To introduce this collection of research studies, which stem from the pro­ grams conducted by The World Phenomenology Institute, we need say a few words about our aims and work. This will bring to light the significance of the present volume. The phenomenological philosophy is an unprejudiced study of experience in its entire range: experience being understood as yielding objects. Experi­ ence, moreover, is approached in a specific way, such a way that it legitima­ tizes itself naturally in immediate evidence. As such it offers a unique ground for philosophical inquiry. Its basic condition, however, is to legitimize its validity. In this way it allows a dialogue to unfold among various philosophies of different methodologies and persuasions, so that their basic assumptions and conceptions may be investigated in an objective fashion. That is, instead of comparing concepts, we may go below their differences to seek together what they are meant to grasp. We may in this way come to the things them­ selves, which are the common objective of all philosophy, or what the great Chinese philosopher Wang Yang Ming called "the investigation of things". It is in this spirit that the Institute's programs include a "cross-cultural" dialogue meant to bring about a profound communication among philosophers in their deepest concerns. Rising above artificial cultural confinements, such dialogues bring scholars, thinkers and human beings together toward a truly human community of minds. Our Institute unfolds one consistent academic program.

Inhalt

I Spontaneity Of Life, Individualization, Beingness.- Harmony in Becoming: The Spontaneity of Life and Self-Individualization.- Toward a More Comprehensive Concept of life.- Confucian Methodology and Understanding the Human Person.- Heidegger's Quest for the Essence of Man.- A Comparative Study of Lao-tzu and Husserl: A Methodological Approach.- II Human Faculties of Life.- Mind and Consciousness in Chinese Philosophy: A Historical Survey.- Transcendental Consciousness in Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology.- Life-world and Reason in Husserl's Philosophy of Life.- Consciousness and Body in the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty: Some Remarks Concerning Flesh, Vision, and World in the Late Philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.- Language, Consciousness, and Mind in Neo-Confucian Philosophy: The Crossbow Pellet.- Conscience and Life: The Role of Freedom in Heidegger's Conception of Conscience.- III Life, Morality and Inwardness.- A Reevaluation of Confucius.- Conscience, Morality and Creativity.- Confucian Moral Metaphysics and Heidegger's Fundamental Ontology.- The Concept of Tao: A Hermeneutical Perspective.- Phenomenology in T'ien-t'ai and Hua-yen Buddhism.- Chinese Buddhism as an Existential Phenomenology.- A Critical Reflection on the Methods of Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and the Idea of Contextualization in Religious and Theological Studies.- IV The Locus of Art In Life.- The Tenets of Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics in a Philosophical Perspective.- The Literary Work and Its Concretization in Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics.- The Writer as Shaman.- A Glimpse of the Fundamental Nature of Japanese Art.- A Phenomenological Perspective of Theodore Roethke's Poetry.- Virginia Woolf's Theory of Reception.- The Aesthetic Interpretation of life in The Tale of Genji.- Index Of Names.