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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Shyam Ranganathan

Goodness as preventing suffering

01 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by Amod Lele in Anger, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Free Will, Judaism, Karma, Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Metaphysics, Morality, Patient Endurance, Self

≈ 10 Comments

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Baruch Spinoza, Mark Siderits, Śāntideva, Shyam Ranganathan

A while ago I referred to Śāntideva’s thought as “ethics without morality” – a deliberately provocative formulation based on Shyam Ranganathan’s eccentric definition of morality as that which conduces to anger. (I don’t agree with Shyam’s definition myself, but putting matters in those terms for the sake of argument helps us to make an interesting and important point.) The idea for Śāntideva is that because everything has a cause, no one is truly to blame for their actions, and therefore we should not get angry at them.

Mark Siderits, in a 2008 article in Sophia, has called this view “Buddhist paleo-compatibilism”: “compatibilism” meaning roughly that while Śāntideva thinks it morally significant that everything has a cause, he still thinks it appropriate to blame people for bad actions.

I don’t think that that is what Śāntideva means, based on a reading of the Sanskrit text of Bodhicaryāvatāra chapter six. I think Siderits reads a great deal into verse 32 that is not actually there, and that is at odds with Śāntideva’s explicit argument in verses 22-33. But I won’t expand on that particular point here, because overall I find the detailed textual argument less interesting than the more general constructive argument. Continue reading →

Ethics without morality

02 Thursday Jul 2009

Posted by Amod Lele in Anger, Free Will, German Tradition, Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Morality

≈ 9 Comments

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Bernard Williams, Charles Goodman, Damien Keown, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jonathan Haidt, Mark Siderits, Śāntideva, Shyam Ranganathan

There’s been a debate in the past couple of years between Mark Siderits and Charles Goodman over Śāntideva’s attitude toward free will. In his chapter condemning anger, Śāntideva says a number of things that sound completely determinist:

Even though my stomach fluids and so on make great distress, I have no anger toward them. Why do I have anger toward sentient beings? Even their anger has a cause…. Certainly, all the different crimes and vices arise out of causes; we can’t find an independent one…. Therefore, when one sees an enemy or a friend doing unjust acts, one should think “it has causes,” and remain happy. (Bodhicary?vat?ra verses VI.22-33) Continue reading →

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