NEWSLETTER | The American Philosophical Association Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies SPRING 2021 VOLUME 20 | NUMBER 2 SPECIAL ISSUE ON BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY: BOOK SYMPOSIUM ON WHY I AM NOT A BUDDHIST BY EVAN THOMPSON FROM THE EDITORS Laura P. Guerrero A. Minh Nguyen and Yarran Hominh Free to Be You and Me: Cosmopolitanism, Editors’ Introduction: Buddhist Pluralism, and Buddhist Modernism Modernism and Its Discontents Sonam Kachru ARTICLES Some Questions for Friends of Buddhism Evan Thompson Précis of Why I Am Not a Buddhist Constance Kassor Thompson Is Not a Buddhist, But What Christian Coseru about the Rest of Us? On Pursuing the Dialogue Between Buddhism and Science in Ways That Abraham Velez de Cea Distort Neither Deconstructing Buddhist Modernism Without Postmodern Orientalism? Bronwyn Finnigan Louise Williams On Being a Good Friend to Buddhist Philosophy Buddhist Modernism: Let’s Be Suspicious But Not Because It Lacks Faith Jonardon Ganeri Evan Thompson Buddhism after Buddhist Modernism: Comments on Evan Thompson’s Why I Replies to Critics Am Not a Buddhist SUBMISSION GUIDELINES AND Jay L. Garfield INFORMATION Throwing out the Buddha with the Offering Water: Comments on Evan Thompson’s Why I Am Not a Buddhist VOLUME 20 | NUMBER 2 SPRING 2021 © 2021 BY THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION ISSN 2155-9708 APA NEWSLETTER ON Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies A. MINH NGUYEN, EDITOR VOLUME 20 | NUMBER 2 | SPRING 2021 commitments, “destabilize” (180, 184) them, and eventually FROM THE EDITORS repudiate them. Editors’ Introduction: Buddhist The two key terms in Thompson’s argument are “Buddhist modernism” (1, 172) and “cosmopolitanism” (165–89). Modernism and Its Discontents That is where much of the cut and thrust occurs between Thompson and his interlocutors in this issue. We will set out A. Minh Nguyen, Editor briefy how Thompson conceives of these two fundamental FLORIDA GULF COAST UNIVERSITY concepts and then move to the arguments made by the [email protected] other contributors to the issue. Yarran Hominh, Associate Editor II. BUDDHIST MODERNISM COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Thompson uses the term “Buddhist modernism” in much [email protected] the same way as David L. McMahan does in The Making of Buddhist Modernism, which is to pick out an interrelated set of tendencies and themes in contemporary (largely) I. OVERVIEW Euro-American Buddhist thought.4 The term is not Evan Thompson’s new book, Why I Am Not a Buddhist, is intended as a defnition or to specify a set of necessary a provocative, insightful, and challenging critique of what or sufcient conditions for an entity (whether a person, he calls “Buddhist modernism” (1), a broad religious, community, tradition, culture, movement, concept, cultural, and intellectual movement that he regards as conception, viewpoint, theory, argument, commitment, “the dominant strand of modern Buddhism” (1).1 Like practice, discourse, rhetoric, or apologetics) to be a Bertrand Russell’s “Why I Am Not a Christian” and similarly Buddhist modernist one. Rather, it is meant to highlight named texts like Kancha Ilaiah’s Why I Am Not a Hindu,2 some common and recognizable ideas from a complex and Thompson’s Why I Am Not a Buddhist is, among other diverse tradition arising from the collision of modernism things, a critique of the place of the Buddhist modernist in its broadest and most pluralist sense and the varied movement in our world, especially Europe and North histories of diferent Buddhist traditions.5 As Thompson America, today. Unlike those texts, however, Thompson’s makes clear in his “Replies to Critics,” especially his target is not Buddhism in its entirety. Nor is his critique response to Abraham Velez de Cea, he takes Buddhist purely negative or antagonistic. He neither contends modernism not to have a “unique [ideological or doctrinal] nor asserts, for instance, that Buddhism has no place in essence,” defned by a set of rules, tenets, theories, or the contemporary world. Rather, Thompson’s critique is principles, but rather to be “a broad cultural movement conceived and formulated from the perspective of a “good having many variants . [and] constituted by clusters of friend to Buddhism” (2, 189), one who wishes for Buddhism traits or properties,” of which Buddhist modernist traits or “to take its rightful place as a valuable contributor to a properties there is, in general, “a frequency distribution.” modern cosmopolitan community” (2). Such a community The traits or properties with which Thompson concerns brings together in deep engagement diferent religious, himself are those specifcally relevant to Euro-American philosophical, literary, artistic, social, economic, political, Buddhist modernism and not, say, to the political or and scientifc traditions. Thompson himself, of course, has nationalistic forms of Buddhist modernism found in been a valuable contributor to these conversations between Myanmar (formerly Burma) or Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon).6 Buddhism, Western philosophy, and the cognitive and brain sciences, beginning with his infuential co-authored The particular ideas that Thompson targets are relevant book, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human to two themes in the philosophy of science and religion. Experience,3 and then as part of the Mind and Life Institute The frst theme is the “encounter” (76), “interaction” (179), over the last two decades. Thompson’s main argument is “exchange” (10), or “dialogue” (48) between Buddhism and that Buddhism’s contributions to a “modern cosmopolitan modern science, particularly neuroscience. The second community” (2) are disserved by core assumptions and theme is the relation between Buddhism and various commitments of Buddhist modernism. If Buddhism is conceptions of religion as the concept of religion was (and best to play its part in this cosmopolitan conversation, a religions themselves were) transformed through (European) conversation between contemporary science and various Enlightenment secularism. Thompson’s main target is what religious, philosophical, intellectual, and contemplative he calls “Buddhist exceptionalism” (23–55). Thompson traditions, then it must question these assumptions and defnes it as “the belief that Buddhism is superior to other APA NEWSLETTER | ASIAN AND ASIAN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHIES religions in being inherently rational and empirical, or These two commitments support each other. The Protestant that Buddhism isn’t really a religion but rather is a kind of individualization of Buddhism enables the excessive and ‘mind science,’ therapy, philosophy, or way of life based on scientistic focus on the individual’s psychology and brain meditation” (2). Buddhist exceptionalists hold that Buddhism “as seen through neuroimaging technologies” (139) apart is epistemically superior to other religions or to religions from the physical, social, and cultural environments in which generally when religion is understood a certain way. It is the psychology and the brain, indeed the whole embodied held to be superior given an epistemology according to being, are embedded. Conversely, the naturalistic which contemporary science provides us with the standard framework of the cognitive sciences, including psychology for rationality and for empirical content and support. and neuroscience, mandates a naturalistic and individualistic reading of the role and benefts of mindfulness meditation Buddhist exceptionalism, Thompson avers, rests on false or and associated conceptions of awakening that cannot confused assumptions about science and about religion. but ignore or downplay interpretations or conceptions of Chapter 1 of Why I Am Not a Buddhist, “The Myth of aspects of reality that are necessarily embedded in a larger Buddhist Exceptionalism,” sets out these issues in broad physical, social, or cultural structure. strokes. In chapter 2, “Is Buddhism True?,” Thompson argues against one Buddhist modernist way of legitimating This Protestant aspect of Buddhist modernism also certain interpretations of Buddhist assertions. Exemplifed underlies, Thompson argues, a particular tangle of in Robert Wright’s book Why Buddhism Is True, this conceptual confusions surrounding the idea of awakening approach contends that Buddhism is uniquely supported by or enlightenment. Buddhist modernists are committed to evolutionary psychology. Wright’s book is a good example, awakening being “psychologically plausible” (149-50, 157), argues Thompson, of how certain prominent strands of that is, explicable in naturalistic terms as a particular state of Buddhist modernism tame and domesticate Buddhist the brain, mode of attention, et cetera. Simultaneously, they ideas by trying to ft them into a limiting naturalistic and are committed to the claim that Buddhism is exceptional scientistic framework. In treating Buddhism as “inherently in not relying on faith in the divine or supernatural and rational and empirical” (2), as “inherently rational and the claim that awakening is a nonconceptual intuitive scientifc” (24), and as “inherently more scientifc than state. But, Thompson contends, in order to have some . other religions” (52), Buddhist modernism misses out specifable content to the notion of awakening such that on what is truly exceptional about (though not unique to) it can be investigated and understood scientifcally, it Buddhism, namely, its capacity to challenge commonly cannot be (purely) nonconceptual. And if one wants to give held assumptions, to “invigorate our thinking” (85),