19,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Being Philosophical guides readers through the perplexing initial moments of meeting philosophy by taking them inside philosophical thinking as an activity.
In a beginner-friendly voice, Stephen Hetherington elucidates how intellectual ‘tools’ from a diversity of traditions, East and West, can enable us to start doing philosophy – that is, to think ‘from scratch’ in a philosophical way. He explores many classical topics and issues that have preoccupied philosophers from Plato, early Buddhists and Confucius to Karl Marx and beyond – selves, souls, identity, will, knowing and reasoning, acting morally, and more – and presents possible methods for responding to different theories.
Inviting and conversational, Being Philosophical is the book needed by every new philosophy student – or anyone wondering whether they might want to explore the world of philosophy.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 412
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Detailed Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Who Are You?
1.1 Selves
1.1.1 Upaniṣadic impersonal selves
1.1.2 Buddhist no-selves
1.1.3 David Hume’s no-inner-substantial-selves
1.1.4 Patricia Churchland’s brainy selves
1.1.5 Ifeanyi Menkiti’s socially created selves
Readings for 1.1
1.2 Souls
1.2.1 Plato’s immortal soul
1.2.2 Wang Chong’s nature
1.2.3 Avicenna’s flying man
1.2.4 René Descartes’s mind-meets-body
1.2.5 Martha Kneale’s stories
Readings for 1.2
1.3 Self-reflection
1.3.1 Christine de Pizan’s Reason
1.3.2 Mary Midgley’s Beasts
1.3.3 Harry Frankfurt’s wantons
Readings for 1.3
1.4 Personal identity
1.4.1 Buddhist demons
1.4.2 Vasubandhu’s persons-as-collections
1.4.3 John Locke’s memories
1.4.4 Derek Parfit’s Teletransporter
Readings for 1.4
1.5 Personal essence
1.5.1 Karl Marx and human nature
1.5.2 Frantz Fanon and race
1.5.3 Sally Haslanger and gender
Readings for 1.5
1.6 Personal will
1.6.1 Aristotle trapped by the future
1.6.2 Alexander of Aphrodisias trapped by the past
1.6.3 Philippa Foot’s explanations
1.6.4 Edna Ullmann-Margalit’s big decisions
Readings for 1.6
1.7 Personal significance
1.7.1 Lucretius living with death
1.7.2 St Anselm living with faith
1.7.3 Albert Camus living with absurdity
1.7.4 Susan Wolf living with meaning
Readings for 1.7
2 Philosophical Reading and Writing
2.1 Wondering what it is to be philosophical?
2.2 Reading
2.2.1 Selfless philosophy (and Āryadeva)
2.2.2 Self-philosophy (and John Perry)
2.2.3 The Way of Truth (and Parmenides)
2.2.4 Forms of Truth (and the
Mahābhārata)
Readings for 2.2
2.3 Writing
3 What Do You Know?
3.1 What is knowledge?
3.1.1 Plato’s knowing beliefs
3.1.2 Nyāya’s knowing episodes
3.1.3 Bertrand Russell’s stopped clock
Readings for 3.1
3.2 Doubts
3.2.1 The
Zhuangzi’
s puzzling questions
3.2.2 Sextus Empiricus’ competing appearances
3.2.3 Nāgārjuna’s empty words
3.2.4 Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī’s dreams
3.2.5 Francisco Sanches’s unknowing words
3.2.6 René Descartes’s demon
Readings for 3.2
3.3 Knowing a physical world?
3.3.1 René Descartes’s dreams
3.3.2 George Berkeley’s ideas
Readings for 3.3
3.4 Knowing other minds?
3.4.1 Dharmakīrti’s idealist reasonings
3.4.2 John Stuart Mill’s realist analogies
3.4.3 Edith Stein’s empathy
Readings for 3.4
3.5 Knowing in action
3.5.1 Wang Yangming’s knowledge-action unity
3.5.2 Gilbert Ryle’s knowledge-how
3.5.3 Elizabeth Anscombe’s practical knowledge
3.5.4 American Indian questioning-knowledge-how
Readings for 3.5
3.6 Knowing’s rights and wrongs
3.6.1 Maria Montessori’s methods
3.6.2 Linda Zagzebski’s intellectual virtues
3.6.3 Helen Longino’s feminist sensibility
3.6.4 Miranda Fricker on epistemic injustice
3.6.5 Charles Mills on white ignorance
3.6.6 Vrinda Dalmiya’s relational humility
Readings for 3.6
4 Philosophical Reasoning
4.1 Elements
4.2 Uses
4.3 Examples
4.3.1 Revisiting Plato’s
Meno
4.3.2 Revisiting the
Zhuangzi
4.3.3 Revisiting Longino’s feminist sensibility
4.3.4 Revisiting al-Ghazālī’s dreams
4.4 Philosophical reasoning as rhythmic gymnastics?
5 How Should You Act?
5.1 Towards yourself
5.1.1 Confucius’ Way
5.1.2 Aristotle’s substantial happiness
5.1.3 Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī’s complete man
Readings for 5.1
5.2 Towards other people
5.2.1 The Confucian
Great Learning
5.2.2 Immanuel Kant’s ends-in-themselves
5.2.3 Mary Wollstonecraft’s early feminism
5.2.4 John Stuart Mill’s greatest happiness
5.2.5 Nel Noddings’s caring
5.2.6 Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities
5.2.7 Charles Mills on the racial contract
Readings for 5.2
5.3 Towards non-human animals
5.3.1 Śāntideva’s sentient beings
5.3.2 Peter Singer’s liberated animals
5.3.3 Christine Korsgaard’s fellow creatures
Readings for 5.3
5.4 Towards nature
5.4.1 The Stoics’ cosmos
5.4.2 Wang Yangming’s one body
5.4.3 Arne Naess’s ecosophy
5.4.4 Holmes Rolston’s environmental ethic
5.4.5 James Lovelock’s Gaia
Readings for 5.4
6 Philosophical Viewing
6.1 Why be philosophical?
6.2 Viewing the world philosophically
6.2.1 Contents
6.2.2 Attitudes
6.3 Viewing views philosophically
6.4 Views, views, views
6.5 Philosophy as experiment
6.6 Philosophy forever
6.7 Philosophical progress
6.8 Xenophanes’ opinion
Reading for 6.8
6.9 Living philosophically
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Pages
iii
iv
vi
vii
viii
ix
x
xi
xii
xiii
xiv
xv
xvi
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
Being Philosophical
An Introduction to Philosophy and Its Methods
Stephen Hetherington
polity
Copyright Page
Copyright © Stephen Hetherington 2024
The right of Stephen Hetherington to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2024 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5457-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5458-4 (pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023945911
by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Detailed Contents
Introduction
1 Who Are You?
1.1 Selves
1.1.1 Upaniṣadic impersonal selves
1.1.2 Buddhist no-selves
1.1.3 David Hume’s no-inner-substantial-selves
1.1.4 Patricia Churchland’s brainy selves
1.1.5 Ifeanyi Menkiti’s socially created selves
Readings for 1.1
1.2 Souls
1.2.1 Plato’s immortal soul
1.2.2 Wang Chong’s nature
1.2.3 Avicenna’s flying man
1.2.4 René Descartes’s mind-meets-body
1.2.5 Martha Kneale’s stories
Readings for 1.2
1.3 Self-reflection
1.3.1 Christine de Pizan’s Reason
1.3.2 Mary Midgley’s Beasts
1.3.3 Harry Frankfurt’s wantons
Readings for 1.3
1.4 Personal identity
1.4.1 Buddhist demons
1.4.2 Vasubandhu’s persons-as-collections
1.4.3 John Locke’s memories
1.4.4 Derek Parfit’s Teletransporter
Readings for 1.4
1.5 Personal essence
1.5.1 Karl Marx and human nature
1.5.2 Frantz Fanon and race
1.5.3 Sally Haslanger and gender
Readings for 1.5
1.6 Personal will
1.6.1 Aristotle trapped by the future
1.6.2 Alexander of Aphrodisias trapped by the past
1.6.3 Philippa Foot’s explanations
1.6.4 Edna Ullmann-Margalit’s big decisions
Readings for 1.6
1.7 Personal significance
1.7.1 Lucretius living with death
1.7.2 St Anselm living with faith
1.7.3 Albert Camus living with absurdity
1.7.4 Susan Wolf living with meaning
Readings for 1.7
2 Philosophical Reading and Writing
2.1 Wondering what it is to be philosophical?
2.2 Reading
2.2.1 Selfless philosophy (and Āryadeva)
2.2.2 Self-philosophy (and John Perry)
2.2.3 The Way of Truth (and Parmenides)
2.2.4 Forms of Truth (and the
Mahābhārata
)
Readings for 2.2
2.3 Writing
3 What Do You Know?
3.1 What is knowledge?
3.1.1 Plato’s knowing beliefs
3.1.2 Nyāya’s knowing episodes
3.1.3 Bertrand Russell’s stopped clock
Readings for 3.1
3.2 Doubts
3.2.1 The
Zhuangzi
’s puzzling questions
3.2.2 Sextus Empiricus’ competing appearances
3.2.3 Nāgārjuna’s empty words
3.2.4 Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī’s dreams
3.2.5 Francisco Sanches’s unknowing words
3.2.6 René Descartes’s demon
Readings for 3.2
3.3 Knowing a physical world?
3.3.1 René Descartes’s dreams
3.3.2 George Berkeley’s ideas
Readings for 3.3
3.4 Knowing other minds?
3.4.1 Dharmakīrti’s idealist reasonings
3.4.2 John Stuart Mill’s realist analogies
3.4.3 Edith Stein’s empathy
Readings for 3.4
3.5 Knowing in action
3.5.1 Wang Yangming’s knowledge-action unity
3.5.2 Gilbert Ryle’s knowledge-how
3.5.3 Elizabeth Anscombe’s practical knowledge
3.5.4 American Indian questioning-knowledge-how
Readings for 3.5
3.6 Knowing’s rights and wrongs
3.6.1 Maria Montessori’s methods
3.6.2 Linda Zagzebski’s intellectual virtues
3.6.3 Helen Longino’s feminist sensibility
3.6.4 Miranda Fricker on epistemic injustice
3.6.5 Charles Mills on white ignorance
3.6.6 Vrinda Dalmiya’s relational humility
Readings for 3.6
4 Philosophical Reasoning
4.1 Elements
4.2 Uses
4.3 Examples
4.3.1 Revisiting Plato’s
Meno
4.3.2 Revisiting the
Zhuangzi
4.3.3 Revisiting Longino’s feminist sensibility
4.3.4 Revisiting al-Ghazālī’s dreams
4.4 Philosophical reasoning as rhythmic gymnastics?
5 How Should You Act?
5.1 Towards yourself
5.1.1 Confucius’ Way
5.1.2 Aristotle’s substantial happiness
5.1.3 Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī’s complete man
Readings for 5.1
5.2 Towards other people
5.2.1 The Confucian
Great Learning
5.2.2 Immanuel Kant’s ends-in-themselves
5.2.3 Mary Wollstonecraft’s early feminism
5.2.4 John Stuart Mill’s greatest happiness
5.2.5 Nel Noddings’s caring
5.2.6 Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities
5.2.7 Charles Mills on the racial contract
Readings for 5.2
5.3 Towards non-human animals
5.3.1 Śāntideva’s sentient beings
5.3.2 Peter Singer’s liberated animals
5.3.3 Christine Korsgaard’s fellow creatures
Readings for 5.3
5.4 Towards nature
5.4.1 The Stoics’ cosmos
5.4.2 Wang Yangming’s one body
5.4.3 Arne Naess’s ecosophy
5.4.4 Holmes Rolston’s environmental ethic
5.4.5 James Lovelock’s Gaia
Readings for 5.4
6 Philosophical Viewing
6.1 Why be philosophical?
6.2 Viewing the world philosophically
6.2.1 Contents
6.2.2 Attitudes
6.3 Viewing views philosophically
6.4 Views, views, views
6.5 Philosophy as experiment
6.6 Philosophy forever
6.7 Philosophical progress
6.8 Xenophanes’ opinion
Reading for 6.8
6.9 Living philosophically
Index
Preface and Acknowledgements
Being philosophical, even briefly, is special. Yet everyone can do it. You can do it. Reading this book can help you to do it. The book takes – and reflects upon – some initial philosophical steps.
Not all steps, of course; what would ‘all’ philosophy be? Is there just one way to be philosophical? Perish the thought. ‘Philosophy’ is a vague term – usefully so. It can bend and stretch. It can retract yet refresh and expand. All the while, it seems to mean something persisting – something clear enough – to get it under way. Philosophical questions and ideas have appeared, disappeared, reappeared, here and there, now and then, across the world and through the centuries, within socially and intellectually diverse traditions. So have many methods for engaging with those questions and ideas.
Yes, philosophy has methods. Even so, it is not merely methodical. It can be inspired. It embraces ideas appearing from … anywhere and nowhere. It welcomes previously unasked questions about ideas old or new. Philosophical moments can occur without warning. This is part of their charm. You might be browsing in a bookshop, a library, online. Watching the ocean. Walking. Opening books and articles, almost at random. Fun titles. Odd words. Puzzling sentences. Noticing philosophical thoughts within yourself might be unsettling, even overwhelming. Scattered ideas could be difficult to blend. Doing so might feel too difficult. But it is not. Well, sometimes it is, for a while. Persistence helps, though. When confused, don’t panic. Never give up. Take a silent moment, or three, allowing what is not clear to become clear. Struggle with your thoughts. Then do not. Worry. Then do not. Think. Then do not. Then think again. And follow your thoughts wherever they lead. Will you discover answers? Perhaps. Will the effort be personally valuable? Hopefully so.
This book revisits and re-creates many such moments. Can we see and feel ‘from within’ what it is – even how it might feel – to begin being philosophical, in different ways with different authors on different topics? Not all ways with all authors on all philosophical topics; five lifetimes would be too brief for that. Philosophy can be big – big ideas, big challenges, big opportunities. It might arise anywhere at any time. It is ancient. It is now. It is the future. In this book we encounter, I believe, a representative sampling. There is a variety of philosophical styles and traditions, philosophical cultures and concepts, from diverse areas of the world, spanning more than two thousand years. We meet much, even if more awaits.
So, the book might fairly have been titled Beginning Being Philosophical. It could not justly have been titled All That There Is to Being Philosophical. That would have been misleading. Does philosophy possess an unchanging core, a potentially calcified heart, a single outer appearance? No. No. And no. It is many and more; it is here and there; it is now and then. Yet somehow it was, and still is, something – something definite enough to be recognised and appreciated, at least mostly so. This book’s aim is to assist you in that respect, too.
How is the book structured? Chapter 1 is about metaphysics, chapter 3 is on epistemology, and chapter 5’s topic is ethics. Those chapters introduce philosophical ideas of (in turn) reality, knowledge, and moral action. We also have three chapters – 2, 4, and 6 – that reflect upon methods. The ‘ideas chapters’ provide data that may be discussed in those ‘methods chapters’. The ‘ideas chapters’ show some philosophical thinking in action. The ‘methods chapters’ think about such thinking. These chapters explain something of how such thinking works. The ‘methods chapters’ do this in three stages (interweaving with the ‘ideas chapters’). Chapter 2 is on some aspects of how to begin thinking philosophically. Chapter 4 highlights how to build upon that base in developing philosophical reasoning. Chapter 6 concerns how to evaluate such reasoning, asking especially what larger lessons we may learn about the nature of being philosophical – including its potential for progress.
The book has many sections within those chapters, each focused upon a particular author or approach or idea. I will quote often from those authors. This is so that you experience something of their thinking, their own words and phrasing.
You will not experience the full richness of their thinking, since I will convey just one or two or three, say, of each author’s ideas. You will also not always experience their thinking’s full complexity. This could be welcome, since at times the complexity obscures a key idea. When reading philosophy, it can be difficult to chart and follow its reasoning and main ideas. I will select and commentate, imparting a sense of what is at stake, and what is being proposed, within a specific instance of philosophy.
Already that points to my first piece of advice for how to read philosophy. Always try to find the main ideas. This makes it easier to chart how an author claims to have reached them – her reasoning for them. And it will be easier to chart how she uses her ideas – what reasoning she generates from them. This might include clarifying or explaining those main ideas, imagining and defusing objections to them, extending or applying them, and so on. It might include … well, whatever is thought to be needed for introducing, understanding, and communicating a philosophical idea. Be receptive. Be alert. Be adaptable.
All the more so, given how varied philosophical thinking can be. If philosophy is to make progress, it might wish to build on awareness of what, if anything, it has already achieved. This means not overlooking or undervaluing philosophy’s enticing past, its diversity of language, ideas, topics, and ways of thinking. No single shortish book will encompass all of that. I wish it could. I have genuinely enjoyed travelling even a little distance along that intricate path, meeting elements of that past and that diversity. You might choose to journey even further along that path. (In this book’s travels, I am an enthusiastic and inquiring tour guide – also learning as we wander, visiting some laneways and neighbourhoods that are as new for me as for you.)
The book’s path, by the way, is not intended to mirror, or be constrained by, a formal and traditional university or college course. This is not written as a standard textbook, in content or structure. I can picture an imaginative introductory philosophy course being taught around the book. In no way, though, is this a rules book – rules for being philosophical. (I do not think that there are such rules.) It is more of a welcoming book – showing visitors around an exciting country. It might easily complement a first philosophy course. It could certainly help someone to prepare informally for such a course, even to read further – for fun, I hope – beyond the course’s official boundaries. So, to anyone about to study philosophy (especially for the first time), unsure as to what kinds of intellectual experience await, welcome! Even if you are not enrolled in a philosophy course, if you are simply wondering what philosophy might involve, also welcome!
The invitation to write the book came from Pascal Porcheron, then at Polity Press. It was an intriguing idea. This is not my first introductory book. Even so, writing in this way remains an adventure. It is different to writing ‘philosophy research’. I have never liked the word ‘research’ for what philosophers do in their ‘serious’ moments. Is it better to say ‘search’, not ‘research’? And is philosophy as much creation as discovery, as much art as science?
Anyway, with genuine appreciation, I now thank several reviewers, who provided excellent criticisms and advice during preparatory stages when the book was being proposed and planned, along with two reviewers who read the completed manuscript, also offering helpful and perceptive comments. Pascal was encouraging and constructive – an editorial exemplar. After Pascal left Polity, Ian Malcolm continued in that vein – encouraging and constructive. And I thank Peter Adamson, David Bronstein, Waldemar Brys, Jonardon Ganeri, Karyn Lai, and Sophia Vasalou for great advice on some of the book’s readings and sections. I learnt a lot in writing this book. Hopefully, you will learn much in reading it.
Introduction
Introductions can be cursory: ‘Hello Xanthe, this is Xavier.’ ‘Hello, Xavier. Nice to meet you.’ Then Xanthe glides onwards, maybe to meet someone else. This book’s introduction – here and now – is not that fleeting. But it is like meeting a new person. ‘Hello, this is philosophy, an old friend of mine.’
And I encourage you not to hurry onwards. Why not tarry for a moment, spending time with philosophy? I think that you will enjoy her company. She is distinctive, curious, lively. She can be surprising, creative, intelligent. She might question some of your ideas. But she will do it constructively, aiming always to understand. Will you become friends with her? There is a chance – with care, respect, and thoughtfulness. That is the encouraging spirit in which this book introduces you to philosophy.
I should mention two of the book’s related features.
First, this is not an exhaustive ‘life memoir’ or biography for philosophy. When meeting someone new, an extended story is generally not what you need to hear. A few episodes from her life? Yes. Some hopes and concerns? Gladly. Will you then be motivated to learn more about her? If so, a friendship might have been born. Now think, analogously, about meeting philosophy. It has been ‘alive’ for so long, encompassing vastly many issues, questions, ideas, and so on, across much of the world. Almost any book introducing you to philosophy describes only a little of that vastness. But might you, upon experiencing philosophy’s presence even to that tip-of-an-iceberg extent, be motivated to discover more about her? If so, another friendship – this time with philosophy – could have been born.
What form might such a friendship take? It will probably be reflective, chatty, and thoughtful – features with the potential to deepen a friendship. What are you doing well in how you relate to philosophy? What can you do better? How can the friendship be strengthened? Such questions underlie the book’s ‘methods’ chapters (2, 4, 6) – reflecting on the ‘ideas’ chapters (1, 3, 5). The ‘methods’ chapters are being philosophical about some notable instances of philosophy, such as those in the ‘ideas’ chapters. The combination of those two kinds of chapter is like two friends taking a moment to reflect on their friendship and on experiences they have shared as friends. They reflect in that way to understand the friendship better, strengthening it in that way. This book’s ‘methods’ chapters function in that way. They are opportunities to strengthen your friendship with philosophy, by understanding better the relationship that you have been developing with it by reading the ‘ideas’ chapters.
I will expand on that point, using a rough analogy.
The ‘ideas’ chapters are like outings and adventures that you might share with a friend: ‘See that view. Let’s go to that game. That was a great concert. Look at that painting. We should listen to that speaker.’ And so on. The two of you are experiencing, together, aspects of the world ‘out there’. Shared moments like that can be at the core of a friendship, obviously with a person but also with philosophy. For philosophy offers you plenty of ideas to savour and evaluate, as if talking back and forth in philosophical ways.
In which case, the book’s ‘methods’ chapters are like occasions on which the two of you – philosophy and you – pause to discuss the friendship, seeking a mutual understanding that itself becomes part of the friendship. Think of how easy it is for two people to share experiences – going to a sports event, visiting a park together, and so on – in a less mutually understanding way. This is not a problem, so long as each enjoys being with the other. Yet maybe something more – in addition to the enjoyment – is possible, and would be welcome. Could the friendship be strengthened by both people also sharing an understanding of its nature and further potential? Taking a moment to discuss this with each other in a genuinely reflective way might help. What if there is no obvious problem needing to be discussed? That does not change my point. Knowing that there is no problem, after having thought together about this, could be reassuring, enriching the relationship. Doing this even occasionally could still be empowering. It might even uncover a previously overlooked weakness – a possible risk – within the friendship. I realise that not everyone wants to engage in such discussions. (I myself do not always want to do so.) There is even a contrary risk, of undermining what had been good about the friendship: thinking too much about a feeling might weaken or remove it. But sometimes a thoughtful conversation about the friendship, say, can strengthen it. The conversation could make the friendship more fully and thoroughly honest, for a start.
It is no coincidence, then, that chapter 1 is about selves. This book is a first meeting with philosophy, potentially the start of a friendship. And philosophy is like a highly self-reflective person. Becoming friends with philosophy is like coming to know someone who can fluently direct your attention, from the outset, to features of both you and her, as selves, that might be significant for developing a friendship with her. She has already been seeking to understand such matters – for thousands of years, we will find. That is commitment. That is substantial. Philosophy is like that person. Philosophy is like someone who has thought a lot about her self (and beyond) – not in a narcissistic way, but in a constructive ‘What-am-I?’ way. Her efforts are constructive also by thinking about others – in a ‘What-are-they?’ way. She tries to understand everyone, as far as possible – in order to understand even a single one of us. What, if anything, do all of us have in common as selves? Can philosophy help you, as a potential friend, to answer that question?
The good news is that she will try, beginning in chapter 1.
1Who Are You?
1.1 Selves
1.1.1 Upaniṣadic impersonal selves
There is no single perfect place or time for taking one’s initial philosophy steps – starting to be acquainted, let alone friends, with philosophy. But here, now, is an excellent place to begin, by meeting one of the earliest steps ever taken, in the Upaniṣads. These were philosophically religious literary writings on ideas from four earlier sacred Vedic texts, grounding what became Hinduism. Religion and philosophy are not always so separate. That is evident in these Upaniṣads (the term ‘Upaniṣad’ means ‘hidden connection’, maybe ‘hidden teaching’). All were written in Sanskrit, in northern India, seemingly over several centuries, possibly starting around 700 bce. (By whom? We do not know.) Let us sample a few of their ideas about selves (a beginning focus explained a moment ago in the book’s introduction).
What is a self? I am one. You are one. Or so we say. But what do we mean? What should we mean? Can we find self-understanding in the Upaniṣads?
In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (Great Forest Upaniṣad; the oldest Upaniṣad; probably pre-Buddhist), a sage, Yājñavalkya, spoke with his wife, Maitreyī, about selves (4.5.12–13).
It is like this. As the ocean is the point of convergence of all the waters, so the skin is the point of convergence of all sensations of touch; the nostrils, of all odours, the tongue, of all tastes … the mind, of all thoughts; the heart, of all sciences; [and so on; followed by the next paragraph].
It is like this. As a mass of salt has no distinctive core and surface; the whole thing is a single mass of flavor – so indeed, my dear, this self has no distinctive core and surface; the whole thing is a single mass of cognition.
Yājñavalkya seems to have been saying that the self within any one of us is somehow the same within all of us. There is no difference in that respect between my self and yours. Dramatically, this does not mean ‘the same in nature’; it means ‘the very same self’. My personal self is your personal self, and vice versa. Neither of us has a distinct personal self. It is as if all of us partake in, or share, a self – the same self, a common self. Yājñavalkya says this (4.5.15): ‘When … the Whole has become one’s very self, then who [= what more specific self] is there for one [= one’s self] to see and by what means?’
Does that make sense? Here is one way in which it might. Each of us is different. But is that because each of us has a fully individual self? Or might everyone be the same thing in whatever makes us persons at all? You and I would be one – somehow literally one self. People often say that we are all connected, really or fundamentally the same. Is that the picture here? We would be the same, in a way, by sharing a single universal self. Might we differ only in other details, such as how we look and what we think and feel? How I look is not how you look; yet our different appearances would be superficial: they would not be what makes either of us a self, let alone a distinct self.
Consider these lines from the later Kaṭha Upaniṣad (5.9–10):
As the single fire, entering living beings,
adapts its appearance to match that of each;
So the single self within every being,
adapts its appearance to match that of each,
yet remains quite distinct.
As the single wind, entering living beings,
adapts its appearance to match that of each;
So the single self within every being,
adapts its appearance to match that of each,
yet remains quite distinct.
Those analogies extend Yājñavalkya’s one about the ‘mass of salt’. The ‘single wind’ (the general power of breathing, I think this means) circulating within each of us ‘adapts its appearance to match each of us’. Our two selves would be one self, in that way (these analogies suggest).
Here is a more subtle way to make the point. In the also early Chāndogya Upaniṣad (5.18.1), Aśvapati talked of ‘this self here, the one common to all men’, and said that, when one knows the self ‘as somehow distinct’ (as not a single universally shared self), one ‘eat[s] food’. What did Aśvapati mean? It is explained by this contrast, with which he continued:
when someone venerates [the self] as measuring the size of a span and as beyond all measure [= when one does think of the self as universally shared], he eats food within all the worlds, all the beings, and all the selves.
This seems to be saying that when thinking of one’s self in that universal way, as everyone’s self at once, one is engaging with the Whole: one ‘eats food’ among all the selves at once, so to speak; one does this in ‘all the worlds’, as ‘all the beings’ at once.
Maybe. I am trying – cautiously – to interpret some ancient writing, asking what may emerge. It feels like something important is being suggested. These Upaniṣads are poetic and complex, though. I am focusing on one idea that can arise when reading them. It seems like a philosophical idea. We have begun being philosophical.
1.1.2 Buddhist no-selves
Or might there be no selves? (No I? No you? No one else?)
That question is sparked by another of the world’s oldest organised ways of thinking – Buddhism, whose distinctive ideas include the no-self view. Meet King Milinda (he was real – the Greek king Menander) and the sage Nāgasena (perhaps not real) in a northern Indian dialogue, The Questions of King Milinda (from around two thousand years ago).
Milinda the king … addressed [the venerable Nāgasena] … ‘How is your Reverence known, and what, Sir, is your name?’
‘I am known as Nāgasena, O king, …. But although parents, O king, give such a name as Nāgasena, or Sūrasena, or Vīrasena, or Sīhasena, yet this, Sire, … is only a generally understood term, a designation in common use. For there is no permanent individuality (no soul) involved ….’
Thus Nāgasena, almost immediately, imbued an ordinary meeting with a philosophical tone. He acknowledged the name ‘Nāgasena’. But he denied that a real self was being named. King Milinda responded by paraphrasing Nāgasena’s thesis and wondering, aloud, whether it is true. ‘This Nāgasena says there is no permanent individuality (no soul) implied in his name. Is it now even possible to approve him in that [= to agree with him]?’ Whereupon Milinda reached for rhetorical questions that, in his view, showed why Nāgasena’s no-self view cannot be true.
‘If, most reverend Nāgasena, there be no permanent individuality (no soul) involved …, who is it, pray, who … lives a life of righteousness? Who … devotes himself to meditation? [Moreover, if there is no Nāgasena,] we are to think that were a man to kill you there would be no murder.’
Nāgasena was being asked, by Milinda, who is doing ‘his’ meditation if not really him (he who is named ‘Nāgasena’)? What would the imagined action of aggression be, if not murder of Nāgasena himself? Milinda persisted with such questioning, trying to locate the person Nāgasena:
‘your brethren in the Order are in the habit of addressing you as Nāgasena. Now what is that Nāgasena? Do you mean to say that the hair is Nāgasena?’
‘I don’t say that, great king.’
‘Or the hairs on the body, perhaps?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Or is it the nails, the teeth, the skin, the flesh, the nerves, the bones, the marrow, the kidneys, the heart, the liver, … or the brain, or any or all of these, that is Nāgasena?’
And to each of these he answered no.
Thus, Milinda asked about physical parts of Nāgasena. If they are not Nāgasena, what is?
‘Is it the outward form … that is Nāgasena, or the sensations, or the ideas, or the [constituent elements of character], or the consciousness …?’
And to each of these also [Nāgasena] answered no.
Milinda was asking whether Nāgasena is constituted by a general appearance – an outward form. No? Then what of something ‘behind’ the appearance, a capacity for thinking or some actual thoughts? Still ‘no’, said Nāgasena.
Hence, Milinda felt that he had asked about all aspects of Nāgasena, the ‘outward’ appearance and the inner mental life. But there is this further possibility.
‘Then is it all these … combined that are Nāgasena?’
‘No! great king.’
Really? Milinda seems to have asked about all of the parts, outer and inner. Now he was being told that, even when they combine, still no Nāgasena-self results.
‘But is there anything outside [these] that is Nāgasena?’
And still he answered no.
‘Then thus, ask as I may, I can discover no Nāgasena. Nāgasena [= the name ‘Nāgasena’] is a mere empty sound. Who then is the Nāgasena [= the actual person] that we see before us? It is a falsehood that your reverence has spoken [= in advancing the no-self thesis], an untruth!’
Milinda concluded, we see, that Nāgasena’s original thesis is false. Is that the end of the discussion?
No, replied Nāgasena. He argued that the name is more than ‘a mere empty sound’, even if less than perfect evidence of a full self. He did this by applying Milinda’s form of argument to the example of a chariot. The aim was to show that Milinda’s form of argument is too strong: it is not to be trusted, because it too readily makes its criticism (such as of the no-self thesis). Mimicking Milinda’s questioning, Nāgasena asked about the chariot’s parts – axle, wheels, ropes, etc. None is the chariot, it is clear.
‘Then is it all the parts … that are the chariot?’
‘No, Sir.’ [This is Milinda answering.]
‘But is there anything outside them that is the chariot?’
And still [Milinda] answered no.
… [So, infers Nāgasena,] Chariot [= the word ‘chariot’] is a mere empty sound. What then is the chariot [= the actual chariot] you say you came in? It is a falsehood that your Majesty has spoken, an untruth! There is no such thing as a chariot!
Milinda bristled. Should he therefore stop using the word ‘chariot’? No. He claimed to be using the word simply as a ‘designation in common use’ – hence not as something that needed to pass the strict test that Nāgasena was applying.
Yet Nāgasena replied that he was also entitled to that sort of standard, even when using his own name. It can be used in a looser way, as ‘chariot’ is. His appearance, his thoughts, and so on, can be designated loosely, with the name ‘Nāgasena’.
Very good! Your Majesty has grasped the meaning of ‘chariot’. And just even so is it on account of all those things you questioned me about – the thirty-two kinds of organic matter in a human body, and the five constituent elements of being – that I come under the generally understood term, the designation in common use, of ‘Nāgasena’.
I have no decisive immediate reply. When I say that I am a person, a self, I use words. (I just did so.) Might they be mere conveniences – handy tools for interacting socially, denoting loosely? The name ‘Nāgasena’ was one of many names that could have been bestowed on the baby Nāgasena. Are other words equally arbitrary in that same way? The name ‘Nāgasena’ reveals nothing of the baby’s real nature. Must we treat the non-name word ‘self’ as revealing part of his real nature? Surely not. It is only a word.
1.1.3 David Hume’s no-inner-substantial-selves
We might test those questions arising from Nāgasena and Milinda (section 1.1.2) by travelling across the world and the centuries to eighteenth-century Scotland. There, we meet the philosopher (and historian) David Hume (1711–76) – plus a further question about selves. Do I have an easily discoverable ‘inner’ self that is definitively me? Here is Hume.
There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence … and are certain … both of its perfect identity and simplicity.
People often talk in that way of having a soul. Hume doubted that they should:
when I enter most immediately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.
Hume was testing an hypothesis (as philosophers often do, I expect to find in this book). This one concerns whether there are ‘inner’ selves. Is that what a self needs to be? Is each self knowable only by its ‘owner’ when she is ‘looking within’ (this is called introspecting)?
Imagine trying to know one’s self in that way. Hume tried. But he inferred that he could not succeed. All that he could find were other things – mental events, say (he called them ‘perceptions’, we see). These are ‘inner happenings’ (we might say).
But how do they happen? Are they being overseen by a self ‘behind’ them? Is there a self ‘inside’, having those experiences? Hume would dismiss that as empty talk – mere words – since we can never ‘find’ that self. ‘There it is, having and owning these mental events of mine. It is how they are literally mine!’ No, says Hume, since he cannot ‘look behind’ the inner experiences. They are all that he can find within, by introspecting. On his thinking, we should conclude that there is no inner personal substance – no inner thing that is a self.
1.1.4 Patricia Churchland’s brainy selves
Must we agree with Hume (section 1.1.3)? Or can we find a further hypothesis still as to what selves are like? Can recent science help us with this?
For instance, maybe a self is only a body. Is it just part of a body? Philosophers often consult relevant areas of science. Will neuroscience help here? Can brain-science be self-science? Patricia Smith Churchland (b. 1943), a Canadian philosopher, might think so:
modern neuroscience and psychology allow us to go beyond myth and introspection [= what we saw Hume using] to approach the ‘self’ as a natural phenomenon whose causes and effects can [instead] be addressed by science.
Churchland is alerting us to what she thinks is the proper method to use when reflecting on selves. We must look to science’s methods. After all, think of what progress has been made in brain research.
Neurobiology is beginning to reveal why some brains are more susceptible than others to alcohol or heroin addiction, or why some brains slide into incoherent world-models. … Perhaps some questions will forever exceed the neurobiological reach, though it may be hard to tell whether such problems are just ‘as yet unsolved’ or whether they are truly unsolvable.
So, Churchland is confident, it seems, about neuroscience being self-science.
As I watched [on an MRI machine, after stepping out of it] the computer monitor showing my brain tilted at various angles and cut at various slices, what stirred me was the idea that I might come to know my neuroself at least as well as I know my psyche-self. Or, at least, someone in the next generation might.
Churchland’s hope, apparently, is that neuroscience will reveal what a self literally is. Neuroscientists may propose and test hypotheses as to the nature of a self. Might this even prompt us to focus less on selves as such, and more on functionally apt and usable self-ideas?
The best hypothesis is that [this] involves a complex idea (representation) that the brain generates through activity in various different regions, including the regions representing the body and a representation using memory of the past. The brain activity that we know introspectively as ‘myself’ is probably part of a set of larger patterns of activity the brain deploys for making sense of and getting by in the world.
Do neuroscience’s advances suggest that we would profit by reframing our question of what a self is? Centuries of philosophy have focused on ‘looking within’, introspectively ‘seeking’ one’s self (as Hume tried to do: section 1.1.3). Does science now provide a better method?
Even if questions about selves feel as if they could be answered by ‘looking within’, and by listening to how people use the words ‘I’ and ‘me’, maybe we need not proceed in those ways. Why not welcome what science says about brains – especially how a brain helps its ‘surrounding person’ to function, including her having mental representations saying that she is a self? She could link these with words such as ‘I’ and ‘me’.
And might that be all there is to having a self?
1.1.5 Ifeanyi Menkiti’s socially created selves
We may wonder, though, whether brain-science (section 1.1.4) would do justice to social-selfhood. That matters if being a self includes having a kind of social reality. Am I a self only by being socially deemed to be so, socially treated as such?
That idea is portrayed by Ifeanyi Menkiti (1940–2019), a Nigerian philosopher who taught in the USA. He distinguished between ‘most Western views’ and ‘the African view’ of ‘the person’. The latter view (I do not know if there is ‘the’ African view; I bypass that question in order to understand Menkiti’s suggestion) ‘denies that persons can be defined by focusing on this or that physical or psychological characteristic of the lone individual. Rather, man is defined by the environing community.’ This concerns how a person is an I at all: ‘in the African view it is the community which defines the person as person.’ A person is a person due to a community’s treating her as one.
Philosophers often aim to test ideas before accepting them. And (as this book will show) there are many possible ways to do this. One approach is to examine an idea’s implications. Menkiti’s thesis has an implication that could feel odd. He said that ‘persons become persons only after a process of incorporation … into this or that community.’ That process takes time, which allows the person – the self – to become more a person – more a self – along the way:
full personhood is not received as simply given at the very beginning of one’s life, but is attained after one is well along in society … [So] the older an individual gets the more of a person he becomes. … One does not just take on additional features, one also undergoes fundamental changes at the very core of one’s being.
As a child, was I less of a person or self? Menkiti offered some linguistic support for that idea, against the view ‘that either an entity is a person or it is not’:
an acquisition of personhood [= an acquisition of this status over time, not simply having it from the outset] is supported by the natural tendency in many languages, English included, of referring to children and new-borns as it.
I am not sure what this shows. Menkiti was resting his case partly on facts about human language use. Do all socially widespread ways of talking embody insight into reality? This question arose with urgency for King Milinda (section 1.1.2); it still does.
Readings for 1.1
For the Upaniṣads, see Upaniṣads, trans. P. Olivelle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); quotations from pp. 70–1, 146, 243–4. For The Questions of King Milinda (the Milinda-pañha), see the translation by T. W. Rhys Davids (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890), Bk II, ch. 1, pp. 25–8 – available at www.sacred-texts.com/bud/milinda.htm. For Hume, see A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), Bk I, part IV, sec. VI. For Churchland, see ‘The brain and its self’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 155 (2011): 41–50; quotations from pp. 42, 43, 45. For Menkiti, see ‘Person and community in African traditional thought’, in African Philosophy: An Introduction, 2nd edn, ed. R. A. Wright (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979), pp. 157–68; quotations from pp. 157, 158, 159.
1.2 Souls
1.2.1 Plato’s immortal soul
We can be motivated to think about our selves (such as in section 1.1) because they would be making uswhatever and whoever we are. But should we add to that motivation the conviction also that people (such as us) are special, within reality as a whole? Some believe so, by thinking that we – and only we – have souls. How might we argue for that picture?
We may begin in ancient Greece. The Athenian philosopher Plato (428–348 bce), in his dialogue Phaedo, portrayed his teacher Socrates (470–399 bce) as envisaging personal immortal souls. Socrates argued for this while waiting, with friends, for the hemlock poison that would kill him, by official order. Would Socrates’ soul survive his death? That was the question of the moment.
Here is one of those Socratic arguments (a sequence of questions, some of them rhetorical).
What sort of thing … would naturally suffer the fate of being dispersed [= broken up and destroyed]? … Would you not expect a composite object or a natural compound to be liable to break up …? And ought not anything which is really incomposite to be the one thing … which is not affected in this way? … Is it not extremely probable that what is always constant and invariable is incomposite, and what is inconstant and variable is composite?
Socrates was approaching the specific topic of a soul’s nature via something more general – the nature of anything’s being composite
