Philosophy of Mind: Heidegger’s Hermeneutics with a view to Yogacara Thought

Abstract

This paper pursues to interpret Heidegger’s hermeneutics as Philosophy of Mind through Yogacara Thought. A famous korean professors’ study is referred in order to arrive at the goal of this study. At first, Yogacara thought is a critical hypothesis between Realism of Hinayana Buddhism and Deconstruction of Mahayana Buddhism. According to Yogacara thought, awareness of phenomena is a transformation of awareness of mind, so there is just consciousness only. In other words, there are eight consciousnesses in our mind, but all consciousnesses are derivatives of Alaya consciousness which covers all potentiality in our mind. Therefore, we can say that Yogacara thought is a mind philosophy. Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein can be understood in the point of view with Yogacara thought very well. Forgetness of Being(Seinsvergessenheit) can be understood as forgetness of Mind, and it leads us to understand the meaning of Being-there(Dasein) and it’s ontological structure. That is, the ontological way of Being-there is a transformation of unconscious mind because existential structure of Being-there can be interpreted as unconscious mind of Alaya consciousness. To conclude, Heidegger’s hermeneutics can be interpreted as a mind philosophy because Heidegger’s ontological fact can be understood Alaya’s unconscious fact.