Ethics and the Subversion of Conceptual Reification in Lévinas and Śāntideva

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

In this paper I am interested in one specific resonance between Levinas and Śāntideva, namely their shared concern with the moral dimension of conceptual reification. For Levinas, ethics, the welcoming of the Other, requires a self-subverting discourse which does not exclude or assimilate alterity. According to Śāntideva, ethics requires the deconstruction of objects we perceive and conceive. This deconstruction, Śāntideva argues, liberates us from the attachments which result both in our own suffering and disregard for the sufferings of others. Levinas, with his commitment to "unsay the said" of his own discourse, and Śāntideva, with his account of the lack of inherent existence of all things, including emptiness itself, argue that ethics requires the deconstructing one's own discourse and conceptuality.

Citation

Edelglass, William. "Ethics and the Subversion of Conceptual Reification in Lévinas and Śāntideva." In Deconstruction and the Ethical in Asian Thought, edited by Youru Wang, 133–41. London: Routledge, 2007.

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Bodhicaryāvatāra

An "Introduction to Bodhisattva Practice," the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra is a poem about the path of a bodhisattva, in ten chapters, written by the Indian Buddhist Śāntideva (fl. c. 685–763). One of the masterpieces of world literature, it is a core text of Mahāyāna Buddhism and continues to be taught, studied, and commented upon in many languages and by many traditions around the world. The main subject of the text is bodhicitta, the altruistic aspiration for enlightenment, and the path and practices of the bodhisattva, the six perfections (pāramitās). The text forms the basis of many contemporary discussions of Buddhist ethics and philosophy.

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