This collection of Abe's essays is a welcome addition to philosophy and comparative philosophy.

This volume concludes the two-volume sequel to Masao Abe's Zen and Western Thought. Like its companion, Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, this work contains many previously published essays and papers by Abe. Here he clarifies the true meaning of Buddhist emptiness in comparison with the Aristotelian notion of substance and the Whiteheadean notion of process.

In Volume i of his Systematic Theology , Paul Tillich says, ‘Being precedes nonbeing in ontological validity, as the word “nonbeing” itself indicates’ . He also says elsewhere, ‘Being “embraces” itself and nonbeing’, and ‘Nonbeing is dependent on the being it negates. “Dependent”—points first of all to the ontological priority of being over nonbeing’ . Tillich makes these statements in connection with a tendency among some Christian thinkers to take God as Being itself. The same understanding of the relation of (...) being and non-being can be discerned in major strands of Greek philosophy through the ideas of to on and me on . Although Greek philosophy and the Christian movement have different starting points in time, in geographical locale, in conceptual orientation, Tillich's statements demonstrate the manner in which the two strands have, to a significant degree, merged, and his comments reflect a basic under standing of being and nonbeing in the West. (shrink)

The importance of learning and categorizing social objects and events has become widely acknowledged over a couple of decades. Although findings from field studies have suggested that non-human animals have sophisticated abilities to recognize social objects, there is relatively little experimental evidence on this issue. Some studies have revealed animals’ excellent skills for discriminating visual and auditory social stimuli. However, because of perceptual resemblances among stimuli, it is still not clear that they recognize these objects with conceptual mechanisms that are (...) independent of the perceptual characteristics of the stimuli. At the same time, whether their concepts have an aspect of transferring information from one modality to another has not received much attention. This paper advocates approaches to a cross-modal aspect of concepts as a new framework to solve these problems, and introduces the latest studies on cross-modal representations of social objects in non-humans. (shrink)

1 Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Its Significance and Future Task1 The contemporary world is rapidly shrinking due to the remarkable advancement of science ...

Written by one of Japan's foremost contemporary thinkers and scholars, Zen and Modern Society is the third in a series of essay collections on Zen Buddhism as seen in the context of Western thought. Throughout his career, Masao Abe has articulated the meaning of Zen thought in a uniquely compelling way - at once, true to the original tradition and appropriately relevant to a variety of comparative standpoints, ranging from Biblical Judeo-Christianity to modern existentialism, phenomenology, and postmodernism. As a (...) leading representative of the Kyoto School, which has sought a critical, comparative linking of Eastern and Western thought, Abe has based his approach on constructive, mutually respectful yet critical intellectual interaction and dialogue with some of the leading figures in the West (including Paul Tillich, Hans Kung, and Eugene Borowitz) as well as dozens of colleagues, students, and disciples. Together with the previous volumes, this work examines and exemplifies some key features of Kyoto School thought. While the essays presented here should be read in light of the socio-political criticism that has since been lodged against the Kyoto School and, more particularly, i. (shrink)

Regional planning has been regarded as a design activity. Usually planners focus on physical design rather than on societal issues. Nowadays, mass communication, environmental issues and social awareness lead to often complex and conflicting needs and interests of the public in regional planning. This paper focuses on the regional planning as a group problem solving process from the view of information processing. It offers an analysis of the causes of conflicts in the group decision process, and defines the characteristics of (...) group decision process support systems. (shrink)

We examine the range of anonymity that is compatible with a Paretian social welfare relation (SWR) on infinite utility streams. Three alternative coherence properties of an SWR are considered, namely, acyclicity, quasi-transitivity, and Suzumura consistency. For each case, we show that a necessary and sufficient condition for a set of permutations to be the set of permissible permutations of some Paretian SWR is given by the cyclicity of permutations and a weakening of group structure. Further, for each case of coherence (...) property, we show that the extended Pareto rule is the least element of the class of anonymous Paretian SWRs. (shrink)

Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge attracts the attention of ethnologists who are interested by the symbolical analysis of kingship. Although this book does not deal with the theme of kingship as such, it overlaps it on a mythical level. It is a novel about the rise and fall of a man, Henchard, whose initial act is to sell his wife and daughter; in order to commit this act he deviates from the context of the human norm by way of (...) drunkenness. He then enjoys great success as a corn merchant and becomes mayor of the town. Twenty years after this the graph of his destiny starts to fall with the arrival of a young man named Farfrae, who eventually ousts Henchard from his business as well as from his political position, and who goes to the length of taking over not only Henchard's mistress, Lucetta, but also his daughter, Elizabeth-Jane. (shrink)

Gustav Radbruch, ein bekannter Rechtsphilosoph des Wertrelativismus, kam erst nach 1945 zu der Behauptung: Sowohl unerträglich ungerechte Gesetze als auch das Gleichheitsprinzip verleugnende Gesetze können keine Verbindlichkeit in Anspruch nehmen. Es ist nach wie vor umstritten, ob diese Behauptung, die später als die Radbruchsche Formel bezeichnet wurde, mit seiner wertrelativistischen Theorie vor 1945 kompatibel ist. -/- Viele Autoren verneinen diese Frage und vertreten die Umbruchthese. Einige Autoren stellen die Entwicklungsthese auf, die als eine Abschwächung der Umbruchthese verstanden werden kann. Dagegen (...) steht die Kontinuitätsthese. Auf deren Seite stellt sich die Arbeit, die den Versuch unternimmt, durch eine Verknüpfung der historischen mit der systematischen Analyse des Radbruchschen Gesamtwerkes die letzte These zu verteidigen. -/- Als Anhang enthält die Arbeit einen Zeitungsbericht über einen Vortrag von Radbruch aus dem Jahr 1923, durch den der Leser einen klaren Überblick über die Grundzüge seiner rechtsphilosophischen Auffassung gewinnen kann. (shrink)