Great bliss clarified -- Six verses on co-emergence -- Utterly clear teaching of unification -- Definitive teaching on dreams -- Clear teaching on utter non-dwelling -- Full teaching of suchness -- Six verses on Madhyamaka.

This paper looks at the tragedy of Qiao Feng in Jin Yong’s The Demi-Gods and the Semi-Devils. While it is common practice for Žižekean scholars to examine genre writing and popular culture with Lacanian theory, the martial arts genre has received little attention. In Demi-Gods, Qiao Feng experiences an ‘identity crisis’ at the peak of his career: rumour has it that though he was raised and trained in China, he was born a Khitan. Qiao Feng at first believes it is (...) a just conspiracy, and henceforth is blind-sided by the imaginary relation between his ego and small others. He mis-recognises others’ scheming as ‘the Other of the Other,’ while his supposedly deceased Khitan father occupies the corner of the Other in the schema L to orchestra the manipulation game. However, what Qiao Feng is really under prey is the desire of the father, and of the two fatherlands, one Han-Chinese, one Khitan: his tragedy lies in the split of the national Other, in the impossibility of the ethical imperative Your duty is to be loyal to your country. And yet, it is exactly because of the emptiness in the ethical call that Qiao Feng can start to act as a subject, a subject that is by definition already always split. This paper thus interprets the actions of Jin Yong’s hero according to Lacan’s schema L, and also provides variations of the schema based on the twists and turns of this martial arts tragedy. (shrink)

The problem of empty terms is one of the focal issues in analytic philosophy. Russell’s theory of descriptions, a proposal attempting to solve this problem, attracted much attention and is considered a hallmark of the analytic tradition. Scholars of Indian and Buddhist philosophy, e.g., McDermott, Matilal, Shaw and Perszyk, have studied discussions of empty terms in Indian and Buddhist philosophy. But most of these studies rely heavily on the Nyāya or Navya-Nyāya sources, in which Buddhists are portrayed as opponents to (...) be defeated, and thus do not truly reflect Buddhist views on this issue. The present paper will explore how Dignāga, the founder of Buddhist logic, deals with the issue of empty subject terms. His approach is subtle and complicated. On the one hand, he proposes a method of paraphrase that resembles Russell’s theory of descriptions. On the other, by relying on his philosophy of language—the apoha theory, he tends to fall into a panfictionalism. Through the efforts of his follower Dharmakīrti, the latter approach would become more acceptable among Indian and Tibetan Buddhists. Dignāga’s Chinese commentators, who were free from the influence of Dharmakīrti, dealt with the empty term issue in three ways: (1) by adhering to Dignāga’s method of paraphrase; (2) by allowing exceptions for non-implicative negation; and (3) by indicating the propositional attitude of a given proposition. Among these, the third proved most popular. (shrink)

Empty names are a problem for Russellians. I describe three ways to approach solving the problem. These are positing gappy propositions as contents, nonsingular propositions as contents, or denying that sentences containing empty names have contents. I discuss methods for deciding between solutions. I then argue for some methods over others and defend one solution using those methods. I reject the arguments that either intuitions about truth value, truth, content, or meaningfulness can decide between the solutions. I give an alternative (...) argument which does decide between the three solutions. The alternative is based on the idea that a sentence and its internal negation are contrary: they cannot both be true, but they might both be false. I argue from Russellian premises to the conclusion that such sentences cannot be assigned truth values when they contain empty names. The argument shows that no Russellian should assign a truth value to a sentence containing an empty name, and therefore that no Russellian should assign a proposition as the content of such a sentence. This shows that Russellians should conclude that sentences containing empty names do not have contents, i.e. the no proposition view. (shrink)

This volume collects Jay Garfield 's essays on Madhyamaka, Yogacara, Buddhist ethics and cross-cultural hermeneutics. The first part addresses Madhyamaka, supplementing Garfield 's translation of Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, a foundational philosophical text by the Buddhist saint Nagarjuna. Garfield then considers the work of philosophical rivals, and sheds important light on the relation of Nagarjuna's views to other Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophical positions.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religion and Science: Nishitani’s View of Nihility and Emptiness–A Pure Land Buddhist CritiqueRyusei TakedaIn general, philosophical critique of Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani, the so-called Kyoto school, has been mainly conducted from a Zen Buddhist perspective. One should not, however, overlook the fact that a profound regard for the philosophical aspects of Pure Land Buddhist thought, another major stream of Mahayana Buddhism, is deeply intertwined in the foundation of (...) their philosophies. But the ways in which they interpret it and the position they give it within their philosophical systems are not the same: they have taken different forms, often giving rise to original terminology, in accord with each thinker’s metaphysical speculation.As Alfred N. Whitehead critically argues in his Religion in the Making, the fundamental reason for the decay of both Buddhism and Christianity is that “each religion has unduly sheltered itself from the other. The self-sufficient pedantry of learning and the confidence of ignorant zealots have combined to shut up each religion in its own forms of thought. Instead of looking to each other for deeper meanings, they have remained self-satisfied and unfertilized.” Further, “both have suffered from the rise of the third tradition, which is science, because neither of them had retained the requisite flexibility of adaptation.” 1In this contemporary situation, the philosophies of Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani, in which the issue of religion and science has been brought into fundamental question and examined on the dimension of origin of their development, have extremely important implications for the critical interpretation of Pure Land Buddhist doctrines, particularly in the postmodern world. 2There are two points I want to make in this paper. First, the fundamental structure of Pure Land Buddhism, in a way an antipode to Zen, will be examined in light of Nishitani’s metaphysical analysis of the relationship between human experience and the laws of nature, particularly bringing into focus his existential realization of ‘nihility.’And second, I want to challenge Nishitani’s understanding of ‘emptiness’ from my perspective as a Pure Land Buddhist, and also to uncover some fundamental [End Page 155] problems underlying his view of ‘emptiness’ by attempting to relate it to Nagarjuna’s negation of ‘substance’ in his concept of ‘non-self being,’ or ‘nih-svabhava.’ 3What is Religion for Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani?Before getting into those two topics, I want to make a rough sketch indicating about where Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani see that religious experience is to be truly realized.The starting point of Nishida’s understanding of religion is found in his argument that “it is on the ground of fact that religion ought to be considered.” The fact of religious experience is in his view none other than self-awareness of ‘absolute nothingness,’ which is also the foundation of what we consider as objective knowledge. The self-awareness manifests itself in the midst of such fact and serves to reveal that fact. He argues that the ultimate goal of Mahayana Buddhism is to penetrate into the depth of this fact.In Tanabe’s philosophy, one’s resurrection and return to the world (genso) and self-renunciation through ‘metanoetics’ (zangedo), a philosophy of absolute Other-power, are required and witnessed to in order for one to establish a genuine religious standpoint. Neither/nor, instead of both/and, is the only relationship in which the self negates itself by means of contradiction, so that at the same time as the self is extinguished in the negation, the contradiction of that which opposes the self is also extinguished. Converted into the neither/nor relationship, both self and contradiction cease to be contradictory opposites. 4 This is Tanabe’s criticism directed at Nishida’s notion of the self-identity of absolute contradiction. Nothingness can never be intuited as such self-identity. The self-consciousness of nothingness is only in resurrection and return to the world, which is witnessed to through practice based upon faith and performed in obedience to Other-power. 5For Nishitani the question of the essence of religion must be answered through tracing the process of the genuine pursuit of true reality. He attempts to interpret the religious quest... (shrink)

A certain metaphysical thesis about meaning that we'll call Informational Role Semantics (IRS) is accepted practically universally in linguistics, philosophy and the cognitive sciences: the meaning (or content, or `sense') of a linguistic expression1 is constituted, at least in part, by at least some of its inferential relations. This idea is hard to state precisely, both because notions like metaphysical constitution are moot and, more importantly, because different versions of IRS take different views on whether there are constituents of (...) meaning other than inferential role, and on which of the inferences an expression occurs in are meaning constitutive. Some of these issues will presently concern us; but for now it will do just to gesture towards such familiar claims as that: it's part and parcel of dog meaning dog2 that the inference from x is a dog to x is an animal is valid; it's part and parcel of boil meaning boil that the inference from x boiled y to y boiled is valid; it's part and parcel of kill meaning kill that the inference from x killed y to y died is valid; and so on. (See Cruse, Ch. 1 and passim.) IRS brings in its train a constellation of ancillary doctrines. Presumably, for example, if an inference is constitutive of the meaning of a word, then learning the word involves learning that the inference holds. If dog means dog because dog ---> animal is valid, then knowing that dog ---> animal is valid is part and parcel of knowing what the word dog means; and, similarly, learning that x boiled y ---> y boiled is part and parcel of learning what boil means, and so forth. IRS constrains grammatical theories. The semantic lexicon of a language is supposed to make explicit whatever one has to know to understand the lexical expressions of the language, so IRS implies that meaning constitutive inferences are part of the semantic lexical entries for items that have them. Lexical entries are thus typically complex objects (`bundles of inferences') according to standard interpretations of IRS.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural InterpretationEdward R. FallsEmpty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation. By Jay L. Garfield. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 306 + xi pp.Jay L. Garfield's Empty Words is a collection of (mostly) previously published essays bearing on the interpretation of Buddhist thought. Emphasizing the Indo-Tibetan tradition while indebted to Euro-American philosophy, Empty Words belongs in a class with books such (...) as Tom Tillemans's Scripture, Logic and Language: Essays on Dharmakīrti and His Tibetan Successors (1999) and Matthew Kapstein's Reason's Traces: Identity and Interpretation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Thought (2001). Below is a précis of Empty Words, followed by remarks on some points that especially caught this reviewer's interest.The essays in Empty Words are gathered into three sections according to subject matter: (1) Madhyamaka, (2) Yogācāra, and (3) Ethics and Hermeneutics. There are five essays in section 1, clustered around three themes: Nāgārjuna's theory of causality (ch. 2, 4), parallels between Madhyamaka and the European skeptical tradition (ch. 1), and paradox in Madhyamaka (ch. 3, 5).Section 2 begins with an essay interpreting Vasubandhu on the three natures and three naturelessnesses, arguing that "Vasubandhu subordinates the naturelessnesses [End Page 196] to the natures pedagogically and describes them as characteristics of, but not (with the exception of the third) identical to the three natures" (p. 121). As for the other three essays in section 2, chapter 7 consists of a translation of and commentary on Vasubandhu's Trisvabhāvanirdes´a, chapter 8 presents an interesting experiment in cross-cultural interpretation in which the history of European idealism is viewed through a Buddhist idealist lens, and chapter 9 (one of the two previously unpublished essays in Empty Words—ch. 14 is the other) attempts to bring together Garfield's views on the limits of expressibility in Madhyamaka and his interpretation of the three natures in Yogācāra.Section 3 includes three essays concerning issues in ethics or political philosophy and two essays discussing the hermeneutical issues involved when Euro-American and Tibetan philosophers attempt to understand each other's traditions. The topics of the former essays are as follows. Is the Dalai Lama's advocacy of human rights (which are grounded in liberal moral theory) compatible with Buddhist ethics, which emphasizes a compassion-based morality (ch. 10)? Are Buddhist values and democracy incompatible (ch. 11)? How does Samdhong Rinpoche's approach to nonviolence relate to Gandhi's (ch. 12)? In the final two essays of the book, Garfield advocates a strategy of cross-cultural interpretation which would avoid the pitfall of orientalism, drawing heavily on Gadamerian-Heideggerian hermeneutics.The remarks that follow bear exclusively on points from essays in section 1 on Madhyamaka. In chapter 4, Garfield critiques the claim, attributed to Dharmakīrti (by rGyal tshab in his commentary on the pramānasiddhi chapter of Pramānavarttika) that belief in rebirth is necessary for the cultivation of bodhicitta. Garfield argues that if this claim is correct, then the "I" in the bodhisattva vow is doing real metaphysical work, functioning as the basis for a real causal relation, contra Nāgārjuna's analysis of causality (which is supposed to involve the rejection of real causal powers). Otherwise, a simpler account of bodhicitta would suffice, in which striving for personal enlightenment could be replaced by striving for someone's attaining enlightenment some time in the future. On this account, practitioners would resolve to contribute to the accumulation of causes of someone's eventually attaining enlightenment, where this accumulation of causes turns out to be something like "universal moral improvement."But what if practitioners just do not know how to bring about universal moral improvement? Garfield acknowledges that buddhas sometimes act counter to the "moral" good, and this suggests an important cognitive difference between buddhas and ordinary beings: ordinary beings can only (fallibly) infer what the best thing to do is, whereas buddhas simply know. Hence, the importance, from a practitioner's standpoint, of the Buddha's teaching, which is a path of personal attainment (and who knows whether it is incidentally a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 24.1 (2004) 117-133 [Access article in PDF] Emptiness, Kenōsis, History, and Dialogue: The Christian Response to Masao Abe's Notion of "Dynamic Śūnyatā " in the Early Years of the Abe-Cobb Buddhist-Christian Dialogue Charles B. Jones The Catholic University of America Introduction Between 1980 and 1993, the Japanese Zen scholar Masao Abe resided in the United States, teaching in various places.1 This brought him into contact with (...) many American scholars and theologians, among whom was John Cobb, a Protestant theologian then working in the area of process theology. Many of the ideas that Abe brought from Japanese Buddhism and particularly from the "Kyōtō School" of Japanese philosophy appeared to Cobb intriguingly congruent with his theological work, and the two began a series of dialogues that came to include a larger and larger circle of Christian theologians2 and (mostly Western) Buddhist scholar-practitioners. The end result was a series of informal encounters as well as a series of three formal "International Buddhist-Christian Conferences" (1980, 1984, 1987; a second series of dialogues were held without Abe's attendance starting in 1998 after a hiatus under the name "International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter"3 ). From these encounters came an impressive number of publications from Abe and from a variety of other participants in what is sometimes known as the "Abe-Cobb Encounter."The agenda, following Cobb's suggestion and vocabulary, was to allow each side to "cross over" into the other; in other words, to study and internalize the worldview of the other in as much depth as possible without converting or losing one's connection with one's home tradition, abiding in the other side as a guest. Later, one was to "cross back," come home to one's own tradition and reflect on the benefits gained in wearing the other's shoes for a time.4 This agenda, which emphasized understanding the other's worldview and concepts of ultimate reality, suited the highly intellectual style of the dialogues, focused as they were on philosophical and theological concerns. [End Page 117]Nevertheless, even given the concern to study and understand the other's philosophical standpoint, a curious disconnect emerges when one studies the literature produced in this dialogue. During the early phase of these encounters in the 1980s, each side, Buddhist and Christian, appears to have taken one text as normative for the entirety of the other's tradition. For Abe, following his predecessors in the KyōtōSchool, the emblematic textfor Christianity was avery short one: the hymn toChrist recorded by Paul in Philippians 2:6-11. He was particularly drawn to the concept of kenōsis, "emptying," which he thought might serve as a cognate for the Buddhist idea of "emptiness" (Skt: śūnyatā ). While the Christians participating in the dialogueaccepted this as a point of contact, albeit with some reservations, others have objected strenuously to this approach, saying that Abe's method of interpreting this text did not hold to responsible methods of exegesis, and at any rate the passage was much too minute to support an entire theology of God and creation.5The Christian side by and large adopted much the same strategy in coming to grips with Buddhist thought, choosing a brief text as the paradigmatic statement of the Buddhist view of ultimate reality: the Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā (Root Stanzas on the Middle Way; hereafter the MMK) of the second-century Buddhist thinker Nāgārjuna. In this instance, objections from the Buddhist side were not forthcoming, because Abe himself took the MMK as a normative statement of Buddhist thought. Nevertheless, his own presentation of Buddhism, especially his key notion of "dynamic śūnyatā, " went considerably beyond Nāgārjuna's presentation and thus elicited some objections from the Christian side for not hewing to their own understanding of Nāgārjuna. Because Abe never responded to these objections directly, the misunderstanding was left unresolved... (shrink)

Call the view that it is possible to acquire aesthetic knowledge via testimony, optimism, and its denial, pessimism. In this paper, I offer a novel argument for pessimism. It works by turning attention away from the basis of the relevant belief, namely, testimony, and toward what that belief in turn provides a basis for, namely, other attitudes. In short, I argue that an aesthetic belief acquired via testimony cannot provide a rational basis for further attitudes, such as admiration, and (...) that the best explanation for this is that the relevant belief is not itself rational. If a belief is not rational, it is not knowledge. So, optimism is false. After addressing a number of objections to the argument, I consider briefly its bearing on the debate concerning thick evaluative concepts. While the aim is to argue that pessimism holds, not to explain why it holds, I provide an indication in closing of what that explanation might be. (shrink)

Fred Adams and collaborators advocate a view on which empty-name sentences semantically encode incomplete propositions, but which can be used to conversationally implicate descriptive propositions. This account has come under criticism recently from Marga Reimer and Anthony Everett. Reimer correctly observes that their account does not pass a natural test for conversational implicatures, namely, that an explanation of our intuitions in terms of implicature should be such that we upon hearing it recognize it to be roughly correct. Everett argues that (...) the implicature view provides an explanation of only some of our intuitions, and is in fact incompatible with others, especially those concerning the modal profile of sentences containing empty names. I offer a pragmatist treatment of empty names based upon the recognition that the Gricean distinction between what is said and what is implicated is not exhaustive, and argue that such a solution avoids both Everett's and Reimer's criticisms. (shrink)

Abstract. On the Direct Reference thesis, proper names are what I call ‘genuine terms’, terms whose sole semantic contributions to the propositions expressed by their use are the terms’ semantic referents. But unless qualified, this thesis implies the false consequence that sentences containing names that fail to refer can never express true or false propositions. (Consider ‘The ancient Greeks worshipped Zeus’, for instance.) I suggest that while names are typically and fundamentally used as genuine terms, there is a small class (...) of names, which I call ‘descriptive names’, whose reference is fixed by commonly associated definite descriptions, and I also suggest that there is an idiom of natural language on which such names can be used as abbreviated definite descriptions in a limited set of sentential contexts, including (1) positive and negative existentials, (2) cognitive ascriptions, and (3) uses of names to talk about myth. Uses of empty descriptive names in such contexts can then be either true or false. Relying on Gregory Currie’s theory of truth in fiction, I also propose an idiom on which fictional names can be used as short for a certain type of description in talk about fiction. Along the way, I provide arguments that names are used as short for descriptions in substantive existential statements as well as in both metamythic and metafictive contexts. I also discuss and criticize alternative views of these matters, including the views of David Braun, Saul Kripke, Peter van Inwagen, and others. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 167-170 [Access article in PDF] Journey into Emptiness: Dogen, Merton, Jung, and the Quest for Transformation. By Robert Jingen Gunn. New York: Paulist Press, 2000. xiv + 334 pp. Written by a New York psychotherapist who also has Zen training, the thesis of this book is that the experience of emptiness is a necessary precondition to spiritual transformation. "Emptiness" is defined as (...) "an experience of being without, of not having, not having answers, not having property, not having love or power or hope" (1). "Transformation" is described as a path that leads to the realization of our rootedness in a transcendent dimension. Three paths of transformation are discussed through three case studies: Buddhism in the experience of Dogen; Christianity through the life of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton; and Depth Psychology as developed in the life experience of Carl Jung. In each case the major obstacle to be overcome is ego and ego attachments. The transformation process, argues Gunn, is often triggered by an initial experience of emptiness such as the early loss of one's mother, an experience of death, divorce, depression, illness, failure, identity confusion, or loss of community. The traditions of Buddhism, Christianity, and Depth Psychology view a person's pivotal experience of emptiness "not as something painful to be avoided, but a door, leading to a larger vision and experience of connection to all of life" (7). Response to the experience of emptiness can be by either engagement or avoidance. Refusing the path of transformation will add to one's burden of suffering whether understood as karma, sin, or neurosis. Yet this is often the contemporary choice. Afraid to move into the unknown, or to let go of ego control, we hold on to whatever is within our grasp—a house, a marriage, an idea, an identity—and avoid the challenge of realizing our true selves. Choosing to enter the Buddhist Way, to take up one's cross or to make the unconscious conscious, is to adopt transformation from an initial emptiness to a "way of life that consists in ever-expanding awareness, continual letting-go of attachments and increasing freedom and service to all of life, to being itself" (9).The author suggests that three stages in the experience of emptiness and self-transformation [End Page 167] are found in the case studies of Dogen, Merton, and Jung: (1) experienced emptiness in their own lives; (2) used that experience to embark on their own path of transformation; and (3) returned to offer their practical experience as a method for others to use. Although viewed differently by each, emptiness is primary for all, and the self that is let go of remains but is transformed. For Dogen, in emptiness we let go of everything, including self and emptiness itself. What remains is no-thing, an insubstantiality that is neither nothing nor something, but leads us back to the Self, which is everything. For Merton, letting go of everything leaves an empty self experienced as poverty, but a poverty that leads to fulfillment, which finds the true Self hidden with Christ in God—free for God, free for others, free for whatever God wills. For Jung, emptiness is the sacrifice of ego to the larger Self, which transcends individual consciousness.While the analyses of the emptiness/transformative experiences of Dogen and Merton are well done, the presentation of Jung lacks depth and completeness. The author's psychotherapist vocation seemed to artificially force the analysis—as, for example, in Gunn's attempt to show that in each case the major trigger of the emptiness experience was the early loss of the mother.I found the presentation of Dogen's Buddhist experience to be the most fully developed and convincing of the three case studies. Gunn does an excellent job of situating Dogen's experience within the context of Buddhism by presenting a well-researched and well-written summary of Buddha, Nagarjuna, and Bodhidharma; however, the contribution of the Theravada understanding is completely ignored. The presentation of Nagarjuna is especially well done, but the author... (shrink)

Doctrinally, Buddhism is free of the myths and symbols that make some other religions so intractable to feminist reforms. In its philosophical views and its meditation practices, Buddhism has tremendous potential for deconstructing gender. In less than thirty years, we have gone from a situation in which almost nothing had been written about Buddhist women to a situation in which books and articles appear regularly. There is now a worldwide Buddhist women's movement, many women Buddhist teachers—at least in (...) North America—and a growing consensus that the traditional male dominance of Buddhism is a problem. Yet, despite the advances made in the last thirty years, Buddhism still privileges men above women. So is the glass half full? Are we well on the way to recasting Buddhism in ways that make it more adequate for its female followers? Or is the glass half empty? Is Buddhism still a religion that works better for men than for women, despite the changes of the past thirty years? In looking at the half-full, half-empty glass, I will consider three topics: first, Buddhism's potential for deconstructing gender, second, some reasons why this potential did not come to fruition historically, and third, some of the changing situations in the contemporary Buddhist world, both Asian and Western. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nihilism, Science, and Emptiness in NishitaniHase ShotoEmptiness and NihilismIt may be sufficiently known by now that the trunk line of Nishitani’s philosophy is the ‘idea of emptiness.’ Indeed, from his Philosophy of Primordial Subjectivity (1940) through his God and Absolute Nothingness (1948) and Nihilism (1949) right into Religion and Nothingness (1961), Nishitani’s thinking has fundamentally turned around the idea of emptiness. 1 Not that in the (...) three works preceding Religion and Nothingness the idea of emptiness is treated overtly as such. Rather, in those works the idea is continually growing, as it were, on an invisible underground level, to come finally to the surface in Religion and Nothingness. It is as if the emptiness that had grown strong by withstanding the pressure of the ‘rock’ of nihilism came into the open by overthrowing that rock.As it was the key to the solution of the problem of nihilism that had beset him in his youth, the idea of emptiness was more than a mere idea for Nishitani. It was something on which the possibility of existence entirely depended for him. Therefore, he did not speak of the idea of emptiness but of the ‘standpoint of emptiness.’ For Nishitani, nihilism was not simply a philosophical problem, a problem accidentally encountered in the course of his philosophical investigations. It was a problem he had been saddled with willy nilly as a result of his own nature and temperament as well as of the conditions of his time. He then decided to shoulder the problem as his particular task. In other words, nihilism assumed for him the nature of a destiny. Consequently, the ‘standpoint of emptiness,’ at which he arrived at the end of the arduous struggle for the solution of the problem of nihilism, took on for him the character of a reliable slab of granite discovered at the bottom of his own existence: something with a depth reaching all the way to the core of the earth and a solidity sufficient to carry the weight of nihilism. Of all this Nishitani himself was clearly aware. Let me reflect a few moments on Nishitani’s idea of emptiness in its relationship with nihilism.How did Nishitani view this nihilism that constituted the basic problem for him? He defined his own philosophical standpoint as, in the final analysis, “the overcoming of nihilism by way of nihilism.” In his own estimate, the nihilism he struggled with was an extremely “difficult” and “hard to solve” problem for philosophy—a problem wherein intellectual aporia and existential conundrum intertwine; not the [End Page 139] kind of problem that finds a solution provided one makes the necessary efforts; a problem that is hard to get hold of: the study of various thought systems appears only to circle around its periphery. Thus, “at a certain moment I decided to give up my philosophical efforts and to tackle the problem by Zen [meditation], away from all intellectual efforts. At that point, for the first time and little by little, a way to its solution came in sight.” 2This kind of patient struggling with one particular problem, as we see it in Nishitani’s case, may not be unheard of but is certainly not commonplace. If we may call this attitude or way of facing problems a ‘method,’ it appears to be described by Simone Weil, where she writes: “The method proper to philosophy consists in clearly seeing insoluble problems in their insolubility, and then to contemplate them, concentratedly and indefatigably, for years, without any hope in the waiting. According to this criterion, there are few philosophers. But ‘few’ may be saying too much. The passage to the transcendent is opened when the human faculties—intellect, will, human love—run into a limit, and then the human being stays on this threshold, beyond which it cannot put a single step—and this without turning away, without knowing what it desires, and concentrated on the waiting. It is a state of extreme humiliation. It is unachievable for anybody who is not capable of accepting humiliation.” 3We may say that, just like Simone Weil herself, who for many years struggled with the insoluble problem of ‘unhappiness... (shrink)

The paper deals with the topic of empty terms as considered in chapter six of Devitt’s book Designation. Devitt’s proposal is that a statement about fiction is (usually) implicitly preceded by a fiction operator roughly paraphrasable by “it is pretended that” or “in fiction”. The causal chain that forms the network for a fictitious name are not d(esignational)-chains, for they are not grounded in an object. Nevertheless, although the fictitious name does not designate, we could say that it stands in (...) some other referential relationship to the world: it ‘F(ictionally)-designates’. It seem that we could then state truth conditions of a F-sentence using F-designation: the F-operator direct us to look not for the designatum of name but for its F-designatum. The name (for example, “Napoleon” in War and Peace), though nonempty, is just like a fictitious name. In proposing that nonempty names in fiction refer to real items, I argue against the view that “Napoleon” in the War and Peace designates the famous general, Napoleon, and F-designates parts of War and Peace. The referent of F-designation is Napoleon, famous general, too. At the end of the paper I claim that Devitt, if he wants to remain a modal fictionalist, has to renounce the view of one-world metaphysics. (shrink)

For Slavoj Zizek the empty place or void stands for ‘Drive/Death Drive’: “a drive is not a primordial, positive force but a purely geometrical, topological phenomenon, the name for the curvature of the space of desire.” (Zizek 2005: 361) This paper examines this ‘empty space’ in two recent cultural texts relating to Taiwan: one a multi-media presentation at the Taipei Biennial and the other the movie, Orz Boyz. The connecting topology belongs to the topography of islands found in the (...) rivers of Taipei. Both the film and the multi-media project make explicit use of the islands in ways which this paper relates to the psychoanalytic project of Zizek/Lacan. The possible discourses, besides psychoanalysis emerging from these two cultural objects are outlined, but in particular the notion of childhood and underdevelopment/overdevelopment are discussed. From this vantage point, childhood/drive and the symbolic order this paper examines the current predicament of Taiwan from a psychoanalytic point of view. (shrink)

The present study has attempted to artriculate a central issue of Mahäyäna soteriology through an examination of the writings of two Mädhyamika masters, Bhävaviveka and Candrakïrti. The purpose here has been to demonstrate a further criterion for the retrospective designation of their respective philosophies with the terms “Svātantrika” and “Prasangika” an exhaustive study of the nature of the Hinayäna wisdom according to the Mädhyamika school would entail an analysis of the writings of many other masters, especially those who produced (...) what has been called the Yogäcära-Mädhyamika synthesis. To attempt to determine the position of Maitreyanätha, for example, on this issue would entail an analysis of the famous “Five Treatises” (the Dharmadharmatävibhańa, the Madhyäntavibhańga, the Mahayanasutrlamkara, the Uttratantra, and the Abhisamayälamkära) as well as the myriad commentaries on these works. It is possible to speculate briefly here on what the position of Nägärjuna may have been on this issue and then go on to discuss the implications and possible motivations of the views of Bhävaviveka and Candrakïrti. (shrink)

Governments are widely viewed by academics and practitioners as the key societal actors who are capable of compelling businesses to practice corporate social responsibility. Arguably, such government involvement could be seen as a technocratic device for encouraging ethical business behaviour. In this paper, we offer a more politicised interpretation of government engagement with CSR where “CSR” is not a desired form of business conduct but an element of discourse that governments can deploy in structuring their relationships with other social (...) actors. We build our argument through a historical analysis of government CSR discourse in the Russian Federation. Laclau and Mouffe's social theory of hegemony underpins our research. We find that “CSR” in the Russian government’s discourse served to legitimise its power over large businesses. Using this case, we contribute to wider academic debates by providing fresh empirical evidence that allows the development of critical evaluation tools in relation to governments’ engagement with “CSR”. We find that governments are capable of hijacking CSR for their own self-interested gain. We close the paper by reflecting on the merit of exploring the case of the Russian Federation. As a “non-core”, non-western exemplar, it provides a useful “mirror” with which to reflect on the more widely used test-bed of Western industrial democracies when scrutinising CSR. Based on our findings, we invite other scholars to adopt a more critical, politicised stance when researching the role of governments in relation to CSR in other parts of the world. (shrink)

(Report assembled for the Workshop of the AMIA Working Group on Formal Biomedical Knowledge Representation in connection with AMIA Symposium, Washington DC, 2005.) Best practices in ontology building for biomedicine have been frequently discussed in recent years. However there is a range of seemingly disparate views represented by experts in the field. These views not only reflect the different uses to which ontologies are put, but also the experiences and disciplinary background of these experts themselves. We asked six (...) questions related to biomedical ontologies to what we believe is a representative sample of ontologists in the biomedical field and came to a number conclusions which we believe can help provide an insight into the practical problems which ontology builders face today. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer an argument in favor of the modular character of mind, based on a more detailed proof of the modular character of the linguistic capacity: in comparing the properties of different components of grammar in a specific area we will draw general consequences about the properties of the cognitive system. More specifically, we analyze and compare the properties, in logical form (LF)and in phonology, of “empty eIements” - eIements that are “visible” or “full” at some level (...) of representation, but not at another level.Our analysis shows that empty eIements are governed at LF by principIes on variables. binding conditions, and thematic principles, that relate eIements at a distance. In phonology, on the other hand, empty elements, i.e., empty segments and empty properties, can be obtaines by deletion and are governed by very different principles (underspecification, principles relating to recoverability of deletion effects), andthese principles relates eIements under strict adjacency. In addition, when a principle seems to be operating in a similar fashion in both components, as in the case of the Projection Principle, it involves lexical properties, which are properties affecting all components. We conclude, hence, that grammar is a modular system, with different components following different principles but related of course, among other things, by the properties of lexical structure.It follows from this analysis that a theory that views language as part of a homogeneous cognitive capacity cannot be mantained: cognition cannot be nonmodular in a strict sense, since a subpart of it, the linguistic capacity is modular itself. We conclude also that the linguistic capacity being modular, we ean only expect that, when studied in more detail, other cognitive capacities will be shown to differ intheir structure still more from the language system. (shrink)

Imagination comes with varying degrees of sensory accompaniment. Sometimes imagining is phenomenologically lean (cognitive imagining); at other times, imagining involves or requires sensory presentation such as mental imagery (sensory imagining). Philosophers debate whether contradictions can obtain in fiction and whether cognitive imagining is robust enough to explain our engagement with fiction. In this paper, I defend the Principle of Poetic License by arguing for the Permissive View of fictional truth: we can have fictions in which a contradiction is true, (...) everything is true, or nothing is true. I show that imagination-based worries about impossible, unlimited, and empty fictions can be shown to be about sensory imagination and that sensory imagination isn’t necessary for fictional truth. (shrink)

The old duality that eventually came to produce the mind/body-problem indicates the problem of transcendental subjectivity. The enduring significance of this problem shows itself in a provocation of any paradigm that has become too objectivistic, too naturalistic – even too idealistic in a certain sense – and too forgetful of its own departure from a perspective always presumed. Analytic philosophy bears a tendency towards such a ‘view from nowhere’ which denies a fundamental subjective connection. The rebuttal of this position entails (...) accepting the interrelation between first- and third-person-perspective; we call this the ‘view from somewhere’. Tracing the tension between the subjective and the objective we find this “view” embraced in the phenomenological tradition. At the same time we find the mind/body-problem seemingly dissolved through, among other key concepts, the introduction of the ‘lived body’. We will see, however, that this is no thorough solution; a fundamental mind/world polarity escapes the phenomenological framework and ends up mounting a critical threat to its own stability. A demonstration is attempted of how both the process of objectification and the process of subjectification falls into regressive patterns. This is due to the interplay of the gaze and the source, the ‘from’ and the ‘towards’: Ajin. Later this argumentation calls for a discussion of the pre-reflective sphere of consciousness. Finally we show the alignment between conclusions driven forth in our own dialectic and the ones found in the philosophy of Nāgārjuna. The transcendental interconstitution of subjectivity and objectivity, perspective and world, has a name in emptiness. (shrink)

Concerned with the issue of the I-thou encounter and the question of how to overcome the problem of the confrontation that occurs in the worldly existence among individuals, the Japanese philosopher Ueda Shizuteru (1926-), a leading member of the Kyoto School, addressed this issue in his phenomenology of the self. Ueda develops his ideas as a hermeneutical practice in the reading of the well-known Zen classic parable Ten Ox-Herding pictures, given that Zen Buddhism is the main tradition upon which he (...) critically and creatively draws. In accordance with Zen, Ueda argues that the emptied self is a non-self self boundlessly open and compassionate. As a result, the selfless self is open to the other in such a way that a genuine encounter with the other can take place. In the encounter, the closed ego realizes that its self-identity includes also its self-negation, such that, for the selfless self the other’s concerns are one’s concerns. The main aim of this contribution is to look at Ueda’s understanding of the interpersonal relations in what he conceives as a twofold world, that is, the worldly existence and the infinite openness that imbues this existence. In the infinite openness, the fundamental difference between self and other disappears into the state where the individual becomes emptiness while maintaining their “otherness” as separate and distinct. It means that the nullified self still preserves its identity, the other is accepted as different, and at the same time both share this common selfless ground. Thus, a particular conception of identity arises in which we can trace its roots back to Nishida Kitarō’s notion of “self-contradictory identity” (矛盾的自己同一 mujunteki jikodōitsu) and Nishitani Keiji’s “non-duality of self and other” (自他不二 jitafuni). According to the first, each of us, as individual bodies, also contains absolute negation within. The latter refers to a mode of being where self and other are one and simultaneously each one remains what it is in itself, probably inspired in Mahāyāna Buddhist logic whereby two different things are neither one nor two and yet both one and two. Given that the identification of the subject with its context and the emphasis on the sameness can entail the risk of suppressing other’s alterity and subordinating the individual to the whole, these views have been regarded as ambivalent. Therefore, the criticism and implications of this standpoint of “contradictory identity” are also examined. However, the assumption here is that due to the ethical import of this standpoint, it could certainly be of interest if applied to social and intercultural relations. (shrink)

There are two main approaches to the problem of donkey anaphora (e.g. If John owns a donkey , he beats it ). Proponents of dynamic approaches take the pronoun to be a logical variable, but they revise the semantics of quantifiers so as to allow them to bind variables that are not within their syntactic scope. Older dynamic approaches took this measure to apply solely to existential quantifiers; recent dynamic approaches have extended it to all quantifiers. By contrast, proponents of (...) E-type analyses take the pronoun to have the semantics of a definite description (with it ≈ the donkey, or the donkey that John owns ). While competing accounts make very different claims about the patterns of coindexation that are found in the syntax, these are not morphologically realized in spoken languages. But they are in sign language, namely through locus assignment and pointing. We make two main claims on the basis of ASL and LSF data. First, sign language data favor dynamic over E-type theories: in those cases in which the two approaches make conflicting predictions about possible patterns of coindexation, dynamic analyses are at an advantage. Second, among dynamic theories, sign language data favor recent ones because the very same formal mechanism is used irrespective of the indefinite or non-indefinite nature of the antecedent. Going beyond this debate, we argue that dynamic theories should allow pronouns to be bound across negative expressions, as long as the pronoun is presupposed to have a non-empty denotation. Finally, an appendix displays and explains subtle differences between overt sign language pronouns and all other pronouns in examples involving ‘disjunctive antecedents’, and suggests that counterparts of sign language loci might be found in spoken language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jesus and Buddhism: A Christian ViewMarcus J. BorgLike several of the contributors to this collection of essays, I begin with my own vantage point. By profession a historian of Jesus and Christian origins, I am by confession a Christian of a nonliteralist and nonexclusivist kind (once Lutheran, now Episcopalian). As a Christian, I am interested in the theological implications of my work as a historian. As a student of (...) Buddhism, I am an amateur whose knowledge is limited to what I have learned from teaching world religions at the introductory undergraduate level.The essays illustrate a classic issue in interreligious dialogue: What shall we compare? Exoteric forms or esoteric core? If Buddhism (esoteric or exoteric) is compared with external forms of popular-level Christianity over the centuries, the gulf is great indeed. But if we compare the historical Jesus and the mystical stream of Christianity (its internal core) with Buddhism, then there are important points of contact.As a Jesus scholar and a Christian, I address two central subjects raised by the essays, the first more historical and the second more theological. I briefly compare the historical Jesus and the Buddha and then reflect about the exclusivist and absolutist claims made about Jesus by the most common forms of Christianity.The Historical Jesus and the BuddhaJesus was a Jewish mystic. This is radical shorthand for my fuller five-stroke sketch, as well as foundational for it. As a Jewish mystic (or Spirit person, by which I mean the same thing), Jesus became a healer, wisdom teacher, social prophet, and movement founder. 1 This sketch is the basis for comparing the historical Jesus and the Buddha.Of the contributors, José Cabezón says the most about recent historical Jesus scholarship. I agree with him about much. Both Jesus and the Buddha opened up the religious life to marginalized people, stressed the interior life, and inaugurated reformist movements. Both traditions take spirits and ‘magic’ seriously. 2 I agree that the major difference is Jesus’ much greater emphasis on social justice, which leads to a further difference: Jesus was killed, his life cut short because he was a social [End Page 93] prophet, whereas the Buddha died from food poisoning. Jesus’ public activity was thus very brief, perhaps as little as a year, compared to the forty or fifty years of the Buddha.To return to similarities, I cite two more. Both Jesus and the Buddha had transforming enlightenment experiences of a mystical kind at about age thirty. Both became teachers of a convention-subverting wisdom flowing out of their enlightenment experiences.Because Cabezón expresses uncertainty about the second claim, I summarize the reasons why I see Jesus as a teacher of an enlightenment way of wisdom similar to that taught by the Buddha. 3 ‘Seeing’ (enlightenment) is strongly emphasized not only in sayings of Jesus but also in the metaphorical ‘spin’ given to some of the stories reporting the healing of blindness. Moreover, inviting a new way of seeing is the primary rhetorical function of Jesus’ aphorisms and parables, his most common forms of teaching.Furthermore, imagery of ‘the way’ is central to Jesus and the gospels, pointing to a foundational similarity to the teaching of the Buddha. There is the broad way and there is the narrow way; those who humble (empty) themselves will be exalted; the path to a new way of being involves dying to an old way of being. This emphasis points to an internal spiritual-psychological process very similar to Buddhist ‘emptying’ and ‘letting go.’ ‘Dying’ and ‘letting go’ are metaphorical synonyms. 4Jesus’ way undermined convention and affirmed a radical recentering in that which is beyond the domestications generated by convention: the sacred. As a mystic, Jesus knew this from his own experience. 5 Like the Buddha, he taught differently because he had seen differently.Thus I have become persuaded of a foundational similarity between ‘the way’ taught by the Buddha and ‘the way’ taught by Jesus. 6 I tell my students that if Jesus and the Buddha were ever to meet, neither would try to convert the other—not because they would regard the task as hopeless, but because they would... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Clinic as Testing Ground for Moral Theory: A European ViewHans-Martin Sass (bio)A Philosopher’s View of Theory in the Clinical SettingThe clinic is a testing ground for theories. I am not clinician; I am a philosopher who has been in the clinic only as a patient or as an ethicist who never has had the final word nor was ever intended to have the final word. I have learned (...) that in the clinical setting general norms and conceptualizations in the Kantian sense must be tailored to real-life situations. From the philosophical schools of analytical reasoning, I learned the skills needed to analyze words and meanings and to dissect problems and so-called “solutions.” But even more impressive are the methodological skills of differential diagnosis, looking at medical problems from different angles and using different methods and instruments. The detail- and patient-oriented work of the clinician provides an excellent model of methodological clarity and professional devotion for a philosopher who assists those working for the “good of the patient.” That model has led to the development of what I call a theory and methodology of differential ethics. [End Page 351]Differential ethics is normative ethics, as it does not give up norms in favor of situational utility. Differential ethics does not venture out empty-handed in order to explore and find principles pre-existing in a given situation; rather it brings basic values and principles along with it and tries to discover the shape they must take and the priority they must be given in the situation at hand. Differential ethics differentiates between general norms and mid-level principles, virtues, and visions that must be introduced and protected effectively and specifically according to different scenarios (Sass 1993). From this European point of view, I shall briefly explain my position and comment on (1) the controversy between principlism and virtue theory, (2) differentiating and balancing, and (3) the importance of trust, both as a principle and as a virtue in the clinical setting.Principlism Versus Virtue Theory: A Mistaken ControversyFrom a European perspective, I find that the debate between the schools of virtue-theory and principlism in the United States is a mistaken controversy. The real conflict between the schools of thought is not methodology, but content. Tom Beauchamp (1995) gives examples of how one language or method can be translated into the other, and Edmund Pellegrino and David Thomasma (1988, p. 206) have formulated a rule for the virtuous physician that, in the language of principlism, reads “respect for autonomy,” but in the language of virtue theory reads “To assist my patients to make choices that coincide with their own values or beliefs, without coercion, deception, or duplicity.”In different situations, however, some systems of reference are more authoritative and effective than others. Appealing to professional virtues would be the most efficacious way to address an audience coherent in attitudes and concerned about personal character. Reaffirmation of personal and professional obligations in secular fraternities or religious communities works best when it includes an appeal to virtues in the language of the humanist tradition, moral theology, or professional ethics.But there are other situations in which authoritative attitudes and expectations are absent and society in general is searching for common, often dormant, principles that will hold it together whatever specific disagreements arise. Such a situation was present in 1978 when the Belmont Report (National Commission 1978) presented principles—respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice—and not virtues to guide moral and political reflections on and reactions to the ethical, legal, and social implications of modern biomedicine in a multi-faceted and multi-cultural society.The formal difference between the systems of principlism, virtue theory, and value theory becomes even less important when clinical-ethical questionnaires are used to understand specific scenarios or cases and to assess different options for proceeding. Thus, my first thesis is: Case discussion, scenario assessment, [End Page 352] and open questionnaires, rather than definite guidelines, bridge the difference between virtue theory and principlism, since such processes can employ any one language or a combination of all three.Differentiating and BalancingMy second thesis is: Whatever system of reference is used... (shrink)

This paper deals with Fichte’s The Characteristics of the Present Age, and in particular with his discussion of the “empty form of knowledge” he claims stands at the centre of the third – i.e. the present – age. Fichte speaks of a fundamental principle that forms the ‘common denominator’ between the third and fourth main epochs. This fundamental principle – the “maxim of comprehensibility” – makes knowledge and comprehension the measure of all that “counts as being valid and as really (...) existing”. But the question arises: How can one and the same principle act as the “unifying concept” for two different “main epochs of human life”? Does this not go directly against Fichte’s claim that two main epochs differ from each other in every respect, precisely because they arise from two entirely different “unifying principles”, and because everything in them must reflect the difference between their “unifying principles”? Fichte’s answer to this question is as follows: a) the fundamental maxim in question allows for two diametrically opposed interpretations, so that each of them provides the principle or the “unifying concept” from which the third and fourth main epochs arise, and b) the third main epoch only gives rise to the empty form of science, as opposed to “truly real science”: it stands for a careless and easy-going, shallow, conventional, trivializing and incorrect conception of the “fundamental maxim of comprehensibility” – so that it misses what is essential, does not do justice to the fundamental maxim, overlooks its implications, and indeed goes against its innermost meaning. Special attention is paid to the question of whether and how some major features of Fichte’s “empty form of knowledge” result from a misguided and superficial understanding of Kant’s “maxims of the self-preservation of reason” and can be reconstructed from this vantage point. (shrink)

The ethics expressed in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love has been subject to persistent criticism for its perceived indifference to concrete persons and failure to attend to the other in their individual specificity. Recent defenses of Works of Love have focused in large part on the role of vision in the text, showing the supposed “blind” empty formalism of the emphasis on the category of “the neighbor” to serve a normative model of seeing the other correctly. However, when this (...) problem is viewed in the broader context of Kierkegaard’s phenomenology of moral vision, two further, thus far unanswered, problems emerge: How can we see the other and the moral demand they represent at the same time, and how can we see the other and our own condition at the same time? This paper draws on other Kierkegaardian texts to show how Kierkegaard’s model of moral vision allows for the simultaneity in vision necessary to overcome these challenges. (shrink)

Scanlon’s book aims to offer us a moral theory of right and wrong and of our obligations to one another. The theory is called contractualism and its central claim is that an act is right or wrong if and only if it could or could not be justified to others on grounds that they could not reasonably reject (p. 4). Scanlon recognizes that so stated, his contractualism might seem empty in the sense that one might think that the aim of (...) offering grounds that others could not reasonably reject is an aim to which all plausible moral theories would aspire (p. 4). For example, as Scanlon himself acknowledges, utilitarians, who hold the view that an act is right only if it would produce the greatest happiness, presumably would believe that their view is one that no reasonable person could possibly reject (p. 189). However, Scanlon believes that his contractualism is in fact substantive. According to Scanlon, his contractualism holds the process of justifying to others to be ‘basic’ (p. 5). In other words, Scanlon believes that simply by thinking about what could be justified to others on grounds that they could not reasonably reject, we can ‘determine the shape of more specific moral notions such as murder or betrayal (p. 5).’ As Scanlon explains, even though utilitarians may also accept that an act is right if and only if it can be justified to others, what makes an action right for utilitarians is that the action has the best consequences; ‘justifiability is merely a consequence of this’ (p. 189); whereas for Scanlon’s contractualism, justifiability is what makes an action right or wrong. The aim of Scanlon’s book is to elaborate and explicate this account of contractualism. (shrink)

The ethical issues concerning the use of PGD to select embryos of a particular HLA type are numerous. They arise from the potentially conflicting interests between those of the pre-existing child, the subject of a treatment which may be curative, and those of the sibling to be created, who cannot give consent to the donation, together with the problem of the destruction of potentially healthy embryos. This essay focuses on the web of vulnerabilities affecting the parents, the sick child and (...) the “saviour sibling,” while addressing three areas: science, bioethics and literature. The novel My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult, provides the reader with an in-depth view of the conflicting interests and emotional problems that affect the Fitzgeralds, a family experiencing the pain of seeing one of their children dying while facing the tragic consequences of trying to save this child by having another offspring. (shrink)

In this essay we discuss a class of apparently metaphorical idioms, exemplified by “fine as frog's hair,” that do not afford any obvious interpretation, and appear to have originated, at least in part, in language play. We review recent trends in both play theory and metaphor theory, and show that a playful approach to language is often an important element in the use and understanding of metaphors (and idioms generally), even when metaphors can be readily interpreted by means of a (...) vehicle-to-topic mapping. Based on this evidence we call for a more deliberate inclusion of language play in metaphor theory and analysis. (shrink)

Buddhist traditions understand emptiness in various ways, and two streams of interpretation, “self-emptiness” and “other-emptiness” , have emerged in Tibet that help bring into focus the extent to which interpretations diverge.1 In contrast to self-emptiness, other-emptiness does not refer to a phenomenon’s lack of its own essence; it refers to the ultimate reality’s lack of all that it is not. Rather than claiming the universality of self-emptiness , proponents of other-emptiness (...) assert another way to understand emptiness with regard to the ultimate . These two interpretations of emptiness—as ground and as groundless .. (shrink)

The buddha-nature literature has a significant place within the Indian Mahāyāna tradition and Tibetan Buddhism. While it is usually included in the so-called Last Wheel of the Buddha’s teachings, many Tibetan thinkers began to cast doubts about the textual significance of buddha-nature discourse in fourteenth-century Tibet. In this article, I will examine one particular case where there is apparent tension between multiple Tibetan masters over the importance of buddha-nature teachings. This paper primarily analyzes Dratsepa’s commentary to the Ornament (mdzes rgyan) (...) written by his teacher, Buton. Dratsepa construes the Ornament as a work critiquing Dolpopa’s interpretation of the buddha-nature literature. He levels a barrage of criticisms against Dolpopa by referring to Indian śāstras and sūtras that are equally important to both of them, and also by tracing his own assessment of the tathāgata-essence teachings to early Tibetan scholars. In contradistinction to Dolpopa’s claims, Dratsepa offers several nuanced readings of the buddha-nature literature and complicates the notion of what it means to have tathāgata-essence, what a definitive or provisional meaning entails, and the relationship between the Middle Wheel and the Last Wheel teachings. In brief, Dratsepa’s text sheds light on one of the earliest discourses on the tension between self-emptiness and other-emptiness presentations. (shrink)

The rich and interconnected universe of Śākya Mchog Ldan’s views, including those on the buddha-essence, cannot be limited to or summarized in a few neat categories. Nevertheless, the following two interrelated ideas are crucial for understanding Śākya Mchog Ldan’s interpretation of the buddha-essence: 1) only Mahāyāna āryas (’phags pa) have the buddha-essence characterized by the purity from adventitious stains (glo bur rnam dag).

Keywords Tibetan Buddhism - Gzhan stong - Dolpopa.

The literature analysing Muslim perspective towards other religions is now quite extensive. However, when it comes to Muslim’s perspective towards Buddhism, the scholarship lags far behind. This article aimed to identify the Muslim views on Buddhism from a theological and philosophical framework. The Muslim views have a different category, on categorising Buddhism, the status of Buddha as a Prophet, and Buddhist as the People of the Book. Each view provides a different framework of Muslim perspective towards Buddhism. (...) From the theological view, one of the outlook is tolerance. Due to the rejection of Buddhist doctrine by most Muslim theologians, Muslims apply tolerance, which is subject to religious freedom stand on, ‘firm in principle, tolerant in attitude’. Tolerance encourages Muslims to adhere to the principles of truth, but does not erode the respect for other religion. While from a philosophical view, it considered Buddhism as a religion from God, as well as other religions. Thus, some Muslim inclusivists and pluralists recognise Buddhism. This research is qualitative. The method used in this research is descriptive-analytic, emphasising content analysis of the data from various books and articles covering Muslim view on Buddhism and the patterns of relations between Islam and Buddhism. Studies suggest the understanding of each framework to encourage Muslims to improve comprehensive interreligious dialogue with Buddhists.Contribution: Religious tolerance, inclusivism, and pluralism is a panacea to inordinate and incessant religious conflict, if given its proper place in Malaysia, it will breed harmony and peace in the society. This work would be of immense benefit to interfaith scholars and religious leaders across all strata of discipline. (shrink)

I hope I will not be accused of mental colonialism by attributing to Europe the role which belongs to it historically: that of the Self, which leaves the position of the Other for us. Consequently, this text ought to begin with the view taken of the Other (the European view of the Brazilians) and continue with the view held by the Other (the Brazilian view of the Europeans).

Kierkegaard’s attitude toward the family of issues usually associated with the rubric ‘nature and grace’ has long been disputed by his interpreters. Some of have seen him as a proponent of the ‘grace perfects nature’ position while others have viewed him as a radical bifurcator of nature and grace. Actually, Kierkegaard’s treatment of these issues is more nuanced. He does propose that human nature intrinsically possesses a yearning that can only be satisfied by God’s grace (and therefore nature is oriented (...) toward grace), but he suggests that the grace that God offers is utterly unanticipated, counter-intuitive, and potentially offensive (and therefore grace disrupts nature). The prospect of God’s self-emptying love is something that nature did not know would fulfill its deepest longings, and which excites both attraction and repulsion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nāgārjuna's Fundamental Doctrine of PratītyasamutpādaEwing ChinnIt seems fitting that the very last verse of Nāgārjuna's challenging work, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way), would present the reader with what seems to be a riddle: "I prostrate to Gautama, who through compassion, taught the true doctrine, which leads to the relinquishing of all views" (27 :30). This should be read with an earlier verse (13 : 8): "The (...) victorious ones have said that emptiness is the relinquishing of all views. For whomever emptiness is a view, that one will accomplish nothing."1 Since the last chapter deals with questions about the self and the world, it is understandable that so many commentators would assume that the "true doctrine" of which Nāgārjuna speaks is the doctrine of śūnyatā, but that gives a paradoxical character to these verses. Gautama recommends to us a doctrine that all this (we and all that we experience of the world) is śūnya, that is, empty of essence and thus of inherent, independent existence. And does this anti-realist, anti-essentialist view of things (as some would interpret śūnyatā) make possible and even constitute the relinquishing of all views, including his own? It cannot simply be the trivial and disingenuous claim that to accept the truth of śūnyatā is to relinquish all other wrong views. So is Nāgārjuna mysteriously refuting himself? Or is he uttering a paradox?I will argue that there is no paradox or problem of self-refutation, because the true doctrine that Nāgārjuna refers to is not śūnyatā but the doctrine of pratītyasa-mutpāda (dependent arising or origination). And what the verses assert is that if we understand and accept this doctrine, we will no longer have the need or inclination to hold any view about the nature of things, including the inclination to construct a view out of the declaration that "all this is śūnya." How this is possible, how accepting the doctrine makes possible the "relinquishing of all views," certainly depends on what kind of doctrine this is and how it is to be distinguished from a "view." Part of my argument, of course, is that neither pratītyasamutpāda nor the assertion that "all this is śūnya" should be taken as even implying any metaphysical views—either nihilism, absolutism, or anti-realism (the most common metaphysical interpretations). There is no doubt that a major target of Nāgārjuna's philosophical criticism is metaphysical realism. But this does not mean that the critic must hold some alternative metaphysical view.The logical place to begin is chapter 1, "Examination of Conditions," where the subject of discussion is the concept of pratītyasamutpāda, but it is not clear at all what Nāgārjuna is trying to establish about this concept. Jay Garfield, in his recent translation of and commentary on the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā titled The Fundamental Wisdom of the MiddleWay, offers a unique interpretation of the point of this chapter, [End Page 54] and I will follow him to some extent in his analysis of the text.2 However, we will part ways at a crucial point in the chapter with regard to what Nāgārjuna is about.On the Nature and Significance of PratītyasamutpādaIn this first chapter, Garfield notes that "Nāgārjuna distinguishes two possible views of dependent origination or the causal process—one according to which causes bring about their effects in virtue of causal powers and one according to which causal relations simply amount to explanatorily useful regularities—and defends the latter."3 That is to say, according to Garfield, Nāgārjuna defends pratītyasamutpāda as a regularity or Humean theory of causation against an essentialist or realist interpretation. The latter contends that while we may cite one or more factors or events as the causal condition of some effect, it is the force or power in these conditions that is actually the cause of the effect. Nāgārjuna's basic criticism of this realist view is summarized in the fourth verse:Power to act does not have conditions. There... (shrink)

This superb collection of writings on buddha nature by the Third Karmapa Rangjung Dorje (1284-1339) focuses on the transition from ordinary deluded consciousness to enlightened wisdom, the characteristics of buddhahood, and a buddha's enlightened activity. Most of these materials have never been translated comprehensively. The Third Karmapa's unique and well-balanced view synthesizes Yogacara Madhyamaka and the classical teachings on buddha nature. Rangjung Dorje not only shows that these teachings do not contradict each other but also that they supplement each (...) other and share the same essential points in terms of the ultimate nature of mind and all phenomena. His fusion is remarkable because it clearly builds on Indian predecessors and precedes the later often highly charged debates in Tibet about the views of Rangtong ("self-empty") and Shentong ("other-empty"). Although Rangjung Dorje is widely regarded as one of the major proponents of the Tibetan Shentong tradition (some even consider him its founder), this book shows how his views differ from the Shentong tradition as understood by Dolpopa Taranatha and the First Jamgon Kongtrul. The Third Karmapa's view is more accurately described as one in which the two categories of rangtong and shentong are not regarded as mutually exclusive but are combined in a creative synthesis. For those practicing the sutrayana and the vajrayana in the Kagyu tradition, what these texts describe can be transformed into living experience. (shrink)

From the Middle Ages onto the 19th century, following the trend set in leper hospitals, madness was to be hidden, secluded in dark places, far away from the mainstream of society. The emergence of the mad person, perceived as inevitably different, allows to make the boundaries between reason and folly, between human and inhuman, irrelevant. If leper hospitals have almost emptied out, if there are much fewer confinement facilities, the values and images related to the leper or the mad person, (...) as well as the sense of exclusion, continue to persist. The purpose of this paper is to show clearly that this matter of exclusion is a serious legacy that could very well apply nowadays to other figures that, each in their own way, symbolize menace or mockery. It applies notably to the aged and the dying who both appear as the opposite of modern society and its values of efficiency, productivity and profitability. The multiplication of places where old people are left to die, and the elderly who are crowded in old folks homes, stand as proof of their exclusion from society. Nevertheless, youth and old age coexist, as well as life and death. If care of others is the trait of a humane civilization, must it be understood that barbarism consists in ignoring its own humanity as well as that of others? In view of such practices of exclusion, policy statements based on recognition of human dignity, where ethical obligation rests on recognition of others and humanism, are rather paradoxical. Is this a paradox or a deadlock; a condition of exclusion or of reconnaissance? (shrink)

This paper deals with the problem of the Pramāṇavārttika’s tenet affiliation and the related question of its final philosophical view within the framework of Buddhist philosophical schools. There are contrasting views and positions on this issue in Tibetan interpretations of the text. Some claim that the Pramāṇavārttika is a text advocating the other-emptiness doctrine, while other scholars argue that it is a Sautrāntika–Vijñānavāda or Vijñānavāda treatise. By contrast, Padma dkar po holds view that it is a (...) Svātantrika-Madhyamaka text, while believing that it explicates the epistemological theories of Sautrāntika and Vijñānavāda. The present paper shows why Padma dkar po does not agree with other Tibetan interpretations on this issue, and why he deals with this problem by attributing a Svātantrika-Madhyamaka affiliation to the Pramāṇavārttika. This paper is divided into three sections. The first section discusses the reason why the Pramāṇavārttika is not a text written from the perspective of the doctrine of other-emptiness. The second section deals with the question of whether it is a Sautrāntika–Vijñānavāda work or a Vijñānavāda text. It will be shown that for Padma dkar po it is none of them. The third and the last section show the reasons why Padma dkar po interprets the Pramāṇavārttika as a text written from the Svātantrika-Madhyamaka perspective. (shrink)

An annotated translation of an essential work of twentieth-century Tibetan Buddhist thought, one that explicates teachings on the Middle Way.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Understand All, Forgive Nothing:The Self-Indictment of Humbert HumbertYuval EylonFor me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.—Vladimir Nabokov, "On a Book Entitled Lolita"Pride is the tendency to overestimate oneself, or underestimate others. In either (...) case, a proud person overestimates his own qualities. Since such a person is inclined to view others as inferior and his own actions as admirable, a proud person is disposed to underestimate the suffering he inflicts on others, or worse—to try and justify it. Curiosity about others, tenderness, and kindness, rarely accompanies pride. Thus, it often conflicts with a charitable view of others, and begets cruelty and callousness. Pride is often accompanied by the desire to be admired by others. This desire gives rise to vanity, or vainglory: a vice that seems destined to give rise to further vices. Aquinas clearly expresses this view in the Summa Theologia:1... the vices which by their very nature are such as to be directed to the end of a certain capital vice, are called its daughters. Now the end of vainglory is the manifestation of one's own excellence, as stated above (A1, 4). To this end a man may tend in two ways. On one way directly, [End Page 158] either by words, and this is boasting, or by deeds, and then if they be true and call for astonishment, it is love of novelties which men are wont to wonder at most; but if they be false, it is hypocrisy. On another way a man strives to make known his excellence by showing that he is not inferior to another, and this in four ways. First, as regards the intellect, and thus we have "obstinacy," by which a man is too much attached to his own opinion, being unwilling to believe one that is better. Secondly, as regards the will, and then we have "discord," whereby a man is unwilling to give up his own will, and agree with others. Thirdly, as regards "speech," and then we have "contention," whereby a man quarrels noisily with another. Fourthly as regards deeds, and this is "disobedience," whereby a man refuses to carry out the command of his superiors.However, whereas pride is an attitude that a person has towards himself, vanity involves a relation with others which pride does not: it emanates from the need to manifest one's excellence to others and gain their approval. Thus, since the proud person does not engage with the opinions of others, his view of himself remains secure. Vanity, on the hand, can prove to be a blessing in disguise: the attempt to gain approval could lead to self-awareness.The pride of Humbert Humbert, the main character and narrator in Nabokov's Lolita, is the pride of an aesthete: intellectually superior, and determined to pursue his appetites. But Humbert is not only proud.2 He is also vain. Vanity leads him to seek the approval of others, and underlines his artistic aspirations. He undertakes the writing of a manuscript, designed to be a masterpiece that vindicates his actions. In his manuscript, Humbert tries to elicit the reader's sympathy, in the conviction that sympathetic identification would lead to acceptance. However, while he successfully challenges and threatens the reader's moral outlook, writing the manuscript has an unintended effect: it shatters Humbert's own convictions and leads to moral transformation. The reason for this transformation is that he recognizes the aesthetic faults of his work, and traces these faults to his own moral faults.The claim that aesthetic considerations can play an important role in moral thinking cannot be taken for granted. First, the threat of an empty aestheticism must be addressed, because it seems that aesthetic considerations and the pursuit of aesthetic ideals compete with moral considerations, rather than complete them. As Humbert illustrates, aesthetic pursuit motivates acts of cruelty and callousness, and aesthetic ideals are often devoid of any moral significance. Second, if aesthetic [End Page 159] considerations... (shrink)