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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Seth Zuihō Segall

When virtue is not in our control

11 Sunday Oct 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Christianity, External Goods, Flourishing, Free Will, Human Nature, Psychology, Self, Stoicism, Virtue

≈ 1 Comment

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Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, depression, Epictetus, John Doris, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Martha Nussbaum, New Testament, Phineas Gage, Seth Zuihō Segall, situationism, virtue ethics

I’ve been thinking a lot on a recent exchange I had with Seth Segall, in the comments on my post about terminology to use for karma. Seth’s comment specified a distinction that is important elsewhere in my exchange with Thompson, on how eudaimonism works. This is a distinction between external goods, on one hand, and on the other – what exactly?

The term Seth used in contrast to “external goods” was what one might take to be its obvious opposite, “internal goods”. I used the exact same term, “internal goods”, in my own later post. Yet in response to Seth’s comment I told him we had to be really cautious about using that term. This indicates to me that my own thought on the topic has not yet been sufficiently clear, and I want to take some time to clarify.

Continue reading →

On delusions and their pragmatic efficacy

28 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Natural Science, Psychology, Supernatural, Therapy, Truth

≈ 6 Comments

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Dalai Lama XIV, Lotus Sūtra, rebirth, Śāntideva, Seth Zuihō Segall, upāyakauśalya

Continuing my response to Seth Segall, my greatest disagreements are with his second point. So I will begin by quoting that at length:

As a hospital pastoral care provider I minister to patients of all faiths, and I have been impressed at how their faiths shape their own understanding of the virtues and contribute to making their lives admirable. So, if you are a person who finds a belief in rebirth compelling, and if you find that a belief in rebirth inspires you to practice being more compassionate to others, I have no quarrel with you. Please continue. The only statement I am willing to make without hesitation is that a belief in rebirth (let’s just use “rebirth” here as a stand-in for all the parts of Buddhism I happen to disagree with) doesn’t work for me, and I expect it won’t work for the majority of modern Westerners. I don’t want to be imperialistic about my beliefs. My attitude is, “this is what works for me,” and if you are feeling the same kind of dissonance with aspects of the Buddhist tradition, see if it works for you, too. On the other hand, I would never want to tell the Dalai Lama that he is practicing Buddhism wrong.

I do recognize the importance of working with people as they are, especially in a difficult field like pastoral care. Still I am nervous about saying that false ideas – which I do take rebirth to be – constitute “the best model for” any given person. Continue reading →

Responses on humanity, rebirth, and a minimalist model

21 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Flourishing, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Philosophy of Science, Psychology, Supernatural

≈ 2 Comments

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Ian Stevenson, Jacques Maritain, rebirth, Śāntideva, Seth Zuihō Segall

Seth Zuihō Segall wrote a helpful response to my review of his Buddhism and Human Flourishing. Seth’s1 response makes four points, groupable in two categories that correspond to the division of my original post: the first two points, roughly, have to do with endorsing modern Western views, the second two with rejecting them. I will move roughly from (what I take to be) our points of greatest agreement to our points of greatest disagreement.

So I will begin with the fourth and last of Seth’s points, which is the one where I think we agree most. This point is about transcending the constitutive conditions of our humanity: a key point at issue between Śāntideva and Martha Nussbaum. As I noted in my review, I do actually stand with Nussbaum and with Seth against Śāntideva on this question: I do not think we should try to transcend these conditions. My concern was that this point needs to be argued, we can’t simply assume Nussbaum is right – because if she is right, then Śāntideva is wrong, and I think it’s important to be clear about that.

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Why I am a Buddhist

07 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Faith, Family, Health, Humility, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Philosophy of Science, Prayer, Reading and Recitation, Therapy

≈ 4 Comments

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Alasdair MacIntyre, autobiography, Evan Thompson, identity, Mañjuśrī, religion, Śāntideva, Seth Zuihō Segall

On Facebook, Seth Segall commented in response to my posts on Evan Thompson:

I agree with all the arguments you have made, but I think there is one maining major issue that divides you from Evan that transcends all the other issues. That is, as a “lover of all wisdom,” why would you define yourself as a Buddhist as opposed to someone who is informed by many wisdom traditions but holds a special place in his heart for Buddhism—in another words, how is your stance different from a more cosmopolitan one that is Buddhist-friendly, but not, strictly speaking, Buddhist?

I think I have answered this question before, but there is more to say on it. For a long time – including the first six years of writing this blog – I defined myself in just such a way, as Thompson does. Like Thompson, I went so far as to say I don’t identify as a Buddhist.

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On the challenging aspects of tradition

17 Sunday May 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Hermeneutics, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Modernized Buddhism

≈ 4 Comments

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Chris Fraser, Engaged Buddhism, Evan Thompson, Linji, Mike Slott, Nāgārjuna, Seth Zuihō Segall, Simon Critchley

Evan Thompson has made a wonderfully detailed response to my earlier two posts that critique his stimulating Why I Am Not A Buddhist. It is a dialogue I am excited to continue. First a logistical note: I have a great deal to say in response, but I generally think that blog posts work better as relatively self-contained but relatively short pieces, so I’m going to space out my own long reply over eight posts. (All this is perhaps in keeping with Simon Critchley’s claim that the philosopher is one who takes time.) In order to stop the discussion from dragging on for too long, I will post these posts at a much more frequent interval than I usually do – three times a week, on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

To begin, I thank Thompson for his careful and thoughtful response. Its title – “Clarifying Why I Am Not A Buddhist” – is extremely apt. It shows me that there are points where I misunderstood the book’s claims, and I think the clarifications in his response make for a more fruitful debate. Above all: the book frames its critique of “neural Buddhism” in ways that did not seem to me to apply to the eudaimonic Buddhism that I hold. (Mike Slott of the Secular Buddhist Network appears to have got the same initial impression I did.) Thompson’s response makes it much clearer that he does indeed intend his critique to apply to me, and to fellow eudaimonist Buddhists like Dale Wright, Seth Segall, Ken McLeod, and possibly Slott. As a result, I think we are now much better able to dive into the real issues at hand, which I take to be crucial ones for my own philosophical project.

Continue reading →

Endorsing and rejecting the views of the modern West

03 Sunday May 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Foundations of Ethics, Hermeneutics, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Supernatural, Western Thought

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Aristotle, Damien Keown, Evan Thompson, Martha Nussbaum, modernity, rebirth, Śāntideva, Seth Zuihō Segall

Friend of this blog Seth Zuihō Segall has a new book out entitled Buddhism and Human Flourishing, which he kindly sent me a pre-print review copy of. There is much to like in the book and I am very sympathetic to it. Indeed, my first worry about the book was that I would be too sympathetic. For the basic idea of the book – a modern Buddhist ethics understood in roughly Aristotelian terms –  is quite close to the book I have been starting to work on writing myself. Did Segall scoop me?

Having read the book, I think this is not the case: my take on Buddhist ethics does turn out to be significantly different from his. Continue reading →

Why is Evan Thompson not a Buddhist? (2)

12 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Flourishing, Karma, M.T.S.R., Modernized Buddhism, Natural Science, Psychology, Supernatural

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Dale S. Wright, Evan Thompson, modernism, rebirth, Seth Zuihō Segall

Last time I noted that Evan Thompson’s Why I Am Not A Buddhist does not establish a case against being a Buddhist in Asian traditions, including Asian Buddhist modernist traditions. His critique focuses instead on Western Buddhist modernists. I do count myself among the latter, so the critique is intended to apply to Buddhists like me. Yet I do not think it hits its target. Thompson’s critique, as described last time, focuses on a neuroscience-linked, supposedly empirical variety of Buddhism that he calls “neural Budddhism”, exemplified by Robert Wright and Alan Wallace. But neural Buddhism does not exhaust Western Buddhist modernism.

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Is “Buddhist ethics” Buddhist?

11 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Morality, Politics

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

abortion, David Chapman, Disengaged Buddhism, gender, modernity, Peter Harvey, Seth Zuihō Segall, United States

David Chapman has on his blog a provocative new series of posts about Buddhist ethics. You can get a strong sense of the tenor of these posts from their titles: “Buddhist ethics” is a fraud, “Buddhist ethics” is not Buddhist ethics, Traditional Buddhism has no ethical system, Buddhist morality is Medieval, and How Asian Buddhism imported Western ethics. Continue reading →

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