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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Epicurus

Aristotelian vs. Buddhist eudaimonia

05 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Early and Theravāda, Epicureanism, External Goods, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Greek and Roman Tradition, Karma

≈ 4 Comments

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Aristotle, Augustine, Charles Taylor, Damien Keown, Epicurus, Itivuttaka, John Cooper, Martha Nussbaum, Nirvāṇa Sūtra, Pali suttas, Udāna, virtue ethics

Damien Keown’s The Nature of Buddhist Ethics closes by arguing for parallels between Buddhist and Aristotelian ethics. He claims that “there are many formal parallels between the ideal of human perfection conceived by the Buddha and that envisaged by Aristotle” (193), such that “Aristotelianism provides a useful Western analogue which will be of use in elucidating the foundations and conceptual structure of Buddhist ethics.” (196)

Is Keown right? Is Buddhist ethics like Aristotle’s? Continue reading →

A Buddhist argument against rebirth

04 Sunday Aug 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Attachment and Craving, Biology, Death, Early and Theravāda, Epicureanism, Hope, Modernized Buddhism, Psychology, Self, Supernatural

≈ 67 Comments

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Epicurus, Jan Westerhoff, Lucretius, Pali suttas, rebirth, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha), Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Halbfass

I am not entirely sure that I agree with the argument I am about to make. However, I do find it at least plausible and I have not seen it made before. I think this argument is worth somebody making, and I think it is worth doing here.

That is: I would like to make a Buddhist argument against rebirth. An argument against rebirth on Buddhist grounds. Continue reading →

Ultimate and conventional truth in Wilfrid Sellars

21 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Early and Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science, Self, Truth

≈ 1 Comment

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Abhidhamma, conventional/ultimate, Democritus, Epicurus, Karl Marx, Madhyamaka, Milindapañhā, Wilfrid Sellars

Let me begin with a guessing game, for those readers who consider themselves relatively widely read in philosophy. I am thinking of a text that examines two different views of human beings. It examines on one hand the view that humans are entities that act on the world of the sort that one can tell stories about, using language, living in communities, giving and taking. It juxtaposes this view on the other hand with the view that humans are collections of smaller imperceptible particles that operate strictly according to universal laws of causation. The texts comes to the conclusion that the latter view is the one that corresponds to reality, with the former simply an appearance or convenient way of speaking. Which text is this? Continue reading →

The very young Marx

17 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by Amod Lele in Biology, Epicureanism, German Tradition, Natural Science, Pre-Socratics

≈ Comments Off on The very young Marx

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Charles Darwin, Democritus, Epicurus, G.W.F. Hegel, John Rawls, Karl Marx, Paul Schafer, religion

In scholarship on Karl Marx it is a commonplace to draw a distinction between the “early Marx” or “young Marx” on one hand, and the “late Marx” (or “mature Marx”) on the other. There is considerable debate about whether Marx changed his opinions from the early phase or the late phase; many argue that they were constant. But there is little doubt that he changed his emphasis. The young Marx – the Marx of the Paris Manuscripts and Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right – writes a great deal about Hegelian philosophy and the criticism of “religion”. For whatever reason, the late Marx – the Marx of Capital – largely leaves that topic behind, at least in what he says explicitly. He turns his attention instead to economics and politics, to the details of capitalism’s functioning.

Readers of this blog will not be surprised to find that I much prefer the writings of the young Marx. (It is humbling to realize that I am now older than he was.) And indeed I recently had a chance to go further: to the works of the very young Marx. Continue reading →

The good life, present and future

03 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Buddhism, Death, Epicureanism, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Human Nature

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

Chan/Zen 禪, consequentialism, Epicurus, Four Noble Truths, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, natural environment, Pali suttas, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha), T.R. (Thill) Raghunath

Every human life ends in death. A long time ago I noted that we often forget this fact; and we shouldn’t. But granted that we acknowledge that we are all going to die, just how significant is the fact of our deaths? A little while ago I treated it as a significant problem, whether for an egoist or for one seeking the good in politics: whatever we achieve comes tumbling down in the end.

There’s a strong philosophical allure to consequentialism, the view that the best actions are those that produced the best consequences (of whatever sort). But a problem with consequentialism is that consequences, by definition, happen in the future – and eventually there will be no future. Continue reading →

From supernatural to unscientific

10 Sunday Oct 2010

Posted by Amod Lele in Death, Epicureanism, God, Mahāyāna, Philosophy of Science, Supernatural

≈ 5 Comments

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Epicurus, Ken Wilber, Lucretius, modernity, Śaṅkara, Śāntideva, T.R. (Thill) Raghunath

A comment from Thill on a recent post makes me reconsider the category of the supernatural, which I’ve employed many times on this blog. It’s been an important category in my reflection because I acknowledge the normative weight of natural science, and am suspicious of claims that contradict its findings. When Śāntideva tells us that advanced bodhisattvas can fire rays from their pores that make the blind see and make malodorous people smell better, I have reason to disbelieve him. The idea of rebirth – at least in the straightforward way Śāntideva portrays it, with bad people getting reborn in hells – makes me similarly suspicious, which is one reason I’ve been so sympathetic to Dale Wright’s project of naturalizing karma.
Continue reading →

Supernatural and political death

03 Sunday Oct 2010

Posted by Amod Lele in Death, Epicureanism, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, French Tradition, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Politics, Psychology, Self, Supernatural, Vedānta

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Advaita Vedānta, ascent/descent, consequentialism, Disengaged Buddhism, Epicurus, Eric Voegelin, French Revolution, Lucretius, rebirth, Śaṅkara, Śāntideva, Sigmund Freud, Simone Weil, Vladimir Lenin

A couple of my recent posts have explored the idea of anti-politics – the idea that concern with affairs of the state is typically detrimental to a good human life. The anti-political view is one for which I have great sympathy. Now, as the previous post might have suggested, I also reject the supernatural; I believe that natural science is our best guide to the causality of the physical world, and that we would do well to look with skepticism on belief in celestial bodhisattvas, the multiplication of tooth relics, or an afterlife.

But if one takes up the resulting position – neither supernatural nor political – then one has relatively little company in the history of philosophy. From Yavanayāna Buddhists to Unitarian Universalists, those who have sought to move beyond the supernatural have typically also believed in political engagement. The vast majority of political quietists like Śāntideva believed in a vast panoply of unseen worlds far beyond those supported by empirically tested evidence.

I continue to wonder: is there something I’m missing? Is there some reason why so many in the end tend to supernaturalism, politics, or both? Continue reading →

The four puruṣārthas across cultures

15 Wednesday Sep 2010

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Christianity, Confucianism, Consciousness, Daoism, East Asia, Epics, Epicureanism, Epistemology, Flourishing, German Tradition, Greek and Roman Tradition, Metaphilosophy, Pleasure, Social Science

≈ 34 Comments

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Aristotle, Augustine, Confucius, Epicurus, Jeremy Bentham, John Rawls, Mahābhārata, Max Weber, Mozi, Plato, puruṣārthas, Stephen Walker, utilitarianism

In private messages, Stephen Walker recently came back to points he’d made before about the three basic ways of life I had identified before (asceticism, traditionalism and libertinism). He noted, correctly I think, that that scheme as it stands is Indo-Eurocentric; many Chinese thinkers (especially pre-Buddhist ones) do not fit it comfortably.

The problem is not merely a matter of some thinkers lying between ways of life – if, say, Mozi lies between traditionalism and libertinism, as Aquinas lies between traditionalism and asceticism. Schemes like this are (and probably must be) Weberian ideal types: the possibility that real-world examples will fall somewhere in between the categories is not just anticipated, it’s intended. The point is to have a universal heuristic to understand the particulars better, not to have a classification where one can file everything neatly into one folder or the other. (There is something rather Platonic about the ideal-type method, in that one never expects to encounter a perfect or exact manifestation of the category in the real world.)

No, the serious problem is more particular to the scheme, with its third category of “libertinism” encompassing those thinkers who do not embrace asceticism and whose critiques of tradition are relatively radical. Chinese tradition features many such thinkers – but, contrary to my category of “libertinism” as defined in the earlier post, almost none of them highlight pleasure as a (let alone the) central feature of a good life. Continue reading →

Two concepts of altruism

08 Sunday Aug 2010

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Early and Theravāda, Epicureanism, Foundations of Ethics, French Tradition, Judaism, Mahāyāna, Modern Hinduism, Morality, Roman Catholicism, Self, Vedānta

≈ 31 Comments

Tags

Aristotle, Buddhaghosa, Christine Korsgaard, Derek Parfit, Emmanuel Lévinas, Epicurus, nondualism, obligation, Paul Hacker, Paul Williams, Śaṅkara, Śāntideva, Swami Vivekānanda

The Catholic Pauls, it seems clear to me, oppose ethical egoism in strong terms. Interestingly, however, they do not spend much time attacking it; instead, they attack a kind of altruism that is very different from their own. And their positions interest me greatly because of the way it highlights differences among philosophical concepts of altruism.

Ethical egoism of some description – say, as advocated by Epicurus – is a perfectly respectable philosophical position. One can say that one’s reasons to benefit others are all ultimately based on benefit to oneself, if one’s own self-interest is rightly understood. Neither Paul has a great deal of sympathy for this position, as far as I can tell, but it is not what they take as a target for their attack.

Rather, they reserve their greatest ire for a position that derives other-orientation from ātmanism – or at least from nondualism. Continue reading →

Can philosophy be a way of life? Pierre Hadot (1922-2010)

12 Wednesday May 2010

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Christianity, Epicureanism, Faith, French Tradition, Greek and Roman Tradition, Health, Metaphilosophy, Mindfulness, Monasticism, Natural Science, South Asia, Stoicism, Therapy

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Epicurus, Hebrew Bible, Megasthenes, obituary, Pierre Hadot, religion, skholiast (blogger), Stephen Jay Gould

Skholiast recently pointed to a sad event that I’d been unaware of until he mentioned it: the death of Pierre Hadot. Skholiast’s involvement with Hadot, from the look of things, is deeper than mine – I’ve read some of his work and referred to him a couple of times on the blog, but I don’t think that he has (yet) had a deep effect on my thinking. Still, I find myself very much in sympathy with Hadot’s approach, and I think his loss is a real one, so I’d like to offer a few musings in memoriam.

The idea that I always associate with Hadot is encapsulated in the translated English title of one of his major works: philosophy as a way of life. Hadot, a scholar of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, treats this philosophy as a way of life, a set of “spiritual practices,” and in so doing he helps remind us of the distance between ancient and modern philosophy. And I don’t just mean that he gives us yet another reason to critique contemporary philosophy departments, which (whether analytic or continental) typically seem far from any ancient ideal of the love of wisdom. I mean also that he reminds us why philosophy has so little place in contemporary Western culture. Continue reading →

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