The World in Which Everything Is the Self

Aristotle once said, “[I]n philosophy it needs sagacity to grasp the similarity in things that are apart” (Art of Rhetoric, III. xi.). This is what this paper aims to accomplish among two Japanese philosophers—Dōgen (1200–1253) and Kitaro Nishida (1870–1945), respectively—and Wilfrid Sellars. Of course, finding of a mere similarity does not lead us to a meaningful philosophical dialogue. However, as this paper makes clear, Dōgen’s (as well as Nishida’s) encounter with Sellars is a happy one. For one thing, Dōgen’s doctrine of pan-self-ism—the thesis that the cosmos we live in is the world in which everything is the self—helps us to get a clearer understanding of Sellars’ perplexing remark about “persons.” For another, reference to Sellars’ conceptual devices, such as “subjectless occurring” and “absolute process,” sheds much new light on the dark and enigmatic thesis of Dōgen and Nishida—the thesis that the world in which everything is the self is the world in which there is no self—and makes it much more approachable.