When “Both-And” Needs an “Either-Or”

J. Neil Daniels

It’s become almost a reflex these days to dismiss an argument by labeling it “Western logic,” as if that alone were enough to render it provincial or passé. Alan Watts tried exactly that when he abandoned Christianity for Zen Buddhism. He called Christianity “incorrigibly theistic” and “invincibly self-righteous,” and concluded that reality couldn’t be pinned down by rational categories at all. But here’s the curious twist: in rejecting Christianity, Watts did precisely what he claimed to reject. He compared two systems, found one wanting, and made a choice. That’s not mystical paradox — no, that’s the law of non-contradiction doing its quiet work in the background. Even those who scoff at either/or distinctions end up using them the moment they speak.

The yin-yang symbol, so often invoked as shorthand for Eastern “both/and” thinking, certainly has a poetic appeal — two swirling halves chasing each other in endless motion, each containing a seed of its opposite. But poetry isn’t a substitute for coherence. Religious pluralists like Wilfred Cantwell Smith have argued that truth “lies not in an either-or but in a both-and,” yet when pressed, they too must draw sharp boundaries. Christianity says Jesus is God incarnate; Islam calls that blasphemy. Hinduism can affirm Jesus’ teaching while denying His resurrection altogether. All three might be wrong, but they cannot all be right. Pretending they can is like insisting that both “the light is on” and “the light is off” describe the same bulb at the same moment. Reality, stubbornly enough, refuses to cooperate.

The deeper point here is that logic isn’t a Western invention, as if it was Aristotle’s pet project or some European quirk. It’s built into the structure of thought itself. Even language presupposes it. Try forming a sentence without distinguishing between subject and predicate, or between “car” and “blue,” and you’ll quickly realize how much logic undergirds communication. The same goes for skeptics who rail against certainty. In order to expose an error, one must first believe in the category of error and, by extension, in the existence of truth. The very act of saying, “You’re wrong,” assumes that “wrong” and “right” are mutually exclusive. So much for logic being optional.

Even the popular “two-level” view of truth in some Eastern traditions — the lower level of illusion (maya) and the higher level of ultimate reality — cannot escape the gravitational pull of logic. The distinction between “higher” and “lower” is itself an either/or claim. And if ultimate reality is truly beyond logic, then any attempt to persuade someone of that fact collapses under its own weight. Silence would be the only consistent option. But silence rarely satisfies, so arguments are made and with them, the same logical scaffolding critics say they’ve outgrown.

In the end, truth excludes falsehood. That isn’t a Western prejudice; it’s the way things are. The claim that “there is no truth” refutes itself the moment it’s uttered. And “true for you but not for me” dissolves into nonsense once you press it past the bumper sticker stage. Ironically, those most eager to transcend logic end up proving its necessity at every turn. The both-and only works because either-or keeps it tethered to reality. Without that anchor, the whole enterprise floats off into contradiction and collapses under the weight of its own incoherence.