Abstract
Is Yogācāra a system of idealist metaphysics or a theory of experience without metaphysical commitments? An increasing amount of literature has argued, since the 1980s, in favor of the second answer. In this paper, I propose to review the background to the question. In fact, most of the attempts to answer the question have been made with reference to Buddhist texts and concepts. However, labels such as “idealism” emerged from Western philosophy and are reflective of specific historical situations and problems. Extending their use to other contexts requires that these specificities are taken into account. Building on an historical survey, I suggest that some essential features of Yogācāra correspond to features of an ancient Greek tradition of metaphysics that has been characterized as idealist: Neoplatonism. On this basis, I come back to the initial question and argue in favor of the idealist interpretation.
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Notes
(See Sharf, 2016, 778).
The most notable exceptions to this phenomenon are (McEvilley, 1980), (Kloetzli, 2007) and (Sabo, 2017). Sabo’s paper is, as far as I can see, unique. He is the first scholar to take note of parallelisms in imagery, language and ideas in Plotinus and Vasubandhu. He rehabilitates the older (Stcherbatsky, Lamotte, etc.) tradition of interpreting dharmadhātu as ‘Absolute Being’ (Sabo, 2017, 496).
The only term coming into question is prapañca (see Ferraro, 2020, 422), but prapañca ‘is a word which in Pali and BHS is very hard to define; a careful and searching study of the Pali is needed, and has not been made’ (Edgerton, 1953, 380). It remains to prove that this word has anything to do with conceptual proliferation, in the sense of a way of thinking disconnected from a supposedly unknowable reality.
In the following, I position myself against Miles Burnyeat’s thesis that idealism is incompatible with ancient philosophy. Markus Gabriel has convincingly sought to establish, against Burnyeat, that idealism is an answer to the problem of the external world and the doubts that relate to it (Gabriel 2007). He draws, among others, on an idea expressed by Jens Halfwassen (Halfwassen, 2002). Halfwassen thinks that both Hegel’s absolute idealism and Descartes’ skeptical argument have a ‘Vorgeschichte’ in ancient Neoplatonism, and particularly in Plotinian nous (Halfwassen, 2012, 208).
The relation between the Mind and the ideas or forms has been expressed in various ways: In Alexandrian Medioplatonic thought (Philo and Clement), tbe Mind is a place or container of ideas, in classical Neoplatonic thought (Plotinus and Proclus, e.g. inst. theol. prop. 177), the Mind is constituted by the totality of ideas, etc. I use “support” as a generic term that allows the above, and other interpretations. For Medioplatonic and Patristic references, see in particular (Lilla, 1990).
In Plotinus and Proclus, Mind constitutes Being by conceiving it, and hence, the thinking of the Mind and Being are identical: ταὐτὸν τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ νοεῖν εἶναι (Plot. Enn. III 8 8 8), τὸ γὰρ εἶναι καὶ τὸ νοεῖν ἓν ἄµφω·.
καὶ γὰρ ὁ νοῦς καὶ πᾶν τὸ ὂν τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ ταὐτόν. (Procl. inst. theol. prop. 174).
(Wagner 1986, 57).
See (O’Meara 1993, 78).
(Bussanich 1994, 21s.). Bussanich refers, in his plea for mind-dependence instead of idealism, to (Williams 1981), who was later backed by (Burnyeat 1982). The discussion revolves around the modalities of how the term “idealism” can be used with reference to Neoplatonism. In this article, I side with Halfwassen’s, Wagner’s, and Gabriel’s point of view that not only in terms of the real productiveness and causal agency does Neoplatonist Spirit allow us to label Neoplatonism as idealist, but also in terms of doubt about the consistency of anything non-intellectual.
The term is taken from Asaṅga’s Mahāyānasūtrālamkāra IX,12, which I quote from (Davidson 1985).
lakṣaṇaṃ hy āvṛtis tatvaṃ pratipakṣasya bhāvanā | tatra ca. sthā phalaprāptir yānānuttaryam eva ca. (MVBh, ed. Nagao 17.3s.).
Enn. V, 5, 4, 9s.: ἀποστατῆσαι µηδὲ τοὐλάχιστον µηδὲ εἰς δύο προελθεῖν, ‘neither to prescind from it the least, nor to go over to duality’.
I take this term from the Tübingen tradition, as represented by Jens Halfwassen. Halfwassen considers Plotinus’ philosophy as as an attempt ‘Platons Philosophie von ihrem tragenden, alles bestimmenden Grundgedanken her, nämlich dem Gedanken des Einen, als eine in sich konsequente Prinzipientheorie zu rekonstruieren’ (Halfwassen, 2015, 150).
(Oh 1979, 77) here uses Jikido Takasaki’s expression. The article discusses dharmadhātu in Chinese and Indian contexts.
(Murti 1955, 9) e.g., where he makes a fine observation about the complex relationship between Kant and Hegel, analogically to that between Mādhyamika and Yogācāra.
(Kitayama 1934).
See (Kitayama 1934, 52).
In fact, Kitayama reflects on texts that participate in different religious and literary frameworks, such as the tathāgatagarbha doctrine (Kitayama 1934, 52), Pali Buddhism (Kitayama 1934, 5), the Abhidharmakośa (Kitayama 1934, 70), etc. A survey of his sources furthermore reveals that he relied on the Taishō Tripiṭaka almost exclusively, viz. that he read most texts in their Chinese version.
See the recent discovery of the Berenike Buddha (Parker 2023).
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Muller, F. The Problem of Yogācāra Idealism. J Indian Philos 51, 707–730 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-023-09552-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-023-09552-6