I’ve been meaning to catch up on the discussions over Buddhism and objects/relations, Slavoj Zizek’s critique of “Western Buddhism,” and related topics, which have been continuing on Tim Morton’s Ecology Without Nature, Jeffrey Bell’s Aberrant Monism, Skholiast’s Speculum Criticum Traditionis, and elsewhere. I haven’t quite caught up, but here are a few quick notes on some of what’s been said…
1) Michael at Archive Fire rightfully points to the virtues of Jeffrey Bell‘s lucidly articulated point that
“[O]bjects are neither autonomous realities that are independent of all their relations, nor are objects reducible to being nothing other than their relations. If one follows the first approach then one accepts the appearance/reality distinction. There are appearances of objects, their phenomenal noematic correlates as Husserl puts it, or the illusions of maya as the Buddhists would understand it, and then there is the object itself that exceeds and is irreducible to each of these correlates and illusions. If one accepts, by contrast, that objects are nothing other than their relations, their causal dependencies, then an object is indeed undermined and cast asunder by the proliferation of depenencies. Nagarjuna’s middle path of emptiness steers a course between the Scylla and Charybdis of realism and nihilism.”
2) Seeing Tim “come out” as a Buddhist amidst objects and objectologists has been one of the more rewarding blogosphere developments for me of late, since my own efforts to bring Buddhist psychology and metaphysics into philosophical discussion have sometimes left me feeling a little discouraged. It’s great, for instance, to find a new ally who would help in debunking Slavoj Zizek’s underinformed critiques of “Western Buddhism” as the handmaiden of capitalist/consumerist well-being. (My own posts on the topic include this piece and some of the others under the “Buddhism” tag on this blog.) The discouragement has come mostly from offline conversations I’ve had with philosophers, most of which happened some time ago. My hunch is that there’s a growing cadre of young western philosophers for whom orientalist assumptions about non-western traditions just don’t cut it anymore.
3) In response to Peter Gratton’s point that what Zizek is critiquing is the “quietism” of Western Buddhism — one could substitute words like “passivity,” “otherworldliness,” “escapism,” and the like — I would simply point out that Zizek doesn’t seem to have conducted any studies, or even referred to any studies, showing that Western Buddhists are any less socially or politically engaged than anyone else. If anything, I’m pretty sure that research would show, and has shown, that that isn’t the case. (I’m relying on my memory of one or two suggestive surveys that I’ve seen, but I would have to dig for them to support this point any further.) The fact that there have been some heated debates over whether there need be such a thing as “socially engaged Buddhism” tells us both that mainstream Buddhism hasn’t seemed “engaged” enough for some Buddhists — thus the need to articulate a branch that is — and that, for others, Buddhism is inherently engaged and the term is simply redundant. The third possibility is that Buddhism should not be engaged, but the only version of that argument that I’ve seen or heard voiced on more than one occasion is the tactical one that political posturing can be counterproductive for the growth of any religion, and that while Buddhists themselves may be political in the same ways as anyone else, publicly connecting their politics to their Buddhism may not be wise.
4) Finally, Tim’s posts on “Object-Oriented Buddhism” — of which there are now some two dozen and counting — haven’t convinced me that Buddhism is more about objects than about relations. But I find his thinking on this topic both thought-provoking and challenging, which, after all, is what philosophy should be about. And he does seem to tacitly admit that it’s a balancing act, so while he may be balancing in one direction and I in another, the point (like Nagarjuna’s whole philosophical enterprise ultimately) is in the act. I’m happy to observe that act from the sidelines (when Tim, or Nagarjuna, are doing the acting). But once one recognizes that there is only the act — only the play (as Heidegger puts it in his lectures on Heraclitus), the great child of the world-play that plays without why — then the sidelines become just as much fun.
I begin my response here. Nice one Adrian.
I think the response to Zizek that he cited no studies of political activity of WBs misses his point. He is arguing for a Hegelian, Marxist, Leninist end of history, a perfectability of history. Buddhists say history is samsara. That some (maybe a lot of) Buddhists for various reasons are socially active is irrelevant. What matters is the underlying narrative.
Thanks, Tim.
bob – I take your point. For Zizek, it probably is the underlying narrative that’s more important. But at the same time, if he is seeking a perfectability of history, then I don’t think he’s being a good Lacanian. Perhaps his Hegelian Leninism is getting the better of him and trumping his Freudo-Lacanianism.
Hi Adrian,
I am one of those who would generally characterize Buddhism as politically quietistic or passive. There are of course significant exceptions, the Engaged Buddhist movement being an obvious one – but it is a very recent movement, and one that I think makes for a dramatic rupture with Buddhism’s past, at least outside of East Asia.
If you’re looking for an argument for the third possibility, I think one has been made (though often not explicitly) in many premodern Buddhist texts. I summed up the case on my blog here:
http://loveofallwisdom.com/2010/08/on-santidevas-anti-politics/
As I say in the post, I don’t entirely agree with this premodern Buddhist critique of politics, but I note in other posts that I am very sympathetic to it because it has been greatly helpful to me:
http://loveofallwisdom.com/2009/12/living-through-the-00s/
I would humbly recommend that you have a look at these posts to say more about the “third possibility” you mention, which I think is overall the correct one. I do think that Buddhism in general has been much further removed from politics than are Abrahamic traditions. Whether that makes for a defence of Žižek is probably best taken up by others.
Amod – Thanks for your post and for the thoughts you’ve put into these issues (which I’ve noticed before on your blog). Your dissertation looks extremely interesting; I’ve put it on my to-read list. I think you make a good case for Buddhist quietism (anti-politics), which certainly has been part of the Buddhist tradition for a long time.
That said, my point was more about the “western Buddhism” that Zizek disavows. I think that political quietism and anti-politics can be found across many religious traditions: Jesus’s “rendering unto Caesar” didn’t really set the stage for an activist church, and Christian monasticism can be as withdrawn as any. Yet Christianity has been, on many fronts, quite activist, and I think this may be in part a product of the broader social context. Similarly, Buddhism has emphasized its quietistic characteristics within specific social contexts – which, of course, have been different in India, Tibet, Thailand, China, Japan, et al, and now in the West. To the extent that Buddhism is centrally about the “middle way,” it doesn’t reject politics; it just keeps it in perspective and steers clear of ideological ‘drivenness.’
Buddhism’s transformations in recent decades (and what is a tradition except something that continually transforms?), especially as it’s flourished within politically activist contexts – Thich Nhat Hanh’s Vietnam, the Beats’ North America, et al. – point to a malleability that Zizek’s arguments don’t clearly acknowledge. (Well, they acknowledge Buddhism’s malleability in the hands of capitalism, but not anything else.) I take his point to be a debunking of pop-intellectual fashions – for Buddhism, for multiculturalism, for New Age/Neo-Pagan/quantum science, and so on, all of which is a valid point, but limited in its usefulness. Supporting that point requires more empirical research, in any case.