EXCERPT Is it legitimate to raise the question ‘What is Asia?’ Is this question possible today? Indeed, was it possible at all in the past? Let us start by questioning the legitimacy of this ontological question: What is Asia? To ask what Asia is, as one asks what Europe is, we will have to essentialise, asking what makes Asia Asia, as we might ask what makes a tree a tree: namely, we will have to ask after the essence of Asia. In this respect, the question ‘What is Asia?’ is in itself nothing Asian. It is a European question, not because this question has never been posed in Asia, but because it is a question concerning the being of Asia, an ontological question. Recall here that Kitaro Nishida once claimed that Western philosophy is centred on the question of Being, while Eastern philosophy inquires into the question of Nothing.…