[Buddha-l] Maybe I was wrong

[Richard Nance]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Richard Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu> wrote
(re: Dan Lustaus's comment that "in too many Buddhist studies programs
serious philosophical training not only is not required or encouraged,
it can be actively discouraged"):

"If what you say is true—that Buddhist studies programs are not
encouraging serious philosophical training—then I would agree that
that is a serious problem."

For what it's worth, this hasn't been my experience. My training was
at UChicago, and my fellow students in the program in the mid-late
1990s (Parimal Patil, Mario D'Amato, Dan Arnold, Jonathan Gold, and
others) were actively encouraged to take up the philosophical
dimensions of Buddhist texts -- and, for that matter, to take courses
in philosophy. I learned -- or like to think that I learned -- a great
deal not only from Paul Griffiths and Matthew Kapstein, but also from
Jim Conant and Arnold Davidson (neither of whom had anything to say
regarding Buddhism).

My cohort at Chicago has since fanned out across academia (most of us
being fortunate enough to land jobs), and I suspect that most of us
are continuing to encourage our own students in this regard. And we're
all fairly young, so the trend is likely to continue. But I hope I'm
right in thinking that the trend doesn't require that one downplay the
findings of philologists or historians in order to philosophize
effectively (not that Dan was suggesting this). Attention to such
findings makes things more difficult when one tries to philosophize,
but one ignores them at one's peril.

Dan remarked:

"The historiographical focus (even philology is on the wane) that has
overtaken many Buddhist studies programs is fine if one wants to enjoy the
city by the veneer of its buildings. If you want to try to get inside the
lives of the inhabitants of the city, philosophy and psychology are
indispensible."

I don't know what is indispensable. But the opposition drawn here may
be misleading. The fact that buildings are equipped with a certain
veneer may suggest something about the "inner lives" of the
inhabitants of that city: namely, that at the time those veneers were
put up, they favored (and could afford) veneers of just that kind.
This might tell us something psychologically (or perhaps even
philosophically) interesting about those people -- or about people in
general. A lot more work would need to be done to ferret out just what
that might be, but I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility.

Richard H. wrote:

> When I bailed out of religious studies, everybody was so busy talking about methodology and closing hermeneutical circles in a post-colonial post-structuralist milieu that nobody was actually looking at religious texts or beliefs or practices anymore.

Not so now. At least not in my experience. Perhaps my experience is
atypical; I don't know.

Best wishes,

R. Nance
Indiana