Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism
Product details
- ISBN 9780791424926
- Weight: 735g
- Publication Date: 10 Jan 1996
- Publisher: State University of New York Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The first book on East-West comparative thought to critically analyze the Zen Buddhist model of self in modern Japanese philosophy from the standpoint of American pragmatism
The thesis of this work is that in both modern Japanese philosophy and American pragmatism there has been a paradigm shift from a monological concept of self as an isolated "I" to a dialogical concept of the social self as an "I-Thou relation," including a communication model of self as an individual-society interaction. It is also shown that for both traditions all aesthetic, moral, and religious values are a function of the social self arising through communicative interaction between the individual and society. However, at the same time this work critically examines major ideological conflicts arising between the social self theories of modern Japanese philosophy and American pragmatism with respect to such problems as individualism versus collectivism, freedom versus determinism, liberalism versus communitarianism, and relativism versus objectivism.
Steve Odin is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. He is the author of Process Metaphysics and Hua-Yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration vs. Interpretation, also published by SUNY Press.
