On Deconstructing Life-Worlds: Buddhism, Christianity, Culture (American Academy of Religion Cultural Criticism Series): 3 - Softcover

Magliola, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0788502964 ISBN 13: 9780788502965

Publisher: Oxford University Press, U.S.A., 1997

Synopsis

This text by an established specialist in French deconstruction, written after his many years in Asia and in the West, celebrates both Buddhist and Christian cultures and the negative but fertile differences between them.

About this title

Review

a highly unusual book. To identify its genre would already be to misread it ... [Magliola] deserves the full attention of those interested in doctrinal issues and in interreligious conversation. (Edith Wyschogrod, Rice University)

a fascinating glimpse of a postmodern journey...a timely and concrete account of the religious resources of deconstruction, and of Derrida, Asian spirituality, and Trinitarian theology. (John D. Caputo, Villanova University)

Magliola's On Deconstructing Life-Worlds shows that he has not only studied recipes of Chinese culture but wholeheartedly tasted and assimilated them. (Mei-shu Hwang, Tamkang University)

From the Author

Buddhist and Christian differences are productive.
Author's Precis of Arguments Advanced:--This book (1) proposes that access to what transcends conventional human experience can be served by the 'negative overlap' between religions, e.g., Buddhism's rejection of an eternal Creator-God provides a clue ('prajnapti') to this transcendent as non-personal and as ever differing (traditional Christianity provides opposite clues); (2) argues that Derrida's notion of double-bind applies not only to the Mosaic God but to the God of traditional Christianity, even in the exacting terms of Roman Catholic theology; (3) argues that Madhyamika Buddhism's Prasangika school, Indian and Tibetan, profitably escapes Yogacaric holism, and fields 'double-bind' more successfully than Derrida does; (4) offers models for non-discursive deep meditation, including orthodox Christian meditation, which are NON-centered (or better, OFF-centered); (5) shows how these deconstructive truths can be eked out CONCRETELY only by way of vicissitude, in the author's case, the clash of three cultures--Italian, American, and Chinese. Part One of the book is given over to postmodern Life-Writing, and the preponderance of its ideas and image motifs, and even its 'floating graphic traits' (Derrida) either cancel or thwart each other: this ongoing constitution/dissolution can be taken in either a Madhyamikan Buddhist sense ('dependent-arising') or a Christian sense (Pauline doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ, crucified-in-this-world yet glorious). [The author holds a Ph.D. from Princeton U., and is a specialist in French deconstruction, Buddhism, and Catholic Christian theology: he is a professor of philosophy and religious studies in Thailand, and has been teaching/researching in the Orient since 1983.]

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, U.S.A.
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0788502964
• ISBN 13: 9780788502965
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 228