I can't help but feel that your response is tangential and doesn't really
address my direct reply to the questions that you, as well as nate, put out
to me.
First of all, the elephant/blind men parable might or might not occur in
"the life of buddha", it depends whose life of buddha you read, I can
guarantee you that it's not in the Lotus Sutra, or the Diamond Sutra or the
Dhammapada. In any event, the notion that buddhism holds that reality is
illusion is something of a misinterpretation of the buddhist concept of
sunyata (emptiness) as most eloquently stated in the Heart Sutra. Secondly,
I took up the elephant parable since nate specifically referred to it. I
made my comments in relation to the "normal interpretation" where it is used
to illustrate that one must take into account other perspectives to know the
truth of what one is perceiving. My point was that its use illustrated
either an idealist or a materialist epistemology, not a dialectical
materialist epistemology as found on the web page that nate referred me to.
So I must read all the questions you pose concerning the blind men/elephant
encounter as humorous and I apologize for not being able to get in the
spirit of merriment you seem to be enjoying about this. The sun has only
shone in these parts for 1 1/2 days out of the past three weeks. Maybe I'm
suffering from SAD.
As to the final quote, could you be a little more explicit about the nature
of the "partial, locatable, critical knowledges" upon which the proposed
alternative to relativism depends?
Paul