A general theory of worldviews based on mādhyamika and process philosophies

Philosophy East and West

Volumn 52, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 207-223

  Kakol, Peter ^a  

^a DEAKIN UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

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EID: 60949581398     PISSN: 00318221     EISSN: 15291898     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2002.0027     Document Type: Review

References (50)

1. - Charles Hartshorne, Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers (New York: State University of New York Press, 1983), pp. 160-161
2. - Sources for this paragraph: Charles Hartshorne, "A Logic of Ultimate Contrasts" and "The Prejudice in Favour of Symmetry," in Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (London: SCM Press, 1970)
3. Nicholas Rescher, Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996)
4. - A. N. Whitehead, Essays in Science and Philosophy (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), p. 121
5. - T.R.V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Mādhyamika System (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), pp. 323-325. Murti argues that both Vedānta and Yogācāra see the absolute as being inclusive of the relative, which is an asymmetrical dependence that is the exact reverse of the one in process thought
6. - My use of the words "full" and "empty" here should not be taken as allusions to plerōma and śūnyatā. I use them here only as heuristic devices to explain the Hegelian dialectic
7. - William James, Selected Writings (London: Orion, 1995), p. 70
8. - Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979)
9. - Ken Wilber sets forth his system in A Brief History of Everything (Melbourne: Hill of Content, 1996) and in Sex, Ecology Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1995). The former is for the general reader whereas the latter is for scholars
10. - Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2d rev. ed. (New York: Continuum, 1997), p. 306
11. - "Though an out-of-date theory can always be viewed as a special case of its up-to-date successor, it must be transformed for the purpose"; in other words, it must be sublated (canceled as whole and preserved as part)
12. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 103
13. See also pp. 77, 92-103, 149, 153, 169, 170-172, 205-206
14. - Andrew P. Tuck, Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship: On the Western Interpretation of Nāgārjuna (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)
15. - Although Mādhyamika is "analytic," this does not mean that it is reductionist in the sense that it reduces all wholes to parts, for its consequential analysis finds no simple and independent parts. That is, there are no absolute parts, just as there are no absolute wholes - very much like the holon theory, which relativizes the categories of part and whole
16. - Richard H. Robinson, Early Mādhyamika in India and China (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976), p. 49
17. - Jay Garfield, trans., The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna's "Mūlamadhyamakakārikā" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 36, 13.8
18. Nāgārjuna uses the word anuśāsana, which means "graded," "progressive," or "fitted." See D. Seyfort Ruegg, "The Uses of the Four Positions of the Catuskoti and the Problem of the Description of Reality in Mahāyāna Buddhism," Journal of Indian Philosophy 5 (1) (1977): 5-6
19. - In the most recent study and translation of Nāgārjuna that I am aware of - Nancy McCagney, Nāgārjuna and the Philosophy of Openness (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997) - it is convincingly argued that the best translation of śūnya(tā) is "open(ness)" or "open-ended(ness)" rather than "empty"/"emptiness," as this best conveys the space-like nature of dependent origination (pratītya samutpāda) as an endless or open-ended regress. Interestingly, McCagney argues that Mādhyamika is a process philosophy that affirms the open-endedness of becoming (pratītya samutpāda), but also warns (as a higher truth) that any attempts to express becoming in words leads to paradox
20. - See Kevin Hart, The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 83-84, 154-155
21. - Ian W. Mabbett, "Nāgārjuna and Deconstruction," Philosophy East and West 45 (2) (April 1995): 203-225
22. Robert Magliola, Derrida on the Mend (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1984)
23. David Loy, "The Cloture of Deconstruction: A Mahāyāna Critique of Derrida," International Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1 ) (1987): 59-80
24. David Loy, "The Deconstruction of Buddhism," in H. Coward and T. Foshay, eds., Derrida and Negative Theology (New York: State University of New York Press, 1992)
25. -Jacques Derrida, "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," in Coward and Foshay, Derrida and Negative Theology
26. - Jacques Derrida, "Letter to a Japanese," in P. Kamuf, ed., A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991)
27. - In other words, process thought and Hegel emphasize the aspect of the past that can be represented (the presence of the past), whereas Derrida and Mādhyamika emphasize the aspect of the past that cannot be represented (the "always already" that was never present)
28. -Jacques Derrida, "Différance," in Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 19-20 n. 23
29. and "From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve," in Writing and Difference (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978)
30. By "unconditioned" I mean the negation of " conditioned"; to be exact, it is neither conditioned nor unconditioned
31. - See Derrida, "Letter to a Japanese Friend," pp. 271-273, where it is pointed out that deconstruction does not exclude reconstruction. In fact, the French word "déconstruction" means both deconstruction and reconstruction
32. - See Peter Fenner, Reasoning into Reality: A Systems-Cybernetic Model and Therapeutic Interpretation of Buddhist Middle Path Analysis (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995), which describes Mādhyamika analysis as the gradual removal of reified concepts from one's worldview. In my view, such change within a worldview can, due to the principle that quantitative change eventually issues in qualitative change, result in the arising of a new worldview that inclusively transcends the previous one
33. - Hence, process thought is "speculative" in the sense that it reflects or describes the dialectical nature of thought and reality that it experiences; however, unlike Hegel, process thinkers also engage in the dialectic and do not think that speculation can only arise, as Hegel thinks, at the end of the dialectical process of history. Indeed, for process thought, there is no end to the dialectic; rather, the speculative description of the dialectic of history is an ahistorical product that can in principle be accessed at any point in the historical process
34. - One difficulty in harmonizing process and Mädhyamika is in relation to the question of theism, for there seems to be a conflict between process panentheism and Mādhyamika a/theism. There is no space to deal with this here, so I will merely make the observation that panentheism functions on the conventional level and is thus similar to a Buddha-Bodhisattva, whereas a/theism functions on the ultimate level and is comparable to Whitehead's "creativity."
35. - His most recent formulation of these seven dimensions is found in Ninian Smart, Dimensions of the Sacred ( London: Fontana Press, 1997)
36. They are experiential/emotional, material/artistic, mythic/narrative, doctrinal/philosophical, organizational/social, ethical/legal, and ritual/practical. In my view these reduce to the three aspects of the mind, namely sensible, mental, and intentional. There are other worldview "universals," according to Michael Kearney, such as self, other, relationship, classification, causality, time, space, etc. See his World View (Novato, California: Chandler and Sharp, 1984), p. 3
37. - Negative-open views are, strictly speaking, neither views nor non-views. I agree with Nolan Pliny Jacobson when he says that "Buddhism is not fundamentally another system of thought; it is a way of feeling that which holds the universe together, experiencing in the fleeting now the creativity that sustains a world." See Buddhism and the Contemporary World: Change and Self-Correction (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983), p. 55
38. - See Magliola, Derrida on the Mend, and David A. Dilworth, Philosophy in World Perspective: A Comparative Hermeneutic of the Major Theories (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). However, Dilworth sees both the dialectical and paradoxical as views that are both sublated within the synoptic view. I think that the synoptic is not a view but the realization of the nondual complementarity between view (dialectic, which includes the logical sub-view) and non-view (paradox) - somewhat like Nāgārjuna's realization of the equivalence of nirvāna and samsāra
39. - In Hegelian terms, it is a speculative view that is aware of the dialectic of views. However, it is not a meta-view above worldviews but a development in the history of worldviews that gives rise to dialectical worldviews that are conscious of the dialectic and their place in it
40. - See Karl R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), pp. 76-77, where Popper distinguishes between the totalistic holism of historicists and the gestalt-like holism of science. Popper defines a historicist as someone who claims to have discovered a deterministic law of historical evolution and uses this to predict, or even engineer, the future. My theory of worldviews, however, makes no such claims as it is based on the notion of "creative synthesis."
41. - Raimundo Panikkar, "Aporias in the Comparative Philosophy of Religion," Man and World 13 (1980): 357-383. While Panikkar is skeptical of the possibility of a theory of worldviews and a philosophy of religion, he does believe that a "dialogal philosophy" can lead to the "mutual fecundation" (p. 375) of worldviews. Cf. John B. Cobb, Jr., Beyond Dialogue: Towards a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982)
42. - If this is so, then conversation becomes merely a tool for the imperialistic assimilation of other language-games. The American cultural imperialism implicit in Richard Rorty's views comes to mind in this connection
43. - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), par. 18
44. - Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), par. 96
45. - Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, pars. 200, 243
46. - Wittgenstein, On Certainty, par. 286
47. - This has important implications for Wilfred Cantwell Smith's theory that one's interpretation of a worldview is only valid if confirmed by adherents of the worldview itself. If someone who only sees a rabbit draws the duck-rabbit figure for me, I may see a duck and draw this for her; but she will see a rabbit and say, "yes, you see what I see." It seems that the issue can only be resolved from the point of view of someone who has inclusively transcended both. Dialogue between equals can solve nothing in this case
48. - W. V. Quine, "Ontological Relativity," in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), pp. 50-51
49. - Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967), pp. 162-163
50. - John P. Keenan, "Emptiness as a Paradigm for Understanding World Religions," Buddhist-Christian Studies 16 (1996): 60