This study draws on comparative philosophy to construct an image of the person in its oriental roots in the I-Thou relationship framework using the thoughts of Nishida Kitaro (Japan) and Leonardo Mercado (Philippines) which leads to another understanding of the I-Thou. In their cultural epistemology, the self in the I -Thou relations has a meaning-shift in the light of concepts that bridge the primordial distance of the self and the other. To locate the self in the concept of basho (place) in Nishida’s thought makes one see I as the non-I, the nothingness as interconnectedness principle. The linguistic evidence kita (I-You) appears in Mercado’s thought to psychically obliterate the self as individual and derives an immediate pronouncement of a socio-dialogical self locating one’s true identity in the family and in the sakop (in- group). In this non-dualistic view of the person confirmed by two Asian philosophers, we are instructed that the Self standing as an individual separate from the other ceases to exist. The I is immediately inter-relational in Nishida’s extinguished self and in Mercado’s non-individualistic self. Both look at the I and Thou relations as engulfed in the transformed sense of self, where its identity is in the Other, and the Other is in the I.
Keywords: I-Thou, Comparative Asian Philosophy, Filipino Philosophy, Nishida Kitaro, Leonardo MercadoBotz-Bornstein, T. (2004), The ‘I’ and the ‘Thou’: A dialogue between Nishida Kitarō and Mikhail Bakhtin. Japan Review, 16. 259-284.
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