Sophia

, Volume 56, Issue 2, pp 337–354 | Cite as

Imagine Being a Preta: Early Indian Yogācāra Approaches to Intersubjectivity

Article
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Abstract

The paper deals with the early Yogācāra strategies for explaining intersubjective agreement under a ‘mere representations’ view. Examining Vasubandhu, Asaṅga, and Sthiramati’s use of the example of intersubjective agreement among the hungry ghosts (pretas), it is demonstrated that in contrast to the way in which it was often interpreted by contemporary scholars, this example in fact served these Yogācāra thinkers to perform an ironic inversion of the realist premise—showing that intersubjective agreement not only does not require the existence of mind-independent objects but is in fact incompatible with their existence. By delineating the phenomenological complexity underlying this account, the paper then proceeds to unpack the emergent Yogācāra account of intersubjectivity, its implications on the understanding of being, the life-world, and alterity, arguing that it proposes a radical revision of the way we conceive of the ‘shared’ and ‘private’ distinction in respect to experiences, both ordinarily and philosophically.

Keywords

Buddhism Yogācāra Intersubjectivity Cosmology Personal identity Hell Vasubandhu Sthiramati Asaṅga 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This paper is part of a broader research project on the concept of the external world (Sattva-bhājana-loka) in Early Indian Yogācāra Buddhism, which I have been pursuing with the generous support of the Marie Curie IRG fellowship of the EU (CORDIS). An early version of the paper was presented as part of the Aspects of No-Self lecture series at the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies, University of Hamburg, Germany, and I am grateful to the Center’s director, Michael Zimmerman, for his kind support. I am especially indebted to Jay Garfield, Yale-NUS College, and Sonam Kachru, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, from both whose comments I have benefited greatly. Any mistakes if befall are of course mine alone.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of East Asian StudiesTel Aviv UniversityTel AvivIsrael

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