[Buddha-l] The arrow: its removal and examination

[Richard Hayes]

On Monday 25 June 2007 02:11, Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:

> Richard, I think you mix up poor old Edmund with his teutonic villagepriest
> pupil Martin Heidegger.

I am referring to Husserl's address in Vienna in 1935 entitled [in English 
translation] "Philosophy and the crisis of humanity". There is a good 
discussion of it, along with a carefully argued rejection of Husserl's claim, 
in J.N. Mohanty's <cite>Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought</cite>, in 
which Mohanty also addresses arguments by Heidegger and Rorty for not using 
the word "philosophy" to discuss what Asians did. It is pretty clear that in 
that address in 1935 Husserl was claiming that true philosophy, like true 
science, is theory for the sake of theory and becomes impure when done for 
any kind of practical end. Obviously, the vast majority of what we call 
philosophy in the West would also fail to be "pure" philosophy by Husserl's 
sense.

Husserl's description of pure philosophy comes close to Charles S. Peirce's 
description of pure science. Mohanty argues that Husserl's notion of 
philosophy was too narrow, and many people have argued that Peirce's notion 
of science was too narrow.

> Martin came at a certain stage of his life under 
> the spell of Hegel, who insisted nothing existed apart from history. So if
> philosophy is a historical phenomenon, like the birth of the Buddha, then
> philosophy must be part of European history and therefore mainly a German
> affair. 

Yes, that is Heidegger's claim. Mohanty addresses it and responds nicely. 
Interestingly enough, many philosophers I know hold a view somewhat like 
Hiedegger's. Their concern is that a philosophy department that becomes too 
diversified loses a core of a shared corpus of texts. Such a department is 
likely to have one clique of professors and students talking about "a series 
of footnotes to Plato" and another clique talking about a series of 
commentaries to the Upanishads, and yet another discussing Kongfuzi and 
Zhuangzi, with no common set of interests for fruitful dialogue. Coming from 
a philosophy department that has courses in Chinese, Indian, Greek and modern 
Western philosophy, I have to admit there is some legitimacy to this concern. 
Everything becomes complicated: what to have on comprehensive exams, which 
languages to required, which courses to require of everyone. One worry (in 
the USA at least) is that if students of Indian philosophy take all the 
Sanskrit they need and read a dozen or so indispensable Indian philosophers, 
they will not have the time to read all the Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, 
Hume, Kant, Hegel and Putnam a person should read if she wants a job teaching 
in a philosophy department.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico