Response to Steven Heines review of The Karma of Words

·期刊原文
Response to Steven Heine's review of The Karma of Words

By William R. LaFleur
Philosophy East and West
vol.36(1986)
p 258
(C) by the University Press of Hawaii

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P258

I trust I will not appear to be thin-skinned in
making a brief response to Professor Steven Heine's
review of my The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the
Literary Arts in Medieval Japan (reviewed in
Philosophy East and West, July 1985, pp. 319-320).
Two points may sufficiently illustrate his method of
criticism and my reason for objecting to reading and
reviewing that tends to be a hit-or-miss affair. He
complains, first, that in one of the chapters in my
book, "...much time is spent on a refutation of a
Platonic view of Japanese Tendai, an issue outdated
for Buddhist scholars." This approach, however,
seriously misrepresents my argument. I agree that
students of Buddhism are not likely to mistake
Tendai for a form of Platonism. But that is not the
point at all. The problem addressed in one chapter
of my book was not occasioned by scholars of
Buddhism, but by some of the West's scholars of
medieval Japanese literature, persons who in fact
have made and continue to refer to Tendai and the
literature it influenced as "quasi-Platonic." My
discussion cites them and goes on to show how this
mistaken philosophical equivalence skews their
readings of important poetry and critical treatises
of the medieval period.

A second instance of applying unusual standards
is Mr. Heine's complaint about "the quotations that
introduce the chapters which, with one exception,
come from Western sources and, standing without
commentary as to their relevance, are
self-defeating." Only the reader of my book will
realize that what he refers to here is really what
in the book-world is usually called "epigraphs." I
for one have never seen explanatory comments
appended to the epigraphs of a book or chapter. To
tell the truth, I hope I never will. Such would
steal away all the fun most readers usually find in
trying to decipher exactly what nexus, however
subtle, the author of a book saw between his
selected epigraphs and his main text. Epigraphs to
my knowledge are always oblique; my use of
quotations from Western writers in a book dealing
otherwise with an Eastern tradition was based on the
expectation that most readers would recognize this
and know how to handle it.

Persons interested in a more substantive
exchange concerning issues involved might wish to
see "Paradigms and Poems: A review of LaFleur's The
Karma of Words," by James H. Sanford, in the The
Eastern Buddhist 17:2 (Autumn 1984) and my response,
"Paradigm Lost, Paradigm Regained: Groping for the
Mind of Medieval Japan," in The Eastern Buddhist
18:2(Autumn 1985).