REL 284 The Limits of Rationality: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Same as Philosophy 284) (Not offered 1999-2000)*

This course examines some of the main ideas about rationality and its limits in several important Western and Indian Buddhist authors. Our inquiry focuses especially on such key notions as substance, the self, and causality. We start with a brief introduction to Descartes' notion of substance and the self, and Hume's critique of causality and the self, and then examine Kant's complicated response to the challenge in the Critique of Pure Reason. What does it mean that Hume calls the self a "fiction", or causality a "custom"? Does Kant really answer this claim, or merely dress up fictions as "transcendental assumptions"? And if reason must take these notions to be fictions, or assumptions, then what can it take to be real? We then move to the examination of similar issues in the Buddhist tradition. We start with the Buddhist critique of the self, which is quite similar to Hume's view, and show the place of this critique in the Buddhist view of the world. We also show that it would be a mistake to take the idea of no-self as purely negative, for it became the basis for the development of systematic philosophy within the Buddhist tradition. After examining Dharmakirti, one of the best examples of such systematic thinking in the Buddhist tradition, we move to the Madhyamaka view of emptiness, which takes systematic thought, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, as its targets. We examine the philosophical strategy of this approach which can be broadly characterized as deconstructive and show how the motive of the limits of rationality plays a central role in the Buddhist tradition and thus provides points of comparison with the Western tradition. Readings: Descartes, Meditations; Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason; Heidegger, What is a Thing?; Huntington, The Emptiness of Emptiness; Collins, Selfless Persons; Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way; Nagao, The Foundational Standpoint of Madhyamika Philosophy. Requirements: four 2- to 3-page papers. No prerequisites.

DREYFUS and FLEISCHACKER