This book focuses on traditions and individuals, religion, culture, reinforcing individual and cultural creativity. It brings specific Eastern and Western perspectives into a dynamic, comparative relation and emphasizes growing sense of interrelatedness and interdependency.

Preface -- Introduction -- Multiple Asian and Western Perspectives -- Social Constructions of Self: Some Asian, Marxist, and Feminist Critiques of Dominant Western Views of Self -- How Universal Is Psychoanalysis? The Self in India, Japan, and the United States -- Chinese and Western Perspectives -- Ethics, Relativism, and the Self -- Classical Confucian and Contemporary Feminist Perspectives on the Self: Some Parallels and Their Implications -- Buddho-Taoist and Western Metaphysics of the Self -- Indian and Western Perspectives -- Reducing Concern with Self: Parfit and the Ancient Buddhist Schools -- Sartre and Samkhya-Yoga on Self -- Japanese and Western Perspectives -- Nietzsche and Nishitani on Nihilism and Tradition -- Views of Japanese Selfhood: Japanese and Western Perspectives