The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized

4 Selfless Persons

4 Selfless Persons The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. —Wilfrid Sellars, 1960 First and Second Human Nature A philosophical psychology is to scientific psychology as theoretical physics is to experimental physics. Its job is to keep the eye on the whole, on how all the experimental data fit together into a comprehensive view of what a person, a human person, is, and what a mind is and does. A philosophical psychology ought to answer questions such as these: • What, if anything, are humans like deep down inside beneath the clothes of culture? • What, if any, features of mind-world interaction, and thus of the human predicament, are universal? • Is there any end state or goal(s) that all humans seek because they are wired to seek it (or them), or what is different, ought to seek because it is—or, they are—worthy? • If there is a common natural orientation toward some end state(s), for example, pleasure, friendship, community, truth, beauty, goodness, intellectual contemplation, are these ends mutually consistent? If not, must one choose a single dominant end? Does our nature not only provide the end(s), but also a way of ordering and prioritizing them, as well as a preferred ratio among them that produces some sort of equilibrium? • How conducive is following our nature to actually producing what we naturally seek, or what is different, sensibly ought to seek? Could it be that not everything we seek—not even pleasant experiences or truth—is good for us? 94 Chapter 4 • What is the relation between our first nature, our given human nature, and our second nature, our cultured nature? • Does first nature continue in contemporary worlds, in new ecologies, to achieve its original ends? If so, is first nature also well suited to achieving new, culturally discovered, or what is different, created ends • Is second nature constructed precisely for the achievement of variable, culturally discovered or created ends that first nature is ill-equipped to achieve? • Do different societies construct/develop second nature in order to enhance first nature and/or to moderate and modify, possibly to eliminate, certain seeds in our first nature that can work against that very (first) nature and/or against our second nature and our cultured ends, which our second nature is intended to help us achieve? Here I begin to discuss the Buddhist answers to these questions. Buddhist philosophical psychology is especially interesting to Westerners because Buddhists deny (or so it is said) that there are any such things as persons or selves (atman) while offering advice, philosophical therapy, about how best to live a good and meaningful life as a person. How a nonperson without a self lives a good human life, how a nonperson with no self lives morally and meaningfully and achieves enlightenment or awakening, is deliciously puzzling . I’ll explain how nonpersons flourish, and achieve, or might achieve, the stable dynamic state I call eudaimoniaBuddha . My interpretive strategy assumes this: Aristotle was right that all people at all times seek to flourish, to find fulfillment, to achieve eudaimonia, but that people disagree about what it is. People also disagree about whether flourishing is personal or impersonal, subjective or objective, whether it is something that individuals or groups that are flourishing are necessarily conscious of or not, and whether there is such a thing as actually achieving flourishing or whether flourishing is invariably a process and a matter of degree. When Aristotle said that eudaimonia was what everyone seeks but that they disagree about what it is, he had in mind disagreements internal to the Greek situation about whether pleasure, money, reputation, contemplation , or a life of reason and virtue bring or, what is different, make up eudaimonia. And he thought that he could give an argument internal to the logic of his tradition that favored the last answer: reason and virtue. The problem repeats, however, across traditions. Thus I use—and recommend that others doing comparative work use—a superscripting strategy, eudaimoniaBuddha , eudaimoniaAristotle , eudaimoniaHedonist , to distinguish between Selfless Persons 95 conceptions of the good life. The superscripting strategy allows us to draw distinctions or contrasts between conceptions of eudaimonia such as this: • EudaimoniaAristotle = an active life of reason and virtue where the major virtues are courage, justice, temperance, wisdom, generosity, wit, friendliness...