The Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg invites applications for a W3 professorship in Buddhist Studies.
The professorship is part of the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (HCTS) which has originated from the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context”.
Against non Italian scholars studying Latin and non Greek scholars studying ancient Greek
Consider the following:
Italy is now a unified country and no longer dominated by Austrian, Spanish or French rulers. Why do we need only more foreigners to supervise Latin publishing and translations?
Or:
Greece is now a unified country and no longer dominated by Turk rulers. Why do we need only more foreigners to supervise ancient Greek publishing and translations?
What do you think? I, for one, would answer that the more and the better scholars engage with these world’s treasures, the better. I am not sure that having an Italian passports makes me a priori a better candidate.
Now, you might consider that I am also not an ideal candidate, since I do not share the same set of beliefs of Cicero or Catullus. However, I am not sure one needs to believe in Aphrodites in order to understand Catullus’ desperate love for Lesbia, nor does one need to believe in Zeus to understand Cicero’s quest for justice. One might say that I am allowed to study Catullus, etc., because no believers of his religion are left but that the principle of “insiders only” still applies in case of religions/political systems/langauges/… of which there is still a living tradition.
This is a legitimate point of view, but one needs to be aware of the fact that it leads to isolationism. One would only be allowed to study people whose religion/language/set of beliefs… she or he shares, with no adhikāra to look beyond his or her field. Moreover, I wonder how one would be able to look critically at his or her field, if she or he had had no chance to learn about how different the world can be.
Long story short: I am still a believer in the enriching power of saṃvāda, ‘dialogue’.
Expanding the canon part n
We have discussed several times (see also here and here) about the problem of how Indian philosophers should be part of normal classes on Medieval philosophy, Epistemology, Philosophy of Language, etc. etc. Podcaster and scholar of Neoplatonism and of Falsafa Peter Adamson makes several interesting points on the Blog of the APA, in this post.
Commenting on a great scholar of Indian philosophy (M. Biardeau)
Who influenced you more in Indian philosophy? Whose methodology do you follow, perhaps without even being aware of it?
Before you answer, let us try to focus on women before we think at the many other men who might have been influential.
I, for one, cannot stop admiring Madeleine Biardeau‘ s work.
Rāmānuja on the self
Rāmānuja’s theory of the self seems to have been greatly influenced by the need to reply to the Advaita Vedāntin claim that the self is nothing but sheer consciousness. Thus, Rāmānuja (like Yāmuna before him) stresses the fact that consciousness needs to inhere in someone and that therefore the self is a cogniser (jñātṛ) rather than sheer cognition (jñāna).
This being said, some statements of him in different contexts may appear puzzling. His summary on the self in the Vedārthasaṅgraha, for instance, goes as follows:
Is philosophy an involution of Buddhism (and other religions)?
This is more or less the thesis advanced by Jayarava in his longest comment on this post.
The idea is that the (Buddhist) religion is primarily experiential and that philosophy is a later reification which misses the main point at stake and moves the emphasis away from what really counts. Moreover, in the case of Buddhism (but I am inclined to think that no other theology would survive Jayarava’s analysis) the result is full of inner contradictions and does not stand a critical inquire.
Thus, why engaging in philosophical thought, if you care for a given religion? Why entering a field in which you will loose anyway, since sooner or later a new development in, say, physics or neurosciences will show that you are at least partly wrong?
A possible answer would be to claim that natural sciences and theology do not speak about the same things (a claim Jayarava appears to refute). Moreover, one might claim that human beings naturally try to understand (as in Aristotle). But are there positive reasons for engaging in philosophy if one comes from a religious standpoint? Let us consider Giordano Bruno’s paradoxical words on this topic (as you will all know, Giordano Bruno was a Catholic priest and philosopher who was burnt on 17.2.1600 because of his heretic ideas —this sonet praises the ignorance of those who do not question anything, as if this were a moral virtue):
IN LODE DELL’ASINO:
Oh sant’asinità, sant’ignoranza,
Santa stoltizia, e pia divozione,
Qual sola puoi far l’anime si buone,
Ch’uman ingegno e studio non l’avanza!
Non gionge faticosa vigilanza
D’arte, qualunque sia, o invenzione,
Né di sofossi contemplazione
Al ciel, dove t’edifichi la stanza.
Che vi val, curiosi, lo studiare,
Voler saper quel che fa la natura,
Se gli astri son pur terra, fuoco e mare?
La santa asinità di ciò non cura,
Ma con man gionte e ’n ginocchion vuol stare
Aspettando da Dio la sua ventura.
Nessuna cosa dura,
Eccetto il frutto dell’eterna requie,
La qual ne done Dio dopo l’esequie!
2 Professors in Digital Humanities at Leiden
The Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University invites applications for 2 fulltime assistant professorships in Digital Humanities:
Assistant Professor Digital Humanities with focus on text analysis (1.0 fte)
Assistant Professor Digital Humanities with focus on data-analysis and visualization (1.0 fte)
Beginningless time and a nice whish from Veṅkaṭanātha
“[Obj.:] Then, let it be that there is a beginning in the liberated beings (i.e., that there is a point in time in which conscious beings started achieving liberation). Before that, there would be no liberated one.
[R:] There is no contradiction in the idea of a continuous and beginningless succession of liberated [beings]. For, it is not the case that someone who was ab initio liberated is then bound. In this case the liberation (and not the bondage) would be something to be realised, which is contradictory. Rather, all beings, bound ab initio liberate themselves, the one after the other, when they get the way”.
(atha mukteṣv ādiḥ, sa kathaṃ tvayā viditaḥ? tataḥ pūrvaṃ muktābhāvād iti cet, tam api kathaṃ vettha? anādimuktau vyāghātād iti cen na; muktapravāhe vyāghātābhāvāt | na hy anādimuktaḥ kaścid badhyate, sādhyamokṣo vā bhavet, yena vyāghātas syāt; kiṃ tu, anādibaddhās sarve ´pi labdhopāyāḥ krameṇa mucyante |, autocommentary on TMK 2.25)
The permanence of time and the radical alterity of mokṣa seem to create a tension here.
Does it entail that each one of today’s beings will be liberated, sooner or later? In other words, do all possiblities need to actualise themselves sooner or later in an endless time?
PhD positions in Poznan, Poland
Open call for six doctoral student positions in a research project on narrative modes of classical, medieval and modern historiography in India, China, and Tibet. The project, which is funded by the European Research Council, is running at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. The positions are in classical Indology, modern Indian studies, medieval Indo-Persian studies, medieval Tibetan Studies, classical-medieval Sinology, and modern Chinese studies. The three-year positions are tuition-free and come with a small stipend. The application deadline is March 31.
Please find additional information in the attached pdf (Call for Six PhD Positions at the University of Adam Mickiewicz).
The poet and the philosopher: chameleon and beetle
As readers know, I side with the latter. That’s why I force myself into reading the reasons of the former. Sometimes, I find them convincing and appealing:
Der Künstler hat ja auch Ideen, doch selten hat er die systematisch geordnet, hat er sich dermaßen koleoptisiert, daß der Widerspruch beseitigt wurde, wie das die philosophischen oder politischen Koleopteren tun, die sich dafür all das entgehen lassen oder ignorieren, was jenseits ihrer Chitinflügel und ihrer starren, abgezählten, präzisen Beinchen sich regt.
(Julio Cortázar, La vuelta el dia en ochenta mundos, beginning of the last chapter).