Tags
Bernard Williams, Charles Goodman, Damien Keown, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jonathan Haidt, Mark Siderits, Śāntideva, Shyam Ranganathan
There’s been a debate in the past couple of years between Mark Siderits and Charles Goodman over Śāntideva’s attitude toward free will. In his chapter condemning anger, Śāntideva says a number of things that sound completely determinist:
Even though my stomach fluids and so on make great distress, I have no anger toward them. Why do I have anger toward sentient beings? Even their anger has a cause…. Certainly, all the different crimes and vices arise out of causes; we can’t find an independent one…. Therefore, when one sees an enemy or a friend doing unjust acts, one should think “it has causes,” and remain happy. (Bodhicary?vat?ra verses VI.22-33)
Goodman takes these passages at face value, reading Śāntideva as a determinist. Siderits instead calls Śāntideva a “paleo-compatibilist,” arguing that Śāntideva still makes room for “moral responsibility.” Siderits tries to derive this claim from a peculiar reading of BCA VI.32, one that adds a great deal of interpretation to the Sanskrit (and doesn’t appear to be supported by the Tibetan commentarial tradition either). But this isn’t the place to get into the details of interpreting the Sanskrit; I’m starting to write an article where I take that point on in more detail.
Here, instead, I want to call more attention to the implications of what I (with Goodman) take to be Śāntideva’s “hard determinism.” Unlike Siderits, I think that in many respects the whole idea of this passage is to reject the idea of moral responsibility and of blame, as part of his larger project of rejecting anger. What intrigues me here is that in some sense, Śāntideva may in some sense be rejecting morality per se.
Shyam Ranganathan‘s book argues for an “anger inclination thesis” of moral claims: that “moral statements are things that there is a tendency to get angry about, if the evaluative force of the statement is violated.” (pp. 53-4) Similarly, comparative studies of moral anthropology like those of Jonathan Haidt tend to find a close correlation between moral claims and the desire to punish. On such a view, given Śāntideva’s sweeping opposition to anger and his willingness to absolve blame and responsibility, it would seem that he is in a serious sense opposed to morality.
I think we can indeed see Śāntideva as opposing morality – on one very serious condition, which is that we make a sharp separation between morality and ethics, as Bernard Williams has done (and Haidt and Ranganathan do not do). Williams wants to take seriously Nietzsche’s withering critique of “morality,” while still (like Nietzsche) making claims about what is good and bad, claims that can reasonably be called ethical. And what strikes me here is the similarity between Śāntideva’s and Nietzsche’s critiques: “Wherever responsibilities are sought, it is usually the instinct of wanting to judge and punish which is at work.” (Twilight of the Idols, “The four great errors,” section 7) On ethical grounds – grounds of gentleness, of patience, of mercy, of resisting anger – one fights against morality, because of its tendency to anger and punishment.
Damien Keown (using very different definitions, of course) once proposed that Buddhism offers “morality without ethics.” In Śāntideva’s work I see the opposite: ethics without morality. And it strikes me as a very powerful ideal.
I’ll be out of town for about two weeks after today, with very spotty Internet access. Posting will be infrequent during that time, if I can manage it at all. I’ll try to find some time to reply to comments, though it might come slowly.
Here I think the developmental morality work of Lawrence Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan, and William Perry all could be of help. All three begin on a level characterized as black and white, “moralistic,” selfish, etc, and move toward a thoughtful, principled, all-embracing and caring level of moral development.
I am still not completely decided on the issue, but I prefer the practice of equating “ethics” and “morals” as two words meaning the same thing from two different languages. It seems more precise to speak of unreflective morals or ethics vs reflective ones, reasoned ones vs unreasoned, and so on. Exploring what that reasoning is, we can then ask if the moral statement or action is, to use Kohlberg’s terms, pre-conventional, conventional, or post-conventional.
Regarding free will, it is a bit like consciousness in that it is a common-sense view and needs to be cogently argued against in order to reach a determinist position. I’m not sure that breaking down the causes of our actions, as Shantideva does, represents an argument against free will. Most free will advocates will concede that all of our actions are conditioned by countless forces, but that we still in the end have choices to make. A free will advocate can well argue that we must deeply understand the conditions for our choices, and then strongly urge us to forsake the unethical choices we could (and typically do) make in favor of ethical choices: ones that recognize interconnectedness, compassion, and so on. As a novice Shantideva reader, this is what I take him to be doing here.
Best wishes and safe travels!
I don’t like equating “ethics” and “morals” because I do think their connotations – in English – has come to be different. The connotations are more than just “unreflecive” vs. “reflective”; “morality” has to do with concepts of blame, praise, obligation, punishment, on which people reflect quite a lot. There’s a similar pronounced issue between “metaphysical” and “supernatural”; yes, the latter is a Latin translation of the former, but they have come to mean dramatically different things. The analytic philosophers who study metaphysics would be horrified (or at least deeply annoyed) to hear someone describe their work as being on the supernatural; rightly so, in my mind.
There are a lot of issues to figure out regarding free will, for sure. What you describe sounds less like a true free-willist position (ie a so-called “libertarian” position like Augustine’s) and more like a compatibilist position (à la Siderits) in which determinism is held to be compatible with the traditional moral concepts (blame, obligation, punishment). I think Śāntideva’s argument is trying to push us away even from compatibilism, though: he is trying hard to argue against blame and punishment. In other words, no, other people really aren’t to blame for their bad actions, and we should stop responding as if they are. It is still good to become better ourselves, and to make other people better, and Śāntideva specifically writes with the hope of making himself and others better. But there’s no free will operating here. One could say there are choices, but it depends on the meaning of choice: one’s choice is determined by one’s personality, which in turn is determined by other causal factors. (He’s primarily thinking of karma, though I can’t imagine him objecting to seeing genetics and environment playing a role; they may be the mechanism through which karma works.)
Good points re: metaphysical and supernatural. But check out the ‘metaphysical’ section of a bookstore with your friendly analytic philosopher and tears will flow.
Would you say that early Buddhism, the Tripitaka, has a mix of moral and ethical teachings? Those that focus on kamma, anatta, nibbana are ethical while those talking of family duties (the Sigalovada Sutta comes to mind) or relationship with the laity (namely in the vinaya) constitutes moral teachings?
But doesn’t Shantideva mention Avici hells, further suffering, and such as punishments (as warnings?) for failure to be ethical (moral?)? Are *we* to blame for our own bad actions?
My own answer would be that concepts of blame and praise are irrelevant to Buddhist Ethics, much as metaphysical speculation – poisoned arrow, yada yada – unless it’s clear that what we’re doing IS actually helping to reduce suffering. But then all of Buddhism would be arguing against blame and thus be ethical and not moral.
I’ll admit that I’m not as precise as I should be about the morality/ethics distinction. In this post I’m taking a very narrow view of morality, referring it to Shyam’s view of what we tend to get angry about, and thus focusing primarily on concepts of blame and punishment (which I think also get highlighted in moral anthropology). In today’s post I lean a bit more toward Williams’s view, which is a little broader, focusing on our other-regarding duties and obligations, considered separately from anger, blame and punishment.
Both kinds of morality are significantly narrower than ethics, but the distinction between them is very important. We might need three terms here, really. I think Buddhists do have morality in the second, Williams sense, as in the sutta texts you point to; it’s a very minor part of the tradition’s concern, which I think is one of the reasons people like Damien get frustrated in looking for “Buddhist ethics,” but it’s there. (Santideva also points to such duties, though very briefly.) On the second kind of morality: I actually wonder whether a lot karma and its effects (such as the hells) should be thought of in terms of blame and punishment. They’re laws of nature. If I get lung cancer from smoking, am I being punished? Only in a rather metaphorical sense, and I think the same applies to the fruits of karma.
Pingback: Taking back ethics | Love of All Wisdom
may I go back to Śāntideva’s statement? Louis de la Vallée Poussin, in his La morale bouddhique (1927, but still interesting –at least for me) writes that the Buddhist accent on volition (cetan?) is a clear hint at the fact that there is moral (in a wider sense) freedom, «but it is useful NOT to believe in one next’s freedom» (mais il est utile de ne pas croire à la liberté de son prochain). Then, he quotes from the Anguttara and from Śāntideva (ch.VIII, stating that it meaningless to blame other creatures, since they are blame and they damage themselves even more than us). Interestilngly, the Anguttara passage explicitly says that one should reflect about the fact that one’s act are determined whenever one has reasons to complain about someone. Could not this interpretation apply to Śāntideva as well? That is, could not it be the case that one has personally to act as if free, and to judge others as if bound?
I am sorry not to ask a purely philosophical question, but I would be happy to read your opinion about La Vallée Poussin’s interpretation of Śāntideva.
No apology necessary, Elisa. This is where philology really matters – if we are trying to learn from the great thinkers of the past, we learn more when we can get them right!
I haven’t read Poussin’s book, but I’m a little skeptical. I tend to think that Buddhists (at least classical Indian Buddhists) generally lean toward hard determinism, and I’m not sure if the concept of cetana really changes matters. I could be convinced on early Pali Buddhism, but I really doubt that Poussin is right in Santideva’s case – S rarely (if ever) uses the term cetana at all.
I am not absolutely sure I am following you. Many scholars (e.g. Varma, “The origins … of the Early Buddhist Theory of Moral Determinism”, Philosophy East and West 1963) have advocated absolute determinism in Buddhism. But 1. what about the fact that nirv??a is unconditioned and would never be attained unless the prat?tyasamutp?da would leave one some degree of freedom insofar as each link is a necessary, but not sufficient, cause for the next one? 2. more in general, does it make sense to develop ethical theories if human beings are absolutely bound? Would you develop an ethical theory about butterflies?
1. That’s an interesting point, and you may well be right to see nirvana as a significant exception to Buddhist determinism. Still, though, I wonder whether it’s just the kind of exception that proves the rule: something undetermined creeps into early Buddhism only at the last minute, just as one is about to be liberated. I don’t see this as giving us reason to read our usual ideals of freedom, moral responsibility and blame back into even early Buddhism. As for Śāntideva, his conception of liberation is rather different; as a Madhyamika he’s going to say a true understanding goes beyond all categories. At the ultimate level, no, things are not determined – but neither are they free.
2 may be the more fundamental question, but I think I can answer it with a confident yes. Spinoza’s ethics, for example, is exactly this: an account of human beings’ emotional states and which ones are better and worse. The writing of an ethical text, on this account, is one more piece in the causal chain: it is motivated by good mental states, and in turn motivates good mental states in others. But all of this remains, in some sense, inevitable. More recently, Alasdair MacIntyre in Dependent Rational Animals developed an ethical theory about dolphins: what it is for dolphins to flourish and what it is for them to live poorly, deriving from their natures. One could, I think, do the same about butterflies, at least in principle – not that the butterflies could read it or understand it, of course, but one could say what would count as a good life for them.