Buddhisms and Deconstructions: New Frameworks for Continental Philosophy (review)

Edited volumes can easily suffer from inconsistency of entries and barely related contributions. Buddhisms and Deconstructions, edited by Jin Y. Park, skillfully avoids such potential traps. It brings together a set of very interesting pieces by Buddhist scholars in various traditions on the one side and Robert Magliola on the other, who is a known authority on continental philosophy, especially deconstructionism, and a pioneer in the engagement of Buddhism, Christianity as well as various strands of postmodern thought. Indeed, a unique feature of the volume is this very engagement between the two sides. Many of the essays are directly related to Magliola's own works while others deal more generally with deconstructionism, especially that of Jacques Derrida. Therefore my focus will be on the three pieces Magliola comments on or responds to in detail so as to highlight the unique aspect of this volume.

In his essay, "Deconstructive and Foundationalist Tendencies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism," Roger Jackson seeks to frame the engagement between Buddhism and deconstructionism by situating various strands of Buddhist philosophy on the continuum between the two poles of foundationalism and deconstructionism. Accordingly, he argues that within the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition Nāgārjuna represents the deconstructive end, Dharmakīrti the foundationalist end, and other figures and schools somewhere in between. Furthermore, Jackson tries to make the case that even Nāgārjuna exhibits foundationalist tendencies and Dharmakīrti deconstructionist sentiments. In making his argument this way, Jackson cautions against any attempt to pigeonhole Buddhism too neatly into the deconstructive end. Instead he advocates that some balance needs to be maintained between the two poles in order to have a better understanding of Buddhism.

In his response, Magliola challenges Jackson's interpretations of the Buddhist traditions and, especially, the deconstructionist movement. According to Magliola, Jackson is misguided in his attempt to reduce the goal of deconstructionism to just anti-foundationalism by setting up the foundationalist—deconstructionist polarity, which echoes too neatly the two extremes of the philosophical positions the Buddha rejects, namely eternalism and annihilationism. For Magliola, such an interpretation, influenced by two leading American interpreters of Derrida—Jonathan Culler and Richard Rorty—with their own different agendas, shows an inadequate understanding of the radical nature of the deconstructionist movement. Furthermore, such a setup potentially misconstrues Nāgārjuna's teaching by rendering it similar to annihilationism/nihilism rejected by the Buddha. As Magliola rightly points out, the middle way of Nāgārjuna is neither substantialism nor nihilism, but rather "the stream of unfindables" (238). For someone who has tried to engage Buddhism and deconstructionism for a long time, Magliola sees the potential contribution of (Prāsaṅgika) Mādhyamaka to western deconstructionism in that the former can teach the latter "how to reinstate the validity of holism (Derridean 'logocentrism') while retaining deconstruction" (ibid.).

David Loy, in his "Indra's Postmodern Net," explores the central Huayan Buddhist teaching of the interpenetration and mutual identity of things, and seeks parallels as well as potentials for dialogue with postmodern thought that resonates with much of the implications of the Huayan teachings. Loy zooms in on the crystallizing metaphor of Huayan Buddhism, the famous Indra's net of jewels that mirror each other in the cosmic exhibition of interpenetration, by examining the Huayan metaphysics of intercausality, exploring its existential implications of non-abiding, challenging the western philosophical fixation on truth as the attempt to grasp onto reality through conceptual schemes, and advocating a non-dualistic, meaning-free, and playful way of life to overcome the relativistic challenges to the Buddhist ethical discourse that seeks no absolute grounding. While acknowledging parallels between Huayan and Derrida, Loy argues that the latter is still caught up in the logocentric discourse even though he recognizes the futility of such projects. Loy proposes that to overcome such "bad infinity" of postmodern infinite regress of word games, there is a need for a "good infinity" which is a "leap" into that which cannot be thought. Consistent with the...