[Buddha-l] FW: Symposium on Philosophy as Therapeia: Perspectives from India and Europe

[jkirk]

X-posted as of interest to many on this list.
"Why do both Sextus Empiricus and the Buddha regard the medicine that is
philosophy to be an emetic, purging itself as well as the disease?" 
Well--choose your purge? The term 'emetic' seems to be rather abrasive in
this context. But diahrretic? diuretic? diaphoretic?

Joanna Kirkpatrick
 
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CALL FOR PAPERS

Symposium on Philosophy as Therapeia: Perspectives from India and Europe
2008 Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference, 
University of Liverpool, 19th-21st June 2008

 We are inviting proposals for papers on the topics outlined below.  Please
send abstracts to Clare Carlisle [ Clare.Carlisle at liv.ac.uk ]  by 30th
September 2007.  

 Papers presented at the Symposium will be published by Cambridge University
Press in a volume entitled Philosophy as Therapeia.

 “Empty are the words of that philosopher who offers therapy for no human
suffering. For just as there is no use in medical expertise if it does not
give therapy for bodily diseases, so too there is no use in philosophy if it
does not expel the suffering of the soul.” The Stoic Epicurus (341-271 BCE)
was not the only philosopher to give voice to a conception of philosophy as
a cure or remedy for the maladies of the human soul. Indeed, this has been a
prominent theme throughout the history of philosophy in Europe, and it has
been just as prominent in many of the various traditions of philosophy in
India. The aim of this Royal Institute of Philosophy symposium is to explore
this paradigm or metaphor for the nature of philosophical practice. Our
intention is that the resulting volume, to be published by Cambridge
University Press, will contain the most definitive statement to date of the
scope and limits of the medicinal model. There will be studies of all the
most important uses to which this model have been put by philosophers in the
past (Socratic, Stoics, Epicurus, Sextus Empiricus; early Buddhists,
Mahayana Buddhism; Upanisadic, Nyaya, Epic; Kierkegaard, Spinoza,
Wittgenstein, Derrida), and also analyses of the model from contemporary and
comparative perspectives. 

 Some of the central themes this Symposium will discuss include: 

• What are the “illnesses” that afflict ourselves as subjects, to which
philosophy might be cathartic? 
• What is the content of the medical analogy? Is the medicine a curative, a
tonic, or a prophylactic? 
• Why do both Sextus Empiricus and the Buddha regard the medicine that is
philosophy to be an emetic, purging itself as well as the disease? 
• What is the role of the sage or wise person, for example Yajñavalkya in
the Upanisads or the Stoic Sage? 
• What is the relation between philosophy as treatment and ‘indirect
communication’ (Kierkegaard)?

 
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