One of the subjects of scholastic debates in medieval Japan concerns the ontology of Buddhist scriptures, with exegetes suggesting various levels and modalities of existence for texts. After an overview of contemporary philosophical discussions about the ontological status of texts as relating to both their material existence as artifacts characterized by different degrees of impermanence (ranging from steles to books to live performances to digital information) and the existential status of their content (the ontology of the signifieds as intersubjectively existing entities or as more or less stable essences), this paper will present medieval Japanese Buddhist theories on the ontology of texts, with particular focus on those emphasizing a materialistic outlook. It will also discuss how theories on the ontology of texts were also used to explain the texts' functions and powers.
Bio
Fabio Rambelli teaches Japanese religions and cultural history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he holds the International Shinto Foundation Chair in Shinto Studies. He is currently working on issues related to materiality, representation and signification in the Japanese religious and intellectual history and on a revisionist history of the Shinto tradition. His books include Vegetal Buddhas (2001), Buddhas and Kami in Japan (with Mark Teeuwen, 2001), Buddhist Materiality (2007), Buddhism and Iconoclasm in East Asia (with Eric Reinders, 2012), A Buddhist Theory of Semiotics (2013), Zen Anarchism (2014).