AUT: Re: Re: Star Wars and Archetypes

["cwright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

commie00 said:
>  keep in mind
> that philosophical taoism and zen buddhism form the backbone of
materialist
> and dialectical thought in asia. and in fact their stated aim is "against
> alienation, for community", interestingly enough.
>
> Tahir: How materialist is nirvana? Surely any religion can quite
legitimately claim to be "against alienation, for community". I certainly
have never encountered any religion that would not say the same.

Chris:
Actually, commie00, there is a strain of conscious materialism in Chinese
thought.  Fung Yu-Lan discusses this in his two volume work A History of
Chinese Philosophy and Wing-Tsit Chan has partial works by Chang Tsai and
Wang Fu-chih in his compilation: A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, which
I also highly recommend for reasonably translated non-popular texts.

One problem, I think, is that we are reading so-called 'European'
philosophical development back into China, Japan, Korea, etc.  The second
problem is the assumption that 'Greek' philosophy is part of some 'European'
history, of course.  Both of these need to be kept in mind.  We also need to
be aware that Taoism, Confucianism, Sikhism(?), Zoroastrianism, Hinduism and
Buddhism were not the only philosophies, but more or less popular religions
(and vice versa), and as such partially theologies.  More or less connected
to ancestor worship, different pantheistic (or complicatedly monotheistic)
beliefs, etc.  What is the relationship of these religio-philosophical
ideologies to the world they arose in and how have they continued to be
relevant?

That there is a materialist aspect to these should not surprise us.
However, we are not comparing a Marxist 'weltanshaaung' with any religious
world-view.  Marx sought to surmount the separation of idealism and
materialism, and in the process develop a thorough-going critique of class
society and capital in particular.  We can either approach Buddhism, Taoism,
etc in the same spirit as Marx (to uncover their origins and relation to the
actual social relations of society, per the intro to the Grundrisse) or we
can debate in truly mechanical, second international Marxism fashion, the
degree of 'idealism' or 'materialism' in these religio-philosophical
beliefs.

The latter is happening right now and seems like a dead end to me.

Cheers,
Chris



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