The Eastern-Western Philosophical Discourse of Mind, Reason, and Culture A Brief History and Comparative Study

This book provides a comparative study, as well as an account of global history, of the philosophical discourse of mind, reason, and culture. It then enthrones the cosmopolitan doctrine of mind, reason, and culture. It provides an approach that supersedes both universalist approach and culturalist/multiculturalist approach and rehabilitates individual persons’ mind as the primary substances of the human mind and thus primary thinking entities. The book develops a new concept of the relationship between reason and culture as part of the relationship between a substance-attribute, subject-predicate relationship, and as part of the relationship between the human mind and culture, as well as part of the humanity-culture-nature triangle relationship. It provides an alternative view both to universalism and culturalism/multiculturalism—the two dominating “isms” in approaching human reason and culture hitherto in both Eastern and Western philosophy--and emphasizes reading original philosophical classics in both Western and Chinese philosophies.

1. Introduction: Mind, Reason, and Culture: East Meets West.- 2. The Grecian Vision: Culture, Philosophy and Human Reason.- 3. The Daoist Vision: the Dao, the Mind, and Philosophical Wisdom.- 4. The Confucian Vision: The Cosmic Mind, the Human Mind, and Individual Minds.- 5. The Modern Western Vision: Human Reason, Culture, and Tradition.- 6. The 19th Century German Vision: The Transcendental turn, the historical turn, and the practical Turn.- 7. The 20th Century Continental Vision: The Cultural Turn and The Vanishing of Individual Minds.- 8. Conclusion: The Cosmopolitan Epoch and Cosmopolitan Vision of Mind, Reason, and Culture.

Xunwu Chen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at San Antonio, USA.