Abstract
For many environmental philosophers, the dualisms intrinsic to Modernity that separate body from mind and nature from culture must be deconstructed in order to develop an inclusive ecology that might respond to the Anthropocene Age. In seeking alternatives to human exceptionalism and humans as exclusive owners of souls to the exclusion of other animals, many scholars have turned to Asian philosophies founded in presuppositions that are far more eco-centric. Focusing on Buddhism, this article will outline some eco-centric aspects of Buddhist dogma, focusing on the idea of co-dependent origination and the Buddhist idea that all things are empty of inherent existence and are constituted through relationality. Then we will show how such Buddhist ideas have been used to develop an ecology that instead of abstracting itself from place, as modern theories are wont to do, seeks to develop an intrinsic relationship to place, and even to locate subjectivity there. This is the Japanese theory of Fudo, developed by twentieth century philosopher Tetsuro Watsuji, a theory that is able to move beyond the dualisms of Western ideology to provide a promising response to the Anthropocene Age. If the being of being human is co-determined and co-dependent upon its milieu and upon the community of others living in such a milieu, we should be focusing on finding ways to re-claim and re-value such milieu as constitutive of human development and flourishing. In this way, we can replace Western universals and intrinsic essence with ontological specificity and the shared inter-dependent experience of community.
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Notes
Callicott and Ames express this well: ‘The real-world problems which taken together constitute the so-called “environmental crisis” appear to be of such ubiquity, magnitude, recalcitrance, and synergistic complexity, that they force on philosophy the task not of applying familiar ethical theories, long in place, but of rethinking the underlying moral and metaphysical assumptions that seem to have had a significant role in bringing on the crisis. Environmental philosophy, in other words, begins with the idea that traditional metaphysics and moral theory are more at the root of environmental problems than tools for their solution…. Environmental problems provide less the occasion for the exercise and application than for the criticism and recasting of Western moral and metaphysical presuppositions.’ Callicott, J. Baird/Ames, Roger T., ‘Introduction: The Asian Traditions as a Conceptual Resource for Environmental Philosophy’ (1–21) in Callicott, J. Barif/Ames, Roger T. (eds.) Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, 1989, Albany: SUNY Press, pp. 1–2.
There are, or course, many different schools of Buddhism, and Buddhism is practiced in myriad ways across the world. In this introduction, I will be presenting a form of Mahayana Buddhism that is inflected by Buddhist modernism, in other words by the academic study of Buddhism. This is the form of Buddhism adopted by Watsuji himself, and thus consonant with his environmental project.
The Noble Eightfold Path
1. Right understanding (Samma ditthi)
2. Right thought (Samma sankappa)
3. Right speech (Samma vaca)
4. Right action (Samma kammanta)
5. Right livelihood (Samma ajiva)
6. Right effort (Samma vayama)
7. Right mindfulness (Samma sati)
8. Right concentration (Samma samadhi)
In the Theravada tradition, the cycle of interdependent-origination is used to explain the origin of suffering in ignorance (avidya), rather than the relational nature of the real.
However ecologically sound these views are, and in seeming agreement with earth system science, there are of course ways of interpreting Buddhism in a more problematic light. Some scholars have noted that Buddhism can be interpreted in terms of cosmological dualism, pointing to the distinction between Saṃsāra (the world of illusion) and nirvana. Is seeking nirvana seeking an escape from the earthly realm of illusion, similar in this sense to the role that heaven plays in Christianity? Is nirvana an existence in a dimension not of this earth? As Buddhist scholar Joel Krueger points out, such a dualistic interpretation is supported by the Four Stages of Enlightenment of the Theravada tradition. He asks, ‘If the nonreturner continues to practice after death, where does he or she reside while doing so? If nibbana is a place or a state that transcends this world, it is a version of cosmological dualism’ (2011: p. 52). Yet as Krueger himself points out, such an interpretation is contradicted in the Mahayana tradition, and in particular in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā written by Nagarjuna (200 CE). In this text, he famously wrote that ‘There is not the slightest difference between nirvana and samsara’ (Garfield, 1995: p. 75). There is thus a single reality that can phenomenologically be perceived differently depending upon one’s level of understanding. Nirvana is Saṃsāra without illusions. There may therefore be aspects of dualism in the Theravada tradition that were later resolved in the Mahayana tradition.
Another risk that is particularly apparent in Western new-age interpretations of Buddhism is what Buddhist teacher and scholar Joanna Macy calls a ‘spiritual trap,’ by which she means the trend to think that reality is solely constituted by the mind, and thus that ‘thinking positively’ is all one needs to do to reach individual happiness and set the world straight. If the power of our mind influences the world we perceive, this is often interpreted to mean that thinking positive thoughts is enough to transform the world, and thus no struggles for justice to defend the vulnerable and fight to improve ecological and political standards, are necessary. As Macy writes: ‘We feel then so peaceful that the world will become peaceful without our need to act’ (1991: p. 55). Though it is true that samsara is conditioned by ignorance as a mental state, this in no way implies that our actions and the results of said actions are immaterial. The ethical rules the Buddha set down, such as vegetarianism and sexual abstinence, would make no sense otherwise.
Such a theory is similar to theories such as that of Gilbert Simondon’s theory of individuation, that seek to focus on the social processes of individuation, and the semiotic modes of communication between individual and group.
Sevilla writes: ‘This consistency across Watsuji’s readings of Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna Buddhisms demonstrates that his view of Buddhism is not necessarily faithful to the doctrine or the historical practices of various forms of Buddhism. Rather, it is best seen as a form of modern Buddhism, deeply inspired by phenomenology and dialectics, and largely peculiar to Watsuji himself.’ (Sevilla, 2017: p. 268).
His book on Japanese temples will be followed by three more books about ancient Japanese culture, Nihon kodai bunka (Ancient Japanese Culture). William Lafleur attributes this turn back to Japanese traditions to the death of Watsuji’s favorite novelist, Natsume Soseki (Lafleur, 1978: p. 240) and he will indeed publish a book reminiscing about both Soseki and Buddhism in 1918, Guzo Saiko (Resurrecting Idols). In 1926, he wrote his Shamon Dôgen (Dogen the Monk), a widely read book on Soto Zen monk Dogen followed in 1929 by an edited translation of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, bringing Dogen back from oblivion and to the center of Japanese Buddhist research. As Lafleur points out ‘Were it not for this book, it is entirely possible that no one outside of the Sōtō sect would be reading Dōgen today’ (Lafleur, 1978: p. 213). In 1927, he wrote his most consistent treatise on Buddhism, his Genshi Bukkyô no jissen tetsugaku (The Practical Philosophy of Primitive Buddhism), followed in 1935 by a book about the reception of Buddhism in Japan, Zoku Nihon seishinshi kenkyû (Further Studies on the History of Japanese Spirit). The last book he was to publish in 1963, after publishing his masterpieces Fudo (Climate and Culture) in 1935 and Rinrigaku (his three-volume Ethics) in 1937, 1942, and 1949, was also devoted to Buddhism, his Bukkyô tetsugaku no saisho no tenkai (The Early Development of Buddhist Philosophy).
‘Drawing deeply on Buddhist, Chinese and Japanese sources, Watsuji’s work helps us advance toward an understanding of the relationality of human being that Western philosophy has only begun to fathom. While Continental, feminist, and environmental philosophies have struggled to find ways of thinking about selfhood, body and nature in ways that avoid the pitfalls of dualism and essentialism, they have not been fully successful as these ideas are so well entrenched in most of Western philosophy. Watsuji’s philosophy provides us with ways of thinking through who we are and how we inhabit our world in ways that are nondualistic and yet still allow for difference.’ (McCarthy, 2017: p. 519).
If Heidegger’s influence on Watsuji is explicit, Reinhard May and Graham Parkes have suggested that Heidegger as well may very well have been influenced by the Japanese thinkers in his milieu to integrate the concept of emptiness into Being and Time, which he developed into his central idea of das Nicht. Indeed, in his text ‘A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer’ in his book On the Way to Language, Heidegger notes the correspondence between emptiness and das Nicht (Johnson, 2019: p. 6), particularly in its relation to death, which is of course central to Buddhist thought and Japanese philosophy (May, 1996; Parkes, 1996).
‘Fudo has been variously translated into English as climate and culture, climate, and milieu. The problem with the term climate is that it does not register the connection to human life and culture that is intimated in the term fudo…. The phrase climate and culture, which was used to translate the title of Watsuji’s book into English, has the virtue of indicating the way fudo extends beyond the mere physicality of nature, but this pair is too cumbersome to use in translating every instance of the occurrence of the term fudo. In addition, the use of a pair of terms to translate a single concept also gives the mistaken impression that fudo consists of, or can be divided into, two distinct and separate entities. The geographer and theorist Augustin Berque – who is also the French translator of Watsuji’s Fudo – has made a case for translating fudo as milieu in both French and English. This usage has certain advantages, especially in terms of moving the reader away from the idea of an objective “natural environment.” On the other hand, in English milieu primarily connotes a social environment, and it does not really convey the vital and all-important sense of nature as the ground of fudo.’ (Johnson, 2019: p. 24).
Watsuji, ‘The Study of Human Being,’ JPS 860, cited Lafleur, 1978: p. 219. Watsuji repeats this concept in his Rinrigaku: ‘What I have described as a human being's existence as betweenness is that which renders individuals and societies capable of occurring in their reciprocal negations’ (Rinrigaku, pp. 101–102, cited Mochizuki, 2006: p. 49).
Sevilla (2014) claims that ‘Watsuji gives two separate models’ (2014: p. 112), hesitating between an endless cycle, and a dialectic with absolute totality figuring as the final synthesis. Yet Sevilla himself points out that in the Rinrigaku absolute totality is always dependent upon individual contingent traditions to give it form, and thus that the dialectic is co-dependent and cannot be sublated.
Watsuji seemed to have regretted his understanding of Japanese exclusivity after the end of the war. Indeed, he made significant changes in the third and last volume of the Rinrigaku, removing those statements that had earlier defended the sacrifice of the individual for the State. In this third volume, Watsuji will introduce the concept of humankind as a dialectical value able to limit the power and authority of the Nation-State as ‘national sonzai.’ In this volume, in order to allow for the dialectical play between humankind and nation, he will defend an open boundary politics for Japan, and blame the closed country policy for Japan’s failure during the war (Sevilla, 2014).
P. J. Crutzen and C. Schwägerl, ‘Living in the Anthropocene: Toward a New Global Ethos,’ Yale Environment 360, January 24, 2011, http://e360.yale.edu/features/living_in_the_anthropocene_toward_a_new_global_ethos.
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This article is adapted from Arianne Conty, Grounding God: Religious Responses to the Anthropocene (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2023), pp. 55–74. © 2023 State University of New York. All Rights Reserved.
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Conty, A. Fudo: a Buddhist Response to the Anthropocene. SOPHIA (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-023-00982-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-023-00982-z