Categories
Andrew Fulford Archive Authors East Asia Nota Bene Philosophy

Retreat to Commitment in Buddhism

Robert H. Sharf writes about the retreat phenomena (with different terms) in varieties of Buddhism. Substitute “private spiritual experience” with liberal Schleiermacherian “immediate feeling of dependence upon the infinite” or conservative Barthian “encounter with the Word” and you get the same basic strategy for dealing with the same underlying problem: The urge to reduce the […]

Categories
Archive Philosophy Steven Wedgeworth

James Beattie’s Ironic Encomium of Rousseau

The unjustly forgotten Scottish poet and philosopher James Beattie has a delightful invective against David Hume, his once-celebrated Essay on Truth. In it, Dr. Beattie provides a philosophical rebuttal, a powerful rhetorical display, an interesting commentary on the Enlightenment, and among other things a personal review of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.