@ bob:
Please recommend away - but best if readily available on-line or cheap.

Am also enjoying this conversation, but not sure how much I can or should do to sustain it right now: combination of distraction + am just reading something relevant to it, but also rather difficult to absorb. I also know that Scott is busy this week, and I'd like to see his take on these subjects.

bob wrote:

The pantheism you describe is going in the wrong direction though.

Before I say anything else, let me first acknowledge that every faith appears different to its adherents than it does to outsiders. The outsiders are always missing some critical nuance or fundament, a fact which can and must be seen in different ways, both from the perspective of the skeptic seeking pure logical consistency, and for the believer who is driven by the perception and intimation of an inner truth, and for whom it is entirely logical and rational to subordinate "mere" logic and rationality to that inner truth.

Also to have better signposts on our wrong path, I should have said "poly- or pantheistic," not just "pantheistic." We should also be clear in this discussion that GWF didn't have much trouble at points throughout his post-Phenomenology career slipping into the language of Christian religion, so we don't need to force Buddhism to "pass" some kind of absolute atheist purity test.

There was a very specific sense in which Hegel strongly approved of Christian doctrines, as "spiritual and sensuous" or "pictorial" representations of philosophic truth. It was a basis for critiquing "Enlightenment" and "Pure Insight" as well as for critiquing naive religion. We've already discussed the meaning of the divinity of Christ in this sense, as the construction of the individual as of infinite worth and mediator of particular and universal. Being the "son of God" would be expressing as a "natural" relationship what for Hegel is a logical relationship between "Spirit" in different aspects.

Such views, naturally, put Hegel on the suspects list for defenders of the old-time religion, a fact that may explain why in later life he tended to stress the defense of religious truth against Pure Insight rather than the dialectical re-interpretation of religion. In the hands of the Young Hegelians, Marx especially, forerunners all of Kojève, the former aspect tended to be emphasized, and used to augment an Enlightenment-style attack on religion that Hegel in fact rigorously criticized.

Yet numerous angles for parallel critiques of Buddhism suggest themselves. In my simpleton's understanding, the annihilation of Self differentiates Buddhism starkly (intentionally and radically?) from Hinduism, which features a pantheon of divine Selves and a panoply of other selves, including high celebration of self as in some passages from the Upanishads I recall. The "deities and bodhissatvas" are spiritual beings who lack being as selves. Reincarnation - which is virtually inconceivable in the Hegelian system - becomes possible because the reincarnated (non-?)self was never defined in terms of its positive existence anyway.

I don't want to lose the thought that karma suggests God or action of a god without a Self, divine action purged of selfhood. As for the disinterest in realizing the Kingdom of God on Earth through collective action, that would be perfectly consistent, since, for Hegel, civil society and the state are where any self becomes real, attains its positive moments, converts its abstract potential for freedom into true freedom. Karma becomes a substitute for the self-conscious collectivity progressing in time that Buddhism, as we've been discussing it, cannot embrace and seems to deny at a radical level.

Karma, from this perspective, stores all of the attributes of divine judgment that the monotheists give to the Lord (i.e., a self-conscious entity above and before humanity) and that the Hegelian puts into history (as the coming to higher self-consciousness which attains its reality in the collective action of individuals).

@ bob:
Well, I'm a little confused by your description as I re-read it closely. No God, but "gods and bodhisattvas." It sounds, in short, more pantheistic than atheistic. Pantheistic religions can be quite promiscuous and inconsistent. Sometimes the gods do whatever they want. Sometimes they're checked by other powers , such as the Fates - whose working sometimes resemble "karma." In some, but not all usages, karma functions like a virtual God, an eternal force of justice and judgment that lacks self-consciousness but still has properties of the divine Likewise, reincarnation and related traditions seem very important to some Buddhists, but not to others. (I once went to a lecture by Xong (sp) Rinpoche many years ago, and it was mostly a long, complicated tale of a person advancing spiritually through multiple incarnations. Very mind-blowing as a story. Had no idea what the point was.)

I'd still like to know more about the relationship between Buddhism and other religions and philosophies - at what point it becomes impossible, if it does, to be both a Buddhist and a Hindu, a Buddhist and a Christian, a Buddhist and a strict materialist-atheist, from either side.

Still not satisfied on this subject, but your final formulation on (neo-)Hegelianism vs Buddhism seems right. Incidentally, Kojève was said to be an incredibly learned man "fluent in Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan dialects as well as in French, German, Russian, English, Hebrew, Latin and classical Greek." I'll see if I can turn up any useful commentaries by him on this question.

bob wrote:

Buddhism is anthropology with no theology.

We may be getting somewhere, but, just for the sake of clarity, anthropology overcoming theology is more Kojève's Hegel than Hegel, in my reading, and would be an essence of Christianity realized inevitably, as exposed and understood via Hegel, than a revolution engineered by Hegel or his system. However, I'm still creeping up on Hegel's knockdown-dragout with Christian theology, so I may have to amend these comments.

As for Buddhism, again, I write as someone whose knowledge and experience of Buddhism is quite limited, but it sometimes seems to me that some Buddhists somewhat passively dispute that the essence of Buddhism is really religious at all: Y'all put it forth as a kind of saffron-flavored phenomenology of mind. Yet at the same time there is a significant stream (the most significant?) of Buddhism that operates with all of the trappings of a religion, including a reliance on "sensuous and spiritual" representations (myths) connected to varieties of mystery, transcendence, and disparate "beyonds."

So, I need a little help here: What role if any do notions of the divine and transcendent play in real existing and historical Buddhism? Is their a Buddhist critique of theology, Hindu or other, or does Buddhism merely bypass or attempt to bypass theology entirely?

Regardless of the answer, the Hegelian issues with Buddhism would remain intact, I think, perhaps taking on more from his critiques of stoicism, cynicism, skepticism, etc. - as philosophical stances on the way to dialectical understandings. Buddhism might therefore in unique ways pre-figure the philosophy of world history that I've been summarizing in these posts and comments, but still lack the elements that would allow it to speak to world history - since it seems to bypass history in somewhat the same way it would seem to bypass theology. The parallel may be more than coincidental.

@ Scott Miller:
An emphasis on grace or parallel concepts isn't shared uniformly among Christians. I think you can spend a lifetime immersed in certain Christian sects and never hear the word in a religious context, though you might hear much testimony about how Jesus came into whoever's life. Often, these testimonials, even if they assert mystery, work out instead as rather materialistic proofs of divine justice: Jesus came to me when he saw I was ready, hit rock-bottom, when I was on the verge of x. "Jesus take the wheel!" Even the evangelical churches that in one way or another trace their way back to very contrary traditions are in this way infected with modern cravings for a god whose decisions can be celebrated as just, or you might say ethical.

Different beliefs about grace, where and how it comes about, and especially whether good works could earn it for a believer, were a major basis for schism and schism again once upon a time, but we're floating high above schism here. Theo-anthropology, in dissolving the separation between God and Man, would seem to obviate it, and likely look for alternative, materialistic or scientific explanations for those experiences.

"Grace" also happens to be the name of a new client whose antique chairs and all-electric motor scooter I've been listing on eBay today. Her mother's name was "Faith." Maiden name "Jolly." Tomorrow or so I ought to list a not-true First Edition of THE FOUNTAINHEAD for her: So, let's see, Faith leads to Grace, something to rest on, something to take you from place to place, something to bring you near enlightenment or the source of everything... but all convertible to money (one hopes).

So I can see why you would bring her up out of the blue like this - and I very much hope you're right about the conditions being favorable.

Am thinking through where this gets us, but, as an aside, I'll make an observation that I'm sure has been made many times before regarding the similarities in the founding stories of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. In each case, we have a founding figure to whom a miraculous event or super-normal connection to the divine is attributed. In each case, his teachings are assembled by followers at some substantial temporal remove from the initial delivery, and the establishment and consolidation of a collective institution to propagate and perpetuate the teaching is marked by intense competition that seems to contradict and undermine the message. Such causes for skepticism may deter some, but for believers they provide a path or paths to proof (including all-important proof to self) of devotion.

One difference between Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and I'll throw in Marxism here as a name for modern irreligious religion, is the relative greater emphasis on collective salvation the closer we come to the present. In Buddhism, it seems to be rather a question mark. In Christianity, it's critical, but still mysterious. In Islam, it's critical and a real work to be accomplished in the world, for God. In Marxism, it's a critical and a real work to be accomplished in the world, with the last connection to divine (supernatural) agency or commandment severed.

@ bob:
Don't worry - didn't take your tone as defensive at all. I'd call it "legitimately protective." I wouldn't expect a devoted Catholic to want to let go of, say, Immaculate Conception, just because CK MacLeod happens to consider it secondary (among other things).

Just exploring the difference between an irreducible content and a secondary content - not "secondary" in actual importance to any particular individual, but secondary relative to a philosophy of world history. To me, the perfects seem like elements within a philosophical discourse, not central mythic elements.

One way of viewing the theory, going back to prior exchanges on "safe from wild animals/non-interfering state," is that a world in which the specific content is not chewed up would be the result of working/fighting in historical time - that IS history, in this view. This is the progressive view of world history that directly contradicts the cyclical view that classical Buddhism shares with other philosophies of the ancient world.

Totally innocent ignorant person's question: If the Noble Eightfold Path can end suffering for the journeyer, why fundamentally/inherently couldn't there be a Noble X-Fold Path for an entire nation, or world, advanced and adopted as such?

@ miguel cervantes:
"the popular movement that wants to change it": hope and change?

Don't really know how your comment is supposed to work within this discussion, other than as a statement of your support for your team of plucky underdogs out to beat the odds.

bob wrote:

he central myth of Buddhism, is that of somebody who leaves society, leaves conventional reality itself (performing a [1]perfectly human feat of meditation), attains enlightenment, then [2]nobody brings it back saying [3]nothing is an end in itself.

I see what you're doing there, but isn't that kind of an initiate's version? Don't take my disagreements the wrong way, as I'm not suggesting there aren't valid questions involved at each point.

[1]isn't "perfectly human" either an oxymoron, a truism and redundancy, or the same as "superhuman"?

[2]"nobody"? Is this a philosophical notion of non-existence of self? Seems like the imposition of esoteric knowledge on common speech.

[3]Not sure, again, why the specific content (or non-content) of the "enlightenment" are integral to understanding the form and function of the myth.

We're using Buddhism here as a stand-in for The East. I'm not saying that Buddhism might not need to be considered separately and on its own terms, but I'm not sure why, within this discussion, the differences between Buddhism and Hinduism, for example, aren't more akin to the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism.

Scott Miller wrote:

Right now, we have a tug-of-war between two confused, reactionary, self-oriented groups, neither of which express liberalism or conservatism effectively.

We have a system of government in which politics reflects, seeks to attract and dominate, and potentially encompasses the entirety of our society, but which is designed to function sub-optimally. Dysfunctionality and distrust permeate the political system and the state.

The most patriotic hate the system in its actuality, and want to destroy its manifestations, but love the idea, which also allows for a love of the nation (the state other than the system) - those are conservatives. (They know how to "offshore" their seemingly contradictory embrace of the security state, placing it outside the "system," possibly the most dangerous thing about them.) The liberals are the ones who defend the system in its actuality, and want to expand and improve it, but hate the system itself.

Each side is condemned to treat the things they hate as objects of ardent desire. So of course they're driven crazy, if they don't start out that way. They take on within themselves the self-contradictions that are integral to the system of which they are a part.

fuster wrote:

I expect philosophy to increase our knowledge of this world and its creatures.

Certainly German philosophy has done that much. At a minimum it has increased our knowledge of German philosophers.

@ Scott Miller:
One question that remains is to what extent Aurobindo, Wilber, or others have thought things through on the level of history and the state, or if they have instead ceded that ground to others - whether because they don't acknowledge the significance of the state or because they tacitly or explicitly acknowledge the Western-Christian models as irresistible.

@ fuster:
Ach - does that mean there was an available correct path that they all missed, for three centuries? Guess it depends on what you expect philosophy to do, or to have done.

@ fuster:
Germans philosophizing isn't so bad. It's Germans doing other things that has at times been on the problematic side.

@ Scott Miller:
Oh, don't mind the frog. He contains multitudes. But maybe you'll set him to ribbiting. Somewhere in a dusty armoire he keeps his set of engraved silver Calvin & Hobbes dueling pistols. He may be cleaning them even as we speak.

@ fuster:
Well, make up your mind - a few days ago you were liking the discussion.

As for Hegel... well, see, you know how it got started, I think... It turned out he was lurking in the b.g. all along, then attacked from several directions at once - Wilson's deep dark secret, Kojève's reply to Strauss (ON TYRANNY having advanced on my reading list as a result of an exchange with bob on neuro-capitalism), the thing that JED (and Adam) couldn't cope with - and then I learned to an extent I had never previously appreciated how much so many of the other thinkers I had appreciated, but also the figures I despised, owed to his approach.

And do you recall how I ended up with Pestritto's book on Wilson, which blames progressivism, esp. Wilson's progressivism and therefore "modern liberalism" on Hegel? Poor feller that I am, I had decided not to purchase Pestritto's WOODROW WILSON AND THE ROOTS OF MODERN LIBERALISM, whose price has been inflated due to Beck and Goldberg having touted it. Instead, I had ordered Pestritto's anthology of Wilson's writings - ESSENTIAL POLITICAL WRITINGS. The book I received had EPW's cover, but contained the text of ROOTS (rather severe printing error). So I read it, and found Wilson's Hegelian understanding of America more intriguing than Pestritto's criticism of it.

So I was fetid to undergo a major encounter with H. Nothing to be done about it. It's far from over. If I had the money and time, I might very well go back to school and do it all "right," in the original. Luckily enough, I don't have the money and time. So we're safe at least from that.