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

[curt]

Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:
> ..... 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. 

Well, let's see. The Germans were nuts for the Greeks (at least back 
then), and one must allow the Greeks to be philosophers, mustn't one? 
But then we are left with that old chestnut of the "Greek miracle" - the 
idea that the Greeks pulled civilization (especially philosophy) out of 
their arses. But if the Greeks, as the Greeks themselves believed, 
learned their philosophy from people to their South and East then it 
requires a greater amount of speculation to insist on a cultural 
"Chinese wall" between Greece and India than it does to suppose a great 
deal of cultural, including intellectual, commonality. Therefore, the 
idea that "philosophy is an historical phenomenon" just as easily 
supports the contention that "Greeks" and "Indians" both did (and at 
least in the case of the Indians, still do) "philosophy" - something 
that Greek philosophers explicitly and emphatically believed themselves. 
There was, of course, even a whole school named after a guy who went to 
India, studied philosophy, and came back very sceptical.

> There's a rather sad text by Martin called 'Conversation with a 
> Japanese' wherein he forbids a Japanese professor to use the word 
> 'esthetics' because Japanese people have no part of the Greek heritage 
> so they cannot know the true meaning of the word. 

Just to reiterate - any argument that bases the supposed cultural 
uniqueness of the West on our "Greek" heritage leaks like a sieve - and, 
at least from the standpoint of real history as opposed to ethnocentric 
myth-making (the "greek miracle"), actually argues for strong ties 
between european and "eastern" cultures.

> Edmund was a secret meditator, because his phenomenological reductions 
> turned into a kind of vipassana, excluding all historical and other 
> prapañca. He wrote not about pure philosophy let alone pure science 
> but about pure phenomenology.

"Secret meditation" sounds like a very good idea.

- Curt