Buddhism Between Religion and Philosophy
Nagarjuna and the Ethics of Emptiness
Price: 1095.00
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ISBN:
9780197803691
Publication date:
11/12/2024
Hardback
423 pages
Price: 1095.00
We sell our titles through other companies
Disclaimer :You will be redirected to a third party website.The sole responsibility of supplies, condition of the product, availability of stock, date of delivery, mode of payment will be as promised by the said third party only. Prices and specifications may vary from the OUP India site.
ISBN:
9780197803691
Publication date:
11/12/2024
Hardback
423 pages
Rafal K. Stepien
Nagarjuna is the most influential of all Buddhist thinkers following the Buddha himself. Throughout his works, Nagarjuna calls on us to completely abandon all our views. But how could anyone possibly do that? This book shows not only how Nagarjuna's truly radical teaching of "abelief" makes perfect sense within his Buddhist philosophy, but how it stands at the summit of his religious mission to care for all living beings. Rather than treating any one aspect of Nagarjuna's ideas in isolation, here he emerges as forging a single system of thought and practice, one that challenges the very ways in which we think about religion and philosophy.
Rights: South Asian Rights
Rafal K. Stepien
Description
Nagarjuna (c. 150-250), founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school of Buddhist philosophy and the most influential of all Buddhist thinkers aside from the Buddha himself, concludes his masterpiece, Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, with these baffling verses:
For the abandonment of all views
He taught the true teaching
By means of compassion
I salute him, Gautama
But how could anyone possibly abandon all views? In Buddhism between Religion and Philosophy, Rafal K. Stepien shows not only how Nagarjuna's radical teaching of no-view or "abelief" makes sense within his Buddhist philosophy, but also how it stands at the summit of his religious mission to care for all living beings. Rather than treating any one aspect of Nagarjuna's ideas in isolation, here his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics emerge as a single coherent and convincing philosophical-religious system of thought and practice.
Grounded in meticulous study of original texts from classical India and China but innovating on the theories and methods underpinning contemporary scholarship East and West, this study shows how profoundly important voices from the diverse religious and philosophical traditions of the world have until now been diminished, distorted, and silenced. In opening up truly global horizons of existing and co-existing in the world, this work challenges the very ways in which we think about religion and philosophy.
Rafal K. Stepien is Research Associate and European Research Council Principal Investigator within the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He also serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy, and his publications include Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature. He has held the inaugural Berggruen Research Fellowship in Indian Philosophy at Oxford, the inaugural Cihui Foundation Faculty Fellowship in Chinese Buddhism at Columbia, an Exchange Scholarship in the Study of Religion at Harvard, and a Humboldt Research Fellowship in Buddhist Studies at Heidelberg University.
Rafal K. Stepien
Table of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Emptiness Between the Lines: Reading Buddhist Philosophy of/and/as Religion
0.0. The Dream is Over
0.1. Nagarjuna and the Ethics of Emptiness
0.2. Believing Between the Lines
0.3. Buddhism Between Religion and Philosophy
0.4. Contexts and Texts
Chapter 1: Orienting Reason: A Religious Critique of Philosophizing Nagarjuna
1.1. The Unimaginative Question
1.2. Unveiling the East
1.3. Orientalizing Reasons
1.4. Reimagining Religion and Philosophy
Chapter 2: Logical, Buddhological, Buddhist: A Critical Study of the Tetralemma
2.1. Matters & Methods
2.2. The Logical Tetralemma
2.3. The Buddhological Tetralemma
2.4. The Buddhist Tetralemma
Chapter 3: Nagarjuna's Tetralemma: Tetraletheia & Tathagata, Utterance & Anontology
3.1 The Dilemma of the Tetralemma
3.2 The Exhaustive Tetralemma
3.3 Tetralemma as Tetraletheia
3.4 Tetraletheia as Tathagata
3.5 Utterance and Anontology
3.6 Tetralemma and No-Teaching
3.7 Silencing Nothing
Chapter 4: Abandoning All Views: A Buddhist Critique of Belief
4.1. Views on Abandoning Views
4.2. Nagarjuna's Abandoning Views
4.3. Abandoning Nagarjuna's Views
Chapter 5: All-Embracing Emptiness: Nagarjuna and the Ethics of Emptiness
5.1. The Abandonment of Ethics?
5.2. The Ethics of Abandonment
5.3. From Ethics to Eirenics
5.4. Abandoning All, Embracing All
Bibliography
Index
Rafal K. Stepien
Features
- Elucidates Nagarjuna's thought in its Buddhist context, integrating his views on belief and intention, language and mind, action and attachment, selfhood and suffering, violence and peace, emptiness and Buddhahood
- Presents a trenchant critique of the Christian and Western assumptions still dominating the study of religion and philosophy today
- Introduces and clarifies ideas of pivotal importance to the history of Buddhist thought in India, Tibet, China, and Japan
Rafal K. Stepien
Review
"Stepien presents a detailed, clearly argued critique of much of the contemporary Western intellectual engagement with Nāgārjuna and describes how Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka can be understood as the source of an approach that is simultaneously religious, philosophical, and ethical in nature. Scholars working on the historical, religious, and philosophical aspects of Nāgārjuna's works have much to gain from engaging closely with Stepien's arguments." -- Jan Westerhoff, Professor of Buddhist Philosophy, University of Oxford
"Nāgārjuna's Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way is often read as a purely metaphysical exploration of emptiness, or, if more than this, purely soteriological. Rafal Stepien argues that this is a misreading-that Nāgārjuna's project is not only metaphysical and soteriological, but also ethical, adding nuance to our understanding of the Buddhist ethical project and of Madhyamaka philosophy." -- Jay Garfield, Author of Buddhist Ethics: A Philosophical Exploration
"Stepien extricates Nāgārjuna from narrow philosophical doldrums and, impressively, foregrounds the ethical significance of this incomparable thinker. Students of Buddhist philosophy will find much benefit in such a reading." -- Jonathan C. Gold, Author of Paving the Great Way: Vasubandhu's Unifying Buddhist Philosophy
"Legend has it that Nāgārjuna descended to the bottom of the ocean in order to bring back the founding texts of his provocative tradition. Rafal Stepien has descended into the restless ocean of contemporary interpretations rising around Nāgārjuna's works and returned with provocations of his own, asking whether our ways of making sense of Nāgārjuna do justice to his texts and the textures of his thought. Stepien conjures for us one more Nāgārjuna, one whose arguments deserve engagement, whose words just might change your mind." -- Sonam Kachru, Author of Other Lives: Mind and World in Indian Buddhism.
"This book is an attempt to correct that Eurocentric approach. It reconsiders contemporary philosophical views on Nagarjuna's writings from a more holistic standpoint, and attempts to avoid imposing western philosophical ideals on topics such as the tetralemma, emptiness, and ethics. While this book ought to be required reading for those whose understanding of Nagarjuna is primarily informed by Western analytic lenses, it is also clear enough to be useful to those who are attempting to understand Nagarjuna's thought without such prior baggage." -- Buddhadharma
"Stepien's interpretation of the great thinker embeds a critique of the Christian and Western assumptions still dominating the study of religion and philosophy today. He introduces and clarifies ideas of pivotal importance to the history of Buddhist thought in India, Tibet, China, and Japan." -- Off the Shelf
Rafal K. Stepien
Description
Nagarjuna (c. 150-250), founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school of Buddhist philosophy and the most influential of all Buddhist thinkers aside from the Buddha himself, concludes his masterpiece, Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, with these baffling verses:
For the abandonment of all views
He taught the true teaching
By means of compassion
I salute him, Gautama
But how could anyone possibly abandon all views? In Buddhism between Religion and Philosophy, Rafal K. Stepien shows not only how Nagarjuna's radical teaching of no-view or "abelief" makes sense within his Buddhist philosophy, but also how it stands at the summit of his religious mission to care for all living beings. Rather than treating any one aspect of Nagarjuna's ideas in isolation, here his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics emerge as a single coherent and convincing philosophical-religious system of thought and practice.
Grounded in meticulous study of original texts from classical India and China but innovating on the theories and methods underpinning contemporary scholarship East and West, this study shows how profoundly important voices from the diverse religious and philosophical traditions of the world have until now been diminished, distorted, and silenced. In opening up truly global horizons of existing and co-existing in the world, this work challenges the very ways in which we think about religion and philosophy.
Rafal K. Stepien is Research Associate and European Research Council Principal Investigator within the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He also serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy, and his publications include Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature. He has held the inaugural Berggruen Research Fellowship in Indian Philosophy at Oxford, the inaugural Cihui Foundation Faculty Fellowship in Chinese Buddhism at Columbia, an Exchange Scholarship in the Study of Religion at Harvard, and a Humboldt Research Fellowship in Buddhist Studies at Heidelberg University.
Table of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Emptiness Between the Lines: Reading Buddhist Philosophy of/and/as Religion
0.0. The Dream is Over
0.1. Nagarjuna and the Ethics of Emptiness
0.2. Believing Between the Lines
0.3. Buddhism Between Religion and Philosophy
0.4. Contexts and Texts
Chapter 1: Orienting Reason: A Religious Critique of Philosophizing Nagarjuna
1.1. The Unimaginative Question
1.2. Unveiling the East
1.3. Orientalizing Reasons
1.4. Reimagining Religion and Philosophy
Chapter 2: Logical, Buddhological, Buddhist: A Critical Study of the Tetralemma
2.1. Matters & Methods
2.2. The Logical Tetralemma
2.3. The Buddhological Tetralemma
2.4. The Buddhist Tetralemma
Chapter 3: Nagarjuna's Tetralemma: Tetraletheia & Tathagata, Utterance & Anontology
3.1 The Dilemma of the Tetralemma
3.2 The Exhaustive Tetralemma
3.3 Tetralemma as Tetraletheia
3.4 Tetraletheia as Tathagata
3.5 Utterance and Anontology
3.6 Tetralemma and No-Teaching
3.7 Silencing Nothing
Chapter 4: Abandoning All Views: A Buddhist Critique of Belief
4.1. Views on Abandoning Views
4.2. Nagarjuna's Abandoning Views
4.3. Abandoning Nagarjuna's Views
Chapter 5: All-Embracing Emptiness: Nagarjuna and the Ethics of Emptiness
5.1. The Abandonment of Ethics?
5.2. The Ethics of Abandonment
5.3. From Ethics to Eirenics
5.4. Abandoning All, Embracing All
Bibliography
Index
Gerald O'Collins
Peter Singer
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Prof Luciano Floridi
History, Literature, and Identity
J.S. Grewal
Bahudha and the Post 9-11 World
Balmiki Prasad Singh
David Ludden
Vrinda Dalmiya
The Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Practice
Gavin Flood
Anthony Stevens
Malise Ruthven
