[Buddha-l] Withdrawal of the senses

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

curt schreef:
> Dan Lusthaus wrote:
>> Eric,
>>
>> I am leaving for a conference (AAR) tomorrow morning, so I don't have 
>> time
>> at present for a protracted debunking of the perennial philosophy
>> appropriation of asian thought.
>>
>>   
>
No need for a perennial philosphy, Dan. We would only slip back into some kind of metaphysics, some theory about a universal timeless underlying truth. However, Pierre Hadot writes in his 'Qu'est que la Philosophie Antique' (What's antique philosophy) that he hated comparisons, but that some friends at the Sinological department attended him on similarities between the relation Stoa-Epicure on one hand and Confucius-Zhuangzi on the other. He was inclined to take that serious. I think this makes sense because nature and politics are in detail different, but as a structure comparable in many situations. 
This doesn't mean that they are identical, but that you can compare and categorize them. The point is that on one hand we are determined by history and all our histories are different, but this shouldn't keep us from understanding each other more or less. We even can understand texts from other era and cultures, because we share parts of the world and we have the same kind of body. And your body is not history or culture, no matter how many tattoos and other cultural decorations you have put on it. Heidegger was very consequent in his historicism and denied the possibility of Chinese or Indian philosophy, just as there never could be a Chinese Battle of Waterloo. I think this is not a very interesting position and that we should take the middle way: be open for similarities and differences. Interpreting history from a historical point of view is circular anyway.
 
Erik


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