Philosophy
- Ancient Philosophy – iTunes – Feed – Stream – David Ebrey, UC Berkeley
- Death – YouTube – iTunes – Download Course – Shelly Kagan, Yale
- Existentialism in Literature & Film – iTunes – Feed – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
- Heidegger – iTunes – Feed – MP3s – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
- Heidegger’s Being & Time – Feed – MP3s – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
- Introduction to Political Philosophy – YouTube – iTunes – Download Course, Steven B. Smith, Yale
- Introduction to Practical Reasoning and Critical Analysis of Argument, iTunes – Daniel Coffeen, UC Berkeley
- Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? – YouTube – Michael Sandel, Harvard
- Kant’s Epistemology – iTunes – Dr Susan Stuarts, University of Glasgow.
- Man, God and Society in Western Literature – iTunes – Feed – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
- Philosophy for Beginners – iTunes – Marianne Talbot, Oxford
- Proust & Philosophy – Feed – Johns Hopkins
- The Examined Life – iTunes – Greg Reihman, Lehigh University
Freelance reporter Hla Hla Win arrested in September after visiting a Buddhist monastery in Burma, jailed for 20 years http://bit.ly/5EvSrk
Chan Buddhism and Lacan on the Role of the Teacher[1]
Timothy C. Huson, Ph.D.
School of Foreign Studies, South China Normal University
In a recent symposium in Nanjing on Lacan’s philosophy, today’s most well-known English language proponent of Lacan, Slavoj Zizek, rejected the idea of seeing Lacanian psychoanalysis in terms of Buddhism and raised an impromptu critique of the popular Western forms of Zen Buddhism for becoming an integral part of capitalist discourse, following a line of thought he has taken in several publications, in one of which he describes “Western Buddhism” as “…the most efficient way for us fully to participate in capitalist dynamics while retaining the appearance of mental sanity….”[2] I think Zizek is right about this latter point, and also about the similar function of Zen Buddhism in Japanese capitalism. But, while raising the topic in China, he missed a great opportunity – and I brought this up in my own comments – to explore the genuinely Chinese aspect of Lacan’s thought as it relates to the theory of teaching in Chan Buddhism, the Buddhism originating in Guangdong Province and carried over to Japan as Zen.[3] Lacan’s conception of both analytic technique and teaching are closely related to the Chan Buddhist view on teaching. In ignoring this connection, Zizek not only missed the opportune setting for acknowledging the Chinese aspect of Lacan’s thought, he also missed the chance, via Lacan, to reintroduce an aspect of Chinese thought that might be of great importance in improving the educational environment in today’s China, for the Chan Buddhist / Lacanian conception of teaching forms a stark contrast to the ineffective exam-centered system that is so dominant in China today.
