Carlos Barbosa - Panel 5 ENOJP Paris
Channel: European Network of Japanese Philosophy
Date: 05/01/2018

Logos as Dharma or the Re-enchantment of Natural Law: A Place for Interreligious Encounter

Carlos Barbosa Cepeda (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain)

the scientific notion of natural law in a way that
makes it not alien or even hostile to the pursuit of life meaning
—in other words, is it possible to re-enchant natural law?
In the context of modernity, natural law is conceived as entirely
impersonal and inert, completely devoid of any significance
whatsoever. As law is merely about facts, in the scientific
worldview there is no place for value as something real. Therefore,
nature is disenchanted. In such circumstances, traditional
teleological worldviews, which used to ground the meaning
of people’s lives, begin to crumble. The urgent question, then,
is: how can religion overcome this crisis?
As it is known, Nishitani takes this problem seriously and
consequently agrees that religious people cannot accept the
disenchantment of nature. However, he also remarks that
trying to revive the traditional, teleological worldviews is no
solution. The past does not come back. Rather, he proposes
the alternative of reinterpreting natural law as Dharma: that
is, instead of interpreting law as the inexhorable ruling that
things cannot help “obeying,” he interprets it as the natural
order that enables them to be what they are in harmony with
what they ought to be. This means that: (i) law is intrinsically
constitutive of each individual being; and (ii) by means of
self-realization of law, the individual can embody its own nature
and understand what it ought to do. This is how nature is re-enchanted —i.e. how the link between nature and life
meaning is reestablished. This reinterpretation makes it possible
to rediscover the place of meaning and value within the
framework of natural law without the need to appeal to old
metaphysics.
It can be suggested that this re-enchantment is available
not only for Buddhism, but for many other traditional religions,
since they often give central importance to a notion of
nature as ineluctably following an eternal order (cosmos) that
is at the same time the ground of facts and the ground of right
(or good) conduct—or, what in the long run is the same, the
ground of good. Besides, once religion critically appropriates
the notion of natural law as suggested above, it also empowers
itself for a constructive (in contrast to a reactive) critique of
reason: it becomes able to redefine reason in terms harmonious
both to the scientific endeavour of discovery and the spiritual
pursuit of meaning and value.

This talk took place at the 3rd Conference of the European Network of Japanese Philosophy in Paris, Université Panthéon Sorbonne (Paris 1) and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) from November 2-4, 2017.

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