In Bart Gruzalski's On the Buddha, he makes the claim that "There is a tendency among those who are attracted to Buddhism to sidestep morality and focus on meditation (p. 41)." I wonder if this is true. There is anecdotal evidence for this claim, and I think that part of the attraction for some people is that Buddhists in the United States do not have the same reputation for political and moral conservatism and moralizing in general that is so off-putting to some. However, to deal with the problem of suffering, which is a central problem for human beings according to the Buddha, it is not enough to meditate. We must also be moral. In the Buddha's first sermon both the meditative and moral aspects of life are emphasized. In order to be truly enlightened, one must live in the right way.
This last point is something that Buddhism has in common with both Christianity and Aristotle's philosophical views, namely, that our ethical character has an impact on our intellectual character. Good people are better at grasping the good, the true, and the beautiful, generally speaking, than immoral or vicious people. This means that it is not enough to be intelligent if one is seeking truth. One must also be good.
7 comments:
Two quick responses...
1. In Christian religious circles, there’s a parallel move that de-emphasizes morality and emphasizes spirituality. Depending on how one articulates this, it could be a great thing or an odd thing.
2. I’ve never quite been convinced by arguments for the connection between ethical character and intellectual character, if for no other reason than the ubiquity of people one might cite as having bad ethical character with fantastic intellectual/cognitive faculties that operate quite well independent of their ethical demeanor. (There is also no shortage of very good ethical persons who could not reason themselves out of a paper bag.) Furthermore, it seems that the alleged connection depends on capitalizing on the analogies between the ethical and epistemic virtues. Are they really as entangled as need be for the connection to be warranted? I guess I can see how perhaps being a person who is fair in her relationships might be transposed into fairness in context of assessment of evidence/arguments. However, I can also see how the ethical virtue of loyalty in the context of the ethical life can be translated into obstinacy in the context of intellectual inquiry (especially when encountering epistemic defeaters). I guess I just don’t grasp the general connection that Plato and Aristotle saw between goodness and truth. Heh heh... but maybe that’s because I have bad ethical character!
And I would disassemble that trinity even further by noting how readily a conscientious aptitude for grasping the beautiful coexists with viciousness, immorality, and philistinism... One of my favorite moments in the problematic film Schindler's List is during the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, when two soldiers dispute over whether a third, at the piano, is playing Bach or Mozart. I would reckon that this and this sort of thing is more prevalent in human affairs than any actual instantiations of that trinity.
Building on Rob’s comment and assuming that Rob’s reference to the “trinity” refers to the tradition of unifying in Platonic mode the concepts of goodness, truth, and beauty, I think that I’m with you.
This is the way I’ve read the Three Theban cycles by Sophocles. When Oedipus discovers the truth, he stabs his eyes out because the truth is ugly. I’ve always thought of this scene as a literary argument against the alleged triune unity that Plato famously endorses.
Side note to Mike: Mike, you really need to post more boring entries so as NOT to tempt people (like me) to procrastinate from their regular duties.
Dan,
Regarding 1. above, it usually is an odd and I would say even destructive tendency, because the idea is that morality and spirituality are not deeply interconnected. Now moralizing, and moral effort employed to gain God's favor are problematic, but I fear that many evangelicals at least want things to be simple and expressable in basic slogans, so they say things like "God doesn't want us to be moral, he wants us to be spiritual." I am not cool with that.
Your second point is interesting, and I agree with you and Rob that there is no necessary connection between some intellectual virtues and ethical character. However, for Aristotle at least, there is a deep connection between ethical character and practical wisdom (phronesis), and I think he is right about this. For example, consider the following vicious cycle (this is from Jim Spiegel's chapter in a forthcoming book on the virtues I'm co-editing with Doug Geivett). S believes adultery is wrong, but commits the act one time. This disrupts proper cognitive function via immoral emotional and physical pleasures, which corrupts the mind's ability to produce true ethical beliefs. This results in a diminished degree of belief in the wrongness of the act and an increased motivation to repeat the act. The result is now that S is more likely to commit the act again, and the cycle repeats itself. I see this in people's lives, and hence believe it is true. N
Now quit procrastinating your duties and get back to work, or your phronetic capacities will be undermined!
Okay, Mike... you’ve tempted me out of lurking mode this one last time:
Your point about the interconnection between morality and spirituality in most religious traditions, Christianity included, is well taken.
Back to the connection between virtues of ethical character and practical wisdom: In your clarification, the example you used fused more tightly (a) ethical virtues in general with (b) instances of intellectual virtue in a highly specified domain of ethical belief. It is indeed easier to see a relationship where the cognitive belief producing mechanisms aimed at ethical belief contents could and probably is affected by the shape of the ethical character/predisposition of the agent. Put very simply: One’s prior investments alter one’s assessment of evidence and rationality (though I suspect maybe you would want to say something stronger than that). Okay, so far that’s common sense. I still think this falls short of a general claim about the alleged connection between (i) having a good moral character and (ii) in general having better functioning cognitive faculties for various belief modules.
Okay, I’m headed out now to enjoy the negative 4 degree weather on this brilliantly sunny day. Yep, our winters are hardcore.
I want to split the difference between the original post and its more general claim, and the tight ethical focus. So, for example, I think one's character could negatively impact function in a broad manner, whenever self-interest is potentially at stake. For example, moral vice might impact one's cognitive functioning with respect not only to practical wisdom, but also theoretical wisdom. One might reject certain metaphysical views of human personhood, or of properties more generally, because of the ethical implications. One could reject certain theories of epistemology for similar reasons. So I think the scope of the impact of one's character on cognitive functioning is fairly broad, after all.
Mike,
I like the split-difference better. I find myself more sympathetic, but just by a little.
My problem is that I also just as easily (and often) see it going the other way. I see the prior attachment to particular ethical beliefs (even the ones that track the truth) produced by character virtues (even the ones that are habituated in acceptable ways) as resulting in the very same obstinacy you mention, just running in the other direction.
A person can be just as doggedly ANTI-fill-in-the-blank position in metaphysics or epistemology precisely because of said position’s unfriendly implications for their ethical views for no other reason than that they don’t line up well. (Watch either Fox News or CNN for any extended period of time and see this in action!)
I don’t see this as especially tempting to those who have bad ethical character. I see this as equally tempting to those who have good ethical character.
When I ask myself what I think the difference is, I end up giving the same answer I did earlier, namely, in either case, the question is really whether or not an agent has acquired the right sorts of intellectual virtues, such that they can reason creatively and carefully about the degrees to which their beliefs in different modules square up or not. That still seems pretty independent of what sort of ethical character an agent has.
– Dan
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