The Department of Religious Studies is delighted to announce that alumni Robert Maguire, who graduated with a PhD in Theology and Religious Studies, has published material related to his research in the journal ‘Contemporary Buddhism’.

Contemporary Buddhism is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes articles on the current state and influence of Buddhism.

Robert’s doctoral project was entitled ‘The Madhyamaka Speaks to the West: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Sunyata as a Universal Truth’. The article is entitled ‘An All-new Timeless Truth: A Madhyamaka Analysis of Conflict and Compromise in Buddhist Modernism’.

The article explores the argument put forward by Donald Lopez, who argues that we should reject the narrative of compatibility between Buddhism and science (as any apparent compatibility is achieved through a process of propositional compromise that sacrifices Buddhism’s distinctive content). This conclusion puts tension on the project within Buddhist modernism to formulate a form of Buddhism that functions within or alongside modern scientific paradigms. While agreeing with Lopez, Robert argues that this conclusion only holds under a particular epistemological assumption that is at odds with the Madhyamaka-Prāsaṅgika philosophy of śūnyatā, and suggests that a Madhyamaka analysis of the tensions in Buddhist modernism opens up the possibility of a friction-less pluralism between Buddhism and science.

You can access the article here.

iStock.com/fpm