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

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 13, 2011, at 22:41 , andy wrote:

> But, there is a sense in which Buddha  proposes a 
> teleological ethics, that claims to be non-defeasible. The Tathagata is he who 
> has done what is to be done, which implies it is to be done.  So virtue 
> ethics, aimed at consequences, but these are not the usual consequences of 
> happiness (a la Aristotle).  So a consequentialist ethics, based on an 
> omniscient insight, is equivalent to deontology?

There are two points in what you've said here that I'd like to respond to. 

First, the formula that is recited for any arhant (including the Buddha) is "done what was to be done." In the Sanskrit (or Pali) word translated as "what is/was to be done" there is an absolutely maddening systematic modal ambiguity. Every word of that form can mean what MUST be done or what CAN be done. Imagine how frustrating it is to encounter words that blur the distinction between possibility and necessity. This could account for why so many modal logicians feel they must commit suicide when they study Sanskrit. But already I digress. My point is that one can take "what is to be done" as a teleologicial necessity, but one needn't. One can also take it as a teleological option. There is a goal, to be sure, but it is not necessarily a goal for everyone. I prefer to see it (without anything stronger to back up my preference than sheer pluralistic prejudice on my part) as one goal among many that one may choose to pursue, and if one does choose to pursue that goal, then there are ways (note the plural) to achieve it. If one does choose that goal and manages to choose one of the many ways of achieving it, then one can be said to have "done what was to be done."

Second, I don't think that the nirvana of Buddhists is too much different from the eudaemonia of Aristotle. Both involve having a maximally healthy psyche that is free from all the vices that result in dissatisfaction. I don't see any important differences between eudaemonia (sometimes translated, somewhat feebly, as happiness) and kuśala-citta (healthy/competent/skillful mind). (Digression two: there is a most helpful article by our very own Lance Cousins on this topic. Cousins, L. S. “Good Or Skilful? Kusala in Canon and Commentary.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 3 (1996): 136–64. It's readily available on line at the JBE website, http://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/) I know that there are Buddhists, and even some Western philosophers, who have cultivated a contempt for Aristotle and hate to see anything Buddhist associated with him, but I happen to find Aristotle very helpful in his articulation of ideas that seem to me to resonate strongly with our good friend the Buddha. On the whole, I'm much more comfortable comparing the Buddha with various Greek thinkers than with modern and post-modern philosophers from anywhere but Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The third of my two points is that I think the jury is still out on whether or not claims made by the Buddha are non-defeasible. I have earned the eternal contempt of John Dunne for suggesting that one can (perhaps even must) read Dignāga as a fallibilist but that one cannot easily see Dharmakīrti in that light; I see Dignāga as being as strongly anti-dogmatic as I see Dharmakīrti as being dogmatic. As I read all the Mādhyamikas with whom I am familiar, they all seem to be robust fallibilists. But what about the Buddha himself? God only knows. There are at least as many Buddhas as there are Buddhists. My own prejudice leans toward a portrait of the Buddha as a laid back fallibilist, Pragmatist, relativist who is cool with pretty much anything, an ironist—in short, a sort of Richard Rorty without the paunch (except in Zen paintings, where the paunch remains intact).

The fourth of my two points is that when I first started poking, in 1995 or so, into the question of whether to see Buddhist ethics as a version of deontology, virtue ethics or consequentialism, I was quickly struck by how very difficult it is to decide. A good case can be made for any of those positions. This led me to two tentative conclusions (a redundancy, since ALL my conclusions are tentative): 1) Buddhist doctrine is so diverse that it is probably as wrong-headed to characterize all Buddhist ethics as having the same flavor as it would be to characterize all European philosophers or all Muslim philosophers as having the same approach to ethics; 2) since pretty much everyone who thinks about ethics at all takes into consideration good character, the consequences of actions, purpose and reason, pretty much everyone can be seen as being in some sense a virtue ethicist, a consequentialist and a deontologist, so perhaps the distinctions are of limited heuristic value when one is trying to explain things in a philosophy class, but if one becomes to adamant about them, these meta-ethical categories (like most categories) become obstacles rather than ladders. 

Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM