Rationality's Demand of its Other: A Comparative Analysis of F.W.J. Schelling's Unvordenkliche and Huineng's Wu-Nien

Comparative and Continental Philosophy 4 (1):75-92 (2012)
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Abstract

The speculative power of theoretical reason is not only incapable of grounding itself, but is also powerless to integrate and unify all of the different aspects of our intellectual and spiritual life. This impotency of what Schelling called negative philosophy gives rise to the demand for a positive philosophy that supplies the integrative grounding in which das Unvordenkliche—that before which nothing can be thought—is rooted. I contrast what Schelling calls an “inverted concept” with Huineng’s account of wu-nien (no-thought) found in the Platform Sutra (Tun-Huang Manuscript). Both Schelling and Huineng advance their respective ideas as not only the necessary basis of their thinking, but as a necessary experience one must undergo in order to realize and thus truly comprehend their teaching. Huineng connects this lived knowing with sudden enlightenment, while Schelling speaks of the exuberant fullness of ecstasy. I close with a brief account of Schelling’s appeal for pluralistic tolerance among different philosophical and religious traditions, in which he argues that such traditions are in error to the degree they lay claim to exclusive and infallible truth

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Critique of Pure Reason.Immanuel Kant - 1998 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edited by J. M. D. Meiklejohn. Translated by Paul Guyer & Allen W. Wood.
Critique of pure reason.Immanuel Kant - 1781/1998 - In Elizabeth Schmidt Radcliffe, Richard McCarty, Fritz Allhoff & Anand Vaidya (eds.), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Blackwell. pp. 449-451.
Critique of Pure Reason.Immanuel Kant - 1781 - Mineola, New York: Macmillan Company. Edited by J. M. D. Meiklejohn.
Critique of Pure Reason.Wolfgang Schwarz - 1966 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 26 (3):449-451.

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