[Buddha-l] The Buddha, an 'emotional weakling'?

[Dan Lusthaus]

Curt wrote:

>People like Hospers and Alan Bloom
> specialize in anachronistic misrepresentations of classical philosophy
> and literature to promote and support contemporary right-wing
> intellectual fads and fancies.

How did Bloom get dragged into this? What's true about Bloom is that very
left-leaning unreflective self-styled philosophers united in demonizing him
some decades ago, because he addressed contemporary political and ethical
issues using *contemporary* philosophical tools, promoting a thinking
conservative (there is such a thing whether one agrees with that position or
not) perspective. The appropriate response (by a Buddhist criterion) for
those who disagree and deem themselves philosophical would be to engage his
arguments, rather than demonize the man. As it turns out, his translation
(with copious annotations) of Plato's Republic is probably the best -- and
most accurate -- English rendering we have of any of Plato's work. Blows
Jowett, Cornfeld, et al., out of the water. It is only incidental to note
that the folks who attack Bloom would also be very uncomfortable with
Plato's political theories (that is not something that Bloom himself
stressed at all).

As this list illustrated awhile back, the same types who condemn Bloom for
his politics despite his superior scholarship, are likely to be eager to
make excuses for real right-wing 20th century Zen masters, who were real
anti-semitic fascists (in the true, not merely derogatory sense of those
terms). I guess if you shave your head you can get away with it. What's
wrong with that picture?

Dan Lusthaus