Being and Ambiguity: Philosophical Experiments with Tiantai BuddhismBeing and Ambiguity is a brilliant work of philosophy, filled with insights, jokes, and topical examples. Professor Ziporyn draws on the works of such Western thinkers as Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, and Hegel, but develops his main argument from Tiantai school of Chinese Buddhism. This important work introduces Tiantai Buddhism to the reader and demonstrates its relevance to profound philosophical issues. Ziporyn argues that we can make both of the claims below simultaneously: This book is about everything. It contains the answers to all philosophical problems which ever shall exist. This book is all claptrap. It is completely devoid of objective validity of any kind. These claims are not contradictory. Rather, they state the same thing in two different ways. To be objective truth is to be subjective claptrap, and vise versa. All interchanges of any kind - conversations, daydreams, sensations - are not only about something but also about everything. Thus, this book concerns itself with no less than the nature of what is and what it means for something to be what it is. It provides a new approach to the basic Western philosophical and psychological issues of identity, determinacy, being, desire, boredom, addiction, love and truth. |
Contents
PART | 33 |
Intersubsumption | 55 |
TOWARD AN ETHICS | 155 |
Being as Cunning Cunning | 168 |
Cant Get NoSatisfaction | 179 |
Subject and Object Punch Line and Setup | 193 |
The Good as the Intersection of Two Impossibilities | 215 |
Freedom | 234 |
THEIR DEMISE | 313 |
Atomicity Otherness and Violence Costarring | 322 |
Eroticism and Continuity with Bataille | 350 |
Oneself as Ones | 360 |
Beauty Harmony and the Mystical | 369 |
Humor | 381 |
Sex and Drugs | 393 |
The Limits of Sublimation | 405 |
More about the Will | 251 |
The Intersubsumption of Self | 271 |
Ethical Layering | 286 |
Sive | 300 |
A Critique of Critique | 417 |
Proof that All Previous Errors Have Spoken This | 428 |
Invitation to a Recantation | 439 |
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Being and Ambiguity: Philosophical Experiments with Tiantai Buddhism Brook Ziporyn Limited preview - 2015 |
Common terms and phrases
absolute actual All-pervasion as All-pervadedness already ambiguity appear simpliciter applies asness aspects become Bodhisattva Buddha Buddhahood Buddhist claim classical Tiantai consciousness constitutive impossibility contingent contrast definition desire determinacy determinate dharmas distinction doctrine Emptiness ence entity equally eternal objects everything example excluded existence experience experienced explicit expression fact feminism finite function Global Incoherence Hegel hence holism Huayan identify identity impermanence implications inherent entailment intersubjectivity Intersubsumption Local Coherence Lotus Sutra Mahāyāna manifest matter means merely mind Möbius strip moretoitivity mutual nature necessarily necessary negation Neo-Tiantai ness never Nirvana non-X notion omnicentrism one's oneself particular pervades pleasure possible precisely present principle punch line question realm recontextualization relation revealed reversibility rience seen sense setup simply śrāvakas structure subsumption tertium quid thereby thing Three Truths tion transcended true turn ultimate unconditioned universal vice versa whole words Xness Zhili Zhiyi