{"id":1352,"date":"2010-10-01T19:21:02","date_gmt":"2010-10-02T00:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/10\/01\/philosophy-salvation-the-world\/"},"modified":"2010-10-01T19:21:02","modified_gmt":"2010-10-02T00:21:02","slug":"philosophy-salvation-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/10\/01\/philosophy-salvation-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"philosophy, salvation, & the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fabio Gironi has a very perceptive response<\/a> to the recent posts at Larval Subjects<\/a>, Ecology Without Nature<\/a>, and here, over Buddhism, objects, and relations.<\/p>\n

I like his admission that “I have never been \u2013 nor [do] I plan to be\u2014a practicing Buddhist or a \u2018believer\u2019 of any sort, but the encounter with N\u0101g\u0101rjuna\u2019s philosophy was probably the most exciting intellectual encounter of my career.”<\/p>\n

There is something wildly exciting about reading Nagarjuna, even if it may be confusing if not accompanied by a reliable guide (and even if<\/em> accompanied). My own understanding of Nagarjuna comes largely filtered through his more recent anglophone translators and interpreters: Garfield, Westerhoff, and others, and I’m sure Fabio knows his Nagarjuna better than I do. But I wonder if he sells himself short by shying away from being a “‘believer’ of any sort.” I know what he means here, but I would want to raise Deleuze’s “belief in this world” as an option into an otherwise too staid picture of ‘belief.’<\/p>\n


\nToward the end of his post, Fabio writes:<\/p>\n

\n

“Once we change the main existential concerns (the 4 Noble Truths) and replace them with a Greek vocabulary (theoria, eudaimonia, phronesis\u2026<\/em>) we could ask: was it really<\/em> any different with western metaphysics? (and I do not only refer to the Ancient\/Medieval world: to what extent did Whitehead have pressing soteriological concerns? Or Heidegger for that matter\u2026)”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s a great question, and I think it would help if we thought of this soteriological dimension — philosophy as salvation — not in the standard sense of a salvation or liberation from<\/em> the world (which popular renditions of Buddhism reiterate all too often) but in the sense of a moral commitment toward<\/em> the world, a salvation of moments<\/em> by directing them toward their<\/em> future and not toward a mere dispersion into nothingness. This is the Deleuzian commitment to the world, and to the becoming of every moment, which is rooted in the understanding that it is the only<\/em> world (and the only moment, for the moment); we’ve just sold it short by not perceiving it adequately. That sounds rather un-Buddhist, but so be it…<\/p>\n

Alternatively, it’s not philosophy itself that is salvific, but rather philosophy is a tool toward a practice<\/em> that is salvific, a practice that transforms, and that does this by transforming our perception of the world. This is where Buddhism has developed some of the sharpest diamond-vajra-sceptre-tools available in the world’s philosophical-soteriological toolbox.<\/p>\n

Fabio writes:<\/p>\n

\n

“The fact that ultimately phenomena are devoid of self, is not a reason for negating the world. On the contrary, prat\u012btyasamutp\u0101da<\/em>, the law of co-dependant origination that regulates it, is possible because of the (conventional) existence of essenceless phenomena. The point here is that this coherence is a purely conventional one: the only possible frame of reference is one that recognizes the dynamic and unstable nature of things. Things, selfhood and words can acquire any meaning at all only if considered as a part of a conventionally existent, groundless, essenceless whole. Every effect refers back\u2014and owes its (conventional) existence\u2014to the totality of its conditions. There is no ultimate reality, no identifiable self-present ego, no absolute word. What exists (conventionally) is what is present, what is present is what is conditioned. There is no possibility to freeze-frame this flow to identify any singularity. Any attempt in this direction is misleading.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I recommend reading the whole post. I’m off to Spain in a few days and will probably not be able to participate much if this were to flare up into a OO-Buddhist “event” (along the lines of the Derrida “wars” and process-relation debates, etc.). But I suspect it won’t, since Buddhist philosophy just isn’t as well known to the philosoblogosphere. But it should be, and I’m glad to see a few inroads being made here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fabio Gironi has a very perceptive response to the recent posts at Larval Subjects, Ecology Without Nature, and here, over Buddhism, objects, and relations. I like his admission that “I have never been \u2013 nor [do] I plan to be\u2014a practicing Buddhist or a \u2018believer\u2019 of any sort, but the encounter with N\u0101g\u0101rjuna\u2019s philosophy was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688977,4422,691847],"tags":[4417,16806],"class_list":["post-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","category-process-relational-thought","category-religion-spirituality","tag-buddhism","tag-object-oriented-philosophy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-lO","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1154,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/11\/14\/nagarjuna-ecophilosophy-the-practice-of-liberation\/","url_meta":{"origin":1352,"position":0},"title":"Nagarjuna, ecophilosophy, & the practice of liberation","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"John Clark\u2019s recent article in Capitalism Nature Socialism, \u201cOn being none with nature: Nagarjuna and the ecology of emptiness,\u201d has gotten my neurons firing in a productive way. Clark is a political philosopher whose book The Anarchist Moment had long ago excited me about the prospect of melding together a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"QCI%20045.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/11\/QCI-045.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1155,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/11\/14\/nagarjuna-ecophilosophy-pt-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1352,"position":1},"title":"Nagarjuna & ecophilosophy, pt. 2","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Continuing from the previous post... \"For Buddhism,\" Clark writes, \"the negative path of the destruction of illusion is inseparably linked to the positive path of an open, awakened, and compassionate response to a living, non-objectifiable reality, the 'nature that is no nature.'\u2019\u2019 Clark perceptively identifies what I consider to be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"QCI%20031.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/11\/QCI-031.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1008,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2008\/12\/01\/immanence\/","url_meta":{"origin":1352,"position":2},"title":"Immanence","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Immanence suggests co-implication, the implication of one thing in another (spirit in matter, mind in body, movement in repose, humans in nature), nonduality, the vitality of becoming rather than the stasis of being, the sufficiency of life in its generative relational flux, its vessels of light scattered for our gathering\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1249,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/04\/23\/cataclysmic-eventology\/","url_meta":{"origin":1352,"position":3},"title":"cataclysmic eventology","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Hiroshima mon amour (dir. Alain Resnais, 1959) In my reply to kvond's and Meg's comments on the Event, I alluded to a quote from Derrida's Cinders, which I thought would be worth posting, especially since I can't find any reference to it online and I don't have the book handy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1358,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/10\/25\/on-buddhism-objects-zizek-morton-etc\/","url_meta":{"origin":1352,"position":4},"title":"on Buddhism, objects, Zizek, Morton, etc.","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10705,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/05\/25\/the-four-ontological-aces\/","url_meta":{"origin":1352,"position":5},"title":"The four ontological aces","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 25, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Buddhism has its \"Two Truths\" and its \"Three Truths\": the \"Two\" were made famous by Indian philosopher Nagarjuna; the \"Three\" a little less famous by Chinese philosopher Zhiyi. About a year ago, I offered up four perspectives on mortality, and here I want to make the case that they could\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/05\/owanbkru3tc51.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/05\/owanbkru3tc51.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/05\/owanbkru3tc51.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/05\/owanbkru3tc51.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}