Buddhism between religion and philosophy : Nāgārjuna and the ethics of emptiness / Rafal K. Stepien.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stepien, Rafal K., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nāgārjuna, active 2nd century.

Nāgārjuna.

Mādhyamika (Buddhism).

Buddhist philosophy--History.

Buddhist philosophy.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 400 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, [2024]

Summary:

"Nagarjuna is generally accepted by Buddhists and Buddhiologists alike as one of the most important of all Buddhist thinkers. Indeed, his thought has been core to the historical shaping and reshaping of Buddhism throughout South-, Central-, and East-Asia. It continues to fascinate, moreover, as evinced by the plethora of recently published inspirational and intellectual works devoted to him by adherents and academics. Recent scholarly interest in Nagarjuna has been intense, with especial focus on the vexed question of the rationality, or irrationality, of his thought. For understandable reasons, debates in this regard have gravitated toward two points of friction between the arguments Nagarjuna laid out in India almost two millennia ago and those considered acceptable by his philosophically minded interpreters today, trained as these latter have typically been in twentieth-century Western analytical philosophy. Briefly stated, the issues at question relate, firstly, to Nagarjuna's use or tetra lemma, according to which a proposition may be true, false, both true and false, or neither true nor false; and secondly, to Nagarjuna's espousal of the "abandonment of all views""-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: Emptiness Between the Lines: Reading Buddhist Philosophy of/and/as Religion

1. Orienting Reason: A Religious Critique of Philosophizing Nāgārjuna

2. Logical, Buddhological, Buddhist: A Critical Study of the Tetralemma

3. Nāgārjuna's Tetralemma: Tetrāletheia & Tathāgata, Utterance & Anontology

4. Abandoning All Views: A Buddhist Critique of Belief

5. All-Embracing Emptiness: Nāgārjuna and the Ethics of Emptiness.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780197771303

0197771300

OCLC:

1406020498