Dialectical practice in Tibetan philosophical culture : an ethnomethodological inquiry into formal reasoning
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Bibliographic Information
Dialectical practice in Tibetan philosophical culture : an ethnomethodological inquiry into formal reasoning
Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, c2004
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
First paperback edition 2007
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Tibetan Buddhist scholar-monks have long engaged in face-to-face public philosophical debates. This original study challenges Orientalist text-based scholarship, which has overlooked these lived practices of Tibetan dialectics. Kenneth Liberman brings these dynamic disputations to life for the modern reader through a richly detailed, turn-by-turn analysis of the monks' formal philosophical reasoning. He argues that Tibetan Buddhists deliberately organize their debates into formal structures that both empower and constrain thinking, skillfully using logic as an interactional tool to organize their reflections.
During his three years in residence at Tibetan monastic universities, Liberman observed and videotaped the monks' debates. He then transcribed, translated, and analyzed them using multimedia software and ethnomethodological techniques, which enabled him to scrutinize the local methods that Tibetan debaters use to keep their philosophical inquiries alive. His study shows the monks rely on such indigenous dialectical methods as extending an opponent's position to its absurd consequences, "pulling the rug out" from under an opponent, and other lively strategies. This careful investigation of the formal philosophical work of Tibetan scholars is a pathbreaking analysis of an important classical tradition.
Table of Contents
Part I: Postcolonial Inquiry into Tibetan Dialectics
Chapter 1: Orientalism and Tibetological Praxis
Chapter 2: Ethnomethodology and the Retrieval of Ordinary Society
Chapter 3: The Organization of Reason in Tibetan Philosophical Debating
Part II: Philosophical Praxis in the Tibetan Academy
Chapter 4: Organizing the Objectivity of the Discourse: Dialectics and Communication
Chapter 5: Reason as a Public Activity
Chapter 6: Rhymes and Reason: Reason as the In Vivo, Concerted Work of Tibetan Philosophers
Chapter 7: Strategies in Tibetan Philosophical Debates
Part III: A Sociology of Reasoning
Chapter 8: Using Reasons: Capabilities of Formal Analysis
Chapter 9: Some Formal Analytic Betrayals of Philosophy
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