Transversal Rationality and Intercultural Texts

Book excerpt: Winner of the 2012 Edward Goodwin Ballard Prize sponsored by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology. Transversality is the keyword that permeates the spirit of these thirteen essays spanning almost half a century, from 1965 to 2009. The essays are exploratory and experimental in nature and are meant to be a transversal linkage between phenomenology and East Asian philosophy. Transversality is the concept that dispels all ethnocentrisms, including Eurocentrism. In the globalizing world of multiculturalism, Eurocentric universalism falls far short of being universal but simply parochial at the expense of the non-Western world. Transversality is intercultural, interspecific, interdisciplinary, and intersensorial. Transversal Rationality and Intercultural Texts means to transform the very way of philosophizing itself by infusing or hybridizing multiple traditions in the history of the world. Like no other scholar, Jung bridges the gap between Asian and Western cultures. What is traditionally called “comparative philosophy” is not just a neglected branch of philosophy; it is poised to radically transform the very conception of philosophy itself.