Between East and West: From Singularity to Community

A leading philosopher steeped in the Western tradition explores ancient Eastern disciplines, meditating on what it means to learn to breathe: the result is a powerful challenge to discover the relevance of indigenous Asian philosophy to our lives. According to Luce Irigaray, Yogic tradition can provide a vital link between the present and eternity, allowing us to reexamine and reenvision the patriarchal traditions of the West. Lacking personal experience with Yoga or other eastern spiritual practices, the Western philosophers who have tried to address Hindu and Buddhist teachings – particularly Schopenhauer – have frequently gone astray. Incorporating her personal experience with Yoga into her provocative philosophical thinking on sexual difference, Luce Irigaray proposes a new way of understanding individuation and community in the contemporary world. By returning to fundamental human experiences – breathing and the fact of sexual difference – she finds a way out of the endless sociologizing abstractions of much contemporary thought to rethink questions of race, ethnicity, and globalization.