List of Illustrations
Preface and Argument
Historical-Autobiographical Introduction
Introduction to an Intercultural Philosophy of Universalism
Acknowledgments
1. All or Nothing? Nature in Chinese Thought and the Apophatic Occident
The Nature of Dao, or the Dao of Nature
In Praise of Blandness: Litotes of the Neuter
Transcendence and Immanence of the Dao
Mencius, or the Naturalness of Morality: Is the All without Transcendence?
2. Nothing and the Poetic "Making" of Sense
The Art of Effectiveness: Doing or Saying Nothing
Poetic Approaches to the Limit of Expression
Neo-Daoism and Neoplatonism: An Uncanny Historical Parallel
Western Apophatic Poetics
One and Other, All or Nothing, East and West
The Absolutely Other and the Movement of Transcendence
(Negative) Metaphysics (or Pre-Physics) as Poetry
Coda on Chinese Expression of Negativity
3. Immanence: The Last Word?
From Figures of Immanence to Formless Transcendence: The Yijing and Negative Theology
Immanence and the Ineffable
The Matter of Method in Intercultural Philosophy
China and the Sense of Transcendence
Secular Self-Critique and Theological Transcendence
New Debates on the Relevance of Transcendence to Classical Chinese Thinking
Reality That Representation Fails to Represent
4. Universalism, or the Nothing That Is All
From the Globalism of Nature to the Universality of Thought
Historical Permutations of the Non-natural Universality Forged by Thought
Beyond Cultural Relativity and the Construction of Universality
Transcendent Universality and the Negative Way: Reclaiming the Enlightenment for Religion
Universality in the (Apophatic) Gap between China and the West
The Common Broken(open)ness of Cultures
The Self-Negation of Culture by (Negative) Theology
5. An Extra Word on Originality
Epilogue Intercultural Dia-logue and Its Apophatic Interstices
Appendix Analytic Table of Contents
Index

William Franke is Professor of Comparative Literature at Vanderbilt University and the author of many books, including A Philosophy of the Unsayable.