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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Dan Arnold

“Indian philosophy” vs. “Buddhist ethics”

16 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Emotion, Foundations of Ethics, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Metaphysics

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Bimal Krishna Matilal, Damien Keown, Dan Arnold, David Chapman, Dharmakīrti, Dignāga, Engaged Buddhism, Śāntideva

It is not especially controversial to say that ethics is a branch of philosophy. I’ve occasionally heard people dispute that claim, but mostly on the grounds that ethics extends beyond philosophy per se, to narrative and the like; few would say that ethical reflection is in general not a philosophical activity. Likewise it is not controversial at all to say that Buddhism began in India, or that Buddhism played a central role in the development of Indian philosphy.

So why is there so little overlap between “Indian philosophy” and “Buddhist ethics”? Continue reading →

The significance of ethics to Candrakīrti’s metaphysics

25 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Epistemology, Foundations of Ethics, Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Metaphysics, Truth

≈ 1 Comment

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Candrakīrti, conventional/ultimate, Dan Arnold, Dignāga, Jayarāśi, John Dunne, Madhyamaka

As I noted last time, I think the disregard of ethics by Indian-philosophy scholars like Dan Arnold is a problem in itself: it’s a misconception of what philosophy is, and one that harmfully shrinks the field of the study of Indian philosophy. But I think this neglect would still be a problem even for people who do decide to restrict their study of Indian philosophy to the theoretical realms of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language. For it seems to me that at least in Arnold’s case, the neglect of ethics leads to a misinterpretation of the metaphysics.

Arnold’s misinterpretation is focused above all around the relationship between the famous Buddhist “two truths”: conventional truth (saṃvṛti) and ultimate truth (paramārtha). Consider Arnold’s description (again in his review of Karen Lang) of the second chapter of Candrakīrti’s Catuḥśatakaṭīkā. “Candrakīrti develops (contra Vasubandhu) a characteristically Mādhyamika point to the effect that the conventional reality of pleasure is not denied, only its being the ‘inherent nature’ of life.” From this description, Candrakīrti’s chapter sounds like it is all about acknowledging pleasure and making room for it. You would not be able to tell that the point of this chapter, very explicitly stated at its beginning, is “rejecting the illusion of regarding the painful as being pleasant” – or that in this chapter, pretty much everything that we would normally consider pleasant turns out to be painful. Continue reading →

Don’t exclude ethics from philosophy

11 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Emotion, Foundations of Ethics, Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Metaphysics

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Bimal Krishna Matilal, Candrakīrti, Dan Arnold, Karen Lang, Madhyamaka, Martha Nussbaum, Pierre Hadot, Śāntideva

It is commonplace today for scholars of Indian philosophy to focus their attention entirely on theoretical philosophy at the expense of the practical. I think this tendency is a mistake. I see at least two grave problems with it. First: In my 2015 article I argued that (at least in the case of Śāntideva) our understanding of Buddhist ethics is incomplete if we ignore Buddhist metaphysics. I am now beginning to think this issue goes in the other direction as well: that we will misinterpret Buddhist metaphysics if we ignore Buddhist ethics. I will talk about that problem next time. This time, I will address the other problem: it can drop us into the all-too-familiar trap of treating some Indian inquiries as “not philosophical” even when they were engaged in by most of the great philosophers of the West.

Traditional Tibetan portrait of Candrakīrti, taken from Rigpa Wiki.I notice both problems most clearly in the writings of Dan Arnold on Candrakīrti. Continue reading →

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