1. Introduction
1.1 The Problems and General Ideas of the Investigation
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
1. Introduction
1.1 The Problems and General Ideas of the Investigation
Is it at all possible for us human beings to rid ourselves of the constraints of natural causality? This question has taken on particular urgency for western philosophers since the emergence of the modern understanding of “nature” as elaborated by Newton (1687).1 With this idea, as Kant so nicely paraphrased in his “Third
Antinomy” in KrV, people believe that everything that happens must have its cause in the previous temporal stage in accordance with causal laws. If this principle of causality exhausts the truth about the human experience, what follows is a strict determinism. And this exhaustion seems to tie in rather well with our modern intuition, for little in our modern common sense understanding of the world casts doubt on it. However, Kant (KrV: A 538 – 58 /B566 – 86.) concluded in his Third Antinomy that aside from natural causality, the causality of freedom (that there must be an absolute cause kickstarting a new series of causation without any pre-condition) is required as well and “in harmony” with the strict fact of the “universal law of natural necessity,” so that the real human experience as such can be derived. This treatment, especially his treatment of the truth concerning freedom, has never stopped courting controversies in Kantian studies, and we modern folks often have little difficulty assuming the exhaustion of natural causality in human experience. Strong naturalism, or the belief that all mental statuses can be reduced to physics, remains exceedingly popular among philosophers nowadays who are interested in the mind.
This same question is actually also being posed with great urgency in another, much older philosophical tradition: Buddhism, particularly because the goal of the practical project in this tradition is to attain nirvāṇa when the practitioners in such a project cannot but situate himself or herself in saṃsāra. Saṃsāra is a common theme shared
1 Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy).
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
among many ancient Asian cultures including Hinduism, Buddhism, Bön, Jainism, Taoism, etc., and it refers to the repeating cycle of a single subject in various forms of birth, life and death (reincarnation), whereas karma, the principle of causality, webs all the elementary forms of actions and existences in the cycle. Nirvāṇa in general entails a profound, still status liberated from the network of the forces of karma.
Buddhism clings on to the necessity of the karma network on the one hand but aims to attain nirvāṇa on the other hand. Hence, the proper understanding of the relation between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra has been an enduring hot bed of philosophical debates in the tradition, one in which philosophers continue to be engaged nowadays. Also, many philosophers in present-day Buddhist philosophy are investing immense efforts to determine whether Buddhism can be “naturalized,”2 meaning that people continue to wonder if there is any positive account of the free status when we have to be situated in nature.
Quite interestingly, we can identify a similar philosophical conumdrum in both traditions: there exists a demand for the incompatibility and, at the same time yet almost paradoxically, also a harmonious interrelation, between natural necessity and some true, free status from that necessity. More precisely, if we look at Mahāyāna Buddhism, which has rejected the ultimate reality (the ultimate real
ontological status) of atoms as claimed by Hīnayāna/Abhidharma Buddhism, we can proclaim that in both Buddhist philosophy and Kant, the possibility for the free status to be any ontological status has already been ruled out. Then, the question is how we should understand the free status and make a clear differentiation as well as a clear connection between the free status and the status situated in the natural constraints, if such a distinction and relation cannot be “ontological.” Perhaps the only other option for the unification of natural constraints and spiritual liberation rests with the
investigation of the condition through which all possible cognitions can be resulted.
If this is indeed the case, then we should not be surprised that in both traditions,
2 See Arnold (2012: 1 – 13).
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
epistemology assumes paramount importance and is taken to be one crucial path or method of practice to uncover such an almost paradoxical unification in humanity.
Kant's response to the question consists of a treatment of the epistemology (KrV) and a positive proof for freedom upon the epistemology (G). Believing that any possible experience has to be a possible cognition and that one cannot experience the
unknowable, Kant established a system of cognitive faculties by abstracting the empirical contents (affected sensation / matter) and analyzing the domains and relations (forms) among the necessary and non-empirical forms in the cognitive consciousness.3 Upon the ground of his epistemology, Kant proposed a two-fold scheme between empirical reality and transcendental ideality.4 On the one hand, as the result of cognition, experience is empirically real, for the cognition is so resulted with certain observable and undeniable formal necessities, e.g., objectivity (as an object), spatio-temporality (in time and space), etc. Of course, although experience derives its reality from cognition, our thoughts about the experience can still be false, because the empirical judgment in thinking may be different from how the
appearance is synthesized in the cognition (transcendental judgment, Überlegen, reflexio5). On the other hand, as the established system, the individual distinct forms, functions and inter-relations of the domains of the cognitive system must possess certain non-empirical necessities, because they are based on the necessary results of the critical abstraction of the sensational (i.e., empirical) contents in cognitions.
Furthermore, as Kant claimed6 and posited7 in KrV, the assumption that these forms and functions have external causes in the “transcendental reality” must undermine the possibility of both nature (empirical reality) and freedom, and these transcendental forms and functions of cognition can only be transcendentally ideal, not real.
3 KrV: A 19 – 22 / B 33 – 36.
4 KrV: A 28 / B 44; A 36 / B 52; A 36 – 41/ B 53 – 58; A 367 – 80; A 490 – 91/B 518 – 19.
5 KrV: A 260 – 2 / B 316 – 7.
6 KrV: A 543 / B 571.
7 KrV: A369; A 490 – 91/B 518 – 19.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Thereafter, Kant was able to restrict the efficacy of natural causality within the empirical reality, insofar as the critical self-investigation of cognition proves and establishes that “causality” is one of the necessary transcendental conditions for cognition and experience (one function of the transcendental logic). On the other hand, the conditions, including the abstract forms, functions and interrelations among them, as Kant attempted to argue, have to hold true when they are expressed in the empirical reality and cannot hold true when they are also inferred as remaining true beyond the scope of the empirical reality. It was exactly at this two-fold investigation stage that Kant laid out his argument for the truth of freedom: a. It is a truth that there is a conditional need (for nature as well as for freedom) for “another” type of
causality, the formal causality in freedom, in contrast to natural causality in the empirical reality (KrV, Third Antinomy); b. free will is a categorical and formal imperative that has to do “not with the matter of the action and what is to result from it, but with the form (of action) and the principle from which the action itself
follows” (GMS: 4168).
With regard to this investigation stage, we can see that contemporary scholars in the philosophy of Kant continue to dispute two issues: (1) Does Kant's epistemology successfully support his transcendental idealism? (2) Are the arguments for freedom in the Third Antinomy in KrV and those in G successful? The mainstream
philosophers take a dim view of issue (1) and seek to “remove” or “separate”
transcendental idealism from empirical realism. Henry E. Allison's work (1983), together with the revised and augmented edition (2004), is a veritable tome
encapsulating the extensive debates. He expertly put together the arguments of the philosophers championing anti-idealism – P. F. Strawson (1966) and his followers, mainly H. A. Prichard (1909) – and the philosophers adhering to the separability-thesis – including also certain followers of Strawson, primarily Paul Guyer (1982, 1983 & 1987) and Rae Langton (1998). The anti-idealists rejected the claims of Kant
8 Translation and pagination follow the Cambridge edition, 1996. Insertion is mine.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
that space and time are the mere aesthetic (sensible) forms of representation and that they possess no external reality (transcendental reality)9. The other group of
philosophers further believe that with the removal of Kant's idea on the ideality of space and time, Kant's epistemology can still suffice for science and objective validity in nature and succeed in refuting skepticism. Allison's interpretation and defense are still being disputed nowadays, and his position has not been receptively received or answered thoroughly by contemporary scholars. The main thrusts of his interpretation and defense are to focus on the distinction that Kant made between the two characters of a person, namely the intelligible character that belongs in the realm of intelligibility and the kingdom of freedom, and the empirical character that belongs in the realm of sensibility and the kingdom of nature, and to emphasize that the
distinction is one between two aspects, not between two objects or two worlds. His criticisms of his opponents fall primarily along the line of attack that their
interpretation of the distinction is merely an ontological distinction and fails to take into account what Kant claimed is an epistemological distinction (Allison, 2004: 4 – 11).
As for issue (2), Allison (1990), with his two-aspect interpretation, attempted to defend the success of Kant's solution to the Third Antinomy in KrV. However, interestingly, H. J. Paton (1947: 224-5), yet another earlier philosopher who held a similar two-aspect view (or, in his wording, two standpoints), believed that Kant's argument in G had failed and that the whole argument for freedom has taken on the form of a “vicious circle.” In contrast, Allison (2011) continued to defend the success of the argument in G. Without going into the details of the discussions centering around the two issues, here, we may want to take a close look at the two shifts in the lines of commentaries on the side of Buddhist philosophy, in which we will find certain patterns of problematic interpretations similar to what we have witnessed in the modern philosophical debates concerning Kant's idea of freedom.
9 Strawson (1966: 16) labeled transcendental idealism a “disastrous” doctrine of Kant.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
The first shift came courtesy of Candrākīrti (ca. 600 – 650 C.E.), an influential thinker in the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism. In Buddhism,
philosophers have also developed a two-fold scheme to treat the relation between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra, and this is known as the “Two Truth” or “Two Reality
Theory.” The earliest written philosophical discussions about the scheme, to the best of our knowledge, took place in the Abhidharma Mahāvibhāṣa Śāstra,10 a canonical text of Abhidharma Buddhism. Essentially, the scheme makes a distinction between the understanding of the real world in the common opinion of the people and the understanding of the real world in the awakened awareness (buddhas). The early discussions about the scheme by Nāgārjuna (Madhyamaka thinker, 150 – 250 C.E.), Maitreya (Yogācāra thinker, second half of the 4th century), Dignāga (the founder of the new Buddhist epistemology and logic, 480 – 540 C.E.)11 and Bhāviveka (the founder of the Madhyamaka school,12 ca. 500 – 578) can be characterized as a description of an epistemological distinction (see 1.3.1.1). These discussions attempted to make sense of the differences and relations between the conventional truth and the ultimate truth as some different employments of the same epistemic capacity. Naturally, their ideas on Buddhist practice exhibit some kind of trust in the moderate employment of epistemology and logic (moderate because of their
constrained use only within the conventional reality and not beyond it), suggesting or demonstrating the performance of the epistemological practice (self-critique) in the investigation of cognition in order to clear away the inappropriate, incomplete understanding of reality and to unveil the appropriate knowledge. However,
Candrākīrti objected to such an opining difference with regard to the distinction. He was convinced that the difference is one between linguistic activities and the
10 The text is believed to have been produced in 150 C.E. (Potter, 1996: 112). We also have Xuanzang's Chinese translation A Pi Da Muo Da Pi Puo Sha Lun阿毘達磨⼤毘婆沙論.
11 We do not have direct textual proof of Dignāga's involvement in interpreting the Two Truth Theory. However, given his status as one of the most significant contributors to Buddhist epistemology, his account of epistemology should reasonably be included in the line of epistemological interpretations of the Two Truth Theory, especially when the two different responses to his epistemology have resulted in the divide of the Madhyamaka, following which the epistemological interpretation of the Two Truth Theory is argued for in one group and denied in the other.
12 Saito (2006).
‧
unspeakable,13 which in some sense transforms the epistemic distinction into an ontological one – a distinction between two ontological statuses: words and the unspeakable (see 1.3.1.1). His understanding of the Two Truth Theory quickly gained influence. On the one hand, his criticism of the Buddhist epistemologist Dignāga (especially his notion of self-awareness, svasaṁvitti14/svasaṁvedana15) paved the way for the profound changes in the philosophical development of Dignāga's famed follower and promoter Dharmakīrti (the founder of the school of Buddhist epistemology, ca. 600 – 660 C.E.16). On the other hand, his disagreement with his clansman and predecessor Bhāviveka splintered the school of Madhyamaka into two main streams over the course of the school's subsequent development: one holds on to epistemology as a method for unveiling the true knowledge whereas the other categorically rejects epistemology.
The second shift took place after the ascent of Dharmakīrti within the circle of the epistemologists. Later Buddhist epistemologists have experienced significant
problems interpreting Dharmakīrti's further development of Dignāga's epistemology because of its realistic and physicalistic (Sautrāntika) character17; more precisely, the
13 Candrākīrti's commentary in the Prasannapadāon MMK 24.8 – 10. Ven. Jianhong Shi (2010: 15) wrote that the key representatives maintaining this view are Gajin Nagao (1978) and Yuichi Kajiyama (1982), cf. Yoshimizu (1990: 105-107, 110-111 and note 6, 144). We can cast reasonable doubts on Candrākīrti's “clear distinction”
between the “two truths” (Ven. Jianhong Shi, 2010: 19), given that there exists some gradient between the two.
Nonetheless, the gradient here concerns the various compositions of knowledge among the practitioners from ordinary persons via the stages of bodhisattvas to buddhas, while the fundamental difference between the two remains very sharp.
14 PSV 1.6ab.
15 Auto-commentary of PSV 1.6ab.
16 Ouyang Jingwu's Yin ming zheng li men lun ben xu.
17 Although most of the contemporary Dharmakīrti scholars would accept the claim that Dharmakīrti's epistemic project is some kind of realistic epistemology (holding a real causal relation between the object of the mind and the cognition in the mind), it is somewhat accepted also that Dharmakīrti's philosophy is highly complicated and perhaps consists of different “stages.” For instance, G. Dreyfus (1997) believed that, following the Tibetan thinker Śākya Chok-den, there are four stages in Dharmakīrti's philosophy, and each stage is denied by the one immediately following it. Dreyfus believed that the realistic characters (together with the assumption of the real existence of the external world) of Dharmakīrti’s philosophy remain only in the scope of the former three stages while the last stage is purely idealism. Without going into the details for now, Dreyfus and Śākya Chok-den's materials suggest that, aside from the “standard interpretation” that the contemporary Dharmakīrti scholars prefer, we may also want to begin to consider an “alternative interpretation”: not simply inking Dharmakīrti as a simple realist. We should keep this in mind, but in the present investigation, Dharmakīrti is made the strawman representing realistic epistemology, which assumes the cognition procedure to be real in time; it thus follows that Dreyfus is believed to be the standard interpretation of the present-day mainstream scholarship.
‧
difficulties arose because the epistemic validity in his opinion has to be guaranteed by the causal efficacy of the pramāṇa-s,18 the measures of cognition (or cognitive
faculties, a term we modern folks are more accustomed to). On the surface, if the relation between the sensational cognitive faculty (perception, pratyakṣa) and the faculty for conceptual construction (inference, anumāna)19 in Dignāga is properly understood, as Dharmakīrti preferred, to be natural causal relation, Dignāga's claim that the cognitive faculties and their result (the resulted cognition) have to be one and the same20 would be very inappropriate.21 Moreover, this claim is highly profound for the philosophical position of Mahāyāna in general, viz., an idealism that refuses self-existing basic elements independent from cognition. If the cognitive faculties and the cognition were related in natural causality, the faculties would become something naturally effective and independent of cognition – in other words, something effective at the non-conventional level. The later Buddhist epistemologists after Dharmakīrti thus began to debate the status of the cognitive faculties, as Dan Arnold (2010) pointed out. In contrast to Dharmakīrti's causal explanation about the
operation of the cognitive faculties, later thinkers such as Prajñākaragupta (750 – 810 C.E.) and Dharmottara (700 – 800 C.E.) began to interpret the cognitive faculties as some formal conditions only through whose complete satisfaction in the resulted, realized cognition that they themselves can be counted as “pramāṇa-s”; this is also the position that Bhāviveka obviously assumed.22 Such developments have made notable Dignāga's not-so-well-appreciated original idea of “the formal conformity,”
18 Pramāṇasvārtika 3.3 (Shastri, 1968: 100): “whatever has the capacity for causal efficacy (arthakriyāsamartham yat) is ultimately existent (paramārthasat); everything else is conventionally existent.” Translation uses Arnold (2012:
21-22).
19 Dignāga established only two pramāṇas, because in every object of cognition we can only have two “aspects (akara)” of it: its immediate particularity and its mediate universality (PSV 1. 2).
20 PS(V) 1.10: “Therefore, these three factors of cognition (object of cognition, cognitive faculty and the resulted cognition) are not separate from one another.”
21 Of course, there are also issues concerning Dignāga's notion of “self-awareness” and “formal conformity” between the determination of the object and the determination in the self-awareness (PS(V) 1.9) underlying the discussions within this group of thinkers. However, since Dharmakīrti himself has already been suspected to accept
Candrakīrti's suggestion to quietly remove the notion of mental perception (Arnold 2010: 340), to introduce these problems would obfuscate the debate on our main thesis. Therefore, I shall put these issues aside for the time being.
22 “dbu ma'i rtsa b'i 'grel pa shes rab sgron ma,” 45b-62b, also 46b-47a (etymology), Prajñāpradīpa (Derge Version of Kangyur; cf. Taishō tripiṭaka No. 3853). The understanding of the Tibetan text relies primarily on the
investigation in the dissertation of Su-an Lin, NCCU (forth-coming).
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
in PS(V) 1.9, between the determination of the form of the object and the determination of the awareness of the cognition of the object.
In face of the concerns about Dignāga's “pramāṇa-prameya-phala-being-the-same”
thesis, Arnold (2010) employed the distinction put forth by Paul Williams (1980) and suggested that Candrākīrti and Dharmakīrti had interpreted Dignāga's idea of self-awareness as “reflective,” meaning that the sixth consciousness (mental
consciousness) processes the result of the first-five-sense consciousness causally.
Such a “reflective” understanding actually casts a doubt on the sixth consciousness being “direct and perceptual” in character, so far as I can see, because if the sixth
Such a “reflective” understanding actually casts a doubt on the sixth consciousness being “direct and perceptual” in character, so far as I can see, because if the sixth