ABSTRACT
The study of Asian thought occupies a strange position in the postmetaphysical climate of the modern West. As Peter Sloterdijk points out, the metaphysical enthusiasm that once characterized Western thought is now largely excluded from the academy, but it has survived in exile in predominantly philological disciplines like Indology and Sinology. Today it is in these disciplines that scholars consider metaphysical propositions such as “you are that” (tat tvam asi), or “the way that can be spoken is not the constant Way (dao ).” The orientalists, says Sloterdijk, are the “bookkeepers of the ecstasies” imported from Persia, India, and China. Their day-to-day life as researchers and teachers at the universities may be prosaic, nevertheless “they can, as a matter of course, cite the thesis that notknowing, avidya, is the matter from which reality is made” – or, as Zhuangzi says, that “not-knowing is profound, knowing is superficial” – and in their professional capacity “they handle the ‘great sayings’ of the East, like trusted Bank employees move gold bars around in the security vaults under the Bahnhofsstraße in Zurich” (Sloterdijk 1993: 218).
