Maverick Philosopher

I. THE ANATTA DOCTRINE

The anatta (Sanskrit: anatman) doctrine lies at the very heart of Buddhist thought and practice. The Pali and Sanskrit words translate literally as “no self”; but the doctrine applies not only to persons but to non-persons as well.[1] In its extreme form, associated with the Theravadins, the “no self” claim is that nothing possesses selfhood or self-nature or “own-being,” not even nibbana “itself.” It is this extreme or unrestricted form of the doctrine that will be under examination here. Is it true that nothing at all has self-nature? Is this even possibly true? These invite the logically prior question: what would it be for an item to have or lack self-nature?

If a substance be defined as anything metaphysically capable of independent existence, then perhaps we can interpret the anatta doctrine as a denial of the existence of substances.[2] The claim would then be that in ultimate reality there are no substances: what we ordinarily take to be such are wrongly so taken. Accordingly, a pervasive ignorance (avijja) infects our ordinary view of the world. It is not an ignorance about this or that matter of fact, but one about the world’s ontological structure. We interpret what is impermanent (anicca) as if it were permanent and substantial, or at least as possessing a core of permanence. Thus if we admit change, as in some sense we must, we yet seek to “contain it” by interpreting it as a mere change in properties or states which leaves the “underlying” substance of a person or thing unchanged. So interpreted, change is mere alteration, a self-same thing’s having incompatible properties at different times. But if there are no substances, and thus no

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unchanging substrates of alteration, then change “cuts deeper,” affecting not only the properties and states of changing things, but also their very existence and identity.

In our own case, there is a tendency to contain the change that obviously affects our bodies, mental states, and fortunes in the world by ascribing to ourselves something like a soul-substance or ego-substance that remains the same through time and change. The postulation of such a substance is often held to be justified on account of its ability to explain a range of data: (i) it accounts for the unity of consciousness at a time, thus explaining how, for instance, seeing a bird and hearing it sing can come together in one act of consciousness; (ii) it accounts for personal identity over time, explaining how one can “reap what one sows,” (that is, experience in the present the consequences of past actions and omissions), and thus how one can now be legitimately held responsible for past acts and omissions; (iii) it accounts for the free origination of one’s actions and is thus their free (hence, morally responsible) agent; (iv) it is that in one which knows when something is known, believes when something is believed, etc.; (v) it is that which makes one unique and distinct from everything else and “irreplaceable” and thus of moral dignity. In sum, the soul-substance is postulated to play the roles of unifier, continuant, doer, knower, and dignifier. If the anatta doctrine is right, however, this postulation of an ego- or soul-substance has no ultimate justification, but arises merely from an ignorant craving for permanence that nothing can satisfy, nothing in the sense-world to be sure, but also nothing in any realms that might lie beyond it.

This putative ignorance about the ontological structure of the world is not a merely theoretical matter, but a deeply practical one: on the Buddhist doctrine, suffering (dukkha) arises from the unavoidable frustration of our desire for permanence, a desire rooted in our ignorant taking of what is impermanent and “selfless” as the opposite. And for Buddhism, suffering is the primary fact, as the First Noble Truth attests. It is not only the primary fact but an all-pervasive one: Sabbe dhamma dukkha, all things are unsatisfactory. Thus even what is ordinarily taken to be satisfactory (sukha), a state of mental or physical pleasure for example, is ultimately unsatisfactory when correctly viewed. For one with right view, the opposite of dukkha is not sukha, but nibbana: the opposite of suffering is not a positive state, pleasure or satisfaction, but a privative state, absence or cessation of suffering.

To eradicate suffering, therefore, we must come to see the world for what it is: void of self-nature. If nothing in the world has self-nature, then the world is impermanent and unsatisfactory “all the way down,” so that there is literally nothing to cling to and nothing in which to find lasting satisfaction. The worldling (puthujjana), who of course to some extent recognizes both impermanence and suffering, believes nonetheless that on balance he will escape from them and enjoy a life that, viewed as a whole, could be adjudged satisfactory. Or at least he believes that he has a good chance at achieving such a life, and that therefore the effort to achieve it is well worth making. Buddha’s doctrine, however, is that there is no escape for any sentient being from unsatisfactoriness no matter how fortunate or well-endowed: impermanence and suffering are ubiquitous. Not even death constitutes escape: there is re-birth to be reckoned with, and bad living might land one in a predicament worse than the present one. One who gains intuitive insight into the truth of anattata (selflessness) will thus

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be enabled to see deeply into the all-pervasive nature of impermanence and suffering, and so seeing, learn to renounce all craving, clinging, and attachment, thereby eventually becoming free of all suffering. As I see it, the anatta doctrine explains the manifest empirical features of impermanence and suffering, but does so in such a way as to imply that they are more pervasive than they seem to the worldling, and are indeed all-pervasive. Thus the worldling will admit that there is impermanence and suffering, but only by contrast with things he regards as permanent and satisfactory; what he cannot grasp until he grasps the truth of anattata (selflessness) is that absolutely everything, even relatively permanent and satisfactory things, are in the end impermanent and unsatisfactory. A correct understanding of impermanence and suffering therefore requires insight into the anatta doctrine.

So although Buddhism is first and foremost a soteriology — as the “poisoned arrow” parable makes unmistakably clear — the Buddhist way of salvation rests on a theoretical claim about the world, the anatta doctrine. If this doctrine is false or unsupported or perhaps even incoherent, then in equal measure so is its soteriology. But this requires a bit more discussion. We need to see that the soteriology is not merely practical or pragmatic, but rests on the Buddhist ontology.

For the Buddhist, the problem at the root of our uneasy and unsatisfactory predicament in this life is not mis-directed desire, but desire itself. Whereas the First Noble Truth establishes, or at least asserts, the fact of all-pervasive suffering, the Second points to desire or craving (tanha) as its origin. We suffer, not because we desire the wrong things, but because we desire at all, and in desiring become attached to objects all of which are ultimately unsatisfactory or dukkha-inducing. If we could stop desiring, then, we would stop suffering. Thus a solution to the problem of suffering is not to be had by a re-direction of desire, from say transient objects to more lasting ones, but by its complete eradication. This is affirmed in the Third Noble Truth which affirms the possibility of the complete cessation and utter renunciation of desire. How this is to be brought about is set forth in the Fourth Noble Truth which outlines the Eight-Fold Path consisting of right views, right intentions, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Paramount among right views is of course the teaching on anatta.

Buddha thus proposes a radical cure for our existential malaise: the extirpation of desire. Compare the Christian Platonist, St. Augustine. We know from his Confessiones that he lusted after bodies, male and female, after property and position, after name and fame.[3] But tasting these things, he could not be satisfied by them. For they are all corruptible and their enjoyment leaves us as empty and vain as they are. Platonist that he was, he took their corruptibility as an index of unreality and unsatisfactoriness. Arguably, he was as sensitive to impermanence as Buddha was. It would not be too much of a stretch to say that Augustine too took the sense world and its ancient lures to be devoid of self-nature. (Anything continuously dependent on God for its very existence cannot possess much by way of self-nature.) But the main difference between them is that Augustine had nothing like an anatta doctrine with respect to God

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and the soul. If anything is atta, God and the soul are.[4] (The marks of atta will occupy us in a moment.) Indeed, these were precisely the two ultimate realities he wanted to know to the exclusion of all else: Deum et animam scire cupio, “I want to know God and the soul.” Hence for Augustine the solution to the problem of suffering was not via an eradication of desire but by the soul’s re-direction of its love from the sense-world to God, from this half-lit world of shadows to the Unchangeable Light.[5] The solution is through a conversio, a turning-around: “For I had my back to the Light and my face to the things illuminated.”[6] For Buddha, ultimately nothing can satisfy desire; hence the cessation of suffering requires the eradication of desire. But for Augustine, desire can be satisfied, but only by union with God. “Our hearts will not rest until they rest in Thee.” Hence the problem for Augustine is not desire as such but ignorantly and sinfully chosen objects of desire.

I think it is clear that these two different views about how salvation is to be achieved (whether by the eradication, or by the re-direction, of desire) reflect different underlying metaphysical commitments, and stand and fall with these commitments. Thus if Buddha radically interpreted is right, and nothing has self-nature, then, given that only the substantial, permanent, and eternal can satisfy us, salvation is possible only by the uprooting of desire. But if Augustine is right, and God and the soul possess self-nature, then salvation demands “merely” the soul’s re-direction of desire away from the false glitter of this world toward God.

To know which of these competing paths really works, we need to know which of the competing metaphysical commitments is really true. The Buddhist “therapy” is not a mere practice, but a practice resting on the anatta doctrine: we must eradicate desire, as per the Second Noble Truth, precisely because only what has self-nature could satisfy desire, and nothing has self-nature. If the unrestricted anatta doctrine is false and something (Augustine’s God for example) has self-nature, then we ought to seek our salvation by a re-direction of desire to this Something. The Buddhist way would then lead not to genuine salvation but to mere annihilation of desire. Buddhist practitioners might think that their practices “work for them,” but if the unrestricted anatta doctrine is false, they would be living in illusion. We therefore see that, although metaphysical discussions such as the one to follow are not conducive to salvation in one sense – they may distract from meditation and moral ascesis and contribute to the ego-bloat found everywhere in the world but especially in academe — they are essential to understand what one must do to achieve salvation, and therefore essential to salvation in another sense.

II. AN ARGUMENT FOR THE DOCTRINE

To better determine what the anatta doctrine amounts to, we need to look at some of the Buddhist arguments for it. (The full sense of a philosophical thesis emerges

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only on consideration of its grounds and its consequences.) On this occasion we look at only one early but highly characteristic text. Here are the words of Buddha according to the Anattalakkhana Sutta, his second discourse, the Sermon on the Mark of Not-Self:

The body [rupa], monks, is not self. If the body were the self, this body would not lend itself to dis-ease. It would be possible (to say) with regard to the body, “Let my body be thus. Let my body be not thus.” But precisely because the body is not self, the body lends itself to dis-ease. And it is not possible (to say) with regard to the body, “Let my body be thus. Let my body not be thus.”[7]

Buddha then goes on to argue similarly with respect to the rest of the five “aggregates” or categories of personality-constituents (khandhas, Sanskrit: skandhas), namely, feeling (vedana), perception (sanna), consciousness (vinnana), and mental formations (sankharas). All are claimed to be not-self. Thus we are told that feeling afflicts us and is not amenable to our control, whence it is inferred that feeling is not one’s self, not one’s own inner substance. The tacit premise of this enthymeme is that one’s self would be something over which one would have complete control, something wholly active and spontaneous. And it is clear that something wholly active will not suffer: to suffer is precisely to be afflicted by something external over which one has no control.

After arguing that each of the personality-constituents is outside of our control and brings suffering, Buddha argues that each of the constituents is impermanent and for this reason as well is lacking in self-nature. The over-all argument of the Anattalakkhana Sutta may therefore be reconstructed in a generalized form as follows:

1. If anything were the self, then it would have two properties: it would not be liable to disease, decay, destruction or change generally, and it would be self-determining, i.e., it would have complete control over itself.

2. But nothing in our experience has either of these two properties, neither the body, nor feeling, nor perception, nor consciousness, etc.

Therefore

3. Nothing in our experience can be identified as the self.

I have structured the argument so that it is not only valid in point of logical form, but also has plausible premises. (A charitable reconstruction can aim at nothing less.) Thus the addition of “in our experience” in premise (2) makes this premise more plausible than without the addition. But this gain in plausibility exacts a price: the conclusion (3) cannot then amount to the unrestricted anatta doctrine according to which nothing at all is a self or has self-nature. It is one thing to say that nothing in our experience can be identified (veridically) as a self, and quite another to say that there is no self.

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For it may well be that the existence of a (transcendental) self that is not experienced is a necessary condition of establishing that whatever is experienced is not a self. After all, if I come to see that my body, feelings, perceptions, and so on cannot be identified as my very self, then it is presumably I myself who come to this insight. If I come to reject body-identification, feeling-identification, etc. as false self-identifications, then presumably there must be at least the possibility of a true self-identification, even if only of the tautological form, “I am I.” If every self-identification were false, then “I am I” would be false. But that is either a contradiction, or implies that there is nothing that body, feelings, etc. are distinct from, which is again incoherent. For if “I am not this body” is true, then in some sense I must exist as that from which my body is distinct. Furthermore, if anyone needs and desires liberation, it is presumably in every case I myself who needs and desires it, and I myself who, if all goes well, achieves it, and indeed achieves it on the basis of my own insight into my non-identity with any of five khandhas or with the psychophysical complex composed of them. The self who needs, desires, and possibly attains liberation is obviously distinct from each of the khandhas and from the psychophysical complex. My body, obviously enough, cannot come to realize its non-identity with itself, for the simple reason that it is not distinct from itself. The same holds for each of the khandhas, and for the lot of them taken together. And to suppose that no one desires, needs, or attains liberation would appear to make hash of the whole Buddhist system of soteriology. Buddhism is an existentialist system in roughly Kierkegaard’s sense: it is the salvation of the “existing individual” that is the unum necessarium and sole desideratum. It is therefore arguable that the existence of a transcendental self is a cognitive and soteriological presupposition: it is presupposed if there is to be insight that no object of experience is veridically identifiable as one’s very self, and it is presupposed if there is to be something that is saved from the samsaric predicament. But to properly exfoliate and evaluate all of this would require a separate article.

Here we take a different tack. Rather than arguing that (2) could be true only if there is a (transcendental) self as cognitive/soteriological presupposition, we focus solely on the evaluation of premise (1), the truth of which is required not only for the soundness of the argument to (3), but also for the soundness of the further argument to the unrestricted anatta thesis, to wit: (4) Nothing is a self. Let us call the argument to (3) the restricted argument, and the argument to (4) the unrestricted argument. The problem of how to move validly from (3) to (4) will not concern us on the present occasion.

III. AN EXAMINATION OF PREMISE (1)

Premise (1) of the above argument says that anything that could count as a self would have to be both permanent and self-determining. But “permanent” here cannot mean relatively permanent: one’s body and many of one’s bodily features are relatively permanent as are one’s attitudes and dispositions. Indeed, if one’s body were not relatively permanent one could not become attached to it and desire its indefinite continuance. The same goes for “self-determining.” Since it is obvious that we do have some control over our bodily and mental states, “self-determining” cannot mean

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relatively self-determining.[8] Properly understood, then, (1) says that for anything to count as a self it must be both absolutely permanent and absolutely self-determining. But given the soteriological context of Buddhist thought, we may immediately add that a self both absolutely permanent and absolutely self-determining will also be absolutely devoid of suffering: the state of such a self would be a wholly satisfactory and maximally desire-worthy[9] state. It would obviously be the ideal state for a self to be in.

What premise (1) does, therefore, is to set an exceedingly high standard for selfhood: to be a self, or to have self-nature, or to be veridically identifiable as one’s very self, a thing must be absolutely permanent, self-determining, and desire-worthy. But the further course of the unrestricted argument makes it clear that nothing at all comes up to this standard: nothing is a self. Now if nothing is absolutely permanent, self-determining, and desire-worthy, then the idea or concept of self-nature invoked in the initial premise is fictitious in that it fails to apply to anything. This suggests the following questions. How could a fictitious idea be held up as an ideal or standard by which to denigrate ontologically the things we encounter? How could a fictitious idea be used to show that the things we naturally desire are fundamentally not worthy of desire?

Let us see if these queries can be transformed into an argument. I will try to establish the thesis that premise (1) is inconsistent with the anatta doctrine taken in its full scope, that is, as applying to everything, nibbana included, and that (1) can be true only if there is something absolutely permanent, self-determining and desire-worthy. In the majority of cases, of course, statements of the form, “If something is F, then it has such-and-such properties” are logically consistent with statements of the form, “Nothing is F.” For example, “If x is the luminiferous ether, then x is the medium through which electromagnetic signals are transmitted” is logically consistent with “There is no luminiferous ether.” It would be absurd to argue that the existence of the ether is a necessary condition of the meaningfulness of the concept of ether. There are plenty of uninstantiated concepts whose meaningfulness is in no way prejudiced by their being uninstantiated. But there are other concepts which cannot be coherently supposed to be uninstantiated. The supposition that the concept of truth[10] has no instances, for example, quickly succumbs to a reductio ad absurdum. For if the concept of truth is uninstantiated, then it is true that it is uninstantiated, which implies that the concept of truth is instantiated. If, on the other hand, the concept of truth is instantiated, then of course it is instantiated. Therefore, necessarily, the concept of truth is instantiated. Hence it is impossible that the concept of truth be uninstantiated. To show that the concept of the self cannot be an uninstantiated concept is not as easy a task; but that is what I

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propose to do. The basic idea of this section is that the concept of the self as it figures in the argumentation of the Anattalakkhana Sutta cannot be an uninstantiated concept due to its specific normative content. To be precise, the concept of the self cannot be an uninstantiated concept if it is a standard relative to which ordinary objects of desire[11] are to be adjudged ontologically and desideratively substandard. Thus the project of establishing that nothing possesses self-nature can be successful only if there is something possessing self-nature. But that is just to say that the project must fail, and that it is incoherent to maintain without qualification or restriction that nothing has self-nature. For all I will be saying on this occasion, however, a suitably restricted anatta doctrine may well be true. Thus nothing I will be saying casts doubt on the restricted argument, i.e., the argument to (3) above.

It is crucial that the reader understand what I mean by “ontological denigration” as it figures in the question, How could a fictitious idea be held up as an ideal or standard by which to denigrate ontologically the things we encounter? To denigrate something is to assert or imply that it fails to meet a certain standard or achieve a certain norm. To denigrate something ontologically is to assert or imply that in its very being or mode of existence the thing in question fails to meet a certain standard or achieve a certain norm. The relevant norm here is maximal satisfactoriness or desirability. Thus to denigrate ontologically the things of this world is to assert or imply that they lack the plenary being or existence they would have to have to be desire-worthy as ends in themselves. A lack of this sort, if it obtains, is obviously all-pervasive and irremediable: all-pervasive, because rooted in the very existence of each worldly being as such; irremediable, because the mode of existence of a thing is essential to it.

That Buddhism is involved in the ontological denigration of ordinary objects of desire is beyond question. The constant emphasis on impermanence has no other point than to establish that things are unsatisfactory and lacking in self-nature, and that we must therefore stop clinging to them and detach ourselves from them. The existence and ubiquity of impermanence are not value-neutral facts about the world that we are invited to contemplate theoretically; impermanence is made much of because of its link with suffering or unsatisfactoriness which has its ground in selflessness. And this for the sole soteriological purpose of inspiring us to work out our salvation with diligence by fleeing from our enslavement to our passions, as one would flee from a burning building. If Buddhism is true, we are in a truly dire predicament made all the worse by the prospect of countless future lives in circumstances even worse than the one we are in now. Buddhism, to put it in a slogan, is “a path not a proposition”; but it is a path of salvation resting on the proposition that the pursuit of ordinary objects of desire, as ontologically substandard, is harmful to our spiritual health.

I should make it clear that I am not opposed to the ontological denigration of ordinary objects of desire; indeed I am all for it. Every genuine religion is involved in such denigration.[12] Thus the New Testament text that “the world is passing away

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and also its lusts” (1 John 2, 17) is not a mere theoretical observation, but a warning: the objects of lust and of the “boastful pride of life” are worthless and next-to-nothing; therefore, turn away from them at once if you value your spiritual well-being. My point, however, is that (i) a thing cannot be ontologically substandard unless there is a standard or norm relative to which it is substandard, and (ii) this standard must objectively exist. Thus in Plato’s metaphysics, phenomenal particulars are ontologically substandard — but only by comparison to standard-setting Forms or Eide. Nietzsche was therefore quite right to point out that any denial of Platonism’s “true world” is tantamount to a denial of its “apparent world.”[13] For “true” and “apparent” are normatively charged terms. Deny the standard relative to which something is adjudged imperfect, and you deny the imperfection of the thing hitherto so adjudged. Plato and Nietzsche agree in this, that the apparent and true worlds stand and fall together, such that it would be simply incoherent to say that the objects of the sense world are merely apparent while also maintaining that there is no true world of standards relative to which they are merely apparent.

To appreciate this, one must see that “ontologically substandard” and such cognates as “ontologically standard-setting” are not purely ontological designations, but ontological-cum-normative designations. Since the days of Hume at least, philosophers have become accustomed to drawing a sharp distinction amounting to an “entailment-barrier” between facts and norms, between what is the case and what ought to be the case. The tendency is to view facts as objective but norms as subjective, as deriving from and relative to subjective acts of evaluation. But in many ancient modes of thought, Buddhism included, there is no such entailment-barrier. What is objectively the case can also be objectively normative. Thus consider this characteristic formulation from the Pali canon: “Dhamma anicca: yad aniccam tam dukkham: yam dukkham tad anatta.”[14] “Things are impermanent: what is impermanent is suffering: what is suffering is not-self.” This means that what is objectively impermanent is by its very nature as objectively impermanent objectively unsatisfactory. The impermanent as such, in its very being, is unsatisfactory. It does not mean that impermanent things sometimes give rise to suffering or even that they always, as a matter of contingent fact, give rise to suffering. For on Buddhism, suffering is inescapable so long as we cling to the impermanent. The plain sense of the formulation, therefore, is that impermanence metaphysically entails suffering, and that suffering metaphysically entails lack of self-nature, and that none of this depends on subjective value-preferences. Because it does not so depend, failure to see the connections here amounts to ignorance and delusion. (Someone who does not share my subjective preferences cannot sensibly be taxed with delusion.) Thus the very nature of impermanence is such as to necessitate suffering, and the very nature of suffering is such as to necessitate lack of self-nature.

On the face of it, however, impermanence is a “factual” or non-normative property, the property of changing or being subject to change, while unsatisfactoriness

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is a normative property. How then can impermanence entail unsatisfactoriness? How can the non-normative entail the normative? This is a question we need to answer. But first we need to appreciate the difficulty.

It is a plain empirical fact that things change, a fact one can literally see and literally feel; but it is not an empirical fact, although I will assume that is a fact, that all changing things are unsatisfactory. That painful states are unsatisfactory is empirically obvious, but the Buddhist claim is that absolutely everything is unsatisfactory, including what we normally think of as states of pleasure: Sabbe dhamma dukkha.[15] Feeling one’s pleasure grow, climax, and then subside, in the sex act for example, one is directly acquainted with impermanence; but one is not directly acquainted with unsatisfactoriness. Hugh Hefner is well aware that his pleasures are transient, but I rather doubt that he would admit that they are unsatisfactory. To the suggestion that they are, he would probably and quite plausibly retort: “Why should what is impermanent be unsatisfactory?” If he were a philosopher, he might defend the view that the impermanent can be satisfactory as follows. There is nothing in the concept of impermanence, or in the meaning of the term “impermanence,” to require that an impermanent thing be unsatisfactory. Even if “Everything impermanent is unsatisfactory” is true, it is surely not analytically true. Thus impermanence does not analytically entail unsatisfactoriness. But neither is the putative unsatisfactoriness of a transient pleasure an object of direct empirical acquaintance. While experiencing a pleasure, one is precisely not experiencing anything unsatisfactory. If one attends to the pleasure alone, no mark of unsatisfactoriness is empirically discernible as long as the pleasure lasts. Thus the truth-ground of “Everything impermanent is unsatisfactory” does not lie in experience. Physical and mental pleasures are impermanent but satisfactory as long as they last. Of course, it is unsatisfactory that they should come to an end; but they can be adjudged unsatisfactory in this regard only relative to the ideal of permanence as a mark of satisfactoriness. But then one has brought in a standard that is precisely not empirically given or empirically justifiable, and the question arises as to what justifies this standard. I shall return to this point in a moment.

The failure of analytic entailment, together with the unobservability of unsatisfactoriness in the cases of sensory states that are pleasurable or else neutral as between pleasure and pain, show that there is a distinction between the ostensibly non-normative property of impermanence and the obviously normative property of unsatisfactoriness. Given this distinction, a worldling might naturally hold that it is merely arbitrary and subjective to evaluate transient pleasures and transient things generally as unsatisfactory. “Everything impermanent is unsatisfactory” would on this view be a subjective stipulation and thus not objectively true at all. Buddhism might be thought to rest on a purely subjective life-denying value-judgment, one that we are under no obligation to accept, and one that a Nietzschean might take to be little more than an expression of physiological decadence or excessive susceptibility to pain.[16] Or thus our hedonist philosopher might argue.

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But, the Buddhist might counter-argue, from the fact that impermanence does not analytically entail unsatisfactoriness, it does not follow that the former does not metaphysically entail the latter.[17] “Everything impermanent is unsatisfactory,” though not analytically true could still be necessarily true. Indeed, I think this is the clear sense of the Buddhist doctrine. Once one appreciates this metaphysical entailment, one is in a position to appreciate that impermanence is not a merely ontological property, but a combined ontological-normative one. Clearly, the same holds for “no self”: it too is an ontological-cum-normative property. To say that something lacks self-nature is not merely to describe it, but to evaluate it. It is to say that it lacks being or reality; that it is not “really real” (ontos on) in Plato’s sense.

But this still leaves us with the question as to the truth-maker of “Everything impermanent is unsatisfactory.” What makes this true? It is not an analytic proposition, and so if true, it is not true in virtue of the meanings of its constituent terms. Nor is its truth-ground to be found in experience. I may learn from experience that all pleasures, noble or base, mental or physical, pass away; but that this passing-away of pleasures is unsatisfactory – this is not something I learn from experience. No doubt both the passing-away of pleasures as well as the pleasurableness of pleasures are empirically detectable features. But the unsatisfactoriness of passing pleasures is not an empirically detectable feature. Note that the passing-away of pains is not unsatisfactory, but the opposite. Hence it is not passing-way as such that is unsatisfactory. Nobody complains when a migraine headache passes away. And of course the unsatisfactoriness of passing pleasures does not derive from their felt quality, i.e., their pleasurableness. For their pleasurableness is quite obviously satisfactory. The unsatisfactoriness stems from the fact that something we want to last, does not last. Thus the unsatisfactoriness derives from the discrepancy between what we want or desire, a permanent state of pleasure, and what we get, pleasures that subside. This discrepancy between the ideal and what is found in experience is obviously not something that can be empirically discerned since it involves a comparison, one of the terms of which is precisely not to be found in experience, namely, the ideal of absolute permanence as the criterion of satisfactoriness. We do not learn from experience that the passing-away of pleasures is unsatisfactory; we impose on our pleasurable experiences the stamp of unsatisfactoriness by comparing them with a standard of absolute permanence that neither has nor can have any empirical pedigree.

But that everything impermanent is unsatisfactory is also not an arbitrary stipulation or expression of subjective preference that we are free to accept or reject. Embedded in its Buddhist context, the proposition in question purports to be objectively true, so much so that anyone failing to grasp its truth is taxed with ignorance and delusion.

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What then is the truth-ground of “Everything impermanent is unsatisfactory”? There is only one answer. What makes this proposition true is that there is an Ideal of absolute permanence and satisfactoriness against which the impermanent can be compared and with which the impermanent is in conflict. And what makes ‘Everything impermanent lacks self-nature’ true is that there is an Ideal of absolute self-nature to which the impermanent can be compared and with which the impermanent is in conflict. These are presumably the same Ideal. If there were no such Ideal, there would be nothing in comparison to which worldly objects could be ontologically-desideratively substandard, and any judgment that they are thus substandard would be false.

IV. AN OBJECTION AND A REPLY

But does it follow that this Ideal objectively exists? For one might grant that there is in some sense such an Ideal, that it is necessarily in play in the various arguments for the unrestricted anatta doctrine, but that it is nonetheless illusory. One might argue that the Ideal is a mere projection of our human desire for permanence and security, a desire that is bound to go unsatisfied given that all is impermanent. As such, the Ideal would have no objective status but still could be used to argue the unreality and unsatisfactoriness of the objects of desire. According to Peter Harvey, “The not-Self teaching can in fact be seen as a brilliant device – a skillful means – which uses a deep-seated human aspiration, ultimately illusory, to overcome the negative products of such an illusion.”[18] Thus the aspiration to permanence, though ultimately illusory, is employed as a standard against which to measure the objects of desire and attachment so that we may come to see that they are insubstantial and ultimately unsatisfactory and therefore to be shunned.

I submit that Harvey’s suggestion is simply and irremediably incoherent. An illusory standard is not a standard relative to which anything could be objectively lacking in either desire-worthiness or self-nature. At best, an illusory standard would justify a merely subjective devaluation of the objects of desire, a devaluation that would be of no objective interest. A little parable may help convey what I am driving at. Suppose someone, call him Harry, goes spouse-hunting armed with an exceedingly exacting standard: a potential mate must be perfect, i.e. must possess all of the perfections appropriate to human beings, and must possess the highest degree of such perfections as admit of degrees. Since nobody meets the standard, Harry’s quest will end in frustration. Now is the problem that no one is objectively worthy of Harry’s attention, or is the problem with the standard? Clearly the latter: since the standard is utterly illusory, there being nothing that could satisfy it, someone’s failure to measure up is no argument against her suitability for marriage. What Harry must do is to throw out his unrealistic standard. It would be absurd for him to renounce his desire/need for a spouse on the ground that no one is suitable. For if his only reason for thinking a candidate unsuitable is her failure to satisfy a purely imaginary notion of perfection, then this is obviously no reason at all. Harry’s fertile imagination is surely no basis for an objective evaluation or devaluation of anything.

[IPQ 465]

Similarly, if the Self-ideal is illusory, as the unrestricted anatta doctrine requires, then a thing’s failure to measure up to it is no argument against it. There is of course a difference between the Self-ideal and Harry’s spousal ideal. The Self-ideal is presumably as common to all human beings as is their insatiable desire for permanent satisfaction, whereas Harry’s ideal is an aberration confined to him and perhaps a few others. But this is not a difference that makes a difference to my argument. An illusion’s being shared by all does not make it any less of an illusion. And so again, if the Self-ideal is illusory, then a thing’s failure to measure up to it cannot be taken to show that the thing in question should be renounced.

This is even clearer when we consider that if nothing is absolutely permanent, then this is necessarily the case. For if there were an absolutely permanent entity, it would be a metaphysical absolute whose possibility would entail its actuality.[19] Readers familiar with the modal versions of the ontological argument know that an existing metaphysical absolute is necessary, while a nonexisting one is impossible. An absolute is not the sort of thing that could have the modal status of contingency. So if the Self-ideal is objectively nonexistent, then it does not just happen not to exist: it is metaphysically impossible. Now it is particularly difficult to see how a thing’s failure to measure up to an impossibly existent ideal could count against its desire-worthiness and reality. If there cannot be a permanent entity, then the idea that anything ought to measure up to such a necessarily nonexistent standard on pain of ontological denigration in the event of failure to measure up is untenable. Why exactly? Well, just as ought implies can with respect to human actions, ought to be satisfied implies can be satisfied with respect to demands in general. Call this the generalized “ought implies can” principle. If the demand that things ought to be permanent to be desire-worthy cannot be satisfied by anything, then it is not a legitimate demand with binding deontic force. Everyone can see what is wrong with the following sentence: “You ought to have saved that child from the burning building even though you would have had to travel at the speed of sound to get there in time.” If a person cannot perform a physical action, then it cannot be demanded of him on pain of ethical denigration in case of failure to perform it. One’s ethical status cannot be lowered by one’s failure to do what one cannot do. Similarly, a thing’s ontological status cannot be lowered by its failure to meet an ontological standard that nothing meets and that indeed nothing can meet. So if nothing is permanent (and thus nothing is even possibly permanent), then a thing’s failure to be permanent cannot be taken to argue its lack of full reality or substantiality or self-nature. Nor can it be taken to argue its lack of desire-worthiness.

My point could be summed up as follows. If human desire makes an impossible demand, a demand for permanence that nothing can satisfy, such a demand cannot be

[IPQ 466]

legitimate: it cannot be employed as a standard for the ontological-desiderative denigration of ordinary objects of desire. If this were our predicament, the appropriate response to universal impermanence would not be the eradication of desire, but its scaling-back. One would only have to stop desiring what one cannot have. One cannot have an unlimited life-span, a maximally perfect spouse, or a house proof against every threat; but one can reasonably aim at a long healthy life of 80 years, marriage to a morally decent person, and possession of a reasonably durable house, and so on. Given that nothing is absolutely permanent, why could not one be satisfied with what is relatively permanent? If a thing fails to meet a standard that nothing does or can meet, why should this constitute a good reason for thinking that the thing in question is unreal or worthless? To reject as worthless all impermanent objects on the supposition that there are only impermanent objects would amount to total nihilism.[20] And I submit that to interpret the magnificent Buddha-Dhamma as a species of total nihilism[21] would be uncharitable in the extreme. But that it what we are committed to if we take the anatta doctrine to have unrestricted scope.

V. CODA

What I have shown is that the truth of premise (1) — the key assumption of the argumentation in the Anattalakkhana Sutta — is inconsistent with the unrestricted anatta doctrine. Thus it is inconsistent to hold both that (i) if anything is a self, then it is permanent and self-determining, and (ii) nothing is a self. For this is equivalent to holding both that (iii) there is an ideal, the Self-ideal, that nothing does or can satisfy, and (iv) things must satisfy this ideal if they are to be desire-worthy. A standard that nothing can satisfy and that everything must satisfy is obviously a self-contradictory standard. For a standard that everything must satisfy is a standard

that something can satisfy by the generalized “ought implies can” principle above; but this contradicts the unrestricted anatta doctrine according to which the Self-ideal is a standard that nothing can satisfy.

The unrestricted argument, the argument to the conclusion that nothing has self-nature, is therefore unsound. For its major premise is inconsistent with its conclusion. But this leaves open the possibility of a restricted argument to the conclusion that no object of our ordinary experience has self-nature and thus that no such object is ultimately desire-worthy. Such a restricted argument, however, requires the unconditioned existence of a supremely desire-worthy Object.[22]

[1]. Although “self” and “person” are sometimes used interchangeably, this is a usage we ought to avoid. Otherwise, “selfless person” in the sense of “person without a self” would be a contradiction in terms and our very terminology would beg the question against the anatta doctrine.

[2]. Cf. T. R. V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1980), p. 17.

[3]. The case for Augustine’s having indulged in homosexual practices is made by Giovanni Papini, Saint Augustine, trans. Agnetti (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1930), pp. 45-47.

[4]. To the extent that the soul is created by God, and thus (given a non-deistic conception of divine creation) continuously dependent upon God for its very existence, the soul is not quite atta. But it is close, and obviously more atta than the body.

[5]. Cf. Confessions, Book 7, Ch. 10.

[6]. Confessions, Book IV, Ch. 16.

[7]. Samyutta Nikaya XXII, 59.

[8]. This remains the case even if determinism is true, and our limited control over our bodily and mental states is not libertarianly free. Note also that to say that we have some limited control over our bodily and mental states does not beg the question against the anatta doctrine: “we” refers to us as persons– persons which could conceivably turn out to be selfless. See note 1 above.

[9]. I often write “desire-worthy” rather than “desirable” because the latter expression is ambiguous as between “able to be desired” and “worthy of being desired.”

[10]. To be precise: true proposition.

[11]. I say “ordinary objects of desire,” since presumably freedom from all desire, bringing with it liberation from the samsaric go-round and entry into nibbana, is an object of desire for someone seeking liberation. But it is clearly extraordinary.

[12]. I realize that this claim requires detailed defense; but it cannot be provided here.

[13]. Friedrich Nietzsche, Goetzendaemmerung: “Die wahre Welt haben wir abgeschafft: welche Welt blieb uebrig? die Scheinbare vielleicht?...Aber nein! mit der wahren Welt haben wir auch die scheinbare abgeschafft!” Werke in Zwei Baenden, (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1967), vol II, p. 341.

[14]. Salayatana Samyutta 4.

[15].Yam kinci vedayitam tam dukkhasmin ti. Whatever is felt counts as unpleasure (suffering). Vedana Samyutta ii, 1.

[16]. Although Nietzsche has some good things to say about Buddhism as compared with Christianity, he classes both as “nihilistic religions,” “religions of decadence.” See The Antichrist, section 20. Section 22 ties Buddhism to an excessive susceptibility to pain.

[17]. Illustration: Being water does not analytically entail being composed of H2O molecules; but given that water is (identically) H2O, and given Saul Kripke’s doctrine of the necessity of identity, x’s being a sample of water metaphysically entails x’s being composed of H2O molecules.

[18]. Peter Harvey, The Selfless Mind: Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1995), p. 45.

[19]. It might be argued that nibbana is absolutely permanent without being a metaphysical absolute. For (1) if nibbana were impermanent it would be as worthless as any impermanent state or thing; but (2) nibbana cannot be an absolute since, lacking self-nature, it is not a substance. It would take a separate article to show wherein the error of this reasoning consists. The present article assumes that the three characteristics of impermanence, suffering, and selflessness stand and fall together. Thus nothing can be permanent without being non-suffering and a self.

[20]. One response to this might be that (i) human desire does make an impossible demand, but (ii) we are powerless to scale it back: it is not possible for us to be satisfied with finite objects of desire. But if so, we would also be powerless to eradicate desire. Surely, if we have the power to eradicate desire, as Buddhism assumes, then we have the power to limit desire to impermanent objects. My point is that this precisely what we ought to do if we are convinced that only impermanent objects exist. So the defense consisting of (i) and (ii) won’t work.

[21]. Total nihilism may be defined as the view that all finite objects of desire are ultimately worthless, and that beyond the finite there is nothing at all.

[22]. I thank John Maraldo, Horace Jeffery Hodges, and an anonymous IPQ referee for comments on an earlier draft.

If all is empty, then this thesis is empty or devoid of self-nature. This implies that the thesis possesses no one determinate sense or meaning. Given that sense or meaning undergirds truth-value, in the sense that nothing devoid of sense or meaning could have a truth-value, (1) is without truth-value.

Is the problem with (1) simply one of performative inconsistency? Anyone who affirms (1) is involved in a performative inconsistency: the very act of affirming it presupposes that it has a definite affirmable content. The act of affirming (1) thus contradicts the content of (1). So (1) succumbs to retortion. Retortion seems to show that it cannot be the case that all is empty. Some things are non-empty, and one might expect that a Buddhist would hold that among these non-empty things are such fundamental truths of Buddhism as the truth of impermanence, the truth of suffering, and the truth of selflessness.

But might the unrestricted anatta thesis be true all the same? Might it be an unaffirmable truth? Are there any unaffirmable truths? One might respond: "Precisely because (1) is true, precisely because all is devoid of self-nature, you cannot affirm it; your inability to affirm it does not show it not to be true."

Is this response any good? I don't think that it is. For what (1) implies is that everything is empty or devoid of self-nature: every act of assertion, indeed every speech act, every content asserted, and every linguistic and other means used to encode or express propositional contents. The problem, therefore, is not just that the speech act of stating or asserting (1) is self-defeating, but that the propositional content asserted is inconsistent with this content's being true.

(1) is not merely performatively self-defeating; it is self-defeating in itself. (1) is in this respect different from

2. No statement is negative.

(2) is either true or false. If false, then unaffirmable because false; if true, then unaffirmable because the very act of affirming it would falsify it. Nevertheless, there are possible worlds in which the proposition expressed by (2) is true, namely, those worlds in which there are no statements. (1), however, expresses a proposition that is false in all possible worlds.

Both see the contemplative life, whether philosophical or scientific or mystical, as a form of evasion, evasion of the tasks of building socialist society (Marx), or of becoming an individual (Kierkegaard). And how divergent these life-tasks! Transcendence through a super-socialization in which the individual is dissolved in the collective versus transcendence through individuation. The contemplative, however, seeks a different form of transcendence of present self: transcendence into the impersonal, asocial, truth.

One sort of contemplative is the mystical quietist. Buddha may perhaps serve as an example. If Marx said that the point was to change the world, Buddha said that the point was to deny the world by extinguishing desire. Suffering is pervasive, and its root is desire; so a radical solutuion entails an eradication of suffering's root. But both agree that theoretical understanding is not the point, but a distraction from the task of transformation of society or self. In a famous Buddhist image, if I have been shot with a poisoned arrow, it does not particularly matter whether I can plot the arrow’s trajectory, provide a chemical analysis of the poison, or ascertain the archer’s social class. The unum necessarium is to extract the arrow. On fire with desire, we suffer; so extinguish the fire, in particular the 'fire below,' and enter into Cessation.

Social activism and Kierkegaardian fideism are dead-ends. The activist illusion is to suppose that unimproved man can improve the world in some global (as opposed to piecemeal) way that could satisfy our need for Transcendence. Those who haven’t seen through this illusion by now will probably never see through it. But mere fideism, mere subjective passion, mere intensification of inwardness is no solution either. What good is mere believing without knowing? What one wants and needs is direct contact with the Absolute. This mystical quietism can supply in some measure – but with its own excesses and limitations that can only be made good by a healthy application of discursive reason tempered by moral conscience.

A balanced life integrates philosophy and religion, mysticism and morality; reason and faith, intuition and conscience. A system of existential checks and balances, if you will.

CAN THE CHARIOT TAKE US TO THE LAND OF NO SELF?

Abstract

This paper examines a famous argument for the Buddhist doctrine of anatta (“no self”) according to which nothing possesses self-nature or substantial reality. The argument unfolds during a debate between the monk Nagasena and King Milinda (Menandros). Nagasena’s challenge to the King is that he demonstrate the substantial reality of the chariot in which he arrived at their meeting when said chariot is (i) not identical to any one of its proper parts, (ii) not identical to the mereological sum of its proper parts, and (iii) not identical to anything wholly distinct from its parts. After presenting the argument and defending it against a plausible objection, I argue that it cannot be taken to show that persons lack self- nature.

Non-Persons and Self-Nature

According to Buddhist ontology, every (samsaric) being is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and devoid of self-nature. Anicca, dukkha, anatta: these are the famous three marks (tilakkhana) upon which the whole of Buddhism rests. I would like to consider a well-known Buddhist argument from the Milindapanha for the third of these marks, that of anatta, an argument one could call ‘The Chariot.’ Since time is short, I will avoid the historical niceties and plunge right into the argument:

P1. No concrete partite thing is identical to any one of its proper parts.
P2. No concrete partite thing is identical to the mere(ological) sum of its proper parts.
P3. No concrete partite thing is identical to something wholly distinct from its parts.
Therefore
C. Terms denoting concrete things, useful as they are for counting and classifying, do not refer to anything real, anything possessing self-nature or ‘own-being.’

The premises of this argument are exceedingly plausible. Thus it is surely obvious that King Milinda’s chariot is not identical to its right wheel, or to any other proper part. It is also obvious that the chariot is not identical to the mere sum of its parts: the sum of the chariot’s parts can exist even if the chariot does not exist, as when the chariot is disassembled. It is the same sum whether the chariot is assembled or disassembled. As for the third premise, it also seems quite clear that there is not, in addition to the parts, some further physical or metaphysical entity that is the ‘real chariot’ or substance or substratum of the chariot. That is no more the case than that there is a little man – a homunculus – inside my head looking through my eyes, and hearing through my ears, etc.

The premises, then, seem to be true; but does the conclusion follow? One obvious response is that the argument is a non sequitur since it ignores a fourth possibility: that terms like ‘Nagasena’ and ‘this chariot’ refer to wholes of parts in a definite arrangement, where this arrangement is a feature of reality and is not introduced by our use of such terms as ‘Nagasena’ and ‘chariot.’ Thus a chariot is neither a sum of disconnected chariot-parts, nor something wholly distinct from the parts, but a sum of parts connected in the right way. Thus one might argue that ‘this chariot’ does indeed refer to something in reality, namely, a whole of connected chariot- parts, where both the parts and the connectedness are features of reality. Surely we cannot effect the assembly of chariot-parts simply by applying the term ‘chariot’ to them. It is the other way around: ‘chariot’ applies to them because of their antecedent connectedness. If this is right, then things like chariots would have a sort of relative self-nature which would entail relative permanence and relative satisfactoriness.

This response to the argument, however, is workable only if there is indeed some distinction in reality between the mere sum of chariot-parts and the connected parts. It is open to the Buddhist, however, to argue that there cannot be any such distinction, and thus to argue against even relative self-nature. To simplify the discussion, suppose we have a whole W consisting of two parts, a and b. Then from (P1) we know that ~(W = a) and ~(W = b). From (P2), we know that ~(W = (a + b)). From (P3), we know that there is no c wholly distinct from both a and b such that W = c. The objector, however, wants us to consider a fourth possibility, namely, that W = aRb, where R is an entity in the world that connects a and b, and in connecting them, makes the difference in reality between the whole and the mere sum of its parts.

One problem with this suggestion is that in many cases no entity R is given. Thus if W is a bolt on which has been screwed a nut, all that analysis reveals is the bolt and the nut: there is nothing in reality that connects the bolt and the nut. Of course, in the past someone or something had to screw the bolt onto the nut; but now all we have is a bolt and a nut with nothing that connects them. We may agree that the bolt and nut are connected – in that the nut is threaded onto the bolt – but this connectedness is not a further constituent of reality that can be found by analysis. Not finding any connectedness in reality, philosophers of an empiricist and analytic bent will deny that there is any connectedness in reality. If we introduce the term ‘nolt’ to refer to the bolt-cum-nut, then our Buddhist analyst will say that ‘nolt,’ like ‘chariot,’ refers to nothing in reality. It does not refer to the sum of the parts, because all will agree that a whole cannot be identified with the mere sum of its parts. Thus our natural thought that there is a connectedness in reality that justifies our belief that ‘nolt’ refers to something, and that what it refers to has relative self-nature, turns out, on the Buddhist analysis, to be an illusion.

Indeed, a defender of the Buddhist view could take a further step by pointing out that any further constituent introduced to do a connecting job will be unavailing for essentially Bradleyan reasons. Suppose two boards are connected with a nail. The resulting whole has three parts: two boards and a nail. An ordinary person will say that one of the parts, the nail, connects the other two. The Buddhist philosopher, however, could point out that there is no difference in reality between the unconnected sum of two boards and a nail, and the same three things connected. For even given that someone in the past drove the nail through the two boards, what we have now before us is simply two boards and a nail. At the present moment there is nothing in reality -- nothing that analysis can uncover — that accounts for the connectedness. There is nothing we can point to, nothing empirically discernible, that is the connectedness or the ground of the connectedness. If we call the two boards nailed together ‘noard,’ then our Buddhist will say that ‘noard’ does not refer to anything. For the noard is not identical to one of its proper parts, nor is it identical to the mere sum of its proper parts, nor is it identical to something wholly distinct from its parts.

It is furthermore clear that introducing a fourth entity to connect the nail to the boards will only generate a Bradley-style vicious infinite regress. For we can then reiterate the inquiry by asking what grounds the difference between the mere sum of these four items and the concrete whole having them as parts. The ground of connectedness continues to elude the analytic understanding.

Thus one can see that the Chariot is an argument that cannot be easily dismissed. We want to say, with King Milinda and with common sense, that a whole of parts is more than a mere sum of parts, and that this something more — the unity of the parts — is something real as opposed to something introduced by our conceptual or linguistic activities, or by our craving for permanence. But since we cannot find this ‘something more’ by analysis, the pressure is on to write it off as illusory.

Persons and Self-Nature

But even if the Chariot succeeds in showing that nonpersons lack self-nature, does it also show that persons lack self-nature? It may be that to argue by analogy as Nagasena does, applying to persons what is true of nonpersons, is a mistaken procedure. Indeed, I will now argue that the analogy is mistaken, and that a person is a whole of parts in an importantly different sense than that in which a chariot is a whole of parts.

Suppose my mental state passes from pleasurable to painful. Not only is the painful state painful, the transition from the pleasurable state to the painful one is itself painful. The fact that the transition is painful shows that it is directly perceived. Thus what we have here is not merely a succession of consciousnesses, but also a consciousness of their succession. For there is a consciousness of the transition from the pleasant state to the painful state, a consciousness that embraces both of the states. But a consciousness of their succession is a consciousness of their succession in one subject. It is a consciousness of the identity of the self through the transition from the pleasurable state to the painful one. Passing from a pleasurable state to a painful one, I am aware not only of a pleasant state followed by a painful one, but also that the one who was in a pleasurable state is strictly the same as the one who is now in a painful state.

What this example shows is that there is direct awareness of the self as that in which the two distinct states are united. I am not only aware of the two states; I am aware of myself as the unity of the two states, as a substratum of a mental alteration. The self, therefore, is directly given; but it is of course not given as a separate object wholly distinct from its states. Thus the failure of Buddhists and Humeans to find a self as separate object distinct from its states has no tendency to show that there is no self. The Buddhist-Humean mistake is to think that if a self is not either one of its states or the sum of its states, then it must be something entirely separate from its states. But this is to ignore a fourth possibility, namely, that a self is the unity of its states.

If the “no self” view were correct, there would be no such thing as mental alteration: all mental change would be existential change. One state would come into and pass out of existence, to be followed by another state that would come into and pass out of existence. But this contradicts the phenomenological evidence: we are aware of ourselves as persisting unities, as substrata of alterational change.

The fundamental problem with the Buddhist approach, as it seems to me, is an exclusive and unjustifiable reliance on analysis as the way to truth. The commonsensical suggestion that a chariot is a whole of connected parts, and not a mere sum of parts, was rejected on the ground that this connectedness cannot be found by analysis, as indeed it cannot. But this is to presuppose that only what can be found by analysis is real. We have, however, no good reason to accept this presupposition, and a very good reason to reject it. We ought to reject it because the project of analysis itself presupposes the existence of wholes which are more than mere sums. It is only a unitary whole which needs analysis, and yet no such whole can be exhaustively understood by analysis. Thus the very project of analysis presupposes that there are unitary wholes which cannot be exhaustively understood by analysis. Every analysis presupposes a prior synthesis.

However things may stand with chariots and other nonpersons, what I want to suggest is that each of us, as a person, is just such a whole. Each one of us is a synthetic unity of consciousness and self-consciousness. Analysis may lay bare the contents of our mental lives, but it will never disclose their unifying principle: not because there is no such principle, but because it is not the sort of thing that can turn up under analysis.

1. Let's begin by noting that both Buddhism and Stoicism are fundamentally practical, not theoretical. Roughly, both systems are primarily concerned with the soteriological/therapeutic question of how one ought to live to attain happiness. Theory is of interest only insofar as it subserves this practical end. At the high point of Greek philosophy, in Plato and Aristotle, it was the other way around, but that is a topic for another occasion. (I agree with Brentano that the schools of Stoicism and Skepticism represent decline from the Platonic-Aristotelian high point. Cf. his Die Vier Phasen der Philosophie.)

2. Both systems tie the problem of attaining happiness (or avoiding suffering) to the problem of finding the true or essential self, that which is genuinely one's own. For example, at Enchiridion XIX, Epictetus writes that "the essence of good consists in things in our own power. . . ."

3. Epictetus distinguishes what is in our control, in our power, up to us, from what is not. In our power: opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, etc. Not in our power: body, property, reputation, etc. Now it is obvious that one has some control over one's body, property and reputation. What one lacks is complete control over these externals. So by 'control' Epictetus must intend complete control.

But then, as Phil Flemming in effect complains, how can it be true that desire, aversion, opinion and other mental states are in my (complete) control? Is sexual desire under my complete control? Was sexual desire in Mohandas Ghandi under his complete control? No, but it was an ideal that he got closer to than most of us will.

4. So it may be that the central Epictetan distinction is between that which cannot be in our complete control and that which can be in our complete control. It is self-evident that body, property, progeny and the like cannot be in my complete control. But it is not self-evident that desire, aversion and the like cannot be in my complete control — at least while these states exist.

5. So I think Epictetus' distinction can be defended from Flemming's complaint. He was suggesting that the distinction is bogus, and I agree that is is bogus if it is the distinction between what is as a matter of fact in my complete control and what as a matter of fact is not. For as I am in my present state, nothing is in my complete control, nothing external but also nothing internal.

Take memories. Do I have complete control over my memories? Despite my work at the purgation of memory, I am still assailed from time to time by memories that rise up and gain control of my mind thus injuring my equanimity. So I can't say that memory is something I have in my complete control. But with memories and other 'internals' there is at least the possibility of gaining complete control over them. There is no such possibility as regards externals. It is impossible that I ever have complete control over my reputation, for example, involving as it does the fickle cooperation of other mortals.

6. Epictetus is thus proposing an ideal of autonomy, self-regulation, an ideal state in which one is in total control of all that transpires within the inner citadel. The fact that we are far from this ideal in our present state does nothing to refute it.

7. Now let's contrast the two control arguments.

Buddha: Nothing internal or external is under my complete control. Only that which is under my complete control is my self. Ergo, there is no self.

Epictetus: 'Internals' are potentially under my complete control. Only that which is under my complete control is my self. Ergo, the self, though not a present reality, is potentially attainable.

8. Now I reject both of these arguments for reason to be supplied in a later post.

The body [rupa], monks, is not self. If the body were the self, this body would not lend itself to dis-ease. It would be possible (to say) with regard to the body, “Let my body be thus. Let my body be not thus.” But precisely because the body is not self, the body lends itself to dis-ease. And it is not possible (to say) with regard to the body, “Let my body be thus. Let my body not be thus.”

Buddha then goes on to argue similarly with respect to the rest of the five aggregates or categories of personality-constituents (khandhas, Sanskrit: skandhas), namely, feeling (vedana), perception (sanna), consciousness (vinnana), and mental formations (sankharas). All are claimed to be not-self. Thus we are told that feeling afflicts us and is not amenable to our control, whence it is inferred that feeling is not one’s self, not one’s own inner substance. The tacit premise of this enthymematic argument is that one’s self would have to be something over which one would have complete control, something wholly active and spontaneous. And it is clear that something wholly active will not suffer: to suffer is precisely to be afflicted by something external over which one has no control.

After arguing that each of the personality-constituents is outside of our control and brings suffering, Buddha argues that each of the constituents is impermanent and for this reason as well is lacking in self-nature. The over-all argument of the Anattalakkhana Sutta may therefore be reconstructed in a generalized form as follows:

1. If anything were the self, then it would have two properties: it would not be liable to disease, decay, destruction or change generally, and it would be self-determining, i.e., it would have complete control over itself.
2. But nothing in our experience has either of these two properties, not the body, or feeling, or perception, or consciousness, etc.
Therefore
3. Nothing in our experience can be identified as the self.

I have structured the argument so that it is not only valid in point of logical form, but also has plausible premises. (A charitable reconstruction can aim at nothing less.) Thus the addition of “in our experience” in premise (2) makes this premise more plausible than without the addition. But this gain in plausibility exacts a price: the conclusion (3) cannot then amount to the unrestricted anatta doctrine according to which nothing at all is a self or has self-nature. It is one thing to say that nothing in our experience can be identified (veridically) as a self, and quite another to say that there is no self.

For it may well be that the existence of a (transcendental) self that is not experienced is a necessary condition of establishing that whatever is experienced is not a self. After all, if I come to see that my body, feelings, perceptions, and so on cannot be identified as my very self, then it is presumably I myself who come to this insight. If I come to reject body-identification, feeling- identification, etc. as false self-identifications, then presumably there must be at least the possibility of a true self-identification, even if only of the tautological form, “I am I.” If every self-identification were false, then “I am I” would be false. But that is either a contradiction, or implies that there is nothing that body, feelings, etc. are distinct from, which is again incoherent. For if “I am not this body” is true, then in some sense I must exist as that from which my body is distinct.

Furthermore, if anyone needs and desires liberation, it is presumably in every case I myself who needs and desires it, and I myself who, if all goes well, achieves it, and indeed achieves it on the basis of my own insight into my non-identity with any of the five khandhas or with the psychophysical complex composed of them. The self who needs, desires, and possibly attains liberation is obviously distinct from each of the khandhas and from the psychophysical complex. My body, obviously enough, cannot come to realize its non-identity with itself, for the simple reason that it is not distinct from itself. The same holds for each of the khandhas, and for the lot of them taken together.

And to suppose that no one desires, needs, or attains liberation would appear to make hash of the whole Buddhist system of soteriology. Buddhism is an existentialist system in roughly Kierkegaard’s sense: it is the salvation of the “existing individual” that is the unum necessarium and sole desideratum. It is therefore arguable that the existence of a transcendental self is a cognitive and soteriological presupposition: it is presupposed if there is to be insight that no object of experience is veridically identifiable as one’s very self, and it is presupposed if there is to be something that is saved from the samsaric predicament.

The gist of the control argument is this. There is no evidence of a self since nothing with which we are acquainted is immutable, and nothing with which we are acquainted is something over which we have complete control.

But this raises an obvious question: Isn't the standard for selfhood being set unattainably high?

This original ignorance is most conspicuous and most damaging in the case of oneself. Filled with the “boastful pride of life,” we take ourselves to be permanent and self-determining, when in fact we are the opposite. We view ourselves as substantial entities when everything about us is insubstantial. It hardly need be stressed that Buddha is not interested in establishing our fundamental insubstantiality or lack of self-nature as a merely theoretical thesis. For his perspective throughout is soteriological: we are in a dire state from which we need salvation. In a famous parable, he likens our condition to that of a man who has been shot with a poisoned arrow. For anyone in such a predicament, the one thing necessary is to extract the arrow: learned inquiries into the arrow’s trajectory, the chemical composition of the poison, the motives and social status of the archer and the like are nothing but a distraction from the one thing that needs to be done. The anatta doctrine is therefore not a merely theoretical claim, although of course it is a theoretical claim; it is a claim put forward as an essential ingredient in a soteriological project. To be saved we must realize the truth of anatta. Buddha’s teaching has therefore as little to do with Humean scruples about substantial selves as playing backgammon has with working out one’s salvation with diligence.

But what exactly is the link between the denial of self-nature and salvation from our unsatisfactory predicament? All of the great religions enjoin self-denial as a (partial) means to salvation, but only Buddhism takes the radical step of grounding the moral injunction to self- denial in a metaphysical denial that there are selves. How does the latter denial conduce to salvation? If I attain insight into my lack of self-nature, how is this supposed to alleviate my suffering (dukkha)? Well, in the Buddhist scheme of things we suffer because of our desire or craving (tanha) for the unattainable. What we want is permanent satisfaction, and we ignorantly think that ordinary objects of desire will provide it. Thus we pursue the likes of property and position, name and fame, pleasure and security. But all of these things are impermanent (anicca), and so our craving for permanent satisfaction is destined to remain unfulfilled. When we do not get what we want, we suffer from not getting it. When we do get what we want, we suffer from its inability to satisfy us, and from the attachment it breeds. Either way, we suffer. We stumble on in life foolishly hoping someday to find the satisfaction that we have never found, and indeed can never find. All is suffering because all is impermanent, and all is impermanent because all is lacking in self-nature. If we could attain insight into anattata, into the selflessness of all things, then we would have a grounded metaphysical understanding of impermanence, as opposed to a merely empirical acquaintance with it. We would clearly see its inescapability and its ubiquity. Armed with this understanding, we would be in a position to dispel the illusion of permanence, renounce our craving for it, and by renouncing it, sever at its root the weed of suffering. For suffering arises from our ignorant craving for permanent satisfaction. The cure for this ignorance is insight into anattata. Thus would the raging fires of lust, hate and delusion be quenched; we would attain 'cessation' and entry into nibbana.

That in a nutshell is the Buddha-Dhamma. It starts with the fact of all-pervasive suffering (First Noble Truth); ascribes its origin to craving (Second Noble Truth); proclaims the possibility of the utter extirpation and total renunciation of craving (Third Noble Truth); and concludes with a program (the Eight-fold Path) for the achievement of the extirpation of craving (Fourth Noble Truth). The Eight-fold Path consists of right views, right intentions, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Paramount among right views is of course the teaching on anatta. Thus the anatta doctrine lies at the base of the entire soteriological structure. But why should we accept it?

That is for another post.