Overcoming Modernity

These last writings by Japanese philosopher Yuasa engage both Western and Eastern thought to reconsider modernity and offer an alternative, more holistic paradigm.In Overcoming Modernity, which contains the last writings from Yuasa, the prominent Japanese scholar reconsiders the modern Western paradigm of thinking and in its place proposes a more holistic worldview. A wide range of topics are examined, including the relationships between language, being, psychology, and logic; Jung's concept of synchronicity; the Yijing (Book of Changes); paranormal phenomena; physics and metaphysics; mind and body; and teleology. Through these explorations, engaging a wide range of Western and East Asian thought, Yuasa offers an alternative to the scientific worldview inherited from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This new paradigm involves the integration of space-and-time and mind-and-body, thematics brought together through what Yuasa calls image-thinking, a mode of thinking that incorporates image-experience.Yuasa Yasuo (1925-2005) was Professor Emeritus at Obirin University in Japan and the author of several books, including The Body, Self-Cultivation, and Ki-Energy and The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, both also published by SUNY Press. At Temple University, Shigenori Nagatomo is Associate Professor of Comparative Philosophy and East Asian Buddhism and John W. M. Krummel teaches religion.