Beyond Personal

Identity
 Curzon Studies in Asian Religion
Series Editor: Sue Hamilton, King's College, London

Editorial Advisory Board:

Nick Allen, University of Oxford
Catherine Despeux, INALCO, Paris
Chris Minkowski, Cornell University
Fabio Rambelli, Williams College, Massachusetts
Andrew Rippin, University of Calgary

Curzon Press publishes a Series specifically devoted to Asian

Religion, considered from a variety of perspectives: those of theology,
philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, politics and literature.
The primary objects of study will be all the religious traditions of the
Indian sub-continent, Tibet, China, Japan, South-East Asia, Central
Asia, and the Near and Middle East.
The methodology used in the works published in the Series is
either comparative or one focused on (a feature of) a specific tradition.
The level of readership ranges from undergraduates to specialist
scholars. The type of book varies from the introductory textbook to
the scholarly monograph.

Tradition and Liberation

The Hindu Tradition in the Indian Women's Movement
Catherine A. Robinson

Shinto in History
Ways of the Kami
John Breen and Mark Teeuwen

Beyond Personal Identity

Dagen, Nishida, and a Phenomenology of No-Self
Gereon Kopf

Proposal or scripts for the Series will be welcomed by the Series Editor
or by Jonathan Price, Chief Editor, Curzon Press.
 Beyond
Personal Identity
Dagen, Nishida,
and a Phenomenology
of No-Self

Gereon Kopf

CURZON
 First Published in 2001
by Curzon Press
Richmond, Surrey
http://www.curzonpress.co. uk
© 2001 Gereon Kopf
Typeset in Horley Old Style by LaserScript Ltd, Mitcham, Surrey
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
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A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN 0-7007-1217-8
----It CONTENTS _,1------

Preface IX
Introduction Xl
Dagen Kigen Xli
Nishida Kitara XIV
Methodological Considerations XVlI

PART ONE: Personal Identity Revisited

CHAPTER ONE: The Problem of Personal Identity 3

Introduction 3
The concept of personal identity 5
Three theories of personal identity 8
introduction 8
personal identity qua substance 9
personal identity qua bodily continuity 15
personal identity qua psychological continuity 18
The concept of personal identity revealed as a convenient fiction 22
personal identity as further fact 22
the indeterminacy of personal identity 24
personal identity is not "what matters" 25
The construction of personal identity 28
personal identity and intentionality 28
the emergence of two selves 31
Summary 33

v
 CONTENTS

PART TWO: Zen Buddhism and Phenomenology on

Self-Awareness

CHAPTER TWO: Selfhood 37

Introduction 37
outline of part two 37
the problem of selfhood 38
Cogito and self-consciousness: a phenomenology of the self 40
the conception of the cogito 40
cogito as intentional act 44
self-consciousness 46
the dual self 49
summary 52
"To study the self is to forget the self" - selfhood in Dogen 53
no-self in Buddhism 53
introduction to Dagen 55
Dagen's "self" as positional act 58
self-awareness in Dagen 63
somaticity and self-awareness 67
Nishida on selfhood 69
introduction 69
the dual self 70
non-positional awareness 73
self-awareness and internal negation 75
conclusion 79
Summary 80

CHAPTER THREE: Otherness 83

Introduction 83
Alterity and intersubjectivity 87
existential ambiguity of self and other 87
excursion: psychic synchronization and psychic
entanglement in Jung 94
"To cast off self and other" - alterity in Dogen 97
alterity in early Buddhism 97
Dagen and otherness 99
the moment of alterity 101
the paradox of alterity 103
intersubjectivity 105
I and Thou in Nishida 110
The interaction of I and Thou 111

VI
 CONTENTS

the disappearance of the self 113

non-thetic awareness 117
the modality of expression 11 9
Summary 121

CHAPTER FOUR: Continuity of Experience 124

Introduction 124
The notion of continuity 125
No-self and continuity in Early Buddhism 132
impermanence and permanence 133
impermanence and continuity 137
the collapse of continuity 141
From dharma-position to dharma-position - continuity
in Dogen 144
From the present to the present - continuity in Nishida 153
from the created to the creating 154
from the present to the present 157
Summary 161

CHAPTER FIVE: Temporality 164

Introduction 164
A phenomenology of time 165
abstract time 166
phenomenal time 170
lived time 173
temporality and the problem of free will 175
Existence-time - time in Dogen 177
time in early Buddhism 177
time in Dagen 178
inauthentic experience of time 179
authentic experience of time 182
the immediate now 184
The non-relative present - Nishida on time 187
introduction 187
linear time and circular time 188
the problem of repeatability 191
dialectical time 193
eternal present 195
Summary 197
Temporality and personal identity 200

Vll
 CO:\TE~TS

PART THREE: Zen Conceptions of Identity

CHAPTER SIX: A Zen Phenomenology of Experience 205

Introduction 205
A Mahayana Buddhist phenomenology of experience 208
The abstract world 213
The phenomenal world 216
The lived world 218
introduction 218
lived world as epistemic reorientation 21 9
lived world as activity 222
summary 224
The actual world 225
non-positional awareness 225
the dialectic of the actual world 228
The question of impermanence 232

CHAPTER SEVEN: Personhood as Presencing 235

Introduction 235
The concept of presencing 235
Dagen's stratification of presencing 235
the role of the universal 238
Synchronic non-duality 240
the dialectic of presencing in Dagen 240
the dialectic of presencing in Nishida 245
Diachronic non-duality 248
the non-dual structure of impermanence 248
presencing qua from the created to the creating 252
identity and non-duality 255
Postscript: presencing is "what matters" 256

Notes 262
Glossary of Japanese Terms 278
Key to Texts by Dagen and Nishida 284
Works Cited 286
Index 294

VIU
-----t4 PREFACE _1---

When I took my first course in Buddhism eleven years ago at Temple

University, I found myself perplexed and mystified by the writings of
Dagen and the concepts of "no-self," "casting off body and mind,"
and "presencing" they espoused. This class sent me on a journey to
understand these concepts within their own conceptual framework
and thus into the field of comparative philosophy, Japanese language
and culture, and the dialectical philosophy of NISHIDA Kitara. The
tentative product of this journey is the present volume, which grew
out of a significant revision of my dissertation. It attempts to relate the
Zen Buddhist notion of no-self as it is elaborated by Dagen and
Nishida to the problem of personal identity and to the theories of self
developed in twentieth century phenomenology and existentialism; in
short, it presents a phenomenology of no-self. In this sense, it
combines my two fundamental intellectual interests: on the one hand,
the quest to understand selfhood with all its ethical, psychological,
existential, and political ramifications, which are all reflected in the
dilemma of reconciling change and a sense of constancy, and, on the
other, the attempt to dialogue notions of selfhood as different as
Leibniz' monadology, Parfit's rejection of personal identity, Merleau-
Ponty's phenomenology of habit-formation, Buddhist notions of
selflessness, and Nishida's infinite dialectic. I hope that this work will
reflect this quest and stimulate or nurture the comparative discourse
on selfhood.
This book could not have been finished if it had not been for a
host of teachers, colleagues, friends, and sponsors. Much of my
academic development lowe to Professor NAGATOMO Shigenori,
whose insightful and perceptive criticism has served both as model
of, and as inspiration for, my research. I would also like to thank

IX
 PREFACE

Professors J. N. Mohanty, Thomas Dean, YUASA Yasuo, and

KIMURA Kiyotaka for their guidance and vote of confidence;
Professors James Heisig, YUSA Michiko, Steven Heine, and Gen
Reeves, for their collegial support and advice; my colleagues in the
Department of Religion and Philosophy at Luther College for their
patience and support; Professors TATENO Masami, Jeff Shore,
YAMABE Nobuyoshi, KURASAWA Yukihisa, WATANABE
Manabu, Alfons Teipen, Terry Rey, Dr. ARAKAWA Naoya, and
Dr. Douglas Berger for many conversations and their friendship;
Dr. Samuel Brainard for innumerable discussions and insightful
criticism; Professor Barbara Thornbury, and Ms. TAMURA Kyoko
for introducing me to the Japanese language; Mr. Jonathan Price of
Curzon Press for having faith in my proposal; Mr. Peter Spuit,
Mr. Nathan Pralle, and Ms. Rebecca Meier for their help with the
manuscript; Mr. Jack Kilcrease and Mr. Christian Salter for compiling
the index; and the library staff at Luther College. I would like to
thank Dr. Martin Srajek for his longstanding friendship and insightful
comments which challenged me to look at the topic of personhood
from a multitude of perspectives. Particularly, I thank Ms. Francesca
Soans, who proofread the manuscript with precision and competency,
for being a constant challenge to my ideas, and for simply being there.
In addition, I would like to thank Luther College for supporting my
research with the Ylvesaker Research Fund and a Faculty
Development Grant and the Japan Foundation for its generous
Fellowship, which enabled me to study and research for one year
under Professor Yuasa, an experience which has been invaluable
professionally as well as personally. I am further indebted to
Professors Robert Schinzinger, David Dilworth, ABE Masao and
Norman Waddell, T AMAKI Koshiro, and YUSA Michiko, whose
translations of Dagen and Nishida have influenced me greatly insofar
as my interest in Zen preceded my proficiency in Japanese. The
process of compiling and writing this study has proven once more that
interrelatedness in which we find ourselves. The inadequacies and
shortcomings of this study, notwithstanding this overwhelming
support, however, are solely my responsibility.

Gereon Kopf
Decorah, 2000

x
------tt INTRODUCTION _1.....---

I'm known as Nagasena, your Majesty, that's what my fellow monks

call me. But though my parents have given me such a name ... it's only
a practical designation. There is no question of a permanent individual
implied in the use of the word.
Nagasena
If I say 'It will not be me, but one of my future selves,' I do not imply
that I will be that future self. He is one of my later selves, and I am one
of his earlier selves. There is no underlying person who we both are.
Derek Parfit
Although they are not one, they are not different; although they are not
different, they are not identical; although they are not identical, they
are not many.
DOGEN Kigen
That which is identical in itself is not merely one but must be the many
as one and the one as many. For this reason, that which changes does
not change and that which does not change changes, as does, for
example, our self-awareness; we can think of this as self-identity.
NISHIDA Kitaro

Among all Buddhist concepts, the notion of no-self (Skrt.: anatman,

Jap.: muga) seems to be the single most important concept within the
Buddhist tradition and, at the same time, the least intelligible one to
those outside of the Buddhist tradition. Recently, however, the
Buddhist theory of no-self finds its conceptual equivalent in the
outright rejection of an underlying personal identity or self,
formulated by the reductionist philosophies of David Hume and
Derek Parfit. 1 Albeit conceived of as highly counterintuitive as well as
ethically irresponsible, the Buddhist position, nevertheless, succeeds
in questioning the notion of an enduring subjective and ethical agency

Xl
 INTRODUCTION

on empirical grounds and demands a rethinking of this pivotal

philosophical paradigm. In addition, DaGEN Kigen's Zen Bud-
dhism and NISHIDA Kitara's philosophy, which is akin to Zen
Buddhism in its conceptual structure, developed a phenomenology of
no-self which suggests a conceptual strategy to respond to the
questions of personal identity and theorizes a selfless self after the
refutation of the notion of personal identity and after the loss of an
enduring self. To a philosophy of a self devoid of personal identity,
Dagen and Nishida contribute their exploration of three fundamental
features which are necessary for, yet often overlooked by, the discourse
of personal identity. These are the self-constitution of the self, the
moment of alterity and recognition, and a philosophy of time. Beyond
Personal Identity discusses Dagen's and Nishida's philosophy of
selfhood and personhood under these aspects in order to (1) engage in
a comparative philosophy (including representatives of analytical,
"Continental," and Buddhist philosophy) of selfhood, alterity, and
time, (2) explore the philosophical implications of Zen Buddhist
terminology and rhetoric, and (3) propose a way to theorize and talk
about selfhood beyond personal identity.

Dogen Kigen

This book explores the notion of Mensch-sein 2 as selfhood, alterity,

and continuity within the writings of the medieval Japanese Zen
Master DaGEN Kigen. Dagen (1200-1253 C.E.), the founder of the
Japanese Soto Zen school, 3 lived during the Kamakura period
(1192-334 C.E.) in Japan, a time which was characterized by political
chaos and corruption, and in which he personified the Zen virtue of
"rugged determination and uncompromising independence" (deBary
1969, 357). Confronted with the corrupt Buddhist elite of the
traditional Japanese Buddhist schools Tendai and Shingon and a
general sentiment, of almost apocalyptic proportions, claiming that
the end of the dharma (Jap.: mappo) had arrived, Dagen devoted his
life to the proclamation of sitting meditation (Jap.: zazen) as the true
transmission of the buddha-dharma (Jap.: buppo no shoden). In addition
to defying the elitist Buddhism practiced by the traditional Buddhist
schools, Dagen distinguished himself by developing a unique literary
expression and philosophical articulation of Buddhist ideas. However,
his thought was almost unknown for a long time, and it is only
through the works of Japanese scholars such as WATSUJI Tetsura,

Xli
 INTRODUCTION

who published a commentary on Dagen, "Shamon Dagen" (1940,

156-246) at the beginning of this century, that Dagen's thought is
made available to the larger academic community. Before Watsuji's
commentary, the study of Dagen's works remained largely within the
discourse of the Sata sect; today, Dagen is counted as one of the
formative thinkers in Japanese intellectual history. When one
approaches the thought of Dagen, one has to keep in mind that the
primary motive for his writing is the proclamation of zazen as the
transmission of the dharma. Dagen's thought has an empirical
foundation, namely, it is grounded in religious practice. Based on his
spiritual experience, Dagen proposes a theory of Mensch-sein which
forces the reader to rethink their conception of personal identity.
Among the Buddhist writers Dagen distinguishes himself in that he
develops a thorough formulation of a theory of self-cultivation (Jap.:
shugyo) and a consequent investigation of the empirical and conceptual
ramifications of the doctrine of no-self. Employing a phenomenology
of epistemic transformation, Dagen ventures to explore the conception
of Mensch-sein in the light of the practice of sitting meditation. He
adheres to the primacy of experience to such a degree that he even
manipulates Buddhist doctrines and scriptures whenever he deems it
necessary so as to articulate the depth of his confirmatory experience
of enlightenment. Based on his experience of satori, Dagen
investigates thoroughly, and sometimes even systematically, the
implications the notion of no-self has for religious life, daily life,
metaphysics, and ethics. In his effort to articulate the experience of
no-self, he simultaneously incorporates and transcends the work of his
predecessors such as Nagarjuna's dialectic, Chih-i's dogmatism, and
the koan practice of Rinzai Zen Buddhism. Dagen abandons any form
of dogmatism or textualism in order to emphasize the existential and
experiential character of the Buddhist notion of no-self. In order to do
so, he freely rephrases and modifies existing Buddhist doctrines and
stretches linguistic boundaries in the search for an appropriate and
exhaustive expression of the experience of satori. For example, while
discussing the concept of buddha-nature (Jap.: bussho), Dagen
advances a threefold modification of this concept as "non-buddha-
nature" (Jap.: mubussho), "emptiness-buddha-nature" (Jap.: kubussho),
and "impermanence-buddha-nature" (Jap.: mujo-bussho) to avoid any
essentialist, nihilist, or otherwise doctrinal position; instead, Dagen
concludes his conceptual considerations with poetic images such as
"inside the mountains flowers blossom" (Dagen 1993, 1: 407) and
"flowers fall amidst loathing and weed flourishes in the middle of

Xlll
 INTRODUCTION

disgust" (Dagen 1993, 1: 94)4 in order to express the existential

predicament of human experience. Dagen thus advances a radical and
existential interpretation of the Buddhist doctrine of no-self.
Even though Dagen does not explicitly formulate a theory of
Mensch-sein (nor does he have a conceptual equivalent to "personal
identity"), his writings nevertheless disclose a consistent underlying
interpretation of human experience and, in particular, of selfhood,
alterity, and continuity. One of the most often-quoted paragraphs
from Dagen's main work Shobogenzo is dedicated to the exploration of
selfhood, in Dagen's words "to study the self" (Dagen 1993, 1: 95).
Despite his denial of an enduring self, Dagen firmly believes that the
process of self-awareness commences with the self-reflective
experiential "I," and only a thorough investigation of the self-
conscious function will reveal the emptiness and provisional character
of the experiential "I" and its conceptualization of itself as narrative
identity. As indicated in his comments, which correlate the
transcendence of the self and the transcendence of the other, Dagen
maintains the interdependency between the self-conscious function of
the experiential "I" and the moment of otherness. Dagen ventures so
far as to claim the necessity of otherness, personified by the
meditation master, for a successful process of self-cultivation through
sitting meditation. Lastly, Dagen attributes major significance to the
issue of continuity, especially to the relationship between the
experience of continuity and the Buddhist doctrine of momentariness.
With his keen sense for philosophical dilemmas, Dagen identifies the
tension between the Buddhist proposition of the enlightenment
experience, which transcends the boundaries of time and space, and
the linear conception of time, which reflects the everyday experience
of continuity. Subsequently, Dagen formulates a Buddhist conception
of time designed to accommodate both modalities of experience, the
experience of continuity and the experience of timelessness, with a
special focus on its implications for the theory of Mensch-sein.

Nishida Kitaro
Nishida, one of the foremost philosophers in Japan, contributes to this
work because of his threefold function as one of the first comparative
philosophers, as the author of a philosophical explication of Zen ideas,
and, albeit implicitly, as the author of a philosophy of selfhood.
Nishida was born in the small village of Kanazawa on the northeast

XIV
 INTRODUCTION

coast of Honshu, the main island of Japan, in 1870. He began his study
at Tokyo University, the highest ranked university in Japan. After his
graduation he returned to Kanazawa to serve, first, at a local high
school, and, then, at Kanazawa University. In 1910 he joined Kyoto
University as an assistant professor, where he was awarded a Ph.D.
and full professorship in 1913. He remained there until he retired in
1928 and died in 1945. His extensive knowledge of British psychology,
including William James, and German philosophy, especially the
idealism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel and phenomenology, provided him with the background to
formulate his own philosophical system, which simultaneously fed on
the ideas of Japanese Buddhism and western philosophical
terminology. Despite his interest in a variety of topics, one of his
major contributions to the field of comparative philosophy was to
provide Zen Buddhism with a philosophical form and explication.
While the claim that Nishida's thought constitutes a Buddhist
philosophy or even a Zen philosophy is rather controversial s for
various reasons, which have to be discussed in a different venue,
I believe it is justified to utilize Nishida's thought as a philosophical
expression of Zen (and thus as Zen philosophy) in the present context.
Nishida develops a philosophical system and, more concretely, a
philosophy of self which is not only based on Zen notions such as
satori, "no-self" (Jap.: muga), "no-mind" (Jap.: mushin), etc. but,
furthermore, either coincides with or expands on Dogen's notions of
selfhood, alterity, continuity, and temporality. Even though he did not
acknowledge that Zen thought and practice was one source of his
philosophy until his last work, "The Logic of Topos and the Religious
World View" ("Bashoteki Ronri to Shukyateki Sekaikan") (Nishida
1988, 11: 371-464), his terminology from early on reflects Nishida's
belief that the notion of satori signifies the most fundamental modality
of human existence in the light of which all human activity can be
interpreted and examined. In his Inquiry into the Good ("Zen no
Kenkyu") (Nishida 1988, 1: 3-200), for example, Nishida attempts
nothing less than a mapping of epistemology, ontology, ethics, and a
philosophy of religion under a new paradigm - the notion of "pure
experience" (Jap.: junsui keiken) which is structurally equivalent to
Dagen's formulation of satori as "casting off body and mind" (Jap.:
shinjin datsuraku). Nishida was convinced that a proper explication of
this experience in the language of philosophy could not only provide
the key to some of the perennial problems in western philosophy but
that it could also function as the heuristic tool to interpret the wealth

xv
 INTRODUCTION

and variety of human experience. Reminiscent of Dagen's agenda, the

key theme of Nishida's philosophy is expressed in his underlying and
pervasive belief that the dualistic paradigm, which has found its most
radical formulation in the philosophy of Rene Descartes and the
resulting "two-world theory" (Nishitani 1991, 77), has proven
insufficient to solve the most fundamental and burning issues of
humankind - namely ontology, ethics, and religion - and has,
furthermore, resulted in a deep and existential schism of experience
and metaphysics as well as science and religion, which has left
humankind not only confused but intrinsically alienated from itself. It
is in this search for a new and inclusive (inclusively mediating)
paradigm that Nishida's Buddhist influence becomes most apparent.
Nishida rejects the "extreme positions" which dissociate the pair of
opposites characteristic of everyday experience and absolutize either
polarity as their respective starting point. Instead, he proposes the
notion of the pure experience, which he defines as "unity of the
subject and the object" (Jap.: shukyaku no toitsu) (Nishida 1988, 1: 15)
as the starting point and most fundamental paradigm, which can
equally accommodate the philosophical discourses on personal
experience, metaphysics, religion, and science. 6
While Dagen's concern is predominantly soteriological, Nishida is
mainly concerned with fundamental epistemological issues. From the
first page of his Inquiry into the Good to the last page of his "The Logic
of Topos and the Religious World-View," Nishida's writings evolve as
an endless struggle to formulate a philosophy that can bridge the
seemingly infinite gap between knower and known to stratify a
comprehensive theory of knowledge that has the notion of self-
awareness as its center. In a striking resemblance to the phenomen-
ological project of his contemporary Edmund Husserl, Nishida
attempts to recapture the pre-reflective unity of the epistemic subject
and object to postulate an assumptionless standpoint of philosophy. In
analogy to Husserl, Nishida commences some of his philosophical
essays written in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century with
the existential predicament of everyday consciousness qua the cogito
in his "I and the World" ("Watakushi to Sekai") (Nishida 1988, 7:
85-172), qua human interaction in "The Non-Relative Contradictory
Self-Identity" ("Zettai Mujunteki Jiko Doitsu") (9: 147-222), and
qua the impossibility "to know what the other thinks" (6: 341) in his
"I and Thou" ("Watakushi to Nanji") (6: 341-427). Starting with the
existential predicament of everyday awareness, Nishida commences to
explore the depth-structure of human knowledge. Like Husserl,

XVI
 INTRODUCTION

Nishida realizes the fundamental flaw in the epistemological

preconceptions of metaphysics and science; he strives, as Nishitani
observed, to develop a philosophical standpoint which simultaneously
addresses the "split between experience and metaphysics" (Nishitani
1991,. 71) and the "conflict between the standpoints of science and
religion" (73) and intends to build a new philosophy on an objective
episteme which resolves the philosophical antinomies and controver-
sies that characterized the history of European philosophy. In this
process, however, Nishida is keenly aware of the paradoxical nature of
his enterprise to know the structure of knowledge - Robert J. J. Wargo
terms this riddle the "completeness problem" (Wargo 1972, 204) -
which is reflected in his terminology of self-contradiction and
nothingness. Nevertheless, he seems to believe that such a cognitive
unity between the epistemic subject and object not only comprises the
underlying depth-structure of human knowledge but further can be
attained in religious experiences as diverse as that of St. Paul's
self-surrender to god, 7 Shinran's nembutsu, and the Zen satori. At
the same time, however, like Dagen, he refuses to dissolve the
dichotomy of everyday experience into a mystical oneness and,
instead, pleads for a radical non-dualism. This non-dual paradigm,
which he terms alternatively as "pure experience" (Jap.: junsui
keiken) , "union point" (Jap.: goitten), "acting-intuition" (Jap.: koiteki
chokkan) , "non-relative contradictory self-identity" (Jap.: zettai
mujunteki jiko doitsu) , and "affirmation-qua-negation" (Jap.: kotei
soku hitei), functions as the conceptual and structural basis of
Nishida's conceptions of self-awareness, "I-and-Thou," "continuity
of discontinuity" (Jap.: hizenroku no zenroku) , and "non-relative
present" (Jap.: zettai genzai) as "contradictory self-identity" (Jap.:
mujunteki jiko doitsu).

Methodological Considerations

To achieve my threefold goal of engaging in a comparative study,

exploring the philosophical implications of Zen Buddhist thought,
and proposing a Zen conception of personhood devoid of personal
identity, I will approach the subject matter in three steps. It is possible
to argue that each part introduces the topic "beyond personal
identity" from a different perspective: Part One from the perspective
of the discourse on personal identity, Part Two from the perspective of
a comparative philosophy, and Part Three from a Zen perspective.

XVll
 INTRODUCTION

(1) In the first part, I will examine the philosophical pursuit of

personal identity which commenced in the philosophical discourse of
the European enlightenment as a debate between, among others,
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John Locke, and David Hume. This
section will define "personal identity" as identity-over-time and trace
the debate on personal identity through the discussion of thought
experiments in the discourse of analytical philosophy in the nineteen
seventies and eighties to Parfit's rejection of personal identity and Paul
Ricoeur's critique thereof. In recent years, the discourse on personal
identity seems to have been enriched by a discussion of clinical cases 8
rather than of the logical and metaphysical conditions of personal
identity. Since the present work focuses for the most part on the
metaphysical, logical, and epistemological implications of "identity,"
"self-identity," and "non-duality," I am unable to include a case-
study-oriented approach. This chapter primarily functions to
introduce the terminology and problematic of personal identity and
to illustrate by implication the difference between the notion of
personal identity, Parfit's rejection thereof, and the Zen Buddhist
conception of, if you will, personal non-duality. It is my thesis that the
framing of the question of personal identity already implies the notion
of an enduring self. Thus, I suggest replacing the search for criteria of
personal identity with an examination of the three fundamental issues
involved in the pursuit and construction of personal identity, namely,
selfhood, alterity, and continuity. I will also argue that any theory of
personal identity has to clarify its assumption about temporality and
thus relate the quest for personal identity to a philosophy of
temporality. In order to avoid the assumption of personal identity, I
will refer to the issues of selfhood, alterity, continuity, and temporality
as the problem of Mensch-sein (literally, being-human). The main
advantage of the term "Mensch-sein" is that as a neologism it
minimizes the ontological connotations and metaphysical assumptions
involved. As such, the term does not constitute a conceptual solution
but rather rephrases the problem of personal identity without
implying a permanent substance.
(2) The second part will dialogue the Zen Buddhist notions of
selfhood, alterity, continuity, and temporality with twentieth-century
existentialism and phenomenology with a special emphasis on Jean-
Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and, to a lesser degree, Edmund
Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In using the label "phenomenology," it
is not my intention to either assume or argue that the delineation
between existentialism and phenomenology does not hold up; neither

XV1l1
 INTRODUCTION

do I intend to negotiate their differences. Rather, and this is supported

in the discussion of both existentialist and phenomenological
philosophy under the category phenomenology, as it is done by
Herbert Spiegelberg (1960) and Bernhard Waldenfels (1983), I believe
that the philosophies subsumed under these categories, especially
Sartre's and Merleau-Ponty's, reveal a particular methodological and
conceptual affinity to Dagen's religious thought and Nishida's
philosophy. They thus aid in facilitating a philosophical dialogue
between Japanese Zen Buddhism and the discourse on personal identity
and selfhood within the Euro-American philosophical tradition, which
traces itself back to the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. 9 Thus
defined, phenomenology shares with Zen Buddhism its existentialist
approach, taking everyday awareness qua the "facticity" of self and
world (Merleau-Ponty 1962, vii), HusserI's "natural standpoint"
(Husserl 1962, 91), Dagen's standpoint of the ordinary person (Jap.:
bompu), and Nishida's world of mutually opposing particulars as its
starting point. Second, phenomenology discloses the binary structure of
everyday awareness, juxtaposing the self qua intentional act and the
world qua construct. Starting with the binary structure of everyday
awareness, phenomenology then explores the various dimensions of
human experience and thus discloses the "world as it is directly or pre-
reflectively experienced" (Shaner 1985, 16). The four main dialogue
partners of this section, Dagen, Nishida, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty,
locate everyday awareness in pre-reflective experience, albeit differently
conceived. In addition, all four philosophers emphasize the importance
of selfhood, alterity, continuity, and temporality to a theory of selfhood.
Finally, in the course of this dialogue, I will develop a terminology
which arises from both phenomenology and Zen Buddhism and, at the
same time, enables me to interpret Zen Buddhism in the light of
phenomenology and phenomenology in the light of Zen Buddhism.
(3) The third part is dedicated to establishing a Zen conception of
personal non-duality from within the philosophies of Dagen and
Nishida. Using the terminology that emerged from the comparative
dialogue between phenomenology and Zen Buddhism, I will develop a
multilayered conception of personhood which applies the notorious
non-duality between identity and difference, change and changeless-
ness, temporality and atemporality, so characteristic of Zen
Buddhism, to the question of continuity over time. Thus I will
introduce the Zen conception of no-self qua presencing to the
discourse on personal identity with all its metaphysical, ethical, and
soteriological implications.

XIX
 INTRODUCTION

Furthermore, the text implies a host of sub-discourses, which are

secondary, if not tertiary, to the overall project, such as the structural
and conceptual similarities between Dagen and Nishida as well as
between Zen and phenomenology, the contributions Sartre and
Merleau-Ponty make toward an introduction of Zen Buddhism to the
philosophical discourse of the "West," the differences between Parfit's
rejection of personal identity and the no-self of early Buddhism and
Zen Buddhism, and, last but not least, the importance of a philosophy
of time to the conception and conceptualization of selfhood and
personal identity. In this context, it will also be important to emphasize
that Zen Buddhism is a predominantly soteriological enterprise. While
I will be careful to read Dagen's thought within the context of his
religious agenda, my primary focus will be the conceptual dimension
and ramifications of his concepts "casting off body and mind" (Jap.:
shinjin datsuraku) and "presencing" (Jap.: genjo).
Finally, I would like to briefly explain my usage and notation of
technical terminology and terms from languages other than English.
To keep the present work as readable as possible, I generally
translated technical terms into the English language. This is especially
important since my project is predominantly comparative and draws
from a variety of language communities. Generally, I retained those
terms whose translation into English posed particular difficulties such
as Nishida's "basho" and Dagen's "shinjin datsuraku," literally
"casting off body and mind," in their original language. Since my
intention is to compare the various terminologies of personhood and
selfhood and to develop some kind of metalanguage of Mensch-sein, I
decided to italicize every term contributing to my conceptual
framework. I thus employ four different notations of translated
terms: Everyday language such as "self" or "external object" and
generally accepted technical terminology such as "no-self" are written
without italics or quotation marks; technical terms discussed as
concepts appear in quotation marks; translated terms which inform
my conceptual framework are italicized; and technical terms whose
meanings differ significantly from everyday usage, such as "to
constitute," are italicized. With regard to the notation of titles of
monographs and essays, in the case of Dagen, I cite the Japanese titles
for ease of reference because the English translations vary
significantly. In the case of Nishida's work, I adopted, whenever
available, the titles of the translations by ABE Masao, Robert
Schinzinger, David A. Dilworth, and YUSA Michiko. The overall
criteria for these conventions are readability and clarity.

xx
 PART ONE

Personal Identity
Revisited
-----It tl----
The Problem of
Personal Identity

Introduction

The philosophical discussion of the notion of personal identity, that is,

the question of how we can conceive of the continuity of persons over
time, seems to have reached a pivotal phase. Derek Parfit's radical
denial of the notion of personal identity and the subsistence of any
personal essence over time, which he first formulated in his essay
"Personal Identity" (1971) and later stratified in his ingenious Reasons
and Persons (1984), has left the contemporary philosopher with the
uneasy choice between reliance on the almost untenable notion of an
inconceivable substratum of selfhood or the seemingly unthinkable,
unethical (in the eyes of some of Parfit's opponents) and, definitely,
counter-intuitive rejection of personal identity. After all, we claim our
identity with a past self every day in our self-presentation through
stories, curricula vitae, and credit histories as well as through
relationships to family relations, friends, and colleagues. Parfit's
rejection of the traditional conception of personhood and selfhood has
received even more weight since it finds support in recent claims of
leading cognitive scientists, such as Ray Jackendoff, and researchers of
Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as Marvin Minsky (1985), that the
cognitive processes of the mind do not necessitate an underlying,
permanent self or Ego. l If true, the dictum of human selflessness would
have implications beyond the realm of philosophy, influencing
psychology, cognitive science, and, most of all, ethics because of the
importance of the concept of personal identity to the questions of
ethical accountability, responsibility, property rights, and the delinea-
tion of human life. These questions are central not only to general
ethical theories but also to the evaluation of ethical and psychological

3
 PERSONAL IDENTITY REVISITED

consequences of contemporary technology and science, such as brain

tissue transplants, 2 and real as well as possible achievements in the
realm of AI, highlighted by popular entertainment a la Hollywood. It
also affects the evaluation and treatment of special psychopathological
cases such as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). In addition, the
notion of personal identity carries significant soteriological implica-
tions in that it seems to constitute a necessary condition for a belief in
an afterlife, whatever form it may take. However, the main question
that concerns me in this book can be summarized as follows: How is it
possible to talk about persons, selves, and minds in the face of a theory
of selflessness? Assuming that the dictum of selflessness, advanced not
only by Parfit but also by David Hume, Jackendoff, Minsky, and, most
importantly for the present enterprise, Buddhism, is viable, how is it
possible to articulate and solve questions concerning the identity,
continuity, personhood, and selfhood of the human individual? The
present chapter will analyze the conception of personal identity as well
as Parfit's rejection of it and propose a way to talk meaningfully about
the issues of personhood, selfhood, and the human experience of
temporality without presupposing or even necessitating the notion of
personal identity. Part Two will explore the notion of selfhood and
temporality as advanced by Zen Master Dagen and the philosopher
NISHIDA Kitaro.
At this point, an important clarification seems necessary. While it is
my main interest here to examine the metaphysical structure of the
concept "personal identity," I am less concerned with negotiating the
arguments supporting and/or refuting the various conceptions of
personal identity, which focus on the criteria for personal identity -
Andrew Brennan (1988), Harold W Noonan, (1989) and John Perry
(1975) have already provided comprehensive overviews of the existing
theories within the tradition of analytical philosophy - but rather with
probing the assumptions underlying such conceptions and their
implications. What are the contributions and implications of the most
prevalent theories of personal identity? In particular, I am interested in
the criticism, which has been advanced to varying degrees by Richard
G. Swinburne (1984), Roderick M. Chisholm (1976), and especially by
Paul Ricoeur (1992), that the discourse on the criteria of personal
identity within analytical philosophy tends to overlook the subjective
dimension characteristic of the formation of personal identity. 3 Who is
the "I" who announces his/her identity in stories and curriculum
vitae? What is the significance of the subjective function, which John
Searle (1992) labels first-person-ontology, for the construction of

4
 THE PROBLEM OF PERSONAL IDENTITY

personal identity and for the discussion of its criteria? More

specifically, I am interested in the description and examination of the
existential sense of continuity and constancy and the concomitant
construction of personal identity in narratives and philosophical
theory. Contrary to the claims of Swinburne and Chisholm, however, I
believe that such a criticism does not necessitate the notion of personal
identity and an underlying and unchanging Ego.

The Concept of Personal Identity

The concept of personal identity arose arguably within the European

intellectual tradition. It has its etymological roots in the colloquial
Greek term prosopon and its Latin equivalent persona, signifying "the
mask worn in comedy or tragedy" or "the character an actor plays -
dramatis personae." (Chadwick 1981, 193). As early as the sixth
century, Boethius (480-524 C.E.), a Latin philosopher and Christian
theologian, formulated the concept of personal identity as a synthesis
of the Aristotelian concept of substance and the notion of an eternal
soul, which early Christian theology had inherited from Neoplatonist
philosophy. In the context of the early Christian debates on
Christology,4 Boethius developed his now famous definition of
persona as "individual substance of rational nature" (Lat.: naturae
rationabilis individua substantia) (193). The foremost function of this
formula was to express that Jesus the Christ, despite his dual nature -
divine and human - was unified and one in numero. Nevertheless, the
formula additionally identified the "incommunicable quality of the
individual within the human species" (194) which functions as the
self-identical and individual essence of the human being. Boethius'
definition of the concept "persona" radically differs from its original
meaning "mask" in that it, now, denoted that which persisted over
time, despite changes and transformations that might occur in its
attributes and accidents, S be they physical or psychological in
character. It is important to note that Boethius' usage of "persona"
implies unity, endurance, and, most importantly, rationality, thus
distinguishing the essence of Mensch-sein not only from the mask that
can be arbitrarily and deliberately utilized or discarded by any given
actor, but also from inanimate, insensible, and irrational entities.
However, it was not until the notion of the individual had developed
in the thought of the Italian Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation,
and the European Enlightenment that the conception of personal

5
 PERSONAL IDENTITY REVISITED

identity as an individual-over-time became the subject of general

philosophical debate, involving eminent thinkers such as Gottfried W
Leibniz, John Locke, Hume, Joseph Butler, and Thomas Reid. 6 By
then, the synthesis of Aristotelian and Neoplatonist thought within
the Christian theological tradition had given rise to the notion of an
individual and enduring core, which clearly demarcates and identifies
an individual, human person. During the periods of the Enlight-
enment and Modernism, this notion of the individual person-over-
time was adopted as the general theory of Mensch-sein, underlying
most philosophical, psychological, and ethical systems in the West.
For all these theories (with the exception of the theories of Hume,
Parfit, and some cognitive scientists), the notion of a real, enduring,
and conscious agent, namely personal identity, functions as a
necessary condition, addressing the issues of ethical responsibility
and accountability as well as the continuity of experience. Today,
personal identity is defined as persistence-over-time, suggesting that
there is one enduring individual which persists through a multitude of
different and separate moments in time and which possesses a
multitude of experiences.
In some sense, the theory of personal identity emerges from the
attempt to explain and conceptualize the sense of continuity
characteristic of the existential predicament of the experiential "I."
Awakening to itself, the experiential "I," that is, the self-conscious
agent, finds itself thrown, as Martin Heidegger would say,' into a
particular situation and context of historicity. To give an example,
every morning I wake up knowing who I am, who my relatives,
colleagues, and friends are, what my social function and professional
responsibility is, etc. In short, I experience myself continuous and
identical with a past self; at the same time, this identity is being
reinforced by the community in which I find myself, by the people
who meet me, recognize me, and, in some sense create who-I-am in
their stories, expectations, and prejudices. The lack of such an
experience of identity and the shortage or even negative reinforcement
of an assumed identity would create a comical or haunting scenario as
exploited in novels such as Joy Fielding's See Jane Run. This everyday
experience of continuity and assumption of identity translates into the
contention that the person P exists at, and persists through,
diachronically diverse moments such as tb t2t t3, t4, etc. For the
sake of clarity, I would like to identify up at tl" as P 1 and "P at t z" as
Pz. Any theory of personal identity inquires into the following
questions: What is it that continues from tl to t2? What warrants the

6
 THE PROBLEM OF PERSONAL IDENTITY

attribution of two experiences P 1 and P 2 to one "person" P? What

privileges the relationship between P 1 and P 2 over the relationship
between P 1 and, for example, Ch in the understanding of personal
identity? Why is it possible for me to claim identity with the person
who graduated from Temple University in 1996 (P 2 ) but not with the
person who won the election for the American presidency in the same
year (~), or with the person who authored the Tao te Ching more
than 2000 years ago (R 3 )?
The colloquial usage of the term "person" is highly ambiguous,
signifying both the diachronic person-over-time such as P and
individual persons-at-the-moment such as P 1 and P 2 . The notion of
the person-over-time designates a set of diachronically separate
experiences such as being born at t 1 , entering high school at t 2 , and
attending college at t 3 , if and only if at any given time to one
diachronical, personal unity corresponds to one and only one person-
at-the-moment. The term "person-at-the-moment," on the contrary,
signifies one particular experience of a given person-over-time.
Assuming the differentiation between person-over-time and person-
at-the-moment, Noonan distinguishes between diachronic identity
and synchronic identity: the former addresses the relationship
between two diachronically disparate person-stages, P 1 and P 2 , while
the latter investigates the relationship between one person-stage, P 3 ,
and the diachronic stream of experiences called "person," namely P
(Noonan 1989, 104-5). Diachronic identity is expressed in statements
of the form "the person who wrote Steppenwolf (P 1) and the person
who wrote Siddhartha (P2 ) are identical," synchronic identity in
statements such as "Hermann Hesse (P) is identical to the author of
Steppenwolf (P 1)." In addition, personal identity does not only require
such a diachronic identity relationship between the two persons-at-
the-moment P 1 and P 2 and a synchronic identity relationship between
the atemporal person P and person stage P 1 but, to be more specific,
their exclusive identity in that, at any given time to, P is
synchronically identical to but one person-stage Po and that person-
stage Plat tl is diachronically identical with but one Po at any given
time to. Personal identity thus defined is a clear-cut matter of yes-or-no
- tertium non datur.
Thus, the theory of personal identity investigates three central
questions: How is it possible to identify a person (myself and others)
as an individual human being? How is it possible to distinguish
between two individual persons? What guarantees the constancy and
identity of an individual person over time? These questions are

7
 PERSONAL IDENTITY REVISITED

designed to identify the fundamental characteristics of an individual

and to isolate that which makes an individual human being unique. In
this sense, the theory of personal identity defines continuity of
experience solely as the persistence and preservation of one individual
person. As mentioned before, such an enterprise is of utmost
importance since its practical implications cover a wide range of
problems that include memory, recognition (how is it that I recognize
an individual human being whom I have met before?), ethical
responsibility and accountability (what are the conceptual conditions
to make an individual human being accountable for what slhe has
done ten years ago?), and legal problems such as the attribution of
property (who is the referent of possessive pronouns?). In short, all
these dilemmas hinge on the fundamental question "What are the
criteria which identify a human individual-over-time beyond doubt?"
At the same time, these questions map out the complexity of the
issue, which is reflected in the breadth of approaches to personal
identity and the emerging interdisciplinary character of the discourse
on personal identity. Recognition evokes the social aspect of human
existence, while the delineation of human individuals involves the
considerations of communicability of mental content in interpersonal
interaction and the exchangeability of human organs in transplants as
well as the clarification and definition of "content" and "delineation."
In addition, concepts such as "identity," "substance," and "continuity"
have metaphysical and, for the most part, logical implications. Most
of all, however, it has to be examined how the various theories of
personal identity reflect the human experience of identity and
difference, endurance and transformation. Finally, and this point is
often overlooked within the discourse on personal identity, the quest
for personal identity suggests two methodologies, a first-person-
approach and a third-person-approach: The former inquires "How do
I define myself?" and "How can I identify what is intrinsically me?"
while the latter defines and recognizes an other's personal identity
from the outside.

Three Theories of Personal Identity

Introduction

Traditional responses to the problem of personal identity have varied

significantly in the past three hundred years. The prevalent theories of

8
 THE PROBLEM OF PERSONAL IDENTITY

personal identity can be roughly divided into three groups: First,

there are the essentialist theories, which, following Leibniz' principium
identitatis indiscernibilitium, conceive of personal identity as an
unchanging constant in the flux of time reflective of Boethius' naturae
rationabilis individua substantia. With the challenge to, and the
undermining of, the essentialist paradigm, which began (in the
European philosophical tradition) with Hume, a rethinking of the
notion of personal identity has become necessary. The post-Humean
philosopher concerned with the question of personal identity finds
her/himself in the dilemma of either subscribing to the mysterious, as
well as questionable, concept of a substance or forsaking the ethically
crucial and seemingly empirical, self-evident notion of personal
identity. Faced with this alternative, the criteriologist8 establishes
personal identity by identifying the necessary and sufficient criteria
that constitute personal identity. This approach discloses two possible
solutions, namely, the attribution of personal identity to bodily
continuity or to psychological continuity. Such an alternative,
however, warrants two immediate observations. First, this dichotomy
obviously arises from and is reminiscent of the mind-body dualism,
which has received its ultimate philosophical expression in the
European philosophical tradition by Rene Descartes, and, thus,
reflects the Cartesian legacy. I believe that this revival of the Cartesian
dichotomy reveals some of the fundamental issues and metaphysical
assumptions involved in the criteriological controversy. Second, the
discussion of the physical and the psychological criteria raises the
question whether these approaches actually substitute the notion of
substance with a bodily or a psychological continuity or whether they
simply substantialize the human body or the psychological complex
involving memory and consciousness. On first· sight, this question
might appear to be splitting hairs, but, as will become clear in the
course of the present chapter, it uncovers the most fundamental
concern of the philosophical quest for personal identity.

Personal identity qua substance

The essentialist approach conceives of personal identity as a

substance,9 that is, an underlying, unchanging unity, which has a
certain set of attributes subject to change, and which is different from
the physical body, memory, and consciousness. The latter phenomena
comprise the transient attributes of Mensch-sein, while personal

9
 PERSONAL IDENTITY REVISITED

identity constitute its unchanging core and essence. Thus defined,

personal identity is the very principle which enables me to identify
myself with various stages (person-stages, if you will) in my life and
with the infant in my photo-album and a believer in transmigration
with a previous existence. In this sense, the essentialist conception of
personal identity echoes the everyday notion of a person as someone
who has a beginning, namely, birth, persists through change, despite
the changes in her/his life and the general transient nature of the
phenomenal world, corresponds to one, unique person-at-the-
moment at any given time to, and dies at the end of her/his life. To
explore the tension between the sense of continuity and constancy,
which is so important to the conventional world constructed by the
human community, and the obvious physical and psychological
changes human individuals undergo during a life span, the defenders
of the essentialist hypothesis employ thought experiments such as
Heraclitus' river and "Theseus' ship." Leibniz, one of the first
champions of the essentialist understanding of personal identity, uses
these thought experiments to exemplify the concept of personal
identity as substance. Heraclitus' river, to Leibniz, remains the same,
one river, despite the constant flux of water particles which comprise
the river. While the flux of water merely indicates a change in the
river's attribute, that is, the water, the essence of the river, that is,
what establishes the river as such, remains constant and unchanging.
By the same token, Leibniz attributes the identity of Theseus' ship,10
which, on its many journeys, was repaired and slowly replaced piece
by piece until nothing of the original material was left, to its
unchangeable and invisible essence reflected in the continuity of its
form and appearance (this statement raises interesting questions
which will be discussed later). Leibniz contends that it is the same
ship which leaves the first and enters the last port of the journey, since
its substance survives all material substitution, which Leibniz
interprets as a mere change in attributes. Swinburne (1 984) and
Baruch A. Brody (1980) support Leibniz' position with the more
up-to-date example of body swapping, in which two persons change
their bodies so that body A is bestowed on person B and vice versa.
The very nomenclature and construction of "body-swapping" already
implies a priority of personal identity - whatever this is - over the
human body.
However, the essentialists also denounce the identification of personal
identity with consciousness, memory, or, in the terminology of
criteriologists, with psychological continuity. Traditionally, essentialists

10
 THE PROBLEM OF PERSONAL IDENTITY

have challenged the Lockian and Neo-Lockian position, which

attributes personal identity to memory or any psychological
continuity, with what can be called "the argument from amnesia."
The prototype of this argument has become known as Reid's paradox
of the brave officer. Imagine, Reid argues, an officer who remembers
his first campaign when he took "a standard from the enemy" (Reid
1975b, 114) but doesn't remember being flogged in high school;
however, at the time of his first campaign, he still remembered the
flogging incident. From this analogy, Reid concludes the insufficiency
of the memory criterion, which, in his example, would render two
persons - the officer who was flogged and took the standard, on the
one hand, and the officer who took the standard and became general in
his later days, on the other - where there is only one. Therefore, Reid
argues, the identity of this brave officer cannot depend on his memory.
Personal identity, thus, as defined by the essentialists, cannot depend
on any transient phenomena such as attributes, but only on an
unchanging core. To elucidate this contention, Leibniz 11 introduces
the second earth example, which compares favorably with the
criteriological thought experiments in ingenuity and provocative
potential. In his New Essays (1916), Leibniz imagines that there is a
second earth, which resembles our earth down to the minutest detail,
in the sense that for each person A here, there exists a person N. on the
second earth, who possesses seemingly the same body, memory, and
consciousness as person A does. However, this seeming identity is an
illusion since a self-identical substance cannot be two in numero.
Leibniz contends that these two persons A and N. - and obviously
they are two persons in numero - are distinct only in substance, and it
is only god who can identify this difference in substance. In this sense,
personal identity is defined as the underlying substance, which
endures bodily changes, amnesia, and causes the present "I" to
identify with past and future experiences.
But what then constitutes this substance, which endures change
over time yet is imperceptible? Following Aristotle's distinction
between substance, the unchanging core, and attributes, which
comprise what "the intellect perceives of the substance, as if
constituting its essence" (Spinoza 1958, 94), Brody differentiates
between essential and non-essential properties (Brody 1980, 151).
While the former provide the necessary criteria for personal identity,
the sine qua non of personal identity, so to speak, the latter are not
necessary to identify an individual person. The strength of the
argument from substance is that it renders personal identity

11