[Buddha-l] Non attached & mindful culinary triumphalism?

[Dan Lusthaus]

I see Andy took his vitamins today. Ok, let's dig in.

> It is in the nature of human culture to forbid
>> such relations (though their enforcement and degree and style of
>>  disapproval may vary, just as their taste in foods may vary --  
>> nonetheless
>>  all eat).
>
> Not a counter-case at all.

In fact, it is. It extracts a different conclusion from the same sets of 
data. Richard asserted that the fact that people BREAK rules indicates that 
what rules prohibit are not "in themselves bad" (malum in se). The counter 
case is that wherever one turns one finds such rules (with variation), and 
that such behavior is treated as a crime, misdeed, an "ought not to." So 
even if one grants that there are natural urges and appetites that drive 
some (not all) people to break the rules, this is still everywhere perceived 
and considered as a breaking of the rules. Ergo it is at least as "natural" 
to insist on and impose such rules as it is to have urges to stray.

This of course is precisely the sort of thing that Mencius and Gaozi argued 
about.

>Philosophically speaking (which I tend to do), the
> question is what is wrong with sexual impropiety itself?  We may suspect 
> that
> the fact that all human societies have some prohibitions on it means that
> there must be something "wrong" about it.  But that doesn't answer  the
> question.  What is wrong with it?

The desire to want to pin things down univocally is admirable, but not 
always practical and sometimes not feasible. As with the famous definition 
(was it O.W. Holmes?) of pornography: "I know it when I see it," some things 
are a bit elusive, retain some ambiguity and wiggling room, and yet are 
sufficiently clear under most circumstances to allow one to act 
appropriately in relation to them.

"Sexual impropriety" is a blanket term for a wide variety of behavoirs, and 
to expect they can be turned into an "it" in the singular, such that a 
single "wrong" can be defined of it, or even a single set of "wrongs", is 
simply confusion. What is wrong about "rape" is not necessarily what is 
wrong about "adultery," and (according to Indian dharma-sastra codes and 
vinaya) there is a difference between raping a prostitute, a nun and 
child -- all are rape, but the penalty (and degree or kind of guilt) is 
different in each case. Similarly for incest(s). Or adultery/-ies. Why 
homogenize the differences just to satisfy an urge for a univocal universal?

>> Richard commits the same fallacy that undergrads make when first 
>> presented
>> with Mencius' theory usually expressed (in English) as "Human Nature is
>> originally good." (Mencius is one of the early, great virtue ethicists.)
>> That fallacy is to misconstrue what is meant by nature. Mencius never
>> suggests that he means "nature" means "happens automatically." He never
>> contends that we all *automatically* do good. Rather his claim is that we
>> have the capacity for goodness, which, if it is nurtured, cultivated and
>> allowed to grow unhindered, will develop into a full fledged "virtue" 
>> (de).
>
> Category mistake: we are not talking about the polymorphous nature of 
> humans,
> but about the nature of the  good.

Who is this "we"? Mencius is not a platonist. He is not interested in the 
nature of the good. He is interested in how certain innate impulses to do 
good things (helping others, etc.) can be furthered, not simply for 
individual betterment, but to engender a healthier society (he was living 
during a time in China called the Warring States period, where everyone was 
asking the Rodney King question: "Why can't we all just get along?").

>Xunzi holds human nature is originally perverse,

He is often depicted that way in the secondary treatments, his position 
reduced to the misleading slogan: "Human nature is originally bad (or 
evil)." But his position is actually much more sophisticated. People are, he 
contends, basically selfish, and thus need to be trained, taught by an 
exemplary teacher, like Confucius, to help them overcome their selfish 
tendencies. He would fit right in with Rousseau, Adam Smith, and many other 
political/philosophical thinkers of that period. Since Zhuxi (Chu-hsi) (12th 
c.) pulled Mencius out of mothballs and gave him subsequent centrality in 
neo-confucian thinking, it is often overlooked that from the time of Xunzi 
(Hsun tzu) until Zhuxi, Confucians were basically Xunzi-ans, and largely 
ignored Mencius altogether. That's more than a 1000 years during which 
Confucianism and Xunzi were synonymous. Why the sudden switch under Zhuxi? 
Influence from Huayan, which had adopted a similarly rosy view of original 
buddha-nature in contrast to the Tiantai position, more Xunzi-an, viz., 
there must be some evil even in Buddha-nature.

>In either case, following
> the Dao is allegedly better than not.  The question is why?

Because it works, and it is the dao, lit. the "way" things work. Why is it 
better to put the horse before the cart? Because that is the dao of horse 
carts. The Chinese are more direct and focused on the practical, pragmatic, 
and utilitarian (in various mixes). The side-step to a universal justifier 
is not a dance they found interesting or inviting.

> Homo Ridens?  Are you sure it is "healthy" humans who have this capacity?

The fact that you would ask that makes me laugh.

> This presupposes ethical valuation, in advance.

We didn't discuss how I arrived at the conclusion, whether an apriori 
assertion or aposteriori conclusion, etc. Anyone who thinks that is a 
serious question is in some serious need of jocularity. Even Kant writes 
about jokes (in the 3rd critique).

> Moral claims are not ontological claims.

The point of Mencius' turn to the issue of basic human nature was precisely 
to give the virtues touted by Confucians an ontological basis, which is why 
the question of human-nature is the Chinese counterpart to the West's 
concern with ontology and the existence of God, occupying a similar 
ubiquitous, central position. And why Buddhism wasn't speaking (to) Chinese 
until it developed the idea of buddha-nature as the Buddhist entry in that 
unavoidable debate.

The distinction drawn by Buddhists -- and apparently British law -- between 
laws according to the nature of the act or according to conventional 
consensus suggests that for some ontology and morality are not separate 
domains, though morality includes an "artificial" as well as a "natural" 
domain.

>But they do tend to be universal
> claims.

That is the precise point when ethics degenerates into moralism, and when 
the problems begin.

>When Buddhists say that killing is wrong, the implication is that it
> is always wrong, and wrong for anyone to do.

Even Buddhists qualify this. The Skt passage from the Bodhisattvabhumi that 
I recently posted stipulates under which conditions one SHOULD kill a 
tyrant. The rules against killing are much stricter when applied to clerics 
than to laypeople, and even less to rulers or soldiers. So your assumption 
that an elusive "universal" -- applied equally to all once and for all -- is 
entailed by Buddhists stating that killing is wrong is itself wrong.

> Again, the question is "why?"

Actually, it tends to be "which?"

> Now if our justification for such a prohibition is that it can have bad
> consequences, we have made it into a principle of prudence rather than
> morality,

You are working toward a very narrow sense of morality. Careful you don't 
end up straitjacketing yourself.

>and we have to inquire into what makes a consequence bad.

If one of many reasons that can be given for why killing is bad is that it 
produces bad consequences, the first question is "which" -- which sorts of 
bad consequences? And to whom? The killer? The killee? Others? Whom? Family? 
Associates? Society in general? And so on. Do they all suffer the same bad 
consequence, or are there different consequences, or even a range of 
multiple types of consequences that can accrue to each?

>If we say
> it goes against human nature (though that seems questionable!),

Because we have yet to clarify which sense(s) of human nature are at play in 
such claims.

>we have made a
> presumption that human nature is good. And if we just say that it is a 
> malum
> in se, well that doesn't even address the question of why it is wrong.

This is a straightjacket of your own devising. I've suggested a few ways to 
avoid snagging yourself in it, but once tied in, I'll leave you to work your 
own way out. The guard will be along to feed you presently...

> Buddhism says that killing is wrong because it causes suffering. That's 
> all.

That's one of many reasons, and again, the issue is "which?" and "to whom?" 
Followed by "how?" Followed by: "What can be done to avoid, rectify, or 
ameliorate this?" They also say one goes to hell. Depending on who you kill, 
maybe even Avici hell. It obligates you to recompense your victim in a 
future life. In fact, if one would thoroughly survey the literature, one 
would find MANY reasons -- some more persuasive or compelling to a modern 
audience than others -- but the fact that killing produces observable 
negative consequences does not cancel out that the reason this is the case 
is because the action itself is negative. It only buttresses that point, 
providing supporting evidence.

> But then so do harsh speech, intoxication, and sexual impropiety.  And if 
> any
> of these actions did not have this consequence, they would not be wrong.

"...*this* consequence"? A good illustration of the mire the demand for 
reduction to a singular case entails. See above.

> Which leads us to upaya, and exemptions to the "universal" rule against
> killing. This is what I find problematic, in regard to "buddhist warfare."

Upaya is only one type of justification or license. It gets more 
complicated.

> The attraction of Buddhism
> is the metaphysics, and how that produces a Buddhist ethics.

There are other attractions, even for us philosophers.

Dan