Category Archives: Virtue

How a sensible person could hold the radical Zhuangist view

09 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by in Action, Daoism, Flourishing, Hermeneutics, Metaphilosophy, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Serenity, Unconscious Mind

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Last week I critiqued Chris Fraser‘s readiness to discard the “implausible, unappealing radical” view that he found in the Zhuangzi. My reflections there were general and methodological. Here I want to plunge into the details and see what might happen if we read the Zhuangzi in the way that I recommended there, rather than the way that Fraser takes in his article.

Let me be clear that what follows is the work of a rank beginner in the study of Daoism. Indeed, most of what I know of the Zhuangzi comes from Fraser himself. So I acknowledge that my attempted interpretation here may be totally wrong. But just based on the passages Fraser himself translates, I find it a more satisfying interpretation than the one that Fraser takes. Continue reading →

Zhuangzi’s middle ground

26 Sunday May 2013

Posted by in Daoism, Emotion, External Goods, Serenity, Stoicism

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On Stephen Walker’s recommendation, I’ve been turning to the articles of Chris Fraser in order to understand the difficult Daoist thinker Zhuangzi. (Happily, Fraser makes most of his articles available free online.) The Zhuangzi is an intimidating text to attempt to understand for a number of reasons, and it’s helpful to have the guidance of someone like Fraser who has spent a lot more time with it than I have. Continue reading →

New pope, new hope?

17 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by in Generosity, Hope, Politics, Roman Catholicism, Sex

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Last week I discussed the first reason you can read my dissertation on this site, and said that this week I would talk about the second reason. But I’m going to put that off until next week, to speak this week of a current event.

Pope FrancisI refer, of course, to the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis. The selection of a pope is a philosophically significant event, for a pope is in some respects among the modern age’s closest equivalents to a philosopher-king: a man trusted by millions or even billions of people to decide the truth about ultimate reality and what is good. And the selection of this pope in particular seems to me an excellent one, a man much better suited for this role than I expected him to be. Continue reading →

Pro-choice humility

09 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by in Certainty and Doubt, Humility, Morality, Politics, Roman Catholicism

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A little while ago on Skholiast’s blog, Elisa Freschi pointed to an argument from Nicholas Shackel attacking the “pro-choice” position on abortion. Shackel objects deeply to the following claim from the US’s newly elected Catholic vice-president, Joe Biden:

I accept my church’s position on abortion…. Life begins at conception. That’s the church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life. But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews…I just refuse to impose that on others.

As Shackel notes, such a position is hardly unique to Biden. Forms of this position are very common; in many Western countries, they may even be the most common. It is the position one could reasonably call “anti-abortion but pro-choice”. And as far as Shackel is concerned, such a position is ignorant or worse. Continue reading →

An outsider who sees the whole

16 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Analytic Tradition, Confucianism, Family, German Tradition, Gratitude, Modern Hinduism, Social Science

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Continuing to honour my parents, I would like to turn this week to my father, Jayant Lele, who has been central to my intellectual development throughout my lifetime. No doubt he has influencrd me in many ways I’m not even aware of; here I will discuss what I do know about.

My father bequeathed to me two intellectual drives: to understand wider context, and to stand outside consensus as an intellectual outsider. Continue reading →

My mother’s meditations

09 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Confucianism, Family, Gratitude, Meditation, Modernized Buddhism, Serenity

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Over the past little while I have been reading more Confucianism, and becoming more sympathetic to it for a variety of reasons. I’ve hardly converted to Confucianism, which is probably just as well; I sometimes think I’d be the world’s worst Confucian – not having children, living far from my parents, and having grown up regularly challenging their authority. To be fair, my parents – a Marxist and a child of the sixties – effectively encouraged me to challenge their authority. Still, in recent years and months I have come to sympathize with Confucianism a lot more. And it feels like the very least I can do is honour my parents in this forum.

I chose this week to do so because my mother, Dorothy Lele, just celebrated her birthday, and I will start by speaking of her. Continue reading →

Slouching towards intimacy

26 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by in Analytic Tradition, East Asia, Family, Greek and Roman Tradition, Happiness, Virtue

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I have noted that those modern Westerners who learn from South Asian philosophy are usually looking for Ascent while those who learn from East Asian are usually looking for intimacy. Given that my own doctorate was specialized in South Asia, with little East Asian component despite my eventual focus on Buddhism, you might easily guess what my own orientation has been on this score – and you’d be right. I’ve often insisted on correcting those who portray Buddhism as an intimacy-oriented tradition – not just to set the historical record straight, but because I think it’s important to emphasize the value of integrity. When I was thinking in terms of three ways of life, the integrity-oriented “ascetic” and “libertine” approaches, for all their contrasts with each other, both appealed to me far more than the intimacy-oriented “traditionalism”.

But then in recent months and years I’ve been reading significantly more East Asian thought myself – and I’ve also been a bit startled to find myself leaning more toward an intimacy orientation. Continue reading →

The dark side of human nature

29 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in African Thought, Christianity, Confucianism, Human Nature, Morality, Politics, Psychology, Unconscious Mind, Virtue

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After Confucius’s death, the great debate in classical Confucian philosophy was over human nature: between Mencius, who, broadly speaking, thought humans were naturally good, and Xunzi, who thought we were naturally bad. In a liberal democracy suffused with the individualism of the sixties, I think most people lean much closer to Mencius’s view. But we miss something very important if we ignore Xunzi’s. Continue reading →

The virtue of laziness

29 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in Self-Discipline, Work

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I’m really enjoying my new job at the intersection of academia and technology, and it’s made me want to improve my technology skills. So I’m now preparing for a Master’s degree in computer science, learning to program in modern computer languages. I’ve been trying to think about how to be a good programmer, and looking up some advice on the web. Of course people’s assessments of good programmers are widely different, but there’s one surprising claim that comes up quite a lot: a good programmer is a lazy programmer.

This is the point where programming becomes philosophically interesting. Continue reading →

The monk’s independence

22 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in Attachment and Craving, Death, Early and Theravāda, External Goods, Generosity, Jainism, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Monasticism, Sāṃkhya-Yoga, Self, Serenity, Social Science

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It’s often said that “individualism” is an invention of the modern West – meaning the approach that defines human beings as independent and autonomous from their social context. The French sociologist Louis Dumont made this claim directly in contrast to India, seeing India as a highly communitarian place where an individual’s community and social status much more. Dumont applied this communitarian view not only to Indian society at large but to its theoretical thought.

Many students of other cultures soon come to see individualism as a Western conceit – a bizarre peculiarity of an eccentric society that went wrong with Descartes. If indeed the modern West is a complete solitary exception to the rule, then there would seem to be something to this view.

I wrestled with it for a while myself. I used to believe Dumont’s classification of India was correct. It certainly resonated with my personal experiences, seeing how much more my Indian family cared about family and community ties. But those experiences, combined with the communitarian stereotype of India found in the likes of Dumont and Max Weber, blinded me to things I read every day in graduate school for years without actually noticing. Continue reading →