[Buddha-l] Emptiness and being unable to imagine dying [confused]

[lemmett at talk21.com]

>My undergrad lecturer for continental philosophy complained to me that its philosophers did not define terms and were a bit vague, rather than him saying what it eventually seemed to be to me: that they did not really argue for their points except perhaps with vague aesthetic notions. I think that is done more in an activist way than in the philosophical spirit of writers like Nietzsche, Kant and Marx who is to blame for everything. 
>It's not so interesting but I bottled out of agreeing with the Tractatus because the religious finale seemed to lack doubt *and* faith. Merleau-Ponty, I think at least he noticed the intersubjective side of that kind of rhetorical dialogue.
>>>I myself did read Heidegger and Husserl, and many other continentals, 
but also the writers you mention above. I had to during my study, 
because at the time you could not get away with just studying only a 
group philosophers or a movement. Later I wanted to understand what they 
were after. I must say I found it very boring most of the time, too 
simplistic.

>Jim Peavler's surely right that life is to be lived and understood. It's occasionally nice for me to think that I might understand something that can't be lived, because I'm not going to just "live" it, right? I should probably resist suggesting that this is analogous to practical ethics, about cognition and application of the idea of life.
>All I really want to add is that Ziporyn's book on Tiantai - Value Paradox - covers Chih-I's fourfold classification of the truths quite nicely. I'm now perplexed about the sudden-perfect / gradual-perfect distinction but it's pretty irrelevant to anything.
>Kind thanks