Casting Off
Wednesday December 2, 2009
I’m sitting in the sunshine, somewhere in Bethnal Green, with a good quality cup of Colombian coffee, recovering from the excitement of last night’s launch of Finding Our Sea-Legs
It’s a curious thing that, from the point of view of the writer, once a book is launched you start to forget about it, and to move on to the next thing; but this is precisely the moment when – for the first time – other folks have the chance to pick it up and to see what exactly it is that you have written, what it is that you have been preoccupied with for so long.
Anyway, it was wonderful to have the book launched with such style. Your job now, dear blog-readers, is to buy yourselves copies, to buy copies for your friends, and for your friends’ friends, and for their friends as well. My job is to get working on the next book. Time to get back to the library.
#2 · Will
16 January 2010
Hi, David, and thanks for the vote of confidence.
The question about the relationship to Buddhism in the book is interesting. Four and a half years ago – when I was half way through the book, and when I started this blog – I wrote about wanting to think about “Buddhism without Buddhism”, to find a way of making use of the possibilities of thought opened up by practice, but without necessarily making explicit reference to Buddhism as a framework. And this, in part, because of my fear of simply ending up repeating the same old thing.
I think your summary of the book’s main thrust is right, and it might be interesting to think through the implications of the idea of emptiness for how we see ethics… But I look forward to your review. Enjoy the rest of your no-writing retreat!
#3 · David Chapman
21 February 2010
Hi, Will,
I’ve posted the review at approachingaro.org/f… .
Actually it is not so much a review as an “essay inspired by”. What I have tried to do is to translate some of your themes from the language of Continental philosophy back to Mahayana Buddhism. I really hope I have not significantly distorted your intent by doing that.
I am hugely looking forward to your next one!
David
#1 · David Chapman
29 December 2009
Hi Will,
I’ve just finished reading Finding Our Sea-Legs. It’s a remarkable piece of work, and I recommend it to any readers. I’m on a no-writing retreat now, but I plan to publish a review in March.
I have a couple questions for you… The book’s main reference point is Continental philosophy, yet you reject the ethical conclusions you find there. On the other hand, to me the book seems permeated with a Buddhist sensibility, although you make almost no explicit reference to Buddhism. I have guesses about why that might be. As far as the first point, perhaps a university press would not publish a philosophy book that made no explicit reference to Western philosophers?
I think a lot about eternalism and nihilism. Perhaps the book’s topic could be summarized as “how do we steer between the Scylla of ethical eternalism and the Charybdis of ethical nihilism?” That is, “how do we relinquish both the hope of a well-grounded ethical system and the fear that without one we can have no ethics at all?”
This problem seems like it should be pressing for Buddhists and Buddhism. The fact of emptiness undercuts any hope for an ultimate, eternal, certain ethics. Yet, sadly, it seems to me that Buddhism has (thus far) had little to say about this. (Which is perhaps why did not couch your book in Buddhist terms.)
It also seems that it ought to be pressing for Western philosophy since the death of God. Yet I know of very few works that address the point. (Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity might be one; but it has the usual Existential faults. And pomos such as Rorty do seem to me to get sucked into the bottomless whirlpool of nihilism.)
So I think your book is important and much-needed, as well as engaging and terrifically well-written.
Bravo, and hope you’ve had a good retreat!
David