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The Identity Problem in Buddhist Ethics

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The Identity Problem in Buddhist Ethics 1 THE IDENTITY PROBLEM IN BUDDHIST ETHICS An Examination of Buddhist and Parfitian Conceptions of the Subject by Roger William Farrington MA Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Birkbeck College 2007 University of London 2 ABSTRACT The Buddhist tradition offers a reductionist view of the subject – the ‘weak’ view -which appears to undercut concern for the consequences of action. The doctrine of morally conditioned rebirth – that is, the perpetuation of a persistent individual through death - entails a ‘strong’ view. Each view has a bearing on morality, and each is problematic: the two seem incompatible. The notion of rebirth and the associated doctrine of karman are deeply connected with this. It is in this complex that I find what I call ‘the identity problem’. I give a general account of Buddhist ethics, placing it within the tradition of ‘virtue ethics’. I show the impact of the identity problem to be large but not total. I deal also with some related topics in Buddhist doctrine: anātman, the heterodox ‘Person school’ and the ‘two-truths’ notion. I consider the bearing of Parfit’s arguments for his version of reductionism on the problem’s solution. Their support for the ‘weak’ view is real but limited. When Parfit deals with the consequences of reductionism for morality, his conclusion is uncertain. When I consider these arguments on their merits, I find them largely unpersuasive. Parfit’s account of reasons for action, with some qualifications, is acceptable, and welcome in its vindication of disinterestedness. I consider how it stands with Buddhist ethics in this light and offer restatements of the doctrines of karman and rebirth. In the case of karman, I develop the idea of a guiding metaphor and suggest how it may be applied; in that of rebirth I draw on a broader Buddhist tradition of meditation practice and benvolence. This restatement leaves the ‘strong’ view more sustainable, and its compatibility with the ‘weak’ view less problematic for morality. I then present the Buddhist ethical scheme as largely intact, if with slightly diminished coercive force. 3 CONTENTS Preface 6 1 Introduction 8 2 Buddhist Ethics 29 3 Clarifications 69 4 Perplexities 110 5 Can Parfit help? 143 6 Is Parfit right? 199 7 Conclusions 243 Abbreviations 278 Bibliography 279 ____________ 4 5 PREFACE The Buddha’s teaching and its practice make up a field of inquiry extending over two and a half thousand years and many cultures. Many languages have been employed in the record of the teaching and in its study and consideration. The scope of the present work is severely limited but still extensive. The sources on which I have drawn, and from which I quote, are in Sanskrit, Pali and versions of Prakrit. In making points of general application, I have normally quoted the applicable Sanskrit terms by themselves, but have sometimes used the Sanskrit and Pali together: for instance, Dharma/Dhamma. I have used English acclimatisations where they are uncontentious, presenting them, and also names, without diacritical marks. Some difficult terms have come to be acclimatised too easily, so that difficulties in their understanding have not been addressed. I therefore use – for instance - karman (Sanskrit), sometimes karman/kamman (Sanskrit and Pali), and only rarely ‘karma’ (English). I have however sometimes needed to use such derivations from this last as ‘karmic’. Sanskrit nouns are referred to, in isolation, in their stem-forms: for instance, dharma and karman. In line with convention, Pali nouns are often (not always) given the nominative singular form: for instance, kamma, rather than kamman, attā, rather than attan. I have followed the practice which seemed most likely to make for clarity on each occasion. Plural forms will not always be recognised for what they are. For instance, the nominative plural of Sanskrit dhātu, a word of complex meaning, is dhātavaḥ. When I have used a plural form that is not obviously such, I have tried to make this clear. Quotations from Sanskrit and Pali texts, and from one or two in Greek, are presented in Roman script. Translations are sometimes my own, but I have often taken over the renderings of other translations available in print. Details of these are given in the Bibliography. Capital-lettered names in the footnotes should prompt a reference to the Bibliography. I have reserved italics for quotations from languages other than English and for all titles of works. For emphasis I use underlining. 6 CHAPTER ONE Introduction 1. The identity problem in outline My immediate concern in what follows will be with a complex of difficulties in the metaphysics of personal identity. My deeper concern is with the bearing of these difficulties on morality. On the Buddhist conception of morality, this is notably problematic, and it is here that I find what I will call ‘the identity problem’. I start with the problem in metaphysics. The notion of the person which I will call the ‘weak’ notion is conspicuous in the record of the Buddha’s teaching.1 It is expressed by way of analysing the human subject in terms of process, so prompting the image of a ‘stream’. The constituents and activities of the subject are found to be unstable and transient, and to give no basis for the postulate of a permanent entity. Such a postulate is taken to be neither needed nor demonstrable. The ‘weak’ notion should not be unfamiliar, as the line of thought behind it is paralleled in the Western tradition, notably in the work of Hume. In the case of all such notions, there will be a tension between what is asserted and the common assurance of personal identity and continuity. That is to say that ‘reductionist’ notions, as they are commonly styled, are counter-intuitive. The first manifestation of the problem is therefore the bare credibility of the‘weak’ notion. This notion is, at first glance, close - and I will later show that it is indeed close - to the version of reductionism presented by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons. I will consider how far the arguments of Reasons and Persons may be applied to the resolution of the difficulties attaching to the ‘weak’ notion, and also how far those arguments are compelling. We find in the record, also, another way of viewing the person, which I will call the ‘strong’ notion’. This is to be found in the way the numerous individuals who people the 11 I am using the terms ‘person’ and ‘human subject’ without discrimination. In Chapter Three I will differentiate them and other terms with the same broad reference. 7 early record are presented as discrete and persistent. The ‘strength’ of the notion is to be registered in this matter-of-fact presumption. It is strengthened further by the concurrent emphasis given to karman/kamman. This is the supposition that the fruits of action will inevitably be bourn by the agent. If I do wrong or act unskilfully in some respect, it is I who will pay for it, and no other, and pay for it to the proper degree. Right or skilful action is accorded a correspondingly happy consequence. There is a yet further strengthening in the presumption of rebirth to be found everywhere in the Buddhist record. A text in the Pali Aṅguttara Nikāya records the appearance before Yama, ‘the Lord of Death’, of someone just deceased. He is addressed as a persistent entity: ‘you have done the bad kammam; you [emphatic] will experience its vipākam (consequence, ‘fruit’)’.2 The identity problem is one of the co-existence of two notions of the subject, each one of which has points of difficulty of its own. My concern in what follows will be with the problem’s implications for morality. Concern for the future is amply secured by the ‘strong’ notion. The ‘weak’ notion seems to subvert it. Doubts over personal continuity will raise questions over the responsibility going with agency and over the grounding for prudential calculation. Two verses in the Pali Dhammapāda, which I will treat as representative in what follows, tell the same story as that of the judgment of Yama. A man having adultery in mind is warned that he would not greatly enjoy it: fear and furtiveness would be its concomitants, he would risk punishment through the law, and he would face a ‘bad’ and, no doubt, painful rebirth. 3 The last consequence certainly, and perhaps all four, will be the outcome of karman. The last is the most daunting, as even the rich and powerful cannot avoid it. The force of the warning owes everything to the presumption that the one who acts is the one who suffers. The ‘weak’ notion seems, at least, to impair this presumption, even in respect of a single lifespan. The ‘strong’ notion secures it, but at the price of bringing into sharp relief some daunting claims. What are we to make of the supposition of conditioning by karman and of the presumption that we have existed before and will be reborn again? 2 AN III, 36 [140]. I have translated a snatch of the words of Yama: atha kho tayā vetaṃ pāpaṃ kammaṃ kataṃ, tvaññevetassa vipākaṃ paṭisaṃvedissāsī’ ti. 3 DhP 309/10. In Pali, Apuññalābho ca gatī ca pāpikā. Literally ‘(There is) both acquisition of demerit and a bad destiny/destination’. This verse can be found in other recensions. 8 2. Is there really a problem? For this account of the problem I have drawn on the earliest stratum of the Buddhist record, which I will call ‘the early texts’. The composition of these texts was followed by a period of systematisation and commentary and then by one of summation.
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