In pondering additional about Seth Segall’s The House We Live In: Virtue, Wisdom and Pluralism, I wish to flip from reviewing the book itself, whose broad method I usually agree with, to exploring my main factors of philosophical distinction with it. I believe it is a significantly necessary method right here as a result of the e-book’s greatest weak point is its refusal to go down to deep philosophical variations, variations in questions of final worth, that means, fact, actuality. Such an method leaves Seth in no place to know his political opponents, a lot of whom are going to be conservative Christians (within the US) or conservative Muslims (worldwide). I don’t assume you’ll be able to attain a full mutual understanding with them until you perceive their variations from you at this very deep, foundational degree.
For after we take a look at Seth’s engagement with monotheistic thought – the thought that underlies these conservative Christian or Muslim views – it seems to be sadly superficial. They get their most intensive remedy on pp 133-7, wherein the wide selection of thinkers quoted contains Francis of Assisi, Rabbi Hillel and Albert Schweitzer. However discover how the part characterizes the work accomplished by its quotations:
This essentially temporary survey of Judeo-Christian, Buddhist, Ogalala Lakota, Ubuntu, and modern humanist traditions illustrates how all (or nearly all) axial and post-axial religions and humanisms—be they Western, Asian, African, or Native American—present us with ethical sources to assist make the transition from an unadulterated individualism or loyalty to a small in-group to a wider identification as an integral member of a broader human group and even perhaps to all life. (137)
The function performed by the traditions right here just isn’t the function of companions in mutual understanding. Moderately, they’re a supply of sources, instruments for use to additional an present mission whose goals had already been determined upfront. I’m in favour drawing creatively on the sources of different traditions to construct one’s personal – what Augustine would name spoiling the Egyptians – however it’s not the identical factor as listening for mutual understanding. To try this, you need to go deeper.
Seth’s neglect of basic distinction isn’t simply along with his monotheistic foes. It additionally characterizes his method to the three traditions—Aristotelian, Buddhist, and Confucian—from which he attracts his account of advantage. He phrases his method as follows:
Let’s start by outlining a number of the outstanding options of three classical moral techniques that arose individually from one another because of their geographical separation—the Aristotelean, Buddhist, and Confucian traditions—to see if we will uncover commonalties [sic] that override their readily obvious variations. (31)
There may be an assumption right here, made however not justified, that commonalities “override” variations. However I don’t assume there’s any cause to take the commonalities as overriding. One can all the time discover some types of commonalities between any small group of phenomena. Aristotle, Śāntideva, and Zhuangzi all have in widespread the truth that the English spellings of their names include the letter A. That doesn’t make that commonality vital, not to mention overriding.
And when one just isn’t clear about one’s ideas for choosing commonalities, these commonalities could in actual fact develop into much less vital. Seth makes an attempt to search out commonalities between Aristotle and the Buddhist texts – however not between the Buddhists and the Stoics. Strikingly, Seth dismisses the view of the Stoics, in response to which “advantage and knowledge are all one must flourish”, as “facile” (34). The issue for him is that the conception of flourishing in classical Buddhism, whether or not within the self-oriented Pali texts or the other-oriented Śāntideva, is much closer to that Stoic view than it is to Aristotle’s; they, just like the Stoics, dismiss the exterior items that Aristotle values. Their single purpose is the removing of struggling (dukkha), and the factor that will get us there’s advantage.
Thus Seth quotes Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra and the Dhammapāda, however says nothing about how these texts take the very best life-style to be that of a monk. The Buddha’s monastic and other-worldly imaginative and prescient of a well-being liberated from the “fetters” of relationships was very totally different from Aristotle’s and Confucius’s view of a well-being embedded in social and political relationships.
Due to that distinction, a lot of what Seth takes to be similarities should not. He quotes the Upaḍḍha Sutta in Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation, the place the Buddha says:
That is your entire holy life, Ananda, that’s, good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship. When a bhikkhu [monk] has pal, companion, comrade, it’s to be anticipated that he’ll develop and domesticate the Noble Eightfold Path.
Seth compares this to Aristotle’s view that “with out buddies nobody would select to reside”. However what he doesn’t point out is that the time period “good pal” in classical Buddhist texts is often utilized in a really particular manner: it refers to 1’s guru, an individual extra superior on the Buddhist path into whom one can put one’s belief, not an equal companion. (See chapters II and III of Śāntideva’s Śikṣā Samuccaya.) Accordingly what’s left of the supposed similarity is merely the naked phrase “friendship” and its synonyms, with no consideration to the truth that what is supposed is one thing very totally different.
Now this idea of friendship and relationship is one thing I believe the Buddha and Śāntideva are fallacious about, most likely even in a monastic context and perhaps even exterior of it. (Simply because the Buddha is fallacious within the Kamboja Sutta.) My level is exegetical rather than constructive: that’s, I’m pointing to what the classical texts truly say, not articulating my very own view. I don’t agree with the hierarchical view of friendship; I believe we do do higher when friendship is mutual and interdependent, most likely even when we’re monks. Constructively, I’m with Seth fairly than the suttas (simply as I’m with Justin Whitaker that it’s good to go to the theatre).
So what’s the level of creating this exegetical argument in regards to the textual content’s view? It’s this: there’s worth in being challenged by texts we don’t agree with. We be taught one thing from the views we disagree with. The issues I realized most from Buddhism were all things I disagreed with at first – and in lots of ways in which’s to be anticipated. Once we already agree with one thing, there’s lots much less there for us to be taught, for we’ve already realized chunk of it. That is without doubt one of the causes I’m drawn to Seth’s plea for mutual listening usually, at the same time as I discover the e-book dwelling as much as it much less in observe: mutual listening doesn’t simply assist us reside in peace, it helps us be taught.
