06.12.11
Review of Batchelor book, and playing the Heidegger card
Tricylce review of Batchelor’s Confessions…
We detect one source of Batchelor’s confusion: Heidegger. If you are going to reflect on Heidegger it is essential to look at his sources in Kant and German classical philosophy. Kant endures, while Heidegger’s formulation seems a passsing fad now. The claim that his phenomenology transcends the dualism of mind and body is NOT an excuse for reductionist scientism, and is merely flagwaving.
The real issue here is visible in Kant and Schopenhauer who replace the dualism with the noumenal/phenomenal distinction.
Batchelor’s increasing discomfort with Tibetan Buddhism was reinforced by his discovery of existentialism, especially Heidegger, Camus, Sartre, and even a memorable lecture by the French philosopher and Talmudic scholar Emmanuel Levinas. He emphasizes the impact of reading Heidegger’s Being and Time, which outlined a new phenomenological approach that escapes the usual dualism between mind and body—a dualism that infects most religious traditions (including much of Buddhism) since it fits so well with “transcendentalist” ambitions to escape this world of suffering. Batchelor does not discuss what, from a Buddhist perspective, is most striking about modern Western philosophy, including existentialism: its lack of contemplative practices as alternative modes of inquiry supplementing its conceptual speculations. In contrast, Buddhism includes the world’s largest collection of meditative techniques, which are usually considered necessary to “wake up” and realize the truth of the dharma.
The Gurdjieff Con » Playing the Heidegger card said,
June 12, 2011 at 2:02 pm
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