ABSTRACT
There is a seduction in harmony. Be it in the world, in one’s life, or in ethical discourses, envisioning harmony continues to be a very powerful tool and vision to the human mind-like a textual coherence that has been an attraction to philosophers and readers alike. Why is a harmony so seductive and, more importantly, what do we mean by “harmony” when we envision it in the context of ethics? In this chapter, against our desire for a harmony, I shall propose an awareness of an intrinsic tension as a groundless grounding of an ethical paradigm in Wŏnhyo’s (617-86) Mahāyāna Buddhism and Jacques Derrida’s (1930-2004) deconstructive ethics. I shall first focus on Wŏnhyo’s writings on bodhisattva precepts to outline his Mahāyāna Buddhist ethics, then I shall interpret them in connection with Derrida’s discussion on violence and the law. The philosophies of both Wŏnhyo and Derrida share a non-substantialist position and thus mark the limits of normative ethics. The ethical in their non-substantialist philosophy becomes possible with an awareness of a tension between the provisional and the ultimate level of ethical discourses. The ethics of tension, however, does not negate a harmony or an order per se; rather, it brings our attention to its horizon, in which harmony or order exists only through its insecurity and incompleteness. In this context, I shall also bring in the “mad monk” tradition of East Asian Buddhism, which seems to exemplify this tension of the ethical embodied in an individual’s life.
