Overcoming Modernity: Synchronicity and Image-Thinking

by Yuasa Yasuo, Shigenori Nagatomo (Translator), John W.M. Krummel (Translator)

These last writings by Japanese philosopher Yuasa engage both Western and Eastern thought to reconsider modernity and offer an alternative, more holistic paradigm.

In Overcoming Modernity, which contains the last writings from Yuasa, the prominent Japanese scholar reconsiders the modern Western paradigm of thinking and in its place proposes a more holistic worldview. A wide range of topics are examined, including the relationships between language, being, psychology, and logic; Jung’s concept of synchronicity; the Yijing (Book of Changes); paranormal phenomena; physics and metaphysics; mind and body; and teleology. Through these explorations, engaging a wide range of Western and East Asian thought, Yuasa offers an alternative to the scientific worldview inherited from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This new paradigm involves the integration of space-and-time and mind-and-body, thematics brought together through what Yuasa calls “image-thinking,” a mode of thinking that incorporates image-experience.

“This is an outstanding piece of scholarship that breaks new ground in philosophy, science, religion, psychology, and ethics. Rather than treating these areas singly, Yuasa offers a theory that unifies all of them in one brilliant paradigm that establishes a new way of looking at ourselves and our world. Only a superior scholar and thinker like Yuasa could provide such an original perspective. This book stands alone as an innovative synthesis of East/West theory and practice.” — Robert E. Carter, author of The Japanese Arts and Self-Cultivation

Yuasa Yasuo (1925–2005) was Professor Emeritus at Obirin University in Japan and the author of several books, including The Body, Self-Cultivation, and Ki-Energy and The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, both also published by SUNY Press. At Temple University, Shigenori Nagatomo is Associate Professor of Comparative Philosophy and East Asian Buddhism and John W. M. Krummel teaches religion.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2008

Reviews

[Jerad · Rating 5 out of 5]

-You need to be a genius in order to understand Yasuo.
-Litmus test for smart people.
-World is not ready to overcome modernism.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A set of ideas that will challenge and change one’s assumptions about the nature of existence.

[cleodweldt grundkeit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminds me of the last book I read in that many fields of study are touched on lightly & superficially. I was not appalled by a reminder that primordial chaos existed temporally prior to the present tense, nor surprised to recognize a difference among peoples speaking across the differences of languages one from the next. The last book was Theories of the Symbol by Todorov. Overcoming Modernity is about recognizing an interconnected collective Unconscious & the author does expand & modify theories formulated by CG Jung & Heidegger in attempting to accomplish this goal.