Abstract
In the eighth chapter of his Introduction to the Practices of Awakening (Bodhicaryāvatāra) the eighth-century Indian Buddhist monk Śāntideva appeals to the nonexistence of any enduring self as a premise in his argument that we ought to commit to impartial benevolence. A striking feature of this argument is that it appears in a chapter that is largely comprised of meditations designed to develop disenchantment with samsara, including a set of forty verses in which Śāntideva imagines himself in a charnel ground contemplating rotting corpses. In this essay I employ comparative philosophy to illustrate how these meditative verses establish an important premise of Śāntideva’s argument. I begin by drawing a comparison between Śāntideva’s text and Derek Parfit, who in Reasons and Persons argues that if we accept reductionism about personal identity, we ought to be less concerned about our future well-being. Next I summarize a powerful response to Parfit by Susan Wolf that claims normative implications do not follow from Parfit’s reductionism. This objection, I argue, also applies to Śāntideva. Although her argument is probably effective against Parfit, in the final section I explain how Buddhist claims about impermanence and suffering provide a response to Wolf. In other words, the Bodhicaryāvatāra’s verses on the dissatisfactions of ordinary life do philosophical work that strengthens the force of Śāntideva’s argument.
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Notes
- 1.
Parfit’s argument for this position occupies much of part three of Reasons and Persons.
- 2.
Parfit also stipulates that identity must take a nonbranching form, but we can overlook this detail here. See Parfit 1984, 207.
- 3.
It is worth noting that Parfit was aware of Buddhist ideas about selflessness when he wrote Reasons and Persons, and interpreted these ideas as expressing a reductionism about persons (p. 273). I think his interpretation is correct, although below I will also suggest a couple of ways in which Buddhist reductionism differs from that of Parfit. See also Reasons and Persons, Appendix J (pp. 502–503), in which Parfit cites several Buddhist passages about the nonexistence of an enduring self. My concern, however, is about the conceptual relationship between Buddhist views about the nonexistence of an enduring self and Parfit’s reductionism about persons, as well as the moral consequences each deduces from their respective positions.
- 4.
See Parfit 1984 pps. 199–202 for his account of the teletransporter thought experiment.
- 5.
See Harris (forthcoming) for a development of these ideas about continuity of identity and rebirth in Buddhist texts.
- 6.
Translations are by Wallace and Wallace in Śāntideva 1997 . I indicate any places where I have modified the translation.
- 7.
“Sentient being ” here translates “sattva,” which in Buddhist thought refers to anything possessing consciousness.
- 8.
… asvāmikāni duḥkhāni sarvāṇyevāviśeṣataḥ| duḥkhatvādeva vāryāṇi niyamastatra kiṁkṛtaḥ (Śāntideva 2001, 190) . Wallace and Wallace translate “aviśeṣatah” as an ablative of reason, “because they are not different.” It is unclear, however, why Śāntideva would be claiming that suffering is ownerless because it is not different. Instead, I translate “aviśeṣatah” adverbially, as “without exception.”
- 9.
- 10.
This way of phrasing Parfit’s reductionism about persons as unification of more basic elements under a concept is influenced by Korsgaard 1989 , 103–104.
- 11.
See Reasons and Persons sections 111–117 for Parfit’s full development of this view.
- 12.
See Goodman 2016 for an application of this point to Śāntideva .
- 13.
See Harris 2011 for a development of this possibility.
- 14.
One would, of course, have to rule out the possibility that we might have good reasons to prioritize the well-being of certain others, such as our friends, before impartial benevolence would be established. But the non-existence of any deep metaphysical fact of identity could be appealed to again in respect to these persons.
- 15.
See Parfit 1984 , 312–314.
- 16.
My comments here are also influenced by Korsgaard 1989 .
- 17.
In a reply to Wolf’s article , Parfit agrees that we have practical reasons to care about persons, but claims such concern remains irrational since it is arises from the metaphysically mistaken belief in a further fact (Parfit 1986, 832–833). Most Buddhists, however, accept that persons do exist in the conventional sense , as conceptually unified synchronic and diachronic aggregations of mental and physical events, and so this critique would not apply to them. I do not think it applies to Wolf either, since I take her point to be that we have good practical reasons for extending our concern beyond the boundaries of strong psychological continuity stressed by Parfit. To put this in Buddhist terms, I have practical reasons to conceptually unify the aggregates (skandhas) from birth to death, regardless of partial psychological discontinuity within this time period. Wolf’s claim is that I choose this stretch of mental and physical activity to care about because of the pragmatic value of doing so. This is not, however, irrational, in the sense of being a metaphysical mistake, since these mental and physical events do exist. Still, metaphysics may have nothing to do with my concern for persons, in the sense that the existence or nonexistence of a unified enduring further fact is irrelevant to why I care about them. Thanks to Oren Hanner for suggesting I engage with Parfit’s reply.
- 18.
- 19.
See Martin 2009 for a development of this challenge.
- 20.
Nirvana is held to be selfless , but is not impermanent or unsatisfactory.
- 21.
See for instance Vasubandhu 905 .
- 22.
Śāntideva does place great value on developing a subset of intellectual knowledge that is relevant to one’s development on the Buddhist path . This is shown most clearly by his explanation and defense of Buddhist philosophical positions about selflessness and emptiness in the ninth chapter of the BCA. See Keown 2001 for an exploration of the moral significance of certain kinds of intellectual development in the Buddhist tradition. See Harris 2014 for a study of Buddhist positions on the pervasion of ordinary experience by suffering (duḥkha).
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Harris, S. (2018). Altruism in the Charnel Ground: Śāntideva and Parfit on Anātman, Reductionism and Benevolence. In: Davis, G. (eds) Ethics without Self, Dharma without Atman. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67407-0_11
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