The question at the heart of my dissertation work, on the Buddhist thinker Śāntideva, is one I don’t feel I’ve resolved: the question of external goods. I took this term from Martha Nussbaum, who in turn got it from Aristotle: external goods (and bads) are things in life that lie largely beyond our control. Wealth, personal relationships, good health: we have some control over all these things, but in the end they can all be taken from us through no fault of our own. The question is: how should we react to gains and losses of external goods, to the vagaries of fortune?
Nussbaum tends to embrace the most commonsense position: our losses of external goods are real losses, and our strong reactions to such losses are expressing the truth that our lives are poorer. She contrasts this view to the Stoics, who say that we should remain calm and unshaken, confident in our own virtue.
I have a strong sympathy for the Stoic side; it’s been my experience that if one becomes unhappy whenever misfortune strikes, one will never be happy. The most extreme logical conclusion of their view seems to be a single-minded devotion to virtue and inner peace, best expressed in a monasticism like Śāntideva’s; but something does seem to me lost in such a life, a loss that could outweigh the misery from being struck by external losses.
There is a third position on the question, though, which has come to interest me more after the dissertation. Thinkers as far apart as Mencius and Nietzsche tend to support a view that losses do matter, but actually benefit us by strengthening us: “whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.” In some respects Śāntideva is closer to this position than he is to the Stoics; and I’m wondering whether it might be the most sensible position to take.
Very interesting questions. They lie close to my own heart and interests. As a Buddhist, I ask, “if we have clear understanding of the true nature of external goods, i.e. that all of them will be lost eventually, does this not eliminate the suffering that would otherwise occur when they’re lost?” So rather than ask how we should or shouldn’t react to loss, the question should be more, dare I say, metaphysical, regarding the nature of the goods in the first place.
The other thought that arose for me was that pershaps Nussbaum’s position can be compatible with the strengthening notion of Mencius and Nietzsche (but that is merely speculative).
Best wishes and welcome to the blog-world!
Mencius said what again??
Stephen, I’m sure you’re more of a Mencius expert than I am, and maybe I’m garbling him a lot here. But I’m thinking of his claims that Fate/Destiny sends adversity to test and strengthen us, and especially of his discussion of Emperor Shun, who seems to have become great specifically because his life was so full of crap. Am I eliding him with Nietzsche too quickly here?
Thanks for sharing such interesting thoughts with us. I am sorry not to be able to contribute to settle the issue. I would rather like to ask a further question, that is, how much do you think the different historical situation of Stoics+Śāntideva vs. Martha Nussbaum affect their approach towards the loss of external goods? I mean, M.Nussbaum lives in a world where at first sight every loss can be recovered (‘things’ can be bought, health can be improved through medicines, even children can be obtained by sterile parents, etc.). I am not expressing by that any judgement, I just guess that this cannot avoid influencing her thought.
That’s an interesting point, Elisa; I’m not sure it makes a major difference in the end, though. I sometimes think our present situation is comparable to the situation of kings or gods in Buddhist texts, in that we can reorder a great deal of the world according to our whims if we so choose – but not all of it. Death comes to us all eventually even now. Nussbaum speaks relatively often about losing children – an external bad that can hit everyone.
Interesting points, Justin. On the first, I’m not sure whether questions of metaphysics or true nature need to be involved – talking about a thing’s true nature on Buddhist grounds may get you into trouble fairly quickly. The most basic point, that all external goods will be lost eventually, is surely one that every serious philosophy needs to deal with. Nussbaum’s position is taken with an awareness of the fact that we all die, although one might argue it’s not enough of an awareness.
The second point is well taken, and worth thinking on. Nussbaum herself does not put the two together; she has an article where she strongly condemns Nietzsche’s position (and associates it with Stoicism, although I think she may miss this difference between the two). But the idea here isn’t primarily to interpret Nussbaum; for our own constructive positions, a synthesis of the two may well be possible and desirable.
Aha. The reason I couldn’t think what you might be referring to is that Mengzi’s positions on this matter are fairly mainstream in early China. There’s quite a lot of thinking about the failure and suffering of worthy men. The narrative tradition (I would call it “epic” but that might throw people, for interesting reasons) features several protagonists known for lengthy trials and hardships who later made good on the understanding and temperament they thereby acquired. (See especially Chonger, Duke Wen of Jin). Interestingly there’s also a counter-current to the effect that prolonged suffering may root out a person’s humanity, as with some versions of the Goujian story.
In any event, the interesting point for comparative study of “internal/external goods” this: almost without exception, Chinese texts before the Han dynasty (which I can’t speak to) center on lives of socio-political engagement and achievement. The insistence of this preoccupation may be the single most distinctive thing about the indigenous Chinese intellectual tradition. Texts and thinkers may react against political engagement and push their thoughts in novel directions, but the preoccupation is always there for them to react against.
I think that, because the focus is seldom on individual fulfillment, some assumptions borrowed from Hellenistic ethics may be less than apt. I have seen the internal/external goods distinction applied to the Analects, for instance, and disagreed with the application. The text that experiments most with freeing the individual from everyday constraints is Zhuangzi, and it’s important for scholars to realize (1) that the Zhuangzi preserves a mad array of different perspectives, with unity of theme rather than of solution, and (2) Zhuangzi is essentially the ONLY text to take such problems seriously. It was not read cited in the Han dynasty, but assumed a central place in Chinese intellectual life thereafter, with the upswing in “cultivated withdrawal” among literate elites.
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