Session 5: Love and Relativism at the Crossroads

Session 5: Love and Relativism at the Crossroads
Chair: Fotini Vaki

Hope to Love You: Love Beyond Self in the Philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Chogyam Trungpa
Tahseen Basheer
Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Philosophy, Interdisciplinary Studies in Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture, State University of New York at Binghamton, New York, USA

In my paper I will focus on key concepts in the works of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and the Buddhist philosopher Chögyam Trungpa.  Though steeped in two very different spiritual traditions they offer a model of love that transcends the idea of possession and ownership.  By analyzing their philosophies of self and other my intention is to investigate the extent to which this new model of relating to the other a viable model for contemporary times.
Both philosophers offer startling insights into the relationship of self and other, inter-subjectivity, time and self, responsibility towards the other and responsibility towards self.  In the analytic of self and other presented by these philosophers human subjectivity and human relationships are empowered with the potential for immense transformations.
In my discussion of their work I will bring out points of intersection and divergence and how their thought reflects on the ever emerging desire to love the other.  I will posit the question of love as hope, as desire, as dream in the future to come, and not as a goal or a purpose already attained or consumed.  Since both philosophers are critical of reducing the other to our desires, or loving the other as consumption and need, the question remains how we hope to love the other and yet respect the other’s space and time.  Related to the question of love for the other is also self-love and if we can hope to achieve the fluid and other-centered models of love offered by Levinas and Trungpa.
The philosophies of Levinas and Trungpa present the reader with huge challenges on the level of ethics, morality, and spirituality.  Their works also raise important questions about the relevance of meditative practices such as humility, forgiveness, generosity, and compassion in contemporary times when the question of god and religion invokes violent responses. The emphasis on humility in both philosophers makes one wonder if disciplining the passions, being mindful of one’s behavior, patience, and responsibility for the other may be the values of the new millennium.   After all, the other we desire to love includes the religious other, the gendered other, the cultural other, the homosexual other, and the racial other. This love could be difficult, tough, and non-traditional but it may have to be hoped for, thought about, and maybe even lived, for it is impossible to imagine a world without love.
This love beyond the conditioned, traditional self can manifest itself as gift—as in the gift of healing, forgiveness, and acceptance.  In the conflicts between cultures, civilizations, religions, and races we may easily lose our capacity to love and endear what is best in humanity—maybe the answer to that lies in a new definition of loving the other.  In my reading of Levinas and Trungpa they offer wisdom of love which has the potential to enlighten our paths, our hearts, and our humanity.  In my paper I will probe the boundaries of hope in asking the question how to love the other with radical wisdom.

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The paper is devoted to the philosophical debate of political argumentation, especially within the framework of the analytic philosophical tradition. Its primary target is not an evaluation of the contemporary political debate, but rather a broader philosophical context. It will concentrate on the role of the concepts of “relativism” and “culture” as important points of departure of social sciences, and the role of further fundamental categories of the political debate as such. An aim of this paper is also a critical evaluation of the contemporary state of philosophy of social sciences and its conveying to broader professional public.
More specifically, the author’s aim is to prove that the above concepts are usually used more or less inadequately, which is caused partly by the low extent of the theoretical precision of the concept of “culture” and partly by the insufficient level of the discussion of the problems of epistemic and ethical relativism. In particular, his argumentation aims at the elucidation of the interconnectedness of philosophy, social sciences and the employment of the concepts of these sciences outside of the theoretical framework (their common sense usage). It attempts to show that a political argumentation that does not rest on a firm conceptual foundation looses its argumentative force and becomes unpersuasive and “impractical” in a broad sense of the word

The historical axis of Modernism-Postmodernism in the intellectual history of the West designates the dawn and the twilight of humanistic optimism. As Anthony Thiselthon indicates, “Perhaps the self of modernity had been right to hope, but wrong about the basis on which it built its hope; perhaps the postmodern self had been right to despair if will-to-power exhausted the content of all reality, but wrong in its assumption that this exhausted all that might be called “real.” (Thiselton, 1995)
The proposed paper aims to discuss the emergence of spiritualistic redemptory alternatives to modernist humanistic optimism and postmodernist nihilism within the discourse of spirituality-based bioethics. The recent debates in bioethics highlighted the delimitations of the idealistic projects for humanistic self-redemption, which endeavor to establish a materialistic utopia of paradise on earth and put their hope in redemptory potential of “messianic” science and technology.
In exploring the relationship between science, religion, social theory and utopia, the proposed paper will introduce the notion of Theophobia for the analysis of the phenomenon of secularist humanistic escapism from spiritualistic paradigms of “reality” and discuss the notion of spiritualistic realism, which exposes the modernist focus on material reality as the prime source of hope as limited and idealistic. The paper will also address the spiritualistic notion of the transcendental anchor as a conceptual counterweight to the variety of phenomena of humanistic idolatry inherent within the dichotomous anthropocentric paradigm, which uses (misuses, abuses) the Other or any part of material reality as the prime source of hope.
Finally, the present paper will analyze the ways in which the restoration of the lost status of the theological notion of hope may help develop an antidote to postmodern disintegration and dehumanization of science. It will introduce spiritualistic paradigms of redemption that form the basis for non-utopian reintegration of science and religion..

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