EVERYDAYNESS, DIVINITY, AND THE SACRED:

SHINTO AND HEIDEGGER

U. Edward McDougall
Department of Philosophy, Durham University
edward.mcdougall@gmail.com

The sacred or holy is central to Heidegger’s later writings, “The Thing” (TT) and
“Building Dwelling Thinking” (BDT) taking it as their focus. This aspect of his phi­
losophy is often viewed as lacking in coherence1 or an attempt to return to Ancient
Greek religion.2 Heideggerian notions of the gods or the sacred have frequently been
dismissed or neglected, with even sympathetic commentators like Julian Young play­
ing down their importance.
Heidegger’s later thought, however, represents one of the most radical attempts
to critically rethink divinity in Western thought, presenting the possibility of dialogue
with the non-Western notions of divinity. Focusing on the Shinto notion of divinity,3
in this essay I will compare the sense of the sacred found in Heidegger’s later writings
with the understanding of kami (gods) and the practice of the shrine, illustrating how
his criticism of the tradition of Western metaphysics provides an opportunity to re­
consider Shinto as a religion. Along such lines, concerning East Asian tradition as a
whole, Nishitani Keiji, Heidegger’s contemporary, comments: “the tradition must be
rediscovered from the ultimate point where it is grasped in advance as the end (or
eschaton) of our Westernization and of Western Civilization itself.”4
Linking Shinto with Heidegger’s later religious thought may appear an unortho­
dox reading. Although his personal interest in aspects of East Asian thought is already
well attested to,5 the present essay does not aim to continue this project of tracing
Heidegger’s sources, but to extend his dialogue with the East Asian World. Heidegger
himself presents the dialogue between East Asia and the West as incomplete, describ­
ing it as “some steps along a course.” Heidegger never explicitly refers to Shinto in
any published writing. He may not have had direct awareness of Shinto, and herein
I will not imply otherwise. However, I will set up a dialogue between Heidegger’s
later religious thought and Shinto, focusing on important but often neglected aspects,
including the nature of the gods and the fourfold, which I will compare with the na­
ture of the kami in Shinto and the presence of the sacred in the shrine. This approach
of continuing a dialogue with non-Western traditions of religion and philosophy is
consistent with Heidegger’s own claim that his thought was a preparation for “dia­
logue with the East Asian World.”6 Through drawing out resonances between Shinto
and Heidegger, this essay will show that Shinto can provide an archetype for Hei­
degger’s thought through a living religion rather than a set of speculations. Even if he
did not have any direct personal awareness of it, the religion strongly harmonizes
with principles in Heidegger’s later thought, providing a religious basis for a non-­
nihilist, Heideggerian approach to modern life.7

Philosophy East & West  Volume 66, Number 3 July 2016 883–902 883
© 2016 by University of Hawai‘i Press
 I will begin by outlining the nature of Heidegger’s later philosophy of religion,
first with a look at the nature of the non-Platonic notion of the gods and the sacred,
followed by an outline of notions of dwelling and the fourfold put forward in Hei­
degger’s essays, TT, BDT and Why Poets (WP). Subsequent to that I will consider the
significance of the kami in Shinto and how they parallel the role of the gods in
­Heidegger’s later writings. In the last section I will compare the Shinto shrine to the
Heideggerian notion of gathering and the fourfold. From this I will show that Shinto
provides a model for the sense of the sacred that the Heideggerian project seeks
to preserve.

Heidegger’s Non-metaphysical Understanding of Divinity

The fourfold8 of gods, mortals, earth, and sky referred to in Heidegger’s later writings
can appear abstruse because of Heidegger’s reference to the gods, a term that ap­
pears incongruous, esoteric, and alien to a large part of mainstream modern Western
religious discourse.
This often obscured role of the gods is imperative to any understanding of the
fourfold, with gods and the absence of gods being central concerns of Heidegger in
this stage of his writings, as illustrated in his work “The Age of the World Picture,”
where the ‘loss of the gods’ (Entgötterung  )9 is listed as one of the defining features of
modernity. He discusses further his concern with the gods in WP, TT, and BDT. How­
ever, as noted, the notion of ‘gods’ in Heidegger is played down in commentaries.
Julian Young interprets ‘gods’ as equivalent to the ‘divine laws,’ or ‘heritage.’10 Such
a reading would present the gods in Heidegger as a poetic metaphor. However,
Heidegger rejected anthropocentric understandings of the gods based on historio­
graphical or psychological interpretations of myth as symptomatic of the ‘flight of the
gods’ in the modern world.11 Views of religion that take a reductionist position, see­
ing religiosity as part of a human need and the divine as merely projections of human
archetypes (meaning that the gods are reduced to embodiments of human virtues),
deny the possibility of encountering their true mystery. If the gods are merely arche­
types of human values then people would understand exactly what the gods are,
because they are encountering an aspect of themselves.12 It is the mystery attached
to the ‘gods’ that for Heidegger gives them their significance as ‘holy,’ standing out
of the ordinary. To take his position seriously, therefore, it is necessary to move away
from the view of the gods as any kind of anthropic projection or poetic metaphor.
However, while Heidegger rejects the modernist view of the gods as projections
of human archetypes, he does not embrace any kind of transcendental view of the
divine as representing a high state of reality in the sense of Platonism or classical
Western theism. Central to the whole project of Heidegger’s later philosophy is a
rejection of Western Platonic metaphysics. All Platonic metaphysics for Heidegger
necessarily rests on a two-world doctrine,13 where one world is seen as definitively
real while the other is dismissed as merely apparent. This, for Heidegger, is the defin­
ing feature of metaphysics, which represents a particular type of understanding of

884 Philosophy East & West

beings that he sees as having come to dominance in Western thinking. Metaphysics
is always an analysis of the transcendent Being of beings in terms of the universals
that all beings possess. Heidegger states directly that “all metaphysics is Platonism.”14
For this reason the gods should not be thought of as an ontologically discrete higher
reality separated out from the rest of the fourfold. While the gods remain radically
distinct from mortals, at the same time in Heidegger’s fourfold there is, in Benjamin
Vedder’s terms, ‘no subordination of higher and lower.’15 The aim of Heidegger’s
later philosophy is to recover a sense of the sacred within the everyday: hence, prac­
tices such as libations are performed in awe of an immanent presence of the gods
marked out from the ordinary, which is, at the same time, bound into the practice of
daily life.
Heidegger moves away from the notion of a transcendental supreme being to­
ward a more immanent sense of the sacred found in the earth and the world, al­
though this does not entail that he adopts pantheism, viewing God, or, in Heidegger’s
terms, Being or the fourfold, as universally evenly present everywhere. Rather than
such abstraction, Heidegger’s later thought focuses on the particularity of certain
entities and places that play a highly individuated role. This approach toward certain
entities in the world begins with the “Origin of the Work of Art” (OWA), extended
further by later essays, particularly TT and BDT, where the gods are seen as an im­
portant part of Heidegger’s fourfold. Heidegger states, “when we speak of the divin­
ities [gods] we are already thinking of the other three.”16
In these later works, Heidegger treats the gods as distinct entities whose presence
is to be encountered. Thus, how can their role be understood? In TT, Heidegger de­
termines the divinities to be “the beckoning messengers of the godhead”17 — a highly
cryptic definition. In order to understand this role it is necessary briefly to look at
how they relate to the other parts of the fourfold. Despite Vedder’s claim that “there
seems to be more kinship between heaven and the godlike,”18 implying that the
gods are heavenly beings while mortals dwell on earth, the gods in Heidegger’s four­
fold bear a deeper relationship to the notion of earth found in his earlier OWA.19 In
that work, the earth stands opaque and impenetrable as opposed to the structured
transparency of the world that mortals ordinarily inhabit. Heidegger’s central images
of earth in the OWA are those that epitomize “darkness and sheltering,”20 defin­
ing this in contrast to the ordered, manifest human world, thus rendering earth
as marking a limit to human understanding. The gods in the fourfold, like earth in
OWA, stand beyond human knowledge, being a presence of mystery in the world.
Delineated from the ordinary they lead mortals into a sense of reverence for the inef­
fable, standing out because of the presence of mystery, which they embody, thus
projected ­within the human world, but cannot be completely grasped by mortals.
Encountering the divine for Heidegger is a matter of encountering such an awe-­
inspiring mystery.
In the modern world dominated by the reductionist way of ordering that Hei­
degger terms Gestell, where earth is viewed as ordered resources standing in reserve,
the gods are lost or absent. Heidegger describes “the loss of the gods”21 alongside the

U. Edward McDougall 885

 dominance of technology as one of the defining features of modernity. As the gods by
definition stand over and above human understanding, it is not possible to bring the
gods back by an act of human will.
Heidegger’s later philosophy, however, is not merely a passive resignation to
modern nihilism. His challenge to the “absence of the gods” is not to try to prove
their existence against modern atheism. Heidegger was critical of the modern natural
theologians’ use of “atomic physics to secure its proofs of God”22 precisely because
proving it in this way strips the divine of its essential mystery. A god who could be
proved like this would become a calculation and stop being a god in Heidegger’s
sense of the word, the central aim being to preserve the sense of the sacred embodied
by the gods. To achieve this, Heidegger takes various approaches, focusing on the
role of poetry in Why Poets and his writings on the German poet Hölderlin, as well
as considering certain practices, notably libations, in TT and BDT.

Dwelling, Immanence, and Transcendence in Heidegger’s TT

This next section will look at practices preserving the sense of the sacred in Heideg­
ger. To do this it will focus specifically on the short but significant essay TT, which
explores further the notion of the sacred as associated with gathering, previously re­
ferred to in OWA,23 where particular great works of art make manifest an underlying
order of existence.24 In place of great works of art, TT considers the apparently every­
day wine jug, which becomes the focal point for the sacred, that Heidegger associ­
ates with gathering.25
Thus, TT can be interpreted as an attempt to think through the notion of sacred­
ness within the everyday. Heidegger draws attention to the “nearness” of the wine jug
to show that it is something that can routinely be encountered within daily life and
might easily be overlooked. Heidegger challenges what he calls the “annihilation of
the thing,”26 meaning that modernity denies the sacred within the everyday because
the thing is reduced to another commodity in the flow of resources, presented as its
use or value, which would make the wine jug merely another consumer product. It
has the role of holding wine as a resource standing in reserve waiting to be con­
sumed by people, who in turn become “human resources,” themselves standing in
reserve in the process of production and consumption.
What does it mean for Heidegger to recover this sense of the sacred within the
world, viewing “the thing” in a way that is open to its mystery, and non-technocratic
in that it does not view the wine jug in reductive terms? While Heidegger rejects the
completely functional use of an entity like the wine jug, at the same time he does not
wish to view the thing through disinterested (“present-at-hand”27) contemplation
along the lines of Schopenhauer’s understanding of aesthetic contemplation seeking
to be a “faithful mirror”28 detached from practice. Separating “the thing” from any
use, as might happen in a museum, will take away its significance. The thing be­
comes the thing through festive involvement around it in which mortal humans par­
ticipate, becoming part of the fourfold exemplified by the offering of libations to the
gods in which “the pouring jug occurs as the giving gift.”29 In this seemingly simple

886 Philosophy East & West

way, four points of the fourfold are brought together, including the gods “who receive
back the gift of giving as a gift of donation,”30 while in “the gift of wine, sky and earth
dwell”31 precisely because earth and sky have come together to grow the grapes
through rain, sun, and soil. Such a setting allows the fourfold to come together “in
the simple one fold of their self-unified fourfold.”32 However, in Andrew Mitchell’s
words, this coming-together is not a “homogeneity, but a spaced parting of the as­
sembled members.33 The gods are allowed to stand in nearness to mortals through
such practices, but continue to remain distinct and beyond human understanding.
Heidegger therefore places the thing (e.g., the wine jug) in the religious role of letting
such an encounter take place.
When viewed from certain Christian, particularly protestant, perspectives, this
may appear potentially close to idolatry in that the sacred in TT is directly attached
to a particular being within the world as opposed to one supreme transcendent real­
ity. Hence, through relating to a wine jug in the correct way, one gains a sense of the
fourfold. Heidegger’s aim is to show the importance of such everyday entities and
practices that are easily neglected in gaining a sense of the immanent presence of the
sacred.
Heidegger’s position in relation to the sacred and religion breaks radically with
a large part of the Western tradition of religious thought. In order to understand
Heidegger’s position, in the next section I will look at Shinto to present an archetype
of what a Heideggerian religion should look like.

Introduction to Shinto

The earliest references to Shinto as a distinct practice go back to the time of the writ­
ing of the Kojiki, the earliest known text to be written in Japanese, which contains
reference to the mythical origins of certain Shinto practices, notably misogi,34 while
the Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan) in the eighth century c.e. refers directly to
Shinto as a specific tradition, when it became necessary to distinguish Shinto as the
way of the gods (kami) from the recently introduced religion of Buddhism (the way of
the Buddhas).35 However, elements of the religion may originate more distantly in
Japan’s prehistory during the Yayoi period 300 b.c.e. to 300 c.e., with certain aspects
going back even further.
Historically, Shinto has encompassed a wide variety of different traditions. The
focus here will be on Folk Shinto, which may often be practiced in conjunction or
direct syncretism with other religions, notably Buddhism, while remaining distinct
from the sectarian doctrinal systems such as Tenrikyo, which are loosely based on
traditional Shinto and centralized State Shinto.36 Thus, unless otherwise stated, when
referring to Shinto the emphasis will be on Folk Shinto, a form far older than the
other forms, which is centered on the various localized practices associated with
different shrines rather than on any fixed doctrine or sacred text.37 The central con­
cern of the remainder of this essay will be to concentrate on a sense of the sacred
conveyed through Shinto practices, first outlining the nature of the kami, then con­
sidering the nature of the shrine.

U. Edward McDougall 887

 The Sacred Kami and Heidegger’s Gods

The central project of Heidegger’s later thought is to challenge the dominance of

modern Western technocratic thought as a way of life, with what an alternative to this
might be appearing unclear and speculative. In the following sections of this essay I
will show how Shinto as a non-technocratic and non-transcendent understanding of
the sacred could offer a resolution to this question, illustrating how Shinto can pro­
vide an archetype of a Heideggerian religion threatened by the dominance of mod­
ern technocratic reason.
Considering this relationship between Heidegger’s later thought and Shinto it is
necessary to look at the central notion of kami. Often translated into English as
“gods,” it is a difficult concept to render outside Japanese, the understanding of kami
in Shinto being radically separated from the Western notion of “onto-theology.” As
noted by Sokyo Ono, “in Shinto there is no absolute deity that is the creator and
ruler of all.”38 Even the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Omikami, “the kami who brightens
the world with the virtue of the sun and is commonly regarded as the supreme kami
of Shinto, consults the opinion of the other kami, calls upon them for help and at
times makes concessions to them.”39 Naofusa Hirai states: Shinto “does not preach
a monistic god behind these kami, underlying and comprehending them.”40 This
means that there is no singular “Supreme Being” standing over and above beings in
Shinto, the kami not being looked to as a source of absolute authority or the origin of
all things. As Boyd and Williams state: “the kami are not understood as metaphysi­
cally different in kind from either nature or humanity.”41 Not seen as transcendental
beings representing a state of reality comparable with Plato’s forms, the kami primar­
ily embody “an immensity that is immanent”42 in the world. In this respect the kami
resemble Heidegger’s gods in that the gods are described as “messengers.” This does
not mean that they are revealing some higher truth, one commentator noting that
“the divinities message is no transmittable content. Instead, they themselves are it.”43
Thus, kami parallel the non-metaphysical, yet ineffable notion of the divine that
Heidegger alludes to in the gods.
The kami do not often appear as personal beings in a conventional sense, Lafca­
dio Hearn describing “a vibration”44 rather than anything concrete or graspable to
convey a sense of their presence. This implies that the kami are felt rather than ob­
served. Although in certain Shinto myths, including those shown in the writings of
the Kojiki and Nihongi, the kami are represented in a more anthropomorphic form,
this is only for certain major kami such as the sun goddess Amaterasu and her
brother Susanoo, the storm god. Other kami are portrayed as more elemental beings,
being associated with natural forces. John Nelson states: “the practitioners of Shinto
hold that anything we can see or sense that is full of power, mysterious, marvellous,
uncontrolled, strange, or simply beyond our abilities of comprehension is what con­
stitutes a kami.”45 Boyd and Williams link the kami in Shinto musubi (energy) to the
creative life force: “the name given to these particular and concrete instances of
musubi is kami.”46 While this is true, Shinto musubi is present within all things that
come into existence.47 What is essential to the kami in Shinto is primarily that they

888 Philosophy East & West

are beyond human understanding. Robert Gall relates that the Japanese Shintoist
philosopher Motoori Norinaga “characterizes the kami exclusively in terms of their
ability to inspire awe and wonder.”48 This sense of awe that cannot be brought into
human understanding is, for Shinto, what sets the kami apart from the ordinary.
Daniel Shaw states that this sense of awe is in some ways “comparable to the
Western aesthetic idea of the sublime.”49 While it is clearly possible to see a reso­
nance with the Western romantic sense of the sublime, as in the Shinto reverence for
Mount Fuji, an interpretation along Western aesthetic lines may be in danger of fail­
ing to convey the full sense of the experience of kami.50 It does, however, provide a
hint of the kami, extending the Western notion of the sublime a stage further to see it
as an experience of the divine.51 This experience can often be unsettling and can be
thought of in Heideggerian terms as unheimlich (un-homely/un-canny or out of the
ordinary), in that the presence of the kami is disruptive to the ordinary.
One way of expressing this is to say that “moments of kami presence need not be
conceived of as encounters with individuated ‘persons,’ but as reminders of our
deep embeddedness in the awe-inspiring process.”52 This means an encounter with
a kami should not be thought of in terms of an encounter with an individual super­
human entity, but as an embodiment of the underlying sense of mystery in existence.
This notion of kami provides a model for understanding Heidegger’s gods as mani­
festations of the mystery of Seyn.53 Thus, what matters for Shinto is not the worship
or devotion to particular named kami, but, in David Shaner’s words, the sense of a
“web of divine presence.”54 Thus, while Shinto still treats each individual kami as a
distinct entity, collectively the kami embody the ineffable sense of divine presence
that is diffused throughout the world. Each particular member of the myriad of kami
is thus a manifestation of this presence with an infinite number of manifestations
possible.
Unlike other forms of polytheism, exemplified by Ancient Greek religion with its
twelve Olympians and other minor deities, the focus of Shinto is far less on a fixed
pantheon in that, while some of the kami such as Amaterasu, Susanoo, and Izanagi
are named in the mythological narrative of the Kojiki, the list is extended to include
officially eight myriads55 of kami, meaning there are literally countless numbers of
deities. Thus, Shinto is not focused on devotion to certain particular deities, but is
concerned with a general acknowledgment of an unlimited number of manifesta­
tions of divine presence in the world. Such manifestations can be either wrathful or
benevolent as there is no predetermined moral code to which kami are expected to
conform.
This understanding of kami within Shinto offers the basis for a comparison with
Heidegger’s understanding of the “divinities” referred to in TT. Heidegger is not seek­
ing to set up a particular pantheon of gods; hence, in Mitchell’s words, “particular
gods play no role”56 and expound no systematic dogma, but rather cultivate attune­
ment to the myriad of possible manifestations of the mystery of existence. Hence,
kami may be used to interpret Heidegger’s notion of the gods in that they provide a
model of the disclosure of the awesome and mysterious within the world. Both
Heidegger’s gods and the myriad of kami are non-metaphysical notions of divinity.

U. Edward McDougall 889

 Gail Stenstad notes that “the usefulness of the Japanese notion of kami in understand­
ing the divinities of the fourfold is that it helps us keep clear that the divinities are
divinities only as they occur in the gathering movement of thinging.”57 Stenstad uses
the term kami to indicate that Heidegger’s gods are distinct from the classical theistic
conception of God, but does not develop this divergence further.
Crucially, the gods as kami in the later Heidegger can be understood as the pres­
ence of awe-inspiring mystery manifest within the world that stands out of the ordi­
nary. In order to be gods, they must be beyond the understanding of mortals. The
“gods” in the later Heidegger are beckoning messengers of the “godhead,” while the
“godhead” may be equated with the underlying mystery of Being referred to else­
where as the archaic German Seyn. While Shrine Shinto lacks a notion of one
­supreme God, the mystery that the kami embody should not be thought of in a pan­
theistic sense, but as brought forth through the presence or way of the kami58 them­
selves. Such notions should be taken as representing the continual mysterious flow
of things, which the gods in Heidegger’s thought make manifest.
However, this view of divinity that is found in both Shinto and Heidegger is often
seen as intrinsically underdeveloped. The danger of the loss of Shinto in modern
­Japan can be interpreted in Heideggerian terms, construed to mean that once tech­
nological mastery as Gestell  59 has been achieved it is no longer possible to sense the
awe associated with the presence of the kami. This process Heidegger refers to as
“the complete Europeanization of the Earth and of man,”60 meaning the universaliza­
tion of the modern Western notion of technocratic progress, marginalizing any alter­
native. The dominance of such an understanding of progress can make an ancient
religion like Shinto appear backward and superstitious. It would appear, however,
from the continued observance of Shinto practices, notably festivals (matsuri), that
aspects of Shinto are still widely continued in contemporary Japan. The Heideggerian
project is precisely to preserve the elements of the sacred that are marginalized
­within modernity. Hubert Dreyfus notes that “in contemporary Japan a traditional,
non-technological61 understanding of being still exists alongside the most advanced
high-tech production and consumption.”62 Shinto in this respect contrasts with
Heidegger’s thought in that the kami are still seen as present in modernity, although
the attunement to their presence may be endangered by Japan’s development along
Western technocratic lines. The question of contemporary Japanese religiosity re­
mains controversial, but goes beyond the scope of this essay.
Regardless of its status in present day Japan, Shinto provides a sense of the sacred
that continues to present a basis for a Heideggerian alternative to Western modernity
through receptivity to the kami. Shinto thus makes clear through concrete example
what is only hinted at in Heidegger’s later work. The Heideggerian project would be
to preserve receptivity to the kami in modernity.

The Folk Shrine, the Fourfold, and Dwelling

In Folk Shinto, the presence of the kami is associated with particular places, ­generally
called jinja in Japanese, translated into English as “shrine,” although there are more

890 Philosophy East & West

specific Japanese names for the types of place associated with different kami. This
sacred shrine is held to be the dwelling place of kami, the individual place where
their presence might be encountered. A variety of different places can be regarded as
“sacred” in Shinto, including trees,63 waterfalls, and even certain rocks, while there
can also be a household shrine or kamidana (kami shelf ). On a larger scale there is
Mount Fuji, held as the dwelling place of Konohanasakuya-hime, the goddess of
blossoms and symbol of a delicate earthly life, while the most prominent among the
shrines is Ise, dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu, which is rebuilt every twenty
years, emphasizing cleansing, conservation, and renewal.
A shrine is both built around a natural thing and marked off from the ordinary
world, usually by the torii gates (entrance gates) or, in the case of the sacred tree, by
the shimenawa or sacred rope. Although a wide variety of settings attached to a par­
ticular place can be called sacred in Shinto, at the same time the location of a Shinto
shrine is not a matter of chance. The sacred place is not merely incidental. This differs
fundamentally from a Christian church in that the church is made sacred by its rela­
tionship to a higher transcendental realm that is not attached to any particular place.
In Shinto it is the unique place that is itself important. The Shinto shrine may appear
to have more in common with the Catholic notion of the sacred site as based on the
holy relics of a particular saint. However, such sites generally gain their significance
through the narrative of the lives of the saints with whom they are associated, the
setting itself becoming extrinsic. As Thomas Kasulis notes, a sacred Shinto site such
as Mount Fuji differs from “many holy sites from other religions — Jerusalem, Mecca,
or the Buddha’s bodhi tree,” because “Mount Fuji was not sacralized by a historical
event,” but rather “it is and always has been, intrinsically awe-inspiring, a site filled
with marvellous power.”64 Even minor shrines represent unique points at which the
sacred presence of particular kami is manifest.
The central point of a Shinto shrine might be thought of as in some sense every­
day and natural, but also unique and special. It is the pivot, in Steven Heine’s words,
in which “to experience the transformative nature of sacrality interconnected with
secularity,”65 because the Shinto shrine is the point at which the ineffable presence
of the kami is manifest within an ordinary setting. Thus, in addition to the immanent
presence of the kami, it is not possible to understand the shrine without this natural
element. Sokyo Ono points out that

Shrines themselves cannot be considered without some relation to the natural beauty
which traditionally has surrounded them. Shrine worship is closely associated with a
keen sense of the beautiful — a mystic sense of nature.66

In the contemporary environment of modern Shinto, it may not appear possible

to preserve the natural setting. However, the link with nature is fundamental. In this
respect, therefore, the natural setting of the shrine cannot simply fade into the back­
ground, but must remain central to the very nature of the shrine itself and thereby
provide a place for a heightened sense of both the kami and location. In this way, the
role of nature within a Shinto shrine might be said to be similar to Heidegger’s “earth”
and “sky.” Kasulis emphasizes this point concerning the role of shrines, stating that,

U. Edward McDougall 891

 by visiting such places in Shinto, “the person’s holographic relationship to all reality
becomes manifest,”67 meaning that in visiting the shrine, the relationship between
the individual, the kami, and the underlying sense of the sacred are displayed and
experienced. Such a relationship between kami, humans, and the landscape reso­
nates with the interplay between the fourfold in Heidegger, where mortals participate
by standing in a relationship to both gods and surroundings.
The shrine thus provides a focal point that bears a deep resemblance to Heideg­
ger’s TT as a place in which “nearness preserves farness,”68 the presence of the kami
remaining completely beyond human understanding while embedded within an
­everyday setting. The shrine is thus an environment that “makes the inconspicuous
shine.”69 In this way the sacred is allowed to be present within the everyday, while at
the same time the shrine provides a setting for what Heidegger calls dwelling, mean­
ing the cultivation of a deep relationship between humans, the natural setting, and
the presence of the sacred that is encompassed there. These localized traditions pro­
vide a basis for, in Heidegger’s terms, preserving “the fourfold in its essential being,
its presencing,”70 meaning the localized occurrence of the sacred. This can be ob­
served in the various practices associated with the wide range of different matsuri.
Take the example of the harvest matsuri, when sake is offered at the festival after the
harvest, much like the libation mentioned by Heidegger in TT. It is, in the words of
Shaw, “not only about pleasing the kami with a good drink . . . but primarily a token
of thanks to the kami for providing the nourishment essential to life.”71 At the same
time the sake as a product of rice from the fields is seen as one of the “abundant gifts
of the earth.”72
Thus, through such practices the different elements that Heidegger interprets as
the fourfold coalesce in the shrine in Shinto. Through participating in such practices
centered on the Shinto shrine, humans, or “mortals” in the later Heidegger’s terms,
become part of this interrelationship. The Shinto shrine thus preserves a non-­
metaphysical sense of the sacred through the mysterious presence of the kami, the
connection with the landscape, and festive gatherings of people. Through such an
immanent sense of the sacred the Shinto shrine thereby provides a living example of
what it means to dwell in the Heideggerian sense.73

Conclusion

It is thus possible to see how Folk Shinto ties in with the philosophical project of the
later Heidegger, providing a basis for “openness to mystery,”74 seen as fundamental
to a way of living that is an alternative to Western modernity with its tendency to view
the earth in technocratic terms as “ordered resources standing in reserve.” This
“openness to the sacred” in Shinto is based on an immanent yet ineffable sense of
the presence of the kami that is cultivated through the practices associated with the
shrine. These aspects of Shinto directly parallel a non-Platonic understanding of the
gods and the practice of dwelling in the later Heidegger’s religious philosophy,
breaking with a large part of prior Western philosophy of religion. Shinto can thereby
provide a paradigm for Heidegger’s religious thought as a practical way of life that

892 Philosophy East & West

otherwise can seem highly abstract and divorced from any practice. It can elucidate
Heidegger’s religious philosophy and presents a model for cultivating and preserving
what he calls the “saving power,”75 not in the sense of simply waiting for a distinctly
possible and indefinite return of the gods, but instead as a practical way of life, a way
to continue to live within Westernized modernity while at the same time remaining
open to a sense of the sacred beyond. The task of the Heideggerian is therefore to
preserve this sense of the sacred embodied by the Shinto shrine, expressed by Shaw
as “a sense of connectedness running through worldly elements; an awareness and
appreciation of the awe-inspiring nature of the world, to be found in its every part.”76
Kasulis notes that “Shinto practice is often more to make one feel at home with awe
rather than try to understand or control it,”77 rendering Shinto radically different from
the prevailing tendency in technocratic society to present objects stripped of their
mystery. Preserving this sense of the sacred thereby provides a basis for a Heidegger­
ian to live within technocratic, consumerist modernity, while remaining open to a
sense of the sacred or the ineffable.

Notes

1    –    This view, put forward by Herman Philipse, asserts that Heidegger’s philosophy
is a failed religion because it has not set out a single fixed creed (Philipse 1998,
p. 301).
2    –    This view is advanced by John Caputo, who claims that the entire religious
project of the later Heidegger can be understood as an effort to revert to a puri­
fied version of Ancient Greek religion without later Judeo-Christian develop­
ments (Caputo 1993, p. 184).
3    –    Elements of this notion of divinity may also be found within other Asiatic poly­
theistic traditions, such as the native religion of the Ryukyu Islands, Korean
Shamanism, or Balinese folk religion, which may also resonate with Heideg­
ger’s thought. However, these traditions may significantly differ from Shinto,
and a full discussion of Heidegger’s thought in relation to these customs goes
beyond the scope of this essay, but would be a worthwhile topic for further
­research. What makes Shinto stand out from these other traditions is that it
­continues to be practiced within a high-tech society, whereas other religions
with such an understanding of divinity tend to be associated either with less
industrialized societies or, as in the case of Korean Shamanism, have severely
declined with modernization. Shinto thus ties with the central project of
Heidegger’s later thought of responding to technology by preserving non-­
­
technocratic modes of existence. This is arguably the central motivation in
Heidegger’s more general interest in Japan, which Heidegger himself expresses
in “A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer” (Heidegger
1971b).
4    –    Nishitani 1990, p. 179.

U. Edward McDougall 893

 5    –    Work by Reinhard May and Graham Parkes, among others, has traced Heideg­
ger’s East Asian influences. Heidegger was aware of a number of classical works
of East Asian philosophy, including Zhuangzi on the Daodejing (at one point
attempting a translation of Laozi’s writings), and possibly the more modern
works of such writers as Okakura Kakuzō or D. T. Suzuki (see Heidegger 1971b,
p. 54). Continuing a dialogue is not just possible, but necessary to fulfill and
understand the project initiated by Heidegger.
6    –    See Heidegger 1977c, p. 158. Thus, the continuation and extension of this
­dialogue between the East Asian World and Heideggerian thought to include
Shinto represents a legitimate continuation of his philosophical project.
7    –    At times Heidegger’s view of modern life has been seen as approaching bleak
passive resignation. Richard Rorty presents Heidegger in this way in “Heideg­
ger, Kundera, and Dickens” (Rorty 1991, p. 71). The present essay challenges a
pessimistic reading of Heidegger’s thought by presenting Shinto as a positive
basis of cultivation and attunement to the sacred within the Heideggerian
framework.
8    –    The fourfold is referred to on numerous occasions in Heidegger’s later works,
particularly TT, BDT, and WP. It might be understood as a web of interconnec­
tivity between four distinct points — “earth,” “sky,” “gods,” and “mortals” — 
which can appear arcane in the sense that such an understanding rests on
­categories of thinking, in particular the gods, which are outside the experience
of contemporary Western life.
9    –    See Heidegger 1977a, p. 116.
10    –    Young 2002, pp. 95–98.
11    –    Benjamin Crowe states: “the reduction of religion to culture to an adornment
affixed to an intrinsically unsatisfying way of life, is [a] central aspect of what
Heidegger calls the flight of the gods” (Crowe 2008, p. 120).
12    –    Anthropocentric approaches to the divine were also criticized by Motoori
­Norinaga, who held that “it is quite wrong to try to interpret the kami rationally
in accordance with some standard or principle derived from the qualities of the
Buddhas or the sages” (Matsumoto 1970, p. 85).
13    –    This means that Heidegger holds that all metaphysics and the Western tradition
of philosophy in general, even very controversially the thought of Nietzsche,
has “‘the two world’s doctrine’ in the background” (see Heidegger 1991b,
p. 63). This interpretation of metaphysics is by no means a standard exposition.
It is not the aim of the present essay to launch a systematic defense of Heideg­
ger’s claim that all Western metaphysics is Platonist. However, the notion of a
higher realm of existence (based on such a two-world doctrine) has clearly
been important in the history of Western religious thought.
14    –    Heidegger 1991a, p. 203.

894 Philosophy East & West

15    –    Vedder 2007, p. 221.
16    –    Heidegger 1971b, p. 150.
17    –    Heidegger 1971c, p. 178.
18    –    Vedder 2007, p. 221.
19    –    See Heidegger 2002, pp. 24–27.
20    –    In his works following OWA, Heidegger continued to use earth as a category,
although what exactly he designated by this category changes. In OWA the
earth is designated in binary contrast to the World, the latter being defined as
openness and unconcealment, whereas the Earth stands for concealment. In TT,
Earth becomes an element of the fourfold.
21    –    Heidegger 1977a, p. 116.
22    –    Heidegger 2009, p. 273.
23    –    In OWA Heidegger talks about the fundamental role of great works of art like
the Greek temple in the foundation of historical worlds by revealing the under­
lying sense of the sacred at the heart of such worlds. In his later writings in TT
and BDT Heidegger switches focus from works of art to apparently more every­
day entities.
24    –    Heidegger famously used the example of the Greek temple in OWA to show
how this embodies the world that exists within. Heidegger treats this example
of how great works of art found worlds in the sense that they are foundational
to, in Ian Thomson’s words, “ontological paradigms” (Thomson 2011, p. 44).
They are basic to a way of life, acting as a focal point within their respective
geographic and historical settings.
25    –    Gathering in TT means, in Mitchell’s words, that “the thing [e.g., the wine jug]
is desubstantialized; it is no longer construed as a present and self-enclosed
entity, but instead as the intersection of earth, sky mortals and divinities” (Mit­
chell 2010, p. 209).
26    –    Heidegger 1971c, p. 170.
27    –    “Present-at-hand” is a term Heidegger uses in his early writings, particularly
Being and Time, to describe a wholly non-functional contemplation of an entity.
A completely present-at-hand contemplation of the wine jug might involve
­cataloging a series of objective properties of the thing, such as color or shape,
as distinct from any involvement.
28    –    See Schopenhauer 1970, p. 156.
29    –    Heidegger 1971c, p. 173.
30    –    Ibid.
31    –    Ibid., p. 172.
32    –    Ibid., p. 178.

U. Edward McDougall 895

 33    –    Mitchell 2010, p. 210.
34    –    A Japanese form of ritual purification, which in contemporary Shinto involves
a ritual wash either in a river or the sea before sunrise, the origin of which is
associated with the account of the kami Izanagi’s self-cleansing in a river on
the island of Tsukushi (modern Shikoku), following his descent into Yomi (the
underworld) in search of his consort, Izanami. For further reading see Chamber­
lain 1982. This shows that practices such as misogi existed in ancient Japan and
suggests at least some degree of practical continuity between the late Asuka
period and modern Shinto.
35    –    For a large part of its history Shinto was practiced in conjunction with Bud­
dhism (shinbutsu shūgō, literally syncretism of the kami and Buddhas) while
also being influenced by the philosophies of Confucianism and Daoism. Bud­
dhist temples and Shinto shrines were officially separated from each other
during the Meiji restoration. However, the two religions continue to be prac­
ticed together. Syncretism is consistent with Shinto in not being based on a
fixed, exclusive set of beliefs.
36    –    State Shinto was the official religion of Japan between the period of the Meiji
restoration and Japan’s defeat in World War Two. The important distinction be­
tween this system of State Shinto and the older tradition of Folk Shinto is exten­
sively dealt with by Kasulis (2004, p. 23). Central to this distinction, he notes,
was that State Shinto was based on “a centralized organization coordinated
nationally” with an “attempt at [a] systematic, coherent and comprehensive
doctrinal system” (ibid., p. 150, table 1). Such centralization and systematiza­
tion contrasts sharply with the loose-knit and practice-based approach of Folk
Shinto. It goes beyond the scope of this essay to look into this distinction. For
further reading please see Kasulis 2004, pp. 119–170.
37    –    The Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki (or Nihongi  ) are often named as the sacred texts
of Shinto. However, they do not occupy a position in Folk Shinto that is at all
comparable with the Koran or the Bible. Primarily, the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki
represent collections of myth and purported dynastic records, which are more
tied to the court of the early Yamato dynasty, while appearing somewhat
­detached from the practice of Folk Shinto. Kasulis notes that “most shrines in
Japan, especially the small ones found in neighborhoods and villages, have
­little relation to the major kami upon which the two chronicles [the Kojiki and
Nihon Shoki  ] focus” (Kasulis 2004, p. 73). Rather than looking to the Kojiki and
Nihon Shoki to understand Shinto, this essay will focus on the practices of
the Shinto shrine. Along these lines the regulations of Yuitsu Shinto quote
Daishokkan (an early Japanese emperor) as stating that “heaven and earth are
the scriptures of Shinto. The Sun and Moon are its demonstrations,” thus con­
trasting it to the teachings of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism (Ōsumi
1927, p. 251), though the text also endorses the study of such traditions along­
side Shinto. Shinto writings such as those of the National Learning (Kokugaku)

896 Philosophy East & West

 scholars should be viewed as second order and interpretative, rather than
­foundational.
38    –    Ono and Woodard 2004, p. 8. The Shinto scholar Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843)
interpreted the heavenly Shinto kami Ame no Minakanushi as a singular creator
kami, seeing the universe, in Kasulis’s words, as “a willful act of a creator kami ”
(Kasulis 2004, p. 126). This is, however, a radical break with more traditional
forms of Folk Shinto where Ame no Minakanushi plays only a very limited role.
There is only one reference to Ame no Minakanushi, which lists the kami as
one of “the Deities that were born [literally became, or came into being] in the
Plain of High Heaven when the Heaven and Earth began” (see Chamberlain
1982, p. 17). Generally speaking, the notion of one supreme creator is absent
from large parts of traditional Shinto.
39    –    Ono and Woodard 2004, p. 8.
40    –    Hirai 1960, p. 41.
41    –    Boyd and Williams 2005, p. 35.
42    –    Ibid., p. 52.
43    –    Mitchell 2010, p. 214.
44    –    Hearn 1897, p. 5.
45    –    Nelson 1997, p. 27.
46    –    Boyd and Williams 2005, p. 34.
47    –    In this respect musubi resembles physis in Heidegger’s thought, defined as the
early Greek word meaning “coming forth and rising up in itself and in all things”
(see OWA, in Heidegger 2002, p. 21).
48    –    Gall 1999, p. 64.
49    –    Shaw 2009, p. 312.
50    –    In claiming this, Shaw appropriates a notion of the sublime from Western aes­
thetic thought, particularly that of Burke, Schopenhauer, and Kant. Heidegger
was noted to be critical of the extension of Western aesthetics to non-Western
traditions, stating that “aesthetics, or shall we say experience within the sphere
in which it set the standard, from the very start turns the art work into an object
for our feelings and ideas. Only when art work has become an object, only then
is it fit for exhibitions and museums” (Heidegger 1971b, p. 43).
51    –    In Shinto, the experience that is treated in the West as a matter of aesthetics
and as part of the domain of personal taste is seen as religious presence in
that it is held to be fundamental to the presence of the kami, which in Folk
Shinto is something not seen as dependent on the particular receptivity of the
individual.
52    –    Boyd and Williams 2005, p. 44.

U. Edward McDougall 897

 53    –    In Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), Heidegger uses
the German term Ereignis, the translators of the work, Emad and Maly, render­
ing this as “enowning,” which should be understood as an event in which the
mystery of Seyn is manifest. (Heidegger uses the archaic German Seyn rather
than the standard German Sein to indicate Being in this mysterious sense.) In a
similar way the kami, rather than as particular personal entities, should be
thought of as awe-inspiring events.
54    –    Shaner 1982, p. 165.
55    –    An early norito (Shinto book of prayer and ritual), preserved in the Engishiki,
compiled during the Heian era (tenth century c.e.), refers to “the eight myriad of
deities,” being “in a divine convocation” (Philippi 1990, p. 68).
56    –    Mitchell 2010, p. 214.
57    –    Stenstad 2006, pp. 209–210 n.
58    –    Shinto 神道 literally means “way of the gods,” borrowing the Chinese dao,
which very roughly is translated into English as “way.” Motoori Norinaga was
notably reluctant to use the term “way” to describe Shinto because of its con­
nection with the Confucian notion of “a system of moral principles or philo­
sophical doctrines” (Matsumoto 1970, p. 76). The Dao in Shinto can be thought
of as closer to the Daoist notion of the Dao, which Ames and Hall interpret
as “ceaseless and usually cadenced flow” (Ames and Hall 2003, p. 14). Thus,
Shinto can be thought of as the flow of the kami.
59    –    Heidegger defines Gestell in “The Question Concerning Technology” as a re­
ductive understanding of the earth in modernity as resources “standing in re­
serve” (Heidegger 1977a, p. 17).
60    –    Heidegger 1971b, p. 15.
61    –    This does not imply that traditions such as Shinto are non-technological in the
sense of standing in opposition to the use of technological equipment, but man­
ifest a sense of the sacred, which like Heidegger’s notion of the holy (das Hei­
lige), is associated with the gods or, as Mitchell states, “is a mode of presencing
that resists the total availability of the standing-reserve” (Gestell) (Mitchell 2010,
p. 214).
62    –    Dreyfus 1995, p. 101. Along lines similar to Dreyfus in his work Sacred High
City, Sacred Low City, Heine notes how much Shinto practice remains em­
bedded within modern Japanese religious life (Heine 2012, p. 47).
63    –    This is attested to by Ono, who states that “these trees are believed to be the
special abode of some kami” (Ono and Woodard 2004, p. 98). Nelson notes
that the evergreen sakaki tree is one of the most ancient focal points of Shinto,
with “very first shrines” being based on just “a single tree standing in an area
designated as sacred” (Nelson 1996, p. 192).

898 Philosophy East & West

64    –    Kasulis 2004, p. 23.
65    –    Heine 2012, p. 47.
66    –    Ono and Woodard 2004, p. 97.
67    –    Kasulis 2004, p. 23.
68    –    Heidegger 1971c, p. 178.
69    –    Heidegger 2009, p. 295.
70    –    Heidegger 1971a, p. 151.
71    –    Shaw 2009, p. 311.
72    –    Ibid.
73    –    This Heideggerian notion of dwelling is paralleled in Shinto by the word kaeru
(かえる), which means “frog,” but also sounds the same as the word for “to re­
turn home.” Hence, Kasulis notes that the statue of a frog in a Shinto shrine
(exemplified by the altar at Futami) reminds “visitors about the importance of
returning home” (Kasulis 2004, p. 169).
74    –    Heidegger 1966, p. 55.
75    –    In “The Question Concerning Technology,” what is meant by “saving power”
appears open-ended and unclear. However, the “saving power” might be asso­
ciated with a sense of awe and wonder, precisely the qualities associated with
the presence of the kami in Shinto (Heidegger 1977b, p. 35).
76    –    Shaw 2009, p. 312.
77    –    Kasulis 2004, p. 166.

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Everydayness, Divinity, and the Sacred: Shinto and Heidegger 
U. Edward McDougall 883
This essay focuses on the later writings of Heidegger, with his radical attempt
to rethink religion, and Folk Shinto. The first two sections outline the gods and
the fourfold in Heidegger’s later thought, while the subsequent sections discuss
the resonances these have within Shinto, particularly kami 神 and shrines.

Confucian Role Ethics and Relational Autonomy in the Mengzi John Ramsey 903
Whether role-ethics interpretations of early Confucianism possess the resources
to identify and redress gender inequality and oppression is examined here.
Argued for is a conception of Confucian autonomy, grounded in Mengzi’s
remarks about zhi 智 (wisdom), that is a substantive account of autonomy
competency: substantive because renyi 仁義 guide junzi 君子 in determining
right and wrong; a competency because it emphasizes a repertoire of skills
and capabilities that include duan reactions, reflection, extension, and self-
realization through renyi. Finally, it is explained how zhi autonomy helps the
role ethicist address gender oppression.

author meets critics

Introduction to Symposium on Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and
Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy by Evan Thompson 
Christian Coseru 923
The Symposium on Evan Thompson’s book Waking, Dreaming, Being gathers
together papers that were first presented at an “Author Meets Critics” session at
the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, in Vancouver, in
April 2015. The richness and complexity of the issues under consideration (the
phenomenology and neurophysiology of waking, dream, and deep meditative
states; intramural debates about self and self-awareness in Buddhism; and the
scope and reach of methodological pluralism and interdisciplinarity in cross-
cultural philosophy, among many other topics) showcase the new perspectives
that can come to light when we establish a meaningful and productive dialogue
between different philosophical traditions and cultures.

Précis of Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience,

Meditation, and Philosophy Evan Thompson 927
Comments on Waking, Dreaming, Being by Evan Thompson John D. Dunne 934
Reflections on Reflectivity: Comments on Evan Thompson’s Waking,
Dreaming, Being Jay L. Garfield 943
Does Yoga Induce Metaphysical Hallucinations? Interdisciplinarity at the
Edge: Comments on Evan Thompson’s Waking, Dreaming, Being Owen Flanagan 952
Dreaming, Imagining, and First-person Methods in Philosophy:
Commentary on Evan Thompson’s Waking, Dreaming, Being Jennifer M. Windt 959
Response to Commentators on Waking, Dreaming, Being Evan Thompson 982
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.