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NeuroQuantology | December 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 4| Page 670-675 670 Lifintseva TP., The Buddhist pill for Satre’s Nausea Opinion and Perspectives

The Buddhist Pill for Satre’s “Nausea”: Phenomenological and Hindu-Buddhist Treatments of Intentionality

Tatyana Petrovna Lifintseva ABSTRACT This paper deals with one of the most complicated issues in philosophy – the problem of intentionality of . The author seeks to answer the question of whether the intentionality of consciousness can be considered a universal anthropological characteristic. Two philosophical positions regarding intentionality are compared on the basis of Jean-Paul Sartre’s major works and the sacred texts of Hinduism and Buddhism. The author first identifies certain traits of Western , which regards consciousness as something to be revealed and to be described as intentional, and second, takes up the approach Ancient Indian metaphysics’ that regards the “depriving” consciousness of its intentionality as having a soteriological purpose.

Key Words: intentionality, , freedom, subject, subjectlessness, negaion, sansaric subject, sacred, profane NeuroQuantology 2012; 4: 670-675

1 In this paper I dare to step into the unsteady discussion regarding just epistemology in the and ungrateful soil of comparativistics and to second half of the nineteenth century and in attempt to compare Western and Indian the beginning of the twentieth century metaphysics through the philosophical and (neokantianism, phenomenology, literary creativity of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – empiriocriticism, pragmaticism) generated an 1980) and through various Buddhist and Vedic explosion of interest in in the first sacred texts. The concept of intentionality will half of the twentieth century – from the be the key in my attempt and my research “reigns of being” of George Santayana to “the question is: the possibility of intentionality “to fundamental ontology” of be or not to be” a defining characteristic of and Systematic theology of Paul Tillich. At the consciousness. beginning of his famous book It is possible to describe Sartre's (1927) Heidegger repeated like a conjuration: philosophy of the 1930’s and 40’s as “the “We should raise anew the question of the search for Being.” One cannot say that during meaning of Being. … The concept of “Being” the epoch he was very original in this is rather the most obscure of all. … We see aspiration. The permanent philosophical the fundamental necessity of repeating a question on the meaning of Being anew. … To retrieve the question of Being means first Corresponding author: Tatyana Lifintseva of all to work out adequately the formulation Address: Tatyana Lifintseva Vlasov st., b. 6, app. 33, Moscow region, of the question” (Heidegger, 1996. pp. xix, 2- Lyubertsy, Russia 140002. National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation. 3). Phone: +79099748119 First, I am going to address Sartre's  [email protected] Received Sept 9, 2012. Revised Dec 04, 2012. Accepted Dec 08, 2012. fundamental work eISSN 1303-5150 (1943). In this text a classical (accepted in Contributors and Supporting: Laina Saul, George Mason University Western philosophy) relation of being and (final editorial correction). www.neuroquantology.com

NeuroQuantology | December 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 4| Page 670-675 671 Lifintseva TP., The Buddhist pill for Satre’s Nausea thinking, nature and spirit, matter and of an external being and its own past, its consciousness, object and subject are previous conditions. Being "nothing", Sartre’s transferred by Sartre to a plane of two person “secretes this Nothing as a gland "regions" of Being: “Being-in-itself" and secretes hormones” (Sartre, 1970; p.103). "Being-for-itself”. Briefly… ”Being-in-itself”, Sartre traces (certainly, not in an exhaustive according to Sartre, is “self-identical, way) the tradition of the description of undecomposed, dense, massive and compact.” consciousness as negative in European It is an absolute passivity; it is what it is, no philosophy. He quotes Spinoza's formula, “To more than that and any definitions are define means to deny”. Hegel admired this inapplicable to it. It is indiscernible, saying, and reformulated it in the judgment – undifferentiated, deprived of any qualitative “The Spirit is a negative”. Additionally earlier definiteness and self-sufficient; it does not in the Scholastics there exist a classical comprise any distinction between “this "and example of a bad artist who painted a lion, but “other”. It means that only the consciousness to the spectator, so it would be clear, the artist (“Being-for-itself”) introduces everything into signed: “This is a lion, but not a dog”. the world: discreteness, plurality, and Asserting that it is a lion, we thereby deny the causality, variability, movement, quantity, possibility for it to be a dog, a mouse, a fish, a quality, and also form, space, time (and, unicorn, a comet, etc... accordingly, mortal destiny), sense, meaning, Human activity, according to Sartre, good, harm, etc. Accordingly, all proceeds is absolutely unpremised: a person creates a from consciousness, the subject. And "Being- new every time, every moment he or in-itself" is absolutely indifferent to she “chooses him/her-self”. But then it turns consciousness, "Being-for-itself". Within the out that this instant creativity loses any person this indifference generates a double binding principle and dissipates in a set of feeling concerning the world: either a disgust separate acts which are not at all bound (as in the Nausea), or a painful envy (as between themselves. But then how is self- in the cycle of The Roads of Freedom), identification possible? Why is Jean-Paul but always this is the feeling of absolute Sartre nevertheless Sartre, instead of Mao- otherness and rejectedness. Zedong (whom he honored greatly), or not a What does this rejectedness mean for Parisian homeless (clochard)? Here, strangely consciousness and what does consciousness enough, Descartes comes, to the aid of Sartre. mean for Sartre? Consciousness, certainly, is Yes, Sartre struggled with Cartesian tradition not reduced to knowledge; it is a and denied the “thinking substance.” But in transphenomenal measurement of being of a the article “Cartesian freedom” (1957) (in the subject. "For-itself" literally means "not-in- preface to Descartes' collected works) Sartre itself", which means non-equality to itself, an makes an attempt of an existentialist orientation on something other and external to interpretation of Descartes. The starting point consciousness, e. g. the table, the chair, the of Descartes’ philosophy, which is the tree, the rat’s tail, Hegel’s Absolute , lost methodical , was interpreted by Sartre as youth, the actual infinity – everything that one an ability to say "NO", as the negating activity can think about. That the consciousness is of consciousness, as freedom (See Sartre, directed toward "something", toward an 1980, p.238). Descartes wrote: “The mind, "other", means that it is not that "something"; using freedom inherent in it, assumes that the consciousness is nothing. (The analogy there is none of things concerning which with the apofatic theology defining God as existence it should feel though the slightest “none of created things”, as "nothing", is doubt” (Descartes, 1952, p.185). And in rather transparent here. On a related note, in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness we read: Sartre’s novel Nausea it is possible to draw “Descartes following the Stoics has given a analogies with the Christian ascetics: the name to this possibility which human reality nausea in Sartre's anthropology seems to has to secrete a nothingness which isolates it – substitute the ascetics’ Christian disgust for it is freedom” (Sartre, 1970; pp.24-25). the all carnal and material. This is however a Therefore, the principle uniting activity of separate theme and we do not have the space human consciousness for Sartre was a to consider it here). permanence of negation, a freedom. The life of consciousness in Sartre's Sartre paraphrases Descartes: “I deny – description appears as a permanent negation hence I exist”. The liberation of a person was www.neuroquantology.com

NeuroQuantology | December 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 4| Page 670-675 672 Lifintseva TP., The Buddhist pill for Satre’s Nausea thought by Sartre as “the ability to self- every intentional object (whether it is a isolation.” “If "Being-in-itself" is self-identical physical thing, the city of Freiburg or “a and self-sufficient, than, for Sartre, “the thousandagon”) are equally ideal and belong consciousness (“Being-for itself”) represents a to consciousness as they are correlated with way not to be coincidence with itself, to escape intentional acts. Husserl understood identity” (Sartre, 1970; p.77). “Nothing is like a intentionality as a general property of hole of Being in the heart of Being”, – is consciousness – to be “consciousness about …” Sartre's well-known aphorism (Sartre, 1970; Sartre makes a certain inversion in p.617). relation to the Husserlian concept of The necessary condition for freedom is intentionality: in which it seems he comes choice, and choice is identical to back to the “intention” of the Stoics and the consciousness. Freedom is an ontological Scholastics, where the consciousness characteristic of a person’s being. Choosing corresponds with… no, not with an object, but one, we simultaneously do not choose the with Being. Sartre considers consciousness as other as well. To be free means to be out of deduced on a "confrontation" with Being. Yes, everything, outside of a given frame of with this dense, not differentiated, passive structure of being. A permanent creativity of "Being-in-itself". Consciousness itself forms consciousness means simultaneously a the object (or, more exactly, objectness). permanent choice and non-choice of oneself in Therefore, probably, it is necessary to say that the world. The choosing act of consciousness is Sartre’s interpretation of Husserl’s a transformation into "nothing" for every new phenomenological reduction has allowed him choice neutralizes the previous experience. to divorce completely with the heritage of the Consciousness appears to be a set of free acts Enlightement – the concept of a "human of self-determination by the person in his/her nature". The human nature “was put outside being. The theme of human freedom is an axis the brackets” irrespective of, in what form it of all Sartre’s doctrine which can be traced appeared: whether in a kind of “universal throughout his works: it is melancholic in the ability of thinking”, “will to power”, or novel Nausea, it has a stoical firmness in “libido”… Being and Nothingness, it is linked with a Here we can come to the following heroic apathy in a cycle of novels The Roads of conclusion: Husserl and Sartre’s intentionality Freedom, or it is passionate in The Critic of the is referred to as immanent to human Dialectical Reason. consciousness. Is it really so? How many Now we will consider Sartre’s concept of efforts were necessary to discover, describe, intentionality which is the core for and eventually prove, the intentionality of consciousness. Sartre takes this concept from consciousness! And after all, whole layers of (1859 –1938), with a number Eastern spirituality, culture and, of course, of changes. Intentionality, as we know, is the philosophy, considered their soteriological concept of a number of philosophical doctrines mission as depriving of consciousness of its (not only phenomenology), fixing the feature intentionality. I would simply like to show that of human consciousness which consists in its the representation of consciousness as orientation toward any object. In Seneca’s directed (and directed not to external object, philosophy intention was a way of movement but intentional as such) was known in India of the soul (motus animi), in Thomas Aquinas’ more than 2500 years ago, but as a problem theology - one of intelligence’s tools, it is the that was absolutely opposite to the Western actualization of its potentiality by means of one: in that the intentional condition was mastering of an object by consciousness. considered "not original", it was a deformed Husserl developed the idea of intentionality in one and soteriological mission consisted in his Logical Investigations (1900), and unlike depriving consciousness of its intentionality. I scholastics, he avoided speaking about will now try to show how this occurred. I will “presentness” of an object in consciousness, make it clear that if it is possible (and for the and, unlike Franz. Brentano (1838 – 1917), did adherents of Vedic religion, Buddhism and not mention consciousness activity even in its Jainism even necessary) to deprive correlation with objectness. According to consciousness of its intentionality, then Husserl, everything that is told about intentionality is not immanent to intentionality, concerns only pure structures of consciousness and cannot be considered a consciousness. For Husserl everything and universal anthropological characteristic. www.neuroquantology.com

NeuroQuantology | December 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 4| Page 670-675 673 Lifintseva TP., The Buddhist pill for Satre’s Nausea In this paper I do not directly mention undergoing, both pleasant and unpleasant Western research on Buddhist phenomenalism sensations and events are all part of existence. or the phenomenalism of Advaita-Vedanta, It is necessary to understand “duḥkha” as an though they are widely-known (for ex. P ontological “groundlessness” of the person, Hacker, W. Halbfass., P.J Griffits, K.H “unequality” to himself/herself,2 a basic Warder, etc.). I have a different purpose. I dissatisfaction with any form of empirical understand perfectly well how incorrect it is to (karmic) existence which always assumes the lump the Vedic religion and Buddhism intentionality of consciousness on any object. together given that there are a great number of I am going to approach now the distinctions between them (and even within most "slippery" part of my research in which I them given their internal diversity). To will try to compare two , the Indian address this problem, I will also speak about and the Western, which are constructed on the distinctions between them. And still for the absolutely different foundations and therefore consciousness of Western people the are as though at all not subject to comparison. similarities are nevertheless stronger than the Both in Buddhism and in the Vedic religion distinctions as both currents of Indian thought the empirical (sansaric) subject is considered strongly differ from Western metaphysics and an illusion, as it has been mentioned already. I a Western mentality. In the course of research am returning to Vedic religion. The individual I will “remind” of some concepts of Indian mentality (soul, jīva) is considered to be a thin (Vedic and Buddhist) philosophies and body (thin, but nevertheless a body), religions and what they designate. For considered as a false receptacle, a peel for the example, Ātman which is usually correlated Ātman. We see here a radical difference with the “immortal soul”, although actually between Vedic schools’ metaphysics (in they have almost nothing in common. The particular, of Advaita-Vedanta) from the eternal Ātman is an extrapersonal and metaphysics of a created person, for example, extraindividual substance which is in Christian theism, which postulates that the demonstrated in a person. To open Ātman in person possesses an individual body (physical) oneself means to get rid of all sensations, with his/her individual and unique perceptions, images, , representations, characteristics, also possesses a unique soul conclusions inherent in the person. That is, the and a unique communication of the given body soteriological ideal is to get rid of “the world of with the given soul, i. e., the self-consciousness forms” (rūpa-loka) – i. e., space, time (and, of the soul is the center of a person (See accordingly, mortal destiny), objectness, Anikeyeva, p.99-105). Therefore, the position discreetness, sense, meaning, causality, of Advaita-Vedanta concerning the mentality- density, extents, colours, light and darkness, body, mentality-cover for something different, taste, smell, etc. Ātman should merge with the the higher, assuming that self-consciousness Brahman (the Absolute, in Western should also belong to this cover and therefore understanding) when a person gets rid of the is strictly opposite not only to Christian, but illusion of his/her personal being. Ātman- also almost every Western philosophical, Brahman is perceived as” knowledge" (veda), concepts of personal being. And the world of but this is a special, subjectless and objectless the individual psyches (which is the core for all knowledge, knowledge as the absolute form of the Western culture) for the Indian any possible knowledge. philosophies and religions as the most true Buddhists go further claiming that there candidate for personal being has the most is not and cannot be anything substantive and rough corporality which is to be removed the eternal inside of the person even if it is first. There are various steps of thinning, deprived of anything personal. The person is removing this corporality, without leaving any only a stream of psychophysical elements – place for individuality at all, but we will not dharmas, which we imagine as an individual enumerate nor analyze them here. mentality, as a person (pudgala) owing to our Let's now come to citations. In "Katha- ignorance, non-vision (a-vidyā). Besides, in Upanishad" (one of the earliest poetic Buddhism suffering (duḥkha) and pleasure Upanishads) it is said: (sukha) are not opposed to each other as it was accepted, as a rule, in the Western tradition, but the second concept is included in the first: for the Buddhist all existence is suffering i. e. 2 We can compare the Buddhist “duhkha” in this aspect with Sorge (concern) of Heidegger or “Being-for-itself” of Sartre. www.neuroquantology.com

NeuroQuantology | December 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 4| Page 670-675 674 Lifintseva TP., The Buddhist pill for Satre’s Nausea “When every desire that finds lodging in the blasphemy). And still… probably, many of us heart of a man, has been lossened from its have read the novel of Aldous Huxley The mooring, Doors of Perception. Huxley describes how he Then this mortal puts on immortality: even accepted an organic substance – mescaline, here he tastes Brahman. … received from cactus peyote, causing the The Purusha, the Spirit within, is seating deformed conditions of consciousness under forever in the heart of creatures: the direction of the psychologist. From the point of view of the Brahmanist or the One must separate him with patience from one’s own body Buddhist it is, of course, a profanation, so to say, "a freebie", but for the Western person it As one separates from blade of grass its will fit. And so, Huxley felt approximately maim fiber. what the yogin of the Upanishads feels at the Thou should know him for the Bright first stages of meditation (pratyāhāra): the Immortal, yea, the Bright Immortal” world loses concreteness, objectness; freakish (Aurobindo, 1981; p.240-241). configurations of volumes flowing each other, forms and colors appear at a look, which the Transition into this condition also consciousness cannot (and does not wish!) to carries the name chitta-vŗtti-nirodha (literally fix as a concreteness, “thisness.”3 He calls it – the discontinuation of wandering of the “The Beatific Vision, Sat Chit Ananda, Being- mind). How does it occur? I think, I will not be Awareness-Bliss” (Huxley, 1956; p.18). mistaken, if I say that though some of us who Huxley also recalls the Zen-Buddhist koan. engaged in yoga did so for concern about our The disciple asks the teacher: “What is health, but, in doing so, perhaps, did not reach Buddha”? The teacher answers, pointing to the highest steps envisioned by those who the half-collapsed fence: “This is Buddha”. originated the practice. And it would be Then – on a heap of manure: “This is desirable to talk about it. In created by a wise Buddha”. Then – on a lotus flower: “This is man Patanjali (II c. B.C.) aṣţāṅga-yoga (octal Buddha”. Then the teacher says: “Buddha is a yoga) the 6th step (pratyāhāra) means a round triangle…” (Huxley, 1956; p.18-19). discontinuation of activity of consciousness. What does it all mean? It means that at a stage Practically it is carried out by means of of “awakening” from an illusion of the concentration of consciousness on any mental “objectness” and discreteness of the world the point: it can be the tip of one’s nose, the consciousness becomes not participated in an umbilical center, a mental point on a wall, etc. object, it is not directed toward an object (real It is not yet the last step – samādhi, about or imagined), it is not intentional, therefore which it is absolutely impossible to tell everything is Buddha … But, receding from anything in a discursive form, but already Huxley, we should say, that it is only the here, in pratyāhāra … It is almost impossible beginning, it is yet not the Buddhist nirvaṇa, for us to imagine nothing except a specific here is no śūnya, the Great , where mental point during several hours or even the impersonal consciousness is deprived of days!... The consciousness loses in this case, any subjectness and objectness. speaking the phenomenological language, not only a noematic correlate, but also a noesis. Now we will return to J. P. Sartre’s famous novel Nausea (1939). Here is what the Western culture and Western spirituality hero of the novel Antoine Roquentin feels: grounded by Christianity do not regard the depriving of consciousness of its intentionality “Things have divorced their names. They are as a soteriological purpose. It is more likely, on there, grotesque, headstrong, gigantic and it the contrary, that Christian ascetics assume seems ridiculous to call them or to say anything at all about them: I am in the midst ultimate aspiration of the person towards God, of things, nameless things. Alone, without so to say, "superintentionality". It is difficult to words, defenceless, they surround me, are a Western person to enter the Vedic or the beneath me, behind me, above me. … I could Buddhist “universe”, though during the last no longer stand things being so close. … So I 150 years very many individuals have tried to was in the park just now. The roots of the do so. And sometimes Europeans or chestnut tree were sunk in the ground just Americans accepted psychotropic substances under my bench. I could not remember it for this purpose (which by the original adherents of the named religions would be 3 Here it is possible to draw an analogy with painting of suprematists considered as a profanation and even as a (for example, Kandinsky and his followers) www.neuroquantology.com

NeuroQuantology | December 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 4| Page 670-675 675 Lifintseva TP., The Buddhist pill for Satre’s Nausea was a root any more. had something in common with Roquentin’s vision vanished and with them the significance of of the park. Thus, things, their methods of use, and the feeble points of reference which men have traced “One version of concentration of thought on their surface. I was sitting, stooping consists in a choice of any landscape, for forward, head bowed, alone in front of this example, a garden. It is beheld, observed in all black, knotty mass, entirely beasty, which details. It is necessary to remember various frightened me. … The roots, the park gates, flowers growing in it, their arrangement, the the bench, the sparse grass, all that has trees, inherent in each of them height, the vanished: the diversity of things, their form of branches, the difference in foliage and individuality, were only an appearance, a so, consistently studying all details, but veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, without naming their names bypass the whole monstrous masses, all in disorder – naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness” (Sartre, garden. Having created yourself a distinct 1979; pp.125-127). representation about a garden when you can also see it with your eyes closed, as well as with As we see, for the ordinary Western open, begin to delete various details one after person who is not engaged in the Hinduist or another from a combination of attributes the Buddhist meditations, depriving the world making a garden mentally. Gradually flowers of its discreteness and objectness is very change their coloring and form, they flow into traumatic. Ernest Kassirer wrote much about each other, they are scattered, and even the it in his Philosophy of the Symbolical Forms dust which has remained from them (1823 – 29). Roquentin, unlike Huxley, did not dissipates. Trees lose foliage, their leaves are experiment with a mescaline, but he suffered a compressed, as if entered into a trunk, then heavy neurosis. He did not cause in himself the trunk becomes thinner and turns to a these mental conditions; they as though simple line. This line becomes even thinner tormented him from the outside. (Sartre has and, at last, disappears. As a result there is described it with such talent that the only a naked earth. Now it is necessary to take Association of Psychiatrists of France has away stones and soil from the earth. The earth awarded him the degree of the doctor of in its turn disappears, etc. Such exercises lead psychiatry for the novel). But that suddenly to the destruction of representations about the endured nakedness of the material world is world of forms and matter, to consecutive traumatic for the consciousness, the Christian achievement of pure and boundless space, ascetics (John the Climatus, for example), and understanding of infinity of consciousness the shramans-eremites of the Vedic religion, and, at last, to comprehension of sphere of and the Buddhists also knew. But they knew emptiness (śūnya) and sphere where there is how to oppose it. In conclusion, I would like to neither consciousnesses, nor absence of engage in philosophical hooliganism and offer consciousness...” (Quoted on: David-Neel A., to monsieur Roquentin, so to say, the buddhist 1932, p.175). “recipe” of a struggle against nausea. The text is from the third c. B. C. and attributed to a I understand this recommendation philosopher Nagarjuna. Here also is a speech would not really help the suffering monsieur about a garden, about a landscape that has Roquentin. Within the context of secular consciousness it is, alas, irresolvable.

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