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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: skholiast (blogger)

Why give Cthulhu a happy ending?

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Biology, Christianity, God, Metaphysics, Natural Science

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

AAR, Charles Darwin, conferences, David McConeghy, Friedrich Nietzsche, H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, kitsch, Mike Mignola, skholiast (blogger), Speculative Realism, theodicy

A few years ago, Skholiast wrote a lovely post on the philosophical significance of J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft, two early 20th-century writers who shaped the genres we now call fantasy and horror, respectively. I was reminded of it this year at an enjoyable AAR panel entitled “Cthulhu’s Many Tentacles”.

Cthulhu Cthulhu, of course, is the best-known character (if that is the word) from Lovecraft’s stories, enough that the fictional pantheon he created has become known as the “Cthulhu Mythos”. Cthulhu is one of a set of “Elder Gods”: horrifying, vaguely amorphous, often tentacled monstrosities that have lain dormant for millennia and will soon devour humanity; their horror is such that the mere knowledge of them could drive one mad. The AAR panel gave recognition to many aspects of Lovecraft’s work: starting with a presentation on the man and his work itself, the presenters proceeded to examine the varied dimensions of the fandom that has grown up around Lovecraft (noting, in particular, that fan creativity has been greatly enabled by Lovecraft’s work rising into the public domain).

The most interesting point I took away from the panel came from a talk by David McConeghy (who also, coincidentally, was the respondent to my paper on teaching with technology). McConeghy noted that while a great deal of modern speculative fiction (he cited Mike Mignola’s comic-book series Hellboy) is clearly inspired by Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and makes references to it, these works also typically have happy endings. Continue reading →

Interview, part 2

14 Thursday May 2015

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Christianity, Early and Theravāda, German Tradition, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Politics

≈ Comments Off on Interview, part 2

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, Anagarika Dharmapala, Donald S. Lopez Jr., G.W.F. Hegel, Henry Steel Olcott, interview, intimacy/integrity, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Max Weber, Rammohun Roy, skholiast (blogger), Swami Vivekānanda, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas P. Kasulis

The second half of Skholiast‘s interview with me is now available, for anyone interested.

In which I am interviewed

09 Saturday May 2015

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Christianity, Dialectic, Early and Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Politics, Sex

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, ascent/descent, Augustine, Ayn Rand, Canada, conservatism, Damon Linker, Disengaged Buddhism, G.W.F. Hegel, George Grant, Heinrich Zimmer, interview, James Doull, Ken Wilber, Martha Nussbaum, Randall Collins, skholiast (blogger)

The always interesting skholiast, whose ideas have figured strongly in quite a few of my posts here over the years, took what I consider the enormously flattering step of interviewing me about my philosophy, in both oral and written form. He is posting the interview on his blog in two parts; the first of these is up now. I think the dialogue form is helpful for philosophical thought, and if you’re interested in my ideas I would highly encourage you to read it.

What I believe

18 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by Amod Lele in Epistemology, Foundations of Ethics, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Natural Science, Truth, Virtue

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

skholiast (blogger)

At my Indian wedding, the ceremony referred at length to becoming gṛhastha: that is, entering the householder stage of life. This turned out to be truer than intended: my wife and I are in the final stages of buying a house. We will close, and move, over the next couple of weeks, and I will be taking a break from writing Love of All Wisdom during that time. I expect to return near the end of September.

Until then I’d like to leave you with this. I recently stumbled on a wonderful old post of Skholiast’s where, in response to a query from Gary Smith, he lists a number of short and pithy theses about what it is he believes. It looked to me like a useful exercise. I’d like to try it here myself. Most of this has been said elsewhere, by me or by someone else or both, with actual argument to justify it. But I thought it might be helpful to attempt a pithy summary in a single place. Continue reading →

Digital philosophy

16 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by Amod Lele in Friends, Metaphilosophy, Social Science

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

academia, Aristotle, Elisa Freschi, lokatakki (commenter), Matt Wilkens, Mencius, Randall Collins, skholiast (blogger), technology

The term digital humanities has quickly become trendy over the past couple years. The term has often excited me, since digital technology in the humanities is both a part of what I do for a living, and what makes my humanistic scholarship on this blog possible. So I’ve followed discussions of digital humanities, such as the HUMANIST mailing list, with interest.

I remain deeply interested in the field, but I’ve also begun to acquire some skepticism toward it. Continue reading →

Chinese intimacy and Indian ascent

11 Sunday Dec 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in East Asia, Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Social Science, South Asia

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, ascent/descent, intimacy/integrity, Ken Wilber, Max Weber, modernity, Parimal Patil, skholiast (blogger), Thomas P. Kasulis

I have repeatedly returned to the categories of ascent and descent, and intimacy and integrity, to classify philosophies; and I have found that the two intersect in important ways. When I discussed that intersection the first time, skholiast asked the important question: “What is the itch in us to make such schematisms?” What is the purpose of trying to classify philosophies in this way?

My first response was that these two are perennial questions, questions that recur throughout the history of philosophy around the world. While I continue to think more or less that that’s the case, I don’t think it did enough to say what’s important about these particular two categories. As I noted later, there are plenty of perennial questions beyond these two. But at the same time, I do see something special about these two classification schemes that merits particular attention to them. Continue reading →

How to answer the perennial questions

18 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in Dialectic, Epistemology, German Tradition, Greek and Roman Tradition, Metaphilosophy

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Aristotle, ascent/descent, G.W.F. Hegel, Ken Wilber, Martha Nussbaum, Plato, postmodernism, relativism, skholiast (blogger)

It’s often said that philosophy is about questions rather than answers. Yet it is in the nature of a question that one who asks it at least wishes to find an answer, even if that answer remains elusive. Even rhetorical questions are rhetorical because they imply an assumed answer.

And so with the perennial questions, to which I regularly return on this blog. Central to the idea of a perennial question, as I have expressed it, is that the answers have never come easily. People across cultures, in different places and times, have asked the question – but in each place, people have come up with opposing answers.

To observe this diversity of opinion is humbling. Here are some of the greatest minds in human history, people smarter than I will ever be, reading each other’s work and still coming to opposite conclusions. Can an answer then ever be found? Continue reading →

Mou Zongsan’s theories across cultures

05 Sunday Jun 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in Confucianism, East Asia, God, Judaism, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Sufism, Vedānta

≈ 38 Comments

Tags

Advaita Vedānta, ascent/descent, Bhagavad Gītā, Emmanuel Lévinas, interview, intimacy/integrity, Jason Clower, Ken Wilber, Martha Nussbaum, Mou Zongsan, nondualism, skholiast (blogger), Tiantai, Yogācāra, Zhu Xi

I have recently taken on a position as interviewer for the New Books Network, an exciting new project to hold podcast interviews with the authors of recently published scholarly books. I will be interviewing for New Books in Buddhist Studies, a position I share with Scott Mitchell. I’ve completed a first podcast which is not yet available online, but I’ll let you know when it is.

I mention this now because that first podcast is with Jason Clower on his The Unlikely Buddhologist, the study I recently mentioned of 20th-century Confucian Mou Zongsan. The podcast is there to explore Clower’s ideas; here I’d like to add my own.

The book asks why Mou, a committed Confucian, spent a great deal of time thinking and writing about Buddhism. Its answer is that Mou found East Asian Buddhists expressing metaphysical distinctions with a clarity that the Confucians had not. Mou is deeply concerned with the metaphysics of value – specifically, the relationship between ultimate value and existing things. One might refer to this as the relationship between goodness and truth, or between God and world, even creator and creation. Continue reading →

Aesthetics and ethics in Zanzibar Town

13 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, African Thought, Food, Place, Politics

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Alain Finkielkraut, architecture, authenticity, David Harvey, Karl Marx, modernism, modernity, skholiast (blogger), Søren Kierkegaard, utilitarianism, Zanzibar

Skholiast has an interesting riff on my recent post about happiness, and I’d like to riff right back. Skholiast quotes from Alain Finkielkraut‘s La défaite de la pensée – a book I read long ago while backpacking through France, in the hope of beefing up my philosophical French. And Skholiast’s quote from Finkielkraut got me thinking of a much more recent trip, my honeymoon in Zanzibar two months ago.

As well as spectacular beaches, Zanzibar has a tremendously atmospheric old Stone Town, and crumbling palaces built in the nineteenth century by Sultan Said. On a tour of these palace ruins, our guide spoke mournfully about how the government had destroyed and misused these palaces after independence and revolution in 1964. It is surely worth mourning when a beautiful object from the past is lost forever. In addition to this destruction, the revolutionary government built most of Ng’ambo, the “other side” of Zanzibar town – the part that is completely non-atmospheric, full of concrete blocks designed by East German engineers. It is in Ng’ambo that the majority of urban Zanzibaris live. The tourist guidebooks tend to scoff at Ng’ambo if they mention it at all, which they rarely do – and no surprise, since it is utterly charmless to look at, a generic site that could be anywhere.

And yet driving through Ng’ambo, I could also see what motivated the revolutionary government to build it that way; more than that, I was quite pleased to see it. Continue reading →

Hegel in space?

31 Sunday Oct 2010

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Confucianism, Dialectic, German Tradition, Greek and Roman Tradition, Metaphilosophy, Metaphysics, Place, Politics, Vedānta

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

David Harvey, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Rāmānuja, Śaṅkara, skholiast (blogger), Zhu Xi

Skholiast makes a key point in response to my post on perennial questions. Regarding the categories I have drawn in the history of philosophy – ascent and descent, intimacy and integrity – he notes that these categories need to be viewed as dialectical, such that different thinkers do not merely oppose each other but supersede each other. I have noted before that the categories are intended as ideal types, so real thinkers will rarely if ever fall on one side or the other; that most thinkers land somewhere in the middle is a feature of the scheme, not a bug. But Skholiast goes further. It is not merely that all of history’s great thinkers have some element of both these sides – that they are in the middle – but that they try in some respect to put them together. They aim, that is, at synthesis and not merely compromise. I addressed this point in the earlier (perennial questions) post, but wrote the post as if it’s only modern comparative philosophers like Ken Wilber who try to do this. Skholiast rightly notes that this sort of attempt to put together opposites dialectically is to be found in the West as early as Plato, and possibly before. On a question as big as ascent and descent, everyone tries to put the opposing views together to some extent.

This is a broadly Hegelian account of the history of philosophy. Judging by his use of the term Aufhebung, Skholiast has intended it to be such. My own sympathies with G.W.F. Hegel are no secret, given my influence by James Doull and his school. But while expressing my admiration for Hegel before, I also expressed my biggest concern about his system: that it fails to do justice to Asian thought. Continue reading →

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