A General Theory of Worldviews Based on Madhyamika and Process Philosophies

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to make a contribution to the emerging field of ''cross-cultural analysis of worldviews'' by showing how the basic insights of process philosophy and Madhyamika Buddhism can be combined into a comprehensive theory of worldviews that is both developmental and typological (or diachronic and synchronic). It is hoped that this theory of worldviews will enable cross-cultural analyses of worldviews to go beyond mere comparison of similarities and differences between worldviews by showing how worldviews can mutually transform one another through dialogue. I will begin by outlining the basic ideas of both process thought and Madhyamika Buddhism, their respective theories of worldviews, and how these relate to contem- porary thought. I will then argue that these two theories are compatible with one another and that their combination can contribute to the development of a general theory of worldviews. Finally, I will show how such a general theory of worldviews— which is also necessarily a general theory of values—can be used in the evaluative analysis of worldviews. Process Philosophy The idea that reality is a cumulative process of perspectival and experiential events has been advocated by philosophers and religious thinkers in various places around the world since people first started writing down their thoughts on the nature of re- ality. Some examples of individuals and schools of thought who can be described as subscribing to the process view are: Heraclitus, the Stoics, early Buddhism, Leibniz, Hegel, Nietzsche, Bergson, William James, Gilles Deleuze, and Wilfrid Sellars. However, it is in the thought of Alfred North Whitehead and his student Charles Hartshorne that the argument for a process view of reality has been put in its most coherent and systematic form to date. My use of the term ''process philosophy'' in this essay refers primarily to the Whiteheadian-Hartshornean variety and secondarily to process thought in its widest and most general sense as the idea of the perspectival event. The process view of reality is based on the recognition of the asymmetrical re- lation between ultimate conceptual contrasts such as becoming and being, process and thing, and event and structure, in that becomings include beings, processes in- clude things, and events include structures, but not vice versa. The reason for this is that beings, things, and structures are special cases of, respectively, becomings, processes, and events. For example, being, or that which does not become, can be understood as a special case of becoming, in the sense of being the extreme limit, or