On May 21 and 22, 2024, an international scientific conference entitled Heidegger, Taoism and Intercultural Thinking Today took place in the premises of the Central Library of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. The event was organized by the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava in close cooperation with the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Vienna and with the support of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The conference was opened jointly by the director Richard Stahel (Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences) and Ľubomír Dunaj (University of Vienna).
The contributions responded thematically primarily to the latest philosophical works on Heidegger and Taoist philosophy, in particular to the book by American professor Eric S. Nelson entitled “Heidegger and Dao: Things, Nothingness, Freedom” (Bloomsbury, 2023), to David Chai’s edited volume entitled “Daoist Resonances in Heidegger Exploring a Forgotten Debt” (Bloomsbury, 2022) and also to Fabian Heubel’s book “Gewundene Wege nach China: Heidegger – Daoism – Adorno” (Klostermann, 2020), analyzing, questions and topics related to Heidegger’s thought, Taoist and East Asian philosophy, and the possibilities and pitfalls of intercultural dialogue and philosophy today.
Professor Eric S. Nelson (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), Fabian Heubel (Academia Sinica) and David Chai (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) gave lectures in individual sections, who also opened the conference, as well as determined the basic topics that were more or less discussed throughout the two-day conference.
The next day, they gave a variety of contributions, expanding the discussion to various concepts from Indian and Japanese philosophy, as well as to the reception of Heidegger in Spain, Japan, Italy and especially in China. Gradually, one of the world’s most important contemporary sinologists, Jana S. Rošker (University of Ljubljana), a Korean-born philosopher working in Paris at Hye Young Kim (Ecole Normale Supérieure), German philosopher Mario Wennig, who spent more than ten years in China and today lectures at Loyola University Andalusia, presented their works. The Slovak academic community was represented by Kristína Bosáková from the Faculty of Arts of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice.
The conference was closed by representatives of the emerging generation of authors dedicated to intercultural philosophy, namely Rudi Capra (University of Torino), Canadian-Turkish philosopher Kurt C.M. Mertel (American University of Sharjah) and Murat Ates (University of Arts Linz).
Individual lecturers agreed that in the current global age it is necessary to look for ways to connect European and non-European philosophical traditions and thus contribute, among other things, to peaceful communication between individual parts of the planet. They expressed a deep conviction that Martin Heidegger himself, as well as various currents of the phenomenological-hermeneutic philosophical tradition, and the philosophy of Taoism can be a suitable tool for an intercultural and truly global philosophy adequate for the 21st century.
Edited by: Peter Daubner, Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
Photo: Martin Bystriansky