CHAPTER SEVEN

TOWARD AN APPRAISAL OF MOU’S USE OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

Mou’s philosophical legacy will occupy the scholarly community for years to come, and this book is sure to be followed by many more. In this chapter I will take preliminary steps toward assessing Mou’s understanding and appropriation of Buddhist philosophy. I will deal first with just a couple of common complaints about Mou’s method, followed by some questions of my own both about some of his spe- cific interpretations concerning Buddhism and his general critique of Buddhist thought.

Mou as Historian of Philosophy

Mou bills Buddha-Nature and Prajñā as a “history of philosophy,” and he incurs a good deal of criticism thereby. He makes a special point of declaring his objectivity and neutral- ity. He writes Buddha-Nature and Prajñā, he insists, as a “history of phi- losophy” (zhexueshi 哲學史) plain and simple, “not [written from] a position of ordinary religious faith, nor . . . an ordinary apologetic posi- tion” and “without any religious prejudice whatsoever.”.1 And his disciples have presented Buddha-Nature and Prajñā unproblematically as a straightforward introduction to the major forms of Buddhist philos- ophy. For example, Mou’s student Liao Zhongqing 廖鍾慶 praised it for its objectivity and neutrality. He wrote that Mou filled a need for an accessible work for the non-buddhologist which would first give “a proper understanding of the objective doctrine of each [Chinese Buddhist] school of thought” and then “after digesting their objective doctrine, give a brand-new doxographic analysis, what is called ranking the teachings . . . As for the latter [the doxography], it is important to give equal regard to ( pingshi 平視) each system’s objective doctrine . . . It is

1 FB, 7. 210 chapter seven absolutely forbidden to praise or blame based on one’s subjective predilections.”2 However, like much else in Mou’s philosophy, these declaration come with a great deal of implicit fine print. For as we have seen, Mou’s book is not a straightforward “history of philosophy” in any sense of that phrase which is commonly accepted nowadays in either the English- or Chinese-speaking academy. Normally, for example, we do not expect the author of a history of philosophy to predicate his major theses on controversial articles of faith. But Mou does. He presumes from the outset that humanity has access to intellectual intuition and that intellectual intuition testifies to the identity or equality of every ostensible thing in the universe with every other thing. But if we do not accept those presumptions (as I have a hard time doing), then we cannot entertain Mou’s main thesis as a candi- date for either truth or falsehood, at least not in its entirety. For Mou’s thesis is not only that (a) the Tiantai version of Buddhism cap- tures Śākyamuni’s intended meaning best but also that (b) it also comes closest to capturing the truth about metaphysics. Anyone can take the first part seriously as a thesis for historical debate, but we cannot even get to the point of weighing Mou’s arguments for the second part of the thesis if we already think that its very premises are unsound. We can commence an argument about whether Mou is

2 Liao Zhongqing 廖鍾慶, “Foxing yu boruo zhi yanjiu [Researches on Buddha Nature and Prajna]《佛性與般若》之研究,” in Mou Zongsan xiansheng de zhexue yu zhuzuo 牟宗三先生的哲學與著作 [The Philosophy and Works of Mou Zongsan], ed. Mou Zong- san xiansheng qishi shouqing lunwenji bianjizu 牟宗三先生七十壽慶論文集編輯組 (Taipei: Xuesheng, 1978), 524, emphasis added. This is, in effect, an anticipation of criticisms such as Cheng Gongrang’s, who remarks, “The deluded mind school, of which the Mahāyāna-sagraha and Sadhi-nirmocana Sūtra are emblematic and the True Mind school represented by the Awakening of Faith are very different in their intellec- tual purport, and in the history of Buddhism, doctrinal classifications have always seen these schools asbeing as different as fire and water. In putting his presentations of these two schools together into Part II [of Buddha-Nature and Prajñā], Mou’s pur- pose is clearly to exaggerate the stature and specialness of Tiantai Buddhist thought.” See Cheng Gongrang 程恭讓, “Lüexi Foxing yu boruo zai Mou Zongsan zhexue sixi- ang jinzhan zhong de weizhi 略析《佛性與般若》在牟宗三哲學思想進展中的位 置 [A Brief Analysis of the Place of Buddha-Nature and Prajñā in the Development of Mou Zongsan’s Philosophical Thinking],” Pumen xuebao, no. 13 (2003), 145–146. The implication of obvious partisan jerrymandering is misplaced, as Mou is entirely clear about the respects in which they are diametrically opposed, such as in their theories of the relationship between unenlightened and enlightened mind, as well as their points of common differences from Tiantai philosophy. As for the stature of Tiantai thought, it is precisely the task of any doxographer to enunciate a rank order among doctrinal schools, and hence is well within Mou’s perogative.