Abstract
It is often observed that there is little or no moral philosophy in classical Indian Buddhist thought. This is sometimes believed to be surprising since obviously there is an ethical teaching in Buddhism and clearly there are other forms of Buddhist philosophy. In my view, there is something that can plausibly be called moral philosophy in Indian Buddhism, but it is not quite what many people have expected because they have approached the issue from a specific understanding of philosophy that is too limited. I propose to defend this interpretation by reshaping Mark Siderits’ concept of fusion philosophy. The fusion I will propose reveals a form of moral philosophy that may be called self-cultivation philosophy. I will argue that this was a common activity in ancient Chinese, Greek and Indian cultures—including especially early Buddhist thought and practice.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Siderits (2003, pp. xi–xii).
- 3.
See Parfit (1984).
- 4.
For a more recent defense of fusion philosophy, using confluence philosophy as a synonym, and an overview of some work from this approach, see Siderits (2017).
- 5.
For his own account, see Santana (2014).
- 6.
For a similar interpretation of fusion music, see Fellezs (2011).
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
See Ch. 23 of Xunzi for the explanation of Xunzi’s view.
- 13.
Hutton (2014, p. 248 (23.19–24)). In references to historical texts, where ordinary pagination is supplemented by another system, this is given in parentheses.
- 14.
Hutton (2014, p. 233 (21.363)). For Xunzi’s epistemology, see Ch. 21 of Xunzi as a whole.
- 15.
Hutton (2014, p. 8 (1.221–25)).
- 16.
Hutton (2014, p. 218 (20.13)). In an illustration of the earlier point about the broad concept of self-cultivation, Xunzi goes on to say that proper music can cause “perverse and corrupt qi to have no place to attach itself” to us (p. 218 (20.13–14)).
- 17.
However, it is worth noting the challenge to this assessment in the interpretation of Confucius in Fingarette (1972).
- 18.
In recent years, the expression “philosophy as a way of life” has been employed increasingly to refer to many of the phenomena I call self-cultivation philosophies. However, the phrase “way of life” is not the best for my purpose. A philosophy could be a way of life without having the specific structure of self-cultivation philosophies I outline here.
- 19.
Williams (1985, p. 4). See the whole of Williams’ first chapter for an account of the importance of this question.
- 20.
For a defense of Classical Chinese thought as philosophy, see Van Norden (2017).
- 21.
Aristotle (2002, p. 112) (II.2 at the beginning), emphasis added.
- 22.
This is similar to, though not quite the same as, the idea of transformative experience in Paul (2014).
- 23.
See Ganeri (2019, p. 16).
- 24.
- 25.
Descartes (1993, pp. 26–7 (VI, 38–9)).
- 26.
For example, see Lloyd (1990, p. 124).
- 27.
For interpretations of Epicurus or ancient Epicureanism that in various ways emphasize these features, though without stressing the phrase self-cultivation philosophy, see Cooper (2012, pp. 226–76), Hadot (2002, pp. 113–26), McEvilley (2002, pp. 611–21), Nussbaum (1994, ch. 4), Sorabji (2000) and Tsouna (2009).
- 28.
See Inwood and Gerson (1997, pp. 28–36).
- 29.
Inwood and Gerson (1997, p. 97) (a fragment quoted by Porphyry).
- 30.
See Nussbaum (1994, ch. 1).
- 31.
Inwood and Gerson (1997, p. 28 (122)).
- 32.
Inwood and Gerson (1997, p. 31 (135)).
- 33.
Inwood and Gerson (1997, p. 100) (a fragment quoted by Porphyry).
- 34.
Inwood and Gerson (1997, p. 43) (a fragment quoted by Diogenes).
- 35.
Inwood and Gerson (1997, pp. 30–31 (131)).
- 36.
See O’Keefe (2010, pp. 107 and 120).
- 37.
See Tsouna (2009) for a nice summary of these in the Epicurean tradition.
- 38.
- 39.
Inwood and Gerson (1997, p. 30 (131)).
- 40.
See Soni (2010).
- 41.
Ñāṇamoli and Bodhi (1995, pp. 533–36 (I 426–32)).
- 42.
See the “Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta” in Ñāṇamoli and Bodhi (1995, pp. 132–44 (I 46–55)) (leaving aside complications raised by “no view” passages that appear in the Sutta Nipāta).
- 43.
See Ñāṇamoli and Bodhi (1995, pp. 614–16 (I 510–12) and 867 (II 260)).
- 44.
- 45.
- 46.
For example, see Bodhi (2012, pp. 291–94 (I 201–205)).
- 47.
Ñāṇamoli and Bodhi (1995, p. 398 (I 301)). I take the Eightfold Path to be a summary of some of the more important practices required to attain enlightenment, not an exhaustive account of all the practices in the Buddha’s teaching.
- 48.
Ñāṇamoli and Bodhi (1995, p. 390 (I 294)).
- 49.
Walshe (1987, p. 131 (I 124)).
- 50.
- 51.
Ñāṇamoli and Bodhi (1995, pp. 782 (II 173) and 260 (I 167)) respectively.
- 52.
It might also be claimed, from a Mahāyāna point of view, that emptiness, the claim that nothing has an inherent nature, also supports this objection. But I would question this as well. On account of limited space, I have focused here on early Buddhism mainly as expressed in the Pali Canon. However, the basic features of Buddhism I have drawn attention to, such as its psychological analyses, are also present in Mahāyāna Buddhism, and similar (though somewhat more complicated) points could be made there. It might also be objected that, on account of the no-self teaching, it is paradoxical to attribute a self-cultivation philosophy to Buddhism. But any account of Buddhist thought and practice faces this paradox (which is one motivation for the development of distinctions between conventional and ultimate truth).
- 53.
For example, see Ñāṇamoli and Bodhi (1995, pp. 151–54 (I 60–62)).
- 54.
- 55.
The great historical precedent for this, of course, is the development of Buddhism in China starting about the first century C.E. Both the emergence of Chan and the development of what is often called Neo-Confucianism reflect the interaction of Buddhism and native Chinese traditions such as Confucianism and Daoism.
- 56.
- 57.
- 58.
For instance, see Tirch et al. (2016).
- 59.
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Gowans, C.W. (2023). Self-Cultivation Philosophy as Fusion Philosophy: An Interpretation of Buddhist Moral Thought. In: Coseru, C. (eds) Reasons and Empty Persons: Mind, Metaphysics, and Morality. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 36. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13995-6_21
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