That Thou Art: Aesthetic Soul/Bodies and Self Interbeing in Buddhism, Phenomenology, and Pragmatism

• Authors: Jones David
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The inheritance of dualism from Plato to Descartes, and since, has impoverished the human relation with nature, the world, other humans, and other species. The division of soul and body, and its counterpart of mind and body, gave us a world from which we believe ourselves to be separate from and superior to other species. This self-othering standpoint has had devastating consequences socially, politically, economically, and ecologically. This essay seeks to identify some resources in the Western tradition in phenomenology and pragmatism that avoid this standpoint and bring them into conversation with some primary insights of Buddhist philosophy: interdependent arising, the not-self, and interbeing. By doing so, it is not only suggested that comparative conversations are not only useful in their own right, but they add dimensions to our experience in the world. Moreover, they offer avenues for living enriched lives in concert with the world without engaging in self-deceptive mental and comforting psychological activities of who and what we really are.

Keywords

EN

experience; aisthēsis; interdependent arising; “that thou art” (tat tvam asi); cogito; aesthetic perception; body; soul; Dewey; Merleau-Ponty; Buddha; Descartes; Plato

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warszawski
• Journal: Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture
• Year: 2020
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 37-47

Dates

published

2020-11-05

Contributors

author

Jones David

• Department of Philosophy, Kennesaw State University

References

• Abe, Masao. Zen and Western Thought. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06994-1.
• Abrahm, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.
• Ames, Roger T., and David L. Hall. The Democracy of the Dead: Dewey, Confucius, and the Hope for Democracy in China. Chicago: Open Court, 1999.
• Culliney, John L., and Jones, David. The Fractal Self: Science, Philosophy, and the Evolution of Human Cooperation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2017.
• Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Books, 1934.
• Dewey, John. Reconstruction in Philosophy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1948.
• Hanh, Thich Nhat. Zen Keys. New York: Doubleday, 1974.
• Hanh, Thich Nhat. Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1998.
• Herrera, Hayden. Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.
• Kalupahana, David. J. Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1976.
• Koller, John M. Asian Philosophies. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002.
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. New York: Routledge, 1962.
• Sharma, Arvind. Our Religions. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993.
• Spiegelberg, Herbert. The Phenomenological Movement. Volume 1. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969.
• Spiegelberg, Herbert. The Phenomenological Movement. Volume 2. Dordrecht: Springer Science + Business Media, 1971.

Identifiers

DOI

10.14394/eidos.jpc.2020.0029