The guy who already wrote my book (part 1)

Last updated on: March 15, 2010 at 4:16 am by Justin Whitaker

The guy who already wrote my book (part 1) 2010-03-15T04:16:00-06:00 Justin Whitaker

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A comparative study of early Buddhism and Kantian philosophy by S.G.M. Weerasinghe

This is essentially the topic of my doctoral thesis, and here it is, all in 88 pages plus a glossary and index. Sadly though, I can’t really recommend the book. Even though it’s short (usually a plus in my world) and covers topics quite dear to my heart, it also has more than its share of flaws. To start, it’s written from something of a Buddhist triumphalist standpoint. Statements like “Early Buddhist philosophy is a royal highway for all those who wish to attain the summum bonum. the ideal of human life. It is a remarkable religio-philosophy complete in every respect” (p.11) are nice, but they’re a clear sign that scholarly objectivity (an ideal, never actualized) is not going to be present.

On the other hand, the suggestion that “The perfection of morality cannot be achieved without an innumerable number of rebirths (in saṃsāra). Thus the idea of rebirth is implied in Kantianism” (p.9) also shows a total lack of sensitivity to the context of Kant’s writing. Particularly appalling is the claim, a few pages later that Kant’s “kingdom of ends” is a “fairy tale” from a Buddhist point of view. The Kingdom of Ends is for Kant a sort of heavenly ideal – not a blissed-out happy-go-lucky heaven, but simply one in which all beings treat each other out of respect, i.e. all beings act fully morally.

There are many commendable points though.

The comparison of Kant’s antinomies (pairs of opposing propositions that both cannot be true but could not be proved either way) and the Buddha’s silence on certain metaphysical questions is helpful and informative. In Kant’s works these include the propositions that

the world is infinite or finite,
all composite things are made up of simple parts, or there are no simple parts,
free-will or determinism is true, and
there is or is not a necessary being (God).

Discussing Kant’s response, Weerasinghe writes:

Kant shows that both thesis and antithesis in the above ‘four pairs’ can equally be supported with a (seemingly) valid proof (CPR., A 426 B 454 – A 463 B 491). Therefore he concludes that they are all pseudo-rational assertions (Ger. vernünftelnde Behauptungen) appearing to rest on an empty concept (Ger. einen leeren Begriff ) (CPR., A 494 B 518). In other words Kant implies that they are all wrong propositions (i.e. judgements) originated from a wrong assumption (i.e. the concept of the world) based on the category of totality (CPR., A 426 B 454 – A 428 B 456) and consequently are having no validity in themselves. (p.31)

This sounds much like the analyses of Buddha’s response to the wanderer Vacchagotta in The Grouped Sayings by the Buddha. Samyutta Nikāya. Book III 257-263 The Vacchagotta section 33. Thread on Not Knowing: Aññānā Sutta (1-55). As he points out, Vacchagotta posed similar questions to the Buddha out of “curiosity without any ethical aim” (p.33).

The chapter comparing the Epistemology (theory of knowledge) of Kant and the Buddha also furthers the Kant-bashing and Buddha-loving of previous chapters, while not failing to point out some central ideas of each.

Thus our empirical knowledge, according to Kant, is a reconstruction of what we experience in our daily life. In other words, it is a distortion of the true picture of the external world or, for that matter, anything which is experienced as knowledge. (p.41)

This is well-compared to the Buddha’s concept of ignorance (avijjā) giving rise to our perception of the world of compound objects. To see without ignorance is to see the voidness of all things.

I’ll stop there for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll finish up with the Epistemology and the largest chapter, Ethics. Then, maybe, I’ll get back to Buddhism, Brain, and Mind, a thought-stream I started over a week ago and left hanging. Oh, and then there are some Buddha-barn pics to post… Should be a fun Monday. 🙂

Part 2 is up here.

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