Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism

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.

"Odin makes an impressive case for the claim that the Chicago School pragmatism of George Herbert Mead provides the most adequate version of the 'social turn' in Western philosophy and thereby the best basis for understanding the self of modern Japanese Buddhist thought, especially Zen, which has undergone its own social turn. Odin then shows how Mead's 'social self' provides an illuminating basis for intercultural dialogue on such issues as individualism and groupism, freedom and determinism, universalism and relativistic particularism, mind and body, and humanity and nature. This is first-rate intercultural philosophy." — David Ray Griffin, School of Theology at Claremont Graduate School"The exceptional achievement of Steve Odin involves his having marshalled an enormous amount of extremely apposite data, focusing on the notion of the social character of the self, and his adroit and ingenious use of this material in a manner which allows the reader to move in a variety of distinct directions in order to assay important implications of the 'paradigm shift' away from the Enlightenment's 'atomistic self' and toward the 'social self' of American pragmatism and modern Japanese philosophy." — David L. Hall, The University of Texas at El Paso

• Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern ThoughtCover PaintingAcknowledgments Introduction The Social Self as an Intercultural Theme for Comparative Philosophy and Religion Part I. The Social Self in Modern Japanese Philosophy 1. Watsuji Tetsuro's Ningen Model of Japanese Selfhood2. The Social Self and I-Thou Dialectic of Nishida Kitaro3. The Dependency Self Model of Doi Takeo's Amae Psychology Part II: The Social Self in G. H. Mead and American Philosophy 4. The Social Self in Classical American Philosophy5. The Social Self and I-Me Dialectic of G. H..Mead Part III: The Social Self in Japanese and American Philosophy 6. Tanaka Odo and the Initial Reception of American Pragmatism in Japan7. The Social Self in Mead and Confucianism8. The Social Self in Mead, Zen, and Japanese Society9. The Social Self in Mead and Watsuji10. The Social Self in Mead and Nishida11. Selfhood in the Social Psychology of Mead and Doi12. The Social Self as a Body-Mind Interaction13. The Social Self as a Human-Nature Interaction14. The Social Turn in Philosophical Anthropology NotesGlossary of Sino-Japanese TermsReferencesNote on CentersIndex