This book approaches the topic of intercultural understanding in philosophy from a phenomenological perspective. It provides a bridge between Western and Eastern philosophy through in-depth discussion of concepts and doctrines of phenomenology and ancient and contemporary Chinese philosophy. Phenomenological readings of Daoist and Buddhist philosophies are provided: the reader will find a study of theoretical and methodological issues and innovative readings of traditional Chinese and Indian philosophies from the phenomenological perspective. The author uses a descriptive rigor to avoid cultural prejudices and provides a non-Eurocentric conception and practice of philosophy. Through this East-West comparative study, a compelling criticism of a Eurocentric conception of philosophy emerges. New concepts and methods in intercultural philosophy are proposed through these chapters. Researchers, teachers, post-graduates and students of philosophy will all find this work intriguing, and those with an interest in non-Western philosophy or phenomenology will find it particularly engaging.

This book offers a concise overview of the development of intercultural philosophy since the early 1990s, focusing on one of its key pioneers Heinz Kimmerle (1930– 2016). Building on influences from Gadamer, Heidegger, Derrida and Ramose, Kimmerle’s approach to intercultural philosophy is radical and fosters epistemic justice. Kimmerle critically reflected on his own western philosophical tradition, highlighting the problems of a discourse based on a dominant concept of rationality, and of excluding different approaches and participants. Instead, Kimmerle developed an alternative way of thinking, emphasizing the importance Of recognizing philosophies of different cultures. He focused particularly on African philosophies in academic discourse. In the book, the many layers of Kimmerle’s intercultural philosophy are revealed, exploring how dialectics, hermeneutics, deconstruction and decolonization can contribute to epistemic justice. The author goes beyond Kimmerle and demonstrates how Kimmerle’s approach can be further enhanced by using an intersectional approach and by engaging in dialogue with female philosophers and artists. This new study, which also introduces unpublished and untranslated texts from Kimmerle’s work in German and Dutch, will be of considerable interest to researchers of continental philosophy, intercultural and African philosophy, political philosophy, decolonial and feminist studies.

Intercultural Phenomenology explores the nature of reality by engaging in a cross-cultural dialogue between two of the most influential philosophical traditions of the 20th century. Drawing on ideas from phenomenology, Japanese philosophy and Zen Buddhism, it follows the philosophers who changed their perception of the world by choosing to suspend judgement. Guided by this philosophical method known as the “epoché”, or suspension of judgment in ancient Greek, it is an introduction to the philosophy and practice of letting objects in the world speak for themselves. Inspired by Nishida Kitaro's insight that true reality is beyond the subject-object duality, the book uses a series of examples and exercises to explore the background to Husserl's idea of the phenomenological epoché, Hans-Georg Gadamer's emphasis on play in human understanding and the haiku poet Matsuo Basho's call for a new level of freedom. This practice-oriented approach moves beyond the traditional East-West divide. It connects various traditions, old and new, contemplative and theoretical, and explains why Japanese philosophy and phenomenology can enrich the quality of our lived experience.

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. By engaging Western philosophers as diverse as Bacon, Descartes, Heidegger, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Glissant, Barthes, Fenollosa, McLuhan, and Eastern philosophers such as Wang Yang-ming, Nishida Kitaro, Nishitani Keiji, Watsuji Tetsuro, Nhat Hanh, and Suzuki Daisetz Teitaro, this book marks an unparalleled contribution to comparative philosophy and the study of philosophy itself.

Phenomenology of the Cultural Disciplines is an interdisciplinary study, reflecting the recent emergence of various particular forms of `phenomenological philosophy of ...'. Included are such fields as psychology, social sciences and history, as well as environmental philosophy, ethnic studies, religion and even more practical disciplines, such as medicine, psychiatry, politics, and technology. The Introduction provides a way of understanding how these various developments are integrated. On the basis of a Husserlian notion of culture, it proposes a generic concept of `cultural disciplines' (which is broader than but inclusive of `human sciences') which subsumes the more specific concepts of `cultural sciences', `axiotic disciplines' (e.g. architecture), and `practical disciplines'.