Zen's Nonegocentric Perspectivism

Abstract

This chapter approaches Zen, in part, from the perspective of Western discourses on perspectivism. It begins by examining the ambivalently egocentric character of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, and later contrasts the egocentric perspectivism employed by Renaissance Western artists with the “floating perspective” developed by Song Chinese landscape painters. It also investigates the relevant Buddhist background of Zen, especially the perspectivism of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra and the Huayan school, which it compares and contrasts with that of Leibniz’s monadology. Passing through some reflections on Cusanus, it ultimately looks to classical Zen masters such as Linji and Dōgen and to the Kyoto School Zen philosopher Nishitani Keiji in order to make its case. At issue throughout is the question of what Zen can contribute to a cross-cultural dialogue on the nature of knowledge. The thesis is that the epistemology implied in Zen is a kind of perspectivism, and yet it differs significantly from the egocentric varieties of perspectivism that are prevalent in the Western tradition. The epistemology of Zen, it is argued, is a nonegocentric perspectivism. More precisely, the point is this: Rather than seeing things only from one’s own habitually egocentric point of view, Zen cultivates one’s ability to play the role of either “host” or “guest,” as appropriate to the situation, and in general to empathetically and compassionately participate in the myriad perspectival openings onto the world that take place in singular events of interconnection.