The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy: One Book to Rule Them All / Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson, eds. -- Chicago: Open Court, 2003

 In the year 2000, Open Court Publishing launch a series titled, "Popular Culture and Philosophy" with the book Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book About Everything and Nothing. Open Court has gone on to publish scores of books in this series.  As someone interested in both philosophy and Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, I was pleased to receive as a Christmas gift Volume 5 in the series, The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy.  Books in the series are anthologies by authors, largely philosophers, who seek to tease out the philosophical themes that appear in whatever pop culture subject is the subject of the book.  TLotR and Philosophy is the only work in the series that I've read.  This is perhaps a reflection of my distance from so much of pop culture -- nothing to be proud of, just a fact. Whether I'll read other works in the series is an open question, but I'm glad to have read this one.

As with most anthologies, the articles are uneven.  Perhaps my biggest complaint is that too many of the authors spend an inordinate amount of time describing major events in TLotR, as if someone reading this work would not be quite familiar with the fact that, say, Gandalf battled a balrog in Moria or Boromir was slain defending Merry and Pippin.  But setting this aside, many of the articles do a good job of exposing philosophical ideas in TLotR.  There are five parts to the work, titled, I. The Ring, II. The Quest for Happiness, III. Good and Evil in Middle-Earth, IV. Time and Mortality, and V. Ends and Endings.  Each part contains three articles, except for the last which contains four.  

Stand out articles include Eric Katz's article "The Rings of Tolkien and Plato: Lessons in Power, Choice, and Morality."  The comparison between Tolkien's One Ring and Plato's Ring of Gyges is an obvious topic for philosophical discussion.  In Plato's Republic, Glaucon argues that anyone with a ring that made them invisible would eventually use it for immoral ends, even an otherwise moral person.  Socrates responds that the moral person would prefer a life of peace and integrity to whatever would be gained by illicit uses of the ring.  Tolkien's characters better reflect this latter theory, though they present a more complicated response to the One Ring than Plato imagines for the Ring of Gyges.  Katz examines the reactions of numerous characters to the One Ring and shows how they respond according to their established character.  Each does experience a least a moment of temptation (except Tom Bombadil), but they each resist, except for Gollum and Frodo.  Gollum because he is murderous to start with, and Frodo because he simply can't overcome the force of the ring he has carried so long.  This suggests that the adage "absolute power corrupts absolutely" is not Tolkein's view.

In Scott A. Davison's article, "Tolkien and the Nature of Evil," persuasively argues that evil is not an independent force in opposition as thought by Manichaeans, but merely the absence of good.  In that sense, TLotR isn't really a story of "good versus evil," it is a story of an effort to keep corruption at bay.  Though Davison doesn't make much of this observation, Tolkien makes shadows a stand in for evil.  This is true not just in TLotR, but in The Silmarillion, Tolkien's realm of the god-like Valar, is originally illuminated (as is all of the world) by two trees.  How this might be isn't explained, but one can't imagine that these would be specific spatial sources of light.  Instead, their presence would bring light to all the world from every angle, leaving no place for shadows.  It is only when the two trees are destroyed by Ungliant and Melkor that the Sun and Moon are created, illuminating the world, but still casting shadows.  Evil has entered the world and shadows come into being.

Aeon J. Skoble's article, "Virtue and Vice in The Lord of the Rings" is rather unique in the anthology.  The other articles in the anthology largely start with features that appear in the novel and go on to observe their philosophical import.  Skoble turns this on its head.  His article reads more like an introductory essay on ethics, particularly virtue ethics, with illustrations of his points taken from TLotR.  That is, he centers the philosophical ideas as opposed to elements of the novel.  If all of the articles were like this, the anthology would make an interesting text for an introductory Philosophy course (of course with the pre-requisite that students read TLotR.  As it is, the anthology might be better described as literary criticism appropriate to an English literature class.  

The final article, by John J. Davenport, entitled "Happy Endings and Religious Hope: The Lord of the Rings as an Epic Fairy Tale," is a real stand out. Davenport makes use of Tolkien's essay "On Fairy-stories" and other works by Tolkien to support Tolkien's claim that TLotR is "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work."  This has always been something that has escaped me.  Certainly, some elements of the novel can be seen as religious and specifically Catholic, but to say it is "fundamentally" so, seemed a stretch.  

Davenport claims that the essentially religious message of the work is that "evil cannot stand forever, that its misappropriation of divine power and right destroys itself in the end.  But this does not come about without our participation, our willingness to sacrifice, and our faith (beyond all rational hope) that our mortal efforts will be met with the ultimate response, and day will finally come again."  The "ultimate response" that Davenport refers to is what Tolkien calls a "eucatastrophe" -- a sudden "turning" at the end of fairy-stories that provides an "unexpected deliverance...experienced not as an achievement..., but rather a divine gift."  The resurrection of Christ is seen as the great eucatastrophe of the Christian faith, and the sudden unexpected appearance of Gollum at the Cracks of Doom is the great eucatastrophe of Middle-Earth.  This makes Tolkien's claim that his work is "fundamentally religious" somewhat more plausible.  Of course, one might also argue that despite how seemingly hopeless things are, the future is always essentially uncertain.  There's nothing necessarily religious about that. 

Other articles in the anthology certainly deserve reviews here, but as they are each short, I'll instead recommend picking up a library copy and sampling them at your leisure.  As you should expect, some will be weaker than others, but anyone interested in Tolkien and philosophy will find them entertaining.  

  

The Refutation of the Self in Indian Buddhism: Candrakīrti on the Selflessness of Persons / James Duerlinger -- London: Routledge, 2013

Below is a review that was published in Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies, Vol. 2, 2015.  The journal "is a bi-annual, peer-reviewed, international journal dedicated to comparative thought.  It seeks to explore common spaces and differences between philosophical traditions in a global context."  to subscribe to the journal, visit its website at http://www.verlag-alber.de/e-journals/confluence/.  

During the lifetime of the Buddha and in subsequent centuries, the philosophical traditions of India commonly accepted the existence of an eternal, substantive self (ātman). Among Buddhism’s most novel and noteworthy tenets was the rejection of this view and the acceptance of the doctrine of selflessness or the non-existence of the self (anātman). The non-existence of the self was, however, controversial even among Buddhists, due in part to the Buddha’s conflicting comments on the question and to the Buddha’s use of personal pronouns.  This led some to believe that he endorsed the existence of the self. As a consequence, various schools interpreted the doctrine in various ways. Several schools, particularly the Vātsīputrīyas and the Sammitīyas, maintained that some sort of “inexpressible person” (pudgala) must exist in order to make sense of personal continuity and rebirth and that this inexpressible person did not contradict the non-existence of the self. These schools became collectively known as Pudgalavādins. Other schools, particularly the Sarvāstivādins and the Sautrāntikas, maintained that the self was a conceptual fiction, constructed out of more fundamental elements called “dharmas.” Still another school, the Madhyamakas, considered the self, along with all objects, to be without independent existence. The Madhyamaka view was developed first by the second century philosopher Nāgārjuna and subsequently by other philosophers, including the seventh century philosopher Candrakīrti.

Works written by Buddhist philosophers on the self are well-worth reading for any philosopher outside of the Buddhist tradition as they offer theses that are at times analogous to ones found in the European tradition as well as theses that have no clear analogy. Among the most important works is the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya by Vasubandhu, particularly its ninth chapter, Refutation of the Theory of the Self (Ātmavādapratiṣedha or Pudgalapratiṣedhaprakaraņa). This work presents several important theories of the self. It outlines the view held by the Sarvāstivādins, the Pudgalavādins, and the Sautrāntikas. For the Madhyamaka tradition, one would do well to read Verses on the Fundamentals of the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā) by Nāgāruna and several works by Candrakīrti: Clear Words (Prasannapadā), Introduction to the Middle Way (Madhyamakāvatāra), and his Autocommentary on the Introduction to the Middle Way (Madhyamakāvatārabhāṣya). None of these are easy reading for anyone not steeped in the concepts and terminology of the Buddhist tradition. Happily, James Duerlinger has provided us with two mostly clear and insightful guides to much of this literature.

The first work is his 2003 book, Indian Buddhist Theories of Persons: Vasubandhu’s “Refutation of the Theory of the Self” which provides us with a translation of Vasubandhu’s Refutation of the Theory of the Self.¹ The second is his 2013 book, The Refutation of the Self in Indian Buddhism: Candrakīrti on the Selflessness of Persons which provides us with a translation of verses 120-165 of Candrakīrti’s Autocommentary on the Introduction to the Middle Way. A full review of Duerlinger’s 2003 work is beyond the scope of this review, but readers would be well served to read at least the introduction to the 2003 work. This will give the reader a background that will make reading Duerlinger’s 2013 work more meaningful.

The Refutation of the Self in Indian Buddhism is composed of three parts. The first part is a general introduction to the root text and an overview of the issues that it addresses (pp. 1-54). The second is the translation of the root text (pp. 55-89). The third is Duerlinger’s own verse-by-verse commentary on the root text (pp. 90-194). In the introduction, Duerlinger describes and explains the views that Candrakīrti attributes to a several Buddhist schools: the Sāṃmitīyas, the Āryasāṃmitīyas, the Sarvāstivādins, and the Sautrāntikas, as well as the non-Buddhist Tīrthikas. Duerlinger also provides a relatively clear expression of Candrakīrti’s criticisms of these views as found in Candrakīrti’s Clear Words, Introduction to the Middle Way, and his Autocommentary on the Introduction to the Middle Way. The introduction is composed of four sections. The first section distinguishes Duerlinger’s translation and commentary from the existing English translations and commentaries. The second places Candrakīrti’s Autocommentary in the context of the Mahāyāna and Madhyamaka traditions and explains the ten stages of the Bodhisattva path of meditation and its fruit as Candrakīrti understands it from the Sūtra on the Ten Stages (Daśabhūmika Sūtra). The third presents valuable explanations of several critical terms used by Candrakīrti, and the fourth section relates Candrakīrti’s theory of persons to other Indian Buddhist theories.

The second part of the work, the translation of the root text, is informed by what is perhaps the most important contribution that Duerlinger makes toward understanding Candrakīrti’s arguments: the distinction between a self “with person-properties” and a self “without person-properties.” By selves “with person-properties,” Duerlinger means beings that possess minds and bodies, perceive, think, feel, act, etc. When English speakers use the term “self” (and personal pronouns), we commonly refer to beings with such properties. This is most evident in our use of the reflexive pronouns “myself,” “yourself,” “himself,” “herself,” “ourselves,” “yourselves,” and “themselves.” In each case, we refer to beings that have person-properties. Even in the case of “itself,” we commonly use the term to refer to beings with person-properties, e.g., “the mouse trapped itself in the box.” The neuter pronoun merely elides our ignorance of the mouse’s sex. There are, however, some instances when we use “itself” (and even “themselves”) to refer to objects without person-properties, e.g., “the building collapsed on itself” or “the bean stalks entwined themselves around the poles.” In these instances, we appear to suggest a degree of agency (a feature of personhood) that on more careful analysis we would reject. So while it is not always true, on the whole our use of “self” refers to beings with person-properties.

The use of the term “atman” to refer to persons is less consistent in Buddhist texts. The world “ātman” is normally translated as “self,” but it ambiguously refers to beings with person-properties and objects without person-properties. According to Duerlinger, by carefully attending to the ambiguities in the Buddhist texts and marking them with his person-property terminology, we can better understand the arguments made by Candrakīrti. Duerlinger writes, “The distinction [between selves with and without person-properties] is not to my knowledge explicitly drawn by Candrakīrti and his Madhyamaka (Middle Way) followers,” but he goes on to write, “The distinction is needed to explain why he [Candrakīrti] represents his fellow Buddhists as asserting the thesis that a self exists by itself when they deny that a self exists by itself” (p. 4). Perhaps it is because Duerlinger does not find explicit evidence for his person-property terminology that he does not us the terminology in his translation of the root text, but it helpfully appears in both his introduction to the root text and in his commentary on the root text.

The third part of the work is Duerlinger’s verse-by-verse commentary on Candrakīrti’s Autocommentary. It is based on seven Tibetan commentaries written in the Madhyamaka tradition, six of which are from English translations. Among the value-added features of Duerlinger’s commentary are quotations from Candrakīrti’s Clear Words, his commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Verses on the Fundamentals of the Middle Way. These quotations provide additional helpful perspective on Candrakīrti’s views.

To delineate the various Buddhist views of the self as Duerlinger believes Candrakīrti understands them, we should start by describing a view of the self held by the non-Buddhist Tīrthika school. This is the most robust view of the self considered by Candrakīrti. We can compare it to something like (but only something like) a Cartesian substantive self. It is an eternally existing mind that is temporarily associated with a particular body. This is in contrast to the Buddhist view that sees the self as identical to or at least dependent upon the body. Perhaps the simplest version of this contrasting view is held by the Sarvāstivādins and the Sautrāntikas. They maintained that the self is identical to the aggregates (skandhas), i.e., collections of elementary “dharmas” which we might recognize as (i) physical atoms, (ii) sensations, (iii) perceptions, (iv) volitional actions and external forces that condition our circumstances, and (v) consciousness. The classic explanation of this view appears in the Questions of Milinda (Milindapañha), written in the first century. In this text, Nāgasena explains to King Malinda that the self is like a chariot, composed of parts, and while one might say that each part exists, the chariot only exists dependently upon the parts; hence, its ontological status is different than the ontological status of the parts. The chariot does not exist in the strictest sense. The word “chariot” is only a convenient way to refer to the collection of parts that alone exist. Similarly, the word “I” is merely a convenient way to refer to the collection of parts or “aggregates” which make up the self.

David Hume comes closest to holding this particular view of the self. For Hume, personal identity is a bundle of overlapping impressions and ideas. Hume would not agree with the Buddhist enumeration of the aggregates (the strands that make up the bundle that is the self), but the important point is that the self is a composition of elementary parts and does not have an independent existence. The Sarvāstivādins differed from the Sautrāntikas on a number of points, but most importantly the former maintained the existence of the past, present, and future, while the latter only accepted that the present exists. In other words, the Sarvāstivādins accepted a kind of duration of the dharmas that the Sautrāntikas rejected. At the same time, the Sautrāntikas accepted the spatial extension of the bodily dharmas while the Sarvāstivādins held that they were infinitely divisible. Importantly, they agreed that the self was identical to the aggregates and that a self with person-properties did not exist independently of those aggregates.

In contrast, the Pudgalavādins held a view that lay precariously between the Tīrthika view and the Sarvāstivādin-Sautrāntikan view. For the Pudgalavādins the self was dependent upon the aggregates. In this respect it was like the Sarvāstivādin-Sautrāntikan self; however, the Pudgalavādin self did possess person-properties. This latter feature made the Pudgalavādin self similar to the Tīrthika self, but as distinct from the Tīrthikas, Pudgalavādins did not maintain that the self was eternal. It could, though, transmigrate from body to body in rebirth. That the Pudgalavādin self was dependent upon the aggregates, but at the same time possessed person-properties while the aggregates did not, meant that the self and the aggregates were neither the same nor different from each other. The Pudgalavādin self was, in this way, “inexpressible.” Perhaps the closest Western notion to the Pudgalavādin view is that of a form of supervenience. The self is dependent upon the aggregates, but does have the same ontological status as the aggregates. It is not substantive as is a Cartesian or Tīrthikan self; yet, it does possess a mind and body and has the capacity to perceive, think, feel, act, etc. It is no wonder that orthodox Buddhists greeted this view with extreme skepticism.

Candrakīrti rejected all of these views and carried to completion the refutation of the self begun by the Buddhist tradition. His refutation relied on a distinction that all of the previous schools of Buddhism accepted but did not make the most of. Each school recognized two forms of truth: conventional (saṃvṛtisatya) and ultimate (paramārthasatya). By asserting that the self is a collection of aggregates and that reference to the self was a short hand for referring to the aggregates, Buddhists were able to maintain that the existence of the self was of a different order than the existence of the aggregates. That is, the self existed conventionally, while what ultimately existed were the aggregates or the elementary dharmas that composed the aggregates. This allowed Buddhists to maintain that it was conventionally true that the self “existed,” while at the same time maintaining that it was not ultimately true. When the Buddha spoke of the self or made use of personal pronouns, he was asserting facts that were merely conventionally true. Both the Pudgalavādins and the Sarvāstivādin-Sautrāntikan made use of this distinction and both accepted that the aggregates – or more precisely, the dharmas – had an ultimate existence.

It is this last claim that Candrakīrti and the Madhyamikas rejected. Their critical premise was that all things with which we are normally acquainted arise dependently. That is, their existence relies on the existence of other things. This includes even the dharmas, the elemental building blocks of the aggregates. In light of this, the self had no ultimate basis at all. All things, including the self, neither existed (independently) nor did not exist. Instead, they maintained what provisionally might be thought of as a third ontological status between existence and non-existence known as “emptiness” (śūnyatā). One might see this as similar to the Pudgalavādin claim that the self was neither the same as nor different from the aggregates, but the similarity is only superficial. The Pudgalavādins located the “inexpressible self” within the conventional realm, while accepting the ultimate reality of the aggregates. Consequently, the self had a basis in the ultimate realm. Against this, the Madhyamikas drew the conventional-ultimate distinction not between the self and its component parts, but between all experience and a transcendent realm accessible only to the enlightened. The illusion of the self as ultimate or as being composed of ultimate elements was what anchored us in samsāra – this delusional world of suffering. Candrakīrti and the Madhyamikas were thus able to acknowledge the purely conventional existence of the self while completely purging it of any ultimate reality. This, more than any other Buddhist theory of the self, was able to interpret the doctrine of anātman in its most rigorous form, while making sense of our (and the Buddha’s) use of personal pronouns.

Relying solely on Buddhism’s root texts upon which these distinctions are based makes for difficult study. Consequently, commentaries and other secondary literature are of great value. James Duerlinger’s The Refutation of the Self in Indian Buddhism along with his early work Indian Buddhist Theories of Persons stand among the most helpful aids to understanding the critical and intriguing Buddhist doctrines of the self.

1.  Duerlinger, J. Indian Buddhist Theories of Persons: Vasubandhu’s “Refutation of the Theory of the Self,” (London: Routledge, 2003).

After Sustainability: Denial, Hope, Retrieval / John Foster -- London: Routledge, 2015

After Sustainability is a frightening book.  Not only because it is based on the premise that climate change poses an apocalyptic future, but for the attitude that its author, John Foster, takes to that future.  Foster is of the mind that we have passed the point of no return and that nothing that we can do as a society will significantly mitigate the harms that a changing climate will create.  He is dismissive of environmentalist and activists that suggest we might achieve some kind of sustainable,  low carbon, global society that will be remotely livable.  Hence, "after sustainability" essentially suggests how we should think about our future once we have given up the false hope of sustainability.

His prescription calls for embracing our "dark self" which seems to be primarily committed to "existential resilience."  At times, Foster appears to suggest that this is a welcome return to a pre-moral attitude that is an expression of our primitive animality.  Less philosophically, Foster appears to suggest that societies that are rich enough should prepare to erect barriers to immigration from less fortunate societies and defend those barriers at all costs.  Whether he is or is not advocating this, he certainly seems to suggest that this will be a consequence of the apocalypse of climate change and that those who will survive will be those who are able to create something akin to the "transition towns" recently created to prepare for the economic disruptions following peak oil.

In all, Foster's attitude is needlessly pessimistic and assumes the coming of worst-case scenarios for climate change.  His response is quite in line with the amoral attitudes of American survivalists.  A more grounded assessment of our situation would indicate that there is a high chance, perhaps even likelihood, that we will not be able to preserve a functioning global society and that the repercussions of this will be disastrous for most of the world's population; however, there is also a non-negligible chance that what we do today will significantly mitigate the damage that climate change might otherwise do.  The worst-case scenarios result from "business as usual" characterizing the world's energy future and there indeed are power forces that will seek to continue with business as usual; however, just as the physics of the planet might be subject to dangerous tipping points, so too are our political, social, and economic institutions subject to tipping points.  Indeed these institutions might be far more subject to tipping points.  Abandoning the pressure to mitigate changes in our climate (as Foster seems to recommend) surrenders any chance that we might reach those positive tipping points.  If Foster is right, then nothing we do will avoid an apocalyptic future, but abandoning our moral responsibilities in favor of self-preservation based on his pessimistic assessment is premature and certainly morally indecent.  

Why the Silence?

It has been quite some time since I posted an entry to this blog.  So I thought I'd provide an explanation to the curious.  I have been on professional leave (a.k.a. sabbatical) for a few months working on a book on Indian Buddhism.  It has meant that I have not spent time reviewing the books I am reading, since what I am drawing from them presumably will appear in the book.  For fuller disclosure, I'm appending below the draft preface for the book.

About a year ago, I was having lunch with a co-worker and the topic of Buddhism came up.  She told me that she really didn’t know much about Buddhism, just that is was a very peaceful religion.  I was tempted to give her a quick tutorial on some of Buddhism’s main ideas, but decided it would be too pedantic for a lunch conversation.  I simply agreed with her and mentioned that I had a long standing interest in Buddhism.  She seemed to want me to say at least something about Buddhism, but by then I had made my decision not to say anything of substance.  In retrospect, I think I was a little worried that by speaking extemporaneously, I wouldn’t give her a very clear or even sufficiently accurate account of Buddhism.  In any case, I subsequently began thinking about what I might say had I had time to formulate my thoughts. 

A few weeks later, I started sketching an outline of Buddhism’s main ideas and thinking about writing a short essay for people like my co-worker.  The sketch of the “short essay” soon began looking like several short essays and maybe even a book.  I doubt that my co-worker really would want to read such a thing, but the idea of putting my understanding of Buddhism in writing began to take over my thoughts.  Finding time to do this would be difficult.  Thankfully, with the support of my immediate supervisors and the Dean of Libraries at my university, I was awarded a professional leave of absence to take on the project. 

It has been more than forty years since I first read a book on Buddhism.  It was Buddhism by Christmas Humphreys.  I was about 15 years old and had recently been confirmed into my mother’s Lutheran Church, but within less than a year of my confirmation, my scientific frame of mind had led me to reject the empirical claims in the Old Testament and to recognize the untestability of Christianity’s theological claims.  Only Christian morality seemed attractive anymore.  Nonetheless, my rather philosophical disposition brought me to wonder about other religions.  By chance, Christmas Humphreys’s book was available on my father’s bookshelf.  Reading it was a most rewarding experience.  Here was a “religion” that seemed to rely on neither speculative theology nor dubious empirical claims, and most of all, it addressed in a clear and rational way two questions that were important to me:  what is the world ultimately like and how can I live a virtuous life?  Perhaps more importantly, it provided me with a prescription on how to reduce the normal adolescent discontent that I was experiencing. 
 
Since then I have read widely on the topic, and Buddhism’s insights have helped me navigate some rather difficult times.  During college and graduate school, I began picking up books on Buddhism at used bookstores, selecting ones that seemed reasonably scholarly and which had some clear connection to my developing understanding of Buddhism.  Consequently, the foundation of my understanding lies in works published in the latter half of the twentieth century, particularly 1960-1980. The authors that had the greatest influence on me were Edward Conze and D.T. Suzuki who ignited in me a strong interest in Zen.  Around 1990, I came across T.R.V. Murti’s The Central Philosophy of Buddhism.  I was mightily impressed, mainly because of its effort to connect Buddhism to Western philosophy, especially Immanuel Kant for whom I had and still have a strong affinity.  Murti’s book redirected my interest away from East Asian Buddhism.  Indian Buddhism now had become my primary interest.  With this grounding, I went on to read English translations of a number of sūtras and abhidharma texts that turned up in used bookstores.  The Prajñāpāramitā literature was of special interest.  

Off and on, I have called myself a Buddhist, but as I have had no formal training in Buddhism and never belonged to a Buddhist community, calling myself a Buddhist always seemed a little pretentious.   Nonetheless, I now find that I know more about Buddhism than I know about the Christianity.  Furthermore, I find that the central insights of Buddhism have become deeply ingrained in how I think and behave in the world.  In that sense, I guess I am a self-taught Buddhist or perhaps more accurately, my teachers have been the authors I have read, and my Buddhist community has been people with Buddhist dispositions, whether they knew these dispositions were Buddhist or not.

At the same time, I am a philosopher in the Anglo-American, analytic tradition.  My Ph.D. dissertation dealt with contemporary Western political philosophy, and over the course of twelve years, I taught philosophy at one college and two universities, specializing in Moral Theory, the Philosophy of Law, and, of course, Political Philosophy.  I also had an abiding interest in Epistemology and Metaphysics, particularly the justification of moral claims and the concept of personhood – admittedly a rather wide ranging set of interests; too many to be much of an expert on anything.

Often, I found the ideas that I encountered and taught were similar to ideas that appear in the Buddhist tradition, but I never made any serious attempt to describe those similarities nor did I ever bring them into my classrooms.  My hope, with this work, is that I will be able to show how several important Buddhist ideas are akin to venerable ideas of the Western philosophical tradition.  Too often I hear Western philosophers dismiss Eastern philosophy as wooly-minded speculation.  Too often I hear devotees of Eastern philosophies dismiss Western philosophy as vain, irrelevant, and superficial.  I suspect that both are speaking mainly out of ignorance.  If I my work can undermine those prejudices, even a little, I will consider it a success.

This work will attempt to reach an educated general audience.  It will also restrict the number of footnotes to the sources upon which it is based.  I do this both to facilitate a more fluid reading experience and because it is not always clear to me what should be considered the generally accepted facts about Buddhism and what is controversial enough to deserve citation.  Instead, I will provide an annotated bibliography of the works that have been important to the writing of this work and I encourage the reader to explore these works in their own way.  I trust that after decades of reading, what has stuck in my brain is likely to be those views that I have encountered on numerous occasions and therefore are established reasonably well, at least in the English language literature.  My lack of ability to read Sanskrit, Pāli, Chinese, Japanese, or Tibetan is, of course, a great weakness in my ability to sort out the truth in any other way than this regrettably casual method.  I will, however, make use of a number of foreign language terms throughout the text.  After all, they are commonly imbedded in the English language texts and translations that form the basis of this work.  English works on Buddhism often make use of Sanskrit and Pāli terminology, and the use of diacritical marks is not always consistent from one author to another.  So for the sake of consistency, I will employ Sanskrit terms whenever they are available and I will use The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism edited by Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Donald S. Lopez, Jr. as my authority on spelling, capitalization, and diacritics with The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion edited by Stephan Schuhmacher and Gert Woerner as a secondary resource.  There will, of course, be instances when I fail to follow this practice, but hopefully, they will be limited.

Buddhist Thought in India: Three Phases of Buddhist Philosophy / Edward Conze -- Ann Arbor, Mich: University of Michigan Press, 1970

Edward Conze is among the most important Western commentators on Buddhism.  He is particularly important for his translation of the Prājñapāramitā-sūtra or The Perfect of Wisdom which exists in three versions of 18,000, 25,000, and 100,000 lines.  The Prājñapāramitā-sūtra is important to the Mahāyāna tradition and especially the Mādhyamaka school.  T.R.V. Murti has called the Mādhyamaka the "central" philosophy of Buddhism, and no doubt it played a very important role in the advance of Buddhism from its early Abhidharma period to the more inclusive Mahāyāna phase; but Conze's career and understanding of Buddhism is not limited to this particular tradition and he demonstrates his broad understanding in Buddhist Thought in India.

Early on, Conze virtually apologizes for writing Buddhist Thought in India citing Theodore Stcherbatsky's monumental work Buddhist Logic.  According to Conze, Stcherbatsky has already covered Conze's topic in much greater detail and at much greater length than Conze can provide, but Conze is being overly modest here.  While Stcherbatsky's work is brilliant and covers much of what is ing Buddhist Thought in India, the latter work provides a clear and concise explanation of topics that Stcherbatsky struggles to communicate.  Stcherbatsky's work focuses mainly on the philosophy of three late period philosophers:  Dignāga, Dharmakīrti, and Dharmottara.  In contrast, Conze covers the entire sweep of Indian Buddhism.

Buddhist Thought in India is divided into three large parts covering Archaic Buddhism, Sthavira Buddhism, and Mahāyāna Buddhism.  His treatments are evenhanded and respectful of each tradition.  He describes both the historical developments that lead to each of these successive periods and explains the critical concepts that characterized them.  According to Conze, Archaic Buddhism, i.e, the Buddhism of Buddha and his immediate successors, can be recognized by what is accepted by all (or most all) subsequent traditions, e.g., the impermanence of all things, the ubiquity of suffering, and the doctrine of no-self.  His treatment of these and other important Buddhist concepts provide the reader with an excellent summary of the main tenets of Buddhism.

In the Sthavira phase of Buddhism, a number of disagreements arose over the interpretation of the main tenets.  This led to a period of highly sophisticated philosophical debate in which the "abhidharma" or higher learning animated numerous Buddhists schools.  Conze's treatment of these debates is good.  Among them is the challenge by the heterodox Pudgalavādan school that asserted the existence of persons, virtually rejecting the doctrine of no-self.  Conze also explores various views of impermanence and especially causation, but also the nature of space, nirvana, enlightened beings, and path to salvation.

It is in the section on Mahāyāna Buddhism that Conze really shows his expertise.  He treats Mahāyāna's three main schools with clarity and precision:  Mādhyamaka, Yogācāra, and the School of Logic.  The first of these schools presents a stark break from the Sthavira tradition, leveling powerful criticisms of its philosophical positions and opening up Buddhism to a more popular following.  In a more positive vein, the Yogācāra school advanced clear alternatives to the Sthavira tradition, sometimes disregarding the arguments of the Mādhyamikas.  Finally, the School of Logic applied extraordinary scrutiny to the basic Buddhist concepts to bring Buddhism to its highest philosophical pitch.  The work of the Logicians is far more completely explained by Stcherbatsky in his Buddhist Logic.

Among the larger arguments presented by Conze in this work is that when trying to understand Buddhism, one should not be fooled into thinking it is a purely rational philosophy that is compatible with modern science.  According to Conze, Buddhism is unquestionably a religion with the goal of saving the world from suffering.  It's empirical and metaphysical positions reach beyond the narrow scope of modern science and to leave out these elements misses its most important contribution to the world.

A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. I / Surendranath Dasgupta -- Chapter V: Buddhist Philosophy -- Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1922

In 1922, the young Indian scholar Surendranath Dasgupta published the first volume of what would become a five volume history of Indian philosophy.  It is a magisterial, encyclopedic work.  Chapter Five is a noteworthy summary of Buddhist philosophy in India, substantial in both length and depth.

Dasgupta begins the work as one might expect, describing the state of philosophy in India just before the time of the Buddha, recounting the legends associated with the life of the Buddha, and outlining the literature of the early period of the Buddhist tradition, but he quickly moves on to a more substantive treatment of Buddhist philosophy, detailing a wide variety of doctrines held by numerous schools.  At first he provides a general account of a number of concepts that are central to the early schools of Buddhism, e.g., causation, consciousness, rebirth, the khandas (Sk: skandhas), theories of matter and sense contact, morality, meditation, kamma (Sk: kharma), and nibbana (Sk: nirvana), providing rather mainstream interpretations.  He goes on, though, to indicate how various schools have reinterpreted these ideas.  Later, Dasgupta takes up the contributions of the Mahayana schools -- Madhyamaka and Yogacara -- and ultimately takes up the views of the Sautrantikas.

The work is an excellent overview of Buddhist philosophy; however, the reader might be somewhat puzzled by its organization.  It is not always clear which views are being attributed to which schools and which views are taken to be shared by numerous schools.  It is notable that his treatment of Madhyamaka was written before the work of Fyodor Stcherbatsky and T.V.R. Murti.  Consequently, he takes the Madhyamikas to be nihilists and does not provide the more sophisticated account of sunyata (emptiness) that characterizes later works on Buddhism. 

Regardless of its shortcomings, Chapter Five of A History of Indian Philosophy is an extremely valuable treatment of Buddhist philosophy which can serve both as an encyclopedic reference source and a valuable continuous text.

Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship: On the Western Interpretation of Nagarjuna / Andrew P. Tuck -- N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1990

Understanding an alien tradition poses enormous obstacles. Many concepts that one takes for granted from one's own tradition turn out to be culturally specific, even ones that seem so fundamental to one's understanding of a subject that we think that they surely must be universal. Nonetheless, if we are to gain a cosmopolitan understanding, we must do what we can to understand what falls outside of our established world views. Success is always partial and it requires long and arduous study or total immersion in the alien culture.

In Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship Andrew Tuck illustrates the changing fashions among Western scholars in their attempts to understand Indian Buddhist philosophy, particularly the views of Nagarjuna and the Madyamaka school that Nagarjuna is said to have founded. Tuck distinguishes three phases in the Western interpretation of Nagarjuna and the Madyamaka school: German idealism, Anglo-American analysis, and post-Wittgensteinian linguistic functionalism. Previously understood as little more than nihilism, serious study of the Madyamaka school did not begin until the 20th century. A landmark in this development was Fyodor Stcherbatsky's book Buddhist Logic which agreed on the illusory nature of the empirical world, but did not reject the reality of a transcendent world of the thing-in-itself. By this, Stcherbatsky advanced a distinctly Kantian conception of Buddhism which recognized the apparent duality of the phenomenal and the noumenal. The approach is further developed by T.R.V. Murti's The Central Philosophy of Buddhism.

As the idealist view of Nagarjuna was coming to maturity, Western philosophers were beginning to abandon idealism and speculative philosophy in general. Instead, the techniques of logical analysis of Anglo-American philosophy were gaining prominence and a number of Nagarjuna's Western interpreters were employing these techniques to understanding his work. According to Tuck, Richard Robinson is foremost in this movement. Given Nagarjuna's criticism of competing philosophical views and the nearly syllogistic passages in his works, it is no wonder that the techniques of the logician would be applied. During this period of interpretation, Nagarjuna's tetralemma [neither A, ~A, A&~A, nor ~(A&~A)] became the focus of study. Nagarjuna's primary project was taken to be refuting all competing philosophical positions, thus rendering all conceptions of "own being" meaningless. According to Robinson, Nagarjuna failed in this project, but in any case, the approach to Nagarjuna's work was analytic, not speculative.

The final phase of interpretation came after the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. According to the post-Wittgensteinian philosophers, Nagarjuna's task was pursued via a careful examination of the function of language, not its mere logical relations. Here a pragmatic, soteriological enterprise was afoot. Nagarjuna was showing his contemproaries how the fly might escape the fly bottle.

Tuck does not endorse any of these readings of (or approaches to reading) Nagarjuna. He merely seeks to show how the philosophical dispositions of Western philosophers have influenced the understanding of Nagarjuna. His work is in its detail interesting, but the larger point seems trivial. He does, however, seem to imply a more significant point.  Beyond merely observing that interpretations of alien traditions necessarily are shaped by the assumptions of the interpreting culture, Tuck seems to suggest that while no prior cultural assumptions are better or worse than another, each can generate a new and interesting mixture of ideas that will illuminate and advance human understanding.

Wei Shih Er Shih Lun or The Treatise in Twenty Stanzas on Representation-Only / Vasubandhu -- Clarence H. Hamilton, trans. -- New Haven, Conn: American Oriental Society, 1938

Over the long history of Buddhism, many schools of thought developed.  Precisely when one school or another appeared is usually controversial. So it should come as no surprise that establishing the date of the foundation of the Yogacara school is controversial.  It is believed that the school was founded by two brothers, Asanga and Vasubandhu.  According to Louis de La Vallee Poussin, the brothers lived during the early 4th century.  Other scholars place them in the latter half of the 5th century.  In either case, their school of thought is among the last to develop in India.

Vasubandhu is deemed responsible for two treatises that present the central ideas of the Yogacara school:  the Viṃśatikā-vijñaptimātratāsiddhi and the Triṃśikā-vijñaptimātratāsiddhi.  These Sanskrit texts are now lost to  us, but both were translated into Chinese numerous times.  From these translations we now have English versions:  The Treatise in Twenty Stanzas on Representation-Only and The Treatise in Thirty Stanzas on Representation-Only respectively.  The edition of the Viṃśatikā reviewed here contains both the Chinese translation by Hsuan Tsang and the English version by Clarance Hamilton.

The Treatise in Twenty Stanzas defends Yogacara doctrines primarily by addressing critiques advanced by other Buddhist schools, thus clearing the way for the acceptance of the Yogacara doctrines.  It is in The Treatise in Thirty Stanzas that Vasubandhu presents a fuller, positive treatment of his thinking.  The central doctrine which Vasubandhu seeks to make tenable is that all that exists is, according to Hamilton's translation, is "representation."  Others translate "representation" as "thought," "mind," "consciousness," or "discernment."  The Yogacara view has often been described as a form of idealism. 

Most broadly speaking, Vasubandhu frames his arguments by considering the relationship between objects of representation, representations, and the ego to which objects are represented.  Of these, only representations are real.  Vasubandhu argues against the Sarvastivadin view that both objects and representations are real, against the Madyamikan view that both objects and representations are equally unreal, and against the Sautrantikan view that representations are merely modes of mental functioning. 

The main target of his arguments are the objections of realists, i.e., those who posit an objective world, independent of thought.  As nearly all Buddhists deny the existence of the self, a refutation of the ego to which objects are represented isn't necessary.  To refute the objections of the realist's, Vasubandhu attempts to show that his idealism can explain adequately that (1) sense objects (representations) can be fixed in space and time, (2) they can be shared in a publicly among numerous steams of consciousness, and (3) they can have a practical function. 

In a more positive attack on realism, Vasubandhu argues that the elements that might make up an objective world are insubstantial.  Of course this view could be extended to the representations that Vasubandhu asserts are real.  His defense against the insubstantiality of objects and representations relies upon the distinction between ordinary cognition and the cognition of an enlightened being.  Ordinary cognizers might easily reject the substantiality of representations and adopt a kind of nihilism; however, a fully enlightened cognizer will recognize a supramundane realm of elements.  By availing himself of this supramundane reality that is intuited only by the enlightened, Vasubandhu comes down squarely in the camp of mysticism.  This is not meant as a refutation of his views, but merely that the methods of ordinary perception and reason are not sufficient to reveal absolute truth.  To discover this, one must adopt the yogic practice that leads to transcendent knowledge; hence, his school of thought is called "Yogacara."

Vedanta Philosohy: Self-Knowledge (Atma-Jnana) / Swami Abhedananda -- N.Y.: Vedanta Society, 1905

Perhaps the central concern of Hindu philosophy is attaining a spiritual union with the divine.  This is sometimes understood theistically and other times not.  What is common in both traditions is the idea that we ourselves must find a path to union with the divine.  To do this, we must first understand who (or what) we are.  In the West, we often seek self-understanding through introspection and psychoanalysis to uncover an authentic identity as opposed to one that has been created for us by our family and social conditions.  "Finding one's self" is about understanding our true values, true passions, or true life projects.  One should contrast this self knowledge with the self knowledge that Swami Abhedananda calls upon us to discover in his book Vedanta Philosophy: Self-Knowledge (Atma-Jnana). 

The self knowledge at issue here is less a question of "who am I" and more a question of "what am I."  It is a more fundamental inquiry.  Abhedananda begins this inquiry by examining the concepts of mind and matter (especially matter).  He asserts that three relationships have been posited between these ideas:  (1) that mind exists only as a product of matter (materialism), (2) that matter exists only as a product of mind (idealism), and (3) that each is dependent upon the other as two poles of a magnet (monism).  Abhedananda presents a number of arguments against materialism.  He goes on to simply assert that idealism is "as erroneous as the materialistic theory."  His preference is for monism. 

The true self or "atman" is then equated with God.  This is Advaita Vedantism.  By understanding that the true self is neither the ephemeral material self nor the individual mind, one comes to know that one's true self is an eternal, cosmic, universal "Soul of our souls" and that "those who do not realize this true Self, dwell in the darkness of ignorance and go through the misery and sufferings which exist in that darkness."  Critical to understanding one's true self is to recognize that at the base of all experience is "prana" or the life-force which animates the world and makes all experience possible. It is "inseparable from intelligence and self consciousness."  Later, Abhedananda employs the traditional analogy for the true self saying that it is like the sun, creating the possibility that all things can be visible.

Perhaps the most critical idea here is that the question that vexes the materialist and the idealist is that the relationship between the self and the world, the subject and the object, Atman and Brahman, is obscure.  Abhedananda, in line with the Advaita Vedanta tradition draws the conclusion that Atman is Brahman and that recognizing this allows us to escape our suffering and become fully actualized.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion / Jonathan Haidt -- N.Y.: Pantheon Books, 2012

There is an extremely good motive behind Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind, i.e., a desire to get people of good will, both conservative and liberal, to see past their own moral perspectives and take one another seriously.  To do so, one needs first of all to see one’s moral perspective as being in some sense subjective and also to assume the legitimacy of the perspective of those with whom one disagrees.  In short, Haidt is calling on us to exercise a little humility and charity when it comes to moral debates.  His main approach for inculcating these virtues is to connect our moral thinking to emotions that are generated by a set of pre-established values.  By examining the moral psychology of liberals and conservatives, he hopes that we will be able to recognize the causes of our differing moral attitudes and find a vocabulary that will allow us to disagree constructively.

The central metaphor for Haidt's moral psychology is that of someone riding an elephant.  The rider is the reasoning/rational aspect of a person, while the elephant is the emotive aspect.  By and large, the elephant goes where it wants to go and the rider provides an after-the-fact justification of the elephant's actions.  At best, the rider can inflect the elephant's movement.  For Haidt, emotions are doing the main work in moral behavior.  Against this, view he poses "rationalist philosophers" or often simply "philosophers."  Setting aside his view of moral psychology, his critique of his alleged opponents is quite misguided.  His mistakes comes from thinking that normative philosophical theories are moral psychological theories.  I'll say more about this later.

The most intersting aspect of his work is his analysis of the sets of values he finds in liberals, conservatives, and libertarians.  According to Haidt, the values of each are based on six "foundations:"  care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation; but the importance of these foundations (or values) is different for the different political groups.  Again, according to Haidt, the moral judgments of liberals are dominated by care/harm, liberty/oppression, and fairness/cheating (in that order of importance.)  The moral judgments of libertarians overwhelmingly dominated by liberty/oppression with some influence coming from fairness/cheating.  The moral judgments of social conservatives are, however, motivated equally by all six of the moral foundations. 

These conclusions are by no means surprising, but on first glance, one might question how Haidt has quantified his results.  By looking at the copious references to psychological studies and the number of surveys available on Haidt's website, yourmorals.org, one can be reasonably convinced that his work on this score is of high quality.  One might object, however, to an overly general assessment of the regulating relationship between emotion and reason.  While it is true that much that goes by the name "reason" is in fact rationalization, reason nonetheless has a role in moral judgments -- a role that might differ among different people.  Some of us drive elephants while others of us drive horses;  Some of us are assertive drivers while others are passive.  Haidt glosses over these distinctions between the varying strengths of emotion and reason among individuals in a population.

It is important to make these distinctions as without them, one is left without an ability to evaluate moral judgments.  If we are stuck with pre-established values which drive us in spite of reason, it becomes impossible to constructively discuss moral differences.  Our moral conclusions are no more amenable to review and change than our culinary tastes.  That Haidt largely overlooks the significance of applying reason to moral decision making turns his work, at best, into a recommendation to apologists on how to address and persuade people with different moral perspectives and not an appeal to see past one's own initial moral perspective and to seriously entertain reaching more valid conclusions about moral questions.  Haidt needs to put aside deterministic psychology and take seriously the moral questions we face.  His antipathy to and misunderstanding of normative philosophy makes it unlikely that he will ever do that.

A Tear at the Edge of Creation: A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe / Marcelo Gleiser -- N.Y.: Free Press, 2010

One way of understanding the object of science is that it is to establish theories about the empirical world that are most explanatory.  An explanatory theory will first of all accurately accomodate past observations and it will predict future observations; however, this alone will not be sufficient to establish a theory.  After all, given a finite set of observations, several theories may be capable of providing equally successful explanations.  In such circumstances, other considerations come into play.  Commonly, "simplicity" is included among those considerations.  A theory which posits fewer independent elements (forces, entities, etc.) is preferred by most scientists, and so, in the course of the Copernican Revolution, the Aristotelian idea that the universe is composed of two different entities, terrestrial and celestial, and that these entities obey different laws of motion was rejected for a theory according to which all physical bodies obey a single law of motion.  In the 19th century another simplification of physical theories took place when electrical and magnetic forces were unified in a single theory of electromagnetic forces.

In A Tear at the Edge of Creation Marcelo Gleiser accepts the view that the desire to simplify physical theories into a single, unified "theory of everything" can be traced to the ancient Greek Ionian philosophers.  Following Gerald Holton and Isaiah Berlin, Gleiser calls this impulse "the Ionian Enchantment" or "the Ionian Fallacy." Gleiser attempts to "unmask" this fallacy.  He suggests that there is no reason to think that all phenomena in the universe can be explained by a single theory -- that the universe is "asymmetric" and "accidental."

His book is composed of five chapters.  The first chapter is a relatively breezy introduction to the Ionian Fallacy, with a healthy dose of autobiographical passages thrown in. The second, third, and fourth chapters are general introductions to cosmology, particle physics, and the origin of life respectively.  In each chapter, Gleiser seeks to underscore the oddity and irregularity of the universe.  By this, he believes he is able to establish his claim that there is nothing common about our universe.  Instead, its existence, particularly the existence of intelligent life is extremely rare and possibly unique in the universe.   The final chapter emphasizes this conclusion and draws the moral from it:  because we are so special, cosmically speaking, we should take greater care to protect the survival of life on our planet and especially our species.

In his introduction, Gleiser explicitly excuses his readers from reading the three chapters on science.  Clearly, he recognizes that a lay reader, particularly one with only a slight background in science, is likely to be overwhelmed by the blizzard of detail he provides.  He attempts to cover so much ground that he can not give sufficient explanation to many, if not most of the science in any of the three science chapters.  Some might call it a "slog" to get through these chapters; however, anyone with a moderate background in science and an interest in building on that knowledge will probably appreciate Gleiser's attempts to highlight the difficulties that theoreticians have had in developing a unified theory in any of the three fields Gleiser examines.

Setting aside the intelligibility of the science chapters, the general claim is one that seems curious and possibly untestable.  The main thrust of Gleiser's argument is that science has failed to uncover a single "theory of everything."  Furthermore, the  more  we learn about the universe, the more we learn that we have more to learn.  Gleiser concludes that this is evidence that the universe is not amenable to explanation by a theory of everything.  That there is not a "oneness" in the foundation of the universe.

Perhaps there are scientists who have a romantic attachment to the oneness of the universe, but I suspect most merely seek simpler theories on the grounds that they are theoretically superior to needlessly complex theories.  Scientist reasonably employ Ockham's razor when confronted with two theories that equally well describe and predict observations.  Curiously, Gleiser dismisses the importance of Ockham's razor when deciding between theories by asserting that is should not be employed when one theory is observationally superior to another.  Of  course not, but that misses the point.  Ockham's razor or the preference for simpler, but empirically equally good theories is an operational principle.   Granted: going beyond this and asserting that the world will ultimately be amenable to a unified theory is a step  too  far, but so too is making the opposite assertion that the world will never be amenable to a unified theory.  Early in his career, Gleiser was a "unifier."  He seems to have swung to the opposite pole.  He needs to find a resting place in the middle ground:  science explains the world through theories which cannot reveal the absolute truth, but should always strive to explain the world according to simpler theories.  To do otherwise would be to spin out any number of fanciful entities that are no more testable than the most crass religious dogma.

Gleiser's final conclusion, that the rarity (and possible uniqueness) of our existence can be a powerful force to motivate protecting our survival seems a rather weak contribution to the a argument.  Humanity is certainly arrogant enough -- self-absorbed enough -- to want to continue the species regardless of the presence or absence of other intelligent life in the universe, but if it motives Gleiser (or anyone else), that's all for the good.  I suspect the real challenge will be to impress upon people the mechanisms through which our collective behavior is undermining the conditions for our children's survival (or even just our own continued well-being.)  Such an understanding will do much more to address our global political and environmental crises than the threat of the extinction of a unique intelligence in the universe.

All in all, Gleiser seems to have been an idealistic "unifier," who has lost his faith and instead of simply accepting the utility of simple theories, he has embraced a new religion based on an assumption of the "asymmetry" of the universe.  Happily, from this, he has found a new reason to value humanity, but humanity is hardly in need of hightened valuation.

On Desire: Why We Want What We Want / William B. Irvine -- Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006

In the introduction to his book On Desire, William Irvine writes, "My goal in investigating desire was to turn it inside out -- to understand how and why desires arise, how they affect our lives, and what we can do to master them."  This goal is (or these goals are) certainly worthy, and Irvine does deliver in many respects; however, he begins with too many conceptual confusions to make the work entirely satisfying.

Early on, Irvine asserts that "we are awash in desire at virtually every waking moment."  Some of these are "terminal" and others are "instrumental."  If this is true, then Irvine's definition of desire is so weak as to be nearly useless.  Later, he backs off of this claim to some extent, but it nonetheless haunts his work to the end.  What is missing here is any serious consideration of behavior that is habitual or proceeding from efficient causes.  This is particularly true in his treatment of instrumental desires.  Desiring a meal (a terminal desire) an agent will experience a sequence of instrumental desires, e.g., desiring one's car keys, desiring to open the car door, desiring drive to the restaurant, to find a parking place, to get a table, etc.  While one might categorize these as desires, one might also treat them simple as actions that unfold from a prior decision to go to the restaurant.  The ad absurdum analysis would posit a separate desire for each foot step along the way.  Irvine also fails to examine the distinction between actions and non-actions.  Do I desire to continue sitting in my chair or am I simply still sitting in it?  The answer is probably different in different circumstances, e.g., sitting while the "yeas" are counted in a parliamentary vote vs. sitting in the waiting room of a bus terminal. 

Irvine distinguishes between desires that are born of emotions and those born of the intellect.  The former is particularly effective in establishing terminal desires, while the latter is effective in establishing instrumental desires, but the correlation is not perfect. Acording to Irvine, the intellect can create a terminal desire to "click one's tongue." Such terminal desires are, of course, rare and weak in comparison to emotional desires.  According to Irvine, his treatment of desires follows from most of what Hume says about the sources of our motivations.  I suspect this is incorrect.  Hume famously wrote that reason is the slave to passion.  Reason is able to assess truth and falsity, but action is generated by passion. 

Setting aside whether or not Irvine is correct about Hume, his treatment of the intellect and its power to act deserves a much fuller explanation.  In some instances, "intellect" amounts to the ability to comprehend language, but it is hard to separate such a fundamental ability from other fundamental abilities, e.g., simple sense perception.  Is understanding that certain sounds have a meaning much different than understanding that certain other sense perceptions have a significance?  If not, then is it an excercise of the intellect to understand that the colors and shapes appearing before me are a tree?  And to what extent are simple sense perceptions components of our emotional states?  If perceptions are implicated in emotions, then it would appear that the boundaries between the intellect and emotion are blurred and they may not bear the distinction that Irvine purports. 

Irvine would have done better to avoid the emotion-intellect distinction and examine instead the passion-reason distinction that is made by Kant.  It is noteworthy that he makes no mention of Kant at all.  If he had, his treatment of desires and mental faculties likely would be more insightful and engaging.  As it is, his treatment relies too heavily on a naive hedonism, dressed up in a not terribly useful discussion of what he calls a "biological incentive system."  Irvine points out that we are born with and presumably naturally develop specific likes and dislikes that have served our survival over evolutionary time.  This seems true enough, but he offers no persuasive account as to how we might overturn or even resist these natural tendencies.  Having such an account is critical to the final chapters of his work which seek to explain how people have learned to "master" their emotions.

Irvine's last six chapters (out of thirteen) explore "dealing with our desires."  He examines the advice and practices of Buddhists, mainstream Christians, the Amish, Hutterites, and Shakers; Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics; as well as people he calls "eccentrics."  In each instance, the practices amount to "mastering" our desires, but again, Irvine does not explain the psychological basis upon which this is made possible, beyond noting that our desires do not preclude our freedom.  Of course, presenting an account of freedom would expand the work considerably, but it is nonetheless central to the questions he seeks to answer.  At very least, a more detailed treatment of the ecology of desires as they fit into the various (sometimes conflicting) long and short-term projects which each of us have probably would be consistent with Irvine's overall approach and would deepen his treatment of the questions at hand.

Root of the Middle Way / Nagarjuna in Ornament of Reason: the Great Commentary to Nagarjuna's Root of the Middle Way -- Dharmachakra Translation Committee -- Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 2011

The Dharmachakra Translation Committee has provided us with a new translation of the Mulamadhyamaka-karikas, translating the title as The Root of the Middle Way.  The Root of the Middle Way is among the most important texts in all of Buddhist literature.  Written by the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna in the second century, it explains the concept of sunyata or "emptiness," upon which the important school of Madhyamaka Buddhism is based.

While historically important, The Root of the Middle Way is a difficult and work to understand.  Consequently, one would be well advised to read several works in the secondary literature to gain good understanding of The Root.  It is, however, brief in comparison to many seminal Buddhist works, so a quick initial reading will give the reader a flavor of the work.

The central idea of sunyata is arrived at in the work through a dialectical process in which all logically possible metaphysical views are said to be refuted.  The force of the work is rather like recognizing the validity of both the Heraclitean argument against stasis and Zeno's argument against change. However, the resulting view is neither nihilism nor agnosticism.  Nihilism, the view that nothing exists, is among the refuted metaphysical views and that all possible metaphysical views are refuted does not preclude us from reaching an understanding of what is true.  Instead, it demonstrates that conventional truth is distinct from absolute truth and that the techniques of argumentation and analysis are incapable of reaching the absolute truth.  Understanding the absolute truth comes only after one has set aside conventional truth and come into direct experience of the emptiness of the phenomenal world.

This particular translation of The Root is by the Dharmachakra Translation Committee.  The Committee does a fair job of presenting the work in an idiom that is largely intelligible to contemporary English readers; however, it does not seem especially more readable than the translation by Jay L. Garfield, reviewed in this blog.  The Dharmachakra Translation Committee also includes with The Root their translation of Ornament of Reason, a commentary written by Mabja Jangchub Tsondru (twelfth century).  Mabja's extensive commentary has had a profound influence on the understanding the The Root over the centuries and remains a lucid explanation of the work today. 

The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy, and Reputation / Saul Levmore and Martha C. Nussbaum, eds. -- Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010

The following are excerpts from a review that is forthcoming in The Journal of Information Ethics.

Most of us learned at an early age that “sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never harm you,” but we also discovered that the saying was often cold comfort. Disregarding verbal abuse or defamatory remarks is not easy. Fortunately, we usually are able to find a more or less adequate way of responding to insults, if only to allow the passage of time to dull the pain. The Internet has made this much more difficult. On the web, insults, defamation, and invasions of privacy can immediately spread to a world-wide audience and last seemingly in perpetuity. The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy, and Reputation, edited by Saul Levmore and Martha Nussbaum, presents thirteen chapters that address harm, speech, and privacy issues raised by the Internet. The authors are, with a few exceptions, law professors at some of the leading U.S. law schools. So unsurprisingly, the chapters are consistently of high quality. They approach the issues at various levels of abstraction, ranging from philosophical discussions to examinations of concrete instances of harm. Most of the authors advocate specific legislative or judicial remedies for the harms under discussion.

...

First Amendment absolutist certainly will find the treatment of free speech in The Offensive Internet inadequate. Their judgment is likely to be based on a high assessment of the importance of speech and the slippery slope that regulation poses. Some may downplay the gravity of the harms that occur on the internet, making the dangers of censorship relatively greater. Their critique, however, needs to address the important distinctions made in The Offensive Internet, particularly in the section on speech. An important hurdle that the critics will need to overcome is the growing maturity of the Internet. In its initial manifestation, the Internet was shielded from regulation in order to promote its promise for enhanced, democratic communication. Today, however, it is perhaps the primary medium of mass communication around the world. As such, it no longer needs special protections. It is now appropriate to employ the widely accepted methods of holding Internet posters accountable for speech that would otherwise fall outside of First Amendment protection.

...

In general, The Offensive Internet is a valuable exploration of some of the more unpleasant aspects of unregulated speech and the consequences that follow from situations in which people can be unaccountable for their behavior. Fortunately, the authors offer us an impressive variety of means to address the problems. The volume does not, however, adequately address two important issues. The first has already been mentioned: protections against harms, protections of the freedom of speech, and protections of privacy can only be established equitably when the relative vulnerability of the parties is recognized. The early chapters’ emphasis on harms to women and minority groups is a move in the right direction, but the recognition of power dynamics tends to disappear in later chapters which seem to assume a power-blind approach. This is particularly clear in the chapters on privacy and reputation. An equitable legal regime should more completely protect the privacy of individuals, while leaving powerful institutions, like government agencies and major corporations, open to public scrutiny.

The second important issue that is not sufficiently addressed is whether the internet entrenches false information or exhibits self-correcting tendencies. Several of the authors acknowledge the fact that assertions (true or false) reside on the web indefinitely, that misinformation is often intentionally posted on the web, and that people tend to post (or re-post) what they wish to be true rather than what is well-justified. At the same time, the on-going activity of editing and re-editing wikis and blogs can also allow for the slow construction of reliable information. If this latter feature of the web becomes more dominant, then the concerns over false information undermining corporate or even personal reputations should decreased. Addressing these epistemic questions, however, would enlarge significantly the scope of the work, but much could have been gained by including at least a chapter or two on the broader philosophical background that lies behind the legal concerns that are central to the work.

In all, The Offensive Internet is a valuable contribution to the understanding some of the effects the Internet is having on individuals and society, and it offers important critical analyses of the current speech regime that may be too liberal for the good of individuals and society. Above all, free speech absolutists would do well to read and reflect on the work.

The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized / Owen Flanagan -- Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2011

In the spring of 2000, Owen Flanagan participated in the Eighth Mind and Life Conference, sponsored by the Dalai Lama.  The Mind and Life Conferences are a series of dialogs among "scientists, philosophers, and contemplatives" to develop a greater understanding of psychology and the philosophy of psychology, to advance the understanding of the nature of reality, and to promote the well-being of people around the world.  Flanagan had a passing familiarity with Buddhism prior to attending the conference, but between his experiences at the conference and the media attention he received following it, Flanagan's passing interest developed into something more serious. The result is The Bodhisattva's Brain.  It is an attempt to naturalize Buddhism -- to pare away the magic, superstition, and untestable theses that is common within popular Buddhism. 

Flanagan is what some might call a "hard headed" analytic philosopher, who has no patience for the "woolly minded" thinking that generally characterizes popular religions.  So it is noteworthy that he would take the time to see what he might find valuable in Buddhism.  Unsurprisingly -- though Flanagan himself seems surprised -- he finds much that is valuable.  His surprised reaction indicates a prior lack of appreciation for the pragmatic nature of Buddhism and his final conclusions about what is valuable in Buddhism betray an immovable commitment to what Buddhist's would call mere "conventional" knowledge.   Despite this, he shows a good understanding of many of the most important Buddhist concepts.  The Bodhisattva's Brain is a landmark examination of Buddhism from a Western analytic perspective.

There are, however, a few concepts that seem overlooked or underdeveloped in the work.  Flanagan appears to construe karma as a mysterious causal relationship in which what goes around eventually, magically comes around to an actor's benefit or detriment.  Moreover, to escape what seem to be counter-examples, Flanagan claims that Buddhism employs the doctrine of reincarnation.  This may be an accurate popular conception of karma, but Flanagan overlooks a more plausible account.  Buddhism maintains that all things have a dependent existence, i.e., nothing exists separately from all other things.  An aspect of this is causation.  Simply put, all things have a cause and cannot exist apart from their cause.  This is uncontroversial enough for physical events, but controversial when extended into the moral realm.  It even seem unlikely that one's fortune or misfortune always is caused by something one did previously or in a past life. 

The problem, however, evaporates when one abandons -- as Budhism does -- the idea of a distinct, persisting self.  Without a self to which beneficial or harmful consequences are expected to return, the law of karma merely asserts that compassionate or harmful acts propagate in kind through the world.  My greedy act will cause harm to others who will become afflicted by jealousy and subsequently will become disposed to act in harmful way themselves.  Conversely, my compassionate act will erase affliction and dispose others to do the same.  I suspect that Flanagan might object that this interpretation of karma departs too much from the popular conception, but it is grounded firmly enough in the doctrine of the non-existence of individual selves to claim a respectability within broader, more charitable interpretations of karma.

Flanagan is impressed with the Buddhist doctrine of anatman -- the idea that our individual selves are fictions.  It is, essentially, a denial of the existence of an individual soul or at very least an immortal, individual soul.  No doubt, stressing this doctrine places Flanagan's understanding of Buddhism on very firm ground.   He does, however, overlook in important critique of this doctrine that lies within the Buddhist tradition itself. Around the second century A.D., Buddhists began articulating critiques of metaphysical claims of this sort. The movement became known as Madhyamaka Buddhism.  Its most important exponent was Nagarjuna, and its most important metaphysical claim was that all things are sunyata or "empty."  Flanagan appears to understand emptiness to involve either (or both) the dependent arising (dependent origination or dependent existence) of all things or else the infinite divisibility of all things.  In either case, the existence (or at least independent existence) of objects is refuted. Flanagan does not seem to appreciate, however, the dialectic nature of Madhyamaka Buddhism.  Emptiness is not merely an assertion of the doctrine of anatman and the non-existence of objects, it is the conclusion drawn from the refutation of all metaphysical doctrines, including the doctrine of anatman.  Perhaps the closest that Western philosophy comes to this observation is Kant's antinomies.  For an excellent treatment of this and Madhymika Buddhism generally, see T.R.V. Murti's The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, reviewed in this blog.

Flanagan further betrays a disposition toward an early form of Buddhism by his lack of attention to the six perfections of a bodhisattva:  generosity, morality, vigor, forbearance, concentration, and wisdom. These perfections are outlined in detail in the monumental work, the Prajnaparamita, also reviewed in this blog. The Prajnaparamita is perhaps the most important sutra in the Mahayana tradition.  Flanagan makes no mention of it. He does discuss aptly the four divine virtues: compassion, loving kindness, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, and these virtues are clearly connected to the perfections of the bodhisattva, but they are limited largely to the moral aspects of the bodhisattva.  To succeed in following the path of the boddhisattva, according to the Prajnaparamita, one needs to cultivate certain non-moral traits or dispositions.  That Flanagan misses this link leads to his skepticism that embracing the doctrine of emptiness will naturally lead one to acquire the four divine virtues.  Of course, it is not certain that if he (or anyone) were to focus attention on and accept the arguments in the Prajnaparamita that he (or anyone) would be led from the non-moral claims in the Madhyamaka tradition to the moral dispositions, but Flanagan's lack of appreciation for the importance of wisdom as laid out in the Prajnaparmita might well explain the extent of his skepticism on this score.

Flanagan would do well to explore more deeply two other concepts in the Prajnaparamita:  (1) the distinction between conventional and ultimate truth and (2) "skill in means."  He certainly recognizes distinction between conventional and ultimate truth, but consistent with his desire to keep Buddhism bounded within a naturalistic world view, he seeks to make sense of Buddhism only within the conventional realm.  Here again, the Prajnaparamita's critical approach to all metaphysical claims helps one understand the futility of a full understanding of the world in strictly naturalistic terms.  Naturalism assumes a metaphysics which cannot withstand the Madhyamaka critique.  By letting go of all "absolutes," including naturalism, one achieves the wisdom (prajna) which is essential to enlightenment.

Finally, Flanagan would do well to appreciate the importance of the concept of "skill in means."  The bodhisattva becomes a bodhisattva by perfecting the perfections.  For example, by continuously practicing generosity, the bodhisattva hones his or her habits to the point that he or she is unaware that there is a giver, gift, or gift recipient.  The bodhisattva does not think, "so-and-so is in need of this gift, so I will give it."  Instead, giving becomes so natural that the "gift" is "given" without thinking of it as a gift.  In such a case, the bodhisattva has achieved skill in means with regard to giving.  The same skill in means is to be developed for the other perfections. 

Enlightenment cannot be achieved without perfecting the perfections, but as only a Buddha has reached this level of spiritual development, it is impossible for us to assess the effectiveness of the path of the bodhisattva.  This leaves the Buddhist open to the possibly reasonable criticism that his or her claim is untestable, but in fact, it only shows the limits of testability as a characteristic of truth.  To see this, one might compare the claim that perfecting the perfections leads to enlightenment to an extremely adept mathematician's proof of an extremely difficult theorem.  No one but the adept is able to understand the proof.  Consequently, some faith is required of lesser mathematicians, if they are to accept the theorem; but this does not make the proof dogma.  Similarly, the validity of the path to enlightenment may only be understood by those who have achieved "skill in means" and those of us with less skill must take it on faith, but that does not make it dogma.

There are a number of other complaints one might raise against Flanagan.  For example, his criticism of most Western Buddhists as being self-absorbed and uninformed often seems uncharitable and condescending.  He also too forcefully dismisses the importance of meditation to Buddhism.  This is perhaps a function of his lack of appreciation for, again, the Prajnaparamita and for the dedicated pursuit of enlightenment by non-lay Buddhists.  Some degree of meditation is crucial, if one is to go beyond the study of Buddhism as a scholarly discipline.

The foregoing criticism of Flanagan's treatment of Buddhism should not lead the reader to think that his work is fatally flawed.  On the contrary, it is a brilliant work of comparative philosophy.  Flanagan shows a remarkably deep understanding of Buddhism for someone who has only given it serious study for a decade or so.  A classic story about the Buddha describes the Buddha as tailoring his teachings to the abilities and understanding of his students, and so his teachings about the path to enlightenment were different and at times contradictory.  What is important is to find ways to advance the student along the path.  Flanagan's work, whether he intends this or not, is an excellent expression of the insights of Buddhism geared for the skeptical, naturalistic, Western mind.  All that might be needed  to achieve a deeper understanding of Buddhist philosophy is a commitment to the path -- a commitment to reach beyond Flanagan's naturalistic Buddhism.

Exploring the Yogasutra: Philosophy and Translation / Daniel Raveh -- London: Continuum, 2012

Exploring the Yogasutra is not for the novice.  Daniel Raveh's exploration mainly addresses the psychology and epistemology underlying Pantanjali's Yogasutra; but he also discusses the difficulties of translation, particularly translating an ancient text in a dead language of a foreign culture into a modern idiom.  One can hardly expect that the original meanings of the words will be replicated simply and concisely in a modern language; however, one might hope that if the ideas under discussion are eternal and universal truths that any relatively well-developed language would provide some way of expressing those ideas.  Since there clearly are difficulties in translating the Yogasutra, one is led to conclude either that it does not reach what is eternal and universal in human experience or that our manner of understanding human experience is variable and requires a more or less significant reframing of how we understand experience.  Anyone remotely sympathetic to comparative religion will opt for the latter explanation and seek help in reframing experience.  Raveh's book attempts to illuminate the assumptions about the structure of mind that are required for this reframing in order to appreciate yogic processes and yogic knowledge.

The most significant assumption is that mental activity is associated with two concepts: prakriti and purusa.  Raveh defines prakriti as "the manifest and nonmanifest dimensions of the world and worldly existence."  In contrast, purusa is the metaphysical core of the self.  Typically, Western psychology would associate mental activity with the latter and see the former as the external cause of mental phenomena; however, the Yogasutra and likely the entire yogic tradition, understands mental activity to be part of, or operating within, prakriti.  Consequently, a higher yogic truth (or "truth-bearing yogic insight") can only be revealed when the yogi brings about a cessation of mental activity. 

Raveh makes an important contribution to the epistemology of yoga when he compares two sutras of the Yogasutra.  His observation helps us understand the nature of yogic knowledge that is made possible when mental activity ceases.  Raveh translates Yoga Sutra 1.7 as "valid knowledge is based on sense perception, inference and reliable testimony."  Here, Raveh notes that "valid knowledge" is based on mental activity that lies within prakriti.  It is conventional knowledge.  He then translates Yoga Sutra 1.49 as "(ritam-bhara prajna or truth-bearing yogic insight) is essentially different from knowledge based on reliable testimony and inference as it touches on particulars."  Notably, truth-bearing yogic insight is not said to be essentially different from sense perception.  Raveh concludes that truth-bearing yogic insight is like sense perception as they both "touch on particulars," but it is different in that it does not operate within the realm of prakriti.  Together, these two sutras provide us with an understanding of the form of knowledge that the yogi seeks: a direct perception of particulars that are not of the manifest or nonmanifest dimensions of the world or worldly existence.

To achieve yogic knowledge, Pantanjali recommends a path composed of "eight limbs."  The eight limbs are yama (ethical restraints), niyama (personal discipline), asana (yogic postures), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (withdrawal from the sense world), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (total meditative absorption).  According to Pantanjali, by following this path -- particularly by practicing the final three stages of meditation -- the yogi can achieve a final and irreversible escape from the delusion and suffering that is this world. 

The final chapter of Exploring the Yogasutra is not written by Raveh, but by Daya Krishna (1924-2007), author of Indian Philosophy: A Counter Perspective.  Raveh is deeply impressed with Daya Krishna's treatment of Pantanjali's Yogasutra.  It is Daya Krishna's approach to the Yogasutra which motivates Raveh's work.  The most important insight that Daya Krishna provides is that samadhi cannot be the ultimate goal of the yogi.  Samadhi is commonly understood as an ultimate, unworldly state that is irreversible.  Following Daya Krishna, Raveh points out that entering a state in which one cannot return is a limitation on the freedom of the yogi, and that perfect freedom requires that the yogi be capable of both entering and returning from samadhi (or the meditative state that is samadhi, save its irreversibility.)

This view prompts two observations, the first of which Raveh does not seem to take seriously.  First, samadhi should be understood as a meditative state which cannot be achieved perfectly in practice; second, the motivation to return from samadhi appears to be similar to the motivations of the Buddhist bodhisattva.  The first two states of meditation, dharana and dhyana, clearly seem to admit of degrees of achievement.  One can concentrate on external objects more or less effectively and one can more or less focus on one's mental processes.  If one accepts that samadhi is a state in which one becomes more or less unaware of the distinction between the subject and the object of meditation, then irreversible samadhi is merely the limit that the yogi may approach, but not fully achieve, in the final stage of  meditation (samadhi).  On this account, samadhi is both an irreversible state that one does not achieve and a meditative state beyond dhyana that yogis can experience.  The goal remains irreversible samadhi or total meditative absorption, but pursuing this goal does not preclude the return of actual yogis from the state of samadhi.

The second obvious observation is that Daya Krishna (and Raveh) appear to be reprising the reformation that took place in the Buddhist tradition when Mahayana Buddhism broke from Buddhism's early form.  The yogi who exercises freedom by returning from the state of samadhi is like the bodhisattva, who renounces perfect enlightenment to bring salvation to all sentient beings.  Raveh recognizes that the Yogasutra stands as evidence that Patanjali himself must have recognized the value of returning to enlighten others.  The Yogasutra is, after all, a guidebook to yogic knowledge.

Exploring the Yogasutra is not easy reading.  This is due mostly to Raveh's frequent use of Sanskrit terms without providing the necessary context for understanding them.  It is a curious feature in that Raveh is acutely aware of the difficulties in translation.  It is almost as though he is writing for an extremely erudite audience or he has simply given up on the difficult work of translation.  Perhaps a little of both is true.

Finally, Raveh provide us with a highly readable translation of the Yogasutra, presented without interpolated commentary.  Despite its textual difficulties, Exploring the Yogasutra is a work well worth reading.