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Buddhism in Recent British Philosophy and Theology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Steven Collins
Steven Collins
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol
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Extract

One of the more popular bedtime stories in our house just now is Horton Hears a Who by Dr Seuss. Horton is an elephant, and unlike the other animals in the jungle, he is capable – thanks doubtless to his large ears – of hearing the faint sounds made by some minute beings called Whos, who live in a town called Whoville on a tiny speck of dust. The other animals think Horton is mad when he talks to the Whos: they take the speck of dust from him and attempt to get rid of it. After a series of adventures Horton retrieves the speck of dust, gets the Whos to shout loudly enough to be heard by the other animals, and so everyone lives happily ever after. In the course of the story, before the speck of dust is taken from him, Horton is walking along and worrying:

‘Should I put this speck down?…’ Horton thought with alarm.

‘If I do these small persons may come to great harm.

I can't put it down. And I won't! After all

A person's a person, no matter how small.’

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , December 1985 , pp. 475 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

page 475 note 1 Collins, , Glasgow, , 1977 (originally published, 1954).Google Scholar

page 476 note 1 Oxford University Press, 1984.

page 476 note 2 SCM Press, 1980 and 1982. Before sending the final draft of this paper to Religious Studies, there appeared Cupitt's Only Human (SCM Press, 1985).Google Scholar Although this is very largely concerned with conceptions of human nature and selfhood, it nowhere addresses directly the issue dealt with here. There are many references, both positive and negative, to Buddhism, one to Parfit (p. 223, n. 3 to Part IV), and at one place (p. 179) Cupitt declares that ‘the individual will in due course have to be demythologised’. Part IV, Chapter 2 compares and contrasts, inter alia, ‘Christian eschatological hope’ with its ethical individuation’, and ‘Indian “release”’ with ‘ the highest development of this spirituality… [consisting in] anatta, the ‘no–self doctrine of the Buddha’: but these are described as two of ‘the antinomies of religious thought’, between which we cannot rationally choose. His own attempt at a resolution of these antinomies consists in an extreme voluntarism, in which both the Buddhist discipline of nothingness’ and ‘the Christian believer's dying with Christ’ are held to ‘stabilise the self, to hold it calm in the face of the enigma of the human condition’ (pp. 190–I). Although, as before, I find much of this admirable and attractive, it will not help us with the main problem I address here.

page 476 note 3 Collins, , 1981.Google Scholar

page 476 note 4 Gray, J. N., in The Times Higher Education Supplement, 18 05 1984.Google Scholar

page 477 note 1 When applied to the action of individuals it can only be indirectly self-defeating. See Parfit, , pp. 5–13.Google Scholar

page 479 note 1 Discussed by Parfit, , pp. 245 ff.,Google Scholar and cf. Nagel, Thomas, Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness, Synthese 22, 1971,Google Scholar reprinted in Nagel, T., Mortal Questions (Cambridge University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

page 479 note 2 Parfit, , pp. 224 and 227–8.Google Scholar for the Buddha, see the Alagaddūpama Sutta, Majjhima No. 22, esp.Mi 37–8 (PTS edition).

page 479 note 3 Parfit, , p. 446.Google Scholar

page 479 note 4 Parfit, , p. 273.Google Scholar I should point out that my understanding of Buddhism has been of the Theravāda tradition and that not all of what I say can be applied directly to other forms.

page 480 note 1 Parfit, , p. 223.Google Scholar

page 480 note 2 Parfit, , p. 212.Google Scholar Cf. pp. 340–I

page 480 note 3 In Mahādyāna, there are thought to be exceptional cases where division, rather like Parfit's imaginary cases, does take place. Buddhas and advanced Bodhisattvas can emanate a number of ‘created’ beings, each of whom can be a separate centre of sentience and agency, Similarly, certain high-ranking lamas who have entered on the Bodhisattva path can split into three ‘reincarnations’, according to the common Buddhist triad of body, mind and speech. (I am grateful to Paul Williams for this information, and for that in footnotes 4 and p. 482 n. I.)

page 480 note 4 In the Tibetan commentarial tradition it is specifically argued that persons in one continuum of lives must be related in a way that other persons are not, since – memory of past lives would be impossible if they were not. See Wilson, Joe, Chandrakirti's Sevenfold Reasoning: Meditation on the Selflessness of Persons, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1980, p. 41.Google Scholar

page 480 note 5 Perhaps the most famous example is Mahāmoggallāna, one of the Buddha's two chief disciples, who was murdered by thieves as a result of his own murder of his parents in a former life. See Malalasekera, G., Dictionary of Pali Proper Names (PTS, 1937), vol. II, pp. 646–7.Google Scholar In general, enlightened Arhats have different characters and personalities because of their different karmic ‘traces’ (uāsanā): see Lamotte, , ‘Passions and Impregnations of the Passions in Buddhism’, in Cousins, L. et al. (eds.), Buddhist Studies in Honour of I. B. Horner, (Dordrecht, 1974).Google Scholar In this regard the western monk Nānajīvako makes an interesting comparison with Heidegger's notion that authenticity requires taking over one's circumstances (the ‘facticity’ of the life one is ‘thrown into’) as if it had been chosen. See his article ‘Karma – the ripening fruit, in Kamma and its Fruit (Buddhist Publication Society, Wheel No. 221 4, Kandy, 1975).Google Scholar

page 481 note 1 Parfit, , p. 220,Google Scholar following S. Shoemaker, Persons and their pasts, American Philosophical Quarterly VII (1970.)Google Scholar Parfit considers imaginary cases where copies of memory traces from someone else's brain are implanted in one's own. This can be seen as similar to memory-traces from past lives. The crucial point here is that such memories would appear in what Parfit, following C. Peacocke, calls the first-person mode of presentation, but would not automatically be memories of events or things actually experienced by the ‘I’ of this life.

page 481 note 2 Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravāda Buddhism (Cambridge University Press, 1982).Google Scholar See chap. 6.3.

page 481 note 3 Ninian Smart expresses this nicely in Beyond Ideology, p. 199:Google Scholar ‘The momentary flux of the person, on the Buddhist analysis, means that any concern which I may have for my future states, whether in this life or in the next, is a concern for states which really strictly are not mine. They are just consequences, or at least part consequences, of my past and present acts. To be concerned about my own future is no different from being concerned about another's – that is, if I see things as they really are. Prudence about my future states becomes a kind of altruism. I exist briefly amid a sea of short-lived sentient states, my own (as we conventionally say) and others’. Goodness is so acting that there is less suffering around, more joy. Indifference to self and compassion thus go hand in hand’.

page 482 note 1 Manchester University Press, 1983, Quotation from p. 210. In the Mahāyāna there is a kind of meditation practice, derived from Sāntideva, called ‘exchanging self and others’ in which this kind of imaginative transposition is practised systematically.

page 482 note 2 Parfit, , p. 280.Google Scholar

page 482 note 3 Parfit, , pp. 281–2.Google Scholar Cf. p. 347. Compare the Buddhist description of the – stylized – reflections which cause one to become a monk: ‘The household life is confined, full of dust; going forth is in the open...’ (e.g. D i 62, M i 179 et freq.).

page 483 note 1 This metaphor can be misleading in Buddhism. It is directly appropriate only to some Hindu schools, such as the vivartādvaita Vedānta. But for a helpful application of the image in Buddhism, see Nānānanda, The Magic of the Mind (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1974,Google Scholar expounding the Kālakārāma Sutta, A ii 24 ff.

page 483 note 2 Swinburne, R., ‘Personal identity’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society LXXIV (1973–1974), 244, 246.Google Scholar (Italics in original.) See also his contribution toShoemaker, S. and Swinburne, R., Personal Identity (Basil Blackwell, 1984).Google Scholar

page 483 note 3 Madell, G., The Identity of the Self (Edinburgh University Press, 1981). p. 110Google Scholar (Italics in original).

page 483 note 4 S iv 400–1; usefully discussed in Rāhula, W., What the Buddha Taught (Gordon Fraser, 2nd ed. 1967), pp. 62–3.Google Scholar

page 484 note 1 The Spectator, 19 05 1984.Google Scholar

page 484 note 2 Allen, George and Unwin, , 1969, pp. 9, 10.Google Scholar

page 484 note 3 Taking Leave of God, p. xii.Google Scholar Cp. The World to Come, pp. xi–xii.Google Scholar

page 485 note 1 Taking Leave of God, p. 117.Google Scholar

page 485 note 2 The Leap of Reason (Sheldon Press 1976), p. 97.Google Scholar

page 485 note 3 Taking Leave of God, p. 14.Google Scholar

page 485 note 4 The Leap of Reason, p. 62.,Google Scholar cf. pp. 91–2.

page 485 note 5 The World to Come, pp. 145–6.Google Scholar

page 485 note 6 Ibid p. 155.

page 485 note 7 Ibid p. 64; Taking Leave of God, p. 164.Google Scholar

page 485 note 8 Taking leave of God, p. 134.Google Scholar

page 486 note 1 Respect for Persons, p. 19Google Scholar (italics in original). Cp. pp. 32–3.

page 486 note 2 In Ruddock, R. (ed.) Six Approaches to the Person (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972). Quotation from p. 33.Google Scholar

page 487 note 1 Beyond Ideology, pp. 200, 289.Google Scholar

page 487 note 2 Nagel, T., The Possibility of Altruism (Princeton, 1978), p. 18.Google Scholar

page 487 note 3 Creation, Persons and the Meaning of Life, p. 29.Google ScholarBeyond Ideology, p. 194.Google Scholar

page 488 note 1 Taking Leave of God, p. 115Google Scholar (italics in original); p. 166.

page 488 note 2 Parfit, , p. 446Google Scholar

page 488 note 3 As is well–known, the original meaning of persona was a theatrical mask. (The classic definition of persona in medieval thought by Boethius, as naturae rationabilis individua substantia was given in relation to this meaning. Cf. Marshall, M. H., ‘Boethius’ Definition of Persona and the Mediaeval understanding of Roman Theater’, Speculum XXV (1950), 471–482.) For further reflections, seeCrossRefGoogle ScholarCarrithers, M., Collins, S. and Lukes, S. (eds.), The Category of the Person (Cambridge University Press, 1985),Google Scholar especially the essays by Mauss, Allen and Hollis.

page 488 note 4 This is argued with clarity and force by McGinn, C., The Character of Mind (Oxford University Press 1982), pp. 52–8 and chapter 6.Google Scholar See also inter alios, Chisholm, R., The First Person (Harvester, 1981), esp. pp. 86–91.Google Scholar

page 489 note 1 I take this formulation from Williams, P. M., On Rang Rig, in Steinkellner, E. and Tauscher, H. (eds.), Contributions on Tibetan and Buddhist Religion and Philosophy, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie and Buddhismuskunde, Heft 11 (Vienna, 1983).Google Scholar

page 489 note 2 How much more complicated is the question than I indicate can be seen from Evans, G., The Varieties of Reference (Oxford University Press, 1982), chapter 7, Self-identification.Google Scholar I feel, however, that this piece does not consider seriously enough the fact that our usual ideas here rest on certain – contingent – empirical presuppositions. It is not enough to say that in certain cases, such as brain bisection – and, I might add, a sequence of rebirths – we cannot ‘fully think ourselves into them as subject, with our customary ideas of ourselves’ (p. 255, n. 4, and cf p. 257). Our customary ideas are what are here in question.

page 489 note 3 A Note to the Paralogisms, pp. 117–8, in Ryle, G. (ed.), Contemporary Aspects of Philosophy Oriel Press, 1977).Google Scholar See also now his The Matter of Minds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).Google Scholar

page 489 note 4 For this last point Vendler depends, as does Parfit (op. cit. p. 351 ff.),Google Scholar and many others, on Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity, inDavidson, D. and Harman, G. (eds.), Semantics of Natural Languages (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 489 note 5 Cp. Anscombe, E., ‘The First Person’, in S. Guttenplan, Mind and Language (Oxford University Press, 175), p. 58:Google Scholar ‘If “I” is a referring expression, then Descartes was right about what the referent was…But Descartes’ position has…the intolerable difficulty of requiring an identification of the same referent in different I–thoughts.’

page 489 note 6 Thomas Nagel, arguing for an external, objective concept of mind which does not abandon the idea of different and irreducibly subjective points of view, holds that ‘Al that is involved in the external conception of mind is the imaginative use of this point of view – a use that is partly present in the memory and expectation of one's own experiences’ (‘The Limits of Objectivity’, in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 85).Google Scholar

page 490 note 1 ‘What is it like to be a bat?’, Philosophical Review LXXXIII (1974),Google Scholar reprinted in Mortal Questions.

page 490 note 2 Cf. The Limits of Objectivity, pp. 87–8.Google Scholar

page 490 note 3 A whole book devoted to the subject, the Puggala paññatti, literally ‘Conception(s) of Persons’ is included in the Abhidhamma, otherwise almost exclusively restricted to matters of ultimate truth. There are many other texts dealing with the topic: see Selfless Persons, Chapter 5.2.3.

page 490 note 4 For references, see Selfless Persons, pp. 132–3.Google Scholar

page 491 note 1 The notion of subjective reality has been explored with great skill byNagel, Thomas, in the works cited and in ‘Subjective and Objective’, in Mortal QuestionsGoogle Scholar; and ‘The Objective Self’, in Ginet, C. and Shoemaker, S. (eds.). Knowledge and Mind (Oxford University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

page 491 note 2 ‘Creation, Persons and the Meaning of Life’, p. 22.Google Scholar

page 492 note 1 Williams, Bernard has helpfully distinguished between ‘I–desires’ and non–I desires’ (‘Egoism and Altruism’, pp. 260 ff,Google Scholar in his Problems of the Self, (Cambridge University Press, 1973)).Google Scholar He takes these to hinge on a straightforward bodily criterion of identity. I would prefer to see the ‘I’ in question as the fact of subjectivity in or at a particular spatio–temporal locus.

page 492 note 2 This is the opening sentence in Williams, Bernard, Morality (Cambridge University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

page 492 note 3 As argued persuasively by Nagel, in The Limits of Objectivity, sections 2 and 3.Google Scholar

page 493 note 1 Mortal Questions, p. xiii.Google Scholar