Leah Kalmanson, "Cross-Cultural Existentialism: On the Meaning of Life in Asian and Western Thought" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
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What is Leah Kalmanson’s main argument about the meaning of life in her book?
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Okay, welcome to New Books in Philosophy, a channel on the New Books Network. I'm Malcolm Keating. Today we'll be talking to Leah Kalmanson, author of Cross Cultural Existentialism on the Meaning of Life in Asian and Western Thought, published in twenty twenty one by Bloomsbury Academic. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy, Leah.
Thank you for having me, Malcolm.
Of course. Uh so let's dive right in. What is the main argument of your book and why did you think it was important to write?
Uh i it's funny, I was just thinking about uh this book over the past few days, uh, because of this interview and it it's it's some years in my past that I really started uh working on it in earnest. Um and I remember thinking at the time that I had all these aspirations to sort of transform myself into a sinologist, but realized that really my language skills were never going to catch up with that aspiration and and thinking, you know, maybe I should just go back to my roots, which are really sort of my own existential questions as a philosopher, right? And I always have had a background in existentialism and phenomenology. So that was the initial um sort of uh post-tenure, you know, I sort of had gotten through the tenure process and I thought now I can really write about what I just want to write about.
Um so that was the initial inspiration for for the book. Um and then I guess if I had to sum up uh uh the the argument that the the book is making it is trying to make a point about certain assumptions um in Western existentialist discourses regarding the the phenomenological ex uh content of inner experience, we could we could say. Um And thinking about Discourses outside of the Western tradition that tend to use terms, categories, uh, ways of framing ideas and questions that don't map on, uh, that don't support those same assumptions regarding the nature of inner experience, but that nonetheless do talk about inner experience in very, very interesting ways. And so my goal was to just think through some of my own existential questions while relying on.
beyond the resources and the the heritage, um uh the sort of rich intellectual histories um of various Asian uh philosophies to do that. So that was the that was sort of the the idea behind the book.
Great. And you mentioned a little bit there your own existential questions motivating you with the subject matter. And um so maybe you can tell us a little bit about what got you interested in the subject matter, what your background is with with Asian philosophy that brought you to this particular set of texts and and thinkers.
Oh, right. I guess I'm a 14-year-old with an existential crisis at heart.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Leah Kalmanson’s main argument about the meaning of life in her book?
0:00–7:33
2
How does Kalmanson describe her personal and academic background that led to the book?
7:33–14:35
3
What is “speculative existentialism” and why does Kalmanson prefer it over traditional phenomenology?
14:35–21:58
4
How does the first chapter challenge the Western subject‑object duality?
21:58–29:25
5
Who is the Korean Buddhist nun Kim Iryŏp and why does she anchor the second chapter?
29:25–37:23
6
What role does the qi‑based worldview play in explaining emptiness and meaning?
37:23–44:25
7
Why does Kalmanson treat ritual as a philosophical practice rather than a purely religious one?
44:25–50:34
8
What future projects does Kalmanson plan after “Cross‑Cultural Existentialism”?
50:34–56:29
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