[Buddha-l] Scholarship and philosophy

[Franz Metcalf]

Dear Robert,

I've appreciated the energy with which you are engaging the list. Do  
please keep going, but also do please give us the benefit of the doubt  
in evaluating our seriousness. I think you're encountering one kind of  
list culture or list rhetoric that has evolved over years of  
interaction. It's good to try to learn our ways a bit and engage us  
using those ways. I say "good," but I realize I mean that only in the  
sense of efficacious. Sounds like my old ethnographic training has  
stayed with me. We are a little microculture, aren't we, Joanna? I'm  
sure anthropologists have done plenty of writing on the subject of  
internet communities and discussion lists.

Randall Jones and Richard Nance have throughtfully replied to your  
opposition of the practices of scholarship and philosophy. I want to  
add one more thought. You suggested we

> compare Buddhist Studies to Christian theology.

This is, in my view, a category error, but one I often fall into,  
myself, as it grows from the particular historical circumstances of  
"Buddhist Studies" in the West. It is natural and appropriate that the  
academic pursuit of "Buddhist Studies" will differ from the apologetic  
pursuit of Christian Theology. Their goals and methods are  
incommensurable, at least in their purest forms. It seems to me you  
are wanting Buddhist scholars to act as Buddhist practitioners; this  
is the position of Christian Theologians. But if Buddhist Studies  
folks will not take this role, who *will*? Who will be the Buddhist  
"scholar-practitioners" (a term coined by the scholar-practitioner  
Charles Prebish)? Very provocative question.

You are right to say such a hybrid mode of scholarly practice is not  
normally encouraged in Western Buddhist academia. Yet things are  
thawing out, boundaries are softening. We shall see how studies evolve  
as old institutions pass away and new ones arise.

In the meantime, you might enjoy reading last year's volume of the  
Journal of Global Buddhism, which wrestles with just these questions. <http://www.globalbuddhism.org/contents9.html 
 >

Cheers,

Franz