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Full-Text Articles in Buddhist Studies
Caducitas And Śūnyatā: A Neoplatonist Reading Of Nāgārjuna, Fabien Muller
Caducitas And Śūnyatā: A Neoplatonist Reading Of Nāgārjuna, Fabien Muller
Comparative Philosophy
In this paper I am addressing the question whether Nāgārjuna’s doctrine should be understood as a theory that describes reality itself (ontology) or as a theory of our relation to reality (epistemological, logical, psychological, etc.). To answer this question, I propose to compare Nāgārjuna’s concept of emptiness to that of ‘caducity’, a key element in the ontology of Renaissance Neoplatonist philosopher Francisco Patrizi. By showing that these concepts are similar, I argue that Nāgārjuna’s standpoint can be considered as that of ontology.
From Post-Pantheism To Trans-Materialism: D. T. Suzuki And New Buddhism, James Mark Shields
From Post-Pantheism To Trans-Materialism: D. T. Suzuki And New Buddhism, James Mark Shields
Faculty Contributions to Books
In modern Western thought, pantheism remains a powerful if controversial undercurrent. Recent re-evaluations of the work of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) point to pantheism’s radical implications for metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. Pantheism (Jp. hanshinron 汎神論) also has significant valence within Japanese Buddhist modernism, particularly in the work of scholars and lay activists who articulated the outlines of a New Buddhism (shin bukkyō 新仏教) from the 1880s through the 1940s. For these thinkers, pantheism provided a “middle way” between materialism and idealism, as well as between theism and atheism. In the postwar period, lapsed radical turned Buddhist Sano Manabu …
One Or None? Truth And Self-Transformation For Śaṅkara And Kamalaśīla, David Fiordalis
One Or None? Truth And Self-Transformation For Śaṅkara And Kamalaśīla, David Fiordalis
Faculty Publications
This article explores how two influential 8th-century Indian philosophers, Śaṅkara and Kamalaśīla, treat the threefold scheme of learning, reasoning, and meditation in their spiritual path philosophies. They have differing institutional and ontological commitments: the former, who helped establish Advaita Vedānta as the religious philosophy of an elite Hindu monastic tradition, affirms an unchanging “self” (ātman) identical to the “world-essence” (brahman); the latter, who played a significant role in the development of Buddhist monasticism in Tibet, denies both self and essence. Yet, they share a concern with questions of truth and the means by which someone could gain access to it, …
On What Is Real In Nāgārjuna’S “Middle Way”, Richard H. Jones
On What Is Real In Nāgārjuna’S “Middle Way”, Richard H. Jones
Comparative Philosophy
It has become popular to portray the Buddhist Nāgārjuna as an ontological nihilist, i.e., that he denies the reality of entities and does not postulate any further reality. A reading of his works does show that he rejects the self-existent reality of entities, but it also shows that he accepts a "that-ness" (tattva) to phenomenal reality that survives the denial of any distinct, self-contained entities. Thus, he is not a nihilist concerning what is real in the final analysis of things. How Nāgārjuna’s positions impact contemporary discussions of ontological nihilism and deflationism in Western philosophy is also discussed.