Monday, February 24, 2014


134. Notions of the self

It is a common thought that promises and commitments require a self that is constant, being in future what it is now and wanting what it wants now. I find that a suffocating notion of self and other. In my view, commitment is aimed at ongoing interaction with someone for mutual growth, mentally, spiritually or economically. Some stability of relationship is required to utilize its potential, but not fixity of self.

According to Buddhism and David Hume, who appears to have been inspired by Buddhism, the self is an illusion that results from misguided thinking in terms of substance. There is only a flux of momentary perceptions, thoughts and feelings without a self. There is as little underlying substance behind ‘I think’ as in the phrase ‘it rains’. Montaigne also had this insight.

In Buddhism one can surrender the illusion of self in intense, disciplined meditation, freeing oneself from the miseries of life that follow from the thirst and cravings of the self, in peace of mind and feeling at one with the world, in Nirwana. Here, there is a parallel to Schopenhauers notion of the will to life as the source of all misery.  

In eastern philosophy there is also a stream, but not a dominant one, that does not surrender but seeks the individual self (purusha) but that was static, eternal, and autonomous. 

While I accept that the self is not unitary but fragmented into multiple, shifting aspects of self, and is ‘on the move’, constructed and reconstructed in experience, I do think there still is a workable notion of identity, as I discussed in item 8 of this blog. If we surrender all notions of the self, how can we, indeed, still talk of intentions and agency? What remains of character? The self is the seat of action in the world, and we live to employ it in that way.

For Kierkegaard also, as for me, the self is not a compound but a process, in a dialectic of inside and outside. He said: the self is a relation that relates itself to its own self. That may sound mystifying, but I think it is exactly right. It can be explained if we turn to Damasio’s account, discussed in item 8 of this blog, and repeated here, as follows. The brain forms images or ‘maps’, in neuronal structures, of the interior body, of organs. Those internal images in the brain are fed by the physiology of organs, and in turn play a role in the regulation of those organs. Next, from observation of external objects and experience with actions those body maps are affected, and a new level of images or maps arises. Here, from interaction with the outside world the notion arises of the self as an independent player in that world. Next that leads to the build-up of a biographical self, with memories of earlier experiences, and expectations and plans for the future, and the whole of all that forms the identity of the self.    

In my argument for otherhumanism I did plead for kenosis or ‘emptying the self’, in the sense of opening up to the other human being, in empathy and benevolence, and inviting its opposition. But I pleaded for that not to lose the self but to enhance its flourishing.

The self needs the other to free itself from its prejudices and to grow, intellectually and spiritually, on the basis of opposition from the other to which one must learn to open up, in empathy. I argued that this even yields economic advantage by utilizing differences between people to create innovation by novel combinations.

Monday, February 17, 2014


133. Substance and appearance

 A deeply rooted idea that appears almost universally in Western philosophy is that the world is constituted by unperceivable, unalterable substance that carries a form of particular features perceived in reality. Change is the change not of substance but of the particulars it carries. In Platonic philosophy, the lure of substance yields the idea of universal, immutable ideas in a world beyond reality, which may be grasped by exceptional, trained minds. In Christianity, God is a transcendent entity about which theology can infer properties, either positively, about what God is, along the via positiva, or negatively, along the via negativa, about what God is not. In the Neo-platonic view, Platonic ideas lie in the mind of God. For mystics, God is ineffable.

The self also is seen in substantial terms, as a more or less unitary, enduring carrier of characteristics. Under the influence of Buddhist philosophy, David Hume deviated from this, as I will discuss in a later item.

In Hindu, Vedic philosophy there is substance in the form of a transcendent being (Brahman), which is the source of all value, and is ineffable and accessible only to the initiated, in wordless contemplation. Language creates illusions and is not fit to capture the transcendent, the thing in itself. 

Buddhism renounces all substance, and sees the world as impermanent, conditioned, a whirl of particulars, and a source of sorrow. The self is an illusion, caught in suffering, but by lengthy, proper training and discipline, enlightenment can be reached in Nirwana, in life, where the illusory self with its thirsts and cravings can be renounced, to achieve a life of peace and serenity. Here also, language creates illusions, and is to be superseded by wordless contemplation.

How difficult it was, in Western philosophy, to shed the notion of substance, is highlighted in the development of Schopenhauers philosophy. To recall: Kant proposed that man construes perceived reality on the basis of categories of space, time and causality, and cannot know the underlying thing in itself. For Schopenhauer, the thing in itself is not outside us, but inside us, in an insatiable will to life, as the source of all sorrow, and can, according to his early work, be grasped by introspection, in self-consciousness. The sorrow sown by an insatiable will is comparable to the Buddhist notion of suffering due to an illusion of self, with its thirsts and cravings.

Moira Nichols[1] argued that under the influence of Eastern philosophy, Schopenhauer began to shift his ideas. The thing in itself now becomes accessible only to the initiated, the sage and ascetic, and it is more than will to life. Escape from the suffering of the will to life is achieved in transcendence that is available only to the initiated. As in Buddhist Nirwana, it goes together with the transcendence of the egotistic self in compassion for humanity as a whole. But unlike Buddhism, for Schopenhauer the thing in itself still appears to remain substantial, an entity beyond the world, and in that it is more Vedantic than Buddhist. As the Brahman of Vedic Hinduism, it constitutes the world and is the source of all value, not only of sorrow. If all this is correct, it amounts to a fairly radical shift, or even negation, of Schopenhauers earlier views. 


[1] ‘Influences of Eastern thought on Schopenhauer’, in Mcfie, Alexander Lyon (ed.), 2003, Eastern influences on Western philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 187-219..
 

Monday, February 10, 2014

132. Religion and pragmatism
 
Almost everywhere and always, people have sought religion, in a flight from existential anxiety, pain, suffering, threats and uncertainties of earthly life, into something transcendent. But that was not always God.

In The great transformation Karen Armstrong shows the emergence of spirituality and religion in different regions of antiquity, in East and West. She focuses on the Axial Age, from 900 to 300 BC, so called because it was a pivotal time, an axis around which development of spirituality and religion turned, in a revolution of thought.

From that book I draw the key notion of kenosis: emptying the self of egotism, greed, and violence, and practice of the spirituality of compassion. All religions have shown that, and they all arrived, independently, at the Golden Rule: Do (not do) onto others what you (do not) want done onto yourself. 

One difference is the following. In Christianity and Islam the idea developed that one should begin with belief in God and a doctrine on his being and the divine order, in order to subsequently apply that to spirituality and ethics. In the East, in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, the idea was the reverse: practice comes before theory; disciplined sympathy will itself yield intimations of transcendence. That implements the pragmatism that I have pleaded for in this blog: ideas follow action.

I don’t know whether Eastern philosophy has influenced pragmatist philosophers, but the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey did influence developments in neo-Confucianism. Perhaps what pragmatism added was a commitment to active experimentalism, testing ideas for failure.

A second difference, related to the previous one, is that theology, with a written doctrine, in Bible and Koran, was pervasive in the West while in the East it was stringently avoided. Hinduism and Taoism did have an idea of a supreme being or principle (Brahman, Tao) that is the source of all good and bad, is the ‘all’ and ‘one’. But here the view that the ‘higher’ is ineffable, cannot fit into our limited human categories, and is best met with silence, precluded written doctrine. That was part also of early Christianity and Islam but was later inexorably overruled by doctrine and orthodoxy, and what was left was relegated to pockets of mysticism. I also have made the plea for recognition of the ineffability of the higher, in this blog.

Whether or not there is a sense of a higher being or principle, in Eastern philosophy there is a pervasive sense of impermanence, movement, production and reproduction, of change and transformation, and of variety and particularity, in contrast with the Western orientation towards permanent substance and universals, beyond particular individuals. The world and existence are diverse and in flux, in ongoing production, reproduction and transformation. One can rise above it in spirit, on the basis of disciplined contemplation and kenosis, achieving a sense of being at one with the universe, but it mostly remains being in the world.

Monday, February 3, 2014


131. Neo-Confucianism

 In the Han dynasty, from about 200 BC, Confucianism was adopted as the national philosophy of China, which yielded a strong bureaucratic system. However, in time Confucianism became ossified, and rival views from Taoism and (from around 800 AD) Buddhism gathered influence. In contrast with the moral and regulatory force of Confucianism, Taoism was against extensive institutional regulation and preferred room for natural impulse. While Confucianism focused on practical things, Taoism better satisfied the urge for an underlying metaphysics.

Confucianism was oriented towards order, rules, ritual, social responsibility, and filial piety. That is in danger of stifling innovation and yielding formalism and stagnation, blocking the creativity of deviance . Or is this view of mine the typical Western bias towards individualism? In this blog I have argued the importance of collaboration and trust and the empathy needed for it. I am seeking a middle path between self and other, and between stability and change.  

From the 11th century AD neo-Confucianism tried to develop a new synthesis, with a re-absorption of Confucianism. This was inspired, in part, by the fear that Taoist metaphysical speculation would go overboard at the expense of practical things, and ‘the negative attitude of the Buddhists toward life in the world and their preference for retreating from active social life … would undermine the ancient forms of Chinese social organization’ (quoted from John M. Koller’s survey of Oriental philosophies, 2nd edition p.  306).

There is a need to reconcile opposites of stability and change, order and disorder, self and other, good and evil, and that is what Taoism, in particular, aims to establish.

However, one source of tension is that while Buddhism and Confucianism are non-religious and non-metaphysical, Taoism proposes Tao as a metaphysical entity, the source of both being and non-being, a fundamental principle and source, without characteristics, which cannot be named, and which functions through the world and is indistinguishable from it. This resembles Spinoza’s notion of God.

A source of tension between Confucianism and Taoism is that in contrast with Confucianism Taoism is non-interventionist. From its metaphysical view of the harmony and perfection of nature it wants to let things work out for their perfection naturally, left to themselves. This led to a split in neo-Confucianism between interventionists and non-interventionists that reminds us of the split, in the West, between socialists and libertarians. 

A similarity between Taoism and Buddhism is that the sage transcends the world of ordinary experience and cognition. In relinquishing the mind of its own the sage is at peace and one with the world. This reinforces non-interventionism.

In view of these complementarities and tensions, it is not surprising that neo-Confucianism has a variety of forms.  

However, a deep commonality of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism seems to be a sense of underlying unity, of the spiritual and the material, of substance and change, of thought and action, of knowledge and morality, of self and other.

I wonder how robust that is under incorporation of Western philosophy, as occurred later, in new Confucianism. 

Where do I stand in all this? I am trying to reconcile the oppositions between subject and object, self and other, order and disorder, and trust and control, without metaphysics, by analysing the logic of the dynamics between them. Here, I run into a fascinating possibility of a parallel with the Taoist principles of Yin and Yang, which I will discuss later.