A COMPARATIVE EXAMINATION OF THE CONTEMPORANEOUS

NEOPLATONIC AND INDIAN-BUDDHIST-WISDOM TRADITIONS

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctorate in Philosophy from Macquarie University.

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY: SCHOOL OF HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY
AND POLITICS

DATE

BY NOEL TOINTON, B.A. (Otago N.Z.), B.A.Hons. (Victoria - 										Wellington, N.Z.).

Table Of Contents

Page - Chapter/Section 	    -      Title               .

i   	Title Page

ii	Table of Contents

iii	Preface

iv  	Declaration

v	Synopsis of Thesis

vii	Foreword

1	I    Introduction
			
26	II  	The Disvaluation Of The Natural Attitude

88	III	Disvaluation Re-Examined

168	IV	Analysis Versus Deconstruction

255	V	The Hermeneutics Of Apparent Disconformity

280	VI	The Hermeneutics Of Absolute Typology

293	VII	A Comparative Hermeneutical Examination

386	VIII	Conclusion?

410	Index

412	Bibliography

428	Appendix I 	Papers Published And Unpublished

429	Appendix II	Diagrammatical Representation Of The 

					    Expanded Hermeneutic Circle

330  Appendix III - On How To Interpret This Thesis

Preface

	In the writing of this thesis I would like to thank the following people for their helpfulness and encouragement. First I must thank Professor Raoul Mortley for his patience, his succinct criticisms and his general ability to inspire my research and pass on at the same time a love for the broad field of scholarship he represents so well. Second, I would like to thank Professor Max Deutscher for his time, his practical advice and his helping me to rethink the concept of a methodology. Next, I must thank Dr. Luciana O'Dywer for the help she has shown me in the fields of Phenomenology and Continental Philosophy. My thanks are also extended to Dr. Anthony Bradley from Sydney University, his advice, especially in relation to reading material, has been most gratefully received.
	In no way are the people just mentioned, or others quoted or noted, responsible for any errors or defects in this thesis, that alone I take responsibility for. I have entered, and attempted to clarify, a controversial field, with as much originality as it was possible for me to define this area of research, knowing that this endeavour might not be successful, would remain controversial and perhaps continue to remain effectively unresolved.
							Noël Tointon, 6/6/91,
							(Macquarie University).

						I hereby certify that this 
						work has not been submitted
						in total or partial	fulfill-								ment of the requirements of 								any other university or 									educational institution.
						
						..............................

						(Name)       Noël Tointon.

Synopsis of Thesis

	The following re-presentation of this thesis takes the currently controversial point of view that the Buddhist-Wisdom tradition (and allied Buddhist traditions) adopt an absolute perspective through the transcendental-phenomenological nature of their religious-philosophical exposition. I argue that the Neoplatonic tradition, as exemplified in the Enneads of  Plotinus, also adopted the same type, or style, of exposition and that both traditions were instances of an absolute genre in this regard. On these commensurable grounds I was able to discern a reasonable degree of structural and functional isomorphism between these two traditions. In the demonstration of this isomorphism my fundamental methodology was a combination of transcendental-phenomenological and hermeneutical concepts that allowed me to describe, and interpret, the two key texts chosen for this comparative examination.
	This thesis is divided between eight chapters. The first four establishing the transcendental nature of an absolute philosophy as opposed to an absolutist formulation. The conclusion was reached that an absolute philosophy involved the centrally placed imposition, maintenance and exercise of a transcendental suspension (or epoche). A hermeneutic device of an expanded hermeneutic circle was introduced and developed. With this device it was shown that the nature of the negative theological process could be considered to be transcendental-phenomenological and hermeneutical in nature, and, circular in function re-investing its traditional positive theological background with a transcendental transformation in meaning. It was also argued that a negative theology was not a disvaluation (as a qualified process of devaluation) of some particular sense of the Divine, or  positive theology, or the world, but, a direct disvaluation of the natural attitude. Hence the implication that this genre of philosophy was both phenomenological and transcendental in its aspirations.
	In the last four chapters two more heuristic devices were introduced. In Chapter VII all three devices are combined in this analysis of the sense, or meaning, of the absolute (as demonstrated in the first four chapters). In order to demonstrate that these two traditions also intend a religious sense of the Absolute it was argued that this question itself had to be translated into a transcendental format, and, that under those terms of reference we could affirm a qualified sense of religious-philosophical structural and functional coincidence in this regard. My final chapter taking a more philosophical view of the ramifications entailed in the type of transcendental-phenomenological position adopted, and adapted, in this thesis.