The Formless Self

Bringing together the depth insights of eastern and western traditions, this book places the topic of the self in a new context.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction 1. Dogen The Question of the Self Activity of the Self The Self as Illusion and Enlightenment The Self as Buddha-nature Temporality and Impermanence 2. Hisamatsu Dialogues with Tillich Oriental Nothingness The Formless Self "Critique of the 'Unconscious'" 3. Nishitani The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism Religion and Nothingness Conclusion Notes Index

About the Author :
Joan Stambaugh is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College of the City University of New York. She has published extensively and is the author of The Real is Not the Rational; The Finitude of Being; The Other Nietzsche; and is the translator of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, all published by SUNY Press.

Review :
"I confess that this work-from the perspective of exposition, analysis, interpretation, application, and stimulation-is, I believe, just about as good as it gets. This book is an unexcelled example of comparative philosophy. Stambaugh's uses of Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Tillich, etc. to illumine Buddhist sensibilities is discreet, even-handed, and nuanced to a degree that comparativists seldom achieve. My greatest concern about this book is that it might not be followed by another one from the same hand." - David L. Hall, co-author with Roger Ames of Thinking from the Han "So much of contemporary Western thought is in a deep struggle to revision and reinvent a more profound sense of 'self.' And Stambaugh's narrative strikes right at the core of this effort, bringing the most advanced thinking in East and West into a creative synthesis. She brings out how the nondual discourse of the Self is profoundly different from any tradition that situates its hermeneutic within the dualistic patterns of Subject/Object thinking. At this point in our evolution it is particularly important for thinkers in the Western traditions who struggle to reach a 'postmodern' vision of the Subject or Self to have a direct encounter with the classical powers of nondual thinking about the Self-the Formless Self." - Ashok Gangadean, Haverford College