Heidegger, Chuang Tzu, and authentic Being-toward-death (Martin Heidegger)

This dissertation explores authentic Being-toward-death and its psychotherapeutic implications in Heidegger's Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) and the Chuang Tzu, the early classic of philosophical Taoism.; This dissertation shows a remarkable affinity between Being and Time's and the Chuang Tzu's conception of inauthentic existence. Specifically, this affinity is seen in Heidegger's phenomenon of Dasein's fall into the "they" (das Man) as inauthentic everyday Self-understanding and Chuang Tzu's phenomenon of the person's loss of te (potency) as small understanding (hsiao chih).; A major theme in Being and Time is that everyday Self-understanding suffers from "loss of Self" (Selbstverlorenheit) through absorption in its everyday concernful comportments in the world and falls into inauthentic ways of Being exemplified in everyday modes of understanding and interpretation. Dasein allows itself to be absorbed into the "they"---the impersonal, collective "one."; This theme corresponds to Chuang Tzu's notion of the person's loss of te. For Chuang Tzu, the ontologico-existential fact of being born into a social-conventional world which stresses discriminative understanding results in the loss of the person's te. This has come about through the person's identification with the self (chi; tzu), by way of socially-conventionally shaped discriminations (pien) that are interpreted and adhered to by a heart-mind (hsin) that is absorbed and dispersed in socially-conventionally shaped desires ( yu). In this way the person's Being forfeits its te , losing its authentic possibilities of understanding and interpreting.; This dissertation shows that there is a crucial relation between authentic Being-toward-death in Being and Time and the Chuang Tzu. This can be seen in the parallel process of transforming the clearing (Lichtung) of Dasein's inauthentic everyday Self-understanding into the openness of Being itself and forgetting (wang) the self with its small understanding so as to be open for te.; The implications of authentic Being-toward-death for psychotherapy emerge from discussions of the relation of resoluteness (Entschlossenheit ) to authentic Being-with the Other, psychotherapy as dwelling ( chu&huml; or wohnen), and Medard Boss's understanding of psychotherapy with reference to Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology and Chuang Tzu's Taoist hermeneutics.