불교 안에서의 다원주의

Pluralism in Buddhism : Overcoming Essentialism and Nihilism

This paper aims at tracing a pluralistic element in the Buddhist intellectual tradition, and suggesting the Buddhist model of ‘a limited pluralism’ that helps us to go beyond essentialism and to overcome a threat of nihilism. For this aim, the author opposes Buddhism against the Hindu traditional thoughts that have a essentialist and a nihilistic characteristic, and defines Buddhism as a philosophical attitude of pluralism. This is because Buddhism sees beings or phenomena including understanding through ‘beings within causal relations,’ namely, the unique way of thinking of dependent arising. Also this is because Buddhism neither absolutize nor universalize one’s own subjective judgment, and opens the possibilities of various understandings and judgments. Besides the middle path(madhyama pratipad), as an attitude not committing both moral scepticism and ontological nihilism, is a restraint mechanism for both a nihilistic and a dogmatic attitude, and is a Buddhist perspective on the problem of a limited pluralism.