Quora Answer: Is anyone sketching a philosophical bridge between Foucault and Nondualism, Buddhist, Taoist or other “eastern” philosophies?

Oct 18 2014

I am writing a paper on Zizek and Dogen which is a defense of Buddhism and other nondual ways like Islamic Sufism. Foucault and other Continental Philosophers figure into that defense in as much as you have to understand the relation of these various continental philosophers to each other. Basically the question should be What is the relation between non-dual philosophy to the Western worldview overall, and then within that context we can see various levels of attempts to solve problems created by dualism established by Aristotle in his Metaphysics. But in fact none of these western philosophers come close to articulating a real nondual position like that of Dogen, for instance.  You really have to compare a concrete instance of nondual thought within that tradition of Taoism, Buddhism, DzogChen, etc and show its relation to the dualist Western worldview as a whole, and then work your way down to individual philosophers and how they have tried to solve problems caused by duality within the western worldview. Otherwise it is easy to fall into Orientalism as so many do.

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