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Abstract

This study examines critiques of logic articulated across diverse historical and cultural traditions within a comparative framework. The critiques developed in Islamic, Buddhist, Chinese, Indian, Zen, and modern Western philosophy do not, in the main, reject logic or reasoning as such; rather, they target the conceptualization of logic as a universal, context-independent, and singular normative standard. The analysis shows that objections raised at ontological, epistemic, linguistic, methodological, and political levels converge on a set of shared concerns rooted in the structural features of logic itself, most notably categorical determinacy, universalist assumptions, and claims of context-independence. At the same time, these concerns do not amount to a unified or homogeneous form of anti-logic. Instead, they give rise to parallel yet independently developed critical traditions, each shaped by its own historical and cultural context. On this basis, the study argues that the philosophy of logic should be understood neither in terms of absolute universalism nor radical relativism, but rather through a conception of context-sensitive universality that distinguishes (i) the cross-tradition shared deep structure of logical inference from (ii) the culturally and historically variable applications, semantic-pragmatic calibrations, and normative-authority claims that surround it. This dual-track formulation preserves the legitimacy of cross-tradition shared logical norms while making analytically visible the recurring tensions that arise when a single logical regime is universalized as an overarching tribunal for all forms of meaning and knowledge.

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