Buddhist Philosophology

I’ve long felt something odd and pretentious about studying past Buddhist philosophers like Nāgārjuna while presenting ourselves as ‘Buddhist philosophers.’ I find myself silently protesting: ‘Nāgārjuna is a Buddhist philosopher; we are students trying to understand his thought through his extant works.’ The fact that we attempt to make sense (or nonsense) of Nāgārjuna’s ideas doesn’t make us Buddhist philosophers. We can certainly study Buddhist philosophy, the history of Buddhist philosophy, or its intellectual development—but calling ourselves ‘Buddhist philosophers’ is another matter entirely.  The other day, however, I stumbled upon a term that crystallizes this distinction: ‘philosophology.’ Robert M. Pirsig uses this term in his philosophical novel Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), where he reportedly states, ‘Philosophology is to philosophy as musicology is to music.’ Though I haven’t read the novel myself, this is exactly the distinction I’ve been seeking.  We need to differentiate ‘Buddhist philosophology’ from ‘Buddhist philosophy.’ Academics engaged in studying past Buddhist philosophy are better described as ‘Buddhist philosophologists’ rather than ‘Buddhist philosophers.’ Of course, nothing prevents us from being Buddhist philosophers—just as nothing prevents a musicologist from playing music and being a musician. But the roles and responsibilities of a musicologist and a musician must be clearly distinguished, and the same principle applies here.