INTERFACING PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

A Borderline Issue in Religion Studies

Abstract

Interface means : "A surface forming a common boundary between adjacent regions " That surface in my paper will be the problem of mirroring as a specific instance of the issue of representation which constitutes the common boundary between the adjacent regions of philosophy and religious studies. But I will translate that problematic of the surface into the problematic of an appropriate philosophical methodology. Clearly, to conceive of that which interfaces between two regions, i.e. philosophy and religious studies, as a surface, a representation,a mirror image, commits us implicitly to an ontology quite different fromone implied by thinking of it as method in the sense of the Greek methodos or way (from meta: in accordance with, hodos : way). Or, to draw on a tradition elaborated later on in this paper, Tibetan Buddhism, for a path, mädhyama pradhipa, for example, to have the power to conjoin two different regions, it must do so via a depth dimension that remains inaccessible to an inquiry which maintains its locus on a surface, within a system of representations, or the mere play of signifiers or, for that matter, which maintains a conception of method as representation or mirroring along with its specific tools: description and analogy. A path, a methodos, can maintainits powerto conjoin only from within an ontology of radical change and a critical attitude which thoroughly undermines the conception of eternal essences, self-sufficient entities, or autonomously existing objects, Iraditionally believed to be the objects of mirroring and representations. It is precisely a conception of representations as mirroring eternal essences which irremediably(within that conceptual universe) separates method from content in such a way that the representations or signifiers no longer refer to anything real, because the representations themselves, or a system of them, are taken as real.