Buddhism and American Thinkers

In Buddhism and American Thinkers, leading scholars explore Buddhist influences on the currents of American thought. The essays presented here advance a continuing dialogue between East and West and show how Buddhism has made ever-deepening penetrations into the very substratum of American thinking. Contributors to this volume share a concern with ideas that constitute a common core of Buddhist and American philosophy. Each relates Buddhism to a factor in American thinking, exploring the numerous ways in which Buddhist perspectives on personal identity, human suffering, and alienation, the nature of compassionate love, and the social nature of ultimate reality amplify and clarify perspectives found in the “golden age” of American philosophy, particularly in the thought of William James, Josiah Royce, Alfred North Whitehead, John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Charles Hartshorne, the great living American philosopher. Buddhism and American Thinkers brings new light to the interrelationship between an ancient orientation to life and the very deepest ideas in the history of American thought.