[Buddha-l] neuroscience: neural plasticity

[Richard Hayes]

On Wednesday 30 May 2007 23:41, Joy Vriens wrote:

> I never liked the term until I read Pierre Hadot's Exercices spirituels et
> philosophie antique, who convinced me that for lack of a better term
> covering everything covered by "spiritual" we would have to resign
> ourselves to seeing and using it.

I agree. Hadot almost succeeded in converting me to the position that the 
term "spiritual" may have a use after all. This past semester I taught a 
course entitled "Comparative philosophy," and Hadot was one of our key texts. 
We read several authors who have discussed the pros and cons of comparing 
thinkers of one tradition with thinkers from another (Matilal, Halbfass, 
Kupperman, Mueller, Mohanty), and then we tried our hand at practicing 
comparative philosophy by reading Marcus Aurelius, Xunzi and Santideva. It 
was quite a lively class. As always happens to me when I teach a class, I 
ended up having no idea at all where I stand on any of the key issues. All I 
know is that I loved everything we read (especially Hadot) and would feel the 
universe a poorer place if any of these authors had not been part of it.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico