|
|
|
|
|
|
|
the reading and seeks the truth; the tension between the act of comparison and its truth is, after all, only another version of the same tension. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
IV The Education Of The Comparative Theologian |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The identity of the person who performs the comparative reading is therefore the central issue, because in that person the practice of comparison and the truth of comparison converge. The identity of the comparativist depends in turn on his or her background and prior education, as well as the interconnected background and current skills and concerns of the comparativist's community, the possibilities opened by particular experiment in comparison that was undertaken, etc. Even before decisions are made about which texts one is to read and in what manner one is to read them, the reader is already a highly defined social being, who comes to the project bearing an agenda defined in important ways by prior education. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
To advance beyond this general observation, we need to return to the issue of competence (adhikara) discussed in Chapter 4: if the wisdom of comparison is a form of discernment, a discernment of the convergence of Text and Truth that is achievable only by a skilled reader, then who is in fact, and not just ideally, the competent reader? The comparativist must be educated and made competent, by being shown how to engage attentively in the compared Texts; and this provisionally achieved competence must be authenticated by the community and passed down as one of its modes of education, for the preparation of future competent comparativists. In the following reflections I first reemphasize the pedagogical nature of the Advaita and Christian texts under consideration, and then consider the comparativist as student and as teacher/writer. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The pedagogy of comparative reading emphasizes the reflective practice of being educated anew through a new combination of materials, drawn from more than one tradition which |
|
|
|
|
|