In this episode, MPhil Buddhist Studies students Cody Fuller and alicehankwinham interview Professor Tzohar (associate professor in the East and South Asian Studies Department at Tel Aviv University).
They interview him about his landmark work in Buddhist philosophy of language, A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor (OUP 2018). They talk about compelling issues in cross-cultural hermeneutics, ethics, and philosophy of language that arise directly from the research covered in the book developing an early Indian philosophical theory of metaphor –little of the likes which exists in contemporary analytic philosophy today. We explore the implications of 6th-century Indian scholar Sthiramati’s claim that all language in figurative – how does this project affect our methodological approaches to and understanding of early Indian discourse and practice? How might this challenge Euro-American contemporary notions of ‘Realism’ and nuance understandings of its philosophies of language and perception? How might the work help us make sense of apparent contradictions in early Indian texts about what it means to be a bodhisattva committed to liberating all sentient beings from suffering and what possibilities does this renewed understanding offer to our own ethical reflection today? Join us to refresh our engagement with the possibilities of ‘non-conceptual awareness’ and more.
