the point of view of a 
Japanese university student whose professor had hired Martin Heideg-
ger as a private tutor. The student recounts that his professor gave Heide-
gger a copy of The Book of Tea. When Being and Time was published, 
the professor was certain that Heidegger had used Kakuzō’s analysis of 
Daoism as the foundation of his philosophy, with the student later giving 
a lecture on this issue at an academic conference in Japan. In The Book 
of Tea, we directly read: “Taoism [is] the ‘art of being in the world.’”49 
The implication here regarding Heidegger is clear as day, as there is no 
proof of Heidegger using the term “Being-in-the-world” before he had 
read the German version of The Book of Tea. With the publication of Be-
ing and Time in 1927, Heidegger had already had access to this transla-
tion as well as a copy of the Zhuangzi for many years. This fact has held 
up in contemporary philosophy, as the few modern scholars discussing 
this issue all say something along the lines of “he has been suspected of 
borrowing the expression ‘being-in-the-world’ (in-der-welt-sein) from 
the 1919 German translation of Okakura Kakuzō 岡倉覚三, The Book 
of Tea (Cha no Hon 茶の本).”50

 Calling back to chapter one, recall that the majority of Being 
and Time is a characterization of Dasein in one way or another. Yet, 
the very term Dasein (Being-there) is derivative of Being-in-the-world, 
which itself is from the characterization of Daoism by Kakuzō. What 
then? Is not the entire web of Heideggerian concepts built outwards 
from the point of stolen intellectual property? As the evidence is pre-
sented, Heidegger did find a niche concept, wrote it off as his own, and 

48 Tomonobu Imamichi, In Search of Wisdom; One Philosopher’s Journey, 
(Tokyo, Japan: International House of Japan, 2004), 123-124.

49 Kakuzō Okakura, The Book of Tea (Global Grey, 2014), 16, http://pdf-
objects.com/files/Book-Of-Tea.pdf.

50 Eric S. Nelson, “Martin Heidegger and Kitayama Junyū: Nothingness, 
Emptiness, and the Thing” Asian Studies 11, no. 1 (2023): 30, https://
journals.uni-lj.si/as/article/view/10594.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

then wrote a book on the concept. Thus, the most logical position main-
tains the existence of Heidegger’s Daoist influences; any objection must 
first develop proof of Heidegger's conception of this concept before he 
interacted with East Asian culture. Moreover, Being-in-the-world from 
The Book of Tea attempts to describe the state of humanity as presented 
in early Daoist literature. Insofar as Dasein is the Being-there of con-
sciousness, then Dasein in the setting of the world is best described as 
Being-in-the-world.

 Now, from an understanding that Heidegger assuredly took in-
fluence from Daoism, it is reasonable to look at specific instances of 
Daoist ideas shining forth in Being and Time. In particular, the Dexter-
ous Butcher of the Zhuangzi bears remarkable similarities to Heidegge-
rian ideas:

Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way, 
which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see 
was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now 
— now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes…’

“A good cook changes his knife once a year — because he cuts. A mediocre 
cook changes his knife once a month — because he hacks. I’ve had this 
knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, 
and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. 
There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no 
thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s 
plenty of room — more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s 
why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first 
came from the grindstone…”51

On a more fundamental level, Zhuangzi uses this parable to characterize 
wuwei by referencing scenarios any layperson could understand. How-
ever, in doing so, he presents a novel view of tooling. The tool is not 
simply used and separate from the user; it ebbs and flows to and from the 
user in this passage. The tool’s Being as part of the user is made manifest 
through its inability to break, as the durability of the equipment mirrors 
the continued Beingness of the being using it, signifying a lack of dis-
tinction between the two. This characterization is nearly 

unparalleled, not only due to the uniqueness of the idea but also the 
51 Chuang Tzu, Chuang Tzu: The Basic Writings (Columbia University Press, 

1964), Section 8, quoted in Bureau of Public Secrets, Chuang Tzu: “The 
Dexterous Butcher,” (n.d.), Section 8, https://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/
passages/chuang-tzu.htm.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

specificity. Furthermore, up until modernity, there was really no impetus 
to prompt philosophers to think extensively about the relationship be-
tween a tool and its user. And yet, we see for Heidegger that:

Equipment can genuinely show itself only in dealings cut to its own 
measure (hammering with a hammer, for example); but in such dealings 
an entity of this kind is not grasped thematically as an occurring Thing, 
nor is the equipment-structure known as such even in the using. The 
hammering does not simply have knowledge about the hammer's character 
as equipment, but it has appropriated this equipment in a way which could 
not possibly be more suitable. In dealings such as this, where something 
is put to use, our concern subordinates itself to the "in-order-to" which 
is constitutive for the equipment we are employing at the time; the less 
we just stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and 
use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the 
more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is - as equipment. The 
hammering itself uncovers the specific 'manipulability' ("Handlichkeit") of 
the hammer.52

He takes special care to characterize the nature of the equipment pre-
cisely. His characterization likewise strays away from the convention of 
conceiving of equipment, tooling, or technology as external to humans. 
Rather, it is by the use of a hammer that the hammer’s Being is revealed. 
Although Heidegger elaborates his theories concerning instrumentality 
and technology later in his career, especially in The Question Concern-
ing Technology, he has already laid the groundwork for the discussion at 
this point in Being and Time, presumably taken from classical Daoism. 
The emphasis on equipment as not existing outside of humans continues 
for much of the book:

The ready-to-hand is not grasped theoretically at all, nor is it itself the sort 
of thing that circumspection takes proximally as a circumspective theme 
… That with which our everyday dealings proximally dwell is not the tools 
themselves (die Werkzeuge selbst). On the contrary, that with which we 
concern ourselves primarily is the work - that which is to be produced at 
the time; and this is accordingly ready-to-hand too. The work bears with it 
that referential totality within which the equipment is encountered.53

The tool becomes such a part of the person that only its ready-to-hand-
ness is present, again painting an artistic flow between the user and the 
equipment. The equipment’s Being in conjunction with the user has no 

52 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 98.
53 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 99.



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medium, similar again to the Zhuangzi: “Confucius said, ‘A good swim-
mer will get the knack of it in no time ––that means he’s forgotten the 
water … he sees the water as so much dry land.’”54 What could we infer 
about a good tradesman? Perhaps, he has forgotten the tool, and sees the 
tool as much as his hand.

 Moving forward, the paradigm Heidegger and classical Daoist 
authors share regarding equipment is most clear if we only take Heide-
gger’s excerpts in a vacuum. In reality, much of Heidegger’s writing 
in Being and Time is in the context of Dasein, which turns out to be 
intricately related to wuwei. As already displayed, Dasein is an object 
of Being whose subject is Being. Likewise, considering wuwei under an 
ontological lens, we can make a few observations. First, wuwei is not an 
ontic entity because even if it is not necessarily an object of Being, it is 
undoubtedly closer related to Being than being. Whereas an ontic entity 
would be a statement of isness; an ontological entity is a statement of the 
isness of isness (deriving from the definition of ontology versus onticol-
ogy). Furthermore, towards which direction does the ontological entity 
of wuwei turn? Given that it is the ideal path of following the Dao, wu-
wei orients itself towards the Dao. And, inasmuch as the Dao has been 
characterized as both transcendent and immanent, as well as Nothing 
and Something, then wuwei is left with no physical direction to turn. 
This fact is only magnified as the Dao and wuwei get better and more 
precisely defined, because better definitions increase the mystical and 
ineffable perception of them. Hence, wuwei, in its possible ontological 
Beingness, must turn to itself as an essential action of the Dao, leading to 
its potential ontological Beingness shining forth in its subject of Being. 
Physically, this statement manifests in the idea that wuwei is generally 
accepted as being capable of occurring in nearly every hobby or work. 
Because wuwei has a subject of Being, or alternatively is a concept out-
side of the paradigm of means and ends (or even within that paradigm, 
wuwei would have wuwei as its own ends), it can be as attainable in 
sports as it is in a trade as it is in an art.55 The only limitation on wuwei 
as an ontological Being exists in the classical Daoist emphasis of wu-
wei manifesting in action. Then, whereas Dasein is simply Being-there, 
wuwei is a way of confronting Being-there authentically. Further, the 
relationship of wuwei to the Dao is that of Dasein to Being, where the 
former acts as a collapse of the potential ontological essence of the latter.

 Not only does Dasein exist as a relative of wuwei, but Heidegger 

54 Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi: Basic Writings, section 19.
55 Stoloff, “Wuwei in the Zhuangzi 2,” 2024.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

also more implicitly incorporates wuwei:

Circumspection operates in the involvement-relationships of the context 
of equipment which is ready-to-hand. Moreover, it is subordinate to the 
guidance of a more or less explicit survey of the equipmental totality of the 
current equipment-world and of the public environment which belongs 
to it. This survey is not just one in which things that are present-at-hand 
are subsequently scraped together. What is essential to it is that one should 
have a primary understanding of the totality of involvements within which 
factical concern always takes its start.56

Here, the transformation of both the person and the equipment created 
because of the inherent goal of a ready-to-hand tool is similar to wuwei. 
Compared with the aforecited “The Dexterous Butcher” section of the 
Zhuangzi, in both cases, the user of a tool becomes more intertwined 
with their tool as they become better at using it. From this, a psycholog-
ical flow state is produced, and given that a psychological flow state is 
similar to wuwei, Heidegger is at least demonstrating the production of 
an idea approximating wuwei.

 Next, there are strong parallels between Heidegger’s charac-
terization of Dasein using Thrownness and the motif of fate in Daoist 
works. In the Zhuangzi, we read:

“I was born on the dry land and felt safe on the dry land - that was what I 
was used to. I grew up with the water and felt safe in the water - that was 
my nature. I don’t know why I do what I do - that’s fate.”57

Here, the Being of the narrator is not justified as reasonable. There is 
no metaphysics presented to justify why they were born on the dry land, 
why they grew up with water, or why this is their nature. Instead, the 
narrator chalks this up to fate. Similarly, Heidegger’s ontology avoids 
normative ethics and metaphysical judgments. In the provided excerpts 
from Being and Time, none advocate for the reader to do anything (al-
though one could argue his presentation of Dasein implies a method of 
living authentically). Hence, Heidegger too, does not care if there is an 
answer to the questions of Thrownness. Instead, he presents his argu-
ment as a truism about the world, saying, “this is just how it is.” Thus, 
both Heidegger and Zhuangzi address the origins of certain determinis-
tic mechanisms in life by illuminating the existence of said mechanisms 

56 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 410.
57 Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi Basic Writings, tr. by Burton Watson (New York: 

Columbia University Press, 2013), Section 19.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

but ignoring why the mechanisms exist.

 Having considered both Dasein and Thrownness in the context 
of Daoism, it is

imperative to realize that the majority of Being and Time is focused on 
Dasein, let alone the even larger spotlight given to both concepts to-
gether. So, to rephrase, a majority of Being and Time is derivative of 
classical Daoist texts. Not only this, but the derivative aspects of Dao-
ism in Heidegger’s work are not simply details, rather, they are entire 
metaphysical, epistemological, and ontological structures underlying 
the thought upon which the book is built. The shining forth of Thrown-
ness from classical Daoism, for example, is not a trivial detail; it is an 
entire ontological structure, a web of presuppositions, which Heidegger 
and Zhuangzi both take for being true. As such, to say Daoism underlies 
Being and Time is not saying that Heidegger directly discusses Daoist 
ideals. On the contrary, he is extracting a more fundamental influence 
from Daoism in the form of the structures through which he views phi-
losophy––these are: fate/Thrownness as a condition of Being, Dasein as 
a complex relationship with wuwei, and the relation of humans with the 
world as fundamentally integrated into the world lacking emphasis on 
instrumentality and equipmentality.

 However, there are limits to my arguments presented. First, the 
idea of Dasein being similar to wuwei is new, and thus, although its 
validity should be seen in this paper, there certainly are important dif-
ferences between Dasein and wuwei. For instance, wuwei is first and 
foremost part of the Daoist belief system and is best understood in ref-
erence to the Dao. By taking wuwei away from the Dao, so too does it 
lose meaning. Furthermore, Dasein is fundamentally a description of 
the world, whereas wuwei entails much more in a normative sense; it 
tells you how to act. So, although I was careful to avoid conflating the 
two ideas directly, this is still worth considering. Another limitation of 
my arguments lies in the possibility that Heidegger took Being-in-the-
world from classical Daoism and then came up with all other ideas inde-
pendently. But this is highly unlikely for a few reasons. First, Heidegger 
took the idea of being in the world and passed it off as his own; there is 
no denying this. His willingness to do so implies he had no qualms about 
taking ideas from Daoism and repurposing them as his own, and he may 
not have realized people would find his source. Second, the similarities I 
presented between Heidegger and classical Daoist texts were not minor 
details that could be recreated; they were entire philosophical structures 
of viewing the world. The best chance for Heidegger not stealing from 



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

Daoism lies in the slight chance that he simply had the same epistemo-
logical, metaphysical, and ontological presumptions as classical Daoists 
had.

In the case a reader could still write off the connections between Martin 
Heidegger and Daoism as coincidental, then it is important to note that 
there are many more philosophical assumptions shared by Heidegger and 
Daoists. First, a significant connection between Heidegger and classical 
Daoist authors has already been developed regarding a few points. The 
discussion of utility’s relationship to usefulness, the interdependence of 
things on relationships, and the revelation of Nothingness in the world 
have all been discussed in David Chai’s Daoist Resonances in Heideg-
ger, especially in the first chapter by Graham Parker.

 Furthermore, more connections still need to be discovered. For 
instance, Heidegger stems from the Husserlian tradition of phenomenol-
ogy.58 In this tradition, there is a focus on studying consciousness by un-
derstanding the first-person point of view of experience.59 For Heidegger 
specifically, “The interconnectedness of Experience serves as the point 
of departure for methodical study.”60 Clearly, then, there is a primacy of 
experience central to Heidegger’s philosophy. In comparison, the Daoist 
cosmology emphasizes the primacy of experience by claiming:

The Way begets one;  
One begets two…”61

 
From the Dao comes oneness, and from oneness comes Yin and Yang, 
and everything else comes to Yin and Yang. Or, assuming that wuwei 
as the essential action of the Dao implies experience is present in this 
cosmology, then this short passage from the Laozi is an expression of 
the primacy of experience in the world. This is yet another structure un-
derlying the worldview of Daoists and Heidegger alike. After this short 
digression, it should be easy to see the reasoning that can be utilized 
elsewhere in Being and Time to identify even more Daoist influences.

§ 3.3: WHERE DO WE COME FROM? WHAT ARE WE? 

58 David Woodruff Smith, “Phenomenology,” Stanford.edu, Stanford 
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, November 16, 2013, https://plato.stanford.edu/
entries/phenomenology/.

59 Ibid.
60 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 75.
61 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chap. 42.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

WHERE ARE WE GOING? 

 In conclusion, the blatant plagiarism shown in Martin Heideg-
ger’s use of the phrase Being-in-the-world (derived from Daoism) opens 
the door for Being and Time being inspired by

classical Daoism. From this position, a nuanced analysis of Being and 
Time reveals that Heidegger approaches philosophy from a similar worl-
dview as Daoists approach the world, not limited to epistemological, 
metaphysical, and ontological presuppositions. The more analysis of 
Being and Time that is conducted, the more evident the similarities are. 
Some ideas I showed as derivative of Daoism include Dasein, Thrown-
ness, and Equipmentality. Thus, in the context of Heidegger’s confirmed 
reading and use of Daoist terms, I conclude it is more likely than not that 
Heidegger’s presentation of Daoist ideas is due to his adoption of them, 
not mere coincidence. The recognition of Daoist sources in Heidegger’s 
work is imperative not only for historicity but also because it allows 
for future scholarship surrounding syncretism. Given the connections 
between wuwei and Dasein, could wuwei represent the most authentic 
Clearing in Heideggerian philosophy? Or is wuwei truly the most au-
thentic experience for Dasein? In either case, discussions like these are 
essential for future scholarship in the history of philosophy and religious 
studies.



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Of Experience and Being: Apopos of This and That

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