Category Archives: Practical Philosophy

Pre- and trans-ego

24 Wednesday Jun 2009

Posted by in Attachment and Craving, Early and Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Self

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What is the source of bad action, the root of our doing wrong or being worse than we should? I’m currently reading Iris Murdoch’s dense and rich Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, in which she most frequently identifies this source with ego. Attachment to ourselves is what makes us do wrong. The view has fairly obvious Buddhist affinities. Suffering, we are told in the Pali Buddhist texts, comes from craving and ignorance; this craving is often specifically identified with craving for selfish things, ignorance with belief in a really existing self or ego. Śāntideva states the view most explicitly: if we knew what the self really was, we wouldn’t act in selfish ways, and then we’d be the bodhisattvas we should be.

There is something I find worrisome about this position – something I think Ken Wilber has managed to catch. It relates to a point I made in a previous entry: that it can be wrong to avoid insisting on what is rightfully yours. Sometimes, it seems to me, we act wrongly because we are not egoistic enough. Again, sociological evidence seems to indicate women typically have this problem more than men; but men are far from immune to it.

Wilber catches this point through the generally developmentalist thrust of his philosophy: awakening proceeds in stages. First we must build a healthy ego for ourselves; only then can we transcend it. Wilber refers in this light to the “pre-trans fallacy”: someone who has not developed proper ego boundaries seems a lot like someone who has transcended them, because neither have strong egos; but that does not mean the two are the same. Something like Śāntideva’s meditation on the exchange of self and other – designed to break down a sense of ego and identify ourselves with other people – seems very much like a “snake wrongly grasped” if it falls into the hands of the meek and servile.

Authenticity

12 Friday Jun 2009

Posted by in Aesthetics, Food, German Tradition, Social Science

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To describe something as “authentic” today is usually thought to give it high praise. But I sometimes question how much of a good authenticity really is.

What makes a thing authentic? Central to authenticity, it seems to me, is the absence of choice. To decide to be authentic is a contradiction.

If people built a house out of stone in 1850 because it was the only material available, we call it an authentic stone house; we do not say this when, of the many materials available to build your house out of today, you choose stone. A Jamaican raised in a Kingston shanty, exposed to reggae all his life, makes authentic reggae himself – in a way that someone who comes in from outside to make reggae music does not. If I were to open an Indian restaurant, people might consider it authentic since I am ethnically part Indian, something I didn’t choose; whereas if I were to open a Thai restaurant, nobody would consider it authentic, even though I can cook much better Thai food than I can Indian.

So why is this something we value? Why do we praise the thing people didn’t choose over the thing they chose? I think it has to do with the inescapable presence of modernity and capitalism, living in the age Marx described so well in the Communist Manifesto, where the “bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.” What is chosen can be bought and sold easily. One can certainly buy and sell authenticity; but one cannot create authenticity. In the prosperous modern world, the unchosen is scarce, and that makes it valuable.

Wishing George W. Bush well

09 Tuesday Jun 2009

Posted by in Anger, Early and Theravāda, Karma, Karmic Redirection, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Politics, Serenity

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When I first read Śāntideva, his practice of redirecting good karma (pariṇāmanā, often translated “merit transfer”) struck me as somewhat curious. As I tend to a naturalistic view of karma, I wasn’t sure how habits could realistically move from one person to another. Dale Wright’s article on naturalized karma speaks of redirection mainly to criticize it.

I gained a newfound respect for the practice, though, when I attended a vipassanā meditation retreat in S.N. Goenka’s tradition, in 2005. Many people I know swear by Goenka’s overall technique; it frankly didn’t do a lot for me. What made a huge difference, though, was at the very end of the retreat, when Goenka urged us to a practice very much like traditional pariṇāmanā. Wish everyone well, he said on his videotape. Think of people you know and wish them the best.

Fine, that’s the easy part. But then he said: wish your enemies well. Think of your enemies, and devote wishes to their being happy. So I thought: who is my greatest enemy? As a lifelong leftie, in 2005, it didn’t take me long to identify George W. Bush. And so, as part of the practice, I tried sincerely to wish that man well.

The experience was more than unsettling. I cried in the process. But it helped me grow a lot. I had spent a long time feeling such poisonous hatred for that man, which did terrible things to me and my own well-being – in a way that Śāntideva warns us about. It’s a terribly unnerving, but highly rewarding, thing to wish your enemies well. Since your enemies are only human it makes philosophical sense to do so, really, if your main aim is consequentialist – that is, to produce the best results for yourself or for humanity. The trick is that it requires you to give up retribution as a goal, and even for a consequentialist, that’s not easy.

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Justice as a mean

04 Thursday Jun 2009

Posted by in Greek and Roman Tradition, Social Science, Virtue

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Aristotle is well known for saying that virtue is a mean between two bad extremes: learning to live well is like learning to hit a target with an arrow, neither too high nor too low. Such an account seems sensible, even obvious, when it comes to virtues like courage. Too little courage makes one a coward; too much makes one foolhardy, taking unnecessary risks. Virtue here seems clearly in the middle.

But what about justice? Aristotle thought that this too was a mean. If we demand more than we deserve, we are greedy; fair enough. But what if we demand less than we deserve? Aristotle thought that this too was a vice. But isn’t it a good thing to be nice and generous in this way? The Dutch legal philosopher Hugo Grotius certainly thought so, and therefore disagreed with Aristotle. The essence of justice, said Grotius, “lies in abstaining from that which belongs to another.” Grotius’s claim moved society away from an understanding of justice based on virtue, and toward one based on law.

I think, however, that Aristotle is smarter than Grotius gives him credit for, in a way that has significant implications. If one asks for too much, Aristotle tells us, one commits injustice; but if one asks for too little, one suffers injustice, and both, in their way, are serious wrongs. It is unjust to refuse to stand up for yourself, to allow others to walk all over you.

The point is particularly important in an age where women are struggling for equality. The vice of submissiveness or meekness, of not asking for enough, is probably more prevalent in women than men. Sociological works like Women Don’t Ask note that gender wage gaps often arise because women don’t feel entitled to their fair share. Aristotle’s view is empowering.

Naturalizing karma

03 Wednesday Jun 2009

Posted by in Buddhism, External Goods, Greek and Roman Tradition, Karma, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Supernatural

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You can’t study Buddhism for very long without bumping into the concept of karma – or more specifically, good karma (pu?ya) and bad karma (p?pa). Karma poses a significant problem for those trying to learn from Buddhism in a contemporary context informed by natural science. In a great many Buddhist texts, the central thesis of karma – that good actions result in good fortune for the agent, and vice versa for bad actions – is simply assumed. Śāntideva, for example, spends a long time warning you about the time you’ll spend in the hells as a result of being bad, but doesn’t give you any reason to believe this is true beyond his own say-so and that of the s?tra scriptures.

But does this mean we should simply throw out the idea of karma? I don’t think so. The most helpful way I’ve seen to think about karma is in Dale S. Wright’s valuable article Critical Questions Towards a Naturalized Concept of Karma in Buddhism. Wright proposes an approach to karma based on an Aristotelian approach to virtue: roughly, good actions develop good habits in us – which is to say virtues, such as courage, generosity or patient endurance – and those good habits in turn tend to make our lives better. The key point is that it depends on a distinction between internal and external goods: virtue makes us better and happier on the inside, and makes our lives better in that respect. It doesn’t necessarily make better events happen to us.

There are some problems with Wright’s thesis that I expect to take up here later. But its central insight seems to me worth adopting for a very simple reason: that it is both Buddhist and true.

External goods

21 Thursday May 2009

Posted by in External Goods, Greek and Roman Tradition, Mahāyāna, Stoicism

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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.