Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation (review)

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Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation (review) Mario D'Amato Philosophy East and West, Volume 53, Number 1, January 2003, pp.

1 Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation (review) Mario D'Amato Philosophy East and West, Volume 53, Number 1, January 2003, pp (Review) Published by University of Hawai'i Press DOI: For additional information about this article Access provided by National Taiwan University (6 Sep :15 GMT)

2 BOOK REVIEWS Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation. By Jay L. Garfield. New York: Oxford University Press, Pp. xiv þ 306. Reviewed by Mario D Amato Hampshire College Jay Garfield is already well known for his important translation of and commentary on Nāgārjuna s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK), published under the title Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Oxford University Press, 1995). In Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation, Garfield provides us with his interpretations of Buddhist thought, many of which informed or arose out of his work on the MMK. Empty Words is a collection of fourteen essays, of which eleven have been previously published, two are newly published, and one, jointly authored with Graham Priest, appears in the present issue of this journal. The work is divided into three parts: part 1 is composed of five essays on Madhyamaka, part 2 contains four essays on Yogācāra, and part 3 has five essays on ethics and hermeneutics. In part 1 Garfield presents interpretations of Madhyamaka thought based primarily on readings of Nāgārjuna s MMK. These interpretations may be approached in terms of the following interlocking themes: Madhyamaka as skepticism, causality as regularities, and emptiness as paradoxical. In the first essay, Epochē and Śūnyatā, Garfield argues that the Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka tradition (namely, Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti) is akin to the Western skepticism of Sextus, Hume, and Wittgenstein. But, Garfield adds, these Buddhist skeptics, because of their cultural and philosophical contexts are a bit more explicit about certain features of the skeptical method than their European counterparts (p. 5): they are more explicit in attempting to steer a course between the extremes of reificationism and nihilism. According to Garfield s reading, Buddhist skeptics seek to undermine the essentialist metaphysical presuppositions that reificationists affirm and nihilists deny, and in so doing to avoid falling into either position. Garfield sees this skeptical method significantly deployed in Madhyamaka arguments against a view of causality as based on causal powers. While the reificationist argues that observed regularities in the world are explained through recourse to causal powers, the nihilist denies the existence of such causal powers, and hence denies the possibility of causal explanations. The Buddhist skeptic s response, in Garfield s view, is rather than to understand regularity as vouchsafed by causation, to understand causal explanation as grounded in regularities (p. 8); there are no occult causal powers, but only regularities, which are explained by reference to further regularities (p. 29). Hence, the Madhyamaka philosopher disavows the search for ontological foundations of the conventional. It should be noted that Garfield s reading of the MMK s position on causality is not uncontroversial. Garfield posits that the text makes a distinction between causes (hetus) and conditions (pratyayas). According to Garfield, a cause is an event or state that has in it a power... to bring about its effect, while a condition is an 136 Philosophy East & West Volume 53, Number 1 January > 2003 by University of Hawai i Press

3 event, state, or process that can be appealed to in explaining another event, state, or process (p. 27). Furthermore, Garfield posits that while Nāgārjuna argues against the existence of the former, he argues for the existence of the latter. There is not a consensus among interpreters of the MMK, however, that Nāgārjuna actually makes such a distinction between causes and conditions. According to many interpreters (in his commentary on the MMK, Garfield mentions Streng, Wood, and Tsong kha pa, for example), Nāgārjuna simply takes causes as one of the four subsets of conditions, and argues against the existence of all four sets of conditions. In any case, Garfield acknowledges the somewhat tendentious nature of the reading (p. 262 n. 6), and I do not believe that these considerations should detract from taking Garfield s interpretation seriously as a possible refinement of a Madhyamaka position. Garfield s view is that the crucial verse for interpreting Madhyamaka thought occurs at MMK 24.18, which he translates as follows: Whatever is dependently co-arisen, That is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation, Is itself the middle way (p. 26). Garfield states that here emptiness is identified with dependent origination, and, as a dependent designation, it is a conventional phenomenon: hence the emptiness of emptiness itself. And so the distinction between the conventional and the ultimate is a difference in the way phenomena are conceived/perceived, a difference, Garfield adds, that cannot be formulated without a hint of the paradoxical (p. 39). This hint of the paradoxical is most fully explored in what I believe to be the most interesting essay in the collection, Nāgārjuna and the Limits of Thought (coauthored with Graham Priest). This essay offers an original and quite compelling account of Nāgārjuna as a thinker who discovers and explores true contradictions arising at the limits of thought (p. 87). Garfield and Priest contend that such contradictions may command rational assent, and hence, if Nāgārjuna does endorse them, it would not undermine but instead would confirm the impression that he is indeed a highly rational thinker (ibid.). The authors state Nāgārjuna s paradox in the following terms: all phenomena, Nāgārjuna argues, are empty and so ultimately have no nature. But emptiness is, therefore, the ultimate nature of things. So [phenomena] both have and lack an ultimate nature (p. 103). Leaving aside the exegetical question of whether or not this is the most defensible manner in which to construe Nāgārjuna s claims (in any case, after nearly two millennia of interpretation by various traditions, a high level of consensus has not been reached here), I believe Garfield and Priest s reading opens up an interesting possibility: that Nāgārjuna, as a transconsistent but fully rational thinker, brings into view that the limits of thought are themselves contradictory. In part 2 Garfield offers interpretations of Yogācāra thought based primarily on some key texts attributed to Vasubandhu (namely, the Viṁśatikā, Triṁśikā, Madhyāntavibhāgabhāṡya, and Trisvabhāvanirdeśa; chapter 7 offers a complete translation of this last text from the Tibetan). Two of Garfield s claims here are that Yogācāra is idealist and that Yogācāra is philosophically distinct from Madhyamaka. On the first point, Garfield notes that recently it has become a matter of debate whether to characterize Yogācāra thought as idealist in its ontology. Garfield s discussion of Book Reviews 137

4 this issue has the following great merits: (1) he offers us a definition of idealism, so that the terms of the debate will be clear the definition he offers states that idealism is the assignment to the mind and to mental phenomena of a fundamental reality independent of that of external objects, while denying it to apparently external phenomena and assigning them a merely dependent status, a second-class existence as objects of and wholly dependent upon mind (p. 155); and (2) he refrains from attributing the same philosophical position to all the authors and texts traditionally classified as Yogācāra in fact, he specifically concludes (quite correctly, in my view) that Vasubandhu s Viṁśatikā and Trisvabhāvanirdeśa may be characterized as idealist. A second claim that Garfield puts forward is that Yogācāra, while in many regards similar to Madhyamaka, is indeed philosophically distinct. One way in which Garfield defends this claim is through an examination of Vasubandhu s interpretation of emptiness (primarily from the Madhyāntavibhāgabhāṡya) in relation to Nāgārjuna s: he concludes that while, according to the former, emptiness means the emptiness of subject-object duality, according to the latter, emptiness means the emptiness of inherent existence (svabhāva). In connection with this, Garfield also argues that in Vasubandhu s works there is a separation between the three natures and the three naturelessnesses, a separation that allows Vasubandhu to argue that his interpretation of emptiness and his idealist ontology and phenomenology [replace] Nāgārjuna s provisional and partial analysis (p. 111). However, according to Garfield, in later commentaries, Sthiramati asserts that the three natures and three naturelessnesses are identical, an interpretation that was followed by Tsong kha pa and other Tibetan scholars, and one that occludes the innovative character of Vasubandhu s contribution (ibid.). In part 3 Garfield examines Buddhist thought in relation to Western social and political philosophy and in relation to the concerns of hermeneutic theory. Garfield asks whether a moral theory based on compassion can be brought together with one based on universal rights. He responds that the two are in fact not incompatible, but that fusing them into a coherent whole requires a particular ordering: compassion must be taken as fundamental (p. 189). More specifically, Garfield posits that compassion can be made more tangible in the social sphere through putting universal human rights into place. In his discussion, Garfield suggests that there is much work to be done in developing a specifically Buddhist social and political theory, and recommends that perhaps the Mahāyāna canon should include the works of Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, Rawls, and others. In the essays on hermeneutics, Garfield reflects on the implications of scholars of one intellectual tradition studying the works of another. In seeking to formulate a position on the issues of cross-cultural interpretation, Garfield contends that a model of understanding and interpretation that takes traditions or their texts as primitive and takes the recovery of meaning from texts as the goal of hermeneutic activity lacks the resources to explicate intercultural exchange (p. 233). He recommends that scholars interested in such exchange turn their attention to engagement with interlocutors from other traditions and reflect on texts in-being-read, or 138 Philosophy East & West

5 in-being-explained (ibid.). In practice this would mean, according to Garfield, developing collegial relationships with scholars of other traditions, thus replacing the models of interrogator-informant or guru-disciple. I think it is clear from all that I have said that Empty Words makes a worthwhile contribution to the philosophical study of Buddhism. To turn briefly to technical matters, the work is written in a lucid style, although it would have benefited from more careful editing, especially in the spelling of Sanskrit titles of works (e.g., the title of the MMK is misspelled on the back cover). The translations offered throughout based on the Tibetan are on the whole quite defensible. However, there is one minor difficulty that I noted: in his translation of verse 38 of the Trisvabhāvanirdeśa, Garfield has: Through the perception of the radiant, And through achieving the three supreme Buddha-bodies, And through possessing Bodhi: Having achieved this, the sage will benefit him or herself and others (p. 135). Checking this against the Sanskrit, we may note that the translation s second and third clauses occur not in the ablative case in the Sanskrit, but rather in the accusative (kāya-trayātmikām and anuttarāṁ bodhiṁ, respectively); the phrase sva-parārtha-prasiddhitaḣ, on the other hand, does have an ablative ending. So it is not that the sage benefits oneself and others through achieving the bodies of a buddha and possessing awakening, but rather: through the accomplishment of the benefit of oneself and others, one attains awakening that has the nature of the three bodies of a buddha. Thus, accomplishing the benefit of oneself and others is actually a means to the attainment of the ultimate soteriological goal of the Mahāyāna (when the goal is reached the distinction between oneself and others is realized to be illusory). Empty Words represents a serious engagement with Buddhist philosophy and contributes to the exegesis of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra thought. More importantly, however, I think that it contributes to the further development of Buddhist philosophy as a continuing project, and to a future in which a plurality of traditions, each conscious of its own history and of the histories of those with which it comes into contact, can interact through collective activity (p. 154). Women in the Chinese Enlightenment: Oral and Textual Histories. By Wang Zheng. Berkeley: University of California Press, Pp. xv þ 402. Reviewed by Ruiqi Ma University of California, Riverside In Wang Zheng s Women in the Chinese Enlightenment: Oral and Textual Histories, the term Chinese Enlightenment refers to the New Culture Movement ( ), when Chinese intellectuals attempted to introduce democracy, science, and other Western ideas into the indigenous Chinese cultural system in response to the military and ideological challenges from the West. The espousal of women s rights and equality between men and women were among the primary goals of the New Culture Movement. Women in the Chinese Enlightenment reconfigures the narrative of that period through a female perspective. Examining the life stories of five women who were born at the very beginning of the twentieth century, Wang Book Reviews 139

Emptiness Appraised: A Critical Study of Nagarjuna's Philosophy (review)

Emptiness Appraised: A Critical Study of Nagarjuna's Philosophy (review) William Edelglass Philosophy East and West, Volume 53, Number 4, October 2003, pp. 602-605 (Review) Published by University of Hawai'i