Hegel and Tiantai Buddhism on Being the Absolute: Theistic and Atheistic Intersubsumptions of Universality and Particularity

Brook Ziporyn

Zoom link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/97418441588

A point in common between Hegel’s philosophy and Tiantai Buddhism is that both develop an intricate theory of what I call an “intersubsumptive” relation between universality and particularity as such, which in both cases also implies the same kind of relation between the parallel categories of negation and determination, subjectivity and substantiality, infinity and finitude, necessity and contingency, and purpose and purposelessness.  “Intersubsumptive” here means that the two seemingly opposite and mutually exclusive terms are not only necessarily joined, not only necessarily imply each other, not only are necessarily pertain to the essence of one another, but also turn out to be synonyms for one another, such that to be substance is exactly what it is to be subject, and so for all the other pairs of opposites—yet without at all compromising the necessary difference between them.   This relation is analogous to that of the two sides of a Mobius strip: at every locus, there are two opposed sides, and yet if either one is traced through its entire extent, it turns out to reverse into the opposite side: there are always two sides and always only one side, and it is by following the essential definition of either side all the way (“thinking through it,” “fully realizing it”) that its implication as the other is also revealed.   Each subsumes the other as a moment or particular instantiation of itself, but is also so subsumed by the other, maintaining thereby their difference.   In this presentation, however, I will explore the ways in which, in spite of Hegel’s radical rethinking of theological categories, the monotheistic heritage continues to hamper his thoroughgoing application of this structure, in spite of claims to the contrary.   Final monotheistic vestiges maintain certain non-intersubsumptive residues in Hegel’s system, evident in the unidirectional structure of the relation between a set of a priori categories that are additionally finite in number rather than infinite,  and in the one-way subsumption of contingency by necessity.   This is contrasted to the atheistic intersubsumptive thinking of Tiantai Buddhism, where full reversibility between contingency and necessity, universality and particularity, negation and determination, unconditionality and conditionality, and above all purpose and purposelessness, reigns as the very locus of liberation.