Kant on Animals, not so different from Buddha?

For both Buddhism and Kant, there is something special about humanity even though we clearly are (biologically) mere animals. One of Kant's key statements on the difference comes here

“Thus what remains to us for indicating the human being’s class in the system of living nature and thus characterizing him is nothing but this: he has a character that he himself makes, in that he has the faculty of perfecting himself in accordance with ends he takes for himself; whereby he can make himself, from an animal endowed with a capacity for reason (animal rationabilis), into a rational animal (animal rationale); and as such he first, preserves himself and his species; second; exercises, instructs and brings up his species for domestic society; and third, governs it as a whole that is systematic (ordered in accordance with rational principles) and fitted for society” (Ak 7:321-322).

(borrowed from Allen W. Wood's paper here) Wood goes on to say that, "Following Rousseau, Kant identifies as the distinctive feature of humanity the faculty of self-perfection. Kant rejects the traditional definition of the human being as animal rationale, allowing only that the human being is an animal rationabilis (Ak 7:321). "

This, it seems, is similar to Buddhist statements of animals: that they lack the potential for awakening. Or is this not so? Is this a later development perhaps? What do the early (Pali) texts say about animals and the difference between us (human-animals) and them (non-human animals).

THE COSMOLOGICAL CONTEXT

"Cosmology orients us. It provides us a place within the universe, a home where
our story can be told in such a way that it makes sense to ourselves and the
people with whom we live. For millennia, the earth and water, the light, the
weather, and the heavens have been accounted for in myriad tales from diverse
cultures. Humans have found meaning in reading their own story against the story
of the place in which they find themselves. From the local shrines arising out
of archaic sensibilities to the elaborate Ptolemaic spheres and Dante-esque
hells of Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, the study of the cosmos begins
and ends with an exploration of self. For the past 300 years there has been a
slow and steady erosion of cos- mological theory. "

Christopher Key Chappel - Thomas Berry, Buddhism, and the New Cosmology
Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 18 (1998), pp. 147-154

And so it is with our study of Buddhist Ethics. We must understand the cosmology of Buddhism, the story that orients us - oriented the Buddha and his earliest followers. Yes, the study of specific terms and doctrines will shed light on us and the meaning of Buddhist Ethics, but without the cosmology, the framework, we tend to be shining a particularly bright beam on tiny specks of earth before us. What is needed is a greater understanding of the path as a whole...

Meditation and the Moral Cosmology of Buddhism

That's a title idea for a talk I will give at The University of Montana next spring. I want to discuss how meditation is filtering into modern society from the East (particularly from Buddhism, of course). But I also do want to cover some of the theoretical or cosmological significance of meditation and ethics from a Buddhist POV.

The notion will be that Meditation 'atunes' one to the cosmos, or the Dharma. It is a sort of 'turning away from' the mundane way of seeing life - a way dominated by greed, aversion, and delusion.

...

More to come...

Buddhist Ethics - is there one?

This a question that has been posed, to some extent or another, by various writers over the years. One of those is Damien Keown (author of "The Nature of Buddhist Ethics" and various articles) and another is Georges Dreyfus (see his 1995 JBE article here). Both contend that Buddhism never developed an actual "ethics" as we in the West would see it.

One defender of the theory that Buddhists DID in fact have substantive ethical deliberation (and thus a real 'Buddhist ethics') is Amod Lele (unpublished 2007 Harvard Ph.D. dissertation - my gratitude to him for sharing this with me) in his work on Śāntideva.

What do we think?

Some questions:

1. What constitutes "Ethics"?
2. When did it arise in the "West"?
3. What prevented it from arising in Asian contexts (if in fact it didn't)?

Keown's claim (borrowed from Lele, p.49):

While Buddhist teachings include normative aspects, such as
the Five Precepts and the rules of the Vinaya, these are typically
presented simply as injunctions, rather than as conclusions
logically deduced from explicitly stated values and principles. In
other words, the Precepts are simply announced, and one is left
to figure out the invisible superstructure from which they are
derived. Thus although Buddhism has normative teachings, it
does not have normative ethics. (Keown 2005, 50)

Dreyfus's claim:

First, Tibetan Buddhist traditions did not develop systematic theoretical reflections on the nature and scope of ethics. This is not to say, as has been often misunderstood, that these traditions are ethically weak. Like other rich traditions, Tibetan Buddhist traditions have developed substantive ethical systems, at the personal, interpersonal and social levels, while lacking a theoretical reflection on the nature of their ethical beliefs and practices. This lack of theoretical ethics, what we could call second degree ethics in opposition to substantive ethics, affects not only Tibetan Buddhism, but Indian Buddhism and other related traditions, and is quite remarkable given the richness of Indian Buddhist philosophical reflection in general. Compared to domains such as the philosophy of language and epistemology, Indian Buddhist traditions never developed a similar systematic reflection on the nature of ethical concepts. This is not to say that notions such as virtue or goodness are unknown in Indian Buddhist traditions, but that they are not taken to be philosophically interesting. Ethical concepts are studied, but they are not thought to warrant a theoretical discussion. For example, in the Vinaya literature, which is often taken as the main reference in ethical discussions in many Buddhist traditions, there are extensive substantive discussions: what are the precepts, what is included in them, what is excluded, etc. Very little attention is devoted, however, to the nature of ethical concepts. Precepts are discussed practically, but their status is not systematically theorized. (p.28-9 in aforementioned article)

Keown's article cited by Lele is in:

Keown, Damien. 2005. Buddhism: Morality Without Ethics? In Buddhist
Studies From India to America: Essays in Honor of Charles S. Prebish, edited
by Damien Keown. London: Routledge.

Aristotle, Buddhism, Kant, and Happiness

From a Buddhist discussion list I am on, there has been recent discussion of Aristotle's view of happiness:

From the Nicomachean Ethics (book 1):

"We are unwilling to call the living happy because changes may befall them and because we believe that happiness haws permanence and is not amenable to change under any circumstances."

"For it seems that to some extent good and evil really exist for a dead man, just as they may exist for a man who lives without being conscious of them, for example honors and disgraces, and generally the successes and failures of his children and descendents."

"Happiness, as we have said, requires completeness in virtue as well as a complete lifetime."

Additionally, I just found this:

Yet evidently, as we said, it needs the external goods as well; for it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper equipment. In many actions we use friends and riches and political power as instruments; and there are some things the lack of which takes the lustre from happiness, as good birth, goodly children, beauty; for the man who is very ugly in appearance or ill-born or solitary and childless is not very likely to be happy, and perhaps a man would be still less likely if he had thoroughly bad children or friends or had lost good children or friends by death. As we said, then, happiness seems to need this sort of prosperity in addition; for which reason some identify happiness with good fortune, though others identify it with virtue. (N.E. Book 1.8 - bolding mine)

This is opposed by Kant, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, wherein what is to be saught is not happiness but a good character (which, Kant assures, leads one to be worthy of happiness):

Good character, he wrote, should not be confused with
four other kinds of things we normally think of as good:
mental talents such as intelligence, wit, and judgment;
desirable temperamental qualities such as courage,
resoluteness, and perseverance; "gifts of fortune," as the
Greeks had called them, like power, wealth, health, and
honor; and, finally, what we all crave, happiness, that is,
"complete well-being and contentment with one’s state."(*)

Both Kant and Aristotle found unique value in the human capacity of reason. This is, at least prima facie, a far different starting point from Buddhism, which seems to focus on the path from suffering to its end (wherein reason Kant and Aristotle understand it lies in that journey is difficult matter to understand). Aristotle gave primacy to theoretical reason (theoria) and Kant to practical reason (morality).

As a Buddhist-Kantian I would suggest that the Buddha's emphasis was also on practical reason, the path to nirvana. But that could be too much splitting of hairs to be useful.

Anyhow, file this under rantings and ravings for now - no real point, just some points, perhaps to ponder.

* Roger Sullivan. The Review of Metaphysics Sept 1995 v49 n1 p77 (15)

A "Revisionist View of Buddhist Ethics" ?

In his 1994 paper, Buddhist Ethics in Western Context: The Virtues Approach, James Whitehill describes Damien Keown's work on Buddhist Ethics as a "well-argued, revisionist view of Buddhist ethics."

In a later paper (1995) Keown seems to acknowledge this distance of his own work from traditional Buddhism when he asks:

In the context of human rights, which is the theme of this paper, an important preliminary question would seem to be whether traditional Buddhism has any understanding of what is meant by "human rights" at all. Indeed, it may be thought that since the concept of "rights" is the product of an alien cultural tradition it would be utterly inappropriate to speak of rights of any kind - "human" or otherwise - in a Buddhist context. (from here, emphasis mine)

By this they seem to mean that Keown is consciously breaking from the "traditional" approach found in Asian countries and attempting to formulate a broader, more theoretical and systematic understanding of Buddhist Ethics.

Given this definition, my work will also take on a "revisionist" approach to Buddhist ethics. What this means exactly, I'm not sure. Both the traditionalist and Keown (and me for that matter) want to describe the actual ethics of Buddhism, not just something we are making up.

Perhaps the traditionalist looks more at what Buddhists do? Or what is primarily taught in the monasteries as ethics? Perhaps the traditionalist even shies away from the use of the term 'ethics', knowing it is a Western category and that no clear slice of 'Buddhism' (yet another Western category) will fit into it.

Perhaps what makes his work, and mine when I do it, revisionist is that it attempts to explain things in a way that Westerners will understand - distanced, objective, disengaged. Whereas the traditionalist writes to move the reader/student forward on the path. The objectives are different. But this is simply the difference between scholarly and practical/practitioner-based Buddhist works. Are these the same categories? Are there other similar categories -- such as immigrant/convert Buddhism in the West -- that have similar lack of utility beyond the most superficial usage?

What does it mean to break from "traditional" Buddhist thought? What limits must still be in place? Much to ponder...

Subject matter for thesis

I'm tossing around the idea a bit of narrowing my thesis material a small bit. You see, there are perhaps four great periods of writing on what we are shaping into 'Buddhist Ethics'.

The first great period lasted form the first century BCE (earliest likely start for the composition of the Pali Canon) until 450 CE (Buddhaghosa of 370–450 CE).

The second I will ignore for now, which overlaps a bit with the first, ranging from 100ish BCE and going until around 1930 (in Tibet). This period was the rise and expansion of Mahayana in its Asian form.

The third may begin in the 1500s, but nothing significant was produced until the 1800s and lasted until the late 20th century. This was the period of Western fascination with and interpretation of the Dharma.

The fourth began in the 1960s or 70s and continues to this day and is characterized by the writings of entrenched academics about Buddhism as an object of historical/philosophical (and most recently) anthropological curiosity.

I'm already cutting out the second phase (probably the largest, so that's good). And I'm thinking of avoiding as much of the third too (after some inconclusive dabbling and the feeling that I could go on many interesting but fruitless sideroads with it).

So - my thesis will focus on early Pali matieral, perhaps including some Abhidhamma and Buddhaghosa and recent scholarly work.

Yippee for cutting my reading assignment from 10,000 pages to 5,000. Read on, young Buddhist philosopher, read on.