Adam Loughnane - Panel 12 ENOJP Paris

“Hollowness or Opening: Poetic Language in the Philoso-
phy of Ueda and Heidegger”
— Adam Loughnane, University College Cork

Both Ueda and Heidegger diagnosed a danger in their times, which they believed stemmed from the representational use of language. The linguistic abuses in the media (elaborated by Ueda) or according to technology (in Heidegger) were endangering not just language, but human existence and the world.
Although their proposed correctives differ in important ways I will consider, both philosophers explored the poetic idiom for its potential to “speak” outside of the representational use of language. Heidegger pursues this idiom for its potential to speak beyond the speech-silence dichotomy, in the “open” (offenheit), while Ueda considers poetic language for the possibility of utterance between objectivity and non-objectivity, or what he calls “actuality” ( 実の事 ) and “hollowness” ( 虚の事 ).
In elaborating and also enacting their theories of poetic language, both Heidegger and Ueda consider the work of various poets. This presentation places the two philosophers in dialogue to consider their respective appeals to these poets. I will weigh the merits of their distinct approaches for a different being-in-the- world through poetic language. While Heidegger puts forth a redemptive volitional orientation within language as derived from the poets he focuses on (Rilke, George) whose “song turns our unprotected being into the Open,” Ueda’s unnamed poet who “plays in hollowness while abiding in actuality,” might point the way to a more viable overcoming of representational language through an enactment rather than a description of poetic language.

This talk took place at the 3rd Conference of the European Network of Japanese Philosophy in Paris, Université Panthéon Sorbonne (Paris 1) and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) from November 2-4, 2017.

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