Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy

Parimal Patil (Harvard University)
With responses fromBronwyn Finnigan (University of Auckland)

"Humeans and Kantians in Early Modern India? Desire, Motivation and Action in Sanskrit Philosophy"

 

The purpose of my presentation is to explain why students of Indian philosophy (especially those interested in ethics) ought to be extremely interested in the question of what Vedic utterances convey. Through my presentation, I hope to show how and why early modern Sanskrit philosophers took this question to be at the center of debates in meta-ethics, moral psychology, and philosophy of action. Central to the presentation will also be the question of how Indian approaches to these issues compare, philosophically, to more contemporary Euro-American ones.

Marie Friquegnon (William Paterson University)
With responses from Charles Goodman (Binghamton University)

"Buddhism and Free Will""

 

The aim of this discussion will be to look at the philosophical concepts of free-will and liberation in varying Buddhist orders. I will argue that there are three distinct concepts of free will and liberation in Buddhism.

First, Buddhists reject the idea that individuals are constrained by a divine power or material causality. Second, Buddhists argue that unethical actions are the direct result of mental states governed by anger/hatred, jealousy/attachment, and ignorance/fear. For instance, Shantideva asserts that we can no more blame someone — under the influence of such mental states — than we can blame fire for causing smoke. And third, in the Mahayana tradition, the same determinist attitude does not apply to "selfless" actions, which spontaneously spring from one’s own enlightened nature.

In my presentation I will outline the philosophical grounds for the aforementioned views. I will explore their implications within Buddhist thought, and I will flesh out what contributions I believe these ideas can make to the discipline of philosophy.

A Joint Roundtable Discussion with Michael Schulman &
the University Seminar on Ethics, Moral Education, & Society

With responses from
Bronwyn Finnigan (University of Auckland),
Hagop Sarkissian (Baruch College, CUNY), &
Jonathan C. Gold (Princeton University)

"How We Become Moral: The Sources of Moral Motivation"

 

I have argued that moral motivation derives from three independent sources: empathy, moral principles, and moral affiliations. All three motivational sources affect the behavior of most individuals, but to different degrees. The relative strengths of these sources determine an individual's "moral style." Religions foster moral motivation by tapping into all three sources, but different religions emphasize each source to different degrees. Thus, different religions have their own moral style.

Matthew Kapstein (Univ of Chicago & École pratique des hautes études) With responses from Owen Flanagan (Duke University) &
Tao Jiang (Rutgers University)

"Myths, Lies, and Moral Reason"

 

The contemporary study of Indian philosophy tends to stress those topics that most closely accord with the interests of mid-20th century analytic philosophy, focusing on questions pertaining to logic and the theory of knowledge, philosophy of language, metaphysics and philosophical psychology. Ethics, though by no means unrepresented, has been at best an area of secondary concern. This, of course, reflects to some degree Indian philosophical literature itself: whereas works such as Śāntaraksita’s Tattvasamgraha, Kumārila Bhatta’s Ślokavārttika, or Jayanta Bhatta’s Nyāyamañjarī treat of the topics mentioned above at great length, questions of value—ethics, politics, aesthetics—are remarkable only for their absence. In the case of aesthetics, we can of course supplement apparent neglect on the part of the philosophers by referring to the massive and intellectually challenging literature of Indian poetics and dramaturgy. But where do we turn in the case of Indian ethics?

A number of responses to this query are available, of which one of the most promising is to be found in the late Bimal K. Matilal’s reflections on the elusive figure of Dharma in the Mahābhārata. In the talk proposed here, I wish to develop Matilal’s line of inquiry, but with particular reference to the long-standing Western “quarrel between philosophy and poetry,” as it has been understood beginning with Plato’s characterization of the confrontation between the two domains.

This lecture was recorded on Friday, February 13, 2009 at 80 Claremont Avenue (the Department of Religion, Columbia University).

Copyright © 2009 CSCP. All rights reserved.

Mark Siderits (Seoul National University)
With responses from Georges Dreyfus (Williams College)

"Was Candrakīrti a Non-Reductionist?"

 

 

While it is generally agreed that Abhidharma Buddhists held a Reductionist view of persons and personal identity, some claim that the Madhyamika Buddhist Candrakīrti explicitly rejects Reductionism. Since Abhidharma frames its Reductionist understanding of non-self in terms of the notion of a privileged ontology, and Madhyamaka explicitly rejects the very idea of a privileged ontology, it seems to make sense that Candrakīrti would reject Reductionism. Still one would expect a Non-Reductionist to affirm a more robustly real sense of personhood than Candrakīrti seems willing to countenance.

In this lecture, the philosopher Mark Siderits attempts a "rational reconstruction" of Candrakīrti and argues that he is best seen as holding a kind of mitigated Reductionism.

This lecture was recorded on Friday, January 23, 2009 at 80 Claremont Avenue (the Department of Religion, Columbia University).

Thumbnail photo #1: Paul Hackett & Georges Dreyfus
Thumbnail Photo #2: Lozang Jamspal
Thumbnail Photo #3: Wendi Adamek & Tao Jiang
Thumbnail Photo #4: Jonathan Gold & Mark Siderits
 

Copyright © 2009 CSCP. All rights reserved.