Looking for coherent authorship
On my dissertation committee, Janet Gyatso always had perceptive comments to make, usually coming from many different directions. The one line of criticism that she pursued throughout the dissertation...
View ArticleAcademia’s details
A decade or so ago, in David Hall‘s graduate class on method and theory in the study of religion, Hall asked the class why the study of religion in recent years had focused so much on particular...
View ArticleThe importance of assumptions
Michael Reidy and the recently returned Thill raise an important point in response to last week’s post, on the assessment of philosophy from analytic and “continental” perspectives. I argued that...
View ArticleRelativism and reason (II)
In last week’s post I began responding to my friend Momin Malik, who had defended relativism against ideas of universal truth. Momin had argued for relativism based on the need for internal...
View ArticleContinental intimacy, analytic integrity
The distinction between intimacy and integrity seems to me likely the most enduring of the perennial questions. Thomas Kasulis coined it as a way of understanding the difference between modern Japan...
View ArticleThe coherence of composite texts
A while ago I discussed how Janet Gyatso had objected to my approach of assuming authorial coherence and single authorship in my dissertation on Śāntideva (and in other works). I said there that...
View ArticleThe appeal of the unappealing
As I noted last week, I owe a real intellectual debt to Chris Fraser‘s work for helping me figure out Zhuangzi – or the Zhuangzi, as Fraser would say. His interpretations have been of incredible value...
View ArticleHow a sensible person could hold the radical Zhuangist view
Last week I critiqued Chris Fraser‘s readiness to discard the “implausible, unappealing radical” view that he found in the Zhuangzi. My reflections there were general and methodological. Here I want to...
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The appeal of Marcionite interpretation
For Augustine, evil is nothing more than the absence of good, as we would say cold is no more than the absence of heat. Not every contemporary Christian follows this idea exactly, but the majority...
View ArticleUnderstanding understanding
I have recently begun the exciting opportunity to teach a course in Indian philosophy in Boston University’s philosophy department. Thinking about and designing the course, I had the great opportunity...
View ArticleThe double standard of misinterpretation
I have recently welcomed the corrective force of books like Andrew Nicholson’s Unifying Hinduism, which remind us that modern appropriations of Indian tradition have their own continuity with the...
View ArticleŚabda and the sciences
One of the key debates in Indian philosophy is what counts as a pramāṇa: an instrument of knowledge, a “reliable warrant”, a means of knowledge reliable enough that one can be reasonably confident to...
View ArticlePhilological and philosophical approaches to the Zhuangzi
Last year, I made several posts criticizing Chris Fraser‘s interpretation of the Zhuangzi, supported by a previous post on interpretive method. Fraser was kind enough to reply at length to my posts by...
View ArticleReading the Zhuangzi as a composite text
This week’s post follows the previous one and should be taken in the same light: namely, that while my views expressed in it have developed in response to a thoughtful and valuable exchange between me...
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