This clear and elegant translation reveals how a modern Japanese thinker dared to show the basic flaw of Western epistemology. In unmasking this limitation, Matsuo presents an Eastern view of a unified experience and provides an epistemological basis for comparative philosophy.
Matsuo notes that while early Greek thought began by focusing on the right counsel ("Know thyself"), since then Western thought has been influenced by empiricistic analysis fired by the rise of scientific philosophy. The author thus turns to Eastern epistemology, in particular Buddhist thought, for clues to the unified experience. The seminal idea of emptiness (sunyata) plays a distinct role in this discovery. The concept of emptiness encompasses the whole dimension of perception where there is no room for separation into mind and body and/or any other form of dichotomy.
Once it is known that the total dimension of perception - the logic of unity - functions in each and every person, then and only then can the field of comparative thought and philosophy be cleared of all preconceptions and move into a more fruitful exchange of ideas. Until such a time, Matsuo claims, we hopelessly engaged in merely refining the epistemological process without ever being able to understand the very basis of intelligence.
The Logic of Unity, Hosaku Matsuo, Kenneth K. Inada (Translator), Paperback, 148 pages, $35.00
Hosaku Matsuo was a practicing physician and founding member of the Japanese Association of Comparative Philosophy. Kenneth K. Inada is Professor of Philosophy at State University of New York at Buffalo and co-editor of Buddhism and American Thinkers, also published by SUNY
Kenneth K. Inada is professor of Asian and comparative philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has translated many Japanese works, most recently Hosaku Matsuo�s The Logic of Unity, which challenges Western methodology by introducing the Buddhist concept of emptiness
Foreword
Hajime Nakamura
Translator's Introduction
Kenneth K. Inada
Preface
Why Philosophy?
Why Comparative Philosophy?
Western and Eastern Philosophy
Chapter I Methodology of Comparative Philosophy
�Realization of mind-base and intuitive unconsciousness�
Locus of the Problem and Its Development
Definition and method
My methodology
On philosophizing
Diagram of the Mind-base in East-West Context
Space and Time as Modes of Intuition<>/span>
Evidences of Intuitive Unconscious
Demonstration No. 1-1
Demonstration No. 1-2
Demonstration No. 1-3
Demonstration No. 1-4
Logic East and West
Recapitulation
Comparative philosophy and contrast of ideas
Realization: holistic man versus individual
Weakness of Western epistemology
Man is born twice
Philosophy as the foundation of all disciplines
What is man?
Chapter II The Logic of Unity
�Discovery of zero and emptiness in praj�aparamita thought�
The Reason for a Logic of Unity
Metaphysical Bias and True Human Orientation
The Limits of Religion and the Social Sciences
The Nature of Buddhism
Ten Articles on the Logic of Unity
The Kegon Ten Profound Gates
Conclusions
Further analysis of the ten articles
Holistic consciousness
Dialectic
Dialectical epistemology
Discovery of philosophical zero
Dialectic of religion and philosophy
Principle of dual truths
Unitary dialectic
Integrative dialectic
Dialectical historicism
Conception of life and world view
Chapter III The Truth in the Heart Sutra
The Heart Sutra (Praj�apramitahrdaya-sutra )
Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva
Further on Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva
On Emptiness (Sunyata )
Instructions to Sariputra
Nature of the Various Dharmas
Nature of Emptiness (Sunyata )
Nature of Ignorance (Avidya )
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