Our students are trained to be intellectual historians

Does Ken’s model shed new light on nonduality? Not that I can see at this point. It seems to just re-hash the same arguments that have been going on for millenia and he seems to have his preferences in the Venanta and Vajrayana. And all one need to is some initial research to see that a) even these 2 views disagree as to the nature of the nondual and b) they are yet again different from the Madhyamika of Nagarjuna. Edward Berge Says: April 2nd, 2007 at 6:20 am open integral

I think there are institutional reasons for this. As I see it, continental philosophy departments are not very ammenable to doing philosophy in the United States. Our students are trained to do close reading and to be intellectual historians, but not to argue, contest various positions, and develop concepts. This entails that the only way one can practice philosophy in the United States is by engaging with other thinkers and making them say what you would like to say. This problem is exacerbated by continental professional conferences, where the only papers accepted are those dealing with various masters of the tradition, rather than accepting work done by newly emerging independent thinkers...Sinthome said this on November 20th, 2006 at 1:52 am

I worry that ontology is getting too much pride of place in the attempt to revitalize Continental philosophy, and I hope we don’t leave out this kind of literary philosophy as well. I mean, isn’t Lars a kind of virtual Kierkegaard (Apologies for speaking as if you weren’t here)? Maybe I define philosophy too broadly, I’ve been accused of this before and I’m not sure they were wrong. Anthony Paul Smith said this on November 20th, 2006 at 9:00 am

One of the things that I’ve found in my experience is that everything comes to be driven by textual hermeneutics, and that there’s something scandalous in arguing against one of the great masters or contesting a claim made by the master. Again and again these sorts of arguments are responded to with the claim that the disputant is “misinterpreting” the work, that they need to go back and look more carefully, etc. That is, engagement with another thinker is reduced to questions of *interpretation* rather than questions of the legitimacy of claims. We’re taught to *understand* texts, not to question whether they’re true or false, sound or unsound...Sinthome said this on November 20th, 2006 at 6:56 pm