The historical Buddha (Gotama), Hume, and James on the self

·期刊原文
The historical Buddha (Gotama), Hume, and James on the self: Comparisons and evaluations
D. C. Mathur
Philosophy East and West
Vol. 28, No. 3 (1978.07)
pp. 253-269
Copyright by University of Hawaii Press

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D. C. Mathur is Professor of Philosophy at State University College at Brockport, SUNY, Brockport, New York

p. 253

I

Gotama, the Buddha (563-483 B.C.), was separated from David Hume and William James by more than two thousand years. He lived, grew up, and taught his message in a cultural climate which was entirely different from that of both of these Western philosophers. Despite this enormous temporal, spatial, and cultural distance it is amazing, as many philosophical writers have discovered, to find some remarkable similarities in the philosophical positions and methodologies of these three seminal thinkers. It is the intention of this article to analyze and compare the philosophical positions of Gotama, Hume, and James on the self--a problem which was of central concern to all the three of them and which has since exercised a continuing fascination for philosophers, both of the East and the West.

At the outset of such a task I wish to point out the enormous difficulty of discovering what exactly Gotama's philosophical position was. The bewildering variety and complexity of the Buddhistic literature over the years coupled with doctrinal disputes of the various schools of Hiinayaana and Mahaayaana make it difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at a firm conclusion regarding the Buddha's own philosophical views. Though Gotama, according to accepted tradition, is reputed to have been a skillful teacher, making use of dialogue, simile, parable, and metaphor in his exposition, yet it is likely that his disciples and followers might have failed to grasp the meaning and the significance of his teaching. The difficulty of handing down the oral doctrine by memorizers over the years, problems of compilation, and the interpretations of later thinkers have compounded the task of exegesis. It is no wonder that each disciple and Buddhistic philosopher has claimed to represent the Master's position correctly!

No attempt, therefore, will be made here to assess the relative merits of the interpretations of such eminent scholars as E. J. Thomas, Mrs. Rhys Davids, A. Berridale Keith, D. T. Suzuki, Stcherbatsky, and many others of international repute. Yet it is not impossible to discern some pervasive features of the original doctrine behind all the baffling variety of conflicting opinions of scholars. The Paali canon called the Tipi.taka, or the "Three Baskets," together with other noncanonical Paali literature, such as Milindapa~nha and Visuddhimagga, contain valuable information from which a reasonable estimate can be made about the historical Buddha's own views. The various schools of Mahaayaana and especially the `suunyavaada of Naagaarjuna (circa 150-250 A.D.), as pointed out ably in a recent introduction to his own translation of this Buddhist philosopher's Muulamaadhyamakakaarikaa by Professor K. K. Inada, exhibit in a broad manner the insights of the historical Buddha. [1] Gotama is

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generally credited to have taught the Four Noble Truths, namely, the fact of suffering (du.hkha), cause of suffering (du.hkha-samudaaya), cessation of suffering (nirodha), and the way to end suffering (maarga). The Hiinayaana tradition also ascribes to Gotama the famous threefold marks of all existence (trilak.sa.na) such as impermanence (anitya), suffering (du.hkha), and non-egoity (anaatman). The description of these three marks in A^nguttara-nikaaya, iii. 134 is very graphic and dramatic. [2] Here it is important to remember that the historical Buddha's main task was not merely to analyze the pervasive traits of existence but also to point a way out of the universal fact of suffering. He was not interested in metaphysical disputations per se but in the ethical transformation of man by leading him through practical moral discipline to the supreme goal of nirvaa.na. The cause of suffering was traced to ignorance of the "way things are" and consequent selfish craving (t.r.s.naa). He is credited with having emphasized the fact that only by understanding the "way things are" could one overcome ignorance and its practical consequence, that is, desirousness or foolish craving. Nirvaa.na-experience was hinted negatively as freedom from ignorance. craving, and suffering, and positively as the attainment, here and now, of deep unfathomable serenity, rapture and equanimity born out of wisdom (praj~naa) and resulting in universal compassion (karu.naa). It is in this subordination of pure metaphysical questions to the practical task of ethical change that Gotama differs from David Hume and William James, and for that matter from much of the modern Western philosophical tradition. It does not mean that Hume and James were not interested in moral issues, What it means is that they devoted themselves to the solution of theoretical philosophical perplexities without connecting this task directly to any ethical concerns of man.

How is all this related to the problem of the self? Certainly, in a very important manner. If the Buddha taught that there is no permanent ego or the self then the "irrepressible" philosophers (both his followers and opponents) must have asked him these difficult questions: Who attains nirvaa.na? Is he the same who was in bondage or is he different? The Pandora's box of metaphysical questions was opened, as is evident from the long history of highly technical Buddhist philosophy and from its disputes with Hindu philosophers who subscribed to the Upani.sadic tradition of the permanent aatman, The key to the understanding of the Buddha's position on the self, in my opinion, lies in his consistent silence on all metaphysical issues. Underlying this attitude of studied silence are two very important philosophical assumptions. First, Gotama shared with Hume and William James the methodological primacy of immediate experience over concepts -- though Gotama's view of such pre-reflective immediate experience was more akin to that of "pure experience" of William James than to the "atomistic" variety of David Hume, Hume, as is well known, had put forward the empirical criterion of meaning and intelligibility thus:

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When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea (as is but too frequent), we need but inquire from what impression is that supposed idea derived? And if it be impossible to assign any, this will serve to confirm our suspicion. By bringing ideas into so clear a light we may reasonably hope to remove all dispute, which may arise, concerning their nature and reality. [3]

It is evident from this quotation that though Hume applied the empirical criterion of intelligibility he assumed with Locke an atomistic view of experience that our "impressions" and their copies, "ideas," are entirely loose, separate, and disjointed. Such a view of experience is, as a matter of fact, a postreflective one rather than the "prereflectively" given immediate experience. And the Buddha's later followers likewise mistakenly interpreted his studied silence on this issue to mean that for him as well the self was nothing but a series of unique and discrete momentary particulars. That is why many well-meaning scholars have seen a greater resemblance between Hume's position and that of the Buddha, than between the latter and James. [4] I believe that the Buddha, by implication, and W. James, explicitly, were making an important logical distinction between "having" an experience in its prereflective immediacy, and "talking about it" in linguistically articulated concepts. This is evident from the Buddha's attitude to the problem of the self and the nature of nirvaa.na, as we shall see later. And, of course, James made use of his now famous principle of "radical empiricism" and the pragmatic criterion of "cash-value" for solving or "dissolving" conceptual philosophical problems by tracing them back to the realities of immediate prereflective experience.

The second important assumption of Gotama which gives an insight into his philosophical position is that metaphysical puzzles are interminable snares and a veritable wilderness precisely because no conceptual formulation can ever be a substitute for the live, intimate personal experience. Hence the Buddha adopted the famous "middle way" between extremes, both with respect to metaphysical and ethical problems. This middle path (madhyamaapratipad) between extremes was neither clearly understood nor appreciated by his disciples. The Buddha did not teach the extinction of all desires as is commonly misunderstood. He had only advocated an end to craving or that excessive desirousness which leads to frustration, anxiety, and suffering. The quintessence of this middle path in metaphysical disputes as advocated by Gotama is to attain an experiential insight (praj~naa) into the nature of "things as they are" without bias and without "grasping" or "clinging" to any conceptual precommitment of any kind. This methodology has a great similarity with the phenomenological "bracketing" of Husserl and the "pure-experience" of William James. The Buddha did not lend his support to any one of the then extant theories of the self. He did not side with the so-called eternalists, who believed in the existence of a permanent entity called the self (aatman); nor did he support the "annihilationists,'' who believed that the self was

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simply nothing. The former view, in the Buddha's opinion, would lead to attachment, grasping, craving, and consequent frustration, anxiety, and suffering. The latter view would do away with the facts of moral initiative and responsibility. With respect to the existence of a permanent self the Buddha is reported to have said:

This, monks, is called going to wrong views.... 'Whatever is this self for one that speaks, that experiences and knows, that experiences now here, now there, the fruition of deeds that are lovely, and that are depraved, it is this self for me that is permanent, stable, eternal, not subject to change, that will stand firm like unto the eternal.' [5]

And on the other hand, when the Buddha was confronted by the view of a certain brahmin that there is no self-agency he is reported to have replied,

"Never brahmin, have I seen or heard of such an avowal, such a view. Pray, how can one step onwards, how can one step back, yet say: There is no self-agency; there is no other agency? What think you brahmin, is there such a thing as initiation?" "Yes, sir." ... "Well, brahmin, since there is initiative and men are known to initiate, this is among men the self-agency, this is the other agency." [6]

In this emphasis on initiative and effort as the experiential equivalents of the self-idea, Gotama is in agreement with William James, who also gave a central place to the experience of activity and creative effort (as will be made clear later) in contradistinction to Hume's analysis of the self in terms of a passive succession of discrete ideas and impressions. The historical Buddha's metaphors of the flame and the river are akin to James' metaphor of the "stream of thought" in which the concept of immediately felt continuous change is emphasized as opposed to that of a series of disjointed particulars of Hume.

The Buddha's treatment of causality or the law of "dependent origination" (pratiityasamutpaada) may be regarded as a phenomenological description of the process of continuous change linked by conditions, without theorizing about the nature of the causal "tie." So also is his description of nirvaa.na as that state of freedom which is to be experienced in order to be understood and for which no conceptual articulation will ever be an adequate substitute. He was aware of the intimate connection between the ideas of the self, agency, and freedom. He endeavored to show, through a phenomenological analysis, that the ordinarily accepted idea of the self as an owner of experiences, as a permanent enduring entity which somehow unites the ongoing flow of psyche-physical processes and as the same identical subject who knows the objects, is mistaken. Immediate experience reveals only a continuous flux of psyche-physical processes composed of five groups or aggregates (skandhas) such as bodily processes (ruupa) and mental processes of sensation (vedanaa), perception (sa^mj~naa), impulses to action (sa^mskaara), and consciousness (vij`naana). The Buddha did not assert that the concept or term "self" stands for nothing because this would be to side with the "annihilationists,'' who rejected moral

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effort, energy of will, and consequent moral responsibility. Such a position, according to the Buddha, is flatly contradicted by our own immediate experience of initiative and effort in overcoming evil tendencies. If there is any experiential truth in the self-idea it is this fact of moral effort, awareness, and mental alertness. This immediate sense of moral initiative is the only phenomenologically verifiable aspect of the concept of the self. The rest is all mere theory and speculation. All ideas of a permanent self are trammels and snares which lead to conceit, folly, attachment, frustration, anxiety, and suffering.

How does such a view of the self account for personal identity and personal freedom? Gotama had something original to contribute to both these problems. Since what we designate the "self" is a continuous flow of psyche-physical processes it is futile to look for exactly the same entity (aatman) within them. Even if one postulated such an entity it would be difficult theoretically to explain its relation to the ongoing flow of these processes. Identity for the Buddha is to be found in the cumulative continuity of the processes themselves. The series is not a discrete one of perishing particulars, otherwise memory and moral effort would be inexplicable. On the contrary, it is governed by the "law of dependent origination" which says: If this is, that comes to be, from the arising of this, that arises. If this is not, that does not come to be; from the stopping of this, that stops. This is a description of what is experientially encountered without being trammeled by the conceptual puzzles regarding the nature of the "'tie" to account for the continuity. Such a cumulative continuity, so the Buddha thought, has a room for personal freedom and moral initiative. It is not a causally tight and determined series. Any notion of rigid determinism flatly contradicts our experience of putting forth moral effort in the, face of temptation. In short, the Buddha's attitude to all these conceptual problems regarding self-identity was to follow the experiential middle-path and to avoid the philosophical puzzles arising from espousing extreme conceptual positions. Exhorting his disciples to avoid the heresies of "persistence of existences" and "annihilation of existences", nihilism and inefficacy of karman, the Buddha is reported, according to Visuddhimagga, xvii, to have said,

By the complete phrase 'dependent origination', such and such elements of being come into existence by means of an unbroken series of their full complement of dependence, the truth, or the middle course, is shown. This rejects the heresy that he who experiences the fruit of the deed is the same as the one who performed the deed, and also rejects the converse one that he who experiences the fruit of a deed is different from the one who performed the deed, and leaning not to either of these popular hypotheses, holds fast by nominalism. [7]

The same nominalistic concept of the self is brought out in the Sa^myuttanikaaya [8] and the Milindapa~nha. [9]

In one of the most famous dialogues between a wandering ascetic Vaccha

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and Gotama as recorded in Majjhima-Nikaaya, Sutta 72, the latter is reported to have steered clear of all philosophical puzzles arising out of an attempt to understand conceptually such metaphysical problems as whether the world is eternal or not eternal, whether the soul and the body are identical or not identical, whether the saint exists after death or does not so exist, and so on. Gotama here makes use of the famous "four-cornered negation." When asked by Vaccha whether Gotama had a theory of his own, he is reported to have replied that the Tathaagata is free from all theories and that none of the philosophical positions taken on these issues would fit the case. [10] When Vaccha was confounded by Gotama's reply, the latter gave an example from the perception of the burning of fire and its eventual extinction to bring home the point to Vaccha that just as the question "In which direction had the fire gone?" was irrelevant as it would not fit the case, in the same manner none of the earlier-mentioned metaphysical questions was relevant to the situation. [11] In other words, Gotama was trying to illustrate how thought got entangled in a confusion of categories in its attempt to articulate what was "given" in experiential immediacy.

To sum up, in dealing with the problem of the self, Gotama kept close to what was given phenomenologically in the flux of immediate, prereflective experience. Such a flow of experience had no place for a permanently existing, unitary ego. Moreover, such an ego was not necessitated by the verifiable experience of continuous change governed by the "law of dependent origination." It could account satisfactorily for the facts of memory as well as of personal freedom. Buddha's eightfold path gave a prominent place to right endeavor, to the putting forth of moral effort and the exercise of initiative in stopping evil tendencies and enlarging good ones. Also, constant mindfulness and mental alertness were emphasized. It was these verifiable experiences of alertness, moral initiative, and constant striving which constituted the quintessence of the self-idea. Freedom to change and to overcome the past through awareness and initiative was fully assured by the Buddha on the same grounds. In emphasizing these experiential aspects of the self-idea as opposed to the jungle of metaphysical puzzles, the Buddha's philosophical position may rightly be designated as "radical empiricism"--a phrase which William James made popular centuries later. In what follows we shall see that there is a great parallelism between the "radical empiricism" of the Buddha and that of James in contradistinction to the "brick-and-mortar" empiricism of David Hume.

II

There is a seeming resemblance between the positions of Gotama and David Hume on the problem of the self. The Buddha, as well as Hume, denied the existence of a permanently and identically enduring self in the flux of experience. But there is a world of difference in the motivation for dealing with the problem of the self, in the treatment of the subject matter, in their respective assumptions

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regarding the nature of experience, and consequently in the quality of the conclusions arrived at. There is also a radical difference in the mood which characterized their personalities as a result of their respective inquiries. Hume's motivation was purely intellectual. Having accepted Locke's theory of experience, Hume was led by sheer logical consistency to inquire whether there was any "impression" corresponding to the commonsense "idea" of the self as a self-identical entity. He did not share Gotama's ethical task of liberating mankind from attachment to a permanent self, resulting in anxiety and suffering.

While Hume examined the concept of personal identity in a rigorous manner within the boundaries of his assumptions, the historical Buddha adhered to studied silence on such questions, and neither asserted the existence of an identical self nor concluded that it was a pure nothing. The Buddha's concept of experience was "pre-theoretical" akin to the "radical empiricism" of James. His "middle-way" was the same as "radical empiricism"--with the help of which he escaped all the dualisms and dichotomies of his times such as eternalism and annihilationism, being and nonbeing, Brahman and the aatman, subject and object, knower and the known, the self and the not-self, permanence and impermanence. Hume's concept of experience, as pointed out earlier, was "atomistic" and as such a postreflective one. Reflective introspection revealed to Hume that the mind was nothing but a series of disjointed impressions and ideas with no "real" relations between them. Such an account of experience revealed, according to Hume, no permanently subsisting self. Applying the empirical criterion he enquired,

For from what impression cou'd this idea be deriv'd?...It must be some one impression, that gives rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are suppos'd to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro' the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos'd to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. [12]

Further,

For my part, when I enter most intimately 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 catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. [13]

Again,

. . . I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.... The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance. . . . There is no simplicity in it at any time, nor identity in different; . . . The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind... [14]

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Hume subjects the whole concept of identity to a rigorous analysis by first examining other uses of the term "same" when applied to plants, animals, ships, and houses. He observes with great insight that the idea of identity would not arise if we had before us only one single, simple, and invariable object. Such a nontemporal situation can give rise to the idea of unity but not of identity. At the same time a mere succession of discrete temporal items in experience can also not account for the idea of identity. It is the confusion between "same" and "different" which gives rise to the fictitious idea of identity. Hume puts it,

After one object is suppos'd to exist, we must either suppose another also to exist; in which case we have the idea of number [that is, difference]: Or we must suppose it not to exist; in which case the first object remains at unity [that is, we do not have a pair, so there is nothing for it to be identical with].
To remove this difficulty, let us have recourse to the idea of time or duration. ... Time ... implies succession, and when we apply its idea to any unchangeable [sic] object, 'tis only by a fiction of the imagination, by which the unchangeable object is suppos'd to participate of the changes of the co-existent objects. . . .This fiction of the imagination almost universally takes place; and 'tis by means of it, that a single object, plac'd before us, and survey'd for anytime without our discovering in it any interruption or variation, is able to give us a notion of identity.... Here then is an idea, which is a medium betwixt unity and number. [15]

Hume, therefore, points out that the idea of identity does not refer to any one particular impression of identity. Identity does not belong to our different perceptions, uniting them together. It is a fictitious quality of union which our imagination projects on the discrete data which are either contiguous, or which resemble one another, or are felt to be causally related. Because our imagination passes smoothly from one datum to another associated with it, we tend to regard them as identical. He explains his analysis thus:

That action of the imagination, by which...we reflect on the succession of related objects... facilitates the transition of the mind from one object to another, and renders its passage as smooth as if it contemplated one continu'd object. This resemblance is the cause of the confusion and mistake, and makes us substitute the notion of identity, instead of that of related objects.... Our propensity to this mistake is so great from the resemblance above-mention'd that we fall into it before we are aware; and . . . boldly assert that these different related objects are in effect the same, however interrupted and variable. In order to justify to ourselves this absurdity, we often feign some new and unintelligible principle, that connects the objects together, and prevents their interruption or variation. Thus we feign the continu'd existence of the perceptions of our senses, to remove the interruption; and run into the notion of a soul, and self, and substance, to disguise the variation. [l6]

Hume further says,

The identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one, and of a like kind with that which we ascribe to vegetables and animal bodies. It cannot, therefore, have a different origin, but must proceed from a like operation of the imagination upon like objects. [17]

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Making use of the relations of resemblance, contiguity, and causality Hume thus accounts for the fictitious idea of personal identity which can go beyond even our memory. He, therefore, concludes,

The whole of this doctrine leads us to a conclusion, which is of great importance in the present affair, viz. that all the nice and subtile questions concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties. Identity depends upon the relations of ideas; and these relations produce identity, by means of that easy transition they occasion.... All the disputes concerning the identity of connected objects are merely verbal, except so far as the relation of parts gives rise to some fiction or imaginary principle of union, as we have already observ'd. [18]

Having discovered no permanent self and having explained away the notion of personal identity Hume in the concluding part of Book I, Part IV gives expression to feelings of melancholy, despair, and doubt. He says,

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate".... When I look abroad, I foresee on every side, dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny, and detraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. [19]

It is difficult to decide whether Hume's despair and melancholy were real feelings or feigned ones. However, these feelings are in sharp contrast to the feelings of release, liberation, and nirvaa.nic peace experienced by the historical Buddha at his discovery of and insight into the nature of things in general and the self in particular. The Buddha taught the doctrine of the "middle path" to humanity in the hope of freeing them from ignorance, anxiety, and suffering, which resulted from a fixation and attachment to a persisting ego.

Despite some acute critical observations on the problem of personal identity Hume failed to give a satisfactory account of our notions of "sameness" and "identity" with respect to our selves. He did not perceive that in accounting for personal identity in terms of our "feigning" or "imagining" such a unity into our discrete data he was already assuming an "I" which, if not a metaphysically distinct substantial entity (`a la Descartes), must have a greater continuity than was allowed by his theory of the self as a series of "loose and separate" perishing particulars. Such a completely dismembered self could not even know that it was a mere succession. Hume's explaining away of the "tie" in the external world and of personal identity in the inner world provoked subsequent philosophers--especially William James in America--to reexamine Hume's assumptions. James replaced Hume's "atomistic" concept of experience by his own "radical empiricism," and put forward a dynamic transactional theory of knowledge in lieu of Hume's passive theory of impressions and ideas.

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III

James made a highly original contribution to the problem of the self and personal identity. It is now being increasingly recognized that he influenced both Husserl and Wittgenstein through his magnum opus The Principles of Psychology. [20] He shared with the historical Buddha and Hume the methodological principle of referring all conceptual problems to experiential realities. But, as pointed out earlier, his concept of "radical empiricism" had more in common with that of the Buddha as being the prereflective flow of immediate experience than with the "atomistic" concept of Hume. All three of them rejected the notion of a permanent ego on the ground that such an entity was not encountered in experience. But while James and the Buddha gave a phenomenological description of pure experience as that of continuous change, Hume put forward a notion of experience as a disjointed and loose succession of impressions and ideas. Then again, both the Buddha and James did not agree with Hume in his contention that, since a persisting self-identical entity is not "given" in experience, it is, therefore, nothing but a mere imaginary projection. In other words, Hume's analysis of the self in terms of passive particulars had no intelligible explanation for the facts of initiative and moral effort. The Buddha and James recognized that those experiential facts of initiative were the quintessence of the self-idea, and as such they could not be explained away as purely imaginary. And lastly, both James and the Buddha gave a prominent place to "bodily processes" in any account of the self, which is missing in Hume's account.

It may be mentioned that both Hume and James made use of the relations of resemblance, contiguity, and causality as a basis for analyzing the notion of personal identity. But whereas Hume had to introduce some sort of "feigning" and "imagining" on our part to "project" identity into data which are otherwise discrete and disjointed, James did not have to take recourse to such a subterfuge. Instead, he put forward a revised concept of "pure experience"--a radical empiricism in which both the focal points (the "substantive parts") and the vaguely felt relations (the "transitive parts") were given in the continuous flux of immediate experience. He put forward such a view in The Principles of Psychology, [21] and later continued, though with some variations, to clarify it further in his Essays in Radical Empiricism [22] and A Pluralistic Universe. [23] He conceived the notion of "pure experience" as a methodological principle which enunciates that,

Everything real must be experienceable somewhere, and every kind of thing experienced must somewhere be rea1. [24]

This was a reaffirmation of his position in The Principles where he expressed his purpose in that famous chapter on "The Stream of Thought" as "the reinstatement of the vague to its proper place in our mental life." [25] He expressed his view of "radical empiricism" most clearly thus:

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To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced. For such a philosophy, the relations that connect experiences must themselves be experienced relations, and any kind of relation experienced must be accounted as 'real' as anything else in the system. [26]

Equipped with this methodological principle James made a serious attempt to grapple with the problem of the self and its identity. He saw his task as that of discovering how the idea of the self was presented phenomenologically in the immediacy of pure experience. James was highly skillful in describing graphically the "feel" of the self in prereflective experience. He dismissed Hume's "bundle" theory as a passive succession of discrete perceptions which did not give any satisfactory account of the dynamic and active aspect of spontaneity of the self. He also repudiated Kant's transcendental Ego on the phenomenological ground that such an entity was not presented in the stream of experience. James interpreted the Kantian Ego as an agent brought in ab extra to unify the otherwise chaotic and disparate experiential manifold. In other words, according to James, Kant tacitly accepted Hume's "atomistic" theory of experience and invented the transcendental string to tie it up. If that was what Kant meant by the self, then James pointed out rather dramatically that,

... Transcendentalism is only substantialism grown shame-faced, and the Ego, only a 'cheap and nasty' edition of the soul. . . . The soul truly explains nothing; the 'syntheses', which she performed, were simply taken readymade, and clapped on to her as expressions of her nature taken after the fact: but at least she has some semblance of nobility and outlook. She was called active; might select; was responsible, and permanent in her way. The Ego is simply nothing: as ineffectual and windy an abortion as Philosophy can show. [27]

Consistent with the earlier mentioned principle of "radical empiricism," James arrived at an important distinction between the "Me" and the "I" in dealing with the problem of the self. Speaking of the empirical "Me" he wrote:

In its widest possible sense, however, a man's self is the sum-total of all he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his- clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank account. All these things give him the same emotions. [28]

He calls it the empirical or psychological "Me" because it is the immediately experienced self, and we identify ourselves with it in various degrees and experience self-feelings in connection with it. It is, however, not a bare unity but is composed of three constituents--the material self, the social self and the spiritual self. Here James gives us a phenomenology of the experienced self in terms of the felt emotions to which our identification with it gives rise. It may be noted that apart from the material and social dimensions of the empirical self he recognized the spiritual self not in a theological sense but as

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"a man's inner or subjective being, his psychic faculties or dispositions, taken concretely." [29]

He gives a graphic phenomenological description of these three dimensions of the empirical self. Each one of us can verify how our body, family, home, and possessions become integral parts of our own self. These comprise what James calls the material self. This is not all. Gradually as we grow up we begin to care for and respond to individuals and groups of persons whose recognition we crave. The image they carry about us in their minds becomes our social self. As a matter of fact we have as many social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion we care. After giving an analysis of these dimensions of our empirical self James raises the crucial question: If these are the experienced selves, who is the experiencer? He was thoroughly acquainted with the historical and philosophical problem of the "I" or the pure "Ego" who is supposed to unify, "own" or be a "witness" to the empirical flux of psychic life. He gave a superb description of the "feel" of that elusive innermost core of subjectivity to which all other parts of the stream of experience seemed only "transient external possessions." To do this he made use of his notion of activity, which he located in the very heart of the stream of subjective life without limiting it, as Kant had done, to the epistemological situation only. He wrote,

It is the source of effort and attention, and the place from which appear to emanate the fiats of the will. [30]

In another graphic description of the "feel" of this central nucleus of the "I" he wrote,

"... I am aware of a constant play of furtherances in my thinking, of checks and releases, tendencies which run with desire, and tendencies which run the other way.... The mutual inconsistencies and agreements, reinforcements and obstructions, which obtain among these objective matters reverberate backwards and produce what seem to be incessant reactions of my spontaneity upon them, welcoming or opposing, appropriating or disowning, striving with or against, saying yes or no. This palpitating inward life is, in me, that central nucleus which I just tried to describe in terms that all men might use. [31]

How did James interpret this innermost core of spontaneity? In The Principles his account on this point was ambiguous. However, he was emphatic in giving a prominent place to that "warm" and "intimate" feeling of our bodily existence which, as a continuous and pervasive nonfocal background, formed an integral part of our self. He wrote,

But when I forsake such general descriptions and grapple with particulars, coming to the closest possible quarters with the facts, it is difficult for me to detect in the activity any purely spiritual element at all. Whenever my introspective glance succeeds in turning round quickly enough to catch one of these manifestations of spontaneity in the act, all it can ever feel distinctly is some bodily process, for the most part taking place within the head. [32]

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James used the descriptive phenomenological method in accounting for our sense of personal identity. He repudiated attempts to account for personal identity in terms of a "transcendent non-phenomenal sort of Arch-Ego," and sought its meaning in an empirically and phenomenologically verifiable feature of our immediate experience. He found the clue to our sense of personal identity in the peculiar feeling of "warmth" and "intimacy" with which our "present self" appropriates our past experiences. He wrote,

A uniform feeling of "warmth," of bodily existence (or an equally uniform feeling of pure psychic energy?) pervades them all, and this is what gives them a generic unity, and makes them the same in kind. But this generic unity coexists with generic differences just as real as the unity . . . And similarly of the attribute of continuity; it gives its own kind of unity to the self--that of mere connectedness, or unbrokenness, a perfectly definite phenomenal thing--but gives not a jot or little more. [33]

Here James' account is very similar to that of the historical Buddha who also recognized the flamelike continuity between the various psyche-physical processes governed by the "law of dependent origination." It seems that both James and the Buddha are here following the "middle path" of giving a faithful descriptive account of personal identity of the self in terms of immediate experience. To both of them it would be going beyond experiential evidence to assert the existence of any "absolute unity" over and above the felt continuity and resemblance of parts. On this matter Hume's account, as we have seen earlier, was deficient because he failed to see that experience was a continuous flow rather than a series of loose and disconnected particulars. That is why Hume had to introduce the element "feigning," though inconsistently, in accounting for our sense of personal identity. James was more consistent when he wrote:

Resemblance among the parts of a continuum of feelings (especially bodily feelings) experienced along with things widely different in all other regards, thus constitutes the real and verifiable personal identity" which we feel. [34]

Is there an "owner" of our experiences? What meaning can be assigned to this sense of "ownership" in terms of our immediate experience? James located this sense of "ownership" within this continuous and cumulative "stream of thought." To him, "each Thought is thus born an owner, and dies owned, transmitting whatever is realized as its Self to its later proprietor." [35] What he means is that each passing thought is experienced in its felt immediacy but nothing can be "known about" it until it is gone giving place to another Thought which "appropriates" it on grounds of resemblance and intimacy. And thus:

Who owns the last self owns the self before the last, for what possesses the possessor possesses the possessed. [36]

James was essentially in agreement with the historical Buddha in regarding this "stream of experience" as it really was--neither a mere succession of

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disjointed particulars nor a tightly "determined" causal series. They both realized that in either of these latter alternatives there would be no room for freedom and initiative. James presented his view of the problem in his famous chapter on the Will in The Principles, Vol. II. He dramatized the issue by depicting the conflict between a propensity and an ideal motive as one between a powerful sensual factor pitted against a weak ideal force. The ideal motive per se had no chance of overcoming the sensual opponent unless it was buttressed by personal effort, which was an independent factor derived from conscious energizing. Symbolizing effort as E, propensity as P, and ideal motive as I, he wrote:

But the E does not seem to form an integral part of the I. It appears adventitious and indeterminate in advance. [37]

Contrasting our experience of making such an effort with our strength, intelligence, and so on he wrote,

But the effort seems to belong to an altogether different realm, as if it were the substantive thing which we are, and those were but externals which we carry. . . . He who can make none is but a shadow; he who can make much is a hero. [38]

Again,

What wonder if the amount which we accord of it be the one strictly underived and original contribution which we make to the world! [39]

James reaffirmed his belief that the self and its freedom were given originally in the felt experience of activity and effort in an extremely interesting essay, "The Experience of Activity," as late as 1904. [40] He was faced, however, with the problem of deciding whether the self was given entirely in the passing experience of effort and spontaneity or was there a more abiding potentiality integrally related to the ongoing actualities of experience. It seems that in his later writings he shied away from the earlier analysis of the self in terms of present actualities alone when he wrote,

The "passing" moment is...the minimal fact, with the "apparition of difference" inside of it as well as outside. If we do not feel both past and present in one field of feeling, we feel them not at all.... The rush of our thought forward through its fringes is the everlasting peculiarity of its life. [41]

Again,

The conscious self of the moment, the central self, is probably determined to this privileged position by its functional connection with the body's imminent or present acts. It is the present acting self. Tho the more that surrounds it may be "subconscious" to us, yet if it in its "collective capacity" it also exerts an active function, it may be conscious in a wider way, conscious, as it were, over our heads. [42]

James expressed similar views in The Varieties of Religious Experience, and also in his essay "What Psychical Research Has Accomplished" in which he wrote,

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The result is to make me feel that we all have potentially a "subliminal" self, which may make at any time irruption into our ordinary lives. At its lowest, it is only the depository of our forgotten memories; at its highest, we do not know what it is at all. [43]

What is more amazing is that James in his Ingersoll Lecture, "Human Immortality," toyed with the idea that our brain might not be the "productive" cause of our consciousness but serve only a "transmissive" function for releasing an independently preexisting personal consciousness. Was he reintroducing the idea of a permanent self? Not necessarily. In the Preface to Second Edition of the same essay he wrote,

It is true that all this would seem to have affinities rather with preexistence and with possible re-incarnations than with the Christian notion of immortality. [44]

Of course, James, like the historical Buddha, was not commiting himself here to any idea of a simple spiritual soul-substance. But he agreed with the Buddha in keeping close to all kinds of experiences normal and paranormal. Therefore, he did not rule out, merely on grounds of conceptual unintelligibility, the possibility of the "stream of consciousness" surviving physical extinction. He gave primacy to experience, and to those who demurred on conceptual grounds he said, "Passer Outre" [45] (let us go beyond concepts).

However, despite these striking similarities between the Buddha's and James' methodologies as well as their treatment of the self, there are some important differences too. Though both of them appealed to the "way things are" or to facts of immediate experience, yet the historical Buddha's analysis is predominantly reflective, and it does not make a clear and articulate distinction between the self as "felt" or "experienced" in its immediacy and its postreflective components. No doubt, reflective analysis revealed no permanent ego-entity but only an on-going flux of psychophysical processes composed of five skandhas. But this left out of account the psychological "feel" of the self in its concreteness. A reflective analysis of any experience is bound to be abstract and remote even when it has the advantage of clarity. No wonder, we do not find any account of the psychological "Me" in the Buddha's treatment. James, on the contrary, was aware of the fact that reflective analysis can never be a substitute for the "live" and concrete feel of immediate experience. It will always leave out some vital though vaguely felt aspects of experience. That is why James made an important distinction between the empirical or psychological "Me" and the metaphysical "I." The historical Buddha ignored the former problem and devoted himself exclusively to the latter. Moreover, James' treatment of the empirical "Me" does full justice both to the individual and social aspects of the self. He was not hampered in his theoretical analysis of the self by any avowed or implicit ethical aims. On the contrary, the Buddha tied his analysis of the self with the practical task of freeing man from excessive craving and foolish attachment to a nonexistent ego. He traced human suffering,

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anxiety, and frustration to the identification of an illusory ego with all kinds of objects and persons in our material and social environment. That is why he not only ignored the social components of our psychological self but positively warned against such an identification. In other words, the Buddha's treatment of the self, while agreeing with James in recognizing the element of effort, energy, and spontaneity, lacked a social dimension. And yet, is it not amazing to find, if my thesis is correct, that the Buddha's approach to the problem of the self and its analysis has a greater resemblance to that of James than to that of Hume as has been commonly believed?

NOTES

1. Kenneth K. Inada, Naagaarjuna: A Translation of His Muulamaadhyamakakaarikaa with an Introductory Essay (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1970), pp. 3-34. Professor Inada rightly points out that Naagaarjuna fully grasped the most fundamental teaching of the historical Buddha, namely, the doctrine of the middle path. Inada, Naagaarjuna, p. 21.

2. See H. C. Warren, Buddhism in Translations (New York: Atheneum, 1963), p. xiv.

3. David Hume, Enquiries Concerning The Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 22.

4. Confer Nolan Pliny Jacobson, Buddhism: The Religion of Analysis (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1966), p. 163-164.

5. I. B. Horner, trans., The Middle Length Sayings (Majjhima Nikaaya), vol. 1 (London: Luzac and Co., 1954), p. 11.

6. E. M. Hare, trans., The Book of the Gradual Sayings, vol. 3 (London: Luzac and Co., 1937, 1952), pp. 237-238.

7. Warren, Buddhism in Translations, pp. 169-70.

8. E. J. Thomas, The Life of the Buddha, As Legend and History (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1927, 1949), pp. 88-89.

9. Warren, Buddhism in Translations, pp. 129-33.

10. Ibid., pp. 125-126.

11. Ibid., p.127.

12. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888, 1964), I, iv, 6, p. 251.

13. Ibid., p. 252.

14. Ibid., pp. 252-253.

15. Ibid., I, iv, 2, pp. 200-201.

16. Ibid., I, iv, 6, pp. 253-254.

17. Ibid., p. 259.

18. Ibid., p. 262.

19. Ibid., I, iv, 7, p. 264.

20. Confer, John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy, (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1957, 1966), footnote 4, p. 592.

21. William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1890, 1927).

22. William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York: Longman's Green and Co., 1912, 1938, 1947). Posthumous, ed. R. B. Ferry.

23. William James, A Pluralistic Universe (New York: Longman's Green, 1909, 1947).

24. James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, p. 160.

25. James, The Principles of Psychology, 1: 254.

26. James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, p. 42.

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27. James, The Principles of Psychology, 1: 365.

28. Ibid.. p. 291.

29. Ibid., p. 296.

30. Ibid., p. 298.

31. Ibid., p. 299.

32. Ibid., pp. 299-300.

33. Ibid., p. 335.

34. Ibid., p. 336.

35. Ibid.. p. 336.

36. Ibid., p. 340.

37. James, The Principles of Psychology, 2: 549.

38. Ibid., p. 578.

39. Ibid.. p. 579.

40. James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, pp. 155-189.

41. James, A Pluralistic Universe, p. 283.

42. Ibid., p. 344, note 8.

43. William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), p. 321.

44. Ibid., p. viii.

45. Henry James, ed., The Letters of William James, vol. 1 (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920), p. 148.