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Introduction
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Anachronism and Ethnocentrism Suppose we permitted ourselves this luxury: invite Confucius, SiddhƗrtha Gautama, Mohammed, Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great, Karl Marx, Thomas Jefferson, Sojourner Truth, or any other interesting or wise dead person with a view, or who is a representative of a tradition, into our conversations about our problems—poverty, heath care, capitalism, how to be a good person, how to live well, to flourish, to be happy—and listen to what they say. This is anachronistic. Some say anachronism is bad, even that it is not allowed. Allow it. Next imagine responding to the anachronistic answers of our respected ancestors with our own reflective standards of cogency, wisdom, and breadth and depth, feeling free to judge their answers as helpful or inadequate for our problems in our time. This is ethnocentric. It is temporally different but logically identical to judging the ideas and ways of other contemporary peoples as well suited for us or not suited for us, as good for us or not good for us in our time. Some say ethnocentrism is bad, even that it is not allowed. Allow it. Three Philosophical Styles: Comparative, Fusion, and Cosmopolitan Next, consider three styles of doing philosophy. First there is comparative. Compare and contrast. Regarding ethics, Confucians say that filial piety (xiao) is a mandatory virtue. Aristotle doesn’t mention xiao or anything in its vicinity as essential to morality. For Buddhists, compassion (karuna) is the first and highest virtue; for citizens of contemporary liberal societies, left or right, individual compassion is an optional virtue while justice or fairness, at both the personal and political levels, holds pride of place as a constraint on the exercise of otherwise unlimited freedom. Second, there Introduction: Buddhism Naturalized 2 Introduction is fusion. What do we get when we add Confucian xiao to Aristotle’s list of virtues? Is it an interesting, appealing mix or not? Could such a mixture work to improve our culture, say, by making the youth more respectful and society more orderly?1 Finally, there is cosmopolitan. Think of the exercise of reading and living and speaking across different traditions as open, noncommittal , energized by an ironic or skeptical attitude about all the forms of life being expressed, embodied, and discussed, including one’s own, but sensitive also to the demands of one’s own way of being and living given its utterly contingent but nonetheless identity-constitutive role in making one who he or she is. The cosmopolitan is a listener and a speaker, an anachronistic and ethnocentric one, he or she compares and contrasts, is willing to try fusings of silly and safe sorts, but mostly likes living at the intersection of multiple spaces of meaning, waiting and seeing and watching whatever happens happen.2 Many Westerners are attracted to Buddhism because it offers one way to be “spiritual but not religious,” the currently favored answer to the religion question on social networking sites. This is an interesting development . Historically Buddhism is atheistic or quietistic when it comes to a creator God. SiddhƗrtha put the creation question, as well as most other standard metaphysical questions, aside in one early sutra as impractical or beyond human understanding or both. But Buddhism is opulently polytheistic insofar as spirits, protector deities, ghosts, and evil spirits abound (Collins 2003, 104). Buddhists in East and Southeast Asia believe in rebirth in about the same proportions as most North Americans believe in heaven. Amusingly, many believers in heaven find belief in rebirth superstitious and thus silly, whereas from a reflective naturalistic perspective both are silly. Is a fully secular, naturalistic understanding of Buddhism possible? Are Quakers and Unitarians Christians? Are secular, naturalistic Buddhists really Buddhists?3 Naturalism comes in many varieties (Flanagan 2006), but the entry-level union card—David Hume is our hero—expresses solidarity with this motto: “Just say no to the supernatural.” Rebirths, heavens, hells, creator gods, teams of gods, village demons, miracles, divine retributions in the form of plagues, earthquakes, tsunamis are things naturalists don’t believe in. What there is, and all there is, is natural stuff, and everything that happens has some set of natural causes that produce it—although we may not be able to figure out what these causes are or were. Why be a naturalist? World historical evidence suggests that naturalism, vague as it is, keeps being vindicated, while the zones “explained” by the supernatural get smaller everyday. Naturalism is a good bet.4 [54.158.138.161] Project MUSE...