From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Wed Nov 13 2002 - 04:42:36 GMT
Matt,
> We've had repeated confrontations on the role absoluteness in the MoQ (or,
> actually, philosophy in general). This newest interlocution is
> interesting, but in the end I find it no more persuasive then the others.
> The passage from Masao Abe is interesting to meditate on, but as an
> absolute I think it falls into the same problems I've outlined before: its
> either ubiquitous or in in "bad faith."
Well, what makes it interesting is that it is *not* (to us fallen beings)
ubiquitous, but can become so.
For instance, I don't see how you
> can be reminded of anything from "something" that is sufficiently "empty."
> If it is really empty, then its empty.
But the catch is that the emptiness turns out to be "full". As Franklin
Merrell-Wolff puts it, the more ponderable something is, the less 'real' it
is, and vice versa.
This is partly why I don't
> understand how we distinguish emptiness from being/non-being. I would
take
> emptiness to be a point about the lack of essence. But by this, I don't
> see why we need to distinguish it from being/non-being.
Any thing lacks essence, since any thing depends on all other things. But we
can see a thing, and think about it, and how is that possible if it is
empty?
>
> But if I grant this, I don't see how we can have a True emptiness (as the
> pure activity of emptying). This sounds like an essence.
It transcends essence/anti-essence. (I know, I'm just mouthing mystical
platitudes -- I'll try to provide a more coherent response below, but what I
am trying to do here and above is to say that you are trying to force it
into standard philosophical categories, while I see it as trying to make new
ones.)
By this regard,
> the absolute falls into bad faith. As I said in my recent post to Peter,
> an ironist (who, I would assume, can be easily translated into somebody
who
> is in the process of emptying) cannot think his position to be any more of
> an essence, as Truth, then anybody else's.
Irony is needed by the seeker, but s/he who has Awakened is certain. But to
be a seeker, one needs to use one's intellect to keep one's butt on the
meditation cushion, and a faith in an absolute helps, as long as this
absolute is inconceivable.
By the same token, if in the
> pure activity of emptying, then there is no absolute. Its been emptied
out.
>
> Now, meditating on emptiness seems like a useful thing to do. I just
don't
> think it works as an absolute. I don't see why we need a contradiction
(an
> empty absolute or an absolute empty) if we have an alternative that can
> move us beyond it.
If the alternative is Rortyian anti-essentialism, then, first, he is kidding
himself if he claims he has no metaphysics (he holds with Darwinism and with
the mind-brain identity hypothesis, both of which depend on a materialist
metaphysical position, and both of which happen to be wrong :), but
secondly, as Nagarjuna pointed out long ago, it leads one to nihilism.
Anyway, I promised to give a more coherent (or maybe less coherent) account,
so here goes.
I am arguing for an absolute to you, who denies the value of absolutes, but
to someone who proposes a conceivable absolute, I would argue against that.
As Nagarjuna also said, "for he would make a view of emptiness, there is no
hope". Whether one calls emptiness (or Quality) an absolute or not, really
doesn't matter. What matters is trying to understand that anything one
experiences is empty. But being empty does not mean it is an illusion. Only
its self-existence, the thought that it has an essence that makes it
independent of everything else, is an illusion (and where the most important
thing to realize this about is one's self).
Or take the essentialist/anti-essentialist debate, though I prefer the older
terms: universals and particulars. Rorty, in Philosphy and the Mirror of
Nature, takes aim at universals. But he neglects to recognize that without
universals there would be no particulars. Without universals (concepts) we
cannot be aware of a particular. And, without particulars, we cannot have
concepts, since concepts have to be about some set of particulars.
Now, you might say that you would rather drop the whole sterile debate, but
you can only do so by *assuming* that awareness is not relevant to the
question, that is, by assuming that things (particulars) exist *as things*
in the absence of awareness of them. It is awareness that creates things as
things (and also space and time). But one cannot make sense of this within
either a SOM vocabulary or an anti-essentialist vocabulary (since that only
allows particulars). What one needs is the logic of contradictory identity,
which is what a 'doctrine' of emptiness can supply.
If, as is likely, you wonder why any of this should be taken seriously, I
can only reply with the question that got me into it all: how, if we are
spatio-temporal processes, can we be aware of time passing? As I see it,
this question forces a reopening of metaphysics.
- Scott
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