[Buddha-l] Re: Facts, Values, and a book a year... [was Hindu Fundamentalism]

[Richard Nance]

On 8/8/05, StormyTet at aol.com <StormyTet at aol.com> wrote:

A couple of points on this discussion

> RH:That is an assertion of values. Value claims are neither true nor false.
> They are simply fancy ways of saying "Hurray!" and "Booo!" You can
> hurray whatever you like, but you should be aware that you re doing
> nothing more than making noise.

Good lord, Richard, you sound like Ayer!  I won't belabor the
fact/value distinction here; to do so would send the thread spiralling
even more off-topic than it already is (actually, it's gone off-topic
twice: once into Hindu Fundamentalism, a second time into Ken Wilber).
However, for anyone interested in reading an accessible and very smart
discussion of the fact/value divide, see Hilary Putnam's "The Collapse
of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays." It won't take you a
year to get through, either.  But on that topic:

> RH:As for reading, I am more inclined to admire a person who has the
> patience to take a year or so to read a book. Reading seven books a day
> is just silly. 
>  
> ST: Now this idea gave me pause. I spend days doing little but reading.
> Perhaps that is silly too. 

I think that what Richard means here, Stormy, is not that you
shouldn't spend your days reading, but that you should take the time
to think seriously and carefully about the implications of what you
have read. That's almost impossible to do when one is aiming for
quantity, and finishing things as quickly as possible.

While I was at the University of Chicago, I participated for several
years in a Wittgenstein reading group. It was started by Leonard
Linsky; by the time I graduated, James Conant had come on board as
well. In one of its early incarnations, the group met once a week, on
Friday afternoons, for three hours. Our task was to read the
*Philosophical Investigations*, taking the time to really work through
what it was saying. After a year, we had completed the first ten pages
of the book, and I had learned a great deal about what it takes to
read philosophy. That's the most extreme case I know, but examples
could be multiplied. A course on Kant's *Critique of Pure Reason*
covered approximately 100 pages; a course devoted Heidegger's *Being
and Time* covered less than half the book; a course called "Readings
in Yogaacaara Buddhism" covered the equivalent of perhaps fifteen
pages of Sanskrit (and we were relying on translations). Each of these
courses lasted ten weeks; each was paced very well.

There's something to be said for reading widely and voraciously, and
something else to be said for reading extremely carefully. It's my
impression that in general, the latter is--and has historically
been--privileged over the former within Buddhist tradition (though the
former isn't entirely dispensed with). In the course of your reading,
you might want to have a look at Georges Dreyfus' "The Sound of Two
Hands Clapping," and Paul Griffiths' "Religious Reading" -- both offer
a wealth of information on this topic.

Best wishes,

R. Nance