Tags
Aristotle, chastened intellectualism, Four Noble Truths, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jesus, Julia Annas, Lorraine Besser-Jones, Martha Nussbaum, Mencius, nonhuman animals, Śāntideva, Seneca, T.R. (Thill) Raghunath
Thill makes an important point in response to my recent post on virtue and pleasure (as well as to a commenter named Bob). The post articulated the view, attributed to Aristotle via Julia Annas and Lorraine Besser-Jones, that the fully virtuous person will take pleasure in virtuous action. Against this position, Thill claims: “Even if you want to kill a dog or a horse in order to put it out of misery and you do it skillfully, it would still be a gross distortion to describe this act as one which gives pleasure to the agent.”
Thill is, I think, getting at an important philosophical debate here: over the value of compassion. Most of us, were we to be faced with the necessity of euthanizing a horse, would feel a painful emotion occasioned by its suffering – that is, compassion. The same would happen if we needed to discipline a child – even if, in either case, we had all the best reasons to believe that this action was the best action to take. But there is still a question: is this feeling a good thing?
Or to put the question more strongly: does a disposition to that feeling make a virtue? Compassion figures strongly on many lists of human virtues, from the Pali brahmavihāras to André Comte-Sponville. But not every such list. Nietzsche, for one, sees compassion as a form of weakness, a pitiful way of exacerbating suffering by adding additional suffering to it. Before him, the Roman Stoic orator Seneca said that compassion
is the sorrow of the mind brought about by the sight of the distress of others, or sadness caused by the ills of others which it believes come undeservedly. But no sorrow befalls the wise man; his mind is serene, and nothing can happen to becloud it. Nothing, too, so much befits a man as superiority of mind; but the mind cannot at the same time be superior and sad. Sorrow blunts its powers, dissipates and hampers them; this will not happen to a wise man even in the case of personal calamity, but he will beat back all the rage of fortune and crush it first; he will maintain always the same calm, unshaken appearance, and he could not do this if he were accessible to sadness.
And if Aristotle does really believes the idea I’ve attributed to him above – that the fully virtuous person takes pleasure in that virtue – then it seems that he, too, must oppose compassion. For compassion, whatever else it is, is painful by definition. The etymology of English com-passion, like German Mitleid, is suffering-with, shared suffering: the suffering, the painful feeling, is what compassion is. It is a feeling characteristic of Christianity – Jesus on the cross, physically suffering for others, seems to exemplify it. And if compassion (or a disposition to it) is a virtue, then that virtue is itself a form of suffering. For compassion to be pleasurable would be a form of masochism. And masochism certainly sounds like an accusation that Nietzsche would level at Christianity; but it doesn’t sound anything like the Aristotle I know.
Martha Nussbaum defends compassion at some length in Upheavals of Thought, and she claims that Aristotle defends compassion. I’m not so sure about this. Nussbaum describes Aristotle’s account of compassion or pity (eleos) in The Fragility of Goodness at some length, and his definition of it does sound a good deal like her own. But there’s a crucial difference: it is nowhere clear from Nussbaum’s account, or from anything I have read in Aristotle, that he considers compassion to be a good thing overall. His long account of it is in the Rhetoric, which gives a descriptive account of the emotions we do in fact feel, not a normative account of what we should feel. It may be that Aristotle agrees with the Stoics in being suspicious of compassion.
But leave aside how we interpret Aristotle for the moment. Turn instead to the constructive question: does the best kind of person, the most virtuous agent, actually feel compassion? It seems to me that the truly ideal person, the perfect person, would not feel compassion; she would do what is best and take pleasure in it because it is best. Other things being equal, pleasure is a good thing; to always do the right thing with pleasure is better than to always do the right thing and sometimes suffer for it. In this I differ strongly from Śāntideva, whose ideal bodhisattva overflows with compassion.
That ideal, however, is only theoretical. In practice – disagreeing with Śāntideva in a very different way – I don’t think there are ideal people. This point is tied to my rejection of the Third Noble Truth, and to my sympathy with chastened intellectualism. Not only are we not ideal now, we’re not ever going to be ideal in this life, and I don’t think we get any additional ones. And for people who aren’t ideal, compassion is very important. When we feel pained at others’ pain, it reminds us that others’ pain is a bad thing; it is a check on the bad actions that we are always all too likely to fall into. That’s why I would generally agree with Thill that the virtuous person is likely to feel pain when putting a dog out of its misery. Not that compassion is necessarily a virtue in itself, but that it supports our other virtues.
Mencius, however, may be taking the opposite approach from what I’ve just said. In section 1A7, he reacts to the story of a compassionate king who could not bear the suffering of an ox that was to be slaughtered for meat, and ordered that the ox be spared (and a sheep put in its place). Mencius praises the king’s compassionate reaction: “Gentlemen cannot bear to see animals die if they have seen them living. If they hear their cries of suffering, they cannot bear to eat their flesh.” But this compassion seems to be a virtue only in itself; it is not a virtue because it helps cultivate other beneficial qualities, let alone because it leads to good results for others. For Mencius’s conclusion is: “Hence, gentlemen keep their distance from the kitchen.” Be compassionate – but let the less compassionate do the dirty work.
Stephen C. Walker said:
The ox was not to be slaughtered for meat, but rather sacrificed for an anointing ritual. Hence, in switching the ox for a sheep, the king committed a ritual irregularity (if not impropriety). The king’s order subordinated li (ritual propriety) to ren (humaneness or benevolence). If we expect Mengzi to take this opportunity to make a point about the relative importance of ritual vs. benevolence, we will be disappointed; he certainly does not praise the king’s order, or suggest that the ox was a proper object for the king’s compassion. Mengzi is not even interested in whether the king’s action was right or wrong, rather using the story to demonstrate that the king has certain psychological resources useful in attaining virtue. The king has already expressed an interest in attaining virtue, primarily that he might rule the inhabited world as a universal monarch. Hence it is not the case that “this compassion seems to be a virtue only in itself”; rather, a king’s compassion features centrally in Mengzi’s political program. The gentleman (or virtuous king) stays away from the kitchen because of his discomfort at witnessing suffering; animals must still be butchered or sacrificed, however, and the gentleman should not let his tender reactions obscure this fact. This means that the tender heart of a gentleman is not suitable for all people to have.
michael reidy said:
Without reaching for my Latin dictionary I recall, perhaps erroneously, that virtus has as a root vis, power. This suggests to me that ‘virtue’ has at its core an increase in power, capacity and force and an enhancement of teleological competence if that’s not too obscure an expression. We become, as it were, more fit to purpose. Buddhist and Hindu ontology offers a foundation for this core virtue which is a being value rather than a detachable attribute. Having this virtue is a matter of what one is. Amod being Amod is not something he has to fit himself into, it is not a suite of habits and dispositions that he dons even if from the perspective of the spectator it may seem that is so.
Altruism and due partiality are counterpart virtues which are of the natural order. Compassion seems to be more a transcendent fusing of that polarity in a supernatural manner.
JimWilton said:
Michael’s analysis corresponds with my understanding. Compassion is intrinsic to being human. It is universally true that our hearts go out toward beings that are suffering. What limits compassion is the conceptual framework that we create — our recollection of the history of wrongs done to us, the stereotyping of others into caricatures of evil, the rigid insistence on a view of the world from the point of view of “what’s in it for me.”
Virtues are qualities that tend to loosen the grip of these rigid concepts — patience, tolerance, generosity, non-territorial intelligence, rejoicing in the achievements of others, etc. So virtues have a quality of path. Compassion is cultivated through virtue in the sense that virtue clears what obstructs compassion.
Michael, the point that I don’t understand in your post is what you mean by due partiality. Can you explain?
michael reidy said:
Jim:
Due partiality is like giving up your place on the lifeboat but putting your own child on rather than another’s. We have a prior contract and responsibility to our own. During the Ethiopian famine (Michael Sandel’s example) the Israelis sent planes to rescue the Ethiopian Jews. Put it down to those famous mirror neurons if there be such. In any case it belongs to the natural order. The sort of complete detachment of the Compassion intimated by Christ’s injunction to leave behind your family and let the dead bury the dead seems to me to be of a different order.
Neocarvaka said:
The Israeli action on Ethiopian Jews can be appreciated as a direly needed contrasting case to their typical criminal and war-criminal actions of “collective punishment”, e.g., wiping out or cleansing the Palestinian neighborhood from which a militant or suicide-bomber came from, targeting areas heavily populated by civilians with cluster bombs and bunker-busting bombs supplied, of course, by their “Guardian Angel” USA.
However, one may still justifiably have contempt for their tribalistic partiality in this case. Why only Ethiopian Jews and not others? This, in my view, diminishes the moral worth of their actions.
michael reidy said:
Much as I don’t like the Israelis, I’m reading Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine at the moment, in the question of the Ethiopian Jews, as in the Americans/British/ etc in Libya, nations have this contract with their people as they see it to get them out of harm’s way. So even if the Israeli ethnocratic tendency takes the gloss of their response I have to respect it as natural partiality.
Thill said:
The Israeli action also raises the following issues:
1. Is “discriminatory compassion”, or compassion driven by partiality toward one’s family, group, etc., still authentic compassion?
2. Assuming that it is really a case of compassion, is “discriminatory compassion” still good because it is compassion, or bad because it is discriminatory? Or, does it have an ambiguous moral status?
3. We can think of cases, such as the Israeli action on Ethiopian Jews, in which this discrimination is arguably blatant. Are such forms of compassion still admirable although they are blatantly discriminatory? If so, which feature of such actions overrides the element of discrimination and gives them moral worth? Is this feature just the element of compassion in such actions?
Thill said:
I think what I was trying to get at in the previous posts on this thread is really the complex nature of the relation between compassion and justice.
On the one hand, compassion for individuals who are suffering as a consequence of injustice can and does motivate us to seek and promote justice.
But on the other hand, compassion can and does run contrary to and override the requirements of justice or impartiality. Compassionate actions can also be unjust actions, e.g., setting free a prisoner with a dying mother so that he can be at her side, saving a fellow Israelite who is starving but ignoring starving non-Israelites, etc.
When compassionate actions are also unjust actions, do they still have moral worth? Why?
Perhaps, this is simply an instance of the general problem of judging the moral worth of actions which are compatible with one important value but at the same time violate another important value.
Should we hold that not all compassionate actions are the same in terms of moral worth and make a distinction between just compassion and unjust compassion? Or between wise compassion and unwise compassion, between foolish compassion and enlightened compassion?
michael reidy said:
Thill,
Wouldn’t it be generally accepted that altruism directed towards an out-group is more meritorious than that towards an in-group. The latter has a pay-off in that it strengthens social bonds and creates reciprocal obligation. It is ‘adaptive’. There’s much less in it for you in the former and as in the case of ‘The Good Samaritan’ especially if the person that benefits is a member of a group who actively despised the Samaritans.
Presumably we first develop a sense of ethical behaviour towards our own group and then extend that attitude towards others. That seems to be the order. A nation ought to dispense justice without favour but in an emergency like Libya might give precedence to its own citizens. That seems fair.
Jabali108 said:
“But no sorrow befalls the wise man; his mind is serene, and nothing can happen to becloud it.”
There is something pathological about this Stoic “wise man” who is serene and unmoved even at the sight of children being tortured and killed by mercenaries in the Ivory Coast. Is this “wise man” recognizable as a human(e) being? I doubt it.
As I contemplate the serene countenance of a Stoic “wise man” in the face of atrocities and horrible suffering, I am reminded of Wilhelm Reich’s notion of a “character armor” and its facial and bodily correlate he dubbed “body armor”. This is a defense mechanism against vulnerability to pain and ends up deadening one’s physical, sexual, and emotional sensitivity.
Stoicism is based on this fear of vulnerability to pain. But all life is vulnerable. The Stoic purchases his “serenity” at the expense of a living, vital, and exquisite sensitivity to the world, inner and outer. His serenity is the deceptive serenity on the faces of the dead!
Stephen Harris said:
I think it might help to distinguish two emotional states that could be called ‘compassion’–an anxious guilt ridden state in which we’re freaked out by another’s suffering, and an empathetic state in which we co-suffer (to paraphrase Amod’s etymology). To help distinguish them, consider the first bound up with our own fears of suffering, our insecurities about whether we can help the other etc—selfishness in general. The second is merely(?) empathetically accompanying the other in their pain. (The kind of thing a highly realized bodhisattva could experience once craving was greatly reduced or cut).
No question the first one is a suffering we would do well to be without. The second, I’m not so sure of.
(Sorry for banality but) Shakespeare makes a similar point by saying that ‘parting is such sweet sorrow’. Should we reply that it would be even better to enjoy the person while they’re here, and then simply say goodbye without the sorrow? I want to say no, because it seems as though that type of sadness is bound up (and part of) the richness of complex relationships.
Likewise, we could consider the question of whether one would take a pill if there was one to skip the grieving process (not to repress it with future negative consequences, but to magically or whatever simply get rid of it while making it no longer psychologically necessary). Again, the grief seems important to me—valuable, and without it, the relationship seems somewhat improvised.
So I guess I want to make a similar claim about compassion. I suppose I would probably need another distinction to do this; if suffering is intrinsically negative, then I could say that some sorrow is not suffering.
Or maybe I could apply the distinction between physical pain and mental suffering. My running 5 miles is both; for an athlete dedicated to pushing her body to the limits, even running 10 might be pain but not suffering (she might relish it). So we can conclude that pain is a neutral experience that only becomes suffering when interpreted a certain way.
And likewise, now we can say that some mental pain (grief, compassion, the sadness of parting) is not suffering. (But it no longer seems to be an issue of interpretation).
It does seem, anyway, that my experience of compassion is different from the suffering of the person I am empathizing with. (Feeling compassion for my friend who has lost her cat is not the same as grieving for her cat etc . . .). So maybe that helps here as well—she mentally suffers, I experience the pain of compassion that may not be suffering.
(Great post and discussion!)
Thill said:
1. Amod, thanks for an interesting and thought-provoking post.
It seems to me that faced with an example of what is generally taken to be a virtue, viz., compassion, whose practice or exercise does not necessarily or always produce pleasure for the agent, and given the Aristotelian notion that virtue is always pleasurable to practice or exercise, one could either hold, as you do, that a) compassion is not a virtue, OR b) that virtue is not always pleasurable to practice or exercise.
I think to hold (b) is the plausible option because: (1) It is contrary to our moral intuitions and practice to hold that compassion is not a virtue, and
2) Your adherence to the Aristotelian premise leads to a slippery slope and we are also compelled to hold that honesty, or truth-telling, is not a virtue since it does not always produce pleasure for the practitioner.
and
3)If the Aristotelian view that virtue is always pleasurable to the practitioner is correct, then, given that pleasure is what most people seek and enjoy, we should expect most people to seek and enjoy the practice of virtue. But this far from the case. Hence, it is not correct that virtue is always pleasurable to the practitioner. (QED)
2. I gave a talk sevral years ago at the National University of Singapore in which I briefly discussed and rejected Nietzsche’s views on compassion. I argued that Nietzsche failed to distinguish between compassion and pity, the former involves empathy with the sufferer and the latter involves fear and disdain for the sufferer and his or her condition. Stephen Harris also conflates the two when he writes that “an anxious guilt ridden state in which we’re freaked out by another’s suffering” is a type of compassion.
I went on to point out that when it is effective in alleviating suffering, compassion produces joy in the recipient, and, hence, also in the agent who now shares in the relief of the recipient whose suffering has been alleviated or removed. And joy is an affirmative, positive, empowering, and strengthening emotion. Hence, Nietzsche is mistaken in his view that compassion weakens the agent and the recipient. Again, I think his diagnosis applies more to pity than to compassion.
I also think that one is already succumbed to a spell of weakness if one is apprehensive that compassion can produce weakness! This is what happened to Nietzsche. His fear of weakness or his fear that compassion could bring about weakness underlies his rejection of compassion, but then he had succumbed to weakness in entertaining that fear. (He was, I think, a compassionate person. His last act in Turin before his final collapse into insanity was to hug a horse which was beaten by its driver!)
3. Compassion can and should come from a form of inner strength born of wisdom. In fact, one needs this tremendous inner strength to be compassionate, to empathize with, share, and alleviate great suffering. Nietzsche himself once wrote that the “superman” would have the head of Caesar and the heart of Jesus. Some might consider this being a psychologically conflicted mutant creature! But the remark shows that even to Nietzsche compassion was not inconsistent with strength.
JimWilton said:
This is an insightful post. I agree that compassion (notwithstanding the etymology of the word) is not suffering — or the pain that is felt is closer to heartbreak or joy than a suffering that turns inward.
Pingback: On celebrating the death of an enemy | Love of All Wisdom
Thill said:
The origin of compassion, as Schopenhauer pointed out, is a problem worthy of profound examination.
I am not sure if there is a satisfactory Darwinian explanation of compassion, in contrast to cooperation, since it does not seem to be adaptive, e.g., those who stay behind out of compassion to help the victims of an attack by a lion or tiger risk losing their own lives!
So, how did compassion become a part of human nature at all?
To understand compassion, one must move beyond the subjective experience of empathy involving the element of “suffering with the other”, and consider also its motivational force in alleviating the suffering of another being.
Ramalingam held the view that not only is compassion virtue par excellence, it is also the foundation of many virtues. It is also a sign of spiritual discernment of the hidden kinship with the other despite the differences of gender, caste, class, species, intelligence, strength, virtue, etc., which may obtain between the self and the other.
Jabali108 said:
“It is also a sign of spiritual discernment of the hidden kinship with the other despite the differences of gender, caste, class, species, intelligence, strength, virtue, etc., which may obtain between the self and the other.”
What sort of kinship is Ramalingam talking about?
Further, how does compassion fit in with desert? Desert is the rock which sinks Rawls’ famous ship of justice “The SMOJ” (“The Slave Morality of Justice” as Nietzsche might have dubbed it.). I wonder if it also sinks Ramalingam’s ship of compassion.
In other words, does his view of compassion or any view of compassion, allow for the distinction between deserved and undeserved suffering? Or is compassion in its very nature “promiscuous” and incapable of making these important distinctions? That would mean that we are equally compassionate toward a torturer and his victims, evildoers and doers of good, and so on. Isn’t this irrational?
Compassion, then, would be irrational if it involves the obliteration of these important distinctions concerning the recipient.
Thill said:
1. “What sort of kinship is Ramalingam talking about?”
He is talking about the kinship of all life, a truth discovered by twentieth century genetics. But Ramalingam (1823 – 1874) wrote in his magnum opus, a work of poetry composed i the early 1870’s after his enlightenment, that all life is one community.
2. “How does compassion fit in with desert?”
This is a complex problem. My initial response is that compassion is consistent with correct judgments of desert, e.g., whether someone’s suffering is deserved or undeserved. Whether these judgments of desert ought to make a difference to compassion and/or its expression in actions is a problem I need to devote more thought to.
JimWilton said:
Thill, I am interested in your thoughts on this.
One thing I am confident of is that compassion and intelligence can operate together. In other words, if there is compassion for the torturer and the victim of torture, it is with awareness of the differences in the situation of each. Chogyam Trungpa R. would speak derisively of “idiot compassion” — a superficial attitude of kindness or gentleness that was motivated more by a desire to smooth over an uncomfortable situation than from real compassion. And if compassion is intelligent, can it manifest in action as something forceful and dynamic? Can an act to forcibly restrain a torturer who is about to commit a crime be an act out of compassion for the torturer?
The key to compassion for me is the motivation. But action out of compassion needs to be based on intelligence.
Thill said:
Jim, it could be argued that intelligence requires that we consider desert and ascertain whether a person deserves compassion or compassionate treatment. On this ground, one could maintain either that:
a) the torturer or murderer does not deserve any compassion and that any compassion here would be idiotic, OR
b)the torturer also deserves compassion but the compassion for the torturer is different from the compassion for the victims; the compassion for the torturer is directed toward his or her pathological condition whose hallmark is subjection to ignorance and/or evil desires whereas the compassion for the victims is obviously directed toward thier suffering
How do we decide whether (a) or (b) is reasonable?
If we accept (b), does this imply that we do not punish the torturer? That would be contrary to desert and, hence, justice, and, therefore, morally outrageous. It would make the compassion idiotic.
If we hold that (b) is consistent with punishing the torturer, then the problem of explaining the role of compassion in the context of this punishment arises.
It is clear that compassion for the victims requires that we prevent the torturer from harming his victims. If you say that this is also an expression of compassion for the torturer, you need to clarify what compassion is directed toward. And even if you clarify that, the question of just punishment of the torturer and the role or shape any compassion for the torturer can take, excluding the idiotic ones, still remains a significant problem.
JimWilton said:
Thanks Thill. This is a helpful analysis.
It seems to me that your (a) and (b) alternatives grow from fundamental differences in view. The concept of a torturer deserving punishment and not deserving compassion assumes that the torturer is an independent actor and that there is an objective god or morality (derived from reason or other basis) that distinguishes good from evil.
Alternative (b) is closer to a Buddhist view that evil is a result of ignorance rather than sin. In this view, the question of punishment or whether suffering is deserved is not part of the analysis. Alternative (a) is also inconsistent with Buddhist concepts of egolessness; the concept of punishment (at least as retribution) requires a reification of the individual. For example, in the case of the death penalty after a long appeals process, a conviction that the sixty year old prisoner, perhaps a born again Christian sick with cancer, is the same person who committed the crime twenty years earlier and is deserving of the punishment at the time it is administered.
My point is that alternative (b) — which I would favor — permits (I would say requires) intelligence. But if punishment is applied, it is applied as a corrective, not as retribution. And administered out of compassion. Of course, there is great potential for self-deception or rationalization with this approach. If not generated by compassion, the idea of administering punishment “for your own good” could be the basis for someone to become a torturer in the first place. That is why intellect alone is insufficient.
If there isn’t a context and a path for developing compassion and intellect together, a moral code can be a substitute that at least can curb wrong behavior. So I would not reject moral codes. They just tend to be rigid — they are created out of compassion and intelligence — but they tend to be applied in a way that is not in tune and in sync with the present moment and therefore can be a little “off”.
Thill said:
“The concept of a torturer deserving punishment and not deserving compassion assumes that the torturer is an independent actor and that there is an objective god or morality (derived from reason or other basis) that distinguishes good from evil.”
It certainly assumes that the torturer is an agent who has made a choice, and, therefore, must be held accountable for his or her actions.
I fail to see how an “objective god” has anything to do even remotely with the central claim. Certainly, the claim assumes that we can distinguish between good and bad (in terms of predominance) actions.
“Alternative (a) is also inconsistent with Buddhist concepts of egolessness;”
So much the worse for the Buddhist concept of egolessness! As I have shown in numerous comments in the past (and, yes, I am that same person now!), the Buddhist ideas on “no-self”, “egolessness” etc., are so horribly muddled and incoherent that they are best consigned to the “nonsense incinerator”.
“the concept of punishment (at least as retribution) requires a reification of the individual. For example, in the case of the death penalty after a long appeals process, a conviction that the sixty year old prisoner, perhaps a born again Christian sick with cancer, is the same person who committed the crime twenty years earlier and is deserving of the punishment at the time it is administered.”
There is no “reification” here. It is a fact that there are individuals. I am sure that you wouldn’t deny that you are an individual. When you go to a shop and use your credit card, they ask for your ID don’t they? Now, how many times have you shown them your drivers’ license and said “Yeah, but I am not the same person as the fellow whose photo you see on my driver’s license.”? And why don’t you say that if you sincerely believe that you are not identical to the person whose photo was taken and printed on your driver’s license sometime ago?
To drag in these absurd notions of denial of the reality of the self or the individual, the basis for correct judgments on the continuity of an agent in time and space, etc., is to muddy the waters of the really significant issues on compassion.
JimWilton said:
I have never been able fully to engage you in a discussion of what you view as constituting “self”. You tend to resort to arguments that egolessness defies commonsense — which cuts off discussion. The same arguments based on commonsense could be used to dismiss the utility of any form of philosophical introspection. These arguments are superficial. You could similarly argue that a dollar bill has intrinsic value because we have attachment to it and society accepts it as a medium of exchange. “It’s obvious. Didn’t you pay your rent this week? Then you concede the point.”
You don’t even need to resort to Buddhist ideas to understand how the idea of egolessness or lack of a reified self affects the concept of punishment as retribution. Our own legal system in the U.S. will not execute a prisoner who is severely brain damaged and incapable of understanding guilt or innocence. There is an explicit recognition that retribution in this case would be immoral. So I ask: What is the essential element that has changed between the murderer who committed a crime and the brain damaged prisoner who is relieved of punishment? And if your view is that the murderer and the brain damaged prisoner have the same “self” despite the lack of this essential element, then where does this self reside (in the body? in a “soul”?)? Where?
Thill said:
Commonsense is not the only court of appeal here although you may want to consider the analogous status of the assertion of any thesis of “speechlessness” or “no-speech”. Plain logic also shows the incoherence of the assertion of “egolessness” or “no-self” in conjunction with other claims.
For instance, you seem to blissfully overlook the fact that you are engaging in the selfsame so-called “reification” of the individual in talking about compassion for the torturer!!! You can’t selectively and inconsistently invoke “reification” in the context of consideration of punishment of the individual and suspend it it in the context of talk of compassion for the torturer, ethical and soteriological prescriptions, and so forth!
Obviously, if you talk of preventing the torturer from harming his victims, you are also engaging in “reification” of the individuals in question here.
Consider the “reification” involved in even saying that someone is suffering! Consider also the “reification” involved in saying that we must have compassion for the one who is suffering, be it the torturer or his victims! If you have no way of establishing continuity and identity between the one who suffered and the one for whom we are required to have compassion, not to mention the identity and continuity of the giver of compassion, consider the sheer nonsense produced, on your own terms, by any talk of anyone suffering or anyone having cmnpassion for anyone!
Thill said:
If you can’t see the patent absurdity of asserting that you are not an individual, that you have “no self”, and at the same time holding beliefs which clearly entail not only that you are an individual and have a sense of self, but also that you must believe that you are na individual and have a sense of self, then you really need to free yourself from the stranglehold of whatever it is that is preventing you from seeing the obvious.
JimWilton said:
Thill, there must be something about the Buddhist approach that sets you off. The introspection that Buddhists engage in either through logical analysis (as in the Madhyamika tradition for example) or through direct examination of experience (as in Mahamudra investigations), is not that different from Western philosophical investigations into the nature of existence. You are much more familiar with Western philosophy than I am, but I believe that the the question of who we are, what is consciousness, and the existence or nature of a self or soul are central issues.
It is also interesting that you dismiss the concept of egolessness by saying that the question is obvious and not worth investigating. In the Buddhist view, self is able to exist as a concept only because it is not investigated. As I have noted in other threads, our sense of self constantly shifts from one aspect of our experience to another. Sometimes we locate self in the body (“I feel tired”). Sometimes we locate self in the mind (“I just had a brilliant insight”). And sometimes we locate self in our speech or emotional or energetic quality (“I feel happy”). We even extend our attachment to self into the world and feel embarrassed or upset or elated if an article we wrote, for example, is criticized or praised. All of this is a cause of suffering.
To say that self does not exist is to say that there is nothing solid that we can really put our finger on when we speak about self. This does not change our ability to function in the world — it simply loosens our attachment. In a relative sense, we can say that self exists. There are policemen who arrest criminals and philosophers who write books. But the concept of a criminal or a philosopher is a narrow concept that does not come near to expressing what we are. Similarly, the concept of self (and it is a concept that morphs and changes over time) is a stiflingly narrow concept that does not come near to expressing who or what we are. Of course, “who or what we are” is the best we can come up with from the point of view of someone who reflexively thinks in terms of a self (and we all — Buddhists included — fall in that category). A Zen teacher might just hit us with a stick.
Jabali108 said:
“where does this self reside (in the body? in a “soul”?)? Where?”
Compare the “eliminative materialist” denial of consciousness by asking the same question: “where does this consciousness reside (in the body? in a “soul”?)? Where?”
Obviously, the raising of the question does not imply that the “no-consciousness” thesis has been established.
And, obviously, again, the question has been raised by a conscious agent or individual. The very formulation of the question implies the reality of consciousness!
It’s the same with the question on the self. Only an individual or self can even formulate the question concerning the self.
The problem of the reality of consciousness and the problem of the self are one and the same problem. There is no consciousness without self-awareness and there is no self-awareness without consciousness.
JimWilton said:
This is where it gets interesting. In the Buddhist view (in my understanding), a quality of mind and perhaps the defining quality is cognizance. This is the self-illuminating quality of mind. It is called by different terms at different stages of the Buddhist path. In shamatha meditation it is called sheshin (Tibetan) or self-awareness or self-knowing. Here it is the quality of a watcher that evaluates mental events.
It is a very interesting aspect of mind. A Buddhist would not say that this is a self. It involves a basic split between the knower and the experience. And then in our normal pattern of dualistic mind (sems) — for example in experiencing anger — we solidify the experience and say “I am angry”. But when we do this, we have created a watcher that watches the watcher that watches the anger. We can’t really conceptualize the quality of cognizance in the moment we experience it any more than an eyeball can see itself or a sword can cut itself.
JimWilton said:
I agree. This is an interesting and useful contemplation.
Thill said:
Jim, a few points in closing:
1. If any talk of the reality of the individual is a case of “reification”, then you can’t really advocate Buddhism to anybody.
2. There is no need to consider special cases such as a criminal on death row who becomes brain damaged and so on in the context of your claim on “reification”. If the reference to an individual and his or her identity is “reification”, then punishment and reward for past actions would make sense since it is not the same individual anymore, or rather, to be consistently absurd, there was never an individual or agent in the first place!
3. “In the Buddhist view, self is able to exist as a concept only because it is not investigated.”
Well, the Buddhist “no-self” nonsense is able to exist as theory only because it is not investigated.
4. It is a form of ad hominem fallacy to reject cogent criticisms of the “no-self” theory on the grounds that it is based on “attachment to the self” in just the way it would be a fallacy to reject the “no-self” theory on the grounds that its proponents suffer from psychological identity and stability issues and affirm this theory to rationalize their predicament!
JimWilton said:
I think you are missing a “not” in your point 2 (“would not make sense”). Otherwise, I don’t understand this point.
With this change, I would still disagree with point 2 because, in relative reality, for individuals who are attached to the concept of self, reward and punishment can be useful in molding behavior (in this limited context, B.F. Skinner had a point to make). I would agree with this statement if it were to say that retribution makes no sense.
Thill said:
Yes, of course, the omission of the “not” was a typo.
I don’t know what you mean by “relative reality”. What is it? And what are you contrasting it with? And if your contrast makes sense, how do you know anything about that contrasting case?
If you are invoking the distinction between “conventional reality” and “ultimate reality”, I regret to inform you that this is another Buddhist “sleight of hand” given that the distinction is made in the so-called conventional reality, and, hence, is itself “unreal” and given that there is no justification for thinking that the Buddhist claims on “ultimate reality” are either incoherent or purely speculative.
Thill said:
“given that there is no justification for thinking that the Buddhist claims on “ultimate reality” are either incoherent or purely speculative.”
should read
“given that there is justification for thinking that the Buddhist claims on “ultimate reality” are either incoherent or purely speculative.”
JimWilton said:
Relative reality or relative truth is an understanding of the world based on dualism — drawing lines and making distinctions. It is conventional reality. It is “relative” because whenever we say that something exists or is “x”, that distinction depends on and gives rise to something that is not “x”.
Ultimate truth is elusive because it cannot be described. Even to say that there is ultimate truth is a concept — ultimate truth becomes a concept contrasted to relative truth. That does not mean that it can’t be known. Artists can have an experience of this that inspires their art. I think I have mentioned Emily Dickinson’s poems “I found a phrase to every thought but one” and “I felt a funeral in my brain” as examples of this experience. We also experience this in genuine moments our ordinary lives — but our minds are so quick and tend to solidify and conceptualize experience almost as soon as it happens. Concepts are useful; we couldn’t function without them. But they always entail a narrow and selective approach to our experience. And, particularly when we have strong attachment to concepts, it is a source of pain.
Since you have a strong intellect and tend to proceed based on logic, it is understandable that you would think that this view lacks justification or is incoherent.
Thill said:
“It is “relative” because whenever we say that something exists or is “x”, that distinction depends on and gives rise to something that is not “x”.”
Nothing is “relative” per se. It is always “relative to”. So if you say that something is “relative”, you must explain what it is relative to.
“Ultimate truth is elusive because it cannot be described.”
Haven’t you already described it as “ultimate” and “truth”? To say that it is “ultimate” implies that there is nothing beyond it, that it is irreducible and independent. This would also imply that it is permanent. To say that it is “truth” is to imply that it is real. So, “ultimate truth” is a reality which is independent, irreducible, and permanent.
As a Buddhist, I think you should at least be puzzled at the joint assertion of the claims that there is no independent and permanent reality and that there is an independent and permanent reality.
“Artists can have an experience of this that inspires their art.”
I agree that there are contemplative states of mind and experiences. But I disagree that Budddhist accounts or explanations of such experiences and states of mind are coherent.
JimWilton said:
“As a Buddhist, I think you should at least be puzzled at the joint assertion of the claims that there is no independent and permanent reality and that there is an independent and permanent reality.”
You raise a good point and one that has been greatly debated in Tibetan Buddhism. Rangtong Madhyamika philosophers stress emptiness in describing ultimate reality while Shentong Madhyamika philosophers stress buddha nature. The great 19th Century teacher Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye frames the debate as disagreement over the best method for conveying in concepts what is beyond conception:
“Rangtong and Shentong Madhyamika philosophies have no differences in realizing as “shunyata” all phenomena that we experience on a relative level. They have no differences also in reaching the meditative state where all extremes (ideas) completely dissolve. Their difference lies in the words they use to describe the Dharmata. Shentong describes the Dharmata, the mind of Buddha, as “ultimately real”, while Rangtong philosophers fear that if it is described that way, people might understand it as a concept of “soul” or “Atma”. The Shentong philosopher believes that there is a more serious possibility of misunderstanding in describing the Enlightened State as “unreal” and “void”.
Thill said:
Noriaki Hakamaya, a pioneer in the critical Buddhism movement, would reject all that as a form of “dhatu-vada” and hence profoundly inconsistent with original Buddhism. Hakamaya also holds that the devaluation of words and concepts as a means of expression of the “dharma” is also inconsistent with the original teachings and approah of the Buddha.
In anycase, the logical problem of the inconsistency between the two claims in question (A: that there is an irreducible, independent, and permanent reality and B: that there is not an irreducible, independent, and permanent reality) remains unresolved.
Talking about the possibility of conflating (A) with the Upanishadic doctrine of the Atman or Brahman and (B) with the doctrine of unreality and nothingness only raises the further problem of how Buddhists can possibly distinguish (A) from the Upanishadic doctrine and (B) from the doctrine of unreality and nothingness. Mere fears or protests alleging conflation of the respective doctrines do nothing to show that there is a significant distinction between the doctrines in question.
JimWilton said:
I’ll have to look up Mr. Hakamaya’s work. Since Buddhism is a non-theistic religion and relies on realization of practitioners in each generation, it is somewhat less text based than other religions.
By the way, I came across an interesting Tibetan saying the other day: “If two philosophers agree, then one is not a philosopher; if two saints disagree, then one is not a saint.” So Thill, I think we can safely say that at least one of us is not a saint.
Thill said:
I hasten to admit that I am not a saint. So, you must be the saint then! Glad to have basked, albeit online, in your saintly company all this time! LOL
The sage, the yogi, the Siddha – these models appeal more to me than that of the saint.
Thill said:
I left out the “Vidyadhara”, an adept or Siddha whose central virtue is an unfailing presence of mind in all circumstances. For more on this model of human excellence, see Van Buitenen’s interesting essay on “The Indian Hero As Vidyadhara”
Of course, some con-artists in the “Guru Industry” have appropriated the august title of “Vidyadhara” without having anything even remotely resembling a qualification for doing so!