The historical Buddha (Gotama), Hume, and James on the self: Comparisons and evaluations
D. C. Mathur
(D. C. Marhur is Professor of Philosophy at Srate University
College at Brockport,SUNY,Brockport, New York )
Philosophy East and West
Vol.28 No.3 (1978.07)
pp.253-269
Copyright by University of Hawaii Press
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 canbe made about the historical Buddha's own views. The various schools of
Mahaayaana and especially the `suunyavaada of Naagaarjuna (civca 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 Hinayaana tradition also ascribes to Gotama the famous threefold marks of all existence (trilak.sa.na)such as impermanence (anitva), suffering (ctu.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 aatnzan, 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 (praf~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 Yisuddhimagga, 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 [sie] 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 percep-
tions 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 givesrise 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 "i magining" 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 themselvrs be experienced relatians. and any kind of relation
experiencen must br accounted as 'real' as anything else in the systrm.[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 abextra to unify the otherwise chaotic and disparate experiential manifold. In
other words, according to James, Kant tacitly accepted Hume's "atomistc 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
p.264
"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
Wi11.[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 particuiars, 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 roind quickly enough to catch one of these mani-
festations 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]
p.265
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 differ ences 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 fee1.[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
p.266
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,
p.267
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
a1l.[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,
p.268
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 ofthe 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,
L938, 1947). Posthumous, ed. R. B. Ferry.
23. William lames, 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.
p.269
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.