[Buddha-l] Re. scholarship and philosophy

[Franz Metcalf]

Dear Robert,

I fully agree with you when you write,

> No set of facts about Buddhism are free of values, and Buddhist  
> scholars who think they are being scientifically neutral in their  
> treatment of Buddhism are actually preaching descriptive relativism.  
> If objectivity is a property of persons rather than of propositions  
> (as again the Middle Way, and many associated Buddhist insights,  
> would suggest), then greater objectivity can be gained through  
> committed investigation of the philosophical issues raised by  
> Buddhism than by merely describing it from a supposedly neutral  
> standpoint.

In fact, this embrace of what Margaret Mead called "discipline  
subjectivity" is fundamental to my view of the human sciences,  
including religious studies. There is simply no such thing as  
objective scholarship in the humanities. In fact it is in recognizing  
our engagement, our subjectivity, and attending to the data that  
subjectivity provides us that we do our best human science work. In  
other words, the data and insights we get from recognizing and  
analyzing our subjective experience as we do human science are  
precisely the richest and most human we can get. It is precisely in  
this work that human science becomes truly a science--not a collection  
of denials and defenses masquerading as a discipline.

This sort of (self)analysis sounds to me to be close to what you are  
advocating for the study of Buddhism. But when you write,

> As I wrote in my last post about this, scholars of Buddhist Studies  
> in influential positions are preventing good philosophical work  
> being done because of their narrow-minded assumptions about what  
> constitutes Buddhist Studies. It is not a question of advocacy, but  
> of method.

I think you are not accurately describing the field. *Some* scholars  
in Buddhist studies do discourage good work (philosophical or not)  
because they define the field too narrowly. Studying Buddhism  
primarily through the lens of psychology, I have fought against this  
narrowness my whole career. But some other scholars are actively  
promoting self-reflective and philosophically engaged Buddhist studies  
by their grad students. I could name many names here; these professor  
are not hard to find. Several, indeed, are active on this list.

Further, I don't see why you are setting up a dichotomy of advocacy  
and method. I see things as grayer than you, perhaps. Or, better, I  
agree the issue is method: whether we include in our method data  
generated from our personal experience. As I say, this is a  
fundamental question in the human sciences, not merely in the field of  
Buddhist Studies or even Religious Studies.

Glad your larger dialogue on karma is going better,

Franz