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

[F.K. Lehman (F.K.L. Chit Hlaing)]

Richard Hayes wrote, in part:
>  That's part of why I find Said so
>pathetic. He's just part of this obsession academics have with
>discrediting what they do.

But it is not tat simple in Said's case because, let us remember, he 
had, as part of the whole 'deconstructionist' movement, a particular 
political agenda that was (and is) bent upon discrediting everything 
'Western' as merely and inherently culturally 'hegemonic'. It's a 
lovly instance of the dreadful fallacy of the Sociology of Knowledge 
(Wissenssoziologie), namely, that somehow an adequate test of the 
validity of an intellectual idea can rest simply upon  a critique of 
the political climate in which the author was educated.
-- 
F. K. L. Chit Hlaing
Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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