This article examines contradictions between the theory and practice of comparative philosophy in a global world. Aristotle and Plato had different approaches to these “contradictions” that show a “discrepancy” between these two classical thinkers. The topic unaddressed by Plato is taken up in the topos of Nāgārjuna, the great ancient logi-cian of ontology in Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy (the 3rd century AD). The “contra-diction” is a principle that have/had profound influence on creative thought in East Asia. Nishida, the founder of the Kyoto School (20th century), established his philo-sophy through the principle of “Absolute Contradictory Self-Identity.” This principle may stimulate reflection upon our digitally connected contemporary global world, and the chaos it has to face.
Contrary to Western philosophy, oriented to grasp and solidify the principles of es-sential being (ontos on), Buddhism seeks to understand the existence of human beings and the significance of suffering in human life. In East Asian languages human beings are described as inter-beings in that they are enveloped by the topos of life and death. Our life is bound to the moments of emerging and vanishing, being and non-being in an essential unity. Dōgen’s philosophical thinking integrated this conception with the em-bodied cognition of both the thinking and the acting self. In the phenomenological per-spective, early Martin Heidegger emphasizes that being is bound to a fundamental sub-stantiality which borders on the Abgrund falling into nothingness. According to Dōgen, the unity-within-contrast of life and death is exemplified in our breathing because it achieves a unity of body and cognition which can be called “corpus.” In a perfect con-trast, the essential Heidegger’s reflection grasps the fundament of being in the world, which represents the actualization of a thinking-being-unity. The goal of this compari-son is to grasp what is the essentiality of being, life, and recognition (jikaku 自覚), bounded to embodied cognition.
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