On this duology of posts I’m going to reply to Sonam Kachru’s pleasant criticism of my very own work on Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses (Vimśikākārikā). However as a substitute of the standard educational apply of arguing towards Kachru’s criticisms, I’m going to recommend that Kachru could also be proper. Or possibly half-right. In any case, his work has helped my very own pondering transfer towards a brand new perception: I’ve come to suspect that I made some errors in my very own earlier work—and possibly these errors are iterations of deeper errors that always happen below the banner of “comparative philosophy.”
On this first put up, I’ll focus on my very own earlier work and Kachru’s criticisms of it, and partially two I’ll say extra about what I feel all this has to do with comparative philosophy and the way we 21st century students method classical Indian texts just like the Twenty Verses.
In my 2017 article, “External-World Skepticism in Classical India: The Case of Vasubandhu,” I laid out the talk about whether or not Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses ought to be understood as advocating a type of metaphysical idealism or a sort of epistemological phenomenalism, and I got here to the (appropriately cagey) conclusion that in both case, Vasubandhu is likely to be learn as offering an invite to contemplate one thing like the problem of external-world skepticism.
In his glorious 2021 research of Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses, Other Lives: Mind and World in Indian Buddhism, Sonam Kachru develops a novel account of the textual content that strikes away from the modern debate about whether or not Vasubandhu is defending a type of idealism. Regardless that I actually have been fairly engrossed on this debate prior to now, I now suppose Kachru has an excellent level.
His important criticism of my 2017 article is that I argued that Vasubandhu’s declare is that we’re conscious of one thing like a “phenomenal object” (Kachru 2021, 44), and certainly at the moment I used to be translating viṣaya as “sense-object” in a phenomenalist sense just like Bruce Corridor (1986). Kachru additionally doesn’t see the opening assertion as a proper anumāna: “This world is simply cognition-only, due to the looks of non-existent objects” (Viṃśikakārikā 1, my translation). As a substitute, desires are employed as certainly one of many sorts of expertise for human and non-human life-forms.
(Whereas I possibly overstated my case within the 2017 article, I don’t really suppose a lot rests on whether or not Vasubandhu is presenting a proper anumāna, and I’ll put aside that challenge right here. However I might rapidly observe that the anumāna may very well be non-fallacious if one takes critically what some have known as the Phenomenal Precept, in response to which we’re instantly conscious of the identical factor in each veridical and inaccurate cognitions—on this interpretation, Vasubandhu’s level is that there’s a core similarity between veridical and inaccurate expertise, and never the “howler” that we should always infer “all cognitions are inaccurate” as a result of “some cognitions are inaccurate”).
Though Kachru criticizes my earlier article, I discovered myself fairly satisfied by loads of his guide, way more satisfied than I might have thought! Like Kachru, I see Vasubandhu’s basic message to be that we should always purpose for “a sure method of being open to the world” (Kachru 2021, 161) in a method that standard human expertise just isn’t. This is smart when you think about that, consistent with Vasubandhu’s Buddhist motivations, our usually closed-minded expertise is one main reason behind struggling.
This additionally is smart of Vasubandhu’s feedback in regards to the non-dual expertise of the Buddhas on the finish of the textual content in Viṃśikakārikā 21-22 (that is additionally why I don’t suppose Vasubandhu may very well be making any arguments meant to clinch the case for metaphysical idealism; in a second of epistemic humility, he admits he has completed the very best he can in a dualistic framework, whereas solely the Buddhas know the entire reality).
Whereas my 2017 article was crammed with all the everyday educational hedges and caveats, I did declare that Vasubandhu, whether or not taken as a metaphysical idealist or epistemological phenomenalist, provides an invite to contemplate the issue of external-world skepticism (Mills 2017, 162-164). And studying Kachru has satisfied me that I used to be flawed to attempt to push Vasubandhu into a sort of phenomenalism in regards to the direct objects of cognition akin to the sorts of Western phenomenalism developed in current centuries.
Though I nonetheless suppose Vasubandhu would have a dim view of what one would possibly name direct realism (of both classical Indian or modern Western varieties), Kachru’s guide provides me a method to make sense of what I see as the overall thrust of Vasubandhu’s arguments (“don’t take your expertise too critically”) with out contorting Vasubandhu’s philosophical brilliance to suit the preoccupations of Western philosophers from the 17th-21st centuries.
However extra essentially, I feel my earlier challenge was misguided.
One might, I suppose, marvel what Vasubandhu would say about external-world skepticism as it’s understood in modern Western philosophy, simply as one might marvel what he would say about Berkeleyan or Hegelian idealism. However studying Kachru’s guide (particularly his cautious consideration to Buddhist cosmology) made me marvel why we might accomplish that. Why, in spite of everything, when Vasubandhu has so many desirable issues of his personal to say?
Vasubandhu’s issues are usually not these of early fashionable Europe, American pragmatism, phenomenology, or modern analytic philosophy. Nor do these Western issues comprise all the conceptual area of all attainable philosophical issues; it could be hubristic racism to recommend that white Europeans alone invented all attainable philosophical issues! There is no such thing as a good cause to let Western philosophy set all attainable agendas for all different traditions.
Vasubandhu has his personal points and insights. If we had been to study from them, we would discover a philosophical problem way more fascinating that the challenge of slotting Vasubandhu into pre-existing Western classes.
In truth, my solely actual criticism of Kachru’s guide is that he’s often a bit too serious about pairing Vasubandhu with modern philosophers immersed in phenomenology, pragmatism, and anti-skeptical analytic epistemology.
However what if we had been to pay attention fastidiously to Vasubandhu in his personal phrases, and study from what he has to say? I’ll discover some attainable solutions to this query partially two.
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Works Cited
Corridor, Bruce Cameron. 1986. “The Which means of Vijñapti in Vasubandhu’s Idea of Thoughts.” Journal of the Worldwide Affiliation of Buddhist Research 9 (1): 7-23.
Kachru, Sonam. 2021. Different Lives: Thoughts and World in Indian Buddhism. New York: Columbia College Press.
Mills, Ethan. 2017. “Exterior-World Skepticism in Classical India: The Case of Vasubandhu.” Worldwide Journal for the Examine of Skepticism 7 (3): 147-172.
