海德格在二次大戰德國戰敗之日(1945年5月8日),寫了一篇對話式文章紀念此一日子,文章區分兩種用:無用與有用,最後引用了莊惠對話,提出德國要成為「無用的民族」以引領未來世界。海德格認為大戰是現代性擴張精神的結果,而其中最關鍵的就是「有用」的思考與世界觀。本文將莊惠兩種存有論的重點放在「用」的兩種差異上,視莊子為「無用的存有論」,視惠施為「有用的存有論」。這點除了文本根據外,更具有當代意義。透過海德格對於兩種用的區分,筆者試圖闡發莊惠辯論的當代意義。
At the time when Germany was defeated in the World War 2 (May 8, 1945), Heidegger wrote a dialogic essay to memorize the event. In the essay he differentiated two kinds of usefulness: non-Usefulness and usefulness. What merits our attention is that at the end of the essay he quoted the conversation between Zhuangzi and Huishi and proposed that Germany be “the nationality of non-usefulness” so as to lead the world in the future. For him the War resulted from the spirit of expansion of which ideology and worldview of “usefulness” lies at the heart. It is against such a background that this essay attempts to construct an account of Zhuangzi’s and Huishi’s ontologies by differentiating their views on “usefulness”, whereby Zhuangzi is read to represent “the ontology of non-usefulness” and Huishi to stand for “the ontology of usefulness”. Viewed in light of Heidegger’s differentiation of two kinds of “usefulness”, the essay hopes to explicate the contemporary significance of the dispute between Zhuangzi and Huishi, particularly Huishi’s emphasis on usefulness which I suggest can be related to the modern pursuit of usefulness.