Ebook: The Status of the Individual in East and West

“Life is cheap in the Orient; in the West, the individual is more important than the society.” “Real democracy exists only in the West; Eastern governments are despotic.” Statements such as these, although not always worded in the same way, are cliches that have long been prevalent in the Western world and have reflected the basic misunderstanding and antagonism between the traditions of Eastern and Western thought.

Confronting such beliefs as well as Oriental misconceptions about the West as Oriental misconceptions about the West was the task of the Fourth East-West Philosophers’ Conference held at the University of Hawai’i in 1964. Unlike the three preceding conferences (held in 1939, 1949, and 1959), the 1964 meeting chose one basic problem as its central theme: the comparative status of the individual in the major philosophical and cultural traditions of Asia and the West. One particular aspect of the overall problem was presented and discussed extensively in each of six sections: metaphysics, methodology, religion, ethics, social thought and institutions.

This volume is composed primarily of the papers presented at the conference, containing also--in the form of questions and answers--some of the extensive, enlightening, and frequently controversial discussion that took place at formal and informal meetings, presenting papers and lectures were some thirty distinguished scholars and philosophers from India, China, japan, the United States, and Europe.