From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Fri Nov 22 2002 - 02:14:42 GMT
Matt,
----- Original Message -----
[Scott prev:]> >So now I better back off a bit on calling Emptiness
"absolute", since that
> >is a very un-Nagarjuna-ish thing to do. I'll weasel out with the usual:
it
> >is wrong to say that Emptiness (or anything, like Quality) is absolute.
It
> >is wrong to say it is not absolute. It is wrong to say it is both, or
> >neither.
>
[Matt:]> See now, I think I can agree with that. I take the point of saying
> is/isn't/both/neither to be an antiessentialist point. Being ironic about
> everything, up to and including ironism. I had a feeling, at root, we
were
> saying the same thing.
Well, we can't allow that to happen, or things will get very boring :-). So
I will point out that to be "anti-essentialist" is to say "isn't", but the
tetralemma says "You can't say 'isn't'" (along with the rest).
On being ironic about ironism, definitely (absolutely?). A long time ago I
offered an analogy on this to a scene from Yellow Submarine. There is a
sucker monster that sucks up everything around it, including the submarine
(SOT, modernist stage). It then sucks up the backdrop (post-modernist,
anti-foundationalist stage). There being nothing else, it sucks up itself
(Emptiness ?), and out pops the submarine, but now in a Land of Imagination.
>
> Now, if only I could convince you that Rorty doesn't lead to
nihilism...;-)
I responded to this in my Post that Disappeared (which seems to be happening
to others as well) as follows:
I should say: he doesn't fall into nihilism as long as he doesn't ask
whether
what he is doing is "fundamentally" worth doing. If he does ask (but of
course
he isn't likely to), then if he keeps with his secularism, he has nowhere to
go but nihilism. Now the ironic absolutist, on the other hand, will say: I
can't really understand in what sense anything I do is fundamentally worth
doing, but I have faith that if I don't give up, and don't stop asking the
question, and take advice from those who do understand, then (fill in the
transcendence of choice).
- Scott
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