[Buddha-l] Zen War Guilt/Zen and the Sword

[curt]

This is quite a nice little image - a group of academics
sitting around and congratulating themselves on the
inadequacy of their critics. Sound like fun - but not
very productive. What idiot came up with the curriculum for
this seminar devoted to reading such obviously worthless
diatribes? I want to speak to the chair of his or her department!
- Curt

Richard P. Hayes wrote:

>Several years ago I taught a graduate seminar in which we read Said's
>Orientalism, along with many other works dedicated to making academics
>all look like complete fools. (It seems as though the obsessions of
>American academics for the past forty years has been to discredit
>themselves at every opportunity and then to wonder why nobody respects
>them. I see it as part of America's undeclared war on science and
>reason.) Most of what we read was silly beyond belief, but Said's work
>stood out as being silly to a degree I had previously thought
>unimaginable. 
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