'SUUNYATAA, TEXTUALISM, AND INCOMMENSURABILITY
By Michael G. Barnhart
Philosophy East & West
Vo.44,no.4
October 1994
p 647-658
(C) by University of Hawaii Press
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I.
For many commentators on the subject,
contemporary Western philosophy has shown
distinctive signs of consensus regarding a basic
understanding of the fundamental constraints
covering the employment of human rationality.
Essentially, the view is that human reason operates
always in a specific context that provides both a
background of functional principles and a foreground
of salient features and things. Therefore, from the
fact that reason is essentially concerned with
knowledge through truth, it does not follow that
there is a necessary convergence regarding the
conclusions we tend to draw in exercising our
reason, should our forms of life happen to differ
substantially.
In other words, there has been a distinct
retreat from a kind of objectivism that would insist
that there are some principles inherent in the
structure of reason that would provide grounds for a
faith (at least) that we might establish some right
version of the way things are--the truth, in
short.(1) At this point, many philosophers tend
rather to argue either that such uniform principles
(such as the laws of logic) are so general as to
provide only the thinnest understanding of the
functioning of the human intellect or that such
seemingly uniform principles are simply
reconstructions on the basis of a particular set of
beliefs and concerns, and are illegitimately
extended in trying to reconstruct the point of view
of others who may not share the same initial
perspective.
Two recent examples spring immediately to mind
and from seemingly opposite ends of the contemporary
intellectual spectrum, in the form of W.V.O. Quine
and Hans Georg Gadamer. Most notably in his classic
"Ontological Relativity, " Quine argues that
fundamental matters such as what there is are only
settled relative to a conceptual scheme, meaning a
tissue or "network of terms and predicates and
auxiliary devices...our frame of reference, or
coordinate system."(2) Though Quine subscribes to
much more than this minimal thesis and often has
little to say about those forces that have shaped
our conceptual scheme, for example history and
culture, he does clearly insist on the relativistic
nature of knowing that something is the case.(3)
That is, there is no piece of meaningful information
(meaning an informative sentence) that is not
embedded in and fails to presuppose an overall
interpretative theory.
In parallel fashion, Gadamer argues the case
that all truth in the sense of what we can learn or
discover (and not limited to scientific truth) is
discovered and warranted relative to particular
traditions. To be sure, these traditions are
themselves transformed by the ongoing process of the
discovery of truth, but they nonetheless condition
it. All meaning and understanding are, for Gadamer,
an interpretative event involving projec-
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tion against a horizon determined by one's
background "prejudices" (in Gadamer's sense) .
Especially when dealing with the truths of the
Geistes-wissenschaften, the projection from one's
own standpoint toward that of other human beings
inevitably requires some, as he says, fusion of our
relative horizons, a process that inevitably
transforms our own standpoint.
What essentially links these two vantage points
(and I certainly would not want to underrate their
differences) (4) is that they both represent an
attempt to demonstrate philosophically the
possibility of knowledge (and hence truth of a sort)
under the limiting condition of the essential
finitude of human reason. I am sure that one can
think of many more and much better examples than
these two, but they illustrate the point-a point
that is nicely summarized by Joseph Margolis in his
term "textualism," which he defines as
the theory that our knowledge of the world is an
interpretation of whatever we take ourselves to
discriminate within an indissolubly relational
condition in which the actual world is
cognitively accessible only through the tacitly
organizing concepts of a natural and
historically changing praxis and language.(5)
Textualism in this sense is thus the kind of
philosophical perspective that Richard Bernstein
offers as a middle way between objectivism and
relativism and that others have picked up on as the
minimal basis for a neopragmatism emphasizing
especially the social responsibilities of knowledge
in the legitimation of power.(6) In a nutshell, the
view shared by many from Habermas to Rorty is that
the intrinsically limited and situational aspects of
human knowledge and its communication (the rejection
of objectivism) are not in themselves barriers to
the critical exchange of views. Just because there
are no absolute standards covering the construction
and employment of our theories, it does not follow
that there are no standards--or what is the same
thing, that they are totally idiosyncratic. In other
words, knowledge and truth are relative to something
like a standpoint or perspective without
objectivity, thereby becoming meaningless. Why?
Because as Bernstein explains regarding
incommensurability in general, "the 'truth' of the
incommensurability thesis is not closure but
openness."(7) Perspectives and horizons are open
even if bounded or limited. They represent as much a
point of departure for human understanding as they
do a limiting condition. In summary--and this is the
point I want to draw attention to--textualism in the
form of a shared conviction across a broad spectrum
of Western philosophers requires or is explained by
this idea of the open perspective or horizon, the
notion of a standpoint.
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II.
What is innovative and attractive about these
views for Western philosophers is, of course, the
preservation of a sense of objectivity while at the
same time there is a pruning of the excesses of
absolutism. It is very hard to envision a form of
life where human beings flourish and where concerns
about legitimation, truth, and mutual understanding
are missing. Societies where differences between
people are unacknowledged and the means of their
mitigation are untested by consensus are generally
unattractive. Hence, objectivity in the sense of
some standard or standards that are more than merely
subjective states of belief and desire is to be
prized. The problem is to ground, explain, and
define objectivity. If one relies simply on the
projection of transcendent principles or a fully
independent reality, then the question of our access
to such principles becomes a philosophical
perplexity of the highest order. However, if
objectivity in the broad sense can be brought into
human perspective, defined relative to human
projects and practices, then the problem simply
disappears. This is the preferred solution of a kind
of pragmatism that one finds reflected over much of
the contemporary scene, a 'neo-pragmatism' that
covers a much broader range than James' empiricist
psychology or Peirce's logical apparatus. In short,
neopragmatism, in the manner in which I am using the
term, trades the sense of objectivity grounded on
transcendent principles and standards such as
Plato's Good, Aristotle's Being, or Kant's
categories and instead insists on an evolutionary
objectivity grounded on the changing structures
regulating historically situated human practices.
Such a view presupposes what I have identified as
textualism. In short, we can have the cake of
objectivity and eat it, too.
This rejection of absolutism is, of course,
nothing new. Heraclitus, Protagoras, and other early
Greek thinkers tended toward the same kind of view.
And, for our purposes, so did much of the Buddhist
philosophical tradition, especially and most
consistently, the Maadhyamika strand. In particular,
the second-century philosopher Naagaarjuna argued
forcefully, especially in his Muulamadhyamaka
kaarikaa (henceforth MMK), that all reality was
'suunya or empty. No thing, including nothing
itself, had svabhaava or substantial and individual
being, self-identity, self-being, or self-existence.
Rather, emptiness or 'suunyata was dependence; that
all things were empty meant that all things were
mutually (and thoroughly) dependent---the doctrine
of pratiityasamutpaada. Thus, no faith in a
transcendent reality or principle could be
sustained, nor could human reason pretend to
independence from the kind of constraints that
pragmatists recognize.
The problem with a Maadhyamika point of view for
neopragmatists and the difficulty posed by many
other ancient and venerable philo-
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sophical positions with which it is often linked,
such as Heraclitus', is that it conflates
objectivity and the absolute, thus endangering the
point which neopragmatism struggles to make. Namely,
within the appropriate context, certain claims are
more appropriate than others, and some claims are
true; it's just that absolute truth or objectivity
outside such contexts is meaningless. 'Su^nyataa, as
a concept, poses the risk of nihilism in its
insistence that all things are equally dependent on
each other, that all things are equally relative.
And if not nihilism, at least an unattractive
Protagoreanism of the sort that even modern
relativists tend to reject as too simplistic.(8)
Put in a contemporary idiom, the problem with
'suunyataa is that if it is true that everything is
empty in the sense that all things are absolutely
and mutually dependent, then we lack the ability to
define horizons, perspectives, the space of reasons,
and meaningual conceptual boundaries. Because if
everything is mutually dependent, then the
categories which comprise the same conceptual scheme
have no closer a relationship than do the categories
which feature in different conceptual schemes. A
conceptual scheme or a tradition must maintain a
relative autonomy from some range of alternatives;
otherwise the concept is completely meaningless.
Alternatively, a neopragmatist might argue that
the insistence on 'suunyataa overstrengthens the
incommensurability thesis on the grounds that it
fails to resolve the issue regarding the openness or
closure of conceptual schemes, worldviews, and the
like. The fact that all things are mutually
dependent, the relativity expressed in
pratiityasamutpaada, does not of itself determine
whether two separate yet dependent conceptual
schemes are open or closed to each other. Is there
an interexpressive dimension to mutually dependent
worldviews? Or does the very insistence on their
dependence rather suggest separation, difference,
and closure? What is to guarantee that we are able
to transcend the limits of our own perspective? We
may be mutually dependent on each other but are we
mutually empathetic.
III.
I think such objections are a mistake, not just
in terms of Buddhist scholarship and the
interpretation of the texts involved, but also
philosophically in terms of the potential that the
Maadhyamika view offers. Indeed, I want to argue
that those who would subscribe to textualism and
neopragmatism would do well to take 'suunyataa
seriously, for it goes some distance toward
explaining the 'openness' of the incommensurability
thesis, the expansiveness of our interpretative
horizon, and the dialectic involved in the 'fusion
of horizons'. Especially since it is at these
critical junctures that contemporary neopragmatism
is tested by such thinkers
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as Donald Davidson and Jurgen Habermas, the question
of such openness cannot simply be dismissed.(9)
The argument that the very idea of a conceptual
scheme is inconsistent with the equation of
'suunyataa and mutual dependence is essentially that
such strong holism amounts to a kind of
epistemological nihilism in the sense that either
conceptual schemes cannot enjoy any independent
existence or that they have too much of it. Indeed,
it is central to textualism that it is only in
relation to a particular conceptual scheme,
tradition, or whatever that one knows anything at
all. In other words, the principle of relativity
embodied in 'suunyataa is too strong. This, however,
is more than Naagaarjuna would claim.
In his seminal work, the Muulamadhyamakakaarikaa
(MMK), (10) Naagaarjuna devotes an entire chapter to
rebuffing the claim that 'suunyataa disables the
holy truths of Buddhism, the aaryasatya. As these
are particular claims attributed to the Buddha
regarding the meaning, significance, and over-coming
of existential suffering, one could press the case
that the aaryasatya represent Buddhism's conceptual
scheme. Certainly, these four truths are seminal to
the tradition in the sense that all Buddhists
reference their faith to these views. In Quine's
idiom, they are the core of the scheme of things
Buddhist in that they are remote from the vagaries
of disconfirming sense experiences.
Far from avoiding the criticism that 'suunyataa
disables such truths, Naagaarjuna argues quite to
the contrary that only in the equation of 'suunyataa
and pratiityasamutpaada can we hope to give these
truths any alethic status. Indeed, what Naagaarjuna
is forced to do is clarify the impact that
'suunyataa has on the significance of convention and
thus, by extension, tradition.
What is that impact? The first point Naagaarjuna
is at pains to make in this regard, and he makes it
in the very way he sets up his opponent's
objections, is that such objections reflect an
essentially negative interpretation of 'suunyataa:
that which is empty is nonexistent. For example, he
has his opponent claim such things as the following
(passage numbers in brackets):
[1] If all this is empty, then there exists no
uprising (origination) and ceasing. These imply
the nonexistence of the four noble truths.
(Kalupahana, Naagaarjuna, p. 326)
Naagaarjuna's reply to such claims is that in
the first place this view of 'suunyataa is
completely mistaken, and in the second the four
truths, like all other things, require emptiness:
[11] A wrongly perceived emptiness ruins a
person of meager intelligence. it is like a
snake that is wrongly grasped or knowledge that
is wrongly cultivated. (Kalupahana, Naagaarjuna,
p. 335)
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Rather,
[14] When emptiness "works," then everything in
existence "works." If emptiness does not "work,"
then all existence does not "work." (Streng,
Emptiness, p. 213)
Put in terms of conceptual schemes,
interpretative horizons, and the like, the point is
that only if one presupposes that 'suunyataa is
negative in import can we say that conceptual
schemes are 'nonexistent' if empty. Naagaarjuna
explicitly equates 'suunyataa and dependence in the
form of pratiityasamutpaada not in order to argue
that dependent things do not really exist and
therefore are empty, but to argue that emptiness
expresses the dependent nature of all things. Thus,
everything exists insofar as it is dependent. Why?
Basically, for very good textualist reasons:
[36] You will contradict all the worldly
conventions when you contradict the emptiness
associated with dependent arising. (Kalupahana,
Naagaarjuna, p. 352)
This is in essence the point that is made in a
wide range of contexts in the MMK: that existence
presupposes relations, and relations resist a
substantialist account. There is no absolute,
nonrelational, independent 'presence' that is
unconditioned. In this sense, Naagaarjuna is solidly
in the camp of twentieth-century metaphysics. In
other words, "the 'originating dependently' we call
'emptiness'; this apprehension, i.e. taking into
account [all other things], is the understanding of
the middle way" (Streng, Emptiness, p. 213).
If all presence (in Derrida's sense)(11) is to
be denied, then the only completely general
characteristic and determining feature of existing
things, of that about which we can be said to know
anything, is relationality. And there is no
principled way to draw a boundary around our
ontology, to circumscribe its extent or the
referential import of our conceptual schemes. Rather
than entailing the negative claim that we therefore
entirely lack conceptual schemes, this suggests that
such schemes are just as relational as everything
else. In short, there are principled reasons for not
getting caught up in the myth of the framework.
But equally, just as Naagaarjuna the committed
Buddhist would be unwilling to put the aaryasatya on
a par with any other articulation of human
existence, so we should be equally committed to a
chosen framework. There are two points Naagaarjuna
makes in this chapter of the MMK that serve to
connect this commitment with the admitted limitation
and, one might say, provisionality of any particular
standpoint. To begin with, he suggests that we must
remember that there are always two truths at work in
the Buddha's teaching-conventional or worldly truth
and higher truth. The point is:
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[10] Without relying upon convention, the
ultimate fruit is not taught. Without
understanding the ultimate fruit, freedom is not
attained. (Kalupahana, Naagaarjuna, p. 333)
That is, the higher truth of 'suunyataa as
relationality is meant to reconnect us to praxis and
'convention' in an enlightened manner. 'Suunyataa,
rather than disabling convention, reinforces it
without making us its slaves.
Secondly, the further point is that convention
itself, our conceptual scheme, is intrinsically
relational, and this is why any kind of svabhaava or
'metaphysical presence' is particularly disabling.
So, we are in the position of making measured
commitments always with an eye toward the
provisionality of our particular tradition and its
attendant conventions. What could be more pragmatic?
So, in answer to the original charge that the
equation of 'suunyataa with relationality makes
conceptual schemes meaningless because they are
provisional, Naagaarjuna would insist that
conceptual schemes are no worse off than anything
else in this regard. Rather, what they represent is
a particular kind of embeddedness--perhaps a
framework in which moral commitment makes sense (at
least insofar as the conventions of Buddhism itself
are concerned). To the further charge that emptiness
and dependence do not decide between openness and
closure with respect to different conceptual
schemes, Naagaarjuna might answer that the very
dependence between convention and higher truth
highlights the kind of flexibility with respect to
our perspectives that pragmatists seek. The
functional ability to tailor higher truth to lower
and lower truth to higher presupposes a flexibility
within human reason that undermines any insistence
on closure within a given scheme. More generally,
commitment to 'suunyataa requires as thorough a
rejection of absolutism as does neopragmatism, and
at least as much commitment to the practical and the
conventional.
IV.
It is possible to go further, however. Not only
does the concept of 'suunyataa escape the criticism
that it undermines commitment to what is limited and
finite; I think it also opens up the 'truth of the
incommensurability thesis' as neopragmatists
understand it for discussion and clarification.
Given the importance of pratiityasamutpaada in
constituting our conventions and customs, any
particular causal or phenomenological account of
such constitution is open to challenge. No one
factor or set of factors is decisive for making us
who we are, so on what basis does our "indissolubly
relational condition" give rise to "the tacitly
organizing concepts of a natural and historically
changing praxis and language"? That is, what is the
connection between-our embeddedness in the world and
how we respond? Is there any meaningful causal
account to be had?
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I take this to be an appropriate question from
the vantage point of the Maadhyamikas because the
question is a traditional one. This is the usual
challenge to any concept whether it be causality,
change, or the self. When someone postulates the
existence of a particular entity such as the self,
the question arises as to whether that thing is the
same or different from its corresponding context. If
one maintains that the organizing concepts of
experience are 'indissolubly' related to certain
conditions, as would be the case with textualism,
the concern would be as with a produced (causal)
effect:
The effect does not exist in the conditions that
are separated or combined. Therefore, how can
that which is not found in the conditions come
to be from [emphasis mine] the conditions?
(Kalupahana, Naagaarjuna, p. 114)
If ontology is the product of particular conditions
in a certain sense, then we must be able to
distinguish between cause and effect. But if so,
then to what extent are the categories of experience
indissolubly relational in the required manner? How
can these categories reliably come from those
conditions? The important point is how we understand
that relationality out of which our interpretation
of the world is constructed. What is the exact
connection between the way we understand and utilize
our concepts and where we come from?
These are not just questions about the nature of
relationality in the 'relational condition' that
defines us, but equally questions regarding the
status of textualist claims as truths. Naagaarjuna
consistently wrestles with the problem of an
improper grasp of 'suunyataa, realizing that it can
bite like an improperly handled snake. Can
textualism equally confront the possibilities for
misunderstanding relationality itself and articulate
what it is to grasp it properly? Would such an
account remain within the boundaries of pragmatism?
Another way of putting these questions is to ask
how we handle the paradox of a fusion of horizons or
'the openness in the incommensurability thesis'. To
follow out the metaphors, presumably a fusion of
horizons is nobody's horizon in particular in that
such fusion suggests a perspective external to those
which are fused. Further, the openness in the
incommensurability thesis requires us to sort out
when we are merely toting up the differences between
ourselves and others and when we are genuinely
appreciating another from their own perspective.
What bars us from thinking of a given horizon,
whether cultural or historical, as a limitation in
the worst sense? Philosophically, one might argue,
nothing at all, if we are speaking in the idiom of
textualism and neopragmatism. For if neopragmatism
consists primarily in the rejection of absolutes,
and hence absolute standards of truth and knowledge,
while we may not be able to embrace the absolute
truth of no truth, we still have no firm account of
what warrants the claim of objectivity in any
particular case.
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And it is this claim on behalf of some particular
proposition, or set of propositions, from which
worldviews or conceptual schemes emerge.
A serious Buddhist philosopher would challenge
the proponent of a conceptual scheme to continue the
story of its relational constitution. Hence, there
is a serious challenge mounted to any kind of
convention-alism or traditionalism as well as a
tendency to question the (usually self-imposed)
limits of any particular framework. Would the
committed pragmatist go so far?
V.
In summary, Buddhists have something in the
notion of 'suunyataa that pragmatists generally
lack, even though 'suunyataa can be seen as a
textualist and highly pragmatic concept. That
something is a sense of 'suunyataa as truth or
higher truth. This sort of concept is usually
greeted with suspicion by pragmatists. Higher truth
suggests absolutes, timeless truth, the limiting
condition of human existence, and so on.
Neopragmatism is a concern for embedded human
truths. However, even such a minimal position
requires some general story regarding the status of
human affairs. Otherwise, one wonders to what extent
textualism is simply optional, or at best a
projection against other possibilities. Would
textualism be true even if there had never been
beings who were embedded in so relational a
condition that they would interpret the world?
In terms of Naagaarjuna's understanding of
'suunyataa, the pervasiveness of pratiityasamutpaada
means that insofar as we are conventional beings
engaged in actions, the truth of 'suunyataa is
simply not optional. It is a kind of transcendental
precondition to all action and discourse. But, and
this is the twist, 'suunyataa itself is meaningless
outside conventional living. "Without relying upon
convention, the ultimate fruit is not taught." In
the same manner that Naagaarjuna argues that
nirvaa.na and sa.msaara come to the same thing, one
might argue that so do higher and lower truth. Since
insofar as higher truth is this nonoptional
condition of relationality that is meaningful only
in the context of ordinary life, lower and higher
truth are indistinguishable; so it is with nirvaa.na
and sa.msaara: "between them not even a subtle
something is evident" (Kalupahana, Naagaarjuna, p.
367).
In short, there is implicit in the Maadhyamika
view a general approach to the whole issue of
rationality and its constraints--the issue with
respect to which our discussion began. It is clear
to what extent a Buddhist philosophy would differ
from textualism in this regard. Textualism shows a
distinct reluctance for arguments in favor of a
general view regarding the categories and principles
operative in a theory of fundamental
rationality.(12) But for the Maadhyamika, this is
exactly the issue. Is fundamental reason within or
astride such categories--within or astride
affirmation and denial itself?
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For Naagaarjuna, 'suunyataa is not confined to
either of the theoretical options by which we
typically specify the operative sphere of
fundamental rationality. It is within neither our
rational categories nor our raw experience, it is
neither transcendental nor natural, it is within
neither a conceptual scheme nor its constituent
conditions. As an implicit account of rationality,
the Maadhyamika view locates reason, one might say,
dialectically 'athwart' any such categories, thus
rejecting them as exclusive descriptive options. A
rationality that is keyed to absolute (and
nonsubstantial, therefore empty) dependence suggests
of itself the inadequacy of such dualisms. Thus, the
attitude Naagaarjuna takes toward higher and lower
truth represents the possibility of the human mind
in its essential emptiness working across any such
categories as these in a kind of play that is
perhaps reminiscent of the question-and-answer
dialectic Gadamer sees as the interpretative
function at the base of all language and
meaning.(13)
Since Naagaarjuna never insisted on the denial
of any particular truth (nor on its affirmation
either), one cannot charge him with trying to affirm
what he sought to deny in articulating a higher
truth. He is certainly not a Protagorean relativist
in this sense. Thus, the development of the
Maadhyamika tradition over the centuries and its
contemporary interpretation in the form of the Kyoto
School cannot be convicted of this kind of
inconsistency, that is, philosophizing in the midst
of a nihilistic purge of philosophy. Indeed, much of
that tradition can be seen as having attempted to
spell out in explicit terms the full dimensionality
of human living. From the early discussion of the
cycle of dependence in the psychology of desire as
one finds it in the Paali canon to Nishida's logics
of the subject, predicate, and dialectical
universal, Buddhist philosophy has drawn consistent
inspiration from its original insistence on the
relationality of all things.
The reason I am suggesting why this strain of
Buddhism can inspire a philosophical tradition is
the degree to which it has redefined the nature of
what is to count as truth in a substantial sense, or
how it can help one to understand the twin
alternatives of affirmation and denial. Again, the
failure to deny or affirm such things as absolute
truth or the categories of thought leaves open the
possibility of redrawing them. In fact, the point
about affirmation and denial is that they are
mutually dependent and equally relative within the
embracing condition of bringing higher truth into
concert with practical life. Affirmation and denial,
and their dialectical interchange, are tools in this
effort.
Therefore, unlike Richard Rorty, Naagaarjuna
should not be seen as repudiating philosophical
thought but rather as sanctioning such work as a
Keiji Nishitani or a Masao Abe has pursued in
opening up ways of understanding 'suunyataa as the
kind of relationality which operates along the
dimensions of human experience. Philosophy is not
like selling, as
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Nelson Goodman once suggested, on the grounds that
we lack the means to validate higher-order
claims.(14) Rather, philosophy remains a rational
and existentially responsible enterprise but with an
entirely redrawn picture of the options regarding
what is thinkable concerning the human condition.
Philosophy is entitled to be as reflective as it can
be under the constraint of leaving open questions of
legitimation.
NOTES
1 - In this regard I am relying upon Richard
Bernstein's categories of objectivism and
relativism, meant to capture the typical options
in theorizing about rationality. See Richard
Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1985).
2 - W.V.O. Quine, "Ontological Relativity, " in
Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 48.
Although Quine (and others) see a conceptual
scheme as linguistic in nature, the sense in
which I am using it throughout this essay allows
for a wider meaning, including the practices
related also to speaking or using our language,
among others.
3 - This is apparent in related essays and books
such as Word and Object (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: M.l.T. Press, 1960) .
4 - Especially with respect to their views on
language, Quine and Gadamer are quite different.
In contrast to Quine, Gadamer tends to emphasize
the practices covering our use of language, in
conversation. See especially the third part of
Truth and Method, "The Ontological Shift of
Hermeneutics Guided by Language" (New York: The
Seabury Press, 1975).
5 - Joseph Margolis, Pragmatism without Foundations
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1986) , pp.
235-236. For Margolis this is a general view
shared by many in the Continental European
tradition as well as in Anglo-American analytic
philosophy.
6 - See the concluding chapter of Beyond Objectivism
and Relativism, here Bernstein argues for a new
kind of phronesis that opens up differences
between and questions the disposition of power
both within and without human communities.
7 - Bernstein, ibid., p. 91. Bernstein stresses this
is his 'inversion' of incommensurability as it
is handled by thinkers such as Feyerabend. In a
sense, this is a repudiation of strong
incommensurability, suggesting a weaker thesis
sensitive to the inevitable differences one
finds between forms of living.
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8 - By Protagoreanism I have in mind what Margolis
describes as the view "that whatever is affirmed
is at once both true and false" (Margolis,
Pragmatism without Foundations, p. xiii). The
risk involved stems from interpreting mutual
dependence as canceling the privileged status of
particular truths, as in the view that since
'all truth is relative' then what's true for me
is not true for you. Margolis, a "modest
relativist," of course rejects Protagoreanism.
9 - Davidson attacks the very idea of a conceptual
scheme on the grounds that we cannot make out
the difference between our own and another's.
Habermas criticizes Gadamer for not
acknowledging the socio-political influences on
a tradition, as well as its inevitably
conservative and conventional tendencies.
10 - I rely primarily on two translations and shift
between them as I think clarity demands. They
are: David J. Kalupahana, Naagaarjuna: The
Philosophy of the Middle Way(Albany: SUNY
Press, 1986); Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness: A
Study in Religious Meaning (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1967). Hereafter, each text will be
designated by author and short title only.
11 - See Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology and other
works. Presence for Derrida is the transparency
of a meaning and a sign or consciousness to
itself. In any case, it is a kind of
metaphysical unity that conditions obviousness
and certainty. Such univocity is completely at
odds with the differential and relational
nature of 'suunyataa.
12 - If one sees the options regarding rationality
as Bernstein does, as essentially one of either
set of absolutely objective or completely
context-bound standards and principles, then to
reject objectivism is also to reject a certain
kind of claim--one that is transcendental in
nature. This is particularly obvious in the
views of thinkers such as Rorty and Goodman.
However, Margolis does leave room for such
claims and arguments. See especially Margolis,
Pragmatism without Foundations, chap. 11,
"Scientific Realism as a Transcendental Issue."
13 - See especially the concluding chapter of Truth
and Method.
14 - See Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc.,
1978), p. 129.
proofread by, Wang,mei-hwei(¤ý¬ü´f©~¤h)