The Formless Self

Bringing together the depth insights of eastern and western traditions, this book places the topic of the self in a new context.Gathering and interpreting material that is not readily available elsewhere, this book discusses the thought of the Japanese Buddhist philosophers Dogen, Hisamatsu, and Nishitani. Stambaugh develops ideas about the self culminating in the concept of the Formless Self as formulated by Hisamatsu in his book The Fullness of Nothingness and the essay "The Characteristics of Oriental Nothingness," and further explicated by Nishitani in his book Religion and Nothingness. These works show that Oriental nothingness has nothing to do with the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western concept of nihilism. Instead, it is a positive phenomenon, enabling things to be.Joan Stambaugh is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College of the City University of New York. She has published extensively and is the author of The Real is Not the Rational; The Finitude of Being; The Other Nietzsche; and is the translator of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, all published by SUNY Press. Read more