This book explores the constitutive role alterity plays in identity formation in Western and Eastern traditions. It examines the significance of difference in conceptions of identity across major philosophical and religious traditions in a global and comparative context, considering Ancient Greek and Egyptian, Chinese, Islamic, European and Japanese philosophies.
In addition, the book opens up discussion of less dominant trends in philosophical thinking, particularly the spaces between self-same existence and otherness in the histories of philosophical and religious thought. Chapters critique both essentialist and postmodern understandings of self-constitution by questioning the ordinary narrative of identity construction across Western and non-Western traditions. The book also explores the construction of selfhood from a wide range of perspectives, drawing upon individual philosophers (including Plotinus, Descartes, Geulincx, Hume, de Beauvoir and Ueda) as well as religious and philosophical movements, including Confucian philosophy, Zen Buddhism, Protestantism and Post-Phenomenology.
Differences in Identity in Philosophy and Religion represents a landmark study, drawing together a range of approaches, perspectives and traditions to explore how identity is constructed across the world.
Introduction: Different Differences in Identity, Lydia Azadpour, Sarah Flavel & Russell Re Manning (Bath Spa University, UK) 1. Souls, Stars and Shadows, Stephen R. L. Clark ((Liverpool & Bristol Universities, UK) 2. Confucian Philosophy as a Universal Approach to Civilized Living: A Contemporary Interpretation, Geir Sigurðsson (University of Iceland, Iceland) 3. Realizing Virtues: Plato and Buddhism, Chiara Robbiano (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) & Shalini Sinha (University of Reading, UK) 4. Application of Tradition in Gadamer and the Sameness-Otherness of Islamic Philosophy, Selami Varlik (Istanbul 29 Mayis University, Turkey) 5. The Mind is More like Matter, the Body More Like the Form’: Geulincx Against Descartes (and the Scholastics) on the Sources of Difference in Minds, Michael Jaworzyn (KU Leuven University, Belgium) 6. My Identity Differs: On Why I Am Not Myself in Light of Hume, Beauvoir, and Zen Buddhist Writings, Andrew Whitehead (Kennesaw State University, USA) 7. Individual Identity and Cultural Practice Relationalism in Modern Protestant Theology, Harald Matern (Universitat Basel, Switzerland) 8. One’s Other Self: Contradictory Self-Identity in Ueda’s Phenomenology of the Self, Raquel Bouso Garcia (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain) 9. Events of Excess, Being and Existence in Jean-Luc Nancy and Jean-Luc Marion’s Philosophies, Robert Luzar (Bath Spa University, UK) Bibliography Index
Sarah Flavel is Reader in Asian and Comparative Philosophy at Bath Spa University, UK. Russell Re Manning is Reader in Philosophy and Ethics at Bath Spa University, UK. Lydia Azadpour is a Ph.D. Researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.
Reviews for Differences in Identity in Philosophy and Religion: A Cross-Cultural Approach
Not only is this a wonderful and provocative collection of some of the most thoughtful intercultural philosophers writing in English today, its cumulative effect challenges some of the standard myths by which we maintain the absolute separation of the West from its Other, the East. Philosophy itself is the clear winner from the debris of this untenable dualism. * Jason M. Wirth, Professor of Philosophy, Seattle University, USA * This volume reminds us that what brings us together are not our similarities but our differences. Drawing on diverse traditions of thought, it expands the horizon of possibilities of how we think about the self and identity. * Kevin C. Taylor, Instructor and Online Coordinator of Philosophy, The University of Memphis, USA *
