Response to Mary Bockovers review of Rationality

·期刊原文
Response to Mary Bockover's review of Rationality and Mind in Early Buddhism
By Frank J. Hoffman
Philosophy East and West
Volume 40, no.2
1990 April
(C) by University of Hawaii Press

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The exposition in Professor Mary Bockover's review
of my book, Rationality and Mind in Early Buddhism
(Philosophy East and West 39, no. 2 (April 1989)),
is accurate for chapters two through six. I am
grateful for what is, in general, a skillful review.
However, the first and second paragraphs of that
review contain several glaring inaccuracies. Bockover
says that I demonstrate that early Buddhism is a
"rational, 'accurate and non-trivial' school of
thought." But (a) my usage of the term "early
Buddhism" refers to a set of texts (the five
Nikaayas), not to a school (p. 1). In contrast to
Sarvaastivaada, Sautraantika, and others, early
Buddhism is not a "school." (Some scholars would like
to think that everything in the five Nikaayas is
indisputably prior to all schools, but this, too, is
a gratuitous assumption.) In addition, (b) my words
"accurate and non-trivial" refer to the ideal study
of early Buddhism rather than to early Buddhism
itself (as pp. 1-2 make plain).

In Bockover's account of my method as set out in
chapter 1, she says: "Going to the Pali texts is
essential, but it is also methodologically necessary
to look at certain commentaries, given the more
specific goal of understanding how Early Buddhism
can be taken to bear on pertinent issues of mind."
However, (c) my point is that it is not
methodologically necessary to consider the
commentaries for the purposes of this study (p. 5).
Finally, (d) the phrase, "internally consistent and
linguistically precise" is not applied by me to
early Buddhism overall, but to that language in the
texts which merits this description (p. 7).

In sum, Professor Bockover has misunderstood my
expressed attitude in this study towards the
Abhidhamma commentaries, as well as my basic usage
of the term "early Buddhism."