22 Monday Apr 2024
Posted in Buddhism, Emotion, Flourishing, Greek and Roman Tradition, Metaphilosophy
Céline Leboeuf just interviewed me for her “Why Philosophy?” newsletter, where I talk about philosophy and its role in my life. Have a look!
19 Sunday Dec 2021
Posted in Early and Theravāda, Family, Flourishing, Monasticism, Play, Pleasure, Self-Discipline
Justin Whitaker has made a second defence of the Sigālovāda Sutta, and it’s time for another response on my end. As a recap, we are debating the value of the Sigālovāda as a guide to lay Buddhist ethics: I do not find it a good guide, he does, and we’ve had a round of back-and-forth over this
I think Justin’s latest comment on the topic is very perceptive, and it pushes the points at which my own take on Buddhism is a reinterpretation, a departure from the classical Pali suttas – for the advice offered by the Sigālovāda is in keeping with the tenor of advice offered in many other such suttas. I’d like to follow up in a couple of ways, among them to ask about how much Justin’s own view might be such as well.
Continue reading23 Sunday Aug 2020
Posted in Christianity, Dialectic, Politics
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Alasdair MacIntyre, Alexandra James, Anton LaVey, expressive individualism, Friedrich Nietzsche, G.W.F. Hegel, gender, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hebrew Bible, John Milton, music, Satan, Satanism, Twin Temple
One philosophical principle I have tried to live by is: there is truth in everything. This is a weaker version of Ken Wilber’s “Everybody is right”: many people are wrong, about many things, but they come to their wrong views for a reason. I take this principle to underlie Hegel’s dialectical method: one should transcend and include every view, which is to say preserve the truth and the reasons underlying a wrong view while leaving aside what is wrong in it.
One thing that led me to this view: as a teenager I was deeply anti-Christian. I saw in Christianity only an oppressive anti-gay, anti-feminist politics – a pillar of Reagan’s Moral Majority coalition. As an adult, though, I came to appreciate Christianity – never adopting its worldview, but coming to see in Christianity a similar kind of self-cultivation to the Buddhist one that had changed my life.
But a true Hegelian, I think, needs to find the truth not only in Christianity but also in its opposite. Hegel himself spends a great deal of time in the Phenomenology looking for truth in Enlightenment anti-clericalism alongside Christian faith itself. In an era later than Hegel’s, though, we now see anti-Christian views taken further than the Enlightenment thinkers ever dreamed: a significant number of people now openly embrace Satanism. And I think it is also important to see the truth in that.
Continue reading21 Thursday May 2020
Posted in Death, External Goods, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Karma, Modernized Buddhism, Supernatural
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Amber Carpenter, Aśvaghoṣa, Evan Thompson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jan Westerhoff, Martha Nussbaum, Melford Spiro, rebirth, T.R. (Thill) Raghunath
The Buddhist propositions that Evan Thompson articulates go deep. They proclaim three flaws of all the things around us, in ways that (Buddhist tradition has typically claimed) make them unworthy of our seeking. On such a view, the only thing truly worthy of our seeking is dukkhanirodha, the cessation of suffering, through a nirvana identified with “unconditioned peace”. The ethical implication is that the finest human life is that of a monk, who devotes his or her entire life to the pursuit of dukkhanirodha. It is granted that most people won’t pursue such a life, but that is because they are too weak to do so; their lives will be worse for their seeking external goods, like familial relationships and material possessions.
Aśvaghoṣa dramatizes these points in the Buddhacarita, his famous story of the Buddha’s journey to monkhood. After a contented life of luxury the Buddha-to-be sees an old man, a sick man and a dead man, he realizes that that is the fate of everyone and everything, and can take no more pleasure in the objects (viṣayas) of the world: “I do not despise objects. I know them to be at the heart of human affairs. / But seeing the world to be impermanent, my mind does not delight in them.” (BC IV.85) It is specifically the impermanence of things that leads the Buddha to become a monk and reject them.
Continue reading23 Sunday Jun 2019
Posted in Analytic Tradition, Buddhism, Foundations of Ethics, Free Will, German Tradition, Politics, Self
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expressive individualism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Simmel, Immanuel Kant, J. David Velleman, law, Onora O'Neill, Patrick O'Donnell
In response to my discussion a while ago of the problems between Buddhism and qualitative individualism, Patrick O’Donnell suggested that J. David Velleman’s Self to Self offered a possibility of bridging the gap between the two. My reaction was skeptical, since Velleman explicitly situates himself as a Kantian, and I have taken Kant as exactly the opposite kind of individualist, a quantitative individualist. I said as much in response, claiming that for Kant “ethically most significant about human beings are those characteristics we all share, not our differences – the right way for one person to act in a given context is broadly the right way for any other person to act in the same context.”
Patrick’s response was where the discussion got really interesting. For this is the first time I’ve seen someone question the very distinction between qualitative and quantitative individualism. Continue reading
06 Monday May 2019
Posted in Early and Theravāda, Economics, Foundations of Ethics, Health, Human Nature, Politics, Psychology, Self, Virtue, Work
≈ Comments Off on Podcast interview on qualitative individualism
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20th century, academia, Catharine MacKinnon, expressive individualism, Friedrich Nietzsche, gender, generations, Georg Simmel, Hans-Georg Gadamer, identity, Immanuel Kant, interview, John Locke, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Monty Python, music, race, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Romanticism, Stefani Ruper, United States, virtue ethics
Stefani Ruper interviewed me for her video podcast a while ago, and the interview is now live. It focuses on the topic of qualitative individualism, elaborating on ideas from my earlier series of posts. It gets into some topics that are a bit more intense than I’ve covered on the blog in recent years, but I’m pleased with it. Thanks to Stefani for this opportunity.
I’ve embedded the video above, so you can watch it here, and I also highly recommend you check out Stefani’s excellent philosophy podcast in general:
iTunes: http://stefaniruper.com/listen
Spotify: http://stefaniruper.com/
Youtube: http://stefaniruper.com/watch
Stream & other outlets: http://stefaniruper.com/
10 Sunday Feb 2019
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20th century, autobiography, Boston University, Dorothy Lele, expressive individualism, Friedrich Nietzsche, gender, Milindapañhā, Pali suttas, Pudgalavāda, René Descartes
The rise of qualitative individualism in the West coincides relatively closely with Western interest in Buddhism. Nietzsche and Emerson, two of the most influential qualitative individualist thinkers, both had an interest in Buddhism stronger than was usual for philosophers of their time. And the greatest flowering of Western interest in Buddhism occured in the 1960s, the same time when qualitative individualism itself became fully mainstream.
Qualitative individualism can be put in many ways, but one of its most characteristic injunctions is “be yourself”. The injunction is often phrased further in terms of one’s true self. Such ideas are of central importance to the LGBT movement. A recent news profile asking Boston University students about the meaning of being transgender finds many of them echoing a common refrain: “discovering your truest self”, “finding one’s true identity”, “being their true selves”, “being truly, completely, unapologetically me”.
None of this seems like a great fit, on the face of it at least, with a tradition that has proclaimed for 2000 years that there is no self. Continue reading
11 Sunday Nov 2018
Posted in Foundations of Ethics, German Tradition, Metaphysics, Politics, Self
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Aristotle, Charles Taylor, expressive individualism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, modernity, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Romanticism, Wilhelm von Humboldt
What is remarkable about the ideal of qualitative individualism is that it is so pervasive yet so rarely thought about in depth. To get a bit more of that depth, I would like to examine next the question of where it comes from.
The idea is modern, I think, though like so many modern ideas it has premodern antecedents. A while ago I breezed a little too easily over the differences between qualitative individualism and Aristotle. I said:
Aristotle – not exactly a great friend of modern liberal freedom – thinks of the best politics in terms of allowing each person to fulfill a highest end or telos, all being the best they can be. Some thinkers would consider this teleology a higher and truer kind of freedom than choice alone. But it seems to me that the freedom of choice is a vital part of the freedom to be what you are. Who would know what you’re meant to be better than you yourself?
I missed something there. If it’s so clear that you’re the person who knows best what you’re meant to be, then why would Aristotle have been “not exactly a great friend” of the political freedom of choice lionized by qualitative individualists today? Continue reading
01 Sunday Oct 2017
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Alasdair MacIntyre, Four Noble Truths, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jan Westerhoff, John Stuart Mill, Pali suttas, Rāmāyana, rebirth, Śāntideva, suicide, Thailand
Last time I discussed Jan Westerhoff’s potent objection to naturalized Buddhism: if there is no rebirth then we can end our suffering simply by committing suicide. Westerhoff takes this objection as a reason to accept rebirth. I do not. Rather, I take it as pointing to a deeper problem with some core Buddhist teachings as they are usually understood. Continue reading
03 Sunday Jan 2016
Posted in Aesthetics, Biology, Christianity, Deity, Metaphysics, Natural Science
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AAR, Charles Darwin, conferences, David McConeghy, Friedrich Nietzsche, H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, kitsch, Mike Mignola, skholiast (blogger), Speculative Realism, theodicy
A few years ago, Skholiast wrote a lovely post on the philosophical significance of J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft, two early 20th-century writers who shaped the genres we now call fantasy and horror, respectively. I was reminded of it this year at an enjoyable AAR panel entitled “Cthulhu’s Many Tentacles”.
Cthulhu, of course, is the best-known character (if that is the word) from Lovecraft’s stories, enough that the fictional pantheon he created has become known as the “Cthulhu Mythos”. Cthulhu is one of a set of “Elder Gods”: horrifying, vaguely amorphous, often tentacled monstrosities that have lain dormant for millennia and will soon devour humanity; their horror is such that the mere knowledge of them could drive one mad. The AAR panel gave recognition to many aspects of Lovecraft’s work: starting with a presentation on the man and his work itself, the presenters proceeded to examine the varied dimensions of the fandom that has grown up around Lovecraft (noting, in particular, that fan creativity has been greatly enabled by Lovecraft’s work rising into the public domain).
The most interesting point I took away from the panel came from a talk by David McConeghy (who also, coincidentally, was the respondent to my paper on teaching with technology). McConeghy noted that while a great deal of modern speculative fiction (he cited Mike Mignola’s comic-book series Hellboy) is clearly inspired by Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and makes references to it, these works also typically have happy endings. Continue reading