Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Hwa Yol Jung

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Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Hwa Yol Jung explores new forms of philosophizing in the age of globalization by challenging the conventional border between the East and the West, as well as the traditional boundaries among different academic disciplines. The essays in this volume examine diverse issues, encompassing globalization, cosmopolitanism, public philosophy, political ecology, ecocriticism, ethics of encounter, and aesthetics of caring. They examine the philosophical traditions of phenomenology of Hursserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger; the dialogism of Mikhail Bakhtin; the philosophy of mestizaje literature; and Asian philosophical traditions. This rich comparative and cross-cultural investigation of philosophy and political theory demonstrates the importance of cultural and cross-cultural understanding in our reading of philosophical texts, exploring how cross-cultural thinking transforms our understanding of the traditional philosophical paradigm and political theory.

This volume honors the scholarship and philosophy of Hwa Yol Jung, who has been a pioneer in the field of comparative political theory, cross-cultural philosophy, and interdisciplinary scholarship. In one of his earliest publications, The Crisis of Political Understanding (1979), Jung described the urgency and necessity of breakthrough in political thinking as a crisis, and he followed up on this issue for his half century of scholarship by introducing Asian philosophy and political thought to Western scholarship, demonstrating the possibility of cross-cultural philosophical thinking. In his most recent publications, Jung refers to this possibility as "transversality" or "trans(uni)versality," a concept which should replace the outmoded Eurocentric universality of modernist philosophy. Jung expounds that in "transversality," "differences are negotiated and compromised rather than effaced and absorbed into sameness." This volume is a testimony to the very possibility of

Reviews

Hwa-Yol Jung, although he has spent his entire professional career in the United States, is well-known and esteemed by many in his native Korea. With this extraordinary volume in his honor, including essays by distinguished intellectuals from several disciplines, American readers will be able at once to become more aware of his own seminal contributions to so many cutting-edge areas of current concernglobalization, ecology, East/West comparative philosophy, contemporary literature, and much moreand to absorb many new and original insights in these same areas. This is one of the most appealing and successful books of tribute to an author that I have ever read. -- William L. McBride, Purdue University
An amazing set of major Asian and Western thinkersmoved by Hwa Yol Jung's long, broad, and original thinking in politics and beyondimpressively address many positive and negative aspects of the emerging inter-national, inter-cultural, gender-sensitive, and ecologically concerned world of globalization. -- Lester Embree, Florida Altantic University
Hwa Yol Jung's creative term 'glocalization,' which refuses to separate the global from the local and roots the global in the local, reflects a mode of philosophizing typical of the many intriguing essays in this book, which resist neat distinctions, seek to include the valid insights of conflicting perspectives, and strive to recover whatever might have been dismissed or facilely forgotten, including other persons, cultures, and philosophies. The contributors' diverse backgrounds reflect the rich dimensions of Jung's own intellectual life, encompassing comparative philosophy, literature, and religion; ecology, linguistics, cultural anthropology, and political theory; phenomenology in all its varieties; and the East-West dialoguea richness that will inspire readers to cross boundaries of their own. -- Michael Barber, Saint Louis University
Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy is an ambitious volume that should be given credit for the reminder of why a new mode of thinking and doing philosophy is necessary in this globalized world of multiculturalism. * Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy *

Author Bio

Jin Y. Park is associate professor of philosophy and religion at American University. She is the author ofBuddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan, and the Possibility of Buddhist Postmodern Ethics and editor of Buddhisms and Deconstructions and Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism.