I am sharing the slides from my presentation at the 31st International Congress of Psychology, held this July in Yokohama, Japan–a Husserlian, phenomenological perspective on the intertwining of self and Other.  I draw primarily on Edmund Husserl’s genetic phenomenological account of the arising of the I in relation to a You, and I also dialogue with two founding figures in modern Japanese philosophy: Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945) and Nishitani Keiji (1900-1990).

This presentation also represents the intersection of my work in phenomenological psychology and the study of meditative practice, which in my case is a tradition in classical Sufism. Interestingly, Dorion Cairns (1976), one of Husserl’s students, reported one of their discussions of the relationship between phenomenology and mystical experience in the following way: “Whole pages of Meister Eckehart, Husserl said, could be taken over by him unchanged” (p. 91).  As I note in the presentation, the relationships of Husserl, Nishida, and Nishitani’s work to religious experience and meditative practice is complex: all three acknowledged both an important relatedness and a critical distinction between religious experience and philosophical or scientific practice. For those interested in this topic, I recommend Susi Ferrarello’s 2015 interview with Professor Ales Bello, and the following texts:

• Ales Bello, The Divine in Husserl and Other Explorations (Analecta Husserliana Vol XCVIII, 2010, Springer)
• Dorion Cairns, Conversations with Husserl and Fink (1976, Marinus Nijhoff)
• James G. Hart, The Person and the Common Life: Studies in a Husserlian Social Ethics (1992, Kluwer)
• Nishitani Keiji, Religion and Nothingness (1982, University of California Press)
• Nishida Kitaro, Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview (1987, University of Hawaii Press)

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