Buddhism: Religion or Philosophy? - Politics & Religion

Gigantic

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Gigantic wrote:

eastern phil and western phil have different pedigrees and values. i mean, fuck, your list of examples itself seems to greatly favour analytic over continental philosophy basically exclusively so that colours the opinions i imagine you probably have on the subject.

this "distorted" view of philosophy, which often has its roots in eastern phil and is usually channeled in the west through dudes like alan watts, people who academics tend to snobbishly look down on as being "not real phil" because it relies so heavily on spirituality, romanticism, and a sense of individual application not unseen in the "self help" circuit. well, this "distorted" vein of philosophy (the definition of which people usually use when they say talk about "their philosophy") is almost 2,500 years old. frankly, ive never seen any reason why eastern phil is in any way invalid - simply because it doesnt adhere to the typical language of western phil or its dialectics (logic, reason)?

(also yeah i consider buddhism more philosophy than religion, as with most far-east religions (taoism, confucianism, etc))
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sp4cetiger

Gigantic wrote:

eastern phil and western phil have different pedigrees and values...

Ugh...no, this is not an east vs. west thing. The closest Western analog to what is often called "Eastern philosophy" is theology, something that's now distinguished from philosophy in the academic mainstream. It's not a question of valid or invalid, they're just different things.

Gigantic

Location: [color=green]Christmas Island[/color]

sp4cetiger wrote:

Ugh...no, this is not an east vs. west thing. The closest Western analog to what is often called "Eastern philosophy" is theology, something that's now distinguished from philosophy in the academic mainstream. It's not a question of valid or invalid, they're just different things.

but right there. what is often called "Eastern philosophy"? its called eastern philosophy. denouncing eastern philosophy as "not philosophy" or i dunno "some other thing" comes from this eurocentric tendency to imagine that what hasnt stemmed from the western dialectic tradition isnt "real srs thought". eastern phil still posits ideas about knowledge and existence, just without using the same established "western language" - to brush it off as "theology" (especially when it never requires the existence or belief in any form of higher power), i dunno, that just kinda sounds like a snobby dismissal to me. (not that theology isn't a serious subject or that ppl dont take theology seriously)
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sp4cetiger

Gigantic wrote:

but right there. what is often called "Eastern philosophy"? its called eastern philosophy. denouncing eastern philosophy as "not philosophy" or i dunno "some other thing" comes from this eurocentric tendency to imagine that what hasnt stemmed from the western dialectic tradition isnt "real srs thought". eastern phil still posits ideas about knowledge and existence, just without using the same established "western language" - to brush it off as "theology" (especially when it never requires the existence or belief in any form of higher power), i dunno, that just kinda sounds like a snobby dismissal to me. (not that theology isn't a serious subject or that ppl dont take theology seriously)

To be honest, I don't like how you're brushing off "theology" and "higher powers". Contrary to what you're suggesting, I take a person's spirituality very seriously, regardless of whether it posits a higher power. I don't see any a priori reason why a higher power should be dismissed out of hand more than a higher plane of consciousness. Adherents of Christianity may claim to have experienced the former and those of Buddhism the latter, but neither can provide an objective demonstration of it to the non-believer.

And that's the key distinction between Christianity, Buddhism, etc. and Western philosophy . While the former rely on subjective experiences that can't be demonstrated to another person without them experiencing it themselves, the latter attempts to restrict itself to those ideas that can be known and communicated through a combination of common sense notions and logic. It's debatable the extent to which philosophers have really succeeded in those goals, but that is what they strive for, and that's what I think is most important in distinguishing it from spirituality and religion.

Muslim-Bigfoot

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Calling eastern schools of thought or ideologies "philosophy" is eurocentric. Philosophy as a word and concept is an invention of Socrates and it's western ignorance to call sth as old as Confucianism "philosophy" when it is older than the discipline of philosophy itself.
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Gigantic

Location: [color=green]Christmas Island[/color]

sp4cetiger wrote:

And that's the key distinction between Christianity, Buddhism, etc. and Western philosophy . While the former rely on subjective experiences that can't be demonstrated to another person without them experiencing it themselves, the latter attempts to restrict itself to those ideas that can be known and communicated through a combination of common sense notions and logic.

you're making some serious misjudgments about eastern philosophy.

Taoism's Chuang-Tsu reads an awful lot like Socrates; likewise the philosophy of Heidegger shares a lot of overlap with Buddhist and Taoist schools of thought. Much "Eastern Philosophy" deals with questions of authenticity, truth, ethics, freedom, and skepticism in ways which align far closer to Western philosophy than they do to what Westerners typically think of as "theology".

have you read the Tao te Ching or the I Ching? they're not theological texts.
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Gigantic

Location: [color=green]Christmas Island[/color]

Muslim-Bigfoot wrote:

Calling eastern schools of thought or ideologies "philosophy" is eurocentric. Philosophy as a word and concept is an invention of Socrates and it's western ignorance to call sth as old as Confucianism "philosophy" when it is older than the discipline of philosophy itself.

i mean, perhaps - my principle argument is that it's wrong to separate the two when they had often been engaged in similar and complimentary conversations. the term "medicine" is of latin origin, that doesn't make whatever had been practiced prior to the romans or in other parts of the world any less constructive to the field of "medicine".
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