[Buddha-l] Maybe I was wrong

[Dan Lusthaus]

Franz,

> Am I so out of touch that I missed it when my side won this war?

For more than two decades the social sciences approach has dominated not 
only Buddhist studies, but religious studies in general. Do I have to 
document the outright hostility that has been shown to disciplines like 
philosophy for being the activities of dead white men (nevermind that 
Indians, Chinese, Tibetans, etc. are not white...)? It's not just Schopen, 
whose work has been important. As I mentioned, the tide is starting to turn 
back.

Let me put the point directly. Who can name a graduate program in Buddhist 
Studies that offers a well-designed concentration in philosophy aside from 
U. Chicago today? I am not talking about a lone faculty member or two, but a 
program whose prerequisites, training, etc. are designed to foster 
excellence in philosophy (and psychology, etc.) as a methodology for 
*studying* Buddhism, not just a convenience for "translating" Buddhist 
thought into digestable morsels for modern consumption. Using philosophy 
(and not just the claustrophobic concerns of analytic phil.) to think 
Buddhistically, to think along with the Buddhist philosophers, as they 
thought, how they thought, since Buddhist philosophers were philosophers and 
not historians of ideas nor philologists (even when they did Grammar, they 
were doing philosophy, not philology).

Philosophy and psychology were parts of the same discipline until very 
recent times (Aristotle, Spinoza, Hume, etc. were major players in what 
developed into modern psychology), which is why I coined a term long ago --  
psychosophy -- to label what Buddhist thinkers were up to.

As for veneer, several people seemed to assume that I was giving the term a 
negative connotation. I'm not. When visiting those charming European cities 
that preserve medieval inner cities, it is the reamining (and maintained) 
veneer of the old buildings that enchants. But most of those buildings --  
having now acquired plumbing, electricity, even elevators -- are now just 
veneers, not domiciles for living the way someone half a millennium or more 
lived. Archaeologists will tell us that the best situation is when they not 
only find artifacts, but have related texts which provide insight into what 
those artifacts meant in their original context, how they were used, etc. It 
saves one from lots of questionable speculation. The artifacts also shed 
light on the texts. We gain insight into what Buddhists thought of Vajrapani 
by finding pictorial, etc., depictions (and the artistic depictions are 
better understood alongside the relevant texts). Those who don't engage in 
philosophical debate will tend to misconstrue the writings of those who do 
as doxographical systems (or mere polemics), rather than purposive sparring. 
Both are good and useful, and can shed light on each other, but there are 
certain things accessible almost exclusively to fellow philosophers, and to 
the extent that doing such philosophy was precisely the reason that those 
texts were written in the first place, neglecting to train in that way is a 
handicap -- or worse. Ignorance (avidya) and misconceptions (moha) are root 
causal problems.

Dan