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Rorty in Dialogue with Contemporary Western Madhyamaka Interpreters on

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
van der Heijden, Christianus Adrianus Anthonius

2023

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10.5463/thesis.426

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van der Heijden, C. A. A. (2023). Rorty in Dialogue with Contemporary Western Madhyamaka Interpreters on
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. [PhD-Thesis - Research and graduation internal, Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam]. https://doi.org/10.5463/thesis.426

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Download date: 28. Oct. 2023

 VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT

RORTY IN DIALOGUE WITH CONTEMPORARY WESTERN MADHYAMAKA

INTERPRETERS ON CONTINGENCY , IRONY, AND SOLIDARITY

ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT
ter verkrijging van de graad Doctor of Philosophy aan
de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
op gezag van de rector magnificus
prof.dr. J.J.G. Geurts,
in het openbaar te verdedigen
ten overstaan van de promotiecommissie
van de Faculteit Religie en Theologie
op vrijdag 17 november 2023 om 9.45 uur
in een bijeenkomst van de universiteit,
De Boelelaan 1105

door

Christianus Adrianus Anthonius van der Heijden

geboren te Mierlo
promotor: prof.dr. A.F.M. van der Braak
copromotor: prof.dr. A.W. Zwiep
promotiecommissie: prof.dr. D.M.K.H. Grube
prof.dr. P.J.C.L. van der Velde
prof.dr. H.J. Pott
dr. M.F. Willemsen
prof.dr. E.V. Tolstoj
 CONTENTS
PREFACE ........................................................................................................................................... 5
Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 8
PART ONE ........................................................................................................................................... 22
Chapter One: RORTY’S MORAL NON-FOUNDATIONALISM ................................................ 23
Chapter overview ........................................................................................................................ 23
1. 1. Founding ethics .................................................................................................................... 23
1.2. Rorty’s pragmatism.............................................................................................................. 34
1.3. Problems ................................................................................................................................ 48
Chapter Two: ETHICS ................................................................................................................... 52
Chapter overview ........................................................................................................................ 52
2.1. “Ethics,” “ethic,” and “morality” ....................................................................................... 52
2.2. Metaethics ............................................................................................................................. 57
2.3. Buddhist ethics ...................................................................................................................... 60
2.4. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 74
PART TWO........................................................................................................................................... 76
Chapter Three: CONTINGENCY & ŚŪNYATĀ Why should we care? ........................................ 77
Chapter overview ........................................................................................................................ 77
3.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 78
3.2. Contingency .......................................................................................................................... 81
3.3. Śūnyatā .................................................................................................................................. 92
3.4. Satya ....................................................................................................................................... 94
3.5. Two Truths in Madhyamaka............................................................................................. 102
3.6. Śūnyatā and contingency.................................................................................................... 108
3.7. The debate between Huntington and Garfield on rationality in Madhyamaka ........... 112
3.8. Māyā: Huntington’s novel and the question “Why should we care?” ........................... 117
3.9. Siderits on rationality and soteriology .............................................................................. 120
3.10. Whence karuṇā? ............................................................................................................... 122
3.11. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 126
Chapter Four IRONY & UPĀYA How can we persuade others to care? ..................................... 131
Chapter overview ...................................................................................................................... 131
4.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 131
4.2. Irony .................................................................................................................................... 132
4.3. The Rortyan ironist ............................................................................................................ 134
 4.4. Irony and justification........................................................................................................ 139
4.5. Philosophy as poetry........................................................................................................... 140
4.6. Irony and upāya in Western interpretations of Madhyamaka ....................................... 144
4.7. Ironists and ‘ascetic priests’ .............................................................................................. 150
4.8. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 152
Chapter Five: SOLIDARITY & MAHĀKARUṆĀ For whom should we care?............................. 157
Chapter overview ...................................................................................................................... 157
5.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 157
5.2. Solidarity as liberal goal .................................................................................................... 159
5.3. Ethnocentricity ................................................................................................................... 160
5.4. Karuṇā and mahākaruṇā.................................................................................................... 164
5.5. The non-duality of great compassion ................................................................................ 167
5.6. Self and others .................................................................................................................... 170
5.7. Mahākaruṇā and solidarity................................................................................................ 174
5.8. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 175
PART THREE ..................................................................................................................................... 177
Chapter Six: CONCLUSION........................................................................................................ 178
Chapter overview ...................................................................................................................... 178
6.1. Clarifications ....................................................................................................................... 178
6.2. “Graftage”: soterio-pragmatism ....................................................................................... 183
6.3. Rortyan thought deepened by Western interpretations of Madhyamaka .................... 188
6.4. Closing remarks .................................................................................................................. 191
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................... 193
APPENDIX A ................................................................................................................................. 211
APPENDIX B.................................................................................................................................. 212
SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................... 213
CURRICULUM VITAE AUCTORIS ............................................................................................ 215
PREFACE

When I first became acquainted with Buddhist thought, it struck me that philosophers such as
Nāgārjuna (c. 150 – c. 250) and Candrakīrti (c. 600 – c. 650) were being ignored in much of
the curricula of philosophy faculties and departments. Studying Eastern philosophers was
considered to be an exotic excursion, interesting but not the real thing. Luckily, Buddhist
thought is finally being acknowledged as real philosophy at a growing number of universities
in Europe, America, and Oceania.
In February 2018, I was contemplating the relationship between ratio and compassion. I
especially wanted to know what Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti had to say about it. I decided to
put three questions on this issue in an e-mail to two renowned American scholars, both
philosophers and experts in Buddhism. The first one was Jay L. Garfield and the other one C.
W. (Sandy) Huntington, Jr, who passed away on July 19th, 2020.
My three questions were: 1) Is there, according to Nāgārjuna or/and Candrakīrti, a
reason for being compassionate?; 2) Does compassion follow from reasoning?; 3) Does the
great compassion follow from reasoning?
Garfield answered ‘yes’ to all three of them. Huntington’s answer (March 13th, 2018)
was a bit different (see Appendix A):

Your questions, in my view, go directly to the heart of issues I have wrestled with for years
now. Although in my recent article in JIP [Journal of Indian Philosophy], I didn't directly
address the problem of the relationship between reason and compassion, what I said there
about Nāgārjuna is relevant. There is certainly, in my view, a relationship between intellect
and heart, and Buddhist philosophy is not simply about ideas. Perhaps we might say that if
those ideas are “properly” understood, then one experiences “a change of heart.” For example,
I think it’s clear that the idea of interdependent origination/emptiness implies that my
existence is entirely bound up with the existence of others. But I don’t know if that qualifies,
exactly, as “a reason for being compassionate.” Maybe it does. What do you think? In any
case, it’s obvious that no reasoned argument is going to compel someone to be compassionate
when they’re not already inclined to do so. That’s why Buddhist training includes moral
exhortations and meditation practice.

In my immediate answer to Huntington’s reply, I explained that my questions arose because I

was writing a dissertation: ‘My project is an attempt to “graft” the modern Madhyamaka
interpretation upon the “rootstock” of Richard Rorty’s meta-ethical non-foundationalism. I
consider Rorty’s conclusions on solidarity to be unsatisfying; it needs something more. I think
there are no rational reasons to be compassionate (as Rorty says) but for mahākaruṇā [“great
compassion”], there are.’ To which Huntington replied the same day:
 Well, I wish you the best with your work. Many years ago I contacted Rorty and tried to get
him interested in associations I had traced between his writing and Madhyamaka. He
responded cordially to my message, but obviously was not interested. I think Buddhism just
seemed too remote to him. As for my novel: you’ll see, I believe, how I have tried to weave
together issues of “wisdom” (prajñā) and “compassion” (karuṇā) in Stanley’s story.

Huntington, professor of Religious Studies at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York,

referred to Maya, a novel he wrote and published in 2015; its main character’s name is
Stanley Harrington.
I found it interesting to read that he had noticed there were associations in Rorty’s work
with Madhyamaka. In 2010, when I wrote my master’s thesis, I noticed that as well. At that
time, I had never heard of Sandy Huntington. Had I known him, I could have really benefited
from his book The Emptiness of Emptiness (1989), published in the same year as Rorty’s
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. In this work Huntington mentions Rorty eleven times.
What a shame I did not read that book for my thesis, entitled Volgt compassie uit de leegte?
Rorty's anti-foundationalism vergeleken met de leer van śūnyatā (‘Does compassion follow
from emptiness. Rorty’s anti-foundationalism compared with the doctrine of śūnyatā’).
Despite my omission, I obtained my MA degree in philosophy at the University of
Amsterdam, on April 8th 2011.
During my studies, I was fascinated by the work of Richard Rorty, who held the
Spinoza Chair at the University of Amsterdam in 1997. Ten years later, a year after I had
started there as a part-time student, he died. News items and articles about his passing
triggered me. Especially his non-foundationalism was of great significance to me. Being a
Catholic clergyman who had lost his faith, I was searching for new grounds, finding out that
such a search is pointless. Articles of him such as “Religion as a Conversation Stopper”
(Rorty 1994a), “Pragmatism as romantic polytheism” (Rorty 1998b), and “Ethics Without
Principles” (Rorty 1999: 72-92) gave in some way direction in my search for new meaning. I
guess I needed shock therapy, given by a wise atheist – there are many unwise atheists – to
overcome my theistic convictions. Rorty delivered that to me. Ironically, I eventually found
out that the Rortyan irony could provide me with a certain sobriety toward my religious
inclinations. Since then, I have considered myself a Christian agnostic. Besides all that, I
loved Rorty’s writing style; and whenever he appeared on television, I was intrigued by his
shyness and his controlled speech, enjoying his bass and New York accent.
And even after his death, Rorty turned out to be topical. Whether it was his alleged
prediction1 of a figure such as Donald Trump becoming the U.S. president (Rorty 1998a: 90)
or his ‘minimalistic pragmatism’ as a tool to tackle the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (De Regt
2020: 16-17), Rorty stays current. Moreover, I think that it is vital that Rorty’s work and that
of his critics continue to be studied, especially in this so-called “post-truth era.”
A few days after Rorty died, an obituary by Jürgen Habermas was published in the
Süddeutsche Zeitung (June 11th, 2007). Habermas was much involved in the debate about
truth that Rorty had evoked. In his obituary, he reminds the public of a small autobiographical
piece that Rorty wrote, titled Wild Orchids and Trotsky.

In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside in north-west
New Jersey, and breathed in the stunning odour of the orchids. Around the same time he
discovered a fascinating book at the home of his leftist parents, defending Leon Trotsky
against Stalin. This was the origin of the vision that the young Rorty took with him to college:
philosophy is there to reconcile the celestial beauty of orchids with Trotsky's dream of justice
on earth. Nothing is sacred to Rorty the ironist. Asked at the end of his life about the “holy”,
the strict atheist answered with words reminiscent of the young Hegel: ‘My sense of the holy
is bound up with the hope that someday my remote descendants will live in a global
civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.’ (Habermas 2007).
However, this dissertation is not about Rorty as a person but his account of moral non-
foundationalism and the problems it raises. It is also about clarifications some Western
interpretations of Madhyamaka could offer for those problems.

1
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/books/richard-rortys-1998-book-suggested-election-2016-was-
coming.html.
Introduction

Relevance

This dissertation grew out of my interest in the relationship between compassion, morality,
and rationality. “Does compassion follow from rationality?” or “Why should we care about
the suffering of other beings?” are questions that fascinate me. In social Darwinism and
fascism, it was argued that compassion was a manifestation of weakness; since weakness was
seen as damaging to the development of the human species, compassionate actions had to be
repressed. Could the opposite be argued, that compassion is actually beneficial to the
development of humanity? Maybe, but my fundamental question is whether the goodness of
being compassionate is rational at all. In this age of populism, “post-truth,” and
Caligulanism2, rationality in politics is quite an urgent matter, especially in a world where
millions of people still suffer from war, hunger, pollution, and catastrophes. Why should the
rich care about the fate of the poor? Is there a solid argument for why the fortunate ones
should care?
The impetus for my interest in this subject matter was the similarity I discovered in the
research for my master’s thesis (van der Heijden 2011) between the following trios: Richard
Rorty’s “contingency-irony-solidarity” and the Mahāyāna Buddhist’s “emptiness-wisdom-
compassion” (Sanskrit: śūnyatā-prajñā-karuṇā). One of my conclusions was that both the
Mahāyānists and Rorty point out that the capacity to suffer is paramount to every discourse on
morality. However, they do not explain why this is paramount, because according to them
there is no answer to this question, or rather: the question itself should not be asked. Jeremy
Bentham (1747-1832), the founder of modern utilitarianism, thought that the capacity to
suffer is the reason why all sentient beings should not be harmed3. But Rorty, who was a

2
Named after the infamous Roman emperor Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (37-41 CE), also known as
Caligula. Dutch philosopher Cees Zweistra says in his book Waarheidszoekers (‘Truthseekers’), published in
September 2021, that the figure of Narcissus does not fully suffice to explain the behavior of conspiracy
theorists. ‘Caligula is Narcissus on a political scale. Caligula abuses his power at the expense of the world. (...)
The conspiracy theorist can bend reality to his will and he uses it with purely malicious and self-centered
motives. Therefore, conspiracy thinking may well be described as Caligulanism and the conspiracy thinker as a
Caligulanist. More adequately, Caligulanism captures the relentless self-centeredness of today's conspiracy
thinker and the ability he has to manipulate reality at the expense of reality.’ (Zweistra 2021: 254-256).
3
Animal rights philosophers often refer to Bentham’s phrase: ‘The question is not Can they reason? or Can they
talk? but Can they suffer?’ (Bentham 2017: 144).

8
strong advocate for a moral imagination for society to diminish suffering, says there is no
foundational reason for that. As a representative of so-called moral non-foundationalism, he
thinks that the difference between right and wrong is not based upon a fundamental principle
or entity (e.g. a divine or natural law). Moral non-foundationalists might believe that there are
several reasons – practical, political, cultural – why the intentional act of causing another
sentient being harm should be called immoral, but they do not believe that there is an absolute
reason why torturing a sentient being is immoral. However, that being said, they might
maintain that there may be a cause for one’s disgust for and opposition to harming sentient
beings; and this would, in turn, engender the normative question as to why anyone should
perpetrate anything that is experienced as repulsive.
In this dissertation, I come back to Rorty, because his thought is still very influential.
As an advocate of pragmatism – a branch of the philosophical movement that started in the
1870s in the United States and still is a largely American affair – he stands for “anti-
authoritarianism,” i.e.‘the protest against the idea that human beings must humble themselves
before something non-human, whether the Will of God or the Intrinsic Nature of Reality’
(Rorty 2021: 1).
In my research, I started with Rorty’s moral non-foundationalism to look for clarity in
the subject matter at hand. However, I stumbled upon three difficulties that I did not discuss
in my master’s thesis:

(1) If there is – as Rorty claims – no substantial entity behind the phenomenon being
experienced as a self, what is the meaning of morality? Does not morality presuppose
a free agent who can be held accountable? Can the “self” be free even if it is only one
of many possible products of a contingent process? If not, is ethics then still possible?
Moreover, what about the value of Rorty’s liberal commitments if moral
accountability is just a convention? If there is no moral foundation, why bother
committing to social and civic engagement vis-à-vis justice and equality? In short:
why should we care?
(2) If we should care, how can we persuade others to care beyond Rorty’s notion of
irony? Rortyan irony is the radical doubt toward so-called final vocabularies. It aims to
prevent metaphysical discussions on human morality. Rorty claims that it is
impossible to deduce solidarity from human nature. However, it is a fact that solidarity
is desirable for many people. Can this desirability, for which there is no inherent
rational ground, be extended to larger groups of moral subjects? According to Rorty,

9
 this extension cannot be realized by employing argumentative persuasion. Are there
means of persuasion that take irony into account? In realizing liberal hope, such means
seem necessary since irony alone could perpetuate cruelty because it accepts no moral
foundation against it.
(3) For whom and/or what should we care? Rorty advocates the enlargement of the so-
called we-groups. Why does he limit his moral imagination to anthropocentrism rather
than including the more-than-human world within his normative scope and compass?
Accordingly, can a Rortyan non-foundationalist vision, which is ethnocentric in the
first instance, be deployed in the endeavor for a truly universal ethic, which is in high
demand throughout our contemporary world whereby different societies and cultures
have to deal with climate change, overpopulation and the harsh struggle for natural
resources?

Concerning these questions, I will search for clarifications in the contemporary Western
(especially from the core Anglosphere) interpretation of the philosophy of early Indian
Mādhyamikas. Mādhyamikas are the members of Madhyamaka4, from the Sanskrit
madhyamā pratipad (“middlemost path”), one of the systems of Buddhist philosophy. It is
said that this Middle Path School was founded by Nāgārjuna5 in the 2nd century CE. This
middle path ‘avoids the two extremes of eternalism – the doctrine that all things exist because
of an eternal essence – and annihilationism – the doctrine that things have essences while they

4
The Sanskrit noun madhya means “middle”; the suffixes -ma and -ka form, respectively a superlative and an
adjective. Thus, madhyamaka literally means: “of the middlemost” or “most central.” To denote an adherent of
this school, we write Mādhyamika because the suffix -ika means “belonging to.”

5
Very little can be said about his life with historical certainty. Most scholars agree that he was born between 150
and 250 CE in the southeast of the Indian subcontinent. In some hagiographies in the Chinese and Tibetan
tradition it is said that he belonged to a family of the highest varṇa, the class of the Brahmins; these stories,
which were written down at least a century after his death, are embellished with myths. One of the authors was
the Chinese monk and famous translator Kumārajīva (344-413 CE), who introduced Madhyamaka into China.
He says that Nāgārjuna devoted himself to the Buddha's teachings after he was confronted heavily with suffering
due to his own actions. Legend has it that before his conversion, Nāgārjuna was a magician who tricked people
by making himself invisible (Walser 2005: 77). In his attempt to sneak into the harem of the local ruler to enjoy
the pleasures of female beauty, he and his two companions got caught. Nāgārjuna succeeded to escape, but the
others got arrested and were executed. Struck by this, he started his quest for the end of all suffering.
It is also important to note that his name was the object of mythification. Nāgārjuna, composed of the
nouns nāga and arjuna, means “conquerer of the snakes”. He was depicted as the one who was invited by the
cobras (nāgas) that guarded the hidden collection of sūtras of the Perfection of Wisdom 5 to bring them to light.
In this myth, Nāgārjuna is celebrated as a kind of revelator, because he would haven taken part in the revelation
of a new Buddhist doctrine, called the Great Vehicle. However, Jan Westerhoff points out that this myth is not
congruent with the evidence provided in Nāgārjuna’s works: ‘he did not consider himself as an innovator or
defender of the “new” Mahāyāna creed against the benighted Abhidharma heretics’ (Westerhoff 2018: 106).
Nāgārjuna did not preach a new Buddhism, but argued against scholastic positions, such as the realist view of the
permanent existence of elementary particles.

10
exist but that these essences are annihilated just when the things themselves go out of
existence’ (Hayes 2017).
The main purpose of finding clarifications for the aforementioned problems is to help
Rorty’s project to advocate “edifying philosophy” (i.e. promoting the intellectual culture of
conversation instead of seeking objective truth) and to reinforce his liberal hope. My project is
about showing that Madhyamaka as interpreted by Western scholars, could graft a
soteriological scion upon the rootstock of Rorty’s liberal ironism; what I mean by that, I will
explain in this introduction’s part on methodology.
According to several Western scholars, anti-realism, anti-essentialism, and moral non-
foundationalism – all Rortyan outlooks – can also be found in the works of Mādhyamikas.
William Curtis, one of Rorty’s defenders said: ‘[A]lthough Rorty never demonstrated any
scholarly interest in Buddhism, [Madhyamaka] is a type of religiosity that is eminently
compatible with and even supportive of his liberal utopia’ (Curtis 2015: 251).

Research question
My main research question of this dissertation is: ‘How can a hermeneutical engagement with
contemporary Western Madhyamaka interpreters (Finnigan, Garfield, Harris, Huntington,
Siderits, Westerhoff, and others) clarify philosophical problems around Rorty’s concepts of
contingency, irony, and solidarity?’

The answer to this leads along five subquestions, divided into two parts, discussed in the
respective chapters:

Part One (setting the stage):

1. What is the historical context of Rorty’s moral non-foundationalism? (Chapter One);
2. What does “ethics” mean for Rorty and contemporary Western Madhyamaka interpreters?
(Chapter Two);

Part Two (clarifying problems):

3. How can Western interpretations of the Madhyamaka approach to Buddhist emptiness
clarify problems around Rorty’s concept of contingency? (Chapter Three);
4. How can Western interpretations of the Madhyamaka approach to the Buddhist concept of
upāya clarify problems around Rorty’s concept of irony? (Chapter Four);
5. How can Western interpretations of the Madhyamaka approach to Buddhist compassion
clarify problems around Rorty’s concept of solidarity? (Chapter Five).

11
 Status quaestionis

In my master’s thesis, I argued that there are similarities between contingency and śūnyatā,
between irony and prajñā, and between solidarity and karuṇā. I also tried to show that the
Rortyan and the Buddhist outlook have much in common in what they say about the
relationship between compassion, morality, and rationality. However, these parallels were
insufficiently demonstrated.
In 2020, the Dutch philosopher Robin Brons published an article, wherein he argues
that much could be gained in understanding the relationship between anti-essentialism and
ethics by establishing a dialogue between Rorty and the Mādhyamikas. He says that such a
dialogue could show that ‘pragmatist therapy might not only cure philosophical maladies but
also alleviate ordinary suffering’ (Brons 2020: 37). He is referring to a paper by Stephen
Harris, entitled “Antifoundationalism and the Commitment to Reducing Suffering in Rorty
and Madhyamaka Buddhism” (Harris 2010)6, who says in his introduction that the connection
between Rorty’s pragmatism and Madhyamaka has never been comprehensively explored,
although they share many ideas, ‘from the rejection of inherent existence and ultimate reality,
to the notion that our world is constituted conventionally and linguistically, to a commitment
to reducing suffering’ (Brons 2020: 19).
Stephen Harris, who is interested in the comparison of Rorty’s liberalism and the
Buddhist project to end all suffering, points out that there is a ‘political’7 difference between
the Rortyan liberal ironist and the bodhisattva (i.e. the hero in Madhyamaka); the first one is
divided, the second not:

[The Bodhisattva] ‘does not alternate between her commitment to the welfare of others, and
desires for novel self-creation, because she understands all such indulgences take place within
the cycle of suffering characterized by continual birth and death. The only private identity
worth affirming, for the Bodhisattva, is the public identity of working to remove the suffering
of all sentient beings. Rorty can respond that the Buddhist account is nihilistic, overestimating
the unsatisfactory nature of existence, and underestimating the aesthetic joy of ironic

6
Harris’s paper was published in the year I wrote my master’s thesis; unfortunately, I was not aware of the
existence of Harris’s publication.
7
By which I mean the attitude of the private toward the public sphere.

12
 redescription. [Mādhyamikas], in turn, will reply that Rorty has not paid enough attention to
suffering, that belonging to others and his own. (Harris 2010: 85).8

Another author who saw similarities between Rorty’s work and Madhyamaka is C. W.
Huntington, Jr. His main works are The Emptiness of Emptiness (Huntington 1989) and “The
Nature of the Mādhyamika Trick” (Huntington 2007). He was very much influenced by Rorty
in his comparative philosophical methodology9. Apart from that, his interpretation of the texts
of Candrakīrti and other early Indian Mādhyamikas might benefit our purpose: to use Western
philosophical approaches to Madhyamaka concepts for the sake of clarifying problems around
Rorty’s pre-philosophical liberalism. Huntington thinks that Rorty moves the interpretation of
Madyamaka in a more promising direction (ibid.: 28) than the ‘Kantian spectacles’ of T. R. V.
Murti (Murti 1955). The Mādhyamikas denied all views, Huntington holds, not out of
nihilism but out of care for other sentient beings. Their philosophy is soteriological
“propaganda” (Huntington 1989: 112). Huntington says that Madhyamaka ‘cannot, even in
theory, be dissociated from a concept of practical application’; moreover, it must be clearly
distinghuised as ‘a truly radical departure from the type of philosophical enterprise through
which one endeavors to discover or define an objective, value free view of truth or reality’
(ibid.: xiii).
Other authors who are going to be discussed are, Jay L. Garfield, Bronwyn Finnigan,
Mark Siderits, and Jan Westerhoff, all members of the the writer’s collective The Cowherds.
Their philosophical interpretations of the doctrine of śūnyatā (mostly translated as
“emptiness”) and karuṇā (“compassion” or “care”), could support the intellectual debate that
promotes human solidarity.
The American comparative philosopher Jay L. Garfield specializes in Early Indian

8
An interesting account of Harris’s analysis of Rorty’s public/private split in relation to the universalism of the
path of the bodhisattvas is from Matthew Coffay (Coffey 2018). He believes that Chan Buddhism, according to
him the first school of Buddhism to really develop the Madhyamaka concept in the linguistic realm, ‘can offer
Rorty a nondualistic approach to language which may help dispel the problem of the public/private final
vocabulary’. Coffay contends that Chan, being ‘considerably less entrenched in esoteric Buddhism and
complicated metaphysics than much of Madhyamaka Buddhism’, would be more attractive to a neo-pragmatist.

9
Huntington uses the hermeneutical method of Rorty’s “strong textualism,” which stipulates that there is no
original, authentic intention of the person or group of persons who produced certain texts and that only the text
matters. In his book The Emptiness of Emptiness, Huntington quotes Rorty from his essay “Idealism and
Textualism,” published in Consequences of Pragmatism: (…) the idea of method presupposes that of a
privileged vocabulary, the vocabulary which gets to the essence of the object, the one which expresses the
properties which it has in itself as opposed to those which we read into it. Nietzsche and James said that the
notion of such a vocabulary was a myth” (Rorty 1982: 151). Huntington’s comment on this quote is that virtually
every classical Buddhist author, in particular Nāgārjuna and the other early Indian Mādhyamikas, would endorse
this strong textualism, because they ‘rejected all assumptions of meaning bound up with the notion of an
objective, value-free philosophical view (dṛṣṭi), thesis (pakṣa), or proposition (pratijñā)’ (Huntington 1989: 8).

13
Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, and cross-cultural hermeneutical research involving
Madhyamaka and Yogācāra. His most important works are Empty Words (Garfield 2002),
Engaging Buddhism (Garfield 2015), and Buddhist Ethics (Garfield 2022). He has a strong
opinion on rationality in Madhyamaka. He holds that logical argumentation plays a crucial
role in the works of Nāgārjuna. This is contested by Huntington, who considers Nāgārjuna’s
texts rather as poetry aimed at making one feel the limits of reasoning.
Bronwyn Finnigan is an Australian philosopher, who works in ethics, moral
psychology, and philosophy of mind in both mainstream and Indian Buddhist philosophical
traditions. Especially her articles on Buddhist (meta)ethics is relevant to this project:
“Buddhist metaethics” (Finnigan 2010), “The Nature of a Buddhist Path” (Finnigan 2017),
and “Madhyamaka Ethics” (Finnigan 2018).
The American comparative philosopher Mark Siderits has made important contributions
to the interpretation of Buddhist texts concerning with personhood, rationality, and
soteriology. His most important books are: Empty Persons (Siderits 2003), Buddhism as
Philosophy (Siderits 2007), and How Things Are (Siderits 2022). The German Oxford-based
philosopher Jan Westerhoff, closely connected with Siderits and others of the aforementioned
authors, provides me with analyses of Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way, especially the teaching of
śūnyatā (“emptiness”). His most important relevant books and articles are Nāgārjuna’s
Madhyamaka (Westerhoff 2009), “Nāgārjuna on Emptiness” (Westerhoff 2017b), “The
Connection Between Ontology and Ethics in Madhyamaka Thought” (Cowherds 2016), and
The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy (Westerhoff 2018).
Of course, there are some other important authors who work in both Western and
Buddhist philosophy. I choose Harris, Huntington, Finnigan, Garfield, Siderits, and
Westerhoff because they are the most on-topic. However, when other authors – for instance
Karen C. Lang, Charles Goodman, and Graham Priest – make a substantial contribution to a
better understanding of this complex matter, I will quote them as well.

Methodology

This dissertation is the result of an academic activity in the field of philosophy and not of
Buddhology (Buddhist studies). I, as a Westerner, explicitly chose to take certain Western,
Post-Wittgensteinian interpretations of Madhyamaka as dialogue partners for Rorty’s work
and not Indian Madhyamaka per se, since I am not a Buddhologist and unable to read the

14
primary sources of this very complex tradition in its original language Sanskrit or – when the
original scriptures have been lost – in Tibetan or Chinese. The Buddhological debate on the
nature of Madhyamaka is an ongoing process.
As Andrew P. Tuck has demonstrated (Tuck 1990), every Western interpreter of
Nāgārjuna’s work interprets it according to their own philosophical taste or membership of a
certain school. Those deeply influenced by Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations
(“Buddhism after Wittgenstein”; Tuck 1990: 74-100) come to very different pictures of
Madhyamaka than for instance Kantians or positivists. In other words, every interpretation
can always be contested.
The interpretations of Harris, Huntington, Finnigan, Garfield, Siderits, and Westerhoff
– most of them are just like Rorty schooled in analytical philosophy and philosophy of
language (‘after Wittgenstein’) – will be used by me to show how a dialogue within the scope
of Western philosophy could deliver some new points of views on morality. It is my ambition
to enrich neopragmatism. I hope to achieve this intended enrichment by hermeneutically
relating the work of Rorty to the work of the Western Madhyamaka-interpreters I have
mentioned.
Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation. In order to interpret a text, one should take
into account its context. But the context is built up from a large variety of texts. So what has
to be studied first: the individual text or the context? This is the so-called hermeneutical
circle: a dialectical movement between the part and the whole. It is necessary to understand
the whole in order to understand the part, but is also necessary to understand the part in order
to understand the whole. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), one of the most important
philosophers of hermeneutics, concluded that all understanding cannot start from scratch,
because there is always prejudice (German: Vorurteil)10. He said that only once you have
stepped into this dialectical circle11, the understanding process can be initiated.

10
‘The overcoming of all prejudices, this global demand of the Enlightenment, will itself prove to be a prejudice,
and removing it opens the way to an appropriate understanding of the finitude which dominates not only our
humanity, but also our historical consciousness' (Gadamer 2013: 288).
11
Garfield distinguishes three hermeneutical circles (Garfield 2002: 236-237):
1. the circle ‘constituted by the relation between any account of the meaning of an entire text and an
account of the meaning of the parts’;
2. the circle constituted by the relation of the understanding of a cultural and intellectual tradition and the
understanding of a text within that tradition;
3. the circle constituted by the relation of the context of the interpretation of a text itself and the reader of
that text (‘the temporal and interactive dimensions of personhood’).

15
 Gadamar called this hermeneutical process “a fusion of horizons” (Gadamer 2013:
306). With “horizon” he means:

Every finite present has its limitations. We define the concept of “situation” by saying that it
represents a standpoint that limits the possibility of vision. Hence essential to the concept of
situation is the concept of “horizon.” The horizon is the range of vision that includes
everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point. (Ibid.: 302).

In this dissertation, I use the results of the comparative philosophical efforts of others. They
have used different methods for their comparative work. For instance, Garfield’s method is
that of the so-called cross-cultural hermeneutics. He contends that comparing texts from a
different culture and age univocally leads necessarily to a faulty understanding. In his book
Empty Words, subtitled Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation, he says that a
Western philosopher that reads non-Western texts should keep a hermeneutic distance:

The problem for the cross-cultural scholar is not simply that understanding is difficult to
achieve, but rather that it is not clear whether understanding across truly distinct cultural
traditions is possible, or even that we can have a clear notion of what such understanding
would be. This is true because understanding as a hermeneutic notion has been most clearly
explicated as having an essentially temporal structure, involving a historical orientation of the
reader with respect to the text read and with respect to the tradition compromising both text
and reader. (Garfield 2002: 233).
Siderits’s method is what he called “fusion philosophy,” achieved out of his interests that are
‘first and foremost systematic, not historical or philological’, says Jan Westerhoff in his
introduction to Siderits (2016). Fusion philosophy

embodies precisely the assumption that by bringing a Western and an Eastern tradition
together, both can benefit from each other about new ways of tackling old philosophical
problems. It is useful to contrast this idea with the concept of “comparative philosophy”, a
style of thinking that frequently embodies a left-page, right page approach, noting similarities
and differences between two traditions, but does not appear to do anything further with them.
In contrast, fusion philosophy, in a way that is similar to fusion music, uses resources from
two traditions not only to have one throw light on the other, but to solve problems occurring in
either tradition. (Ibid.: 2-3).
The texts that I have studied are not the original Buddhist texts in their original languages and
set-ups but the English translations of those texts, mostly done by Garfield, Huntington, and
Westerhoff themselves. These translations are used by them to paint a picture of the Indian
tradition in question within a Western contemporary discourse. The horizons I want to merge
are within this hemisphere. So my hermeneutics need not be cross-cultural or fusional.
I hope to contribute to this discourse by constructing several new ways of thought. For
this, I introduce graftage, a horticultural technique, as a metaphor: two different plants or trees
are brought together in such a manner that they will grow together in order to generate an

16
ennobled organism. One way of doing it is to graft a branch of a plant (the “scion”) on another
plant (the “rootstock”). I let Rortyan pragmatism be the rootstock and “Madhyamaka as
interpreted by the aforementioned authors” (M’) the scion.
When I will mention various Buddhist tenets, I do so in a seemingly associative and
impressionistic manner intending to set the stage in a hermeneutic-circular manner for a
dialogue between Madhyamaka as interpreted by philosophers “after Wittgenstein” and Post-
Wittgensteinian pragmatism. Important to state here is that I will not provide a systematic
Rorty critique. This dissertation is not about bringing his thought down, nor praising him; I
leave that to others. It is about presenting the ideas of one of the most important thinkers of
our time and getting them confronted with an outlook of Western Buddhist scholars who are
influenced by him, in order to make some small ‘constructive philosophical progress.’12
However, some of Rorty’s critics will be heard, but only for the sake of making him better
understood within the context of this project. Again, it is not about making progress in the
understanding of Madhyamaka, but about making progress in making Rortyan liberalism
more fruitful.

Richard Rorty

Richard McKay (Dick) Rorty was born October 4th, 1931, in New York City as a son of left-
wing activists. Because of his unpopularity with his peers – he was often being bullied – he
fled the raw reality of his high school by reading as many books as possible. Just before his
15th birthday, he was accepted to the University of Chicago as a philosophy student. There he
earned his BA degree in 1949 and his MA degree in 1952. From 1952 to 1956, he did his
doctoral research at Yale University, which he completed with a PhD. His dissertation was
entitled The Concept of Potentiality. ‘My dissertation was a third on Aristotle, a third on
Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, and a third on Carnap and Goodman,’ he said in an interview
(Knobe 1995). It was quite exceptional at that time that philosophers were experts in classical
Greek thought, modern continental philosophy, and analytical philosophy.
After he obtained his PhD degree, he fulfilled his military service in the US Army for
two years. After that he received his first appointment as a lecturer at Wellesley College. In

12
Connolly 2014: 48

17
1961 he was hired as an assistant professor at Princeton University to end up as a full
professor.

At Princeton, I was hired specifically to teach Greek philosophy, so I did that for a while, until
I got tenure and until they got somebody else to teach Greek philosophy. I was teaching
mostly analytic philosophy, because it was stuff I needed to learn. It was what everyone was
talking about, and I didn't have time for Heidegger until I'd gone through quite a lot of analytic
stuff. (Ibid.).
He struggled through ‘a lot of analytic stuff,’ which in 1967 resulted in the editing of a
collection of essays by leading thinkers on the origins of the philosophy of language and
analytical philosophy. Rorty entitled it: The Linguistic Turn. This phrase from Gustave
Bergmann would become the standard expression of the paradigm shift that Wittgenstein had
brought about.
During his Princeton period, Rorty increasingly distanced himself from the dominant
analytical philosophy in the US. His main objection was its scientific pretense. In 1979 he
published Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, putting Greek thought, modern philosophy,
and analytical philosophy on the same footing. The view that philosophy is the academic
discipline that provides man with a mirror of reality is rejected by him. This unmasking of
Western philosophy as a vain accumulation of knowledge initially gave him many enemies. In
1982, Rorty became a professor of humanities at the University of Virginia. After his
retirement, he was appointed Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University in
California. He died of pancreatic cancer on the campus of this university on June 8th, 2007.
Rorty’s criticism of philosophy because of its claim to universal validity compelled him
to reject comparative philosophy. In his view, comparing the intellectual traditions of the
West and the East is not only an ‘empty gesture’ (Balslev 2000: 9), it is also a ‘skilled
complement that creates more awkwardness than collegiality among fellow philosophers’
(Zhang 2007: 12). According to him, the generation of common ground should be left to the
economic forces of this world, because this creates mutual interests and, of course,
intercultural exchanges. The dialogue thus established is not based on a supra-cultural essence
but on a bilateral need for commonality. This need frees up the imagination needed to
empathize with the other. After all, anyone who does business with people from another
culture would benefit from knowing how the other might react in the negotiating game.
Rorty’s pragmatic rejection of comparative philosophy did not prevent him from
writing and participating in debates about the meaning of intellectual traditions from the East.
In July 2004, for instance, he took part in an international symposium of the East China
Normal University of Shanghai on (neo)pragmatism and his own thinking in relation to

18
Chinese philosophy, especially Confucianism. This symposium was organized because of the
growing interest in the People’s Republic of China in the work of John Dewey and his
intellectual offspring, to which Rorty counted himself. The Korean-American philosopher
Kwang-Sae Lee sees great similarities between Rorty’s thought and that of Zhuang Zhou, the
author of the Zhuangzi, the founding scripture of Daoism (Lee 2009).
Although Rorty would have been very interested in Eastern thinking, I have not been
able to find a single text of his in which he writes about Buddhism. Perhaps he was deterred
from doing so because of his aversion to comparative philosophy. Ethnocentric as he was, he
also might have denied himself the right to reflect on a tradition extra-ethnic to him.
It appears that Rorty ignored Buddhism. However, a number of Buddhists did not
ignore him. They were very interested in his work, at least Western Buddhists. I already
mentioned Huntington. And there is Stephen Batchelor, who is very controversial in the field
of academic Buddhist Studies, because of his secular and naturalist recounting of Buddhist
soteriology and his lack of international academic recognition. In 1974, this Scottish-born
publicist became a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Dharamsala (India). After seven years of prayer,
studym and translation work, he told his superior that he wanted to immerse himself in Zen
Buddhism. He left for South Korea where he was initiated into the practice of Zen in a
monastery. In 1985, after a journey through China and Tibet, he left the monkhood and
returned to Europe. In 2010 he published his autobiography Confession of a Buddhist Atheist.
There he says about truth:

Following the example of William James, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty, I have
relinquished the idea that a “true belief” is one that corresponds to something that exists “out
there” in or beyond reality somewhere. For pragmatist philosophers such as these, a belief is
valued as true because it is useful, because it works, because it brings tangible benefits to
human beings and other creatures. Siddhattha Gotama's Four Noble Truths are “true” not
because they correspond to something real somewhere, but because, when put into practice,
they can enhance the quality of your life. (Batchelor 2010: 199).

Overview of Chapters

This dissertation consists of three parts. The first part has two preliminary chapters. The
second part has three chapters, each of which is respectively linked with the Rortyan concepts
of contingency, irony, and solidarity. The third part is the one with the concluding chapter,
wherein the answers to the research question are evaluated.
The first chapter provides a historical context to Rorty’s moral non-foundationalism. It
starts with a little history of the philosophical attempts to underpin ethics. It gives an

19
overview of three ancient strategies. Next, I will discuss Immanuel Kant’s criticism of these
strategies and his own strategy to found moral philosophy and the strategy of the Utilitarians.
Then, I present in a very summary manner several foundationalist criticisms of the Kantian
and Utilitarianist foundation strategies. The sixth subsection is about Ludwig Wittgenstein’s
non-cognitivism as an answer to the question of whether morality can be grounded rationally.
The seventh subsection deals with the “quasi-foundationalism” of Emmanuel Levinas, the
Verantwortungsethik of Hans Jonas, and the “ethics of care.”
In the second section of Chapter One, I will present Rorty’s stance on this matter as
“pragmatism.” Subsequently, I will identify three major problems: 1) Why should we care if
everything is contingent?; 2) How can we persuade others to care beyond Rorty’s concept of
irony?; 3) For whom/what should we care? Possible clarifications, I will claim, can be found
in several Western interpretations of Madhyamaka.
Chapter Two aims to better understand the nature of Rorty’s desire for a less cruel
world and for greater solidarity. Is this merely a personal desire or is it a corollary of a
pragmatist ethic(s)? This chapter begins by problematizing the concepts of ethics, ethic, and
morality. Then, it discusses metaethics, because the discussions between moral
foundationalists and non- or antifoundationalists belong to the metaethical discourse. It also
contains a hermeneutical analysis of what both the Mādhyamikas and Rorty have to say about
morality and the self.
Chapter Three is about the question, “Why should we care if everything is contingent?”
It reflects on the relationship between contingency and morality. First, I examine what the
concept of contingency entails. Next, I will hermeneutically compare contingency and
śūnyatā as explained by the aforementioned Western philosophers. After that, I will discuss
the Buddhist concept of satya in order to produce some answers to the question of moral
normativity according to Rortyan ironists. The issue of the so-called Two Truths forms the
central piece of this chapter. I will present the account on this matter of the Mādhyamikas
Nāgārjuna, Buddhapālita, Bhāvaviveka, and Candrakīrti. Finally, I will show what the
distinctive interpretations of the Two Truths are of the Western Buddhist philosophers Sandy
Huntington, Jay Garfield, and Mark Siderits. The main issue here is rationality. What is the
power of reason when everything is empty?
Chapter Four is concerned with the question of how to persuade others to care. It is
about truth, (Rortyan and Mādhyamikan) irony, philosophy as poetry, and wisdom. It also
introduces the way of the bodhisattvas, the sages who practice irony for the sake of other
beings. I will show that the skills of the bodhisattva called upāyakauśalya can help the liberal

20
ironists in their contributions toward a world with less cruelty. On the other hand, this chapter
leads to another new insight: that the figure of the bodhisattva can be described as belonging
to the poetic guild of expanders of horizons in a world that – to use R.W. Emerson's words –
has no “enclosing wall.”
Chapter Five reflects on Rorty’s concept of solidarity and how Western interpretations
of the Madhyamaka approach to Buddhist compassion can clarify problems arising from the
limitations of his ethnocentrism. It deals with why people should bother to be compassionate
and for whom or what we should care. How can the awareness of the transmoral nature of
mahākaruṇā (‘great compassion’) be helpful in the realization of a more liberal world?
Chapter Six is the overall conclusion of this dissertation. It sums up the fields of the
three problems formulated in Chapter One. These fields are formed by the thematic duos
contingency-emptiness, irony-normativity, and solidarity-ethnocentrism. I will integrate the
clarifications for the problems in these fields. In the next stage, I will reach the sections in
which I elaborate on the metaphor of “graftage” and reflect on whether this graftage can
reinforce Rorty’s liberal hope.

21
PART ONE

22
Chapter One:
RORTY’S MORAL NON-FOUNDATIONALISM

Chapter overview

In this first chapter, I want to present Richard Rorty’s account of morality and ethics vis-à-vis
moral non-foundationalism, which is intertwined with his (anti)epistemological anti-
representionalism. To set the stage for this, I will first discuss the problem of founding moral
goodness. Herein, while it is not my intention to present the entire history of Western ethics, I
must provide a general review of several champions of moral philosophy as far as their
outlooks are concerned with the problem of grounding moral goodness; such champions
include, in chronological order: Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant,
J.S. Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, D.W. Ross, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Emmanuel Levinas.
Then, after presenting Rorty’s account of this metaethical problem, I will treat three additional
problems; like entangled knots, I will try to unravel them in the rest of my inquiry: 1) if there
is no substantial entity behind the phenomenon that is being experienced as a self, what then
is the meaning of morality? 2) if there is no moral foundation, why bother committing oneself
to social and civic engagement, justice, and equality? 3) can a Rortyan non-foundationalist
vision, which is ethnocentric in the first instance, be deployed in the endeavor for a genuinely
universal ethic? In short: if moral non-foundationalism is justifiable, what justifies a global
ethic?

1. 1. Founding ethics

The classical theological variation of Plato’s famous Euthyphro dilemma13 was once
mentioned by Moritz Schlick, founding father of the Vienna Circle, during conversations he
held with Ludwig Wittgenstein. Friedrich Waismann14 wrote down Wittgenstein’s response:

13
From the dialogue Euthyphro, in which Socrates asks Euthyphro: “Is the pious (τὸ ὅσιον) loved by the gods
because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” (10a according to the Stephanus pagination).
14
Friedrich Waismann (1896-1959) held conversations between 1927 and 1936 with Wittgenstein in order to
write a book about the latter’s thought. This book Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis was published in 1967.

23
 Schlick says there were two views of the nature of the good in theological ethics: according to
the flatter interpretation, the good is good because God wants it; according to the deeper
interpretation, God wants the good because it is good. I think that the first view is the deeper
one: good is what God commands. For it cuts off the path of every explanation of “why” it is
good, while the second view is the flat one, the rationalist one, which acts “as if” that what is
good can still be grounded. (Wittgenstein 1984: 115).

Ever since Socrates quarreled with the so-called Sophists about the essence of the good,
philosophers have tried to prop up ethics by grounding the good. Wittgenstein calls this
rationalism. Rationalism, in his sense, is the belief that underneath the concept of the moral
good there is a rock bottom foundation which is distinct from the good itself. This ultimate
foundation is so solid that even God has to obey its coercive authority.
The view Wittgenstein calls rationalism belongs to what in moral epistemology is
called foundationalism. In general, the term foundationalism refers to several theories
concerning the justification of knowledge (Hasan & Fumerton 2018). Central to all
foundationalist theories is the epistemic commitment that all beliefs are grounded within
fundamental beliefs and/or first principles. In classical foundationalism, those beliefs are
infallible, and, in regards to modest foundationalism, they are allowed to be fallible and
arbitrary as long as no counterproof for their inability to justify is being given. In short, a
belief is fundamental if it cannot be derived from another belief. Thus, in ethics,
foundationalism is the view that moral truths are grounded in an irreducible feeling or in
what, according to reason, proves to be self-evident.

1.1.1. Three strategies of founding ethics

The philosophical conviction that a non-moral reality undergirds moral truth is ascribed to
Plato despite the fact that metaphors such as “under,” “ground,” and “foundation” are,
ironically, not used in his dialogues. In fact, throughout his philosophical works, readers will
discover a reversal of these metaphors whereby rather than “depth,” “height” is championed
as the “founding” positioning. In The Republic (book VI) the main character Socrates
compares the ideal statesman with a navigator; navigating is impossible without knowledge of
the celestial world. The analogy that a qualified sea captain has to be a stargazer is apropos
for thinking about governance; the foundation of a just state is the knowledge of the higher
principles, which Plato compares with stars. The star of stars, the celestial body that points in
the direction of justice, is the Idea of the Good. However, that being said, what one reads is
not what one always gets. In other words, the trouble with interpreting Plato’s terminology is

24
that we have to use a vocabulary that for ages has been contaminated with false
understandings of the Greek language which Plato used. Of course, ἰδέα (from ἰδεῖν = “to
see”) does not mean “idea.” And ἀγαθος doesn’t refer to the moral good (Demos 1937: 245;
Vergeer 1990: 102), that would be a Judaeo-Christian Hineininterpretation (Cairns, Hermann
& Penner 2007: 5). The phrase ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα means: ‘the best, most usable sight at
reality.’ An idea in this sense would be a perspective. The Homeric meaning of agathos is
“useful,” “profitably,” “satisfactory,” “competent [in battle],” “noble” (Yamagata 1994: 188-
191). So whatever fits, whatever fulfills one’s practical need, whatever can be properly used
to solve a problem, whatever enables one to deal with situations adequately, has the quality
for which the ancient Greeks used the word agathos.
The crafted statesman knows what works in different kinds of circumstances because he
can take up the best positions in order to contemplate (θεωρία) the actual affairs. The quality
of his downward contemplation depends on his upward contemplation of the “stars.” Since
the statesman has the power to take a perspective from higher grounds, he knows how to act
whenever the state is in trouble, domestically and externally. These perspectives are never
optimal but nevertheless thinkable as such. The things on the ground are seen by the
“theorists” – in the original meaning of “spectators” – as less than they could have been. Here
the possible takes the position that the heavenly constellations have for the navigator. The
result is the image that the actual participates in the possible, what Plato calls μέθεξις.
Due to the spiritual and magical accounts of the Platonists and the Neoplatonists, the
perspectives become supernatural beings; they become Ideas and Divine Forms. Accordingly,
the best perspective on the playing field becomes the celestial entity of the moral good.
Moreover, the definition of goodness cannot be found in the actual praxis; calling something
good, can only be done appropriately after contemplating the supernatural quality of being.
Thus, the human faculty that enables the theorist in this contemplating business is reason.
Aristotle from Stagira, Plato’s student in Athens, founded his own school and started to
write tractates instead of using the narrative method of his master. For Aristotle, reason is the
only instrument the human animal (ζῷον) possesses in order to find the very thing that makes
things good. In his account, the good is not the reflection of that what the platonic theorists
deem possible or of a celestial principle; for him, the good is connected with the human τέλος.
In short, all things in the world have their telos. What is this telos? It is commonly translated
as “goal,” “purpose,” or “end.” Classical philosophy scholar Gabriel Richardson Lear says:
‘In the most concrete and literal sense, a telos is a result and connotes that something has been
finished’ (Richardson Lear 2004: 11).

25
 According to Aristotle, all beings are endowed with a natural drive to realize a finishing
goal/purpose. In regards to humans, this striving force (ἡ βούλησις) can be manipulated by
reason. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that there are conditions one strives for
hypothetically (because they are needed to obtain something else) and conditions that are
affirmed categorically (for their own sake). For humans, the perfect telos is ευδαιμονία, which
is the mental condition of the good spirit (eu daimon), commonly translated as “happiness.”
Every action that leads to this happiness is morally good. What constitutes happiness for
humans? In short: that they reach their completion; that they become what they truly are. A
human is a rational animal. Rationality makes him human. To the degree that he is rational, he
becomes happier, since reason makes him perfect. But happiness is not a matter of the
individual alone. Rather, happiness can only be obtained if the community reaches its
completion. Ethics, therefore, presupposes politics, the academic discipline that studies the
πόλις. The polis is the autarkic community of groups, generated to survive and attain the good
life. This good life is the natural telos of the polis.
Reason is not only the alpha and the omega of human life; it is the conative force that
leads the polis and humans from alpha to omega. However, in contrast with the Platonic
account, rationality for Aristotle is totally immanent. Morality is not measured by a
transcendent reality. It has its basis in human praxis. However, that does not mean that moral
judgments are not built upon something solid and foundational. Indeed, the foundational
solidity is rationality. That being said, the normative nature of human behavior is not
determined by logical deduction, but instead by reference to self-evidence. Aristotle is
convinced that rational beings can recognize the good life as soon as it is manifested,
particularly in intellectual and moral virtues.
Even with the contributions to Ancient Greek philosophy that Plato and Aristotle made,
one can discover additional foundational perspectives proffered by Hellenistic philosophers.
The Stoa was the most important school of Hellenism, and, like Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics
grounded moral truth in reason. Happiness can be reached only by rational beings who have
optimized their reason, for they can live according to Logos, the eternal and active principle.
What is unique about Stoic ethics is that it is built upon physics; the study of φύσις (phusis)
shows the immanent divinity is at work. To learn such means, in short, knowing how to
behave. Ultimately, those who are virtuous are completely rooted in the Logos; in them, there
is no fear and no craving, for they are prepared to endure the “logical” necessities.
In the Middle Ages, philosophy was considered to be the servant of theology
(philosophia ancilla theologia). The moral theology of Thomas Aquinas is based upon his

26
synthesis of 1) Plato and the Platonists (e.g., Augustine), 2) Aristotle, and 3) the Stoics. This
is moral foundationalism in triplo:
1) all moral truths are reflections of the Idea of the Good, present in God’s mind; Aquinas
holds that natural moral law is the radiation of the Eternal Law;
2) human acts are judged by the principle of teleology; yet his account of eudemonism is
more than Aristotle’s focused on the individual, whose telos is the Beatific Vision: the human
immediate knowledge of the creator in the afterlife;
3) virtuousness is whatever is in accordance with the Logos, being God’s Son and the Second
Person of the Trinity, i.e., through Which/Whom the Father creates.
Aquinas teaches that the first and fundamental principle of natural law is that the good
has to be done and pursued (bonum est faciendum et prosequendum). This seems like a
definition of the moral good. However, Paul van Tongeren claims that this is just a formal
principle of the good. It does not say what has to be done, but only that whatever is being
judged as good, has to be done. Natural law is, therefore, immanent in our conscience.
Therein we can realize what has to be done. How? Not by obeying an external law or inner
impulses but by obeying the obligation to think for ourselves (Van Tongeren 2013: 154).

1.1.2. Kant’s criticism of the three strategies, and his fourth alternative

After having discussed the philosophical attempts to find solid ground for moral goodness by
Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics (and Aquinas, who synthesized their strategies), I turn to
Immanuel Kant. He as well can be called a foundationalist in moralibus, because, in his
ethical theory, he founds moral goodness in both the will and reason.
Kant earned his place in history by giving morality a different meaning. In his own
view, no one before him has really understood what morality actually is. With Aquinas he
holds that the good has to be done and has to be pursued, not because it is the principle of
natural law, but because it is the principle of morality itself. Morality is connected with
rationality, but not in the sense that the good participates in God’s intellect or is a radiation of
the Eternal Law. Those metaphysical arguments can never be valid because our reason is not
capable to reach out beyond the very borders of reason. Since God belongs to the noumenal
realm, He cannot be known scientifically.
After declaring the bankruptcy of metaphysics, Kant takes up the project of practical
reason, asking: “What has to be done and to be pursued?” In other words: what is moral

27
goodness? Kant says that it is grounded in free will. Without free will, there is no morality.
Nothing else sets law for the will than the will itself. The will is completely autonomous,
which means that an action, an omission, a spoken word, or a thought can never be moral if it
is not intentional; thus, doing something that appears to be good is amoral if it was not
intended. However, what should we want? Kant holds that man is free to decide what he
wants, which is evidenced by the way we embody a volitional capacity to direct the will. The
basis for this volitional capacity is reason. To be more specific, according to Kant, it is the
logical principle of non-contradiction that determines how autonomous moral agents ought to
execute their normative choices and actions, as well as evaluate the normative behavior of
others. In other words, moral agents should want to obey a maxim which they want to have
the status of a universal law. For example, the maxim “I should be stealing other people’s
belongings whenever I desire them” cannot be given the status of a universal law. Moreover,
to want to behave that way would be absurd, as it undermines the very essence of property
and, therefore, also of stealing. Because if everybody stole, it would no longer be stealing.
Notice that Kant’s deontological system is founded not only upon logical principles but also
upon essences.
From the absoluteness of pure reason and the autonomy of the will, Kant concludes that
every human being has an unalienable dignity. Therefore every single person should always
be treated as an end, he says (Kant 2012: 41). But what good is it to formulate such a moral
obligation as long as people are still suffering? the Utilitarians might have asked, concluding:
as long as no political system is equipped to condition or even force citizens in such a matter
that they treat their fellow human beings according to their innate dignity, humanity needs an
alternative strategy.

1.1.3. The Utilitarian fifth strategy

The Utilitarians made it their business to obligate politicians and citizens to calculate in
moralibus. It is not the intention of one’s actions (i.e., the means) that is normatively
significant, but rather the consequences of one’s choices and actions. Since they believed that
every human being desires a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of pain, moralists should
be worried about how they could present an ethic15 (a moral attitude) that helps the individual
to attain this.

15
In Chapter Two, I will elaborate on the distinction between ethic and ethics.

28
 In his book, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), Jeremy
Bentham claims he found a basis for moral judgments: the experience of pain and pleasure.
He calls them the “two sovereign masters” under whose governance mankind has been
placed:

It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.
On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects,
are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every
effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In
words, a man may pretend to abjure their empire, but in reality he will remain subject to it all
the while. (Bentham 1789: 1,I).
John Stuart Mill, who defended utilitarianism in his book Utilitarianism (1863) against the
harsh criticism of especially the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Hicks 1937), says that the
foundation of morals is Utility. According to this principle, actions are to be considered

right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the
reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by
unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. (Mill 1863: chapter II).
Since Mill grounds this ethics on human nature, utilitarianism can be seen as a foundationalist
theory.

1.1.4. Nietzsche’s anti-foundationalism

In his book Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886), Nietzsche manifests a subversiveness
concerning morality and ethics. In Part Five he says:

With a stiff seriousness that inspires laughter, all our philosophers demanded something far
more exalted…a rational foundation for morality – and every philosopher so far has believed
that he has provided such… Morality itself, however, was accepted as “given.” (Nietzsche
1966: 97).
Nietzsche believes he is the first philosopher (e.g., ‘every philosopher so far…’) to be
genuinely critical of ethics. Indeed, he envisioned that his skepticism of moral
foundationalism would have a transformative impact upon future generations16. ‘He denies
any rational foundation of morality by asserting that there are no moral facts. Since there are
no moral facts, moral judgement is an illusion, and morality is a misinterpretation of certain
phenomena.’ (Irwin III 2011: 327).
If there are no moral facts, moral judgments cannot be truth-apt according to the

16
Hence the second part of the title of Jenseits: “Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future.”

29
correspondence theory of truth17. Nevertheless, why do moral judgments have to be
illusionary?18 Nietzsche thinks such judgments do not reveal any objective facet of nature;
instead they reveal the emotions of the one judging (ibid.: 329).
The question now is whether morality may have another foundation other than a
rational one? Is it possible to consider emotions as a foundation for morality? Well, that
depends. If there were a universal emotion as a response to a particular situation, then that
emotion could function as solid ground. Nevertheless, Nietzsche shows us that our moral
judgments are not universal but rather determined by contingent circumstances, like historical
and cultural situations. Therefore, emotions are more like quicksand rather than a solid
foundation for morality. He calls ethicists who disregard the historicity of morality
Egypticists:

You ask me which of the philosophers’ traits are really idiosyncrasies? For example, their lack
of historical sense, their hatred of the very idea of becoming, their Egypticism. They think that
they show their respect for a subject when they de-historicize it, sub specie aeternitatis – when
they turn it into a mummy. All that philosophers have handled for thousands of years have
been concept-mummies; nothing real escaped their grasp alive. (Nietzsche 1998: 16).

Is Nietzsche’s historicism an anti-foundationalist view? I think so, mainly because there is no

rational or emotional foundation for morality, and the so-called morality itself is not a moral
thing. He resists any attempt to ground morality because there is nothing that needs
foundation. What ordinary people and ethicists call morality is nothing else than the way to
cope with historical power relations. He explains this employing the distinction between
“master morality” and “slave morality” (Nietzsche 1966: 204-212).
Nietzsche considers drives to be the vital forces in man. The master lives out his drives
unimpededly and does not hide behind excuses of the so-called mind. The slave, on the other
hand, does not have the freedom to live out his drives, converts them into “spirit,” and then
designs “morality,” which allows the spirit to rule over drives. Through this morality, the
great mass of slaves seeks to subjugate the elite of masters. Thus bourgeois morality is

17
More about this theory is in section 2.1 of this chapter.
18
Many contemporary scholars, particularly in the analytic tradition, would argue that Nietzsche was an error
theorist, particularly in his earlier works. Others have maintained that his latter works, such as Beyond Good and
Evil, reflect a more non-cognitive metaethical (we discuss metaethics in the next chapter) perspective. For non-
cognitivists, emotions are not regarded as illusions; they are just simply not truth-apt; “morality is sign language
of the passions/affects.” Joseph Markowski thinks of Nietzsche as anti-cognitivist whereby, unlike non-
cognitivism that draws dualistic distinctions between reason and emotions, anti-cognitivism views such as non-
dualistic: moral judgments reveal and conceal perspectives rather than affirming or negating normative truths
proper (Markowski 2021: 37).

30
nothing but a means of power to keep the happy few from indulging in their lusts. So-called
“moral values” are, therefore, not absolute norms but values that are brought about by the
“will to power.” Philosophy, ethics included, is for Nietzsche a ‘tyrannical drive’; it is ‘the
most spiritual will to power’ (Ibid.: 16).

1.1.5. Foundationalist criticism of Kantian and Utilitarianist foundation strategies

One of the most outspoken accounts against Kantian ethics, Nietzsche’s anti-ethics, and
Utilitarianism was given by the Scottish philosopher William David Ross, the leading
representative of intuitionist ethics in the 20th century. In his book The Right and the Good
(1930), he writes that ‘moral convictions of thoughtful and well-educated people are the data
of ethics just as sense-perceptions are the data of a natural science’ (Ross 1930: 41). These
convictions contain specific duties, such as a duty to keep promises, a duty to compensate for
the wrong we have done, a duty of gratitude, a duty to maximize good things and a duty not to
cause other people’s suffering. Every normal human being claims that these duties are right
since they are founded by so-called “moral facts,” which are denied by Nietzsche. Moral facts
can be known, not because they can be derived from reasoning (Kant) or calculating (Mill)
but because these are self-evident. From the vantage point of moral epistemology, Ross can
be characterized as an “ethical intuitionist.” Ethical intuitionism teaches that moral truth is
known without inference of other truths. It is a foundationalist stance because morality is
founded upon intuition, a knowledge immediately available. Accordingly, his commitment to
intuitionism makes Ross, in terms of moral epistemology, also a cognitivist, and because he
believes that his knowledge corresponds with an external factuality, he is a moral realist as
well.

1.1.6. Non-cognitivism

The next philosopher to review for our survey of foundationalism within Western moral
philosophy is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who is well recognized as ‘the founding father of the
success of metaethics in the first half of the twentieth century’ (Loobuyck 2005: 381). The
term metaethics will be explained in the next chapter.
In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), Wittgenstein defends the moral
epistemological stance of non-cognitivism: moral judgments have no descriptive meaning,

31
and there is no such thing as a moral fact. Therefore, he argues, ethics is a nonsensical
activity. A moral judgment has no truth value. However, that does not mean that Wittgenstein
is not concerned with the question how we should behave. ‘(…) expressing his views on
ethics the way he does, Wittgenstein first and foremost appeals to our own authentic ethical
experience, which spawn an urgent need to find a morally just attitude toward life,’ says
Martin Stokhof in his book on ethics and ontology in Wittgenstein’s early thought (Stokhof
2002: 248). ‘Ultimately, our ethical considerations should converge on an objective ethical
view, that of the world as a whole, as one interconnected being, from which our fundamental
moral obligations and strictures can be derived’ (ibid.: 249).
In his Philosophical Investigations, written in the period 1936-1946, Wittgenstein
changed his metaphilosophical course, moving to coherentism, i.e., ‘the view that beliefs can
be justified only by their relation to other beliefs; there are no absolute, special foundational
beliefs, and every justification is a justification relative to the practice or context in which it
functions’ (Loobuyck 2005: 394). Interestingly enough, this has led to a new form of
cognitivism in ethics, as Loobuyck shows. He points out that Wittgenstein made clear that
rationality is not transcendent to practice and only underpins mathematics and sciences.
Rationality is contextual as well.

The consequence of Wittgenstein’s insights for moral philosophy is that he saved the
possibility of moral dialogue, practical rationality, and objectivity. Objective evaluations of
many sorts are possible, given any sufficiently determinate standards that are constitutive of a
social context in which the evaluation occurs. Values and norms do not have authority per se
but only within a social context, within a certain language-game. Morality cannot be
autonomous but is always relative to other agreed-on and assumed standards. We have seen
that if morality and the justification of it are thought within the formal logical paradigm, it
must lead to an emotive reduction of values to subjective preferences. Wittgenstein showed
that there are alternative ways to think about rationality and objectivity, for example, in ethics
but also in aesthetics, theology, and other domains of human life. (Ibid.: 389).

This new moral cognitivism is also present in the work of John Rawls, who was very much
influenced by the late Wittgenstein. Rawls designed a theory in which he claims that moral
reasoning must not result in truth but in “overlapping consensus” (ibid.: 395); just like
linguists who search for grammar in an existing alien language, moral philosophers should
look for moral rules in social practices.

1.1.7. Quasi-(non-)foundationalism

In contemporary ethics, various theories go beyond the dominant discussion between

32
foundationalism and anti-foundationalism. I call these strategies “quasi-foundationalism” or
“quasi-non-foundationalism” because they somehow escape this dichotomy. The starting
point of the ethical theories of the “quasi-(non)-foundationalists” is human reality as a
phenomenon. Emmanuel Levinas could be categorized as one of them because his idea of
morality results from an experience rather than a conclusion of a metaphysical effort. It is the
experience of the moral appeal of “the face of the other” (Levinas 1969). This face cannot be
ontologically identified since it is the manifestation of a transcendent exteriority, one that is
being experienced as a moral obligation. In contrast with Kant, Levinas holds that moral
goodness is not grounded in the rationality of the moral subject, but in the intersubjectivity
between the self and the non-self. However, the non-self can never function as a foundation
because it cannot be known ontologically and, therefore, also not be generalized. According
to Levinas, the moral imperative is totally heteronomous. Thus he not only stresses that “the
other” presents the subject with a moral choice but also that the commanding character of the
moral appeal stands as a kind of alien law.
This idea of an unfoundable and unfounding heteronomy can also be found in the ethics
of Hans Jonas (Jonas 1983). The moral law appears, so to speak, in an end in itself, as a
vulnerable value that appeals to our willingness to commit. Not freedom but guilt and
responsibility are the basic concepts of Jonas's theory. Power is the existential condition of
holding oneself responsible to take care of the vulnerable. Only the person in a position of
power to contribute to, for instance, the struggle against climate change can feel rationally
responsible.
Another strategy that might be called quasi-(non-)foundationalist is “ethics of care” or
“care ethics.” This relatively recently developed way of thinking is more a movement than a
tightly defined theory. If there were a common belief among all care ethicists, it could be this:
before there is even morality or thinking about morality, there is the experience of the appeal
that needy beings make to the human individual; these beings require care. Nel Noddings, one
of the most important representatives of care ethics, holds (Noddings 2003) that moral
awareness is grounded in human nature, not in an essentialist way but rather in a
phenomenological way. The epitome of this awareness is the mother who nurtures a child; it
all starts from there.
Care ethicist Margaret Walker stresses that feminism brought something new to the
ethical discourse: she contrasts “moral understanding” with what has traditionally been
thought of as “moral knowledge.” ‘She sees the moral understanding she advocates as
involving “attention, contextual and narrative appreciation, and communication in the event of

33
moral deliberation” (Held 2006: 11).
Levinas, Jonas, and the care ethicists have in common that they believe that moral
goodness occurs only when the urgent call of the not-self to us is heeded.

1.2. Rorty’s pragmatism

In light of our aforementioned analysis, we can now turn our attention to Richard Rorty, who
is aligned with pragmatism, a “method of reflection”19 that is shared by American scholars
such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey20. There is something that
has been known as Peirce’s pragmatic maxim: ‘Consider what effect, which might
conceivably have practical bearing, we conceive the object of our concept to have. Then, our
conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the concept’ (Peirce 1992: 132).
Pragmatists are interested in the consequences of thinking, not in the foundations of thinking.
The notion of the moral good is, for the pragmatist, an effect of successful praxis, not a value
founded upon a hypostasized idea transcendent to any praxis.

‘For the pragmatist in morals, the claim that the customs of a give society are “grounded in
human nature” is not one which he knows how to argue about. He is a pragmatist because he
cannot see what it would be like for a custom to be so grounded’ (Rorty 2009a: 178).

Rorty21 is categorized as a neopragmatist, although he preferred to be called a pragmatist

(McReynolds 2007b: 3:07-3:12). The novelty of neopragmatism, also called “linguistic

19
Peirce. CP 5.13 note 1.
20
Joseph Margolis writes in the prologue of his book Reinventing Pragmatism that there could not have been a
center to the pragmatist “movement” if there had not been someone like Charles Sanders Peirce. ‘[H]owever,
Peirce himself was never the recognized center of the movement until it was largely spent, even in the eyes of
those who drew (or who said they drew) their original pragmatist inspiration from him. The “center” of
pragmatism has proved to be [John] Dewey, and the center perceived very early in Europe (and the United
States) was, for a time, [William] James. Even now, at the turn into the new century, Peirce is honored chiefly by
the unexplained departures that mark James's alleged usurpation of the pragmatist label for a theory of truth that
Peirce found preposterous, as well as Dewey's insouciant eclipse of all of Peirce's painstaking alternatives to
Kantian transcendental reason. It is more than plausible to say that both Peirce and Dewey are undoubted
pragmatists. But it is exceedingly difficult to give a rounded account that commits them both (or James) to
congruent doctrines or inquiries.’ (Margolis 2002: 1).
21
Pragmatism was ‘practically dead by the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s’, says Joseph
Margolis (McReynolds 2007b: 0:00-1:09). Rorty is credited to have revived the spirit of pragmatism (Nataraju
2019: 1-2). Thanks to him, Dewey escaped oblivion. Rorty’s adversary within neopragmatism, Hillary Putnam –
who doesn’t call himself a pragmatist (McReynolds 2007b: 3:39-3:43) –, acknowledges the fact that without
Rorty pragmatism would probably have remained eclipsed: ‘He did an important job in getting people to read the
pragmatists again. He influenced me to read James and start teaching James. So I am grateful to him for calling

34
pragmatism” or “analytical pragmatism,” is that its representatives processed the so-called
linguistic turn22 in their work. As Dewey already held, language does not represent the world,
but is a tool that enables the lingual subject to deal with the world (Rorty 1982: 198); Rorty
popularized this pragmatist tenet with the slogan ‘coping not copying’ (Blackburn 2005: 158).
Neopragmatism is also influenced by the literary criticism of the French philosopher Jacques
Derrida23.
For all pragmatists, as Rorty once said in an interview, the term truth does not signify
an accurate representation of reality: ‘we call beliefs true when the adoption of them makes us
better able to achieve happiness’ (Mendicta 2006: 94-95). The same goes for moral goodness:

[W]e pragmatists drop the appearance-reality distinction in favour of a distinction between

beliefs which serve some purposes and beliefs which serve other purposes (…). We drop the
notion of beliefs being made true by reality, as well as the distinction between intrinsic and
accidental features of things. So we drop questions about (…) The Way the World Is. We
thereby drop the ideas of The Nature of Humanity and of The Moral Law, considered as
objects which inquiry is trying to represent accurately, or as objects which make true moral
judgements true. (Rorty 1991b: 4).

In much of his publications, Rorty often uses the phrase “We pragmatists.” According to the
American philosopher Joseph Margolis, there is in Rorty’s work, however, less “we” than he
himself suggests. Margolis even argues that Rorty has deformed American philosophy and,
therefore, also pragmatism (Margolis 2002: 54). Rorty ‘is prepared to exploit (by way of
conceptual camouflage) any philosophical mode of argumentation that suits his temporary
need to undermine an opposing philosophy’; Rorty also ‘means to challenge every would-be
philosophical argument that proceeds along metaphysical or epistemological lines,’says
Margolis, adding: ‘The intended transformation in discursive practices is precisely what Rorty
means by “pragmatism” or “postmodernism” or “metaphilosophy”’ (ibid.: 57-58).

attention to classical pragmatism. (…) And he read everything. But he has a philosophy of his own; Rortyanism
is a good enough name’ (ibid, 9:22-9:49).
22
The phrase “the linguistic turn” was coined in 1960 by the Austrian-born American philosopher Gustav
Bergmann in his review of Peter Strawson’s Individuals. Later it was used to characterize a change of direction
in the development of analytic philosophy. It is said that Richard Rorty popularized the term when he published
the book The Linguistic Turn (1967; Chicago University Press), a collection of essays he edited on the linguistic
philosophy movement.

23
Rorty, in his capacity of professor of Comparative Philosphy at Stanford University, said of him: ‘Of all the
philosophers of our time, he has been the most effective at doing what Socrates hoped philosophers would do:
breaking the crust of convention, questioning assumptions never before doubted, raising issues never before
discussed.’ (Rorty 2005).

35
 So, when Rorty is using insights of his admired colleagues such as Donald Davidson
and Wilfrid Sellars, he “deforms” those insights for his own ‘philosophical mosaic,’ says
Margolis (ibid.: 59). ‘Rorty literally recruits allies of mixed and different convictions –
muffling philosophical differences for a time, offering a friendly detente or two, facilitating
by other than philosophical means the effective subversion of hitherto valid sources of
canonical resistance’ (ibid.: 62).

1.2.1. Rorty’s criticism of foundationalism

In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, originally published in 1979, Rorty declares the end
of the era of epistemology. What is epistemology? First it is the academic discipline centered
upon and concerned with theories of knowledge. According to Rorty, the desire for such a
theory was ‘a desire for constraint – a desire to find “foundations” to which one might cling,
frameworks beyond which one must not stray, objects which impose themselves,
representations which cannot be gainsaid’ (Rorty 2009: 315). This need for evident
foundations – i.e., the absolute justifications of propositions – comes from the urge to build a
solid scientific edifice. Scientists and philosophers had the intuition that this urge was
somehow an indication of the real existence of those ‘objects which impose themselves.’
Descartes called them “les idées claires et distinctes.” Epistemologists must have figured that
in order to “have” those ideas, there has to be a thinking thing; that is why they invented the
mind, says Rorty. In unmasking epistemology as a result of a desire, Rorty claims that the
“objects” found by the epistemologists are just constructions. He does not, of course, use this
as an argument, since there are desired things that do actually exist. Rorty uses different
arguments against classical and modern epistemology – especially Kant’s – from analytical
and continental thinkers (Rorty is praised for bringing the two traditions together). Among the
first are Wilfrid Sellars and W.V.O. Quine. Their so-called holism is, according to Rorty, ‘a
product of their commitment to the thesis that justification is not a matter of a special relation
between ideas (or words) and objects, but of conversation, of social practice’ (Rorty 2009:
170). Sellars24 attacked in his essay “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (1956) what he

24
Margolis: ‘By means of a related maneuver, Rorty reclaims Sellars as one of his orienting stalwarts, largely
because he reads Sellars as having produced a compelling argument against “the Myth of the Given” (thereby
defeating empiricism) and, in that spirit, as having shown us a way to eliminate “mind” in its familiar substantive
sense. This is why Rorty writes an introduction to Sellars’s important essay, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of
Mind" (reissued as a separate volume), which, let me emphasize again, originally appeared in the same volume
as the eliminativist essays already mentioned. It is in this way part of a new manifesto. Sellars, Rorty says, “may
have been the first philosopher to insist that we see ‘mind’ as a sort of hypostatization of language. He argued

36
called “the myth of the given.” The “given,” the primary notion of epistemology, must have
three essential characteristics in order to function as an epistemological foundation: 1) it has
to be immediate, i.e., direct and unmediated; 2) it is epistemically independent, and 3) it is
epistemically efficacious. Sellars argues – in short – that none of these conditions occur.
Quine argues in his famous essay “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) that no
proposition has a one-on-one relation with a singular object or fact; its meaning, therefore,
cannot be derived from that. All propositions are conditioned by the network of other
propositions. It is the totality – he later corrects that by replacing “totality” with “huge
fragments” – of all the possible connections between the propositions in the network that
yield meaning. Hence, all human knowledge, even logic and mathematics, cannot be founded
on non-cognitive, extrinsic, transcendent idées. Quine concludes that science has no better
access to reality than the humanities. In Rorty’s interpretation of Quine’s argument25, this
means that there is “no fact of the matter” and that the notion of reference has become
obsolete, ‘as ontology (…) also’ (Rorty 2009a: 199). All human knowledge results from
convention, even what appears to us as necessary truths. In light of such, Rorty states:

for Quine, a necessary truth is just a statement such that nobody has given us any alternatives
which would lead us to question it. For Sellars, to say that a report of a passing thought is
incorrigible is to say that nobody has yet suggested a good way of predicting and controlling
human behavior which does not take sincere first-person contemporary reports of thoughts at
face-value. (Rorty 2009a: 175).

Subscribing to Sellar’s and Quine’s holism in his “deformative” way, Rorty enforces his non-
foundationalism with Thomas Kuhn’s notion of incommensurablity. That is the principle of
the impossibility of the comparison of two or more scientific paradigms on neutral ground.
Kuhn argues that there is no meta-level from which it can be judged that one paradigm is
more true than the other. Despite his admiration for this notion, Rorty thinks that Kuhn did

that the intentionality of beliefs is a reflection of the intentionality of sentences, rather than conversely.” This
again is deliberately skewed in the sense already supplied. In pressing Sellars's candidacy (which has not caught
on in quite the way Rorty would have wished), Rorty ignores the plain fact that Sellars presses the point of the
“Empiricism” paper Rorty cites in the service of a convinced metaphysics of the most unyielding kind.’
(Margolis 2002: 60).
25
Margolis points out that Quine himself ‘flagged Rorty’s mistaken reading,’ calling it ‘admirably explicit’
(Margolis 2002: 61). He then quotes Quine:
In ascribing to me the “claim that there is no ‘matter of fact’ involved in attributions of meaning to
utterances, beliefs to people, and aspirations to cultures,” Rorty overstates my negativity. How words
and sentences are used, in what circumstances and in what relations to one another, is very much a
matter of fact, and moreover I cheerfully call its study a study of meaning. My reservations concern
rather the ascription of a distinctive meaning or cognitive content to each separate sentence, as
something shared by the sentence and its correct translations. I hold that two conflicting manuals of
translation can do equal justice to the semantic facts, while distributing the meaning load differently
sentence by sentence. (Quine, “Let Me Accentuate the Positive,” in: Malachowski 1991: 117).

37
not go far enough; and so, Rorty does. He applies this concept of incommensurablity to
philosophy as well. In the academic discipline that we call philosophy, there is no such thing
as progress, Rorty claims. New philosophical theories are not better than older ones in the
sense that they give a better view on what we call reality. Philosophy as epistemology is of no
use. Philosophers who think they have a privileged position in producing truth by looking
more closely to the foundations of knowledge live in a delusion. They have to let go of this
pretention that they can take a “God’s eye view,” as Putnam called it. ‘Rorty’s notion of
incommensurability is related to his rejection of this idea of privileged representation, which
leads to pluralism. (…) For Rorty, pluralism does not necessarily entail conflict between
different frameworks,’ says Kwang-Sae Lee (Lee 2009: 23).
In short, if “nature” can be read as reality, “physics” can be used as the study of reality.
Rorty says that we humans have no knowledge of nature independent from our own cognitive
conditions, which entails that our physics is nothing more than what we conventionally
construct to get a grip on things. If we think we have knowledge of a certain object, that
object is not the source of that knowledge; it is the other way around: our knowledge
constructs the thing. This seems to be idealism. If idealism is the theory that says that the
mind creates reality, Rorty cannot be seen as a member of this philosophical movement. It is
clear why not: Rorty holds that there is no such thing as the mind. The mind is an invention of
the epistemologists, as he says in Philosophy and The Mirror of Nature.
Herein, we must now ask the following question: does Rorty’s standpoint on the nature
of mind, vis-à-vis it is an invention, constitute a truth claim? No, it does not, certainly not in
the sense of the correspondence theory, which Rorty rejects. In his “Pragmatism and
Romanticism,” he states, “At the heart of pragmatism is the refusal to accept the
correspondence theory of truth and the idea that true beliefs are accurate representations of
reality” (Rorty 2007: 105). This theory holds that a proposition is true as soon as it
corresponds with a fact. In this outlook, a proposition is the image of a non-lingual reality.
Whenever this image is adequate, there is truth. This theory was disputed by Gottlob Frege,
who said that the truth of propositions is undefinable because truth is an absolute quality of a
proposition; he shows this via infinite regression, reduction ad absurdum. Suppose, Frege
says, that proposition p is true if and only if p corresponds with f, being a certain state in the
world. To confirm this, we have to check if p corresponds with f; in other words: we have to
check whether p is true. That leads to a new proposition: ‘p corresponds with f.’ This one is
also true if and only if it corresponds with the reality in which p is corresponds with f. Et
cetera, et cetera.

38
 Donald Davidson, who had a major influence on Rorty’s thought, rejects the
correspondence theory of truth as well (Davidson 2001: 17-42). His rejections are based upon
contesting the notion of “fact.” His so-called “slingshot argument” shows that all true
propositions ultimately correspond to one and the same fact: the “great fact.” It should be said
that Rorty was far from being interested in refuting the theory of correspondence. ‘On the
view of philosophy which I am offering, philosophers should not be asked for arguments
against, for example, the correspondence theory of truth,’ he says in Contingency, Irony, and
Solidarity (Rorty 1989: 8). From his perspective, every attack on a theory always parasitizes
the claim that a better theory is available, better in the sense of having a higher degree of
adequacy to reality. ‘Interesting philosophy is rarely an examination of the pros and cons of a
thesis’ (ibid.: 9).
For Rorty, interesting philosophy cannot be epistemology anymore26 but has to be
hermeneutics from now on. However, according to him, “hermeneutics” is ‘not the name for a
discipline, nor for a method of achieving the sort of results which epistemology failed to
achieve, nor for a program of research’ (Rorty 2009a: 315). Interesting philosophy is no
longer about forwarding truth claims regarding the three Kantian questions: “What can I
know?” “What ought I to do?” and “What may I hope?” The last question remains interesting
though because hermeneutics in the Rortyan sense is the expression of a certain hope: ‘that
the cultural space left by the demise of epistemology will not be filled – that our culture
should become one in which the demand for constraint and confrontation is no longer felt’
(ibid.). Where the “old” philosophy was based on the assumption that all contributions to a
given discourse are commensurable, hermeneutics is ‘largely a struggle against this
assumption’ (ibid.: 315). The “new” philosophy is aware of the impossibility of revealing the
pillars of being and of showing the absolute ground of our knowledge. It has no longer the
form of a precisely structured and strictly regulated debate but is now more of a conversation
between educated partners without the expectancy of attaining a shared acceptance of a
conclusion. In this “new” philosophy that Rorty calls hermeneutics, incommensurability is the
shared starting point. From there, philosophy is not about knowing ourselves anymore but has
to be seen as ‘an aid to creating ourselves’ (Rorty 1999: 69).
Be that as it may, as I interpret Rorty, he is presenting this new philosophy while still

26
Hence, Rorty is not interested in overcoming or dealing with the so-called Münchhausen trilemma: “[a]n
attempt to justify something leads to one of the following three alternatives: (1) infinite regress – tracing grounds
endlessly, which is practically impossible; (2) circularity – repeating a ground given earlier, which is logically
unconvincing; or (3) dogmatism – abandoning the attempt and accepting a ground at some point, which is
arbitrary.” (Iwasa 2013: 110).

39
acting like an old-school philosopher. In saying that any truth claim has no absolute value, he
is making a truth claim, a truth claim regarding, for instance, metaphysics. Of course, he does
not claim to bring up an adequate depiction of objective reality. But he does claim truth, truth
as opposed to nonsense. If someone would say that all that Rorty wrote was utter nonsense,
how would a Rortyan philosopher respond? Wouldn’t he be arguing that there is a method in
Rorty’s madness? Rorty himself argued all the time. Not, of course, to prove anything, but to
convince his audience. His truth claims are not claiming to have absolute value, but are aimed
at getting his listeners to call his claims justified.
I am aware of the fact that pragmatists actually work with a notion of truth. John
Dewey, one of Rorty’s heroes, worked with Charles Peirce’s account: ‘The opinion which is
fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the
object represented in this opinion is the real’ (Peirce 5.407; Dewey 1938: 343 n).
Nevertheless, how would Dewey reply to the objection that truth is the thought that goes
beyond the status of opinion while it represents an objective state in reality? He would explain
the pragmatist outlook, saying that reality is absolutely contingent and that a human account
of reality can, therefore, never be characterized as being stable and trustworthy. All we can
hope for is the achievement of consensus about our poor opinions on the Heraclitean physis,
in which there are no essences and substances. As a matter of fact, Rorty replies in this
fashion when he – in opposition to Kant’s transcendentalism – explicitly refers to Darwin as
the one who made it almost impossible for a thinker to be reasonable and essentialist at the
same time:

Once people started experimenting with a picture of themselves as what Darwin’s apt pupil,
Nietzsche, called ‘clever animals’, they found it very hard to think of themselves as having a
transcendental or a noumenal side. Further, when Darwinian evolutionary theory was brought
together with the suggestion (…) that it is language, rather than consciousness or mind, which
is the distinguishing feature of our species, Darwinian evolutionary theory made it possible to
see all of human behaviour (…) as continuous with animal behavior. (Rorty 1999: 68).

The Stoics based their ethics on their physics. Their moral doctrine was, so to speak, a mirror
of nature. One might think that in that respect, there is an impassable gap between the Stoics
and Rorty. But in a strange way, they have something in common: both their views on
morality rest on the results of their fundamental analysis of reality. Rorty’s moral non-
foundationalism is founded upon his anti-representational “theory”27: our knowledge does not

James Conant, one of the contributors to the book Rorty and His Critics, called Rorty’s theory “metaphysics.”
27

Conant admits that this epithet is ‘intentionally provocative.’ ‘Rorty would bristle at the suggestion that he has a
metaphysics. Rorty counts philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Heidegger among his heroes and says that he

40
represent the reality outside our mental constitution; it is not, as he puts it, the “mirror of
nature.” Pragmatism is, for Rorty, ‘an attempt to alter our self-image so as to make it
consistent with the Darwinian claim that we differ from other animals simply in the
complexity of our behavior’ (ibid.: 69).
Of course, ethics in Rorty’s outlook can never be the project of answering the Kantian
question ‘What ought I to do?’, for this question presupposes firstly a moral subject called “I”
and secondly a mind where a moral law is to be found (through revelation or reasoning). A
pragmatist’s ethics raises this important question: why should we not be selfish?
Why wouldn’t we be selfish if it is no longer reasonable to obey a divine law, or to act
in conformity with the Logos or a categorical imperative? In other words, how can we explain
in a non-foundationalist matter why it would still be a “good” thing that people care for each
other? Is that even possible?
Rorty answered these questions in his book Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989).
His answer is, to begin with, a deconstruction of the question. Asking what the objective
ground is for solidarity when there is no such thing as an objective ground is pointless. Rorty
turns the question upside down. How can we find consensus based on our actual solidarity?
The answer to this question is this: if truth is nothing more than consensus, moral truth is also
a matter of a shared opinion; without solidarity, there cannot be a human community, and
without community, there is no language, as the later Wittgenstein claimed. Without
language, consensus is unthinkable. Hence: solidarity is the condition of possibility of
“objectivity” (called intersubjectivity or Peircian truth [= “the opinion which is fated to be
ultimately agreed to by all who investigate”]).

shares their avowedly anti-metaphysical aims – aims such as that of “showing the philosopher the way out of the
philosophical fly-bottle” (…). Despite his protestations that he has no interest in the activity of constructive
philosophizing, Rorty often goes on to elaborate the outlines of an alternative theory showing how we can make
sense of our existing practices (of assertion, description, justification, criticism, etc.) in the absence of the
seemingly indispensable notion. This inevitably involves him in the elaboration of further theses, as
metaphysically contentious as any of those he sought to reject. Rorty thus ends up enunciating what certainly
appear to be (at least partially) worked-out metaphysical doctrines of his own – doctrines which he opposes to
those of the Realists and which (at least appear to) offer alternative answers to the Realist’s questions.’
(Brandom 2000: 274-275).
In the same book, Rorty responds to all his contributing critics. Here is how he defends himself against Conant’s
provocation: ‘I see the difference between the metaphysicians and the anti-metaphysicians as consisting mainly
in the anti-Realism of the latter. In my jargon, “metaphysical” and “Realist” are pretty well co-extensive terms.
Conant obviously attaches a very different meaning to the term “metaphysical” than I do, and I wish that he
explained his use of the term in more detail. Is a view metaphysical insofar as it is contentious, or just insofar as
philosophy professors are likely to contend about it? Is all such contention between philosophers pointless? Well,
presumably, the present contention between Conant and myself is not. To grasp his sense of “metaphysical”, I
should have to have a better sense than I do of which philosophical contentions he takes to be the result of
obsessions and which not.’ (Ibid.: 344-345).

41
1.2.2. Unfounded solidarity

Rorty borrows the following criteria from the American philosopher and political theorist
Judith N. Shklar28: ‘A liberal is someone who believes that cruelty is the worst thing we do’
(Shklar 1984: 43-44; Rorty 1989: 146). In a liberal society, solidarity is its ultimate value,
Rorty says. It is not inherent to human nature or a radiation of a transcendent moral order
because there is no such thing as a common human nature29. And if there would be a
transcendent order, we could not say or notice anything of it. Solidarity is not a built-in
quality of humans, but a matter of socialization; it has to be worked for, by liberals. In his
preface of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity he writes:

In my utopia, human solidarity would be seen not as a fact to be recognized by clearing away
‘prejudice’ or burrowing down to previously hidden depths but, rather, as a goal to be
achieved. It is to be achieved not by inquiry but by imagination, the imaginative ability to see
strange people as fellow sufferers. Solidarity is not discovered by reflection but created. It is
created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of
other, unfamiliar sorts of people. Such increased sensitivity makes it more difficult to
marginalize people different from ourselves by thinking. (…)
This process of coming to see other human beings as ‘one of us’ rather than as ‘them’ is a
matter of detailed description of what unfamiliar people are like and of redescription of what
we ourselves are like. This is a task not for theory but for genres such as ethnography, the
journalist's report, the comic book, the docudrama, and, especially the novel. (Rorty 1989:
xvi).

As we have seen, Rorty tries to get rid of any form of essentialism, especially in regard to
humans and humanity. The human being does not have such a thing called mind, nor is he the
subject of the medium language that he uses in order to relate to the world. What the human
individual connects with, vis-à-vis his species is:

not a common language but just susceptibility to pain and in particular to that special sort of
pain which the brutes do not share with the humans – humiliation. On her conception, human
solidarity is not a matter of sharing a common truth or a common selfish goal but of sharing a
common selfish hope, the hope that one's world (…) will not be destroyed. (Ibid.: 92).

Solidarity can, therefore, not be deduced from a discourse. It is only a communal desire not to
suffer. The question “why should I be solidary with people who suffer?” is a nonsensical

28
According to whom philosophers have dealt with the theme of justice to a large extent, while they ignored the
problem of injustice; Shklar, Judith (1990). The Faces of Injustice. New Haven: Yale University Press.

29
‘[T]here is nothing deep inside each of us, no common human nature, no built-in human solidarity, to use as a
moral reference point. There is nothing to people except what has been socialized into them – their ability to use
language, and thereby to exchange beliefs and desires with other people.’ (Rorty 1989: 177).

42
question in the pragmatist’s eyes, as it presupposes a moral truth. And as Rorty made clear
many times, the reflection on being human does not yield any reason to be solidary or to show
compassion. In order to become aware of other people’s sufferings, it is not our reflexive
capacity that is needed but our imaginative power.

We should try to think of imagination not as a faculty that generates mental images but as the
ability to change social practices by proposing advantageous new uses of marks and noises. To
be imaginative, as opposed to being merely fantastical, one must both do something new and
be lucky enough to have that novelty adopted by one's fellows – incorporated into their ways
of doing things. (Rorty 2007: 107).

In order to change social practices, a new vision is needed. This new vision cannot be born
from an old self. A new self has to be created. Helpful for this project is reading sophisticated
literature and the use of that literature as a guide for retelling one’s personal history. Another
project is the engagement of the newly created self in the public struggle for minimizing
suffering. Personal identification with humanity as such is impossible. Possible is solidarity
from the ironic disposition. Rorty calls this “self-doubt”:

In my jargon, this is the ability to distinguish the question of whether you and I share the same
final vocabulary from the question of whether you are in pain. Distinguishing these questions
makes it possible to distinguish public from private questions, questions about pain from
questions about the point of human life, the domain of the liberal from the domain of the
ironist. It thus makes it possible for a single person to be both. (Rorty 1989: 198).

Rorty calls himself a liberal, a liberal in the tradition of Mill and Dewey. Rorty says that
Nietzsche, Lacan, Foucault and Derrida were not able “to make obsolete the old-fashioned
utopian scenario.”

They cannot reveal the philosophical weaknesses of the bourgeois liberalism common tot Mill
and Dewey; they can only reveal its blind spots, but they were not a result of some wholesale
failure to understand the nature of the subject, or of desire, or of language, or of society, or of
history, or of anything else of similar magnitude. (Rorty 1999: 236).

Liberalism is the secular and democratic pursuit of creating a better society where all citizens
are free and have equal opportunities. What makes society better cannot be measured by a
non-human “idea” like justice or the good. The only measure of progress, according to
utilitarians and pragmatists, is suffering. Mill’s and Dewey’s utopia is a world in which
people suffer a minimum amount of pain and sorrow and enjoy a maximum amount of
happiness.
According to rationalists, the world gets better only if moral rationality increases; for
reason makes humans and the governors of the human world capable of acting in conformity
with transcendent values. In contrast to this Platonism, pragmatists like Rorty say that moral
43
progress is ‘a matter of increasing sensitivity, increasing responsiveness to the needs of a
larger and larger variety of people and things’ (Rorty 1999: 81).
Moral progress starts in the relationship of one human to another. However, who is the
other? The other is paradoxically the one in whom the moral subject can recognize himself.
The others become moral objects as soon as they become members of the “we.” A better
world is being created when the “we” is being extended. The liberal utopia will become a
reality if the “we” consists in all humans. Not every human being is automatically a member
of the “we,” as theists and humanists claim. Rorty says that individuals are only affected by
the pain of others when they feel that the sufferers are not aliens. Many Americans began to
care about the African enslaved people’s destiny after reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle
Tom’s Cabin (1852); upon completing their read, they started to feel that the Africans were
like them. Of course, they could have known that the African enslaved were human, but they
just did not care because those creatures from Africa were not members of their “we.”
Rorty’s ethnocentrism is opposed to metaphysical universalism, which defends the duty
to solidarity on abstract notions such as “humanity,” “brotherhood,” and “human dignity.”
One might ask if Rorty gives a solid reason for why greater solidarity is to be preferred
over, for instance, ethical Darwinism. The Dutch philosopher Henk Vroom commented: ‘The
difficulty with Rorty’s view lies in his plea for solidarity and the appeal to extend the group of
people whom we have to be solidary with. But why would we have to do that? Didn’t others
say that the weak should die and the Übermensch should survive?’ (Vroom 2014: 49).
This question ‘Why should we?’ presupposes, as Rorty himself might reply, a major
significance of the Kantian distinction between hypothetical and categorical obligations, or –
as Dewey puts it – between prudence and morality (Rorty 1999: 73). Prudence is defined here
as the quality of the capacity of individuals and groups to adapt to changing circumstances. A
prudent person is experienced and knows how (s)he must act under certain conditions. Moral
acting is, on the other hand, non-conditional. An act is only moral if done out of a principle,
regardless of the circumstances. In this sense, morality rests on the conviction that something
like intrinsic goodness exists. Pragmatists reject this, says Rorty. In their view, there is no
distinction of kind between prudence and morality. Moral goodness is not a radiation or a
reflection of divine or non-human reality. It is the quality of a mutation in a partical human or
social state; that mutation is a decrease in suffering. In this sense, morality does not stem from
a “higher” human faculty, called “reason,” but is the result of adaptation to a changing
environment. The only human faculty, however, is language. According to Rorty’s

44
interpretation of Dewey’s30 pragmatism, the history of language is a ‘seamless story of
gradually increasing complexity’ (ibid.: 73).

The story of how we got from Neanderthal grunts and nudges to German philosophical
treatises is no more discontinuous than the story of how we got from the amoebae to the
anthropoids. The two stories are parts of one larger story. Cultural evolution takes over from
biological evolution without a break. From an evolutionary point of view, there is no
difference between the grunts and the treatises, save complexity. Yet the difference between
language-using and dumb animals, and the difference between cultures which do not engage in
conscious, collective moral deliberation and cultures which do, are as important and obvious
as ever, even though both are differences of degree. On Dewey’s view, philosophers who have
sharply distinguished reason from experience, or morality from prudence, have tried to turn an
important difference of degree into a difference of metaphysical kind. They have thereby
constructed problems for themselves which are as insoluble as they are artificial. (Ibid.: 75).

Ethical questions, such as the following, are examples of those problems unless we treat them
as questions of prudence. “Why should we bother about other people?” “Why do we have to
aspire for greater solidarity?” We do not have to do anything, Rorty might reply. There is no
compulsive absolutum outside contingent reality. There is no transcendent magisterium that
burdens us with any obligation, whether it is a divine commandment, a natural law, or a
categorical imperative. We do not have to be solidary; we want to be solidary31. As soon we
are bothered with the suffering of a member of our “we-group” we start feeling empathy. This
is not human nature; it is a contingent constellation of our brain, which has evolved to the
point where it enables most of us to be empathetic and sympathetic, a capacity we share with
other primates, as primatologist Frans de Waal pointed out.
If we want to be solidary so badly, why is there still such a lack of solidarity in the
world? Why are the happy few so indifferent to the enormous amount of suffering of so
many? Is it because our “we-groups” are still so small?
Economists would explain the phenomenon of suffering with the notion of scarcity.

30
Margolis warns for Rorty’s tendency to appropriate Dewey as he did with other of his so-called heroes. For
instance, when Rorty writes in his paper “Feminism and Pragmatism”: ‘Pragmatists like myself think that the
Deweyan account of moral truth and moral progress comports better with the prophetic tone in contemporary
feminism than do universalism and realism’ (Voparil 2010: 334). Margolis: ‘(You need to remark the sly
association of the “Deweyan account of moral truth and moral progress” with the “prophetic,” which Rorty
attributes to the feminists. In one stroke, therefore, Rorty warns us not to interpret either in the way of providing
a defense for “public” policies: the issue is confined to the sphere of the “private.”) But that cannot be
convincing if there is (as there is) a viable third possibility. You have only to read Dewey with care to see that he
was never a Rortyan or a postmodernist in Rorty’s sense, and never yielded in his mature work to anything close
to Rorty’s doctrines.’ (Margolis 2002: 66).

31
According to David Hume (1711-1776), persons want to be solidary because empathy/sentiment is simply a
natural embodied feature of human beings; ‘the minds of men are mirrors to one another’, he said (Hume 1978:
365); contemporary neuroscience would say that position is conditional and dependent upon the brain.

45
They are still grounding their theories on the axiom that all humans strive to maximize the
gratification of their own needs. Since the means to attain a certain level of well-being are
scarce, there is a struggle for those needs. And wherever there is struggle, there is suffering.
For pragmatists, this struggle can yield opportunities for greater solidarity as well. The
economic forces of this world yield mutual interest and, therefore, also intercultural
exchanges. For this exchange, businesspeople must use their imaginative power to know the
other party’s position in the negotiating game. As a collateral effect, empathy can occur. With
such globalization, driven by the profit-telos, the “we-group” enlarges. As a result, the
extension of the set of moral objects takes place.

As already said, moral progress is, according to Rorty, an increased sensitivity to other
beings’ suffering. How can that be realized? Rorty’s answer is already mentioned: by the
stimulation of the imagination. The effect would be the liquefying of our solid frames of
reference. This can result in a leap in another area, far away from people’s comfort zones.
One could say this is a form of spirituality. This concept of “spirituality” was very absent in
Rorty’s work, due to his distrust of organized religion. But on September 21st, 2005, he used
the word “spirituality” in a lecture on ethics in Turin, Italy. Rorty distinguishes between two
uses of this term. The first is “the yearning for the infinite”; the second: “an exalted sense of
new possibilities opening up for finite beings.”

The difference between these two meanings of the term spirituality is the difference between
the hope to transcend finitude and the hope for a world in which human beings live far happier
lives than they live at the present time. (Rorty 2011:14).

He points out that since the democratic revolutions of the 18th century in America and
Europe, the new spirituality has turned away from the possibility of sainthood and perfecting
an individual human life toward the ‘possibility of perfecting human society’ (ibid.).

1.2.3. Non-foundationalist utilitarianism

Rorty sees himself as standing in a utilitarianist tradition.

I want to underline the importance of such issues for philosophers who, like myself, are
sympathetic to William James’s pragmatism. James agreed with John Stuart Mill that the right
thing to do, and a fortiori the right belief to acquire, is always the one that will do most for
human happiness. So he advocates a utilitarian ethics of belief. James often comes close to
saying that all questions, including questions about what exists, boil down to questions about
what will help create a better world. (Rorty 2007: 5).

46
However, Rorty – following Dewey – is opposed to Bentham’s utilitarianism:

The utilitarians were right when they coalesced the moral and the useful, even though they
were wrong in thinking that utility is simply a matter of getting pleasure and avoiding pain.
Dewey agrees with Aristotle, against Bentham, that human happiness cannot be reduced to the
accumulation of pleasures. (Rorty 1999: 73-74).

Does being a pragmatist and an anti-representationalist include being a moral anti-

foundationalist? Not necessarily. It would be better to call him a non-foundationalist, certainly
in ethics, since he does not want to be involved in a debate between rationalistic ethicists and
anti-metaphysicians. As a pragmatist, he is not interested in the epistemological questions of
moral knowledge because, according to him, morality is not a matter of knowledge. If it were,
we would be acting in a moral matter because we knew on what grounds that could be done;
philosophical inquiries would help us in our quest for the right behavior. As if we would help
an old lady across the busy street because we had knowledge of some supernatural law or
reason-based imperative. We help the old lady because we feel it is the right thing to do.
Those feelings are not based upon knowledge but come from an innate capacity to be
empathetic. This capacity is not an essential characteristic of human nature. It just happened
to be there; it is completely contingent.
As he often does, Rorty presents Nietzsche as the great protagonist of the anti-
metaphysical cause. Nietzsche is brought out into the open as the scourge for every thought
that leans upon Plato. In his essay “Ethics without Principles” (Rorty 1999: 72-90), Rorty tells
the story of the two camps fighting each other on ethical questions like the status of human
rights. The two battling parties are the metaphysicians on the one hand and Nietzsche – he is
on his own – on the other hand. There is a third group, which overlooks the battlefield. If they
were not sent by any divine power to perform as official spectators, one could say that they
were the theorists in the most classical meaning of the word. However, this third party is
completely independent; Rorty calls the members of this party “the pragmatists”; and he is
one of them.
The metaphysicians (i.e., “philosophers who see morals as resting on metaphysics”)
speak confidently. They talk big in order to ground notions as “inalienable human rights,”
“the honor of the family,” and “the fatherland in danger” on “something like the will of God
or the nature of humanity.”

This metaphysical suggestion is vulnerable to Nietzschean suggestions that both God and
human rights are superstitions – contrivances put forward by the weak to protect themselves
against the strong. Whereas metaphysicians reply to Nietzsche by asserting that there is a

47
 ‘rational basis’ for belief in God or in human rights, pragmatists reply by saying that there is
nothing wrong with contrivances. (Rorty 1999: 84).

Why do the pragmatists say there is nothing wrong with contrivances? Is it because
contrivances are very pragmatic? They can indeed help one deal with the threats to life. If
God does not exist – for Rorty this is a certainty (Rorty 1984: 49) – one would better invent
one if it can bring you fulfillment. In the utilitarian sense, such a fictive God could be a source
of happiness, and consequently, preaching about such a God would be a moral thing to do.
And what about human rights? As long as people believe in it and act in accordance with this
fiction, suffering might be minimalized.

The pragmatist can cheerfully agree with Nietzsche that the idea of human
brotherhood would only occur to the weak – to the people being shoved around by the
brave, strong, happy warriors whom Nietzsche idolizes. (Rorty 1999: 84).

In other words, Rorty does not consider this as an argument against the pragmatic power of
the notion of human rights. Let this notion be a contrivance born out of passion; fact is that it
stopped many powerful men from harassing people and bullying them around.

Once you drop the distinction between reason and passion, you no longer discriminate against
a good idea because of its origins. You classify ideas according to their relative utility rather
than by their sources.
Pragmatists think that the quarrel between rationalist metaphysicians and Nietzsche is
without interest. They grant to Nietzsche that reference to human rights is merely a convenient
way of summarizing certain aspects of our real or proposed practices. (…) To speak of human
rights is to explain our actions by identifying ourselves with a community of like-minded
persons – those who find it natural to act in a certain way. (Ibid.).

1.3. Problems

Rorty’s “ethics” follows from his “physics.” In other words, he believes epistemic
justification in general, normative justification in particular, vis-à-vis reality, grounds what he
says about morality. However, his Darwinian and non-dualist account of “a world without
substances or essences,” raises several problems.
In all his writings, there seems to be just one “world” or “nature.” Still, he writes about
it as if there were substantial individuals and things in it. It seems that he is not aware of the
difficulties this can cause. For instance, what does he mean by ‘increasing our sensitivity to
the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people’?
Who are those other sorts of people? Does he mean individuals? If so, how is this
reconcilable with his conviction that language, the self, and the world are contingent and that
48
there are no substances but only fictions (also in modern physics)?
Is it not an anomaly to claim that moral progress is the increase of sensitivity for other
individuals? After all, sensitivity presupposes a subject and solidarity an object. If moral
subjects and objects are deprived of a substance called “self,” what is solidarity then?
Moreover, why – given his Darwinian perspective, according to which there is only a gradual
difference between humans and other animals – does his call for solidarity not include all
sentient beings?

It seems that there are at least three problems in Rorty’s approach:

1. Contingency: Why should we care?

If everything is a product of evolutional coincidence, so is our morality. If there is no
rational foundation for our moral needs and only an emotional basis for our desires for
a world without cruelty, what then is the significance of engagement with the struggle
for a better world? Would this be only a matter of accidental preferences, or is
morality more than the subjective adaptation to a particular state of affairs? How
should moral engagement be taken seriously without a certain foundation? A
metaphysical one is out of the question, but maybe there is some kind of moral nature.
Moreover, could this nature be qualified without the foundationalist burdens of
prescriptivism?
2. Irony: How do we persuade others to also care?
How is, according to Rorty, normativity possible when his moral appeal to solidarity
is only a matter of taste? Rortyan irony is a kind of wisdom, an attitude toward the
awareness of total contingency. However, is it wise enough for the liberal cause? Is
the liberal ironist not doomed to fail in convincing her fellow humans that liberal goals
are worth fighting for? If she has only poetry and the art of the novel and of the
reportage to rely on, then the fact remains that the anti-liberals also make use of those
tools to promote their own program. What means other than the arts do liberals have to
present their case as something true?
3. Solidarity: For whom should we care?
Rorty’s approach is ethnocentric. How can our we-group be extended to a universal
us? Is a global ethic possible? For the project of building a less cruel world to succeed,
greater solidarity among citizens is paramount. Irony helps to broaden communities so
that its members have a greater sense of empathy with each other. However, how long
will this empathy last if the individual is constantly called upon to show solidarity?

49
 Would it not be likely that a certain solidarity fatigue would then set in? Would the
individual desire for autonomy not start to backfire at some point? How does one
prevent the story of absolute individual autonomy from supplanting the story of a
global solidarity?

For these three problems, I will search for possible clarifications in several important Western
interpretations of the writings belonging to Madhyamaka.
For problem 1 (contingency), I study on the basis of some leading scholars the Buddhist
notions of anātman (non-self) and śūnyatā (emptiness); I will suggest that Western
interpretations of the Mādhyamikan approach to the Buddhist concept of emptiness can
potentially clarify a non-foundationalist ethic. According to this teaching, impeccable
behavior manifests as a consequence of the total awareness of śunyatā. Furthermore, I will
look into the interpretations of Huntington, Garfield, and Siderits of the Mādhyamikan
teachings of Double Truth to present the bodhisattva as the figure who has realized these
teachings completely.
For problem 2 (irony), I will discuss prajñā as the special wisdom of the bodhisattva,
who knows how to deal with all the troubles, tribulations, and hardships of the world
(saṃsāra). Her wisdom enables her to communicate salvifically in any given situation
(upāya). I think that if Rortyan irony were to be influenced by the notion of upāya, the liberal
cause could be supported and ennobled.
For problem 3 (solidarity), the Western interpretation of the notion of karuṇā
(“compassion” or “care”) is presented. Unlike the ironic pragmatist, the bodhisattva is able to
break down any boundary with others. Her “great compassion” (mahākaruṇā) is not a result
of ethics as ethical theory but is a manifestation of wisdom. The nature of the bodhisattva’s
impeccability turns out to be, what I call transmoral. Transmorality is the manifestation of the
perfectly realized emptiness, which transcends any personal morality and, therefore, also
overcomes ethnocentrism.
Problem 1 will be addressed in Chapter Three, problem 2 in Chapter Four, and problem
3 in Chapter Five.
To be clear: In this dissertation, I will not argue that a Western interpretation of
Madhyamaka can solve the aforementioned problems but that it can give us new perspectives
that can serve as possible keys to solutions. These new perspectives might generate new ways
of defending the liberal ethic. Rortyanism and Madyamaka, as understood by contemporary
Western philosophers, could function as “rootstock” and “scion” in the technique of graftage,

50
a metaphor of constructing new visions.
Before we move on to our search for new perspectives, we need to elaborate on the
differences between the concepts of ethic, ethics, and metaethics, for it is not entirely clear
what some authors mean when they say that Rorty has his own ethics. One might think that he
defies ethics in the same manner as Nietzsche did. Or could Rorty’s pragmatism be
considered a non-foundationalist ethics? And does his appeal to solidarity result from his
ethical thought, or is his ethics an offspring of his desire for solidarity? And what does Rorty
himself mean when he, for instance, advocates an “ethics without universal obligations”
(Rorty 2021: 7-143)? I am inclined to suspect that he refers to an advocacy for a liberal ethic.
However, is this advocacy philosophical or pre-philosophical? Almost the same goes for
Buddhist ethics. It is not always clear what Western Buddhist scholars mean by “ethics.” Is it
ethical theory, the religious discourse on moral and disciplinary precepts, or metaethics?
Therefore, in Chapter Two, we explore conceptual clarification of these terms so that we are
well equipped for Part Two of this dissertation.

51
Chapter Two:
ETHICS

Chapter overview

We have discussed the issue of moral non-foundationalism. Before we delve into the
Madhyamaka outlook on the relationship between ontology and morality in order to move
forward in our project of clarifying philosophical problems around Rorty’s concepts of
contingency, irony, and solidarity, we have to discuss the difficulty of the concept of ethics
and of ethic. This is followed by the discussion of metaethics since the debates between moral
foundationalists and non- or antifoundationalists belong to the metaethical discourse. After
that, I discuss in seven subsections several difficulties of Buddhist (meta)ethics. First, is it
possible to compare Buddhist ethics with any of the systems of ethical theory in the West?;
second, was moral philosophy practiced in the intellectual traditions of historical Indian
Buddhism?; third, is Buddhist ethics based on the law of karma?; fourth, what are the
challenges in constructing a Madhyamaka ethical theory; fifth, how solid is Śāntideva’s
argument for the ethic of altruism?; sixth, is free will an issue in the Western philosophical
account of Buddhist ethics?

2.1. “Ethics,” “ethic,” and “morality”

In May 2022, the book The Ethics of Richard Rorty (Dieleman, McClean, Showler 2022) was
published. It contains diverse and critical reflections of different authors on Rorty’s
contributions to ethics, ‘an aspect of his thought that has been relatively neglected.’ In their
introduction, Paul Showler and Susan Dieleman outline four traditional ethical notions Rorty
rejects: moral foundationalism, categorical imperatives, moral principles, and philosophical
expertise. I think it is highly controversial to claim that Rorty has an ethics. He certainly is not
an ethicist. But what is ethics?
In the English language, it has basically three meanings. The first is the disciplined
attempt to answer the question, “How ought we to live and what constitutes a good life?”; the
results of this attempt can be divided into action-based theories and character/virtue-based
theories. The second meaning is that of a set of values and norms, or specifically a set of

52
principles of behavior in a certain community of people, e.g., a company or a professional
group. The third meaning is a set of moral issues concerning a particular activity, e.g.,
euthanasia.
In the present discourse, I use the concept “ethics” in the first meaning as a referral to
the philosophical discipline which deals with the question, “how should we act32?” The
synonym for “ethics” then is “moral33 philosophy.” It concerns matters that do not belong to
the domain of “what is” but to the domain of “what ought to be.” Since only persons are
capable of making this distinction, ethics is only involved with the behavior of persons;
persons are usually defined as beings that can think and are capable of making considerate
choices. While ethology is a study of behavior, ethics is only interested in moral behavior, i.e.,
behavior as a result of autonomy or – according to some – of free will.
In contrast with unfree behavior, moral behavior can be good or bad34. These
qualifications cannot be given to behavior resulting from a natural necessity. For instance,
breathing under normal circumstances is amoral35 and, therefore, cannot be qualified as either
good or bad36. However, if I were to hold my breath as a kind of self-sacrificing protest
against some imposed measure, then breathing would be moral.
Ethics can be descriptive and prescriptive. A descriptive ethical discourse not only
describes how persons talk about good and bad, but also problematizes it. Furthermore, its
business is to present the diverse philosophical theories on moral issues systematically.
Prescriptive ethics, on the other hand, tries to find out how one should act. Through
reasoning and arguments, prescriptive ethics attempts to make sense of what makes certain
actions right, as well as what constitutes admirable character traits. It tries to determine
philosophically what we ought to do (and to think, to say, to omit) or not, and why, for both
general and specific situations. Accordingly, prescriptive ethics provides both a moral
imagination and a theory of normativity for autonomous individuals and social groups to live
by; hence it is also called “normative ethics.”
Now, based on the theories within the general field of normative ethics, philosophers

32
The word ‘act’ is used here in the broadest sense; it also refers to thinking, speaking and omitting.
33
The Latin equivalent of the Greek ἦθος (ethos) is mos (pl. mores); they both mean ‘custom,’ ‘habit.’
34
Bad behavior is often qualified as immoral.
35
‘Amoral’ (= ‘not moral’) refers to a quality that does not belong to the ‘ought to’-domain; ‘immoral’ does
belong to this domain.
36
Also used is ‘wrong.’

53
can apply such to a whole range of issues, thereby engaging in the philosophical discipline of
applied ethics37. There are many branches of applied ethics, including medical ethics;
corporate ethics; sexual ethics; environmental ethics, etc. Although, it must be said that there
is also the possibility to stick to a sheer descriptive way of doing applied ethics, the value of
which is, of course, only academic.
The word “ethics” is originally a plural. The plural form referred to a plurality of issues,
in this case, moral or ethical issues. Eventually, “ethics” in the sense of moral philosophy
became a singular noun; however, “ethics” has also remained the plural form of “ethic.”
One might argue that Rorty’s work contains an ethic but not an ethics, in the
aforementioned “first meaning” of the word. As a pragmatist he is not searching for moral
truth. Moreover, he rejects the possibility of gaining moral knowledge. Nevertheless, that
does not mean that his work lacks moral commitment. On the contrary, one might even call
him a moralist38. As an ironist, he is committed to the creation of a private self, and as a
liberal he longs for a world without cruelty, suffering, and enslavement. I would say that
Rorty’s moral commitments are not so much the result of an ethics but rather amounts to a
self-chosen ethic.
An ethic is a consistent individual or collective collection of values and norms. The
consistency in this collection may depend on ethics, but it also could be pre-philosophical. In
Rorty’s case, his liberal ethic is not the result of having found a moral law wherein the liberal
cause is inscribed. However, the ethic of creating a private self is standing on the platform of
the anti-representationalist awareness that no final vocabulary is definite and always
doubtable.
The search for arguments by which we try to justify the values of an ethic is called
ethics. According to Rorty, this search has always been the heart of all philosophy. In the
history of philosophy, he argued in one of his early papers, “Philosophy as Ethics” (Rorty
2020: 13-24), many branches of philosophy became independent disciplines as soon as these
scientiae ceased to be interested in moral values. For example, natural philosophy became
physics when scholars realized that the search for natural laws was irrelevant to finding moral
principles and their foundation. Thus Rorty predicts that eventually, even logic will no longer

37
Applied ethics is a relatively new discipline in philosophy as it only just began getting off the ground in the
late 1960’s and early 1970’s (Singer 1979).
38
Richard Bernstein says of Rorty: ‘I think there are ways in which people tend to caricature Rorty. I think
what’s at the heart of Rorty is that he’s a great moralist in the best tradition of Dewey, and Whitman, and
Emerson; and people frequently don’t see that. They think he's flip and indifferent and insensitive.’
(McReynolds 2007a: 4:35-4:51).

54
be taught by philosophers; in time it will be done by mathematicians. According to Rorty, that
logic still belongs to the philosophical enterprise has to do with the strong presumption among
logicians that the Law of Thought is somehow related to the Law of Being and the Moral
Law.
An upheaval in the history of “philosophy as ethics” is the modern conviction that
values cannot be validly inferred from facts39. As a result, “mother philosophy” lost many of
its scientific “children” because the knowledge of how the world is no longer produced a valid
knowledge of how to behave.
Rorty distinguishes two currents that relate to this new situation in their own way:
positivism and existentialism. The positivists believed that ethics as finding arguments to
justify values is no longer possible. The existentialists, on the other hand, considered the
cutting of the link between ethics and ontology as a liberation; the “liberated” ethics referred
to the realm of the subjective. Yet, the issue remained unsatisfactory on both accounts. The
positivists got the reputation of not taking moral issues seriously, and the existentialists would
have opened the way for arbitrariness and irrationality. Rorty agrees with both critiques, but
he holds that both the positivists and the existentialists were right in claiming that the “ought”
is not inferrable from the “is.” Rorty comes up with a solution borrowed from William James.
According to his pragmatist definition of truth, Rorty says, “p is true” equals “p is a
proposition which one ought to accept.” That would imply, Rorty thinks, that it is logically
valid if the “is” would be inferred from the “ought” since every “is” is, according to the
aforementioned definition of truth, rewritable in an “ought.” An imperative cannot be inferred
from a fact while inferring an imperative from another imperative is not necessarily silly.
Rorty holds that every fact is always a “story.” There are no plain facts because they are
always the results of interpretations of data. So, there are always different stories to choose
from. It is an “ought statement” that determines which story is picked. ‘The one we pick is
determined by the purposes we want the story to fulfill, and our purposes are regulated by the
ethical imperative under which we are working’ (ibid. 22). In this sense, the whole of modern
science is a story – ‘a story which satisfies the values of simplicity, elegance, and ability to
produce practical technological consequences’ (ibid. 22).
The history of philosophy shows, according to Rorty, a long series of valid inferences

39
Rorty says this view was made precise and explicit by Kant. But before him it was Hume who first articuled it:
‘For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation,’tis necessary that it shou’d be
observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether
inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.’ (Hume
1978).

55
from imperatives to facts. But they were disguised as inferences from facts to imperatives. For
example, says Rorty, what Plato’s Republic held was not: “There are Forms, therefore, we
should live the Life of Reason” but: “We should live the Life of Reason, therefore we should
believe in Forms” (ibid.: 23). This puts our history of moral non foundationalism in a different
perspective: Plato did not ground moral values in a transcendent reality. ‘What Plato was
ultimately concerned about (…) was to commend a way of life. Part of a way of life is the set
of things one says about what the world is like – one’s science, or one’s metaphysics, or both
together. But this part is not the foundation of the whole.’ (ibid.) So what Rorty says here is
that Plato’s metaphysics was actually a product of his imagination functioning as a premise
for an ethic.
What are the consequences of the question of Rortyan “ethics?” If ethics is the business
of finding arguments to justify moral values, then Rorty would say that such a query could
only fail if those arguments are inferences from the way the world is. However, if James is
right, statements about how the world is could be reformulated into imperatives that point you
in the direction of an ideal world.
We know what Rorty’s ideal world would be like. Decades after writing “Philosophy as
Ethics,” Rorty published his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. In it, he presents himself as a
proponent of the ethic of self-creation and an advocate of the liberal cause. His ethics,
however, is not an ethical theory but a narrative in which he refers to edifying philosophers,
such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida, who rewrite the story of philosophy, and to
novelists such as Orwell and Nabakov, who show what a world would look like if liberal hope
would be crushed. The books of the first group, Rorty says, help us ‘to become more
autonomous,’ and the books of the latter ‘to become less cruel’ (Rorty 1989: 141).
Next, we will discuss the term “morality.” It can be used descriptively and normatively
(Gert 2002). I use it descriptively because Rorty has no ethical theory, and he thinks
constructing moral norms based upon philosophical reflection is nonsense. He adopted
Dewey’s proposal to reconstruct the distinction between morality and prudence (Rorty 1999:
73). Both are ways for people to adapt to their environment. These adaptations are dictated by
evolution. Prudence is a routine attitude toward others and the environment; morality is a non-
routine attitude. Morality arises when prudence is no longer adequate and it occurs when
controversy arises.

On Dewey’s account, the prudence-morality distinction is, like that between custom and law, a
distinction of degree – the degree of need for conscious deliberation and explicit formulation
of precepts – rather than a distinction of kind. (Ibid.).

56
In this chapter, I consider morality to be the capacity of human beings to allow themselves
individually and collectively to be led by non-legal rules for their behavior. By mentioning
“non-legal” rules, I intend to show that there are guidelines that come “from within” and have
no official intersubjective status, such as laws, regulations, company rules, etc. Herein, “from
within” is a metaphor for the origin of rules other than those imposed upon individuals to
create order in human communities. Moreover, I do not mean to stipulate here that an inner
core, like a soul, a spirit, or conscience, leads individuals. However, at the same time, I also
do not intend to deny the possibility of those “inner” agents.
Is “morality” then a meaningful concept if the moral agent lacks reality? Yes, but only
conventionally. Morality is a phenomenon that belongs to the so-called conventional world,
where everybody is socially bound to accept that things exists individually. In Madhyamaka,
according to Garfield, individuality is ultimately just a convention that services
communication (Garfield 2002: 175). As we shall see in the next chapter, the ultimate
(paramārtha) can only be experienced through the conventional (saṃvṛti) and the
conventional can only be understood as conventional from the enlightened perspective of the
ultimate.
Rorty’s pragmatism is intended as a disenchanting no-nonsense discourse, yet at the
same, it is unintendedly referencing the ultimate. From his anti-metaphysical outlook, he is
ironically – in the usual and not the Rortyan sense – looking out for the main reason why
metaphysicians practice metaphysics: to find the ultimate. For him, the ultimate is everything
that is contingent. As I will show, it would have helped him to have used the insights of the
Mādhyamikas in order to be more armed against the harsh criticism of being a relativist. Had
he appealed to such, then he could have consistently maintained that moral categories of right
and wrong can be applied, provided that it is related to saṃvṛti.
Conclusion: ultimately, there is no morality because it is a capacity of individuals, and
individuality – presupposing substantiality – is only phenomenally and conventionally
experienced as real.

2.2. Metaethics

Next to ethics – in the singular form of the word – there is metaethics. Whereas descriptive
ethicists study moral thought and behavior, metaethicists study the concept of morality itself.
In addition, it also investigates the peculiar nature of moral discussions and asks whether

57
moral principles are in some way based upon non-moral values or maybe facts. In light of the
previous chapter, the discussion between moral foundationalists and non- or
antifoundationalists is a metaethical one.
Metaethics does not provide a substantive answer to the question “what is good or
evil?” because its interests are of a deeper level: “what is the possibility condition of this
question?” and “what is the meaning of the good-evil dichotomy?”
There are several ways to classify the different metaethical views. One of the leading
philosophers working in the field of mapping contemporary metaethics is Alexander Miller.
Following his classification (Miller 2003: 8), every metaethical theory is an answer to several
levels of questions. The question at the first level is: “Do moral judgments express beliefs?”
The ones who answer “yes” are called cognitivists and the ones who answer “no” are non-
cognitivists. The term cognitivism is derived from the Latin word for “knowledge” (cognitio).
A cognitivist is convinced that a moral judgment is truth-apt, meaning that one can have
knowledge of the goodness or the badness of an act. A non-cognitivist, on the other hand,
maintains that normative judgments, such as good or bad, cannot be known since they are
undergirded by sentiments, feelings, and emotions rather than facts or abstract principles.
While several different non-cognitivist theories exist, emotivism40 is perhaps the most well-
known. According to emotivism, moral judgments are just expressions of emotions and are,
therefore, not truth-apt. I contend that Richard Rorty, without really being involved in the
metaethical debate, gravitates to emotivism.
The next level of questions is framed for the adherents of cognitivism: “Are moral
judgments at least sometimes true?” Herein, Miller gives an account of John Mackie, who
answers that moral judgments are always false because they conform to his “Error Theory.” In
short, error theory maintains that human subjects have no epistemological means to have
access to so-called moral facts or properties41.
The third level of questioning, according to Miller, is then set up, again, for
cognitivists: “Do the beliefs which are expressed by moral judgments concern facts that are
constitutively independent of human opinion?” Based upon this level of questioning, he
reveals a fourth level of questioning which is framed to the ones who answer the former level

40
See: Ayer (1936), Stevenson (1944).
41
One of Mackie’s arguments for this was the so-called “argument of queerness”: ‘If there were objective
values, they would be things of a very strange kind, completely different from anything else in the universe.
However, we do not have a philosophically satisfactory account of either the existence of such things or how we
might learn about them. Therefore, we shouldn't believe in objective values’ (Mackie 1977: 38).

58
of questioning affirmatively: Are those facts natural facts? The metaethicists who say “yes”
are called naturalists, and those who say no non-naturalists. ‘According to a naturalist, a moral
judgement is rendered true or false by a natural state of affairs, and it is this natural state of
affairs to which a true moral judgement affords us access,’ says Miller (2003: 4). He uses G.
E. Moore's characterization of “a natural state of affairs”: ‘[T]hat which is the subject matter
of the natural sciences and also of psychology’ (Moore [1903] 1993: 92). Moore, by the way,
was a non-naturalist cognitivist.
The last level of questioning, according to Miller’s tree, is laid out for the naturalists:
“Are moral facts reducible to other natural facts?” The metaethicists who say “no” are often
called Cornell realists because three42 of them got their PhDs at Cornell University. They
maintain that moral facts are natural facts in their own right. Those who answer “no” are
called naturalist reductionists. They claim that ‘moral vocabulary is analyzable in terms of
non-moral vocabulary or which claim that moral properties are identical to non-moral natural
properties as a matter of synthetic fact’ (Miller 2003: 139). The Cornell realists, however,
argue ‘that we can view moral properties and facts as part of the natural fabric of the world
for the same reason that we can view, for example, physical, chemical or biological facts as
part of the fabric of the natural world, namely, that they pull their weight in explanatory
theories’ (Miller 2003: 140).
A classification other than Miller’s is based upon the validity question of moral
judgments. There are two first-level positions: moral nihilism and moral standardism. Moral
nihilism defends the position of amorality (“nothing is inherently moral or immoral”),
whereas moral standardism holds that there are moral standards. On a second level, there is
the division of standardism into moral univeralism and moral relativism. Moral universalists
are convinced that moral standards have universal validity: they are valid for every human
being, no matter the culture or situation of the moral subject. On the other hand, moral
relativists claim that the validity of a moral standard is dependent on social, cultural, and
psychological conditions. Andrew Fisher makes a distinction between agent relativism and
speaker relativism. The first holds that ‘someone’s action is right or wrong depending on his
or her moral framework’; the second that an action is right or wrong depending on the moral
framework of the one who judges the action (Fisher 2011: 120).

42
Richard Boyd, Nicholas Sturgeon, and David Brink.

59
2.3. Buddhist ethics

In the last two decades, Buddhist ethics has become a much-discussed field in the West. This
is partly due to the important role the electronic Journal of Buddhist Ethics (JBE), founded in
1994, has played in sparking academic interest among scholars.
However, we must ask, to what does Buddhist ethics refer? It is not always clear what
is meant by the disciplinary label “Buddhist ethics.” Is it a reference to what the Buddha said
about right or wrong behavior? Is it sīla43, the group of the three elements of the Noble
Eightfold Path (right speech, right action, right livelihood)? Is it the Buddhist reflection on
sīla, systemized by descriptive ethicists? Is it the collection of normative theories of Buddhist
thinkers? Or is Buddhism itself already ethics, just as Rorty called Western philosophy ethics?
Notwithstanding these general questions, if one reads through the titles of the articles in JBE,
one will quickly discover that alsomuch has been written on the Buddhist stance(s) on matters
like the environment, human rights, life and death, and medical issues.

2.3.1. Does Buddhist ethics exist?

In his article “Does ‘Buddhist Ethics’ exist?” (Cowherds 2016: 119-140), Marc Siderits notes
that in all the traditions of Indian philosophy, there is little that could be recognized as ethics
in the sense of ethical theory44. An ethical theory is an attempt to justify moral values
rationally, answer questions of moral motivation, and provide solid criteria for the solution of
moral dilemmas. Although such theories are absent, Siderits believes there is enough material
in those traditions to construct a theory retrospectively. However, he asks himself ‘why it
might be that the work has not already been done’ (ibid.: 121). His answer to that question
begins with the observation that there is a focus on the same value that Aristotle held as the
main telos of life: eudaemonia. That focus could be seen as a starting point for ethical
theorizing. Siderits identifies three values that serve as eudemonic ends: kāma (sensual
pleasure), artha (material wealth and power), and dharma (virtue and good repute). The
ethical difficulty started once a fourth value was introduced in the ancient Indian quest for

43
Sanskrit: śīla
44
Garfield remarks on this: ‘When scholars say that there is little or no explicit ethical theory in Buddhist
literature, they have in mind the fact that there is little discussion of explicit metaethics. But when they look for
this kind of theorethical metaethics, these scholars may be overlooking in the wrong place. Path literature is what
fills this void, providing much of the explicit content and theoretical framework through which Buddhist moral
thinkers think about ethics.’ (Garfield 2022: 91). “Path literature” contains admonitions to follow and cultvate
paths. Garfield says that Buddhist authors use the path metaphor in a double sense: external (a way to go) and
internal (a way of living).

60
wholeness: mokṣa (liberation from the cycle of life). In Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and
Sikhism, this is still considered the supreme end for humans and non-human sentient beings.
The aim is to be liberated from the perpetual wheel of life, death, and rebirth (saṃsāra).
Achieving kāma, artha, and dharma produces a temporary removal of suffering, but those
who devote too much effort to them become attached to a state that actually perpetuates
eternal suffering. Hence: only mokṣa provides true happiness. What stands in the way of
achieving mokṣa is ignorance – Garfield calls it: “primal confusion” (Garfield 2015: 10). Only
the ones who know that their existence is merely a negligibly small link in an infinite series of
lives can get liberated from eternal suffering. And once one has gained this knowledge, why
should one be bothered with theorizing about one’s moral motivation? Siderits: ‘[T]here is a
very simple answer to the question of why one should be moral: because otherwise one is
certain to get something bad in return. Here it is important to be clear about the (virtually)
pan-Indian conception of karma’ (Cowherds 2016: 122). Later in this chapter, we will
elaborate more on karma ethics. However, for now, we can settle with what Siderits has to say
about the heart of karma theory: it ‘lies in the claim that every (intentional) action is the cause
of a latter fruit for the agent that takes the specific form of a feeling of pleasure, pain, or
indifference, this hedonic character of the fruit being determined by the moral character of the
action’ (ibid.).
So Siderits holds that there is little ethical theory in the Indian traditions because of the
widespread acceptance of the karmic causal laws. Still, there is another reason, he continues.
Concern with ethical theorizing may seem to distract the moral subject from the heart of the
matter: deliverance from bondage to the wheel of rebirth. Because ethical theorists might tend
to deal with individual cases in which moral motives – characterized in terms of acquiring
pleasure and avoiding pain – conflict with liberation. Siderits gives this example of such a
case: ‘an act of noble self-sacrifice might win one rebirth as a god; but gods are usually
depicted as not particularly interested in attaining liberation’ (ibid. 124).
It seems that classical Indian philosophy can fit in the mold of eudaimonistic ethics.
However, Siderits continues, this is not true for Indian Buddhism. The reason for this is the
doctrine of anātman. Buddhism agrees with the other Indian traditions that humans are
suffering because they identify with something they are not, namely the psycho-physical
complex that is thought to benefit from pleasure and to be harmed by pain. However, ‘the
mistake’ – that causes bondage to saṃsāra – ‘lies not in what we identify with, but that we
identify with anything at all’ (ibid.: 125). The first step to liberation, the Buddha teaches, is to
overcome ignorance. The knowledge that has to be gained is that suffering is caused by the

61
illusion of a self. A person is no more than ‘the occurrence of a complex causal series of
impermanent, impersonal psycho-physical elements’ (ibid.: 125). However, says Siderits, the
idea of being a person can be useful fiction as long as it is not taken too seriously. Acting as if
one were a person, one could calculate the karmic fruit of one’s behavior. This yields two
dangers: it causes existential suffering and drives a wedge between prudential and moral
reasons.
The first danger, Siderits explains, is that the search for happiness causes attachment to
the narrative making the subject act as if he were a substantial individual with a series of
afterlives. In that case, the ‘quest for happiness turns out to be a hedonic Ponzi scheme’ (ibid.
126).
The second danger is the eclipse of the essence of Buddhist liberation: it is not about
the minimization of your suffering; it is about the deliverance of suffering itself. Only the
work done for the sake of the latter counts as moral. Thereover are no real controversies;
hence, Siderits holds, ‘the Buddhist tradition does not have very much to contribute to the
current discussion in ethical theory (ibid.: 127).
Jan Westerhoff, however, notes that Nāgārjuna did produce ‘a considerable amount of
discussion of ethical topics’45; he distinguishes three kinds of statements on morality in the
Madhyamaka texts (Westerhoff 2009: 213). The first one discusses Buddhist doctrine in
matters of behavior. The second kind deals with the difficulty of anātman46 (non-self). The
third kind of statements reflects upon the consequences in moralibus of the Madhyamaka
view. If there is no difference between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra, as is claimed in some schools of
Mahāyāna Buddhism, then there is also no difference between the liberated and the non-
liberated state, then why would one bother advancing philosophical inquiry into ethics
proper? Westerhoff says that most of Nāgārjuna’s ethical remarks fall into the first and some
also into the second kind. ‘Remarks dealing with the ethical repercussions of emptiness (…)
are relatively rare in the works of Nāgārjuna. Analysis belonging to the third class; those
dealing with the specific ethical consequences of Madhyamaka thought are virtually absent’
(ibid.: 215).
Westerhoff continues by mentioning a very relevant issue: ‘(…) the question to which

45
Westerhoff (2009) says that most of Nāgārjuna’s remarks on ethics are found, apart from the Ratnāvalī and
some verses of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, in works as the Suhṛllekha and the Shes rab sdong bu (“Tree of
Wisdom”).

46
Sanskrit; Pāli: anattā.

62
extent there is a fundamental relationship between the Madhyamaka theory of emptiness and
the ethical theory of compassion centered on the ideal of the bodhisattva’ (ibid.).
Jay L. Garfield, in his book Engaging Buddhism, also speaks about “Buddhist moral
theory.” As a member of the Cross-Cultural Hermeneutics School47, he is uncomfortable
putting Western labels on Buddhist ethics. According to him, Buddhists have a different
perspective from which they evaluate behavior. ‘Buddhist moral theorists see ethics as
concerned not primarily with actions, their consequences, obligations, sentiments or human
happiness, but rather with the nature of experience’ (Garfield 2015: 279). He thinks that
Buddhist ethics is a moral phenomenology concerned with ‘the transformation of our
experience of the world and hence our overall comportment to it’ (ibid.). The reason that it is
impossible to assimilate Buddhist moral thought to some system of Western ethics is because
of the doctrine of pratītya-samutpāda, says Garfield. ‘Thinking about the good from a
Buddhist perspective begins from the first principle of Buddhist metaphysics48 – the fact of
thoroughgoing interdependence. (…) [F]rom a Buddhist perspective, every event and every
phenomenon is causally and constitutively dependent upon countless other events and
phenomena. Moral reflection on action must take all of these dimensions of dependence into
account. To focus merely on motivation, or on character, or on the action itself, or on its
consequences for others, would be to ignore much that is important.’ (ibid.: 280). Many
Western ethicists take ‘a kind of ontological and axiological individualism for granted in
several respects’ (ibid.). Firstly, in Western moral theories, ‘agency is taken to reside in
individual actors, with an attendant focus on responsibility as a central area of moral concern’
(ibid.). This is incompatible with the doctrine of anātman. Secondly, Garfield continues49,
‘interest is taken au fond as an individual matter, and even when the self is consciously
deconstructed50 (…), interest is taken to attach to individual stages of selves’. Thirdly: ‘[A]
conflict between egoistic and altruistic interest and motivations is taken to structure ethical
deliberation and acting on egoistic motives regarded as prima facie rational, if not morally
defensible or ultimately rational.’ The doctrine of pratītya-samutpāda, however, shows that

47
See: Introduction, Methodology.
48
The use of the word “metaphysics” here is problematic, certainly when it is applied to Madhyamaka thought,
because you might define this school of Buddhist thinking as antimetaphysics. More on this matter in Chapter 5.
49
Ibid.
50
Garfield is referring to the work of British philosopher Derek Parfit (1942-2017), who said that there cannot be
found any adequate criterion of personal identity; persons do not exist apart from their components (Parfit 1971).

63
egoism is ‘fundamentally and obviously irrational’ (ibid.: 281).
Bronwyn Finnigan and Koji Tanaka, two members of The Cowherds51, write in
Moonshadows about Buddhist ethics in the context of the Doctrine of the Two Truths (see
Chapter Three and Four of this dissertation). They question whether Mādhyamikas were
concerned with the justification of the moral precepts. They conclude that such was hardly the
case. ‘Madhyamaka ethics is distinctive in its explicit focus on the fulfillment of ethical 52
precepts in conduct rather than their justification. Indeed, the fact there is little systematic
ethical theorizing in Madhyamaka suggests an implicit recognition of the limitations of
justification in ethics’ (Cowherds 2011: 227). More reflections on Madhyamaka ethics will be
given in subsection 3.5.

2.3.2. Karma

Overcoming duḥkha is not just overcoming suffering in the short span of one life, but it is a
project that does not end at one’s death. In Buddhism, the perpetual cycle of life, death, and
rebirth is the wheel that sustains suffering. The Dharma offers a way out from what is called
saṃsāra. This escape possibility presupposes the assumption that there is something reborn
after death, causing the suffering to start all over again. The degree of suffering in the next life
depends on the moral quality of all the subject’s actions, omissions, words, and thoughts. This
religious concept is generally accepted in most of the Indian traditions. It is called karma, a
term that ‘plays a role in any Buddhist moral discussion’ (Garfield 2015: 284).
Siderits writes:

The Sanskrit term karma literally means “action.” What is nowadays referred to somewhat
loosely as the theory of karma is, speaking more strictly, the view that there is a causal
relationship between action (karma) and “fruit” (phala), the latter being an experience of
pleasure, pain or indifference for the agent of the action. This is the view that the Buddha
appears to have accepted in its most straightforward form. Actions are said to be of three
types: bodily, verbal and mental. The Buddha insists, however, that by action is meant not the
movement or change involved, but rather the volition or intention that brought about the
change. As Gombrich (2009) points out, the Buddha’s insistence on this point reflects the
transition from an earlier ritualistic view of action to a view that brings action within the
purview of ethics. For it is when actions are seen as subject to moral assessment that intention
becomes relevant. (Siderits 2023).

To understand the Buddhist doctrine of karma, the concepts of anātman and

pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination) are of great importance. The idea that there is an

51
See: Introduction, Status Quaestionis.
52
Instead of “ethical”, I would have written “moral.”

64
“I,” a delineated person, is already a fundamental delusion about the nature of reality. What
people call their self or soul is instead a constantly changing interplay of the five groups that
constitute the individual existence (Pāli: pañcupādānakkhandhā): the material body with its
sense organs; the sensations; the perception of the world; the mental formations (intensions,
will impulses, desires, and interests); and consciousness (Finnigan 2023: 6). From this
constant change, the regularity of the dependent origination results: each action forms the
world anew, on the material and mental level. Karma, in this sense, refers to the attachment to
the phenomena of the world and the thoughts and deeds that follow from them. All actions
and thoughts cause karma and lead to further entanglements in the world. The ultimate aim of
the Buddhist practitioner is to stop generating karma and, thus, to leave saṃsāra behind. The
first step in attaining this is realizing that the so-called Three Mental Poisons (Goodman
2021) cause this attachment: moha (confusion, ignorance), rāga (greed, desire), and dveṣa
(hate, aversion). A list of three “antidotes” is often presented: prajñā (wisdom), dāna
(generosity), and maitrī (lovingkindness); these virtues yield positive karma, meaning that it
can compensate for negative karma.
The question is: how rational is this belief in karma? Siderits (2007) tries to explain this
by making three points about the Buddhist attitude toward karma and rebirth. The first one
emphasizes that karma is not divine retribution for committed sins. ‘The laws of karma
basically have to do with receiving pleasant results for acting out of morally good motives,
and receiving painful results for acting with evil intentions’ (ibid.: 9). However, what is good,
and what is evil? There are two Sanskrit words that seem similar to what in the West would
be called “morally good.” Those words are kuśala and puṇya. The first one means originally
“skillful.” It is often translated as “virtuous” and “wholesome” (Cowherds 2016: 13). Puṇya is
called the action that ‘gives rise to happiness or otherwise favorable conditions in the future’
(ibid.); the most common translation is “merit”; and an alternative one is “karmic
fruitfulness.” The question here is: how can the skillfulness and merit of an action be
determined? A person who minimalizes her own suffering and that of another could be
qualified as someone who acts morally well. However, how do we know if someone’s action
is morally good in the sense that it generates “good karma?” Is that not cyclical?: an action is
meritorious because it brings karmic merit. Siderits says that the knowledge about karmic
merit is not commonly verifiable but seems to belong to the scope of the yogi (ibid.: 123).
One might also ask whether the question of good karma does not amount to a Buddhist
version of Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma: Is an action good because it has positive karmic
repercussions, or are the karmic repercussions good because the action is good? In other

65
words: is the law of karma the foundation for Buddhist ethics, or is an independent moral
principle the foundation of the law of karma? (Jones 2014).
In tackling this, one has to be aware that moral goodness is totally different from
obeying a ‘set of rules decreed by a cosmic ruler’ (Siderits 2007: 9). And karma is not about
the enforcement of those divine rules ‘by the cosmic police’ (ibid.). Siderits explains that the
law of karma is very different from juridical laws but can rather be best compared with a law
of physics such as gravity. Gombrich explains that, according to the Buddha, the “heaviness”
– if we stick to the metaphor of gravity – of an action is determined by the intention behind it
(Gombrich 2009: 13). If the intention of an agent (kartṛ) determins the karmic consequence of
her action, it seems that the law of karma is not the basis for ethics, but the other way round.
The second point Siderits makes is that ‘belief in rebirth does not serve the same
function that belief in an afterlife serves in many other religions’ (ibid.). Karma and rebirth
are not religious tenets that have a consoling function. Rebirth is not the same as reincarnation
in the sense that it gives the individual person a new chance to become happy. Rebirth is not a
happy opportunity; it is something that needs to be overcome since rebirth generates new
suffering and also redeath.
The third point has already been discussed; it says that the doctrine of karma seemed to
be commonly accepted by spiritual teachers before the time of Siddhartha Gautama, ‘and to
have been part of the common-sense conception of the world for most Indians for most of the
time that Buddhisme existed in India’(ibid.: 10). Siderits underscores that karma and rebirth
are not part of the Western common-sense worldview. If Buddhism is to be studied as
philosophy, one must ask for evidence for this doctrine. Indeed, uncritically adopting a
doctrine is not very philosophical. So what to do? Siderits answers this:

We will ask (among other things) of there are good reasons to believe it. If there not, we will
go on to see whether other important teachings of Buddhism would also have to go if this
doctrine were thrown overboard. This might come as a shock, particalrly of you think of a
person’s religion as something sacrosanct that others shouldn’t question. How can we criticize
beliefs that might turn out to be central to another person’s whole life? But someone who asks
this is forgetting something: Buddhist philosophers thought that their most important claims
should be subjected to rational scrutiny. This is what made them philosophers. They certainly
critized the views of other Buddhist philosophers. And there was a great deal of rational
criticism exchanged between the Buddhists and other Indian philosophers. (ibid.: 11).

Madhyamaka originated from the exchange of rational criticism between other Buddhist
schools. Its doctrine of emptiness gave karma and rebirth a new meaning. In Ābhidharmika
Buddhism, the system of scholastic reflection on the Dharma, the person as a moral subject is
a construct of the five aggregates; these so-called skandhas are built up from irreducible
66
entities, called dharmas. Dependent origination is the causal relationship between these
elemental constituents. ‘Insight, arising through the use of introspection and meditative
analysis, ascertains how these processes work in fine detail. This insight, in turn, liberates one
from the delusion of an autonomous person and thus from the grip of cyclic rebirth (Cowherds
2016: 185). However, Nāgārjuna, the first Mādhyamika, argues that nothing has inherent
existence (svabhāva), not even the dharmas. What are the consequences for his doctrine of
universal emptiness (śūnyavāda) for ethics? If there is ultimately nothing that has intrinsic
reality, what is it then that generates positive or negative karma? Or does the doctrine of
karma only refer to a conventional reality?

2.3.3. Madhyamaka ethics

Bronwyn Finnigan says in her article “Madhyamaka Ethics” (Finnigan 2018) that there are
two main loci of contemporary debate about the nature of Madhyamaka ethics. Such an ethics
has to be reconstructed because of the absence of systematic ethical theory in the works of the
historical Indian Mādhyamikas. The first locus queries whether śūnyavāda is consistent with a
commitment to systematic ethical distinctions. The second is about the metaphysical analysis
of anātman presented by Śāntideva53 in his poem Bodhicaryāvatāra. In this subsection, I only
discuss what Finnigan has to say about the first locus. Subsection 2.3.6 will deal with ethical
issues in the Bodhicaryāvatāra.
The moral values in Madhyamaka are centred around the bodhisattva ideal. ‘A
bodhisattva’, Finnigan explains, ‘is one who, motivated by compassion (karuṇā) toward the
suffering of others, has both committed to remaining in the realm of cyclic rebirth (saṃsāra)
in order to relieve all suffering (i.e., they have perfected bodhicitta) and has cultivated those
moral virtues or perfections (pāramitā) which enable them to enact this commitment’
(Finnigan 2018: 167). This definition already contains an ontolological difficulty. If a
bodhisatvva is described as “one” who is committed to help “others,” how does this not
conflict with śūnyavāda, the doctrine of emptiness? Ultimately, persons do not exist;
consequently, there are no bodhisattvas. However, as we shall see later in this dissertation,
Nāgārjuna presents in his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā a new view of the Ābhidharmikan doctrine
of the two truths: the conventional truth and the ultimate truth. Finnigan says that how best to

53
Śāntideva was an influential North Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist monk, who possibly lived in the 8th century
BCE. It is said that he was a Mādhyamika. According to Charles Goodman, Śāntideva was the only teacher of
the great Buddhist traditions whose work shows that he had been ‘engaged in sustained, general theoretical
reflection about the nature and source of moral normativity’ (Goodman 2017: 327). His Bodhicaryāvatāra
(‘Introduction to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life’, BCA) is ‘a religious and philosophical poem of great rhetorical
power’ (ibid.).

67
understand Nāgārjuna’s stance on these two truths is ‘enormously controversial’ and that it
has been the subject matter of considerable commentarial dispute in India and Tibet. At least
one interpretive issue is about the nature of Madhyamaka ethics. It concerns whether
Nāgārjuna’s reasoning does or does not establish a positive thesis as the result of a valid
argument. Bhāvaviveka (6th century CE) defended that it does; this view has come to be
known as Svātantrika Madhyamaka; Candrakīrti (7th century CE) defended that it does not, a
stance called Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka. ‘Later Tibetan Mādhyamika commentators bitterly
divide over how this distinction is best understood. While some consider it to be insubstantial,
reflecting a mere difference in rhetorical style, others maintain that it has substantive
philosophical import’ (ibid.: 164).
It is not always obvious, Finnigan explains, whether a disagreement is substantive or an
equivocation in assumed accounts. She individuates three distinct philosophical positions on
the nature of conventional truth and the possibilities of its rational and epistemic analysis that
have been attributed to Madhyamaka thinkers. In particular, she follows Tom Tillemans
(2016) in distinguishing two distinct philosophical positions that have been attributed to
Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka and which he respectively labels “typical Prāsaṅgika” and “atypical
Prāsaṅgika.” Thereafter, she contrast these positions to that of Svātantrika Madhyamaka,
which she interprets in the sense ascribed to Bhāvaviveka by the Tibetan master Tsongkhapa.
According to Finnigan, it seems that the historical Mādhyamikas did not consider
śūnyavāda to have any significant impact on ethical reasoning, but they also insisted that their
doctrine of emptiness does not entail moral nihilism. ‘But were they correct in this view?’
Finnigan asks. ‘What argument could be offered to support this conclusion? And how could
Mādhyamikas justify their assumed ethical distinctions?’ (Finnigan 2018: 167).
Finnigan starts by stating that it would not be consistent for Mādhyamikas if they would
qualify certain actions and thoughts as morally good or bad on an ultimate level, since
ultimately no action or thought possesses an essential property.

They nevertheless could (and often did) insist that ethical distinctions are a conventional
matter, where holding views about conventional reality is consistent with śūnyavāda. While
this might warrant the holding of ethical views, in general and as such, it does not yet provide
reasons for the specific ethical distinctions that Mādhyamikas endorse. What reason can a
Mādhyamika offer for why certain conventional actions, qualities and mental factors (e.g.,
compassion, generosity, refraining from murder) are to be considered conventionally good
while certain others (e.g., selfishness, envy, murder) are to be considered conventionally bad?
(ibid.).

68
Finnigan mentions the Sanskrit term lokaprasiddha, a concept used by the Prāsaṅgikas to
justify moral claims. It means ‘what is universally known’ or ‘generally established.’ Since
Madhyamaka originally is not about establishing positive theses as the result of valid
argumentation, what “the world” accepts to be true, must be accepted as saṃvṛtisatya
(conventional truth), the Prāsaṅgikas hold.
The Svātantrikas, on the other hand, claim that conventional truth only comes about
when legitimate epistemic means are deployed so that they reflect conventional truth
adequately. In measuring the quality of those epistemic means, one must again invoke the
concept of essentiality, which was rejected by Nāgārjuna in the first place.
The deployment of lokaprasiddha by the Prāsaṅgikas, however, as an ethical tool,
would lead to a conservatism that ‘undermines the possibility of critiquing the views of others
and revising one’s own’ (ibid.). However, if lokaprasiddha is used to determine that suffering
is bad and ought to be prevented, it might confirm what the Buddha initially taught.
Nevertheless, the Buddha’s teachings would then not be a correction of the widespread
illusion of ātman, but only true because they reflect ordinary beliefs. That undermines ‘the
universality and stability’ of the Dharma, Finnigan says.
Is there also an atypical Prāsaṅgika deployment of lokaprasiddha? There might,
Finnigan says. Such a deployment amounts to a more liberal approach to common knowledge;
it might admit the rational assessment of conventional claims by epistemic standards accepted
by the majority of people concerned with such issues. Such an assessment might argue that
the Buddha’s diagnosis of a widespread psychological problem was correct: that suffering
arises from a tension between 1) a deep-seated desire for, attachment to, and belief in, the
persistence of oneself and what one owns and loves, and 2) the fact that everything is causally
conditioned and thus impermanent. Finnigan says that, although this diagnosis is not accepted
by the majority of the world’s citizens, yet it is verifiable by epistemic means. Nevertheless,
these means seem incapable of ascertaining moral properties. So the question how atypical
Prāsaṅgikas do ethics remains. One possibility is that they implement a teleological evaluation
of actions, omissions, words, and thoughts. They are qualified as good or bad to the extent
that they are instrumental in reaching the Buddhist telos: nirvāṇa, defined as either the
cessation of suffering or a lived state of well-being.
Normative force might be grounded in an innate tendency to strive for nirvāṇa. An
atypical Prāsaṅgika could argue, Finnigan says, that ‘while evaluative distinctions are
themselves not evaluated using ordinary epistemic means, the desired or innately aspired for
goal, relative to which they are normatively grounded, is a matter of empirically verifiable

69
descriptive psychology’ (ibid.: 169). Finnigan holds that this might seem ‘a plausible
rendering of Madhyamaka ethics from the perspective of the atypical Mādhyamika’ (ibid.),
because it is consistent with both śūnyavāda and lokaprasiddha. Nevertheless, she continues,
‘it has two major implications that are potentially problematic for Buddhists’ (ibid.).
The first potential problem results from the probable dismissal of the appeal to
traditional conceptions of karmic consequences as a way of justifying evaluative claims.
Operations of karma are, after all, not considered to be verifiable using ordinary epistemic
means. However, historical Mādhyamikas not only accepted karma as a basis for action
evaluation, they also frequently appealed to the notion of puṇya ‘as a central means by which
bodhisattvas are considered to alleviate the suffering of other sentient beings’ (ibid.).
Śāntideva, for instance, emphasized ‘the role of bodhisattva’s benefitting other sentient beings
by accumulating and sharing their karmic merit rather than offering direct physical or material
assistance’ (ibid.). According to Finnigan, these claims may need to be radically revised if
they are not to contradict the moral philosophical standards of the atypical Prāsaṅgika.
Moreover, moral claims either take the form of desire-dependent hypothetical imperatives or
are normatively underpinned by goals that implicitly inform our behavior.

However, some read Śāntideva as arguing that a particular evaluative position (i.e., great
compassion, often taken to mean altruism or impartial benevolence) is entailed by a proper
understanding of reality. That is, if one has a right understanding of ontology, one will not
only have a reason to remove the suffering of all other sentient beings but one will also be
obliged to act in this way. (Ibid.).

Before we turn to Śāntideva, we discuss briefly the relationship between ontology and ethics
in Madhyamaka. Westerhoff says that it is difficult to defend the claim that there is no close
systematic connection between Madhymaka ontology and the ethical claims of the
Mādhyamikas (Cowherds 2016: 205). He argues that there are numerous sources that attempt
just such a connection. That begs the question: is Madhyamaka ethics an inference from the
way things fundamentally are? If the answer is yes, modern Western philosophy claims that
such an ethics is false, because it bridges the gap between the “is” and the “ought”; in other
words: it is unjustified to infer imperatives from facts. However, what if the ethic of the
bodhisattva is not an imperative but a fact? We will elaborate on this question in Chapter Six
of this dissertation.
According to Barbra Clayton, cited by Westerhoff, ‘it does not make sense to ask the
Buddhist whether one can start from a set of factual premises and end up with a normative
conclusion, since for the Buddhists there are no clearly factual premises’ (ibid.); ‘all

70
knowledge of the external world, the facts, is inevitably vested with interest, or value’
(Clayton 2001: 88).
Finnigan, Westerhoff, and Clayton, all react to what is written about the ethics of
Śāntideva. Especially Paul Williams’s book Altruism and Reality: Studies in the Philosophy of
the Bodhicaryāvatāra (Willams 1998) is of great influence. In the next subsection, their views
on this publication will be briefly discussed.

2.3.4. The Bodhisattva’s way of life

The work that made Śāntideva famous is the Bodhicaryāvatāra (abbreviated as BCA). Lesser
known is his Śikṣāsamuccaya (abbreviated as ŚS). The first one is a philosophical poem; the
second one is an anthology of quotations from the Mahāyāna sutras, commented by
Śāntideva. Both works contain ethical reflections.
The text that plays a very important role in the Western accounts of Madhyamaka ethics
is chapter VIII of the Bodhicaryāvatāra (BCA 8), especially the verses 101-10354.

101. The continuum of consciousness, like a series, and the

aggregation of constituents, like an army and such, are unreal.
Since one who experiences suffering does not exist,
to whom will that suffering belong?
102. All sufferings are without an owner, because they are
not different. They should be warded off simply because they
are suffering. Why is any restriction made in this case?
103. Why should suffering be prevented? Because everyone agrees.
If it must be warded off, then all of it must be warded off; and
if not, then this goes for oneself as it does for everyone else.

At first glance, Śāntideva appears to argue that, since everything is empty, suffering must be
minimized not for one’s own sake but for the sake of all. This seems to be an argument from
“is” to “ought.” Williams says that Śāntideva has effectively destroyed the bodhisattva path
because his argument is fundamentally incorrect. However, this conclusion has been strongly
debated.
In order to make Śāntideva’s verses more clear, Finnigan rewrites them into:

(1) There is no self; ‘we’ are just composites of psycho-physical elements,

and composites are not real;

54
This translation, used by Westerhoff (Cowherds 2016: 207), follows Wallace & Wallace (1997: 102).

71
 (2) Given (1), there is no basis for distinguishing my pain from yours;
pains are ownerless;
(3) Pain is bad and to be prevented;
(4) Given (2) and (3), either all pain is to be prevented
(we should act altruistically without partiality) or
no pain is to be prevented (we should be apathetic without partiality);
(Conclusion) All pain is to be prevented (we should act altruistically without partiality).

According to Finnigan, Williams claims that the key to this argument is eliminating egoism’s
ontological foundations. There is no way, he holds, to differentiate between my suffering and
your suffering since there is no self. It follows that egoistic self-interest in averting one’s own
pain is irrational and that one should be impartially beneficent for reasons of rational
consistency. However, Williams argues that there are two plausible readings of the first
premise of this argument, both of which fall short of supporting this conclusion:

1(a) Śāntideva denies the ultimate reality of a self but allows that persons are conventionally
real.
1(b) Śāntideva denies both the ultimate and conventional reality of selves. All that exists are
psycho-physical elements in causal relations.

Williams says that if Śāntideva means 1(a), his argument fails because it does not eliminate
the grounds for egoistic self-interest, for one still can privilege the interests of a conventional
self. If Śāntideva means 1(b), all possible ontological grounds for egoistic self-interest are
eliminated; however, it also makes nonsense of a bodhisattva’s commitment to sacrifice their
“own” karmic merit for the sake of “others” since there are no “others”; consequently,
Williams contends, there is no object of a bodhisattva’s altruism (Finnigan 2018: 171).
Finnigan says that all contemporary scholars deny that Śāntideva intended 1(b) because
it represents the perspective of Abhidharma ontology. Since Śāntideva is a Mādhyamika, it is
highly plausible that he would defend the Madhyamaka outlook, to which 1(a) corresponds. I
will not flesh out Finnigan’s elaboration of the three different Madhyamaka perspectives
(Svātantrika, typical Prāsaṅgika, and atypical Prāsaṅgika). Instead, I turn to Westerhoff
(Cowherds 2016: 209-220).
Westerhoff contends that Williams did not take into account the “three trainings” that
constitute the foundation of all Buddhist practice: the sequence of listening (śruti), thinking
(cintā), and meditating (bhāvanā), preparing the practitioner of a life in which altruism is
realized. Williams’s criticism would be less powerful if these trainings were included in
Śāntideva’ premises. Westerhoff reminds us that Williams’s argument against the logical
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implications between egoism and altruism rests on the observation that there are possible
cases of ‘agents with justified belief in selflessness that still carry out selflish actions’ (ibid.:
211). However, Westerhoff argues, this argument is predicated on the notion that what is
being discussed is merely a justified belief, not realization. It becomes much more difficult to
make the case that certain people are endowed with the ability to realize selflessness but lack
the capacity to behave in that way once the argument is understood to be suggesting that there
is a logical connection between the two. Williams makes the case that the tendency to act
selfishly and the belief in altruism are compatible psychological states. However, it makes
more sense to suppose that Śāntideva was interested in whether or not the realization of
selflessness and selfish behavior go together. According to Śāntideva, Westerhoff explains,
the realization of selflessness and selfish actions ‘are not compatible’ (ibid.).
Much more is said by a number of authors about Williams’s criticism of Śāntideva’s
ethical appeal to an altruistic ethic. I already mentioned Clayton. She points out that within
the Mahāyāna tradition there is an acknowledgement that the whole notion of subjectless
experiences is in some ways absurd through the use of paradoxical ideas, such as the notion
that “all beings are enlightened, and none.” She suggests ‘that this need to resort to
paradoxical language resulted from trying to talk about an ultimate level of reality which is by
nature not amenable to language’ (Clayton 2001: 4). This might pave a path for irony – in the
Rortyan sense – as a metaethical approach.
Furthermore, she suggests that to take Buddhism in any way seriously, one has to be
‘open to the idea of subjectless experience’ (ibid.). Clayton’s argument against Williams’s
criticism that Śāntideva will not provide a rational foundation for altruism if he maintains the
less absurd position that there are persons, is that Śāntideva does not deny the reality of
conventional persons. ‘He is saying that because they only exist relatively, there is no ultimate
difference between you and me, and my suffering and yours. Because of that lack of ultimate
difference, it doesn’t make sense for me to worry more about my pains than yours’ (ibid.).
Clayton asks whether this is logically consistent. She argues that it is not if certain of
Śāntideva’s premises are accepted. Śāntideva ‘is not and cannot make the kind of strictly or
merely logical argument Paul Williams requires because for him seeing emptiness entails
altruism not only logicaly – because there are reasons to believe in emptiness – but also
practically’ (ibid.). This is, she says, because the awareness of śūnyatā leads to the
elimination of moral impurities. Together with the development of the virtues, the bodhisattva
progresses in her aspiration to help all beings.

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 In this way, understanding reality, the “ is” of emptiness, is part of the path to altruism. Thus
Śāntideva cannot be logical in the way Paul Williams would like because this logic carries
with it a form of distinction between facts and values that, first of all, assumes a logically
unbridgeable gap between “is” and “ought,” and secondly, simply does not hold in Śāntideva’s
world. This failure to distinguish between facts and values implies, among other things, that
for Śāntideva, compassion is both a matter of reason, and a matter of fact. (ibid.: 95).

Clayton’s conclusion explains the difficulty of understanding Madhyamaka ethics within the
categories of Western ethical theory. Be that as it may: it opens up for liberals like Rorty a
different view of solidarity in a contingent world, where the choice for the wellbeing of other
moral subjects, while not dictated by an ultimate human nature, is driven by an experience of
others, even when they lack an intrinsic reality.

2.4. Conclusion

Ethical questions always belonged to the heart of Western philosophy, said Rorty. Does the
same apply to Madhyamaka? The question of how to act has always been tantamount for
Mādhyamika; after all, to realize nirvāṇa, one should practice. Western interpreters of
Madhyamaka often compare the ethic that directs practitioners on the path to nirvāṇa with
teleological eudaimonism. However, as Siderits and Finnigan made clear, the subject of a
virtuous life that enables one to attain happiness has no inherent reality. The first virtue that
has to be realized is the awareness of the fact that the “I” is just a fictitious idea and that the
belief in the substantiality of the moral subject is a source of suffering. Being liberated from
false ideas is not enough; one ought to act compassionately to generate good karma. The law
of karma, however, is not part of the Western common-sense worldview. Nevertheless,
Madhyamaka philosophy contains much that is useful for Western ethicists because it is
subject to rational scrutiny, also in matters of morality and behavior. In constructing a
Madhyamaka ethics, Finnigan explained, it is necessary to investigate the issue of how the
doctrine of śūnyatā relates to the ethic of the bodhisattva. The ethics of this ethic is only
understood by the distinction between an ultimate truth and a conventional truth. The altruism
of the bodhisattva presupposes the difference between the self and others. This difference,
however, only exists on a conventional level; consequently, a Madhyamaka ethics only refers
to the conventional reality. Ultimately, the universal emptiness has no implications for ethical
theory. Nevertheless, according to Śāntideva, the realization of śūnyatā leads to an ethic of
wholesome behavior and perfect thoughts.

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 That brings us to a new question: if śūnyatā has far-reaching implications for our
understanding of morality, then what about the “ethical” implications of Rortyan notion of
contingency? Does the awareness of universal contingency have the same implications for
how pragmatists make sense of morality as that śūnyatavāda has for how Buddhists deal with
the primary experience of subjective freedom? These questions already set the stage for the
next chapters.

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PART TWO

76
Chapter Three:
CONTINGENCY & ŚŪNYATĀ
Why should we care?

Chapter overview

Why should we care if everything is contingent? What is the purpose of morality if, as Rorty
contends, there is no substantive entity behind the phenomenon being experienced as a self?
Does morality not require a free agent who is answerable? Even if the “self” is just one
possible outcome of a contingent process, can it still be free? If not, is morality still a
possibility? Furthermore, if moral accountability is only a convention, what does that mean
for the worth of Rorty’s liberal commitments? Why bother committing to social and civic
action in support of justice and equality if there is no moral underpinning? In this chapter, I
will follow up on our treatment of ethics from the previous chapter, specifically, the
difficulties arising in constructing a Buddhist metaethics. Herein, I do so by framing my
analysis in connection with some of the problems arising from the metaethical implications of
what is presupposed by those who want to honor the Rortyan value of “solidarity.” I begin by
analyzing the concept of contingency and examining the implications of Rorty’s idea of the
contingency of the self for morality (section 2). Next, I will connect this idea with śūnyatā,
the Mahāyāna notion of the voidness of the human subject (section 3). In the following part of
this chapter, I prepare the field of the discussion of emptiness as ultimate reality. Since
śūnyatā is, according to the aforementioned authors, connected with the Madhyamaka view of
reality, I will discuss their interpretation of the notion of satya (“truth”/”reality”) in section 4.
If everything is empty, how can we gain knowledge about the world? How, then, do we know
what is true and what is false? Does it still matter to distinguish truth from falsehood? I first
present the meaning of truth in early Buddhism according to Sandy Huntington and Mark
Siderits. Huntington shows the difference between truth as a monistic value and truth as a
concept being used in the doctrine of the “Four Noble Truths,” both proclaimed by the
Buddha. Siderits uses the early Buddhist distinction between conventional and ultimate
truth/reality (sacca) in order to demonstrate that moral responsibility might be compatible

77
with determinism. Then, in section 5, we will look into what our authors think is one of the
most important tenets of Madhyamaka: the doctrine of the Two Truths. Based upon this
inquiry, we shall then present several Western attempts to render the different interpretations
of Nāgārjuna’s account of this doctrine; first, those of the Mādhyamikas Buddhapālita and
Bhāvaviveka and, next, the interpretation of Candrakīrti and his view on the ultimate
truth/reality. In section 6, I will compare the Rortyan notion of contingency with the Buddhist
concept of emptiness. In section 7, I will discuss the problem of the relationship between
contingency and the need for a workable ethic in order to get engaged in the project of
building a world with less cruelty. The main issue here is rationality. What is the power of
reason when everything is contingent? If reason cannot be based upon a transcendent
foundation but is a product of evolution as well, what light can it shed then upon the human
effort to tackle the world’s tribulations? Can the concept of śūnyatā offer any clarification in
this matter? What is the relationship between emptiness and rationality? We learned that the
Mādhyamikas distinguished conventional reality from ultimate reality. Now, we will
showcase the scholarly perspectives of three Western Buddhist philosophers who dealt with
this distinction: Sandy Huntington, Jay Garfield, and Mark Siderits. Accordingly, this section
proceeds with the question: Do Mādhyamikas have their own philosophical position on truth,
or are they simply skeptical critics of epistemology and theories of truth? In any case,
rationality remains essential, which is evidenced by a debate on this issue in Madhyamaka
between Garfield and Huntington. In section 8, I elaborate this a bit further by means of
Huntington’s novel Maya. Finally, in section 9, the central question of this chapter, “Why
should we care?” is put to Siderits’s account of the relationship between rationality and
soteriology.

3.1. Introduction

As noted in the former chapter, according to several Western renderings of Prāsaṅgika

metaethics, śūnyatavāda has no ethical implications, but it does lead to a different ethic. The
principle of lokaprasiddha brings to mind Rorty’s conviction that normative values are
nothing more than what a large group of humans contingently desire. In this sense, “Why
should we care?” is according to Rortyan pragmatists a bad question. People simply care
because that is what many of them desire to do. Rorty thinks their desired goal is a liberal
society that can provide the best possibilities to minimize human suffering. However, as we

78
shall see, he also defends a personal ethic, namely the creation of a “self” that empowers one
to the fullest fulfillment of life.
Rorty’s non-foundationalist claim that there is no moral truth could be qualified as a
truth claim in the sense of a depiction of ultimate reality. Despite the word “ultimate” in our
lexicon, the ultimate cannot be the object of study, as Rorty antimetaphysically espouses. It is
commonly accepted among Western scholars that also in Mahāyāna Buddhism, the notion of
the ultimate does not refer to a substantial entity; it does not refer at all but is used to sustain
utterances about the experience of enlightenment and being saved from all suffering; thus, the
Buddhist idea of the ultimate is a soteriological55 category.
As Rorty has said several times, the purpose of philosophy is not to discover what
should be desired but to use it as an auxiliary discipline to reflect on what one already desires.
We know what he desires: liberty. In an interview with Robert Harrison of Stanford
University Radio (Harrison 2005), he states that liberty is not an absolute value: nevertheless,
‘it is the best what man has come up with so far. It has done more for human happiness than
the Buddha ever did’ (ibid.: 35:49-35:58). The interviewer asks: “What do we know of the
happiness in Buddhist cultures from the inside? Can we know from the outside that we are
happier than they are?” (Ibid.: 36:10-36-22). Rorty replies: “I suspect so. All of us have
experiences and moving around from culture to culture. They are not closed-off entities,
invisible or opaque to outsiders. You can talk to people raised in lots of different places about
how happy they are and what they like.” (Ibid.: 36:23-36-44). According to Rorty, most
people like liberty. And since liberty and capitalism go along, capitalism is also preferable
because ‘it’s the worst economic system except for all the other systems56’ (ibid.: 41:53-
42:01).
Harrison asks him whether or not philosophers should be concerned about the
ecological crisis because the liberal utopia depends on natural resources. No, Rorty replies in
his renowned disenchanting way; he states, ‘suppose there are asteroids that are threatening
earth, should philosophy then turn to the study of asteroids?’ (ibid.: 48:51-49.00).
Accordingly, Harrison responds by stating: ‘But asteroids are not political, ecology is,’ adding

55
One could argue that Rorty’s utopian liberalism is also soteriological since he desires liberation from pain by
enlarging the scope of liberal institutes. I think, however, it is better to call his utopianism “soterical” instead of
soteriological because his defense of the suffering-minimizing ethic is not based upon reasoning (Gr. logos).
56
Rorty here alludes to a statement made by an unknown person, paraphrased by Winston Churchill in the House
of Commons, November 11th 1947: ‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world
of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is
the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’

79
that humanity is a present global disaster because of environmental pollution, resulting from
applying the Utilitarian wealth maximization principle. Skeptical of Harrison’s push back,
Rorty claims that ecology and handling the climate change is ‘a matter for the engineers rather
than for the philosophers’ (ibid.: 49:49-49:59). In the same manner, Rorty argues that our
moral goals are not the result of ethics, although morality can be a topic of philosophical
reflection as long as it is helpful for people to understand that morality stems from desire and
not from thinking. This understanding maintains that solidarity is not only the desired
principle but also the best starting point for humans to make sense of their lives.
What is solidarity? Is it the joint preparedness to help each other to attain happiness? If
this would be an appropriate definition, then what is this thing, this subject, that would like to
attain happiness? Of course, this question is not interesting for a pragmatist à la Rorty because
it provokes a metaphysical anthropology. He starts with the experience of desire and tries to
help construct strategies to attain happiness. Analyzing what this thirst for happiness is and
what it does for individuals and societies is only interesting for Rorty if it helps to quench this
thirst. Be that as it may, the thirst for happiness presupposes a subject. To find out the
ontological status of the desiring subject may be the classical theorist’s concern; pragmatists,
however, would seem to remain indifferent regarding this question unless one could show that
the desire for happiness is something dangerous, something that leads to the opposite of
happiness. If that could be demonstrated, Rortyan pragmatists cannot let that pass because it
would harm their utopian ideal.
Rorty may be right that the principle of liberty and the free market that goes along with
it has done more for humans to enjoy a certain economic wealth than the Buddha did.
However, it is another thing to think that economic progress is the same as happiness. Being
wealthy is no guarantee for happiness; being enlightened is.
Suppose morality is the capacity to discern a desired state of affairs from an undesired
state of affairs. In that case, if and only if suffering is undesirable, one is moral when one acts
in a way that suffering is avoided, diminished, and resolved. If one could be convinced that
cultivating a self is causing suffering, would it not be wise to ask for a method to learn how to
eliminate this cult of the self? A pragmatist should ask this question to be loyal to the program
of pragmatism.
Nevertheless, what if people desire the “wrong” thing, for instance, a state wherein
suffering is cultivated? In any case, the Rortyan pragmatist could not oppose that
argumentatively. She could oppose it only by showing the benefits of its opposite. However,
maybe, there is another possibility of advocating solidarity; framing it in light of the Buddhist

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doctrine of anātman (non-self) could open new horizons for liberty-seekers. Liberty as the
conditioning value for the unimpeded endeavor toward happiness becomes a project of actual
attaining happiness without longing for it as an autonomous self but instead as an undefined
subjectivity.
Let us now revisit the central issue of this chapter: Why should we care if everything is
contingent?

3.2. Contingency

The term “contingent” comes from the Latin verb contingere, meaning “to touch,” “to
happen,” or “to coincide.” As a philosophical concept, “contingency” is used in both ontology
and logic. In the ontological sense, “contingency” denotes the status of entities whose
existence or non-existence is neither necessary nor impossible. In the logical sense,
contingency is the status of propositions that are neither always true, independently of any
truth value (i.e., tautological), nor always false (i.e., contradictory). A contingent proposition
is, therefore, neither necessarily true, nor necessarily false.
In the formal language of modal logic the symbol for necessity is □, for possibility ◇,
and for contingency ∇:
∇p ⇔ ¬□p ∧ ¬ ¬◇p
∇p ⇔ ◇p ∧ ◇¬p)

Contingency is emphasized by postmodernism in ‘ways that were unthinkable in pre-

modern as well as in modern philosophy,’ writes Dirk-Martin Grube in his article
“Contingency” (Grube 2015). He explains that in Western mainstream philosophy, the main
concern was to attain knowledge of what is necessarily true (i.e., the absolute). The ancient
Greeks distinguished episteme from doxa; the first is the superior knowledge of transcendent
reality; the latter is the inferior knowledge of the changeable, contingent things in the daily
world.
‘With the rise of modernity, this devaluation of contingency changed,’ Grube continues.
‘The traditional devalution of doxa was (…) turned on his head’ because empiricism, as the
conviction that true knowledge stems from empiricism experience, became triumphant,
culminating in the Scientific Revolution. However, German idealism became concerned again
with the Ding an sich (Kant) and das Absolute (Hegel).
Rorty is, according to Grube, the most prominent representative of the postmodern

81
concern for emphasizing contingency, because he turns this emphasis against modern
philosophy itself by attacking the view that human knowledge mirrors reality “out there.”

Morality presupposes the experience of the self. Before Jay L. Garfield, in his book Engaging
Buddhism, presents Buddhist outlooks of the self, he sums up four problems in the
contemporary discourse of the self in the West (Garfield 2015: 91-101). He discusses four
principal issues regarding ‘the existence of anything that deserves to be called a self’:

1. diachronic identity (does a subject remain the same over time?);

2. synchronic identity (how can one present subject be distinguished from another
present subject?);
3. personal essence (what part of me is not accidental but essential?);
4. minimal conceptions of self (what remains of the self without ‘the objectionable
ghostly substance or suspect empirical claims’ of selfhood?).

An important passage in Chapter 4 (Self) of Garfield’s book is about ancient Greek and
Judeo-Christian concepts of the self:

While it might seem natural to think about our identity in terms of the primitive identity of a
soul or pure subject/agent, this is on the one hand very culturally specific and religiously
grounded (not, for instance, that it is not even recognizably Greek – while Plato and Aristotle,
for instance, recognized a psyche, this was a composite affair, and not a simple, primitive
identity), and, on the other hand, does not so much solve the problem of identity but
transforms it into two problems: first, in what does the identity of the soul consist, and second,
how is it connected to the selves we know, our psycho-physical selves on whose identity we
are to give up? (…) […] it is worth noting that many philosophical and religious traditions
reject any basis for such a primitive identity. These include not only the Buddhist tradition
with which I am concerned (…) but also the Daoist and Confucian traditions of China and the
Cārvāka tradition of classical India. Classical Greece certainly did not take a soul with
primitive identity conditions for granted either. (…) […] living in cultures saturated both by a
generically Greek outlook and a generically Abrahamic outlook, we take a distinction between
essence and accident for granted, (…), [which] is a further cultural prejudice in need of
interrogation. (Ibid.: 96-98).

The experience of the self, as a presupposition of morality, is found in a free subject that
allows itself to be led by non-legal rules. Where those rules might come from is a question I
will discuss below when I bring up Rorty’s interpretation of Freud’s concept of the Ego. For
right now, let me begin with what Rorty has to say about selfhood. In Contingency, Irony, and
Solidarity, he says something that is very significant for Buddhists. After quoting from a
poem by Philip Larkin, supposedly about the fear of dying, he writes:

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 There is no such thing as fear of inexistence as such, but only fear of some concrete loss.
“Death” and “nothingness” are equally resounding, equally empty terms. To say one fears
either is as clumsy as Epicurus’s attempt to say why one should not fear them. Epicurus said,
“When I am, death is not, and when death is, I am not”; thus exchanging one vacuity for
another. For the word “I” is as hollow as the word “death.” (Rorty 1989: 23).

Nowhere else does Rorty come closer to the Buddhist concepts of anātman and śūnyatā.
Rorty seems to say that the phrase “I am” is as contradictory as the expression “being dead.”
The word “I,” used as a name by which a subject relates itself to the world, has no reference
in the ultimate and is therefore “empty” and “hollow” (śūnya57).
Rorty starts with sharing a thought in a poem because, according to him, poetry is more
fit for dealing with contingency than philosophy. Between the two, there is a “quarrel” (Rorty
1989: 25) going on. Poetry is ‘an effort to achieve self-creation by the recognition of
contingency,’ and philosophy is ‘an effort to achieve universality by the transcendence of
contingency.’
It is not immediately clear what ‘the recognition of contingency’ entails. From Rorty’s
remarks about the ‘vacuity’ of “I,” it seems justified that we can interpret the term
“contingency” as “emptiness.” In a world without necessities, where everything could happen,
poets try to find some kind of stability to create meaning. This lingual creativity is “ex nihilo,”
meaning that there is no absolute foundation upon which a system of meaning-giving signs
can be constructed. Moreover, language does not refer to a world out there. Language,
without picturing, is like a thing or a hypostatic activity that creates worlds58.
Rorty uses the insights of Donald Davidson59, who rejects the idea of language as a
medium of representation or expression. Language as a medium presupposes, according to
Rorty, two substances: a self on the one hand and reality on the other. According to this
framework, the self appears as the owner of networks of convictions and desires, not as the
result of those networks. Following Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Davidson
states that the idea of language as a third entity between the self and reality is no longer
adequate. ‘There is no such thing as a language (…). We must give up the idea of clearly
defined shared structure which language users master and then apply to cases,’ says

57
‘It is believed that śūnya was originally derived from the root svi, “to swell,” and śūnya implies “relating to the
swollen.”’ (Chang 1971: 60).
58
Also, possible worlds are included here.
59
Davidson 2001; Rorty says (Rorty 1989: 10, n 3) that Davidson cannot be held responsible for how he
interprets his views.

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Davidson60. Language for him is nothing more than ‘a flag which signals the desirability of
using a certain vocabulary when trying to cope with certain kinds of organisms.’61
Rorty says that Davidson has the same idea of the history of language as Darwin has
of the development of, for instance, a coral reef; it is non-teleological. The history of language
is also the history of all lingual, signifying activities, such as the arts, the sciences,
philosophy, and ethics. Rorty uses Davidson’s conception of that history, especially regarding
to metaphor. Metaphors, having immediate affective power whereby new experiences can be
expressed in familiar ways without having to stipulate new definitions, do not evolve as a
result of necessary laws but as a result of a contingent process. When we stop thinking of
language as a medium, we also ought to stop thinking that metaphors have meaning, Rorty
says, following Davidson. Because if metaphors had meaning, they would refer to an extra-
lingual world or have a place in a language game.

Metaphors, by definition have not. (…). In [Davidson’s] view, tossing a metaphor into a
conversation is like suddenly breaking off the conversation long enough to make a face, or
pulling a photograph out of your pocket and displaying it, or pointing at a feature of the
surroundings, or slapping your interlocutor’s face, or kissing him. Tossing a metaphor into a
text is like using italics, or illustrations, or odd punctuation or formats. (Rorty 1989: 18).

It is possible62, though, that metaphors, in due time, get a position in a language game, by
which they receive meaning. Every noise or mark started as a metaphor before it started to
mean anything. But in a ‘world of blind, contingent, mechanical forces’ (Rorty 1989: 17), it
occurs that meaningful noises and marks are no longer capable to describe novelties.
Metaphors can be uttered to express this incapacity. As soon as metaphors start to enable the
utterers to say something about a changed world, the metaphors have ceased to be metaphors
because they gained a place in the language game of describing the world. They will become
‘what most sentences of our language are, a dead metaphor’ (ibid.).
Rorty’s interpretation of Davidson’s and Hesse’s metaphor theories63 serves as a
building material for his pragmatist outlook on matters of suffering. If suffering is the result

60
Rorty 1989: 15.

61
ibid.

62
Here, Rorty refers to Mary Hesse, who thought of scientific revolutions as “metaphoric redescriptions” of
nature (Hesse 1980).
63
See also Rorty (1987).

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of the exclusion of beings that cannot be described as members of our we-group, metaphors
can help us to express our incapacity to be solidary. Poets, novelists, journalists, and religious
leaders can be the utterers of these “unfamiliar noises.” Once they lose their metaphorical
quality and become sentences of our language, they can be powerful tools to enlarge our we-
group so that we can welcome the newcomers with our compassion64.
In Chapter Four, I will discuss the use of metaphors again when we try to understand
the Rortyan irony from the perspective of the bodhisattva who uses his pedagogical skills
(upāya). First, let us go back to the theme of contingency. Because of the contingency of the
moral subject, the question is: what is the origin of this subject? What is the story of the
uprising of subjectivity, morality, and normativity? Against the Christian theological and
clerical discourse on that matter, Nietzsche wrote On the Genealogy of Morality (1887),
which considerably influenced Foucault. He is known for his historico-critical studies, in
which Foucault comes forward not only as an anti-essentialist but also as someone committed
to writing the narrative genealogies of present societal phenomena and institutes. Foucault did
not pretend to search for historical truths. In The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), he
explains that his project is about dismantling continuities and units that we in our time take
for granted. He evaluated his genealogical research as liberating because it showed the
contingency of contemporary beliefs. Like a “narrative therapist”65, he points out with his
analysis of “technologies of power” and “practices of freedom” that the self-image of
individuals is made up of dominant stories but that also alternative stories can be found which
may reveal other meaning producing determinants. In telling those alternative stories, the
dominant discourses get dismantled as being contingent. Civilians being part of the institutes
generated by dominant stories, may feel attacked by this dismantling effect. That, however, is
an effect of the presentation of the alternative stories and not of an effect of the description of
the present status quo. The reason for this perception as criticism of the institutes is because of
what I call “narrative normativity.” This normativity stems from the experience it creates.

64
In “Solidarity or Objectivity,” Rorty says: ‘For pragmatists, the desire for objectivity is not the desire to escape
the limitations of one’s community, but simply the desire for as much intersubjective agreement as possible, the
desire to extend the reference of ‘us’ as far as we can.’ (Clarke & Simpson 1989: 169).
65
‘Narrative therapy is more of an approach than a defined theory. This approach works from the premise that
each person’s life is a series of stories on many levels, similar to a novel with many chapters. Stories are used to
make meaning of a situation and to make sense of one’s life. Some of these stories and chapters are given to the
person by family, context, culture, religion, gender, etc. One of the key aspects of narrative is to re-author one’s
own story so that one is not living a story that does not fit with one’s identity. In narrative therapy, a person
and/or family seeks therapy when there is a problem that cannot be fixed. In fact, there is a story around a
problem that oppresses the family. This story about the problem also fits into the larger stories about oneself.’
(O'Connor 2014: 1182).

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According to Foucault, an experience can only “take place” – i.e., acquire a place in reality –
if it escapes pure subjectivity. It is only when others are somehow confronted with this
experience that ethico-political questions arise regarding the contemporary manifestations of
the things that were the subject of Foucault’s genealogical analysis.
In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Rorty calls both Nietzsche and Foucault ‘self-
creating ironists’ (ibid.: 65). What an ironist is will be the topic of Chapter Five. In short,
irony in Rorty’s sense is the awareness that the self is not a substantial entity but a result of
contingent events and dominant stories. By the dismantling effects of the telling of different
stories, not only another “self” can be constructed, but also another society. Rorty disagrees
with Foucault because ‘he is not prepared to admit that the selves shaped by modern liberal
societies are better than the selves earlier societies created’ (ibid.: 63). Rorty says that much
of Foucault’s work ‘consists in showing how the patterns of acculturation characteristic of
liberal societies have imposed on their members kinds of constraints of which older,
premodern societies had not dreamed’ (ibid.). However, Rorty continues, Foucault is not
‘willing to see these constraints as compensated for by a decrease in pain, any more than
Nietzsche was willing to see the resentfulness of “slave-morality” as compensated for by such
a decrease’ (ibid.).
Another important thinker on the matter of the contingency of the self is Sigmund
Freud. Rorty discusses his views in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity and in several other
publications. The most interesting for our research is his article “Freud and Moral Reflection”
(Smith & Kerrigan 1986: 1-27). Actually, it is not about the contingency of the self but about
the contingency of the phenomenon experienced as a self. In his interpretation of Freud’s
contribution to the ‘decentering movement of thought’ – after Copernicus and Darwin66 –
Rorty explains that whoever thinks that Freud taught that the ego is not master in its own
house has got it wrong. Because if that had been the revolutionary insight he shared with the
world, he would be saying the very same thing the ancient Greek philosophers had already
said. First of all, Freud denies the existence of an ego. “Ego” (Ich), “id” (Es), and “superego”
(Überich) are not names for real entities but psychological names for certain mechanisms.
Psychology, in Freud’s outlook, is not the science of the psyche in the sense of an inherent
agent hidden in the physical shape of the human subject. Psychoanalysis is not the therapy
that helps patients to find their true self because there is no such thing as the true self.
Whenever Freud talks about the self, he means the subjective desire of an individual to be in

66
Ibid.: 1-2.

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control, to act of his own free will. So, it is not about the self but about the craving to be a
self. As Rorty points out, Freud’s psychoanalysis shows that not only the ego is led by this
craving, but also the other instances Es and Überich. In fact, the unconscious is, in Rorty’s
interpretation, not a chaotic sea of passions that spoil the party of the sovereignty-seeking Ich.
The unconscious is a not yet explained but felt manifestation of other egos. Rorty repudiates
explanations of psychoanalysis that say that the Id represents the irrational mechanism in the
human subject. On the contrary, the unconscious is rational, with which a conversation can be
entered. For this interpretation, Rorty uses some insights from Davidson67. The latter noted
that philosophers after Freud have always been upset by his insistence on the “partitioning” of
the self. According to Rorty, those philosophers tend to reject Freud’s ominous image of
‘quasi-selves lurking below the threshold of consciousness as an unnecessarily graphic
description of the incoherence and confusion that can befall a single self’ (Smith & Kerrigan
1986: 4). They seem horrified by the idea that a single body would contain multiple selves.

Davidson defends Freudian partitioning by pointing out that there is no reason to say “You
unconsciously believe that p” rather than “There is something within you which causes you to act
as if you believed that p,” unless one is prepared to round out the characterization of the
unconscious quasi self who “believes that p” by ascribing a host of other beliefs (mostly true, and
mostly consistent with p) to that quasi self. One can only attribute a belief to something if one
simultaneously attributes lots of other mostly true and mostly consistent beliefs. (Ibid.).
According to Davidson, Rorty continues, a person can be defined as a coherent and plausible
set of beliefs and desires. This definition helps us to explain what is going on when we note
that someone is behaving irrationally: this behavior cannot be explained by reference to a
single such set; perhaps involving other of these sets can explain it.

Finally, [Davidson] concludes that the point of “partitioning” the self between a consciousness and
an unconscious is that the latter can be viewed as an alternative set, inconsistent with the familiar
set that we identify with consciousness, yet sufficiently coherent internally to count as a person.
This strategy leaves open the possibility that the same human body can play host to two or more
persons. These persons enter into causal relations with each other, as well as with the body whose
movements are brought about by the beliefs and desires of one or the other of them. But they do
not, normally, have conversational relations. That is, one’s unconscious beliefs are not reasons for
a change in one’s conscious beliefs, but they may cause changes in the latter beliefs (…). (Ibid.:
5).
The novelty of this outlook is that our unconscious selves are ‘not dumb, sullen, lurching
brutes, but rather the intellectual peers of our conscious selves, possible conversational
partners of those selves’ (ibid.: 7).
How these selves got involved in our lives is not the right question. These selves make

67
From Davidson’s essay “Paradoxes of Irrationality,” later published in: Davidson 2004: 169-188.

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our lives. Their powers result from a contingent strain of stories, actions, and ideas. The same
goes for the Überich. The mistake would be to look at this mechanism in the Platonic or
Kantian way, mainly as the authoritative part of the individual that connects him with
‘universal truths, general principles, and a common human nature,’ says Rorty (ibid.: 14). In
his account of Freud the conscience is not the higher region of the mind, but just one more
part of a ‘larger, homogenous machine’ (ibid.). Freud, says Rorty, ‘identified the sense of duty
with the internalization of a host of idiosyncratic, accidental episodes’ (ibid.).
The consequences of these Freudian tenets for Rorty’s thought on morality are as
follows. Freud is consistent in his mechanistic psychology. Psychoanalysis denies the
existence of a substance called “mind”; the psyche is a material phenomenon. In contrast with
Descartes and Kant, he did not reserve a sacred place for reason and free will in the realm of
the physical; there are no spirits in the material world. According to the former, this place –
which Rorty calls an “enclave” – is of course not spatial at all, as it is a thinking entity (res
cogitans). The latter rescued classical morality by his notion of the Ding an sich. Kant’s
enclave was a non-spatiotemporal point: ‘nothing but a moral imperative, nothing but a call to
moral purity.’

This still smaller and more mysterious enclave of nonmechanism became the preserve of a
subject called “moral philosophy”. Kant tried to make morality a nonempirical matter,
something that would never again have anything to fear from religion, science, or the arts, nor
have anything to learn from them.” (Ibid).

Freud gives Rorty all the reasons to reject the justification of practicing moral philosophy
(i.e., ethics). However, that does not mean that Rorty is not concerned with matters of
morality. For him, morality concerns two fields: the public and the private. Public morality is
about the increase of solidarity in society. Philosophical questions concerning public morality
are nonsensical because the aim for people who strive for moral progress in the public field is
simple: increase the amount of happiness (joy, pleasure, satisfaction, etc.) and decrease the
amount of suffering. Rorty is more interested in personal morality. According to both classical
and modern ethicists, the main questions are: What is the moral good, and how can one purify
the self from elements that keep one away from attaining the moral good? Underneath these
questions lies the Socratic maxim: “Know thyself.” Anti-ethicists like Nietzsche, Freud, and
Rorty claim the moral quest should be about self-enlargement. They consider the Socratic
maxim nonsensical because there is no such thing as the pure self; it is impossible to know
something that does not exist. From that perspective, the popular maxim ‘Be yourself’ is, of

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course, equally nonsensical. Self-enlargement, thus, does not mean that the true and pure self
should be enlarged. Self-enlargement (“self-creation”68 would be a better term) is firstly
concerned with knowing what kind of person you like to be and secondly with working to
become that person openly and without constraint.

The desire to enlarge oneself is the desire to embrace more and more possibilities, to be
constantly learning, to give oneself over entirely to curiosity, to end by having envisaged all
the possibilities of the past and the future. It was the goal shared by, for example, de Sade,
Byron, and Hegel. On the view I am presenting, Freud is an apostle of this aesthetic life, the
life of unending curiosity, the life that seeks to extend its own bound rather than to find its
center. (Ibid.: 11).
From this standpoint, aesthetic maxims would sound like: “Know what you want to be,”
“Choose the best possible self,” “Be loyal to the desire to become what you want to be,” and
“Reach for the stars.”
These maxims presuppose free will, mainly because the capacity to choose a self
logically entails a belief in freedom. Does Rorty has a problem here? The short answer is
“No,” for the simple reason that the issue of free will and determinism is a metaphysical
problem. As a pragmatist he has no philosophical position of his own regarding this classic
debate but only a metaphilosophical69 stance:
(…) I want to illustrate the difference between taking a standard philosophical problem (or
cluster of interrelated problems such as free will, selfhood, agency, and responsibility) and
asking, on the one hand, “What is its essence? To what ineffable depths, what limit of
language, does it lead us? What does it show us about being human?” and asking, on the other
hand, “What sort of people would see these problems? What vocabulary, what image of man,
would produce such problems? Why, insofar as we are gripped by these problems, do we see
them as deep rather than as reductiones ad absurdum of a vocabulary?” (Rorty 1982: xxxiii).

As a pragmatist, Rorty follows William James’s “pragmatic method” here: ‘a technique for
clarifying concepts and hypotheses so that metaphysical disputes that appear irresoluble will
be dissolved. A good example is the dispute between free will and determinism: once we
compare the practical consequences of both positions we find no conflict. As James admitted,

68
“I think that the Socratic ideal of self-knowledge is replaced among contemporary intellectuals by the
Nietzschean idea of self-creation. So that the life of the intellectual is not a matter of finding out what has been
inside himself or herself all the time; it’s a matter of becoming someone new. And the same for societies. Social
progress is not a matter of discovering the central nature of the state or of one’s nation or of one’s society; it’s a
matter of becoming a more rich, interesting society than in the past,” says Rorty, interviewed in Phillip
McReynolds’s film American Philosopher (https://youtu.be/0sQOmGEwuSo).
69
Rorty’s outlook is sometimes called a metaphilosophical one. He once pointed out that metaphilosophy has a
central paradox. ‘[M]etaphilosophy aims at neutrality among philosophic systems, and yet each system can and
does create its own private metaphilosophical criteria, designed to authenticate itself and to disallow competitors.
The presence of this paradox shows us that the quest for absolute neutrality, and for a categorical imperative
which would bind all philosophers equally, is hopeless.’ (Rorty 2014: 50).

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he explained the pragmatic method through examples rather than a detailed analysis of what it
involves. He did little to explain exactly what “practical consequences” are.’ (Legg &
Hookway 2020).
The question is: are there indeed no practical consequences if we compare the theory of
free will with the theory of determinism? Let us, for instance, look for any practical
consequences that occurred after the Dutch neurobiologist Dick Schwaab published his
popular-scientific book Wij zijn ons brein (“We are our brain”) in 2010. In it, he defends the
reductionist stance that there is no such thing as free will. I dare to pose that there were no
practical consequences of Schwaab’s statement. No political questions were being asked
about the meaning of the institutes of the judicial system because if there is no free will, no
one – even the mentally sane killer – is responsible and accountable for the committed crime.
No criminal judges left their office because they suddenly felt that to sentence criminals was
an absurd thing to do. There were no activists who ceased their protest against abusers after
they started to think ‘what’s the point of accusing an abuser if his abuse is only an effect of
his neurophysical condition?’
Although Rorty considers the problem of free will as a non-problem, he defends the
Freudian position that the self is a hollow vessel to be filled with desirable content. Asking
about the ontological status of that content is pointless, according to Rorty. Be that as it may,
still a number of questions occur, such as whether realized selves become real selves. Is the
hollowness of the acting subject eternal or can it be overcome?
Just as for Rorty, in the Buddhist philosophical tradition, the question of the freedom of
the will did not matter very much. According to Jay Garfield, ‘[t]his problem never arose in
Buddhism (…), not because Buddhist philosophers were less astute, nor because they solved
it, but because the presuppositions that raise these questions are not satisfied in Buddhism’
(Garfield 2017: PP). Garfield notes that the philosophical problem of “free will” has a
Christian genealogy, calling this issue ‘a legacy of St. Augustine,’ who tried to resolve the
problem of evil in a world created by an omnipotent and all-good God. But theodicy70 is
irrelevant for putting “free will” on the agenda of contemporary Buddhist philosophers, he
holds. Also, metaphysical, ethical, and legal questions do not give enough reason to insert this
issue in the professional reflections on Madhyamaka. That is because the ‘free will and

70
Theodicy comes from the Greek theos (‘god’) and dikē (‘justice’). How can a just God allow bad things to
happen? This question was asked by G.W. Leibniz, who coined the French term théodicée, after the earthquake
of 1755 that destroyed Lisbon.

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determinism puzzle’ ‘cannot’ arise in Buddhism. In Western thought, there is always the I
(Augustin and Aquinas: the soul; Kant; the postulated Ich; Descartes: res cogitans; Locke: the
intentionality of an agent). But Buddhism rejects a metaphysical soul (the doctrine of
anātman); hence the absence of a Buddhist basis for formulating the free will problem.
‘A fundamental tenet of Buddhism is pratītyasamutpāda, the idea that all phenomena
are “dependently originated,”’ says Garfield (2017: PP). ‘The emptiness or insubstantiality of
persons – absence of soul/self – is a central moral and metaphysical insight on the Buddhist
path’ (ibid.). However, he points out, Mādhyamikas are committed to the karma doctrine, ‘the
view that we are responsible for our situations and destinies.’ (ibid.) Against those who say
that karma necessitates free will because immoral behavior has karmic consequences,
Garfield says that those consequences are amoral; they are not punishments or rewards but
purely causal consequences. But Mādhyamikas, according to Garfield, do talk about freedom,
albeit in the place in a negative sense: not “freedom of,” but “freedom from.” Buddhist
freedom is the state of being liberated from suffering, cyclic existence, etc.
The path to liberation, for a self that is mere conceptual imputation, is a path to the authorship
of a narrative in which a better self is the protagonist, a self whose actions are conditioned by
compassion, sympathetic joy, generosity and confidence, by responsiveness as opposed to
reaction. The self I imagine at the higher stages of the path is free in ways the self I construct
now is not. More of its acts are actions it claims to author, and the conditions of those actions
are morally salutary rather than counterproductive. However, the freedom achieved through
the cultivation of this path, understood in the Madhyamaka framework (…) is not a freedom of
the will, but authority – freedom of a conceptually imputed person from the bars of a self-
constructed prison, a freedom that demands no indeterminism. And when that freedom is
complete, there is nothing left to lose. (Ibid.: 55).

Once an individual decides to train himself to become free from ‘the bars of a self-
constructed’ prison, he will eventually contemplate the condition that the subject that started
this salvific enterprise was not a sovereign entity, nor a free agent, but only subjectivity
manifesting the natural longing to freedom from the boundaries of the ego. The initiative only
appeared being taken freely in the classical Western sense. Mādhyamikas taught that the self
is “empty”; it is constructed ‘through the appropriation of aggregates, through recognizing a
body, thoughts, values, dispositions, and intentions’ (ibid.: 53). Garfield explains that in the
creation of the self, none of us is innocent and none of us is autonomous.

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 Our identities are negotiated, fluid and complex because marked by the three universal
characteristics of impermanence, interdependence, and absence of self. It is context-
governed interpretive appropriation – not autonomous, substantial selfhood – that sets the
metaphysical and moral questions regarding agency and responsibility in Madhyamaka.
To act is for our behavior to be determined by reasons, by motives we regard as ours.
(Ibid.: 55.).

Nevertheless, what about the origin of the initiative to act? In Mahāyāna Buddhism, such an
origin is connected to the important notion of emptiness (śūnyatā).

3.3. Śūnyatā

Siderits argues that in Mahāyāna Buddhism, the project to attain happiness is no longer a
matter of the individual attempt to realize nirvāṇa as if it were a separate reality apart from
our everyday world (Siderits 2016: 46-47). In Mahāyāna, according to a commonly held
Western explanation, the principle applies that there is no difference between nirvāṇa and the
unenlightened, worldly state called saṃsāra (Westerhoff 2018: 104). Why? In short, no
concept ever refers to an absolute or substantial entity, mainly because everything is “empty”
(śūnya), including the concept of “emptiness” itself.
For Mādhyamikas, the concept of śūnyatā71 is of the highest value and most profound
truth ‘precisely because of its soteriological application as the tranquilizing agent for
“conceptual diffusion,”’ writes Huntington (Huntington 1989: 55). This diffusion is caused by
the human tendency to substantialize all things, which generates clinging and therefore also
suffering.
Westerhoff says it is evident that śūnyatā is ‘the central philosophical concept’ in
Madhyamaka literature (Westerhoff 2009: 12). According to him, the main difficulty in
explaining what this concept means lies in the fact that it is purely a negative one: ‘emptiness
is the emptiness of something and indicates that something is not there’ (ibid.).
Siderits emphasizes this explanatory difficulty by stating that none of the Mādhyamikas
give arguments for śūnyatā (Siderits 2007: 183). He mentions, for instance, the existence of
arguments in Nāgārjuna’s72 Mūlamadhyamakakārikā concerning a variety of topics such as

71
Sanskrit: शून्य, śūnya = ‘empty’; -tā = ‘-ness.’
72
Jan Westerhoff (2017b) says that in Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of śūnyatā four different “faces” of non-
foundationalism can be detected: an ontological, an epistemological, a linguistic, and an alethic “face.”

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causality, motion, and the senses. But they do not try to prove emptiness. All of Nāgārjuna’s
arguments share a common form: reductio ad absurdum. ‘They start from the hypothesis that
there are ultimately real things, things with intrinsic nature, and they then show that this
assumption has unacceptable consequences,’ writes Siderits (ibid.).
Śūnyatā in Madhyamaka means that all things lack svabhāva, i.e. intrinsic nature.
According to Garfield, emptiness itself is ‘not a replacement of one intrinsic nature with
another’; the ‘Madhyamaka program is not one of fundamental ontology in the ordinary
sense, but rather a critique of the very enterprise of fundamental ontology’ (Garfield 2015:
66). An important notion in that critique is śūnyatā-śūnyatā: emptiness is empty, meaning that
it cannot be grasped, hypostasized, and contemplated as an objective truth.
Garfield points out that the Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness is paradoxical because
it reveals a fundamental paradox in reality: ‘(…) Nāgārjuna makes it plain that even the
statement that phenomena are empty of intrinsic nature is itself a merely conventional truth,
which, in virtue of the necessary involvement of language in conceptualization, cannot
capture the nonconceptualizable nature of reality. Nothing can be literally true, including this
statement. Nonetheless, language – designation – is indispensable for expressing that
inexpressible truth. This is not an irrational mysticism, but rather a rational, analytically
grounded embrace of inconsistency.’ (Ibid.: 68).
The moral implications of śūnyatā are paradoxical as well. It seems that morality
presupposes a subject that acts from its inner core; otherwise, an act could never be freely
chosen for. Nonetheless, if persons had such a substantive center, they would be eternal and
completely isolated from each other. Solidarity is, therefore, possible because persons are
empty. However, if they were not empty, they could not suffer because they would not be
subject to factors that could endanger their existence. A person with svabhāva cannot even be
in danger. From this perspective, it seems that emptiness is a necessary condition of
morality73.
As Garfield already mentioned, the notion of emptiness is closely linked with the
question of truth.

73
This reminds of what, according to Rorty, Annette Baier and John Dewey say about the philosophical “myth
of the self” ‘as nonrelational, as capable of existing independently of any concern for others, as a cold
psychopath needing to be constrained to take account of other people’s needs’ (Rorty 1999: 77). If we really
were such selves, Baier and Dewey argue, ‘the question “Why should I be moral” would be forever
unanswerable’ (ibid.).

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3.4. Satya

In the Anglo-Saxon literature on Buddhist epistemology, it is said that Nāgārjuna makes a

distinction between two levels of satya; this Sanskrit word is usually translated as “truth.” In
light of this distinction, the following question arises: can this translation be used without
risking confusion due to cultural and historic differences vis-à-vis language? Indeed, there is
always a risk in translation. The Italian expression “Traduttore, Traditore!” refers to more
than a risk: a translation is a betrayal as it discards the true meaning of concepts because it
reduces the cultural context of these concepts to a minimum. While there is truth to this
expression, if one never takes a risk, then one will not discover and/or create new
perspectives74.
It is nearly impossible to interpret Nāgārjuna’s stanzas without the help of
interpreters/commentators who stood within the tradition he started; their writings make it
easier for us to understand the logical progression of his argument, along with his
philosophical commitments. There are roughly two important Indian Mādhyamika writers
who help us decipher the fascinating and sometimes enigmatic lines Nāgārjuna dropped on
satya: Bhāvaviveka en Candrakīrti.
The two levels of satya are the “ultimate” (paramārtha) and the “conventional”
(saṁvṛiti). At this point, I use “satya” instead of “truth.” The reason for this is based upon the
fact that we have not shown yet whether “truth” is an adequate translation. Perhaps we have to
stipulate an English neologism to translate satya without betraying the Indian way the word
was used.
As The Cowherds have pointed out, satya can be used for both truth and reality
(Cowherds 2011: 4, 5). That means that not only statements can be bearers of satya but also
things and situations. However, they have agreed to use “truth” as a default translation and to
use “reality” when the context demands it. I follow their lead in this.
The distinction of the “two truths” (paramārtha-satya and saṁvṛiti-satya) is not a
novelty of Madhyamaka. Nāgārjuna inherited it from early Buddhist schools. However, he
transformed this dichotomy by erasing it (Deguchi et al. 2021: 59). In Nāgārjuna’s view, ‘that

74
Cf.: ‘The translations of Ortega and Heidegger into English make it possible for us to talk reasonably about
them, just as the translations of Austin and Dewey into Spanish make it possible for Spanish-speaking
philosophers to talk reasonably about them. Something is lost in translation in both cases, but not enough to
matter. Philosophy is, and should be, rootlessly cosmopolitan’, dixit Rorty in Mendicta 2006: 107.

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dichotomy invites both the reification of the ultimate truth, and hence attachment to it, and
nihilism with respect to the conventional, and hence deprecation to it’; Nāgārjuna, therefore,
thought that the dichotomy between the ultimate and the conventional truth/reality is
dangerous (ibid.). ‘So, in addition to distinghuishing between them, he also argued that there
is no distinction between them’ (ibid.). What that amounts to will be explained in the next
section. But first let us turn to the original distinction.
Siderits points out in the section “A Note on the Early Buddhist Theory of Truth” of his
book Buddhist Philosophy that many scholars have held that the Buddha maintained a
pragmatic theory of truth (Siderits 2016: 52). The reason for that is the Buddha’s position
toward the so-called “indeterminate questions” (Pāli: avyākata)75, metaphysical questions like
“Is the world eternal or not eternal?”. For the soteriological quest, the Buddha considered
those issues76 not helpful – and therefore not truthful.
Siderits mentions that the famous Sri Lankan interpreter of early Buddhist philosophy
K.N. Jayatilleke (1920-1970) was strongly opposed to this account (Jayatilleke 1963: 351-
359) because he showed evidence that the Buddha held a naive version of the correspondence
theory of truth. Jayatilleke cited the following passage from the Majjhima Nikāya, a vast
collection of middle-length teachings in the Pāli-Canon, in which the Buddha says:

When in fact there is a next world, the belief occurs to me that there is no next world, that
would be a false belief. When in fact there is a next world, if one thinks that there is no next
world, that would be a false conception. When in fact there is a next world, one asserts the
statement that there is no next world, that would be a false statement. (Trenckner 1948: 402-
403).

Indeed, that does not sound very pragmatic; a pragmatist would bring non-epistemic elements,
such as utility, coherence, and economy, into consideration for the conception of truth.
Siderits argues then that early Buddhism is inconsistent on this issue.
In addition to Siderits, Huntington also points out that the concept of truth is ambivalent
in early Buddhism. In the rest of this section, I use his reconstruction of the history of the
early Buddhist discourse on truth (Huntington 2007: 111-116). Therein, Huntington cites a
verse in one of the oldest extant scriptures of the Pāli canon, the Sutta Nipāta:

75
These are concerned with issues such as infinity, the relation soul-body, life after death, personal identity, and
the orgin of the self.
76
Ṭhānissaro 1998.

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 Truth [Pāli: sacca] is indeed one and the knower of it does not dispute it. There is not a
second [view].

3.4.1. Two levels of satya

As Huntington demonstrates, Buddhist scholasticism arose in order to defend the ideal of a

monistic truth concept. These learned reflections appear in the third ‘basket’ of the Tipiṭaka77.
Many Abhidhamma texts give the solution for the problem that some of the Buddha’s
sayings seemed to be contradictory. This solution is the claim that Gautama’s teachings are
totally consistent but were presented in an explicit manner (nītārtha) and in an
implicit manner (neyārtha). Gradually this distinction was changed in another distinction: the
presentation of the Dharma at the highest level (paramattha/pāramārtha) and at the level of
convention (saṃmuti/saṁvṛti). ‘Once this hermeneutical scheme was in place there was no
avoiding it or its metaphysical implications. From then on to speak as a Buddhist, from within
the orthodox tradition, meant, in the most primary sense, to perform one’s exegetical
work with these particular linguistic/conceptual tools’ (ibid.: 116).
Huntington starts this hermeneutical story with a question from the Abhidhamma
treatise Vibhāṣa or Mahāvibhāṣa Śāstra:

If there are four truths, why then did the Blessed One say that there is only one?

According to Huntington, a dominant answer to this question might be best understood as a

pragmatist one; he even calls it a “a version of Jamesian pragmatism.” William James’s view
on truth can be boiled down to this formula: ‘The true is the name of whatever proves itself to
be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite assignable reasons’ (James 1975: 42).
This captures what Huntington says about the cash value of Buddhist truth, which is good
because its definite assignable reason is spiritual liberation, ‘which is found when one ceases
to need, or desire, certainty of the sort provided by fixed views’ (Huntington 2007: 112).
Also, the Sutta Nipāta is, according to Huntington, a source of “spiritual pragmatist”
wisdom. Moreover, he says, consider what is said about the reason why the Buddha was silent
after the monk Mālunkyāputta had asked him several metaphysical questions. Those questions
were ‘not practical, not related to what is fundamental to the spiritual life’ (Huntington 2007:

77
The Pāli word tipiṭaka means ‘three baskets’; Sanskrit: tripiṭaka. The Tipiṭaka contains the corpus of the Pāli
canon, consisting of three collections: the sayings of the Buddha (sutta), the monastic rules and regulations
(vinaya), and the intellectual reworkings of important elements of the Dhamma (abhidhamma).

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113). When clinging is the problem, ‘any actual doctrine is potentially dispensable, for the
simple reason that all doctrinal statements are of exclusively pragmatic value. In all of this,
we find a clear and demonstrable historical precedent to Nāgārjuna’s thoroughgoing rejection
of all doctrines, views, arguments, and proofs’ (ibid.).
Huntington gives an analysis of the problematic reconciliation of spiritual pragmatism
with an essentially metaphysical doctrine of truth. This metaphysical truth is the ‘one without
a second,’ mentioned in the Sutta Nipāta. The means for such a reconciliation was found in a
hermeneutical distinction, he says. This distinction, already mentioned above, is present in the
Pāli suttas and throughout the Mahāyāna corpus, between two kinds of discourse: (1)
canonical expressions with a “direct meaning” (Pāli: nītattha / Sanskrit: nītārtha); and (2)
those with an “indirect meaning” (neyyattha/neyārtha). In the first category, ‘the single truth
is manifestly or literally present’; in the second category, ‘the single truth is not immediately
available and must therefore be accessed by the application of interpretive principles
sanctioned by the canons of orthodox exegesis’ (ibid.).
The nītattha/nītārtha analysis was mainly used as a hermeneutical tool ‘to measure
specific doctrinal statements against the ideal of a single truth,’ says Huntington. He continues
by stating that the nītattha/nītārtha analysis was a tool by which ‘all apparent discrepancies
and incoherencies among doctrinal statements’ systematically could be reconciled. The same
hermeneutic method was used to integrate various doctrinal connections into a continuous
historical tradition in which the single truth could become apparent, Huntington holds.
‘In accomplishing this task, the same hermeneutical strategy served to weave together
various disparate doctrinal threads into the fabric of a continuous historical tradition wherein
the single truth could be seen to unfold. No matter if the fabric of tradition is every bit as
abstract and ideal as the unitary truth which it is supposed to preserve and reveal; it could not
be otherwise, for if the incoherencies were treated as anything other than apparent – that is, if
all the various specific doctrinal formulations could not in the final analysis be reconciled –
then it would no longer be possible to maintain the idealized construct of an unbroken
tradition,’ thus Huntington (ibid.). He is convinced that there is no relativism at this level.
‘We are dealing here with the ontology of understanding, an existential/hermeneutic circle
that defines both knowledge and existence; for only in the rigorous, often painful working out
of what is always already given as true do we find ourselves in a particular situation
embodying a particular range of possibilities’ (ibid.).
The nītārtha/neyārtha scheme was the clear expression of a coherence theory of truth,
says Huntington. He then quotes the British Buddhist scholar Ian Harris, who paraphrased this

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theory as follows: ‘If someone makes a series of statements on a particular matter it is
important that they should all point in the same general direction, or rather that they should
cohere. Someone whose statements do not meet this condition may be dismissed as someone
who does not expound a unitary truth’ (Harris 1991: 84).
The ontological commitment embodied in this coherence theory of truth was first made
explicit in the early commentaries with the specification of a distinction apparently not
recognized in the Pāli suttas between “the truth of the highest meaning” (paramattha sacca)
and “the truth of conventional affairs” (sammuti sacca). According to Huntington, this
distinction can be found in a text appearing in two commentaries78:
The Perfectly Enlightened One, the best of teachers, spoke two truths, viz. conventional and
absolute—one does not come across a third; a conventional statement is true because of
convention and an absolute statement is true as (disclosing) the true characteristics of
Things. (Jayatilleke 1963: 364).

Here, Huntington says, the value hierarchy implicit in the original nītārtha/neyārtha
hermeneutic is preserved and also mapped onto an ontological landscape where the effort is
still to reconcile apparent contradiction. The critical difference, however, is that in this case
the reconciliation has to take place in strictly metaphysical or ontological terms. ‘When
exactly the shift from a concern with doctrinal statements to a concern with ontology occurred
we will probably never know, but it is clear that such a shift is taken for granted in
ābhidharmic exegesis, where the two truths are now linked to a correspondence theory of
truth. In the Vibhāsa we find the highest truth identified with reality (tattva) and the world as
it exists (yathābhūtaṃ) (cf. Harris 1991: 90).’ (Huntington 2007: 115).
According to Ian Harris, one ontological truth gives rise to two epistemic truths, ‘i.e.
the conventional (saṁvṛti) and the ultimate (pāramārtha)’ (Harris 1991: 91). ‘The Buddhist
teaching (dharma) is itself a body of disparate doctrines such as the four noble truths, the
theory of dharmas, the three marks of existence, etc. which cohere into an overall picture with
the explicit intention of providing an antidote to the conventional way of seeing things. It
eventually leads to the realization of ultimate truth. The dharma then, while it may appear
contradictory to a superficial examination, in fact has a coherent unity which point toward the
true nature of reality.’ (Ibid.).
What is the relevance of all this to our questioning of reasons for solidarity? It prepares
for the stratification of speaking about compassion. Huntington and Harris have shown that
even in early Buddhism, there was awareness of a plurality of meaning in soteriological

78
One in the Kathāvatthu and the other in the Aṅguttara Nikāya.

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discourse. At first glance, this plurality was underpinned by the one truth. That changes,
however, with Madhyamaka, where the notion of the two truths changes of character.

3.4.2. Siderits on the two truths

Mark Siderits spells out the Abhidharma doctrine of the two truths: ‘Ultimate truth is easy to
explain. It is just what most people think of as truth: the property a statement has when it
represents reality as being a certain way and reality mind-independently is that way. But the
stipulation that correspondence be to how things mind-independently are means that many
statements we take to be true are not ultimately true.’ (Siderits 2016: 250.)
Siderits gives the example of a statement about Sinyang Hall, a building that belongs to
Seoul National University, where he teaches. At present he is in Sinyang Hall. Such a
building is not real outside our conventions and our mind. Therefore the statement “I am in
Sinyang Hall” can never be ultimately true. Statements about all other composite entities are
never ultimately true, because they are not ultimately true. The “neither-identical-nor-distinct”
argument says that no building can be identical with the atoms of which it consists: there is
one building and countless atoms. However, those atoms cannot be distinct from the building
they form and the building not from its atoms, ‘since it cannot be wholly located where each
atom is (it is being too large’ (ibid.: 251). If one would say that the building is only partly
located where each atom is, one would end up in an infinite regress (Siderits 2007: 104-111).
‘It is important to add that while “I am in Sinyang Hall” is not ultimately true, it is not
ultimately false either. For, there being ultimately no Sinyang Hall, the statement that I am not
located in it could not be ultimately true.’ (Siderits 2016: 251). The statement “I am in
Sinyang Hall” is not ultimately but conventionally true. What that means is much harder to
explain, says Siderits. He asks himself whether there could be another truth, that is not a
representation of an ultimate reality.
‘Well, “Hamlet is a Danish prince” is true, we say, yet there is no-one in the world to
whom the name “Hamlet” refers. The statement cannot be really, literally true, yet we still
think there is some sense in which it is true. That Hamlet was a Danish prince is, we say, “true
in the story.” By this we mean that if the statements that make up the story were fact and not
fiction, then this statement would be true in the literal sense. Conventional truth is a little like
that.’ (Ibid.).

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 Siderits points out that there really are no buildings; there are just atoms79 arranged in
various ways. But given the way that the atoms around me are arranged, if in addition to
atoms there were also such things as buildings, then ‘I am in Sinyang Hall’ would be
ultimately true. But there are no such things as buildings.
We only think there are because it is useful for us to think of atoms arranged a certain way, not
simply as the many things they actually are, but as composing one big thing, such as a
building. If this pretense of ours reflected mind-independent reality, the statement would be
ultimately true. Our pretense does not reflect reality indeed, given the neither-identical-nor-
distinct argument, it cannot. But just as the statement about Hamlet does bear a certain
complex relation to marks on a page, so the statement about Sinyang Hall bears a complex
relation to the atoms around us. That is why it turns out to be useful, and why we say it is true
when, strictly speaking, it is not. (Ibid.).

Siderits now goes back to the statement “Hamlet is a Danish prince.” Of course, everybody
knows that this is literally true. The question is however, could it be “true in the story” or
“fictively true?” Siderits has studied possible answers and says that opinions about this issue
vary. The difficulty is, he points out, that we think that Denmark is a real place, while Hamlet
is not a real person. It is not clear at all how a real place could be related to an unreal person
in such a manner that it would make the story true. ‘If you think that a real place can figure in
the truth-maker for a statement that is only fictively true, then you will think the statement can
be fictively true in a perfectly straightforward way. But if not, then you will need to hold that
the true-in-the-story “Hamlet lives in Denmark” is not about the real Denmark but some other
sort of place entirely.’ (Ibid.).
Something similar happens, continues Siderits, with conventional truth. He says that
there is agreement about the status of the statement “I am in Sinyang Hall,” namely that it is
conventionally true. At the same time there is agreement that statements such as ‘There are
such-and-such atoms arranged in such-and-such a way’ is ultimately true. But what about the
statement ‘Sinyang Hall is made of such-and-such atoms’? Indeed, it says something about
Sinyang Hall; we know it is not ultimately true, but could it be conventionally true? The
answer to that question is still open for debate, because here too there are various opinions,
Siderits says. He sees a difficulty in this case because if we can talk of Sinyang Hall and those
atoms in the same breath, this will lead to contradictions.

79
According the same reasoning, the statement that there are just atoms is also not ultimately true, because atoms
are not elementary particles. Just as building, atoms are composite entities (composed of a nucleus and
electrons). In an updated discourse on this manner, the metaphor of the atom is replace by categories of quantum
physics (cf. Repetti 2012: 45).

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 Perhaps the easiest way to see why is to think of the sorites80 puzzles that will emerge when
we begin to look into how many randomly chosen atoms we can remove before Sinyang Hall
ceases to exist. And there are other ways to show why permitting such talk leads to dire logical
consequences. Still, there are those who would say that there can be a conventionally true
statement referring to both Sinyang Hall and the atoms.’ (Ibid.: 252).

Siderits is convinced that many Buddhists would say just the same thing, although they have
not discussed an issue like this. But that is, he says, because these Buddhists believe
conventional truth harbors contradictions within itself, and therefore must be transcended.
They would not see a reason to try to insulate conventional truth from the contradictions that
arise when you let in the referring expressions of ultimate truth. Other Buddhists, such as
Dharmakīrti81, would disagree, says Siderits. Their point is: we cannot account for the
usefulness of conventionally true statements if they inevitably give rise to contradictions; so
the insulation between the two discourses must be two-way.
To summarize, there are two things we might say about the conventional truth-value of
“Sinyang Hall is made of such-and-such atoms.” We might say that it is conventionally true.
That policy will lead to there being good reason to accept various contradictions. We might
welcome this result as showing the inherent instability of our ordinary ways of talking and
thinking. On the other hand, we might take the resulting contradictions to show that
conventional truth must be reformed. The proposed revision is that we not allow referring
expressions from ultimate discourse to be employed in conventional discourse. Buddhist
Reductionists might take either of these two stances. (Ibid.).

Siderits wants to explore what happens if we take the second approach, according to which
that sentence has no truth-value, because it is simply meaningless.
‘Now if that is the view we take of the relation between the two truths, then it follows
quite straightforwardly that no argument the conclusion of which belongs to conventional
discourse can have a premise that belongs to ultimate discourse. No statement about Sinyang
Hall follows from any statement about atoms.’ (Ibid.).

80
Sorites is derived from the Ancient Greek word for “heap.” The name “sorites paradox” or “paradox of the
heap” is given to a problem that for the first time would have been discussed by the Megarian philosopher
Eubulides of Miletus (4th century BCE). The paradox can be reformulated in the form of this syllogism:
Major premise: ‘One million grains of sand is a heap of sand.’
Minor premise-1: ‘A heap of sand minus one grain is still a heap.’
Minor premise-2: ‘A heap of sand minus two grains is still a heap.’
Etc.
Conclusion: ‘One grain is a heap.’
81
Indian philosopher of the 7th century CE. He was a leading representative of the Buddhist school of logic at
the famous university of Nalanda. He wrote a number of key works on epistemology and syllogistics. Few of
them, all written in Sanskrit, were saved. However, all of them are still preserved in the Tibetan translation.
Keown 2003: 75.

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 For many this would sound counter-intuitive, but Buddhists will not be put off by this,
Siderits says. All Buddhists agree, he continues, that common sense is profoundly mistaken
about any number of important facts about the world. The intuitions shaped by common sense
therefore cannot be trusted. Finally, Buddhists disagree about the question whether it is
possible to ‘revise common sense in such a way as to rid it of its liability to lead to
contradictions’ (ibid.: 253).

3.5. Two Truths in Madhyamaka

The two “epistemic truths” are mentioned in Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK)

but explicitly only in chapter XXIV, which discusses the Four Noble Truths. Nāgārjuna starts,
according to Garfield, with a few statements of his opponents:

If all of this is empty,

neither arising nor ceasing,
then for you, it follows that
the Four Noble Truths do not exist. (Garfield 1995: XXIV,1).
In the following verses Nāgārjuna, goes on with this reductio ad absurdum by his opponents:
If the Four Noble Truths would not exist, then the whole Dharma practice would be totally
useless, because the Dharma itself would not exist; and how absurd is that? It’s getting worse,
the opponents argue: even the Buddha would not exist!
The following verses are the answers of Nāgārjuna himself, again, according to
Garfield:

We say that this understanding of yours

of emptiness and the purpose of emptiness
and of the significance of emptiness is incorrect.
as a consequence you are harmed by it.
The Buddha’s teachings of the Dharma
is based on two truths:
A truth of worldly convention
and an ultimate truth.
Those who do not understand
the distinction drawn between these two truths
do not understand
the Buddha’s profound truth. (Garfield 1995: XXIV, 7-9).
Nāgārjuna makes, as we can see, a distinction between the true truths – Ian Harris calls these
“epistemic” – and the Buddha’s profound truth, which is not differentiated, but one. What is
the status of this “profound truth”? Does it function as a metaphysical foundation? If it did, it

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would have svabhāva. But that goes against the general thesis and purpose of the MMK.
Nāgārjuna tries to convince his readers that the awareness of śūnyatā and of śūnyatā-śūnyatā
withhold them from clinging to any concept. He wants his readers to be liberated from
clinging and false adherences because those mental tendencies generate duḥkha. So from a
soteriological standpoint, the oneness of the profound truth of the Buddha is the solid
guarantee in what Wittgenstein would call a religious language game. The emphasis on the
uniqueness offers solidity because people who desire to gain knowledge distrust any
pluralistic explication of truth.
Between the ‘grammatical’ boundaries of the Buddha’s single truth there are the two
truths. If we merely look at the meaning of satya as a characteristic of the so-called truth-
bearers (propositions, statements, beliefs, judgments, etc.) – because in Indian logic things can
be also “true” –, then it is quite obvious that only conventional truth can be attributed to these
truth-bearers. For it is not thinkable, due to the boundaries of language, that a truth-bearer
could be ultimately true. Westerhoff (2009) makes this very point more explicit: ‘According
to the Madhyamaka view of truth, there can be no such thing as ultimate truth, a theory
describing how things really are, independent of our interests and conceptual resources
employed in describing it. All one is left with is conventional truth, truth that consists in
agreement with commonly accepted practices and conventions.’ (Ibid.: 220).
As with all important texts, Nāgārjuna’s works have resulted in a variety of
interpretations. The first known interpreter in the early years of the Mahāyāna philosophical
discourse was Buddhapālita82 (c. 470 - c. 550).
Buddhapālita’s interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s texts on conditioning and causality caused
an intense debate, letting eventually arise two major subschools83 within Madhyamaka (Hayes
2017). The most famous comment Buddhapālita, according to Garfield, made was on this first
verse of the MMK:

Neither from itself nor from another

Nor from both

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This monk of possibly South Indian descent became a revered scholar. As a student, he became acquainted
with the original works of Nāgārjuna, who lived three centuries earlier. As a master, Buddhapālita taught the
principles of Madhyamaka. He also wrote commentaries on famous works of Nāgārjuna and of his disciple
Āryadeva, who is most known for his Four Hundred Verses (Catuḥśatakaśāstrakarikā ). The only work of
Buddhapālita that survived is Mulamadhyamakavṛtti (MMV), his commentary on MMK. The original Sanskrit
text was lost; the Tibetan translation is the oldest version of this important commentary.

83
Svātantrika and Prasaṅgika. These names, however, “are modern scholars’s translations into Sanskrit of the
Tibetan terms Rang rgyud pa and Thal ‘gyur ba, respectively, which were used in Tibet from about the eleventh
century on to designate [the] two subschools (…)” (William L. Ames in Dreyfus & McClintock 2003: 41).

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 Nor without a cause,
Does anything whatever, anywhere arise. (Garfield 1995: I, 1).
Buddhapālita sums up the only possible relationships between cause and effect:

1. the cause is the same as the effect;

2. the cause is different from the effect:
3. the cause is both the same as and different from the effect;
4. the cause is neither the same as nor different from the effect. (Jones 2011: 125-132).
In his analysis of these possibilities, Buddhapālita, according to several Western
interpretations of his work, shows that each of these is untenable:

ad 1): he argues that the identity of the two ‘defeats the very idea of causality’ (Hayes
2017);
ad 2): ‘If the effect were different from the cause, on the other hand, then there would
be no constraints on what could arise out of what, so long as the cause and the effect
were different’ (ibid.);
ad 3): If 1) and 2) are untenable, 3) has to be untenable two because it is the
conjunction of 1) and 2);
ad 4): it undermines the very idea of causality as well.
Ultimately, this is all Buddhapālita, according to several Western interpreters, has to say on
causality. It appears he thinks he is totally in accordance with Nāgārjuna’s argumentation;
mainly, by showing the absurdity of concepts that should explain the phenomena, one must
acknowledge that there is nothing that the mind can cling to, including the concept of mind
itself. Accordingly, Buddhapālita offers a negative ontology; rather than affirming how things
are, he negates every affirmative proposition. This negativism, using the method of the so-
called prasaṅga84 arguments, is rejected by Bhāvaviveka85, who thinks that Mādhyamikas
‘should put forward a positive argument for a position rather than merely showing the
inadequacies of other positions’ (ibid.). Buddhapālita’s methodology of prasaṅga86 is

84
The Sanskrit word prasaṅga means “consequence.”

85
There is not much hard historical information about the life of Bhāvaviveka (ca. 500-570), also known as
Bhavya and Bhāviveka. Possibly born in Southern India he went to Magadha in the North to study the works of
Nāgārjuna. Fully trained as a monk and scholar, he went back to his natal region, where he became quite famous,
especially because of his opposition against Cittamātra85 (“The School of Mind Only”). Ame thinks he might
have been ‘the first to use the formal syllogism of Indian logic in expounding the Madhyamaka’ (ibid.: 42).
All of Bhāvaviveka’s works in the original language vanished; only the Chinese and Tibetan translations
of several of them were preserved. His most important texts are his commentary on Nāgārjuna’s MMK,
Prajñāpadīpa (PrP, “Lamp of Wisdom”), and Madhyamakahṛdayakārikā (MHK, “Verses on the Heart of the
Middelmost”).

86
This methodology consists of using arguments “that show that the opponent’s position leads to consequences
unacceptable to the opponent himself” (Ames 2003: 42).

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qualified by Bhāvaviveka ‘as hopelessly old-fashioned and out of touch with recent
achievements in logic and with contemporary intellectual life generally,’ giving the School of
the Middle Way ‘an air of quaint irrelevance’ (Ames 2003: 57).
The American historian of philosophy and religion Richard H. Jones says that
Bhāvaviveka’s major contribution to the Madhyamaka tradition was his claim that the defense
of Nāgārjuna’s position requires yukti, i.e., a method of reasoning from right judgements
because the method of reductio ad absurdum is not enough. Centuries later, Tibetan scholars
claimed that Bhāvaviveka thus founded a subschool of Madhyamaka, called Svātantrika
(Jones 2011: 199). The Sanskrit word svātantrika (Tibetan: rang rgyud pa) is the adjective of
the noun svatantra (i.e. “independent activity”).
Bhāvaviveka, in order to convince opponents of Madhyamaka, applied a syllogistic
form, consisting of propositions that conventionally were considered to be independently
correct. He was convinced that this would modernize the defense of the doctrine of emptiness.
He argued ‘that without a positive reason and example for holding a claim, an argument
cannot exclude the opposite thesis and thus does not have full probative force’ (ibid.: 201;
Ruegg 1981: 64). Candrakīrti87 would oppose this position in every way possible.
He studied the commentaries of Buddhapālita and Bhāvaviveka. According the Tibetan
narrative, he founded the Prasaṅgika School by defending Buddhapālita against the criticism
of Bhāvaviveka. Candrakīrti’s two best-known works are his commentary of the MMK
entitled Prasannapadā Madhyamakavṛtti (“Clear-worded Commentary on the Middlemost”),
which survived in Sanskrit as well as in Tibetan translation, and an independent treatise called
Madhyamakāvatāra (MĀ, “Introduction to the Middlemost”), available only in Tibetan
translation (Hayes 2017). Karen C. Lang translated this work and published it in her book
Four Illusions (Lang 2003). Essential for our discussion is the following passage:

Those outside the path of Nāgārjuna

have no means of achieving tranquility.
They are misled about conventional and ultimate truth,
and because they are misled they do not attain liberation.
Conventional truth is the means
and ultimate truth is the result of that means.
Whoever does not know the difference between these two
enters the wrong path because of that false conception. (MĀ VI.79–80; Lang 2003: 19).

87
According to accounts of medieval Tibetan historians, Candrakīrti (c. 570 - c. 650) was born in South India
and became a monk, studying the works of Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva (Lang 2018). After a while he was
appointed abbot of the great monastic university of Nalanda (North India). That is all what is historically known
of this famous scholar’s life.

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Huntington says that the MĀ reflects the central concern of the debate between the stances of
the so-called Svātantrika and Prasaṅgika. Both schools accept the ultimate validity of the
emptiness doctrine. The Svātantrikas hold that this doctrine could be established most
effectively ‘by utilitizing an extensive system of independently valid (svatantra) inferential
judgments embodied in the tripartite syllogism of Indian philosophers,’ which consists of a
proposition, a supporting reason, and a suitable example (Huntington 1989: 34). Candrakīrti,
on the other hand, is convinced that a gradual realization of emptiness could only be achieved
by a critique directed against one’s ‘own prejudices and presuppositions about so-called
empirical experience and the arguments either consciously or onconsciously posited to
support these preconceived ideas’ (ibid.).
Westerhoff says that Candrakīrti in the MĀ warns against entering in debates with rival
systems because he is aware that Nāgārjuna saw the danger of clinging to one’s own positions
(Westerhoff 2018: 134). According to Siderits, Candrakīrti and the Prasaṅgikas hold that
conventional truth is ‘a set of brutely given practices which must be taken at face value’
(Siderits 2016: 32). ‘To seek to analyse these practices is to introduce the standards of
rationality, standards which the Mādhyamika believes to be thoroughly discredited. If the only
truth is that which accords with conventional practices, then we must resist all temptation to
analyse and explain these practices. To give in to such temptation would be to confuse the
worldly canon of rationality with the philosophical’ (ibid.).
For Candrakīrti, the ultimate truth is not graspable for lingual activity. Nevertheless,
suppose that the Buddha did not use language; how would anybody have known about the
Dharma? Moreover, how would we have known about the distinction between
paramārthasatya and saṁvṛitisatya if wise teachers had remained silent? Candrakīrti explains
that the Buddha taught according to the linguistic conventions of his audience. Every
language consists of conventions. Grammar rules are necessary in order to utter meaningful
expressions. One of those rules is that a sentence is constructed with pronouns. In order to
explain that there is no self, the Buddha only could present this insight while presupposing
that the pronoun “self,” according to his listeners, referred to what was thought to be
experienced as an inner core. So the truth of non-self presupposes the ordinary use of the term
“self.” This ordinary use is, of course, only meaningful if one believes in the existence of the
self. In other words: without the common sense belief that there is a self, the doctrine of non-
self would be unthinkable.
According to the American scholar Karen C. Lang, who wrote the book Four Illusions
– about Candrakīrti’s advice on the bodhisattva's practice of yoga – language is the means that

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shows the path leading to ultimate reality. ‘People who fail to understand that language has no
further utility once the goal has been reached, however, remain inextricably trapped within the
labyrinth of language’ (Lang 2003: 19). Candrakīrti, she adds, teaches that what appears real
to ordinary people is regarded by exceptional yogis as merely conventionally true, perceiving
the emptiness of those things as ultimate truth. ‘Direct and personal experience enables them
to apprehend ultimate truth, which transcends the limits of language and dualistic thought’
(ibid.).
Jan Westerhoff remarks that the Mādhyamikas would have rejected the correspondence
account of truth, which says that the truth of a statement is founded upon a similarity of
structure between that statement and a state of affairs in reality to which it refers (Westerhoff
2009: 219). According to Westerhoff, this also entails a rejection of the corresponding view of
how language works, namely that our utterances are only truth-apt if they are shaped by
propositional languages and that their truth depends from their adequate representation of how
things are in the world. The main reason for this rejection is, according to Westerhoff, that the
Mādhyamika cannot find any sufficiently substantial relation that would allow us ‘to bind
together world and word at the most fundamental level.’
If there were such a relation that links words and their referents, then the causal relation
would be the best plausible candidate. However, as Nāgārjuna has argued in detail in his
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, the causal relation itself is conceptually constructed, Westerhoff
says. ‘But if causation cannot be regarded as a relation that functions objectively, independent
of the concepts we employ, then it can hardly be regarded as a mind-independent way of
founding the relationship between language and the world.’ (Ibid.).
The Mādhyamikas might adopt a truth theory that conceives truth in terms of
assertability, Westerhoff thinks. Such a theory regards a statement as true if conditions arise
which warrant our assertion of that statement. For instance, if one says: “Water is wet,” then
that statement can be qualified as true because the one that uttered this statement has
something that justifies it. However, if it is impossible to find anything for certain statements
that could justify them, then those statements are, acccording to this theory, not truth-apt.
‘This kind of denial of verification-transcendent truths (…) agrees very well with Nāgārjuna’s
contextualist epistemology. For if nothing is intrinsically a means of knowledge, nothing can
be intrinsically beyond the grasp of such means of knowledge either.’ (Ibid.: 220).
Westerhoff explains further that according to the Madhyamaka view of truth there is no
ultimate truth, in the sense of a theory describing how things really are. ‘All one is left with is
conventional truth,’ he says. However, to speak of conventional reality as distorted is highly

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misleading, ‘unless all we want to say is that our way of investigating the world is
inextricably bound up with the linguistic and conceptual framework we happen to employ’
(ibid.).
Madhyamaka holds that all we humans seem to be dealing with is a ‘purely immanent
notion of truth where the only kind of truth we have access to is a reflection of conventional
practices and agreements’ (ibid.: 221). Nonetheless, Westerhoff continues, the Mādhyamikas
might make the point that sometimes treating truths as more than just conventional, could be
advantageous. This might occur whenever there are practices and conventions that need to be
improved. ‘The Mādhyamika could thus argue that for pragmatic reasons we should conceive
of truths as reflections of an objective, external reality even though we do not think that there
are any such truths in fact’ (ibid.).

3.6. Śūnyatā and contingency

Is contingency the same as emptiness? This question can only be answered once we have
determined the conceptual framework to which the two terms belong. Contingency is a
philosophical concept used to denote the non-necessity and non-absolute nature of things.
Emptiness is a Buddhist concept. Although philosophy and religion are not reducible to each
other in Buddhism, we can say that the doctrine of śunyatā has a religious purpose: the
liberation of all suffering beings. To liberate these beings, they must first be liberated from
ignorance (avidyā). This is done by appealing to the mental faculties of the ones that hear the
Dharma. False representations of reality must first be removed, leading one to recognize that
it is reasonable to walk the path of salvation.
Back to the question: Is contingency the same as emptiness? In Rorty’s view, reality is
not underpinned by a teleological principle; everything that comes into being is entirely
accidental. The contingent course of things implies that it is unpredictable.
According to the Buddhist principle of pratītyasamutpāda, everything is connected to
everything; nothing arises randomly, and nothing is not caused. If everything is caused, there
are also no original thoughts that can generate new states. Then there is also no free will
because every expression of will is conditioned. From this, it can be deduced that the course
of things is theoretically predictable. However, this determinism was rejected in early
Buddhism. According to the doctrine of karma (Pāli: kamma), there is a distinction between
morally good and morally bad intentions and actions. Since this distinction seems to

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presuppose free will, the course of events is unpredictable despite conditioned existence. The
difficulty with this, however, is that the doctrine of anātman entails that there is no subject of
free will. If there is no self, the notion of free will seems redundant. The Mādhyamikas solved
this by explaining pratītyasamutpāda through the notion of emptiness and the doctrine of the
Two Truths. It is precise because everything is empty and without essence (asvabhāva) that
there is dependent existence (and thus saṃsāra and karma); after all, the essential
(svabhāvatā) is, according to Madhyamaka, independent, imperishable, and necessary. At the
same time, the realization of asvabhāvatā can break this chain of dependence, allowing
freedom to arise. Total freedom manifests thanks to the religious realization of emptiness. In
that enlightened state, however, where there is no longer any distinction between saṃsāra and
nirvāṇa, the question of free will is no longer relevant. At the phenomenal level, the course of
things seems to be determined by will on the one hand and according to the wheel of
impermanence on the other; at the ultimate level, however, there is only emptiness. Is
emptiness then the same as contingency? As “emptiness” refers to the religious experience of
freedom, any identification with Rorty’s concept fails. As emptiness “implies” that nothing in
this world is permanent, necessary, and absolute, it corresponds to contingency in Rorty’s
sense.
With Rorty, we see the same philosophical eros to de-eroticize philosophy as with
Nāgārjuna. Both seize upon reason to show the limitations of reflective reason. Both are
concerned with the fate of their suffering fellow humans.
Rorty’s pragmatism, as mentioned above, distances itself from the Greek method of
analyzing and describing reality in dichotomies, such as appearance-being, body-mind,
emotion-reason, et cetera. Mahāyāna Buddhism is highly ambivalent concerning dichotomies.
On the one hand, it points to the unity of, for example, nirvanā and saṃsāra; on the other
hand, it constantly points to the distinction between the illusionary world and the ultimate. It
seems that Mahāyāna philosophies, as interpreted by contemporary Western philosophers,
serve themselves with metaphysics so abhorred by pragmatists. The emphasis on the
distinction between reality and the make-believe world of conditioned existence seems to
confirm this. However, this is not a distinction between the absolute and contingency.
According to Mādhyamikas, nothing is absolute, not even ultimate reality; the doctrine of
emptiness says there is no all-supporting ground. In this sense, Madhyamaka could be
considered a form of non-foundationalism.
Rorty’s antimetaphysics is rooted in his observation that language is contingent and that
the self is a fabric of various contingencies. This view concerning the self corresponds to the

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Mahāyāna teaching about the five skandhas, the “parts” that make up a person. They turn out
on closer inspection to be empty, thus implying the absence of a substantial core (adhyātmā-
śūnyatā). Whereas Rorty seizes upon this emptiness in a Nietzschean way to create a self, the
Buddhists, on the contrary, seek to achieve complete realization of this emptiness. This seems
like an essential difference, yet I also see a similarity. Thus the bodhisattva, through his
selfless existence, has created a new reality, a new selfless self. This mode of existence cannot
be grasped intellectually in any way. Hence it is not only the object of cult but also the subject
of art. The bodhisattva reality creates a culture of both compassion and beauty. It is not
difficult to see that there are major differences between the aesthetic views within an ego
culture and those of a culture where selflessness is cultivated. Where everything revolves
around personal status and economic growth, forms and materials serve mechanical
functionality, rapid stimulation of the senses, and diversion. However, where everything
revolves around spiritual growth, the search for tranquility, attention to detail, liveliness, and
concentrated dignity are paramount.
Rorty rules out the human ability to know whether a non-human, transcendent, absolute
reality exists88 since human knowledge is always intersubjective and conventional. According
to him, facts are never ontologically connected with objective reality but rather with a
convention within a contingent community of subjects on what they think is justifiable to
stipulate.
In his works and interviews, Rorty refuses to say anything about the ultimate. He
maintains that the intellectual desire for the ultimate is dangerous because it tries to reach
something that cannot be reached discursively. Theology as the prosaic endeavor to underpin
absolute claims burdens the adherents of those claims and leads them into some kind of
epistemic slavery. In his intellectual desire for liberty, he marks any discourse that serves the
business of revealing divine truths as one to be battled. Not in a philosophical way – because
then one must commit oneself to fight in the metaphysical arena – but in a showing way:
pointing out that those truth claims put people in chains. The only compelling instrument
against these theologians is the non-argumentative demonstration of the suffering that
theology has caused.

88
There was a period in which Rorty characterized his view as atheism. Later, in 2002, he wrote: ‘(…) there is a
second sort of philosopher who describes himself or herself as an atheist. These are the ones who use “atheism”
as a rough synonym for “anticlericalism.” I now wish that I had used the latter term on the occasions when I
have used the former to characterize my own view. For anticlericalism is a political view, not an epistemological
or metaphysical one’ (Rorty & Vattimo 2005: 33). See also: Hashemi 2017: 170-176.

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 For religious persons, Rorty’s rejection of theology can be experienced as an attack on
their core beliefs; for many of them, he appears to be one of those many liberal and aggressive
atheists who seem to enjoy the bashing of God-fearing folk. But would it be possible to use
Rorty’s “physics” in favor of mysticism so that everyone – including religious people – can
benefit from his insights? There might be a discourse that could be grafted upon the Rortyan
synthetic approach of both the Continental and analytical traditions of thought. I contend that
this discourse can be found in Western interpretations of Madhyamaka.
We have seen that Nāgārjuna attacks the substantialist outlook on reality. Dialectically,
he shows that nothing has self-essence and substance (Skt. svabhāva), thereby taking an
opposing stance against the Abhidhamma89 tradition. ‘For the Ābhidharmikas, substance-
svabhāva does exist; it is the intrinsic and essential quality of ultimately real objects
(dravya),’ says Jan Westerhoff in his philosophical introduction in his book Nāgārjuna’s
Madhyamaka (Westerhoff 2009: 30).
Both Nāgārjuna and Rorty deny that there is such a thing as ultimate truth in the form of
a theory describing how the world really is. ‘All one is left with is conventional truth, truth
that consists of in agreement with commonly accepted practices and conventions’ (ibid,: 220).
In the antirealist interpretation of Madhyamaka by Siderits, it is the ultimate truth ‘that there
is no ultimate truth’ (Siderits 2003: 157). That is the consequence of the doctrine of śūnyatā,
he holds.
In order to avoid reifying this ultimate concept, which in turn can become an object of
ideological or religious attachment, Nāgārjuna underscored that also emptiness is empty:
śūnyatā śūnyatā. Herein, the emptiness of emptiness standpoint prompted Bhāvaviveka, the
alleged founder of the Svātantrika tradition, to formulate the following interpretation: the
ultimate is a kind of intuition about reality as being empty, as the total absence of svabhāva.
Rorty would oppose Bhāvaviveka’s position because ultimate truth for Bhāvaviveka is an
insight, a view beyond viewing. For Rorty, this is much too Platonic. It gravitates too much
toward the earlier discussed “myth of the given” (Sellars 1997: 33): that special, privileged
insight waiting for us to be found. Even if this insight is not rational at all, Rorty still would
reject it as a deceiving Gnosticism. However, that being said, there is another interpretation of
the paramārtha that might be more suitable for my grafting project.
One might assert that Rorty would share Siderits’s account “the absence of ultimate
truth is the ultimate truth” since Rorty rejects philosophy as the intellectual attempt to mirror

89
Abhi- means both “exceeding” and “about.” So the meaning of abhidamma might be “the higher teaching” or
“the meta-doctrine.”

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reality in an increasingly clearer manner. Intellectual activity should be serviceable to the
liberal ethic: to ease the pains of beings we can relate to and to stop their suffering. For Rorty,
who sees himself as a thinker who adopted the utilitarian ideal, philosophy is only worthwhile
when it supports discourses that are helpful to ‘our project of maximizing the overall
satisfaction of desire’ (Rorty 2011: 15); philosophia ancilla beatitudinis. If beatitude or the
end of all suffering is the purpose of all thought, is rationality still the driving engine of
thought? This question is relevant because it could conceivably be that irrational thoughts
could also lead to a salvific goal. It sets the stage for presenting the debate between Jay
Garfield and Sandy Huntington about the significance of rationality in the
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.

3.7. The debate between Huntington and Garfield on rationality in Madhyamaka

During the Tibetan adoption of Buddhism, ‘the most philosophically difficult and
controversial of the problems encountered in the Madhyamaka,’ writes David Seyfort Ruegg
(2000), was the question of

whether followers of this school may legitimately, within the frame of their school’s
philosophical principles, advocate a propositional thesis (pratijñā) and maintain an
assertion/asserted tenet (abhyupagama) or assertoric philosophical proposition/position
(pakṣa). The problem is, in other words, whether there is any place at all in Madhyamaka
thought for a doctrine of one’s own (svamata) in the form of an established philosophical
system (siddhānta). This problem raises in its turn the further question as to whether the
Madhyamaka (and with it a major part of Mahayanist thought) embraces a truly philosophical
component, or whether it is rather (as some modern writers have opined) what is sometimes
called a Wisdom Literature and a form of discursively – and therefore philosophically –
inexpressible mysticism concerned solely with the ineffable. Furthermore, the question arises
whether this mysticism borders on philosophical relativism or indifferentism where no theory,
whatever its nature, is maintained, and where no analytical thought is admitted. (Ruegg 2000:
106-107).
This problem continues to remain unsolved. It was a main topic during a three-day90
symposium in April 2010, hosted by Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, featuring
more than twenty scholars91 from across the United States and Europe. The theme of this
important academic gathering was: Madhyamaka & Methodology. A Symposium on Buddhist
Theory and Method. Every participant had the opportunity to respond to two papers: “The

90
April 23–25, 2010.

Amongst them were, next to Huntington and Garfield: Mario D’Amato, Georges Dreyfus, Peter Gregory
91

Yaroslav Komarovski, Connie Kassor, Karen Lang, Tom Tillemans, Kevin Vose, and Jan Westerhoff.

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nature of the Mādhyamika trick,” by C. W. Huntington, Jr. of Hartwick College; and a reply
to that paper by Jay L. Garfield of Smith College. In this section, I want to zoom in on the
subject matter of reason and how it functions in Madhyamaka.
While they agree on many points, Garfield and Huntington have different outlooks on
the role of reasoning in Madhymaka. Though their differences are considered by themselves
as “hair-splitting,” it generates a good picture of the field of the contemporary interpretation
of the Indian Mādhyamika stances on rationality and the boundaries of thinking. The
differences between Huntington and Garfield might not be as harsh as those of the
Svātantrikas in opposition to the Prāsaṅgikas. Still, they are significant for this study because
they can equip us better for our project of grafting Madhyamaka upon neopragmatism.
In his paper, Huntington (2007) argues that Robinson (1957), Hayes (1994), Tillemans
(1999), and Garfield (2002) are wrong in attributing to Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti ‘a
commitment to rationality and to the use of argument, and that these commentators do
violence to the Madhyamaka project by using rational reconstruction in their interpretation of
Nāgārjuna’s and Candrakīrti’s texts’ (Garfield 2008: 507). Huntington ‘argues instead that
Mādhyamikas reject reasoning, distrust logic, and do not offer arguments. He also argues that
interpreters ought to recuse themselves from argument in order to be faithful to these texts’
(ibid.).
In his response, Garfield tries to demonstrate that Huntington is wrong: ‘Nāgārjuna and
Candrakīrti do deploy arguments, take themselves to do so, and even if they did not, we
would be wise to do so in commenting on their texts.’ (Ibid.).
Let us first discuss Huntington’s stance. He stands in opposition to contemporary
scholars who ‘force a logical grid’ over the work of Nāgārjuna, ‘who is so obviously and
profoundly distrustful of logic’ (Huntington 2007: 111). Huntington has a threefold strategy:
to discuss the historical origins of the logical gridding in the Indian and Tibetan traditions92;
to show that these attempts are based upon prejudices regarding Nāgārjuna’s insistence that he
has no proposition (pratijñā)93; to offer an alternative interpretation that takes into account the
literary dimensions of Nāgārjuna’s writings.
Huntington notes that the attempts to make logical sense out of Nāgārjuna have its

92
I used Huntington’s historical discussion in section 1 of this chapter.
93
Vigrahavyāvartanī 29, Nāgārjuna 2010: ‘If I had any thesis, that fault would apply to me. But I do not have
any thesis, so there is indeed no fault for me.’

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historical precedent in Bhāvaviveka and that his stance – namely that this interpretation
‘misses the point’ – finds its own precedent in Candrakīrti (ibid.: 126).

The real issue here is not about who is the legitimate historian, but simply: Whose reading is
most persuasive, most interesting, most cogent and engaging? (…) Once we dispense with all
attempts to secure a priori privilege for one or another reading of Nāgārjuna by linking it to
claims about some kind of inherent methodological purity, the way is open to adjudicate any
particular interpretation of his writing strictly on its own merits. It seems to me that the most
serious shortcoming of this insistence on reducing the Madhyamakārikā-s to a series of logical
formulas is that such a reading lacks any sensitivity for the very features of textuality –
symbol, metaphor, polysemy, multivalence – that might lead us (à la Candrakīrti) out of the
compulsive desire to deal in certainties. (ibid.).

To make his point clear, Huntington does not argue the logicians’ stance rationally, but he
tries to illuminate his opponents with a picture. In other words, he doesn’t tell what he means;
he shows it as one would show a painting; not the actual painting or a photograph of it, but a
textual reference to it. The work in question (see Appendix B) is of the 17th-century Flemish
artist Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts, called Turned-over Canvas94 (1668). It is a so-called
trompe l’oeil. Gijsbrechts painted an image of the reverse of a framed painting. Huntington
says that someone who would turn this painting and become disappointed after discovering
that he is fooled has not understood the artistic concept of the issue at hand.
‘Like Gijsbrechts,’ writes Huntington,

Nāgārjuna has placed before us a masterwork of the creative imagination that disturbs and
provokes in that it appears to be something it is not, something graspable. We feel a
compulsion to pick it up and turn it around in order to see what has been proven or, as the case
may be, disproven. But to succumb to the temptation — and to be disappointed to find that
neither the one nor the other has been accomplished — is, as I have already indicated, to miss
the point, for the logically indeterminate space hiding behind the writing ought to tell us
something about our own preoccupations, about the nature of our relationship with the
meanings of words seemingly familiar and, at the same time, distressingly remote. (Ibid.: 128).

Huntington’s hermeneutical lens can yield a certain image of Nāgārjuna’s purpose, namely
that of a mirror. The readers of Nāgārjuna’s texts can become aware of their clinging to
graspability. In the tradition of Candrakīrti this awareness must lead to the realization of the
emptiness of emptiness. Trying to grasp emptiness by trying to make it the conclusion of a
rational process might be the same as trying to explain prosaically that there is no original
painting on the other side of Gijsbrechts’s canvas. The only way to liberate oneself from this
urge to look behind the canvas in the hope of finding absolute truth is by looking in the mirror
that poetry is. Then you might see your prosaic, non-ironical characteristic countenance and,

94
Another English title: The Reverse of a Framed Painting (in Danish: Bagsiden af et indrammet maleri).

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hopefully, change your gaze.
Garfield’s reply95 is an answer to this non-conceptual gaze. According to him, both
Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti hold that reason undermines and subverts itself96. The question is:
how can one attain the supra-intellectual disposition of the mind after reason is being
undermined and subverted; in other words: how can you attain non-conceptuality? Garfield
rhetorically summarizes Huntington’s position by saying that in order to understand
Nāgārjuna’s and Candrakīrti’s non-conceptuality, Huntington might suggest taking a special
pill that enables interpreters to “think” non-conceptually as well. ‘I don’t advice doing that
(…), because simply going non-conceptual gets you absolutely nowhere. Moreover, you
would have no reason to believe that that pill and the effects that it produces are efficacious
and have any value for you.’ (Garfield 2010: 6:23-6:44). He then explains that reason is the
only way to get convinced of the importance of non-conceptuality. Thus it takes reason to
know that reason is self-subverting. Garfield adds that Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti exactly did
that: reasoning, by ‘very careful argument; not fictional argument, not non-existing argument,
not by reading about the arguments that somebody else gave, but by pursuing analysis, (…)
rational analysis that attempts to find out the fundamental nature of reality’ (ibid.: 7:09-7:29).
This rational analysis, Garfield continues, convinces us that we do not attain objective
knowledge at the end. Does this non-conceptuality lead to a complete intellectual blackout?
No, Garfield says. The result is a non-conceptual insight that can be communicated,
discussed, and articulated. However, the non-conceptuality is easy to achieve through non-
conceptual efforts, jokes Garfield: ‘All you need is a very large rock.’ Knock yourself out,
and you attain non-conceptuality, albeit in a “mute” and “inert” form. ‘Non-conceptuality
needs to be enriched by the conceptual insight to allow you to actually make something of it.’
(Ibid.: 8:21-8:43).
Garfield says that the “hair-splitting” difference between his stance and Huntington’s is
about the transcendental need for reason as the vehicle that leads to the paradox of self-
undermining rationality:

[T]he only way to understand the way that reason is in the end subverted, the only way to
understand that reason isn’t self-justifying, and the only way to understand that there is
knowledge that transcends reason is to use reason. And the deeper paradox is that when you
get to a stage where you might think reason can be abandoned, that’s when reason is most

95
The quotes are from the actual words he spoke during the session on April 24th 2010, in Smith College. My
source is the podcast Madhyamaka and Methodology, to be found on iTunes (Garfield 2010).
96
Garfield refers to similar thoughts in the West: Sextus Empericus (Against the Logicians) and David Hume
(Treatise of Human Nature; Book 1, Part 3.).

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 necessary. Non-conceptual thought, if it’s to be thought at all, has to be conceptual throughout.
And understanding of the limits of reason, requires reason. And that what Madhyamaka is
about. It’s a middle path, not because it sort of falls into the error of arguing that reason is self-
justifying and universally probative, nor into the extreme of complete irrationalism and an
abandonment of thought at any stage, but rather because it realizes that reason is an
enormously useful tool at the beginning, the middle and the end. And for that reason I praise
reason above all else. (Ibid.: 9:16-10:29).

Notwithstanding the aforementioned points, fleshing out further Huntington’s stance, it

appears that he might be considered to be a Rortyan. In his article Nāgārjuna’s Fictional
World (Huntington 2018), he puts forward a new argument against rationalistic readings of
Nāgārjuna.
The purpose of the search for logical proof or explanation of śūnyatā in Nāgārjuna’s
works, Huntington says, is not limited to intellectual understanding; this search is mainly
aimed at facilitating a particular kind of lived experience. He takes it as uncontroversial that
mere rational conviction cannot be the ultimate soteriological purpose of Buddhist
philosophy. If one further assumes that reading Nāgārjuna could itself serve as a form of
spiritual practice, then it might be that – while there is little concern with assertion or proof,
Nāgārjuna has something important to say about how he is using language.

Something about how his language must be read and understood so as not to deflect attention
toward a logical abstraction and so restrict our capacity for a direct and unsettling encounter
with ‘what is awesome and astonishing in its inexplicability’97. It is in this particular sense that
(…) we open the possibility of construing his project in a way that has little to do with any
desire to command rational assent, to prove or disprove any sort of universally binding
theoretical claim. (Ibid.: 157).
If Nāgārjuna’s writing is interpreted as a literary means to a soteriological end, then we could
no longer hold that his method is dialectical, because it does not ‘not belong exclusively to the
realm of logic, but implicates ethical, aesthetic, and practical standards in the work of
constructing reality’ (ibid.: 176). At the same time, we may be able to keep calling it
dialectics if dialectics can also mean the method to criticize other propositions or statements
that do not necessarily operate in a logical manner. In this way, Huntington is a Rortyan,
because he suggests that using metaphors – a metaphor understood as an “unfamiliar noise”
(Rorty 1989: 41) – can lead the hearer or reader to a deeper level of understanding beyond
conventional truth.

97
Diamond 2008: 45-46.

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3.8. Māyā: Huntington’s novel and the question “Why should we care?”

In light of the treatment above, we shall now begin discussing Huntington’s attempt to answer
the question that pragmatism is asking once it is confronted with the challenge of the meta-
ethical consequence of an overall non-foundationalism in regard to what in the conventional
world is called “evil” and the suffering it brings. Why, in other words, if everything is non-
foundational, should we care?
Huntington refrains from answering this question discursively. He chooses the narrative
manner, like Plato, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Sartre before him. And Huntington holds that
Nāgārjuna did not assert anything and produced fiction in order to “say” the ineffable. That is
why rationalistic readings of Nāgārjuna are problematic, Huntington says (Huntington 2018:
158); his stanzas, simply put, cannot be considered as tractates.
Huntington’s answer is given in a work of fiction he wrote, a novel. Maya (Huntington
2015) is the title of this book, referring to māyā, a complex Indian concept that is often used
in reference to illusoriness. Huntington himself says about Maya: ‘a novel I conceived as a
work of narrative philosophy in the spirit of Nāgārjuna, an exhibition of emptiness’
(Huntington 2018: 165). In a key passage, this “exhibition” of śūnyatā is interestingly enough
not explained within a Buddhist context, but within a Hindu context: the non-dual teachings
known as Advaita Vedānta, promoted by Ādi Śaṅkarācāryaḥ98 (Śaṅkarā; in Huntington’s
novel spelled as Shankara). These teachings have much in common with Madhyamaka.
Maya is about an American student, Stanley Harrington, who studies Sanskrit in India
during the 1970s. In the story – Stanley is the first-person narrator – we learn about his
intellectual and spiritual progress in a culture totally different from his own. Stanley’s
Sanskrit teacher is Pundit Trivedi. One day Stanley is not the only student during a reading
session (Huntington 2015: 206-208). A Hindu family man named Chotilal joins in. He
complains about how hard and confusing it is to understand Śankara’s commentaries on the
Bhagavadgītā. What Chotilal understands is that Śankara writes about Brahman, ‘a state
beyond all distinctions – beyond all the worry and pain of this illusory world. Beyond even
the need to fulfill one’s dharma.’ Pundit Trivedi acknowledges that this is indeed one of
Śankara’s interpretations. Chotilal: ‘But how can it be, Guru,-ji? Is this world really nothing

98
He lived in the 8th-9th century CE.

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more than maya?’ (…) ‘Is all that we do for nothing?’ Chotilal: ‘Is this … all of it not real99?
I want to understand, Guru-ji. I need to understand Shankara’s meaning.’
Huntington is letting Pundit Trivedi say: ‘And what if it were?’; ‘What if all of it – the
whole world – were nothing but a dream? (…) Would knowing this change anything?’
Chotilal replies that if indeed everything is nothing more than a dream, then why should he
worry about his daughter’s dowry and his ill wife’s pain? ‘Why should I care about
anything?’ The wise teacher replies to these questions by stating: ‘Is that what you would
prefer?’ Pundit Trivedi continues by saying to his confused pupil: ‘Few of us can doubt that
life includes a great deal of discomfort. But this teaching of maya is very tricky, and if one is
not careful with it – as with a strong medicine – it can bring more trouble than it solves.’ And
then he tells the story of Kela Baba.
Kela Baba was a swami (svāmī), whom Pundit Trividi met in his youth. It was said that
he had attained deep a realization of Śaṅkarā’s teaching. While teaching a group of students, a
furious elephant suddenly appeared and began to chase Kela Baba. The swami had to run for
his life. He survived the attack of the mad elephant by jumping into a dry well that was used
as a waste pit. After a while, the elephant lost interest, and Kela Baba called for help. Some of
his students pulled him out of the well and saw their master covered with manure and other
filth. One student was shocked to see the swami like this. He also expressed his
disappointment in how Kela Baba escaped danger. Pundit Trividi says that this student asked
his master: ‘Baba-ji, you told us everything is illusion. If the elephant was not real, then why
were you afraid? Why did you run away? Even you do not believe this maya talk! You are a
fake and a liar. From now on, I will call you Garbage baba, since that is where you belong –
in the garbage!’ However, the swami replies that not only the elephant was an illusion but also
its anger and chase; even his running away was maya. And the students responded: ‘If only
you had told us this while you were still in the well, then we would not have taken the trouble
to raise one illusion out of another! Why should we care?!’ Chotilal says that he agrees with
the disappointed student. Why should we care, indeed?

“But Guru-ji, was Kela Baba only pretending to be afraid of the elephant?” His gloom had
returned, and I could see he was working himself up all over again. “What good is it to know
that the world is maya if … if …”
He suddenly became animated, throwing up both hands in frustration.
“He ran from the elephant, Pundit-ji! He ran to save himself! There is no reason to run
from a dream!”
“Exactly.” Pundit Trivedi pounced on his words, speaking calmly, but with great

99
Italics used by Huntington.

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 authority, almost before Chotilal had finished this last sentence. “There is no escape from a
dream, because even the idea of escape is itself only a part of the dream. You have grasped
Shankara’s essential point. The dream of escape is the final illusion. When you see this, there
is nothing more to understand.”
It was as if a trapdoor had abruptly opened beneath my feet, and I felt myself falling
through endless space. I had been studying Vedanta for years, but with these few words
Pundit-ji had turned everything on its head. Of course, he was right. But what does it mean to
say that life is a dream when there is no possibility of waking up from the dream? What then is
the meaning of “liberation”? (Huntington 2015: 211).

Huntington goes on with the story by letting Pundit Trividi say to Chotical that this “maya
talk” can “easily lead to confusion and trouble.” Before Chotical leaves, Pundit Trividi
teaches him a key verse from the third chapter of the Bhagavadgītā, where Lord Krishna
explains to Arjuna: ‘In doing his work without attachment to its results, a man attains
liberation.’
When Stanley is finally alone with his teacher, he asks him if Kela Baba really
understood Shankara’s teaching on the meaning of māyā.

He smiled. “Why ask me this question? What do I know of such things? I am an old man
telling stories. That is all.”
“I’m curious. What do you think?”
He waved one hand in the air, as if to brush away a fly. “All is illusion! All is real! What
is the difference?” He paused, then answered his own question. “No difference at all. This is
precisely Shankara’s teaching, is it not? All distinctions are merely apparent; all difference is
ultimately false (…)”. (Ibid.: 213).

The Shankara in the story is an alter Nāgārjuna. In this last cited passage, we can learn much
about Huntington’s position in the debate on how one should interpret Nāgārjuna’s work.
Firstly, he rejects that it is metaphysics. Instead, it is the telling of stories. The wisdom is
being transmitted by the exchange of narratives.
Secondly, it is no use to distinguish discursively make distinctions between illusoriness
and reality. It is all about doing the right thing; act without attachments to whatever
philosophical system. Every system of wisdom is only wise once it works, once it puts you on
the way of the dharma. In Hindu thought, dharma is ‘the foundation on which everything is
built,’ Pundit Trivedi says to Stanley Harrington. ‘Dharma is our duty, our obligations to
others. It is the life given to each of us, the life to which we surrender’ (ibid.: 214). This
sounds Kantian, deontological, at least. Pundit Trivedi says this is ‘Sankhya, not Vedanta.’
Sankhya is often categorized as the dualist system of Hindu philosophy, and Vedanta as
Hindu non-dualism. The Sankhyan dharma is ultimately conservative: ‘To live in accord with
your dharma means simply that you do things the way they have always been done,’ says

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Pundit Trivedi. How different is the dharma according to Shankara and Nāgārjuna. Dharma is
not a foundation; rather, it is acting upon nothing but compassion. In the story of Kela Baba,
the swami was running because he realized compassion for the body he had and the person he
felt to be. Not running away would not only have been stupid but also arrogant, not only
toward the apparent self but also toward the elephant; the reason for such is that in running
away one respects another sentient being. Whether this being is illusory or real is simply not
relevant. It reminds us of the parable of the poisoned arrow, providing one of the most
obvious reasons to qualify this wisdom as pragmatist.
Rortyan non-foundationalism has no answer to the question, “Why should we care?” In
expecting an answer, one presupposes a system that provides good reasons for doing what is
only natural. Escaping the fury of a mad elephant is not the result of a maxim. It is a
spontaneous action, a reflex. Helping a fellow man who is starving is a reflex as well. The
only issue here is this: when is somebody a fellow man? If he has, to a certain point, the same
physical features? And do only the members of the species homo sapiens count, or also all
hominids and non-human animals? History shows that the question “who is our fellow man?”,
which sounds almost absurd to us, was by no means strange in previous centuries100.
According to Rorty, questions about human nature are obsolete and useless; he declines
expressions like “designate a substantial property.”101 Asking ontological questions to
determine an object’s humanity is in contrast with his liberal pragmatist ethic.

3.9. Siderits on rationality and soteriology

Mark Siderits argues that Buddhist tradition never made the assumption that rationality is
incapable of resolving soteriological or existential concerns. ‘Quite the opposite: the Buddha
takes it as obvious that we shall never resolve our existential concerns until we become
genuinely clear about what it is that our existence consists in’ (Siderits 2003: xiv).

100
E.g. the Valladolid debate (1550–1551). Indigenous people in the conquered lands of the New World were
brutally enslaved by the Spanish and Portuguese colonialists. The moral basis for this practice was disputed in
the Colegio de San Gregorio, in the Spanish city of Valladolid. Fra Bartolomé de las Casas pleaded against the
enslavement of “Indians”; his opponents were various scholars and clerics, including Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda.
De Las Casas had to prove that the Indians were created in Gods image and after His likeness too.
101
‘In my opinion it is useless to ask which adjectives have a purely expressive function and which designate a
property. It is also useless to ask which properties are substantial. All properties, one might say, have the same
ontological status. But I should also prefer to abandon expressions like ontological status. Pragmatists do not
employ this term.’ (Rorty & Engel 2007: 12).

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 According to Siderits, it takes rational analysis to understand what the Madhyamaka
doctrine of emptiness amounts to. It is not a form of reductionism. He applies this term to the
Buddhist notion of anātman: personhood is an illusionary concept. Buddhist Reductionism is
based on a ‘thoroughgoing mereological reductionism’: the view that ‘no composite entity is
ultimately real, that only impartite entities belong in our fundamental ontology’ (ibid.: xv).
However, the Mādhyamikas hold that all things are empty. That means that nothing has
an intrinsic nature. Siderits says that this awareness might turn into metaphysical nihilism or
into what he calls “global antirealism.”
According to metaphysical nihilism, the ultimate nature of reality is such that nothing
exists. This presupposes the belief that only things with intrinsic natures are ultimately real
things. ‘If there are no such entities, then it seems to follow that there are no ultimately real
things.’ Hence: the ultimate truth is that nothing exists.
According to global antirealism, the position Siderits defends, the very notion of an
ultimate truth, of there being an ultimate nature of reality, is incoherent (ibid.: 132).
Nāgārjuna, Siderits says, is a global antirealist. He seeks to demonstrate in the MMK ‘that
there can be no consistent account of the ultimate nature of reality’ (Siderits 2016: 27), which
leads to the slogan: “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth” (ibid.: 24). According
to opponents of Madhyamaka this might seem a kind of nihilism about rationality: ‘if supreme
rationality requires that we accept nothing as supremely rational, this can only mean that no
canon of rationality is rationally acceptable’ (ibid.). Siderits says this became the basis of a
standard objection to the doctrine of śūnyatā, because it would imply that it is necessarily
self-stultifying. The Mādhyamika, however, seems to be claiming, Siderits continues, that
philosophical rationality is ‘impotent to discover substantive truths concerning the ultimate
nature of reality.’ Yet this is the result of precisely philosophical rationality, employed by
Nāgārjuna. The objection against this might be that if his view were correct, one has
absolutely no reason to believe it; and if he is to be seen as advancing reasons for this claim,
then he is inconsistent. His response, however, is that he himself has no thesis. Claiming that
all things are empty would indeed be inconsistent. But Nāgārjuna does not claim that at all; he
only demonstrates through reductio ad absurdum that the claim that anything has intrinsic
nature leads to inconsistencies.

Nāgārjuna might be taken as intimating that the ultimate nature of reality is not amenable to
rational analysis, that is, that no canon of rationality is adequate to reality. Or he might instead
be seen as claiming that the very notion of an ultimate nature of reality is incoherent, that the
contradictions emerge from the exercise of philosophical rationality can be traced to a realist
conception of truth as correspondence to a mind-independent reality.’ (Ibid.: 27-28).

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The point of Nāgārjuna’s dialectic is, according to Siderits, ‘not that reality transcends
conceptualization, but that truth must conform to human practice, that philosophical
rationality is doomed precisely insofar as it seeks a truth free of all taint of human needs and
interests’ (ibid.: 29). For Siderits, Nāgārjuna demonstrates this ‘by systematically displaying
the paradoxes that arise when worldly categories are subjected to analysis in accordance with
the structures of philosophical rationality’ (ibid.: 29-30).
According to Siderits, all Mādhyamikas hold that the ultimate truth is simpliciter that
there can be only conventional truth (i.e. every statement that is acceptable for common
sense). They escape the charge of nihilism about rationality ‘by embracing a kind of
conventionalism’ (ibid.: 30). But how do they escape the risk of “Feyerabend’s anything
goes”? Siderits answers that this is only a danger in the unlikely case of a culture ‘that accepts
beliefs that are irrational by our lights’ and that those beliefs ‘are warranted by their standards
of rational acceptance’ (ibid.).
Siderits concludes that antirealism in the context of Madhyamaka has the soteriological
function of deflating the pretensions of philosophical rationality.

It was Nāgārjuna’s insight that in order to become truly selfless one must become profoundly
sceptical about our ability to arrive at the ultimate truth about reality. The notions of ultimate
truth and ideal rationality breed clinging and attachment, and thereby a sense of self.
Scepticism about these notions undermines these last refuges of the self. The Svātantrika
attempt to bring elements of philosophical rationality into coherence with worldly rationality
may be seen as an effort to temper scepticism with humility. When we give up the ultimate
truth and resign ourselves to nothing more than conventional truth, we may still be tempted to
suppose that we have at least the right. To see that there may yet be better and worse versions
of conventional truth is to see that here too there is always room for improvement. (ibid.: 36-
37).

3.10. Whence karuṇā?

Let us move to this question: Do we need philosophy in order to make moral progress?
Rorty’s answer is clear: No (see Chapter One). Do we need philosophy in order to learn the
doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatavāda)? The answer is also no. However, to convince his
opponents of the universal absence of svabhāva, Nāgārjuna had to use hard dialectics. In
understanding Nāgārjuna’s arguments, one should be trained in rational thought. The result of
that understanding is the awareness that our rationality is not enough to really realize what it
means that everything is empty. In order to realize this awareness, one does need experiential
practice, which includes meditation and moral behavior.

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 The next question is: Do we need śūnyatavāda in order to be compassionate? The short
answer is: It depends. Compassion, as the aspiration to help others not to suffer, can be ignited
by natural capacities such as empathy and sympathy. Acting upon those capacities and totally
committing your life to the well-being of others does not require philosophical training.
However, in order to live compassionately, one needs sūnyatāvada. Nevertheless, why should
we want to reach the stage of karuṇā? Western scholars, such as several Cowherds, have tried
to find an answer to this question in Śāntideva’s text Bodhicaryāvatāra.
In the verses VIII 90-103 of the BCA, Śāntideva reflects on the relationship between
oneself and other beings. Graham Priest (Cowherds 2016: 221-239) starts his contribution
with the question: “Whence compassion?” He presents the BCA-verses 101 and 102, where
we can find Śāntideva’s answer:

A continuum and collection,

just like such things as a series or an army, are unreal.
The one for whom there is suffering does not exist.
Therefore for whom will that suffering become their own?
Since all ownerless sufferings are
without distinction,
[they] should be alleviated just because of being suffering.
What restriction is made in this case?

According to Graham Priest, the argument seems as follows:

It is clear that it is good to get rid of one’s own suffering. One is inclined to think there is an
important difference between one’s own pain and that of another. I can feel my own pain in a
way that I cannot feel yours. To sustain this thought, one needs to suppose that pains have
possessors, like you and me. If there are no such things as people, this thought collapses.
There are lots of painful skandhas out there. If there are really no people to possess them, then
a motivation to get rid of any of them is a motivation to get rid of all of them. These things
must be bad independent of any bearer: there isn’t one. (Cowherds 2016: 226-227).

Priest says that Śāntideva, however, cannot convince a Mādhyamika with this argument
because he still holds the Abhidharma view that the skandhas – the five aggregates (form,
sensations, perceptions, mental activity, consciousness) that constitute the phenomenon of a
person – have svabhāva. This means he still holds that pain is real and the possessor of this
pain does not. But according to Madhyamaka, ‘persons and pains are on an equal ontological
footing’ (ibid.). After weighing other possible arguments that are worthy enough for a
Mādhyamika, Priest comes to a rather unsatisfactory conclusion in his attempt to answer the

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question “Why be moral?” Using the metaphor of the Net of Indra102 he says that it ‘undercuts
the very nature of the distinction between self-interest and other interest’. But this does not
answer the fundamental problem at hand as we are already aware of this view; indeed, it is not
an answer to the question of why the prajñāpāramitā of the bodhisattva manifests itself in
great compassion. The correct answer, I think, is that great compassion has transcended the
level of morality.
Realizing śūnyatā means the manifestation of mahākaruṇā. Individual practitioners
who are engaged in realizing śūnyatā remain obliged to act in morally correct ways. Their
practical endeavors are, according to Goodman, based upon ethics. I would say that they are
based upon an ethic, because of the lacking of ethical theory in Buddhism. Still, Goodman
(2009) is convinced that Indian Buddhists were consequentialists. He thinks103 he has found
evidence104 for that in Nāgārjuna’s Ratnāvalī (‘Precious Garland’), a long śāstra addressed to
a king, presumably Gautamīputra Śatakarnī105. Nāgārjuna gives this monarch advice on
political and ethical matters. His guidelines are practical. Take for instance this one:

Just as deficient children are punished

Out of a wish to make them competent,
So punishment should be carried out with compassion,
Not through hatred nor desire for wealth. (Nāgārjuna 1998: 138).

It is understandable that one should punish for a good reason. And the way one punishes is
also significant: with compassion one achieves more compared to, say, revenge. However, is
this consequentialism? This is advice regarding governing individual state subjects, and

102
Indra is a Vedic deity: the king of Heaven and of the Devas. Indra’s Net is a metaphor used in the
Avataṃsaka Sūtra (‘Flower Garland Sūtra’) and philosophically explained mainly in Chinese Huayan Buddhism
(in Dushun’s Cessation and Contemplation, Zhiyan’s Ten Mysterious Gates, and Fazang’s Return to the Source.
Thomas Cleary: ‘The net of Indra is a net of jewels: not only does each jewel reflect all the other jewels but the
reflections of all the jewels in each jewel also contain the reflections of all the other jewels, ad infinitum. This
“infinity of infinities” represents the interidentification and interpenetration of all things.’ (Cleary 1983: 37).
103
Goodman 2009: 184.
104
‘Few scholars of Buddhist ethics have devoted much attention to questions about the criminal law and the
punishments it metes out. Yet several Indian Buddhist texts contain very interesting remarks about punishment;
of these, the most detailed and revealing treatment is found in an important Mahāyāna work, Nāgārjuna’s
Precious Garland (Ratnāvalī; Rin po che’i phreng ba), lost in Sanskrit and preserved only in Tibetan. This text
is a letter of advice to a king. Along with discussions ranging from the disadvantages of hunting to the most
subtle principles of Buddhist metaphysics, Nāgārjuna gives the king advice about how to conduct social policy,
particularly how to treat criminals. These remarks are very interesting for the light they shed on general issues in
Buddhist ethics. They provide additional evidence for two interpretive theses that we should believe anyway, on
independent grounds: that Indian Buddhists are consequentialists and that they are hard determinists.’ (Ibid.).
105
According to Heramba Chatterjee Sastra (Hopkins in Nāgārjuna 1998: 22nc).

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therefore belongs to the conventional realm of reality, not the ultimate one.
Goodman (2017), in trying to convince his readers that there is such a thing as Buddhist
ethics106, refers to another work of Śāntideva: the Śikṣāsamuccaya (‘Training Anthology’,
ŚS). He cites the pericope ŚS 199:

In just the same way, leading merchant, an ordained bodhisattva living in the wilderness
should conceive of the body as being like grass, bushes, plants, trees, sticks, or walls, merely
having the appearance of a person. The bodhisattva should as, “Who here is afraid? Who is
here terrified?” And the bodhisattva who is afraid of danger or frightened should carefully
consider the body appropriately, as follows: “In this body there is no soul, no sentient being,
no life-force, no living thing, no person, and no human being. What is called ‘fear’ is an
inaccurate postulation, and I should not postulate such an inaccurate postulation. (Goodman
2017: 328).107

I want to argue that this text shows that the theory behind it is not that of an ethicist. If ethics
is the rational discourse on finding rational reasons for a person’s behavior – Kant: “What
ought I to do?” – then the discourse on the bodhisattva’s ethic is not ethics because the whole
idea of being a person, of the “I,” has to be extinguished in order to reach the state of true
bodhisattva-hood. Of course, much can be said about the ethic of the bodhisattva training and
its purpose, but that does not make it ethics. The purpose of this training is to end all duḥkha,
a purpose that can be considered as being utilitarian if one is desiring to end the suffering of
all moral subjects (persons). However, since śūnyatavāda teaches that there are, ultimately, no
individual persons, a utilitarian ethic cannot be attributed to Śāntideva.
We have now come to the point of eliminating the question “Why karuṇā?” The better
question is “Whence karuṇā?” It started with the Buddha, teaching that duḥkha is everywhere
and that there is a way out. The will to teach this was instigated by karuṇā. It all began with
karuṇā and will end with mahakaruṇā (see Chapter Five) because it is the “great compassion”
that puts an end to duḥkha.
Whence karuṇā? For this question, an ethicist answer is unnecessary and impossible.
There is no deeper ground upon which the desire to do good is based. Therefore we cannot
produce any philosophical knowledge about the origin of compassion108. The only sensible

106
Goodman thinks that because of Śāntideva’s impartial benevolence his outlook could be marked as
utilitarianism. ‘If Śāntideva was indeed a utilitarian, we may confidently call him the greatest utilitarian poet
who has ever lived.’ (Goodman 2017: 341).
107
Goodman’s own translation.
108
Joseph D. Markowski argues that any attempt to construct a Buddhist ethics can only make coherent sense
from a standpoint of non-cognitivism (Markowski 2014).

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thing that can be said is that Gautama noted that people generally do not like duḥkha. In the
Deer Park in Sarnath, he showed no interest in proving the First Noble Truth. ‘He took it as a
datum, one that is obvious to anyone on serious reflection, though one that escapes most of us
most of the time, precisely because of our evasion of serious reflection in order to face this
fact,’ says Garfield (2015: 281). Gautama did not come up with a metaphysics of pain,
suffering, and frustration, and an ethics to overcome it. He just stated pragmatically that it is
desirable to overcome it because it is experienced as a bad thing, period. ‘If one disagrees109
with this assessment, from a Buddhist perspective, moral discourse has no basis: There is no
problem to be solved. If you just love headaches, don’t bother taking aspirin. If you don’t, you
might consider how to obtain relief.’ (Ibid.).

3.11. Conclusion

Rorty is an adversary of ethics in the sense of moral philosophy or ethical theory. From
Rorty’s perspective, ethics is nonsensical in the Wittgensteinian sense because one cannot
establish rationally what is the moral good. However, despite the nonsensical nature of ethical
discourse, one can construct an ethic by stipulating and enumerating a set of norms. Rorty’s
ethic is both ironist and liberal. Herein, from a Mahāyāna perspective, vis-à-vis the ethic110 of
the bodhisattva, Rorty’s normative standpoint echoes the vow to liberate all sentient beings
from duḥkha, while knowing that there are ultimately no sentient beings to be saved. As we
will see in Chapter Five, the bodhisattva’s compassion is a manifestation of “nature”
(dharma), and it does not need substantial beings, thinking things, noumenal subjects, or souls
created by a deity. However, what it does need is a subject of desire, a subject that desires to
be freed from agony, frustration, and despair, and a strong subject that has faith in the
possibility of universal coherence and final salvation. The subject’s first step toward
enlightenment is to question its own reality, to learn that the world is illusory.

109
Sometimes people refer here to Nietzsche’s aphorism: ‘What does not kill me makes me stronger.’
110
My choice to avoid the term “ethics” for śīla pāramitā could cause a lot of misunderstanding, especially since
authoritative scholars such as The Cowherds use ‘ethics’ to indicate the preached moral virtue in Buddhist
tradition (Cowherds 2016). For instance, Jan Westerhoff, author of Chapter II (“The Connection Between
Ontology And Ethics”) writes: ‘The claim that there is no close systematic connection between Madhyamaka’s
ontological and ethical claims is difficult to defend in the presence of numerous Madhyamaka sources that
attempt to establish just such a connection between its key ontological insight (emptiness) and the foundation of
ethical practice (compassion)’ (ibid.: 205). The section of this text is titled: “The Close Connection Between
Emptiness and Ethics.” In my opinion, Westerhoff should have used “ethic” instead of “ethics.” And of course, I
think that compassion has no foundation at all; it is a consequence not a basis.

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 If all is māyā, then the very thought to escape/transcend such is māyā as well. Even
without an ultimate self, there is selfishness. To escape selfishness111 is to realize the idea of
selflessness. The bodhisattva escapes the self by acting as a self in order to help his fellow-
subjects. Her ethic is meant for practitioners on the path to Buddhahood. Not to help them in
‘getting closer to the True or the Good or the Right’ (Rorty 1999: 87), but to help them to
increase their imaginary power.

We see imagination as the cutting edge of cultural evolution, the power which – given peace
and prosperity – constantly operates so as to make human future richer than the human past.
Imagination is the source both of new scientific pictures of the physical universe and of new
conceptions of possible communities. It is what Newton and Christ, Freud and Marx, had in
common: the ability to redescribe the familiar in unfamiliar terms (ibid.).

The bodhisattva ethic, as interpreted by contemporary philosophers to make it understandable

for a Western audience, could be classified as the intellectual practice of redescription. Agents
of this ethic are the bodhisattvas, for whom the difference between the ultimate and the
conventional reality has become unimportant for the sake of helping others to enlightenment.
The bodhisattva’s set of norms is oriented around helping others to progress toward freedom
from suffering. This ethic requires much creativity since the preparedness of masses of egos
to walk the path of liberty is small.
Ultimately, there is no ready-made recipe for redescribing the familiar in unfamiliar
terms in order to make the human future richer. A bodhisattva, driven by compassion, is
always in Terra Incognita. She never knows what is out there. She is always making leaps of
faith. Her faith is not rooted in her admiration for human nature or universal kindness; she
does not care about doing good or the right thing; she does not fear that her actions might be
judged as bad or unjust. In light of this perspective, we must ask: What is her faith? Why is
she working so hard to help others? As we have seen, this question belongs to the ethical
discourse. Why should we care? We should not, in this sense there is no hidden “ought” to be
gleaned from the “is”; all is empty. Therefore, the bodhisattva just cares. She does not ask this
question because she knows there is no answer. It is like being mortally wounded by an arrow
while you are exhausting yourself thinking about where the arrow came from and at what
speed. Craving for an answer is the way of the ignorant and the Platonist who still believes in

111
Here one might argue that there is a distinction between moral egoism and psychological egoism. It is one
thing to say that one’s interests are always anchored within one’s subjectivity and general plan of life; it is
entirely different from saying that one’s interests and life plans are oriented around one’s self interests, singly.
The arhat, for example, maintains both modes of egoism since the arhat is attempting to win enlightenment for
themselves alone; the bodhisattva, on the other hand, is looking to win enlightenment for all and so does not fall
within moral egoism.

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the mind-independent transcendentals: the True, the Good, the Right. Does this mean that, in
order to help others, the bodhisattva has to become a poet? In short, the answer is no. The
bodhisattva does not have to become anything, she just is a Rortyan poet. Her leap of faith is
the trust she has in her pain. She suffers; she wants to suffer because suffering keeps her
going. She does not love the suffering; she knows that her pain forces her to be creative.
Creativity as the power to find totally new ways out of a worn-out world, is a dangerous
virtue because the risk always exists of being misunderstood and of being persecuted.
The better question now is not why we should be compassionate but from where the
desire to be compassionate comes. The bodhisattva has no choice between acting
compassionately or not. It is her “nature” that makes her do her salvific tasks. One of those
tasks is to bring the mind at ease, to be mindful of the truth that there is no mind. And the path
to enlightenment is not about following a set of rules or obeying a religious doctrine. Or as
Nāgārjuna says in his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā:

The pacification of all objectification

And the pacification of illusion:
No Dharma was taught by the Buddha
At any time, in any place, to any person. (XXV:24; Garfield 1995: 76).

If, as Rorty claims, the self and the world are contingent, then the construction of an ethical
theory seems a vain exercise. However, a contingent world does not preclude moral progress.
That progress can be measured by the increase in sensitivity to suffering. An ethics that is not
a theory but an intellectual stimulus to promote that sensitivity can benefit from being
fertilized by the ethic of the figure of the bodhisattva as it appears in the Western
philosophical accounts of Madhyamaka. This ethic results form the realization of śūnyatā.
The doctrine of śūnyatā does not mirror nature, as Rorty would put it. Emptiness does
not correspond with the intrinsic nature of things because śūnyatā is the lack of intrinsic
nature. So, the proposition “everything is empty” is not a Wittgensteinian picture of the
ultimate state of affairs. In that sense, it has no truth value. Emptiness is not a stance of
fundamental ontology. Instead, it teaches that it is the ultimate truth that there is no ultimate
truth.
When this outlook is applied to the phenomenon of personhood, it does not yield an
exclusively Buddhist notion. According to Rorty, also Freud showed that in the moral subject
an inherent nature is absent. However, the Freudian view originated in a very different
context: finding the right therapy to cure people with peculiar conditions. He taught his

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patients and his readers that it is impossible to free ourselves from the larger story of which
the narrative we have constructed, is a part. Self-knowledge is, therefore, always a
hermeneutical enterprise with no final outcome because there is no substantial self to be
discovered behind the horizon. Rorty concluded from his interpretation of Freudian
psychoanalysis that the maximum achievable goal of philosophers is to help people integrate
their life story with the larger picture so that the individual would be better equipped to
increase his moral capacity. One might say that this Freudian-Rortyan insight could promote
the Western understanding of the Bodhisattva-path because increasing one’s moral capacity
contributes to a world with less cruelty.
Having compared the Rortyan notion of the contingency of the self with the
interpretation of several Western scholars of the Madhyamaka concept of the emptiness of the
moral subject and offered a closer look into the way the Mādhyamikas came up with this idea
of śūnyatā, it appears that emptiness and contingency are almost synonymous, insofar as they
both mean that nothing in this world is permanent, necessary and absolute.
If Candrakīrti is correct, the doctrine of śūnyatā cannot be defended by positive
propositions because logic does nothing to arrive at an absolute truth. Nevertheless, it is
language that puts us on the track to the realization of ultimate reality. However, it is a non-
referential language that shows that, at the ultimate level, there is nothing to refer to. As we
have seen, Huntington follows this line by placing the language that Nāgārjuna uses in his
writings outside the discourse of logicians by connecting it to the spiritual path of liberation
from attachments. One could argue that Huntington has thereby “illuminated” texts of
Nāgārjuna in a Rortyan pragmatist way. In his novel Maya, Huntington links his insight to the
metaethical question of the reasons for moral behavior. The answers offered in a fictional
reality strongly remind us of Rorty’s moral non-foundationalism. While our conventional
language is incapable of reference, it can, however, show that all things are empty, which in
turn gives a hint of the ultimate truth; moreover, the big questions that play a significant role
in ethics, especially in the West, are of little soteriological value.
What reminds us of Rorty’s antirealism and pragmatism is Siderits’s account of
Nāgārjuna’s dialectic: it serves the notion of truth as conforming to human practice and
admonishes philosophers to abstain from the quest for truth ‘free of all taint of human needs
and interests’ (Siderits 2016: 29).
From this point, we need to explore further how language can help us get used to
renouncing metaphysical claims while making us more sensitive to the many kinds of
suffering experienced by sentient beings experience. We already had an inkling that

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soteriological language allows us to look at reality differently without referencing to an
alternative state of affairs. The question is whether this non-referential language, which leads
us on the path of heightened compassion, has affinities with Rortyan irony. Hence, we will
delve into the relationship between irony and truth in order to offer clarification in the
question of “How can we persuade others to care?”

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Chapter Four
IRONY & UPĀYA
How can we persuade others to care?

Chapter overview

This chapter discusses the relationship between irony and upāya. After a brief introduction, I
provide, in a first section, an account of the concept of irony, which is then followed, in
section 3, by a treatment of how Rorty uses this concept, and what “Rortyan irony” is. From
there, in section 4, entitled “Irony and justification,” I explore the nature of the pragmatic
concept of truth in connection with irony. Then, in section 5, “Philosophy as poetry,” I
explore the creative use of language in order to update what Rorty calls “final vocabularies.”
Finally, in section 6, I examine whether irony plays a role in the Western interpretation of
Madhyamaka; thereby, I compare Rortyan irony with the Mahāyāna concept of upāya as it is
conceived by Western interpreters of Madhyamaka.

4.1. Introduction

In Chapter Three, we discussed the Madhyamaka doctrine of the Two Truths. The right
Mādhyamikan attitude toward this distinction between the ultimate and the conventional
truth/reality is prajñā (Sanskrit for “wisdom”), which Mādhyamikas practice to the point of
perfection: prajñāpāramitā. The perfect wisdom is the authentically experiential integration
by which every inclination to superimpose svabhāva onto things is eradicated. Herein, upon
realizing śūnyatā-śūnyatā, and thus having achieved prajñāpāramitā, practitioners of the
“Middle Way” discover that their realization cannot be expressed in words; from an ultimate
standpoint of truth, there is nothing that can be said about śūnyatā-śūnyatā. This is so mainly
because of the dualistic nature of language, which presupposes svabhāva, vis-à-vis logic (e.g.,
the law of identity and the law of contradiction) and grammar (e.g., subject-predicate
dualism). Thus, because emptiness obliterates all dualities, it would be absurd to think that it
can be discussed and/or expressed through the dualistic distinction languages creates.
Now, just because emptiness cannot be expressed through language in a way that is

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ultimately true, that does not entail that language cannot service our conventional
understanding of such. One could say that Nāgārjuna is like a poet as he factiously and
playfully “lies the truth”112; the adequacy of vocalizing sounds and using linguistic signs to
refer to objects and events is an illusion. Every lingual utterance is, therefore, always
provisional and ironic. In this chapter, we look further into that because the Rortyan “prajñā”
is irony. He espouses the idea that ironist philosophers are not like poets but that they are
poets (Rorty 2016).

4.2. Irony

The term irony is derived from εἴρων (eírōn), a concept of classical Greek theatre. The
etymology is uncertain; maybe it comes from εἴρω (‘I tie’; ‘I insert’; ‘I say’). The eírōn was
one of the stock characters for any given comedy. The narrative function of this character is to
bring his adversary down to earth. This adversary is the typical blasphemer, the one who
arrogantly believes that he has got everything under control. The eírōn destroys the image
which the bragger (alazōn) has of himself and which he seeks to impose upon others; his
strategy is to use fake flattering and quasi acknowledgements of the boaster’s hubris. In his
Nicomachean ethics, Aristotle uses those theatrical characters – eírōn and alazōn – in
discussing the question whether it is possible to do injustice to oneself.

Mock-modest people [eírōnes], who understate things, seem more attractive in character; for
they are thought to speak not for gain but to avoid parade; and here too it is qualities which
bring reputation that they disclaim, as Socrates used to do. Those who disclaim trifling and
obvious qualities are called humbugs and are more contemptible; and sometimes this seems to
be boastfulness, like the Spartan dress; for both excess and great deficiency are boastful. But
those who use understatement (eirōneíai) with moderation and understate [eirōneuómenoi]
about matters that do not very much force themselves on our notice seem attractive. And it is
the boaster (alazōn) that seems to be opposed to the truthful man; for he is the worse character.
(Aristotle 2009: 77).

Eirōneía is translated by W.D. Ross as “understatement” (Aristotle 1908) and by H. Rackham

as “self-depreciation” (Aristotle 1934). As we shall see, prajñā and Rortyan irony are both
depreciations of the self, respectively as negation of svabhāva and the negation of the

112
‘Dichters liegen de waarheid’, Bertus Aafjes (Aafjes 1944: 9). ‘They, therefore, if one looks at it well,
ultimately invoke their seriousness. Their seriousness is the root of all evil. Their seriousness, their everlasting,
unremitting seriousness, is the millstone around the neck of what pays the price: the moment of creation. One
must have passed the seriousness a long time ago in order to get to the creative moment. Poets lie the truth.’

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Cartesian res cogitans, along with all the other metaphysical entities of subjectivity.
Aristotle mentions Socrates as an example of someone who in front of others denies he
has certain highly esteemed qualities. ‘He had a reputation for irony, though what that means
exactly is controversial; at a minimum, Socrates’s irony consisted in his saying that he knew
nothing of importance and wanted to listen to others, yet keeping the upper hand in every
discussion’, says Debra Nails (Nails 2020). Be that as it may, in the tradition of Western
thought, it is said that Socrates used irony as a pedagogic tool. As an eírōn, Socrates, as he
appears in Plato’s dialogues, feigned ignorance toward intellectual alazōnes, thereby
revealing that their so-called knowledge leads to confusion instead of clarity. His “method”
seems to be a conversational proto-form of the logical tool of reductio ad absurdum. If irony
would be defined as saying the opposite of what you mean – as it is in some lexicographic and
encyclopedic entries – one might say that irony is ironically the foundation of the practice of
finding logical and mathematical proof.
Most of the authors of encyclopedic entries teach that irony is not an unequivocal
concept. Firstly, there are different types of irony; secondly there are different fields in which
the concept is used. As noted above, the dramaturgical field is the first one where it was used.
After comedy it was used in tragedy. Tragic irony is the inadequacy between the knowledge
of the protagonist and the knowledge of the audience. The hero doesn’t know his fate, but the
audience does, because it was informed by the chorus. Another field is rhetoric, where it is
used to persuade the public. In the irony section of the rhetorical toolkit we find: (1) the
understatement or reduction (litótēs); (2) exaggeration (huperbolḗ); (3) reversal (antiphrasis,
saying the opposite of what you mean); and (4) bitterness (sarkasmós). As a rhetorical
principle, the understanding of irony is based on the fact that speaker and listener know that
they share certain convictions. The ironic utterance playfully violates this shared state of
knowledge in order to make a political point or to make people laugh.
Another type of irony is situational irony, subdivided in cosmic irony and historical
irony. The first one is also called “irony of fate” or Welt-Ironie, ‘the irony of the universe with
man or the individual as victim’ (Muecke 1986: 23). It is used in Greek tragedy (e.g. Oedipus
killing his father and having sex with his mother), modern drama, literature and opera (e.g. the
suicide of Othello; the death of Rigoletto’s daughter) and cinema (e.g. Magnolia113). The

113
Coincidence plays a decisive role in this 1999 drama film, which is illustrated in the opening stories. In one of
them a 17-year old boy is attempting to commit suicide by jumping of the building in which he and his parents
have an apartment. He is fed up that his parents argue all the time. At the same moment he’s falling down, his
mother is threatening her husband with a shotgun. Accidently, she kills her falling son, who had loaded it earlier,

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lesson the public might draw from these examples is that the personal intentions of
individuals are no match for the predestined course of events in the universe.
And then there is historical irony. The irony of certain historical events occurs when the
factual outcome of an action or an event is totally different than the intended outcome, often
in a funny or amazing way. One of the most significant examples is the attempt to kill US-
president Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981. He fired on the president several
times, but all of his shots missed. “Ironically,” one bullet bounced off the bulletproof
presidential limousine and hit Reagan in the chest.
All these types have a contrast in common: apparent attitude versus real intention; the
factual utterance versus the actual thought; expectation versus factual outcome; the intended
purpose versus the purposiveness of the unintended. These contrasts teach an important life
lesson: don’t take the world, history, life and above all yourself so seriously. Because what
you say, has no real reference; what you plan or expect, is not going to happen; what you
intend will not be the case; what you think you are, you are not. These negations remind us of
Kierkegaard’s rather dramatic description of irony, saying that it manifests itself “as the
infinite absolute negativity”:

It is negativity, because it only negates; it is infinite, because it does not negate this or that
phenomenon; it is absolute, because that by virtue of which it negates is a higher something
that still is not. The irony establishes nothing, because that which is to be established lies
behind it. It is a divine madness that rages like a Tamerlane114 and does not leave one stone
upon another. (Kierkegaard 1989: 261).

4.3. The Rortyan ironist

Irony in Rorty’s vocabulary is different from the types we just discussed. But also here, there
is contrast. It is doubt that generates this contrast. No, doubt is being generated by a subject
called an ironist. Rorty’s idea of irony is not a theatrical or rhetorical tool, but a philosophical
attitude toward language. The ironist is a doubter and takes nothing seriously except her
irony. She doubts that a present use of a certain set of words is still capable of expressing a
new reality, a reality that cannot be experienced unless new words are found. That’s why

hoping that his parents would accidentally kill each other. The boy’s dead body doesn’t crash on the pavement,
but is caught by a safety net. The police arrests his mother on suspicion of murdering her son.
114
Tamerlane (1336-1405), also known as Timur, was a Turkic conqueror; a fictionalized account of his life
formed the basis of Edgar Allan Poe poem Tamerlane (1827).

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poetry is of the utmost importance, according to Rorty.
The Rortyan ironist is an anti-essentialist and a pragmatist. Essentialists pretend to
know that it is possible to know what things really are. Humanism as essentialism is based
upon ‘human nature’; every individual that belongs to humanity has actual and potential
characteristics of this nature. Rorty may be averse to this belief in those so-called essential
qualities, but that does not prevent him from making statements that concern all humans.
After all, he is a pragmatist. As long as these statements can tackle concrete problems
(pragmata), there is nothing wrong with the word ‘humanity’. The pivotal pragma Rorty faces
in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Rorty 1989) is the suffering of humans. The general
statement Rorty makes at the beginning of chapter 4 (Private irony and liberal hope) is:

All human beings carry about a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their
beliefs, and their lives. (Rorty 1989: 73).

Rorty says that with these words we express our sympathies and aversions toward our
enemies, our life projects, our deepest doubts about our destiny and our hopes; with these
words we tell our life stories.

I shall call these words a person's “final vocabulary.” (Ibid.).

Rorty calls it “final vocabulary” because this set of words has reached a boundary, beyond
which there is only nonsense; there is ‘only helpless passivity or a resort to force’ (ibid).
Someone who constantly and radically doubts her own final vocabulary, Rorty calls an
‘ironist’. She doesn’t take her own final vocabulary seriously, because she believes that no
lingual statement can ever correspond to a non-lingual, absolute and objective reality. That is
why she is always open to other final vocabularies: they might be better, meaning more
persuasive. She has a clear awareness that her own final vocabulary fails to rationally remove
her doubts about her final vocabulary. Moreover, an ironist believes there is no neutral final
vocabulary on a meta-level, which makes it possible to determine which vocabulary
corresponds most closely to reality.
The opposite of irony is common sense, says Rorty. Someone with common sense is
satisfied with his final vocabulary.

To be commonsensical is to take for granted that statements formulated in that final

vocabulary suffice to describe and judge the beliefs, actions and lives of those who employ
alternative final vocabularies. (Ibid.: 74).

The metaphysician also uses common sense, says Rorty. By metaphysics he means what
Heidegger also understood by it. ‘All metaphysics, including its opponent positivism, speaks

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the language of Plato’ (Heidegger 1977: 74). According to Rorty, all intellectual research that
tries to find an access to Being, to the Good and the True is a manifestation of Platonism
(Rorty 1993: 111).

In this sense, the metaphysician is someone who takes the question 'What is the intrinsic
nature of (e.g., justice, science, knowledge, Being, faith, morality , philosophy)?' at face value.
He assumes that the presence of a term in his own final vocabulary ensures that it refers to
something which has a real essence. (Rorty 1989: 74).

By contrast, the ironist is a nominalist and a historian, says Rorty. This means that notions do
not refer to a non-linguistic reality, but are developed under certain historical circumstances.
For an ironist, philosophy has a completely different value than for a metaphysician.
The latter sees philosophy as the attempt to find ever better answers to the ‘big questions’. For
the ironist, philosophy is nothing more than the attempt to apply and develop a pre-selected,
specific final vocabulary. There is also a difference in attitude toward books. While
metaphysicians systematically subdivide the collection of writings into specialized
disciplines, ironists regard the works of all authors as attempts to develop new final
vocabularies. Whether sage, natural philosopher, poet, novelist, or scientist, neither of them
has a privileged access to reality. All original spirits with a talent for re-description – Rorty
only gives Westerners as examples: Pythagoras, Plato, Milton, Newton, Goethe, Kant,
Kierkegaard, Baudelaire, Darwin, Freud – are ‘like corn to be crushed by the same dialectical
mill’ (ibid.: 76).
The truth claims of metaphysicians are, according to ironists, nothing more than
‘platitudes used to inculcate the local final vocabulary, the common sense of the West’ (ibid.:
76-77). Metaphysicians, blinded by their essentialism, do not realize, however, that their final
vocabulary is merely local in nature.

Whereas the metaphysician sees the modern Europeans as particularly good at discovering
how things really are, the ironist sees them as particularly rapid in changing their self-image,
in re-creating themselves. (Ibid.: 78).

The ironist is an anti-universalist. What unites her with the rest of humanity and with all other
animals is not a common language, but only a sensitivity to pain. However there is a
difference in this sensitivity between humans and other animals. To clarify this, Rorty refers
in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The main
antagonist in this dystopian novel is O’Brien. In the story he is a member of the Inner Party
and works as a clerk in the Ministry of Truth, like the protagonist Winston Smith, who has
been spied on by O’Brien, also a secret agent of the Thought Police.

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 O'Brien reminds us that human beings who have been socialized – socialized in any language,
any culture – do share a capacity which other animals lack. They can all be given a special
kind of pain: They can all be humiliated by the forcible tearing down of the particular
structures of language and belief in which they were socialized (or which they pride
themselves on having formed for themselves). More specifically, they can be used, and
animals cannot, to gratify O'Brien's wish to “tear human minds to pieces an put them together
again in new shapes of your own choosing.” (Rorty 1989: 177).

The ironist knows that structures of language and belief can be teared down, because some
humans have the power to ‘redescribe’, an intellectual action that ‘often humiliates’ (ibid.:
90). The ironist is fully aware of this power. Knowing that language is contingent and that
new metaphors generate conditions in which new social freedoms can arise, the ironist knows
she is capable of doing harm. The redescribing ironist threatens someone’s final vocabulary.
If a person’s ability to put himself and his world into words is dismissed as ‘futile, obsolete,
powerless’ (ibid.), then a person may feel humiliated to the bone. Rorty notes that
redescription and possible humiliation are not more closely related to irony than to
metaphysics. Redescription is a general characteristic of the intellectual, says Rorty (ibid).
The difference is that the metaphysician redescribes in the name of reason and the ironist in
the name of imagination (ibid.). In contrast to the liberal metaphysician, the liberal ironist is
not able to provide powerful hope for new liberties. Indeed, the ironist does not invoke God,
Truth, or Rationality. Through his redescriptions he can only increase the chances of
improving social conditions. Another difference is that the rewritings by the metaphysician in
one movement concern both the public and the private sphere. The ironist115 can only hope
that the redescriptions by the poets of private final vocabularies will have consequences for
collective final vocabularies, so that the suffering116 of as many people as possible can be
reduced. After all, he can never invoke a manifesto that links the private pursuit of perfection

115
Andrew Wicks wrote that Rorty’s ironist ‘emerges as a central figure who not only embodies his alternative
to the philosopher, but also acts to negotiate the boundaries of the private and the public. Skill at understanding a
variety of different types of discourse (“vocabularies”), or intellectual frameworks, makes the ironist especially
adept at negotiating cultural and linguistic barriers between different groups who may wish to cooperate. This
capacity is the vehicle through which we can develop greater insight into forms of invisible cruelty that exist
within our current linguistic categories and it also provides intellectuals with a direct political outlet for their
skills. The ironists’ urge to overcome and achieve authenticity can be confined within the limits of supporting
democratic purposes and preventing cruelty. Ironists use their skills to work out forms of private perfection, that
is in helping us to deal with our “aloneness,” while also directing those energies to the public task of preventing
cruelty and sustaining democratic conversation. (Wicks 1993: 554-555).
116
In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity Rorty says several times that he stands in the utilitarianist tradition,
especially what the role of government is concerned: ‘J.S. Mill's suggestion that governments devote themselves
to optimizing the balance between leaving people's private lives alone and preventing suffering, seems to me
pretty much the last word.’ (Rorty 1989: 63).

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to public salvation, as the Christians, the Enlightenment philosophers and the (Neo)-Marxists
did.

These distinctions help explain why ironist philosophy has not done and will not do, much for
freedom and equality. But they also explain why 'literature' (…), as well as ethnography and
journalism, is doing a lot. (Ibid.: 94).

According to Rorty, the fact that novelists and journalists achieve more in the field of freedom
and equality than philosophers can be explained by the fact that pain is non-linguistic:

It is what we human beings have that ties us to the non-language-using beasts. So victims of
cruelty, people who are suffering, do not have much in the way of a language. That is why
there is no such thing as the 'voice of the oppressed' or the 'language of the victims'. The
language the victims once used is not working anymore, and they are suffering too much to
put new words together. So the job of putting their situation into language is going to have to
be done for them by somebody else. The liberal novelist, poet, or journalist is good at that.
The liberal theorist usually is not. (Ibid.).

Note that Rorty speaks of theorists in this quote. That brings me to a new distinction he
makes: the ironic theorist versus the ironic liberal. The purpose of the ironic theory is to
understand the metaphysical urge to theorize so well that you become completely free from it,
says Rorty, after which he uses a metaphor of Wittgenstein from his Tractatus117:

Ironist theory is thus a ladder which is to be thrown away as soon as one has figured out what
it was that drove one’s predecessors to theorize. The last thing the ironist theorist wants or
needs is a theory of ironism. (…). He is trying to get out from under inherited contingencies
and make his own contingencies, get out from under an old final vocabulary and fashion one
which will be his own. (Rorty 1989: 97).

Rorty gives four examples of ironic theorists: the young Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and
Derrida. According to Rorty, they were only private philosophers, i.e. philosophers who were
concerned with intensifying the irony of the nominalist and the historian (ibid.: 95). Their
work, according to Rorty, fits badly with public goals and is of no use, for example, to
politicians who strive for new social freedoms – ‘no use to liberals qua liberals’ (ibid.). All
four of them wanted a Total Revolution, says Rorty:

They want the sublime and ineffable, not just the beautiful and the novel – something
incommensurable with the past, not simply the past recaptured through rearrangment and
redescription. They want not just the effable and relative beauty of rearrangment but the
ineffable and absolute sublimity of the Wholly Other; they want Total Revolution. They want
a way of seeing their past which is incommensurable with all the ways in which the past has

117
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.54: ‘My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone
who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb
beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it). He must transcend these
propositions, and then he will see the world aright.’ (Wittgenstein 2014).

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 described itself. By contrast, ironist novelists are not interested in incommensurability. They
are content with mere difference. (Ibid.: 101).

Ironist novelists think they can gain private autonomy by rewriting their own history in a
hitherto unknown way. They do not strive for ‘apocalyptic novelty’ (ibid.) as the theorists do.
It simply doesn't bother the ironic non-theorists if their redescriptions serve as material for re-
descriptions of their successors. In fact, they wish their successors success with it. However,
they cannot imagine that they will have successors, because they are ‘prophet[s] of a new age,
one in which no terms used in the past will have application’ (ibid.: 102).

4.4. Irony and justification

Rortyan irony stems from the rejection of the classical and modern notions of truth. The
danger of using the concept “truth” is to ‘slide back into representationalism’ (Grippe 2020).
Instead, Rorty uses “justification”. His notion of this condition is much criticized because of
its ascribed sociological character, which entails that a statement would be justified when a
majority of language users have reached a positive consensus about whether that statement is
warranted. But of course, such a consensus doesn’t last eternally; language communities as
being the results of contingent events change continuously and the opinions of the warranty of
statements with them. Therefore language users ‘produce new and better ways of talking and
acting – not better by reference to a previously known standard, but just better in the sense
that they come to seem clearly better than their predecessors’ (Rorty 1982: xxxvii).
Hillary Putnam distinguishes in Rorty’s view of justification two aspects: a
contextualist and a reformist one (Brandom 2000: 84). The first means that for Rorty a
statement is justified when ‘some bunch of people’ considers it as justified; the second aspect
refers to the production of ‘new and better ways of talking and acting’.
The reformist aspect of justification is closely connected with the ironist task of
redescription. This task can never be fulfilled, since the world is a Heracleitian reality. There
are no eternal meanings. New vocabularies have to be found to form a lingual toolkit for
communities who are confronted with new realities or with some peculiar sensations that can
only be processed once there are utterances which can be used to deal with those sensations.
Often these utterances are found by lingual pioneers. They experiment with them in order to
implement them in several types of language games. Only the community decides whether
those utterances are integrated in the vocabulary, so that statements can be made about new

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situations, previously unknown.
As already explained in Chapter Three, metaphors are the utterances without meaning,
waiting to become meaningful once they are accepted as elements of justified statements.
According to Rorty, poetry is elementary in this process.

4.5. Philosophy as poetry

Fifteen years after the publication of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Rorty delivered the
‘Page-Barbour Lectures for 2004’ at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The topic
was: “The Priority of Imagination Over Reason.” The texts of the three lectures, spread over
three consecutive days, were published in 2016 by the University of Virginia Press under the
title Philosophy as Poetry. Rorty presented Plato as the culprit, responsible for all what has
gone wrong in the Western history of thought. Not once did he use the words “irony” or
“ironist.” But it is clear that he spoke about the liberal ironist endeavor of redescription in
order to reduce the amount of suffering.
Rorty ties in with what Percy Bysshe Shelley says in his in 1821 written essay A
Defence of Poetry: ‘Poets (…) are not only the authors of language and of music, of the
dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting: they are the institutors of laws, and the
founders of civil society (…)’ (Shelley 2011: para. 4). Rorty is taking this a step further by
claiming that ‘nature itself is a poem that we humans have written’ (Rorty 2016: 11). Stating
that ‘the imagination is the principle vehicle of human progress’ (ibid.), he warns admirers of
Shelley that the poetic imagination should not be seen as a faculty by which direct access to
reality can be obtained (ibid.: 21).
In his first lecture Rorty explains once again why we should get rid of ontology, but not
before we have gotten rid of ‘the idea of nonlinguistic access’. He attacks the Augustinian
theory118 of language:

Rationality, thought, and cognition all began when language did. Language gets off the ground
not by people giving names to things they were already thinking about but by proto-humans
using noises in innovative ways, just as the proto-beavers got the practice of building dams off
the ground by using sticks and mud in innovative ways. (Rorty 2016: 4-5).

118
Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, I,VIII,13; Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations, §1.

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Abstractions like “gravity” and “inalienable human right” are just signs that are not connected
with environmental exigencies; they are not names for mysterious entities but ‘marks and
noises’ invented by ‘geniuses who gave rise to bigger and better social practices’ (ibid.). The
development of a richer language is, according to Rorty, not an enlargement of a set of words
by which we can give names to non-lingual things.

What we call “increased knowledge” should not be thought of as increased access to the Real
but as increased ability to do things – to take part in social practices that make possible richer
and fuller human lives. The increased richness is not the effect of a magnetic attraction exerted
on the human mind by the really real, nor by that mind’s innate ability to penetrate the veil of
appearance. It is a relation between the human present and the human past, not a relation
between the human and the nonhuman. (Ibid.: 5).

This pragmatist stance is enriched with a metaphor used by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his
essay Circles. For Rorty – being the Rortyan ironist he is, the most important claim in this
text is: ‘There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us.’ 119 This image of the
absent closing wall is interpreted by Rorty as:

There is nothing outside language to which language attempts to become adequate. Every
human achievement is simply a launching path for a greater achievement. We shall never find
description so perfect that imaginative redescription will become pointless. There is no
destined terminus to inquiry. There are only larger lives to be lived. (Ibid.: 6-7).

Almost at the end of his first lecture he refers to Nietzsche and how he has been trying to
persuade his audience that ‘Nietzsche wrote the better poem’, meaning that he found new
expressions to tell a new story as opposed to the old stories of the antique and modern
metaphysicians about the continuing drive of humans to overcome problems. In Plato’s
‘philosophical story’, hard knowledge of the Real got rid of the imagination of myth and
poetry. But Rorty says that the Platonic tale was as mythical and poetical as the pre-
rationalistic world views were.

To take the side of the poets in this quarrel is to say that there are many descriptions of the
same things and events, and that there is no neutral standpoint from which to judge the
superiority of one description over another. (Ibid.: 20).

Nietzsche’s “better poem” is in his Nachlass120, where he attacks fiercely the dogmatic idea
that things have an objective and essential nature121. Rorty:

119
Emerson 2019: 3.
120
Nietzsche’s literary remains, comprising of all of his work (except in letters) that were not published at the
time he had his mental breakdown on January 3th 1889 in Turin, that ended his career as a writer.
121
In Sanskrit that would be: svabhāva.

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 He spells out his point by saying: “That things possess a constitution in themselves quite apart
from interpretation and subjectivity, is a quite idle hypothesis; it presupposes that
interpretation and subjectivity are not essential, that a thing freed from all relationships would
still be a thing.”
In passages such as this one Nietzsche brushes aside the common-sense claim that there
is a way Reality is independent of the way human beings describe it. (Ibid.: 9).

Philosophy as the search for absolute truth in the sense of a lingual expression of the objective
nonhuman reality, is in its purpose an obsolete activity. However, Rorty considers this type of
philosophy an intellectual attempt to bring order in the chaos, a creative product of the
imagination, that in a particular era was valued as a human enterprise of the utmost
importance. For Rorty, this applies not only to metaphysics but also to physics. The genius of
Newton is in that respect not different from that of the ingenuity of the beaver building a dam.
It all comes from imagination. But,

giving and asking for reasons is distinctively human, and is coextensive with rationality. The
more an organism can get what it wants by persuasion rather than force, the more rational it is
(…). But you cannot use persuasion if you cannot talk. No imagination, no language. No
linguistic change, no moral or intellectual progress. Rationality is a matter of making allowed
moves within language games. Imagination creates the games that reason proceeds to play.
(Ibid.: 15).

In the second lecture Rorty tells the story about the academic clashes between analytical
philosophers and non-analytical (Continental) philosophers. He references Hegel’s story
about how humans have successfully drawn wider Emersonian circles around themselves and
how that story prepared the way for Nietzsche’s claim that the point of being human is ‘to
achieve self-creation through self redescription’ and not ‘the ability to know what we
ourselves really are or what the universe is really like’ (Ibid.: 31).
In the third lecture Rorty is trying to tell how romanticism122 and pragmatism
‘complement one another nicely’ in order to persuade his audience to the view that
meaningful philosophy should work in the service of liberal irony. However, even ironists
should be pragmatic. As long as a certain practice does much good for people, do not
interfere:

122
Romanticism was a very influential movement that came up in the Age of Enlightenment. ‘At the heart of
romanticism is the thesis of the priority of the imagination over reason – the claim that reason can only follow
paths that the imagination has broken’ (Rorty 2007: 105). One of its most esteemed representatives was the
German poet, playwright and philosopher Friedrich Schiller. In Philosophy as Poetry, Rorty mentions him three
times. In one of them he quotes Isaiah Berlin, who said about Schiller that he was the first one in the history of
human thought who introduced the notion ‘that ideals are not to be discovered at all, but to be invented; not to be
found, but to be generated as art is generated’ (Rorty 2016: 47).

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 Romanticism tells us that reason would have had nothing to do – that we would have had
nothing to think about – had imagination not been at work. Pragmatism tells us that
imagination should not be allowed to interfere with reason’s activities. Once an activity of
reason becomes a social practice, such as mathematics, experimental science, or constitutional
jurisprudence, it becomes self-regulating, and should be granted autonomy. It is one thing for
an imaginative genius to suggest that we might play a different game, but quite another to
disrupt the game presently being played by making illegal moves. (Ibid.: 45-46).

But he warns present romanticists not to succumb to the temptation of reifying imagination, of
homunculizing it as a privileged access to truth, just as the Platonists and modern rationalists
did with rationality, and some metaphysicians did with the will123. The nadir of this
aberration, he said, was the deification of rationality124. Instead, Rorty says that rationality is
not a universal principle, but a product of contingent events and stories. As an adherent of
historicism Rorty once again argues why irony – he doesn’t use this word once – is the most
reasonable intellectual attitude.
Imagination, he emphasizes, is what generates larger circles in the void – there is no
“inclosing wall.” It is also prior to reason, meaning that poets – in the Emersonian sense –
first have to come up with novelties that might be seen as expression of their alleged madness,
before intellectuals or other practitioners of “the civil conversation”125 are going to work with
the novelties, building a new, previously incomprehensible, line of thought.
To anticipate what his critics would say now, Rorty mentions two villains who also had
“poetic” qualities. Hitler, he says, had as powerful an imagination as Pericles126 or

123
Rorty says that even Nietzsche could not resist that temptation when he presented the will to power (ibid.:
54).
124
During the French Revolution Catholicism was replaced by the Cult of Reason, an anti-Christian state
religion. It did not last long: in 1794 Robespierre founded the Cult of the Supreme Being. Both “religions” were
suppressed in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte.

125
The introduction of Philosophy as Poetry is written by the American scholar of literature Michael Bérubé,
who in 1984 followed a seminar of Rorty on Heidegger. ‘Throughout the seminar, Rorty generously gave us
copies of his essays-in-progress as he was establishing the lines of thought that led to his 1989 book
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity; he also gave us copies of essays written by people who disagreed with him
passionately.’ John Caputo, for instance, lit into Rorty’s indifference to late Heidegger, charging that ‘Rorty
denies the strangest of the strange in Heidegger, the abiding incommensurability of the thought which thinks that
which is not a thing,’ and capping off the indictment with the accusation that all Rorty really wanted was for the
discipline of philosophy to keep a civil conversation going. ‘Well, he’s got me there,’ Rorty admitted
ingenuously, furrowing his brow and looking at the class. ‘That really is all I want.’

126
Maybe Rorty mentions him here as a kind of father of ancient democracy.

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Jefferson127. And Mao Tse-tung’s fantasies were as attractive as those of St. Paul. But then he
applies the old Latin principle abusus non tollit usum128:

The new social practice that is put in place as a result of somebody’s poetic vision may be a
very practice indeed. But if we give up on the Platonic and Kantian notion of an innate ability
to tell visions that will produce good from those that will produces evil, we can still say that if
nobody has any visions, nothing will ever get any better than it is now. (Ibid.: 55).

In his conclusion Rorty comes up with a new – one might say ironic – interpretation of
sophia129, the Greek word for ‘wisdom’, and therefore also for ‘philosophy’130. Calling an
intellectual ‘wise’ should no longer mean that this person has access to a reality that goes
beyond the human imagination, something that is immune to redescription. Instead:

It is coming to mean that she combines a desirable openness to novel proposals with
familiarity with the fates that have overtaken many past proposals. Such people recognize that
although the only hope for the future lies in the human imagination, novelty alone is never a
sufficient recommendation. (Ibid.: 61).

4.6. Irony and upāya in Western interpretations of Madhyamaka

Irony as the intellectual attitude by which all linguistic expressions are never to be taken
completely seriously because of the belief that it is impossible that they correspond to
ultimate reality, seems highly Mādhyamikan. However, the linguistic character of irony in
Madhyamaka is implicit. Nonetheless, the ironists in this Buddhist tradition do talk about
logic. And although they know that logic is linguistic, they do not131 thematize this the way

127
Principal author of the American Declaration of Independence (1776).
128
Abuse or misuse of something does not imply that one has to get rid of it.
129
Rorty says that before sophia acquired the special sense that Socrates and Plato gave this word, ‘it meant
something like “skill”, something that could be gained only through the accumulation of experience In that older
sense, wisdom can be gained only by living a long time, seeing many men and cities, and keeping one’s eyes
open. But after Socrates and Plato it was thought of differently; sophia came to mean getting in touch with
something that was not the product of experience at all.’ (Ibid.: 59).

130
Rorty: ‘The Greek word for “love of wisdom,” philosophiae, which had once meant something like
“intellectual culture,” came to denote the attempt to escape from finitude, to get in touch with the eternal, to
achieve some sort of transcendence of the merely human.’ (Ibid).
131
Although language is not given much explicit attention in the works of Nāgārjuna, says Jan Westerhoff, it is
possible to extract some of his view on this issue. ‘A good starting point for the discussion of Nāgārjuna’s
conception of how the theory of emptiness affects our view of language is his so-called no-thesis view’
(Westerhoff 2009: 183), to be found in verse 29 of the Vigrahavyāvartanī (Nāgārjuna 2010):
‘If I had some thesis the defect would as consequence attach to me. But I have no thesis, so this defect is not
applicable to me.’

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Nietzsche and Wittgenstein did. The Mādhyamikan ironists have one simple principle: also
the statement ‘everything lacks inherent existence’ cannot be taken seriously.
Buddhist irony can be found in what is called upāyakauśalya. This Sanskrit term means
“skillful means,” “skill-in-means,” or “expedient means.” Often it is just upāya, meaning
“method”; kauśalya means “cleverness.” The concept of “skillful means” is of great
importance in Mahāyāna (Westerhoff 2018: 109). It is the principle of using every possible
means to help people understand the Dharma. The Buddha himself taught the Dharma, but
always adapted to the level of his audience (Pye 2003: 2). His tutorial skills were aimed at
increasing the chance that people understood what he was talking about and that they would
act accordingly. Upāya was especially important for Mahāyānins, because they had to explain
why their new “vehicle” (yāna) was not something they had made up themselves, but that
their sūtras also sprang from the same source as the Tripiṭaka, namely the Buddha himself.
Why then was Mahāyāna so different from early Buddhism? Because the Buddha knew that
the time was not yet ripe for this new doctrine. It was only taught to a few capable disciples.
And when the time was ripe, the new sūtras (and tantras132) were revealed; legend has it that
Nāgārjuna played an important role in the finding of the Mahāyāna scriptures133. It is said that
‘[t]he idea of skillful means is therefore an ingenious exercise in religious reformation
through reinterpretation. In this sense, it is a hermeneutical device’ (Federman 2009: 126).
The concept upāya makes Buddha’s teachings ironic. What he said is never the whole
story. Sometimes he even had to lie134 in order to tell the truth. To make this understandable
one could refer to the famous parable of the burning house from the Lotus Sūtra (Watson
1993). Śākyamuni tells his disciple Śāriputra the story of a rich man who is trying to rescue
his sons from his burning house. But they are enjoying themselves by playing games. They
are totally unaware of the danger. ‘The fire is closing in on them, suffering and pain threaten

132
John Powers: ‘Most tantras claim to have been spoken by Śākyamuni Buddha, or sometimes by other
buddhas. This assertion is accepted by most Tibetan Buddhists, but is generally rejected by contemporary
historically-oriented scholars, because no reliable evidence supports the appearance of tantras for at least a
millennium after the death of Śākyamuni. The discrepancy between the time of the Buddha and the period of
Vajrayāna flourishing in India has also been noted by Tibetan historians, and Tāranātha (1575–1635) attempts to
explain it away by stating that Śākyamuni taught the tantras during his lifetime, but some were passed on in
secret from master to disciple, while others were hidden in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three or Tuṣita until
humans were ready to receive them. The origins of tantra are extremely obscure, and there are numerous theories
concerning when, where, and by whom various texts were composed’ (Powers 2007: 251).
133
More about this in Chapter Six.
134
Cfr. Aafjes 1944: 9.

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them, yet their minds have no sense of loathing or peril and they do not think of trying to
escape!’ (Watson 1993: 56).

The father understood his sons and knew what various toys and curious objects each child
customarily liked and what would delight them. And so he said to them: ‘The kind of
playthings you like are rare and hard to find. If you do not take them when you can, you will
surely regret it later. For example, things like these goat-carts, deer-carts, and ox-carts. They
are outside the gate now where you can play with them. So you must come out of this burning
house at once. Then whatever ones you want, I will give them all to you!’ (Ibid.: 57).
When the sons heard their father telling them about these toys, they all eagerly came out of
the burning house. So, a lie saves the ignorant boys. Interesting is the irony of presenting the
three carts as just examples, while they are very significant. These toys refer to respectively
the three vehicles (triyāna): the vehicle of the śrāvakas – the ones who aim to become an
arhat by following the teachings of the Buddha (śrāvakayāna) –, of the pratyekabuddhas –
the ones who attain buddhahood on their own (pratyekabuddhayāna) –, and of the
bodhisattvas (bodhisattvayāna). Obviously, there is an hierarchy among these three animals:
the ox, being strong and always ready to serve to carry one’s burden or to plough one’s field,
is the most esteemed one.
The bodhisattva, who embodies universal compassion, represents the highest moral
ideal in Mahāyāna. One of the best known examples of a Mahāyānan bodhisattva is being
presented in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra or Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra135 (“The Sūtra of the
Discourse of Vimalakīrti”). Its principal theme is, according to Jay Garfield, upāya (Deguchi
et al. 2021: 42). Upāya is ‘the bodhisattva’s skill in facilitating the awakening of all sentient
beings,’ says Garfield, adding Robert Thurman’s translation of the term: ‘skill in liberative
technique’ (ibid.; Thurman 1976). ‘One of the most important attributes a bodhisattva
cultivates is the skill necessary to bring sentient beings of all kinds and dispositions to
awakening,’ Garfield continues.
The title of the sūtra refers to the central figure of this important text: Vimalakīrti.
This person is not a bhikṣu but a upāsaka (layman). Although this follower of the Buddha
does no lead a monastic life, he transcends the necessity to become totally committed to
religious practice. Vimalakīrti was married with children. He also was a successful
businessman. Although he was engaged in worldly affairs and wore expensive clothes and
jewels, he was not mundane at all. He visited gambling parlors, brothels, the local harem,

135
The original Sanskrit version, possibly written circa 150 CE, was lost; of the ancient Chinese translations, the
one of Kumārajiva (first decade of the 5th century of the CE) is the most prominent.

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government buildings and wine houses in order to liberate the ones present in these places
from their mental chains.
This sūtra has an interesting narrative, full of irony. We, the readers, learn that
Vimalakīrti is a true sage. And what doesn’t a true sage ever do? The answer: asking stupid
questions, unless, he does it out of pedagogic irony. For the sake of our education the narrator
says that Vimalakīrti, as a form of upāya, fell ill, whereupon he asks himself: ‘I am lying here
sick in bed. Why does the World-Honored One in his great compassion fail to show some
concern for me?’ (Watson 1997: chapter 3). How can a bodhisattva say that the Buddha fails?
The ironic narrator lets Vimalakīrti doubt the Buddha’s compassion. From this, the story
continues with the announcement that the Buddha in his omniscient wisdom was aware of this
so-called doubt. What follows is that the Buddha orders his ten most important disciples, who
are all monks, to go to the layman Vimalakīrti and inquire about his illness. They are:
Śāriputra, Maudgalyāyana, Mahākāśyapa, Subhuti, Pūrṇa Maitrāyanīputra, Kātyāyana,
Aniruddha, Upāli, Rāhula, and Ānanda. All of them object to this assignment, due to their
earlier encounters with Vimalakīrti. All of them were painfully impressed by his eloquence
and wisdom, that they felt ignorant. After them, the Buddha asks the bodhisattva136 Maitreya
to visit Vimalakīrti. But he too refuses, because he considers himself not competent to get
confronted with the layman’s extraordinary knowledge of the Dharma. Also other
bodhisattvas described one by one a past encounter with Vimalakīrti and therefore said to the
Buddha that they were not sufficiently equipped to make an inquiry about the status of
Vimalakīrti’s illness, which of course is more than a physical condition but a symbol of the
unenlightened state of all living beings in saṃsāra. At the end, Mañjuśrī is being assigned to
visit Vimalakīrti (chapter 5). At last someone obeys the command of the Buddha. Curious
about the conversation between ‘these two great men’ that will take place, a throng of
bodhisattvas, major disciples, and heavenly beings decide to accompany Mañjuśrī to
Vimalakīrti’s sickbed. Also present is Śāriputra, who in the pre-Mahāyānan culture was
revered as the most eminent disciple of Śākyamuni. The narrator of this sūtra uses him as a
target of Vimalakīrti’s irony:

At that time Śāriputra, observing that there were no seats in Vimalakīrti's room, thought to
himself: “All these bodhisattvas and major disciples-where are they going to sit?”
The rich man Vimalakīrti, knowing what was in his mind, said to Śāriputra, “Did you come
here for the sake of the Dharma, or are you just looking for a place to sit?” (Watson 1997:
chapter 6).

Here the term ‘bodhisattva’ is used in the Theravādin sense: a being who in his next life will become a
136

buddha.

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In this sūtra, upayā would appear to make sense ‘only when contrasted with that which is not
upayā – but that which is nonetheless true,’ writes Garfield (Deguchi et al. 2021: 47). ‘The
ruse used by the father to get his children out of the burning house in the Lotus Sūtra is
upayā.’ It might then be thought, Garfield continues, ‘to contrast with “straight” Dharma, as a
skillful, expedient necessity when telling the truth or acting as one ordinarily ought to would
not work, a sort of “what to do until the Buddha comes” second best.’

These contrast with the case where one simply, straight out tells the truth. “If you don’t come
out of the house, you will die; there is nothing I can do for you, son.” This statement would be
true, but unskillful. Upayā then contrasts both with mendacity and with literality. To the extent
that it is honest, it is figurative and indirect, and makes sense only against a background of the
literal and the direct. But the thrust of the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa is that all Dharma practice, all
speech, including the Dharma itself, is upayā. (Ibid.: 47).
Again, mastering upayā belongs to the key qualities of a bodhisattva. Stephen Harris, who wrote a
paper, entitled “Antifoundationalism and the Commitment to Reducing Suffering in Rorty and
Madhyamaka Buddhism,” calls the bodhisattva the ‘ironic saint of Madhyamaka Buddhism’
(Harris 2010: 78). He says that it is not clear whether a Mādhyamika is an ironist exactly in
Rorty’s sense. A bodhisattva, he continues, seems to have no doubts about the final
vocabulary she uses in liberating all beings from suffering.

Nevertheless (…) the [Mādhyamika] does not think the terms of her final vocabulary
correspond to any mind independent reality. Further, she is willing to adopt alternate final
vocabulary when to do so will help liberate other beings. The Buddha, for instance, is held to
have offered teachings contradicting core Buddhist tenets as a skillful means [upāya] for the
sake of his audience. (Ibid.: 88, n. 22).
Harris says that the ‘ironic bodhisattva’ (ibid.: 82) is not on a quest of re-creating a new
private self, as the liberal ironist is. Irony is for the liberal a way to become more autonomous,
free from the final vocabulary of their upbringing that might contain them. He quotes the
passage of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity on redescription as an escape route to more
freedom.

We redescribe ourselves, our situation, our past, (…) and compare the results with alternative
redescriptions which use the vocabularies of alternative figures. We ironists hope, by this
continual redescription, to make the best selves for ourselves that we can. (Rorty 1989: 80).
However, Rorty thinks that a constant irony in the public sphere is undoable.

I cannot go on to claim that there could or ought to be a culture whose public rhetoric is
ironist. I cannot imagine a culture which socialized its youth in such a way as to make them
continually dubious about their own process of socialization. (Ibid.: 87).
That’s why Rorty holds that the ironist’s final vocabulary can be and should be split ‘into a
large private and a small public sector’ (ibid.: 99–100). The public sector contains the final

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vocabulary relevant to the welfare of others. ‘Such vocabulary is off limits to any
redescription which would inhibit its effectiveness at promoting the liberal goals of reduction
of cruelty, and personal liberty. The rest of a person’s final vocabulary, what is grouped under
the larger private area, is up for grabs’ (Harris 2010: 74).
According to Harris, the bodhisattva, unlike the liberal ironist, is not divided and has no
need for this split in a private and public sphere of irony:

She does not alternate between her commitment to the welfare of others, and desires for novel
self-creation, because she understands all such indulgences take place within the cycle of
suffering characterized by continual birth and death. The only private identity worth affirming,
for the Bodhisattva, is the public identity of working to remove the suffering of all sentient
beings. (Ibid.: 85).
For the Mādhyamika, says Harris, the dilemma of the liberal ironist does not arise, because
she ‘is not tempted by the siren call’ of the creation of a new self. She is ‘not tempted to adopt
private identities conflicting with her commitment to removing suffering because she realizes
all such identities would be permeated with suffering themselves’ (ibid.: 79). The
Mādhyamika’s analysis of suffering ‘runs much deeper’ than Rorty’s:

The Buddhist understands the nature of ordinary human experience to be suffering;

idiosyncratic private fantasies are not alluring to her, for she realizes any such desire merely
continues the unending cycle of pain. For the Madhyamaka Buddhist, the only identity worth
affirming is one in which the public and private come together: that of the spiritual saint
working tirelessly to eliminate the suffering of all beings. (Ibid.: 85).
Idiosyncratic private fantasies may not appeal to a serious practitioner of Buddhism. On the
other hand, the personal imagination is needed in order to become more sensitive to the
troubles of the world in all its dimensions.

The Emersonian, Nietzschean creation of a self seems to be the opposite of the Buddhist
practice of realizing anātman. Why would you become interested in a new self, if the whole
notion of a self is illusory? Stephen Batchelor, who considers himself a pragmatist
Buddhist137, objects to this idea of the negation of the self. He says that for him ‘the practice
of the Dharma has very little to with the adopting of a set of metaphysical beliefs and has
everything to do with applying a set of injunctions’ (Batchelor 2011: 38:27-38:41) and that

137
He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Center of Pragmatist Buddhism. On its website, Richard Rorty
is mentioned: ‘Through the neopragmatism of the late Richard Rorty, the Center for Pragmatic Buddhism is
developing an "American" approach to Buddhism, having revised the language employed to describe Pragmatic
Buddhism and having embraced an indigenous system of thought alongside traditional Buddhism. This position
is liberating, as it allows us the ability to redescribe our selves and our society through the playful and creative
use of an ever-shifting language. Impermanence must indeed be applied to all things, including our forms of
Buddhism.’ http://www.pragmaticbuddhism.org/philosophy.

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Buddhism ‘is not something that we learn to believe but that we learn how to do’ (ibid.:
38:45-38:50). He interprets the Four Noble Truths not as truth claims, but as ‘tasks’ (ibid.:
39:03): fully embrace dukkha; find the origin of dukkha; stop craving; cultivate the Eightfold
Path. In doing that, ‘the self or the world is a project to be realized, a work in progress, not
something to be negated or denied’ (ibid.: 45:58-46:07). The teaching of anattā (anātman)
doesn’t mean that the self doesn’t exist, says Batchelor. ‘What it points to is, that the self is
not a fixed thing that either does or doesn’t exist. The self is a living, organic, unfolding
process’ (ibid.: 46:31-46:45), in which imagination is of the utmost importance:

What matters in the creation of a work of art is the capacity to place that skill in the service of
the imagination. The same is true of dharma. No matter how accomplished one's technical
proficiency in meditation (for example) may be, such skill in itself can lead to no more than
becoming an expert: a master craftsman as opposed to an artist. In fact, the practice of dharma
is more truly akin to the practice of art. With the tools of ethics, meditation, and
understanding, one works the clay of one's confined and anguished existence into a
bodhisattva. Practice is a process of self-creation. (Batchelor n.d.).
In Rorty’s sense, the self-creative activities of poetry and art are ironic because they have no
reference to anything; they are attempts to find better idioms to use in a world that is
constantly changing. One might say that, in line with Batchelor, the Buddhist practice can be
considered as irony.
In a certain sense, “Rortyan” products such as novels and poems could also be seen as a
kind of upāya, in sofar they aim at helping people to develop their imaginative powers in order to
assist in constructing a different, more free, and less cruel world, or to change the perspective that
keeps them in a narrow-minded state.

4.7. Ironists and ‘ascetic priests’

Irony and prajñā are alike. The enlightened sage knows that his final vocabulary does not
match that of those who listen to him. He must always adapt to the limited comprehension of
the listeners. Hence Śākyamuni’s upāya. As Buddha, he was fully aware of the impossibility
of describing linguistically the state of the “extinction” of his individual historic appearance.
Moreover, according to the Mahāyānins, he wanted to prevent most of his listeners from
being alienated too soon by a truth they could not yet comprehend. Prajñā drove him to
convey his truth only in doses or even to lie about it.
Opposite the ironist, according to Rorty, is the metaphysician. In his essay
Philosophers, Novelists, and Intercultural Comparisons: Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens

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(Balslev 1999), he describes the metaphysician by using the type that was so despised by
Nietzsche: the “ascetic priest.” According to Rorty, Heidegger is an example of this type. Like
Plato and Augustine, he had the desire for a secluded ‘space’ from which he could judge the
world. To this end, Plato created the sky of ideas in order to be able to look down on the
realm of shadows; Augustine created the City of God, far above the city of men. Heidegger
looked back instead of down. A self-proclaimed anti-metaphysician, Heidegger analyzed the
history of Western philosophy and concluded that metaphysics was the cause of the
forgetfulness of being (Seinsvergessenheit). But according to Rorty, Heidegger turned out to
be an ‘ascetic priest’ himself, precisely because of his Offenheit des Seins. The ascetic priest,
says Rorty,

is the person who sets himself apart from his fellow humans by making contact with what he
calls his ‘true self’ or ‘Being’ or ‘Brahman’ or ‘Nothingness’. (...) His ambition is to get
above, or past, or out of, what can be said in language. His goal is always the ineffable. (...)
Ascetic priests have no patience with people who think that mere happiness or mere decease of
suffering might compensate for Seinsvergessenheit, for an inability to be in touch with
Something Wholly Other. (Balslev 1999: 109-110).

Can we deduce from this text that Rorty despised Buddhist sages? It seems that śrāvakas
would not really have his sympathy; they leave the world to get in touch with the Ultimate for
themselves. However, I think he would not reject the bodhisattva ideal, for purely pragmatic
reasons of course. After all, a bodhisattva has vowed to undo the suffering of all beings. He
does not withdraw from the world to feel far exalted about it, he is determined to attain
prajñāpāramitā because he is touched by the suffering of others and wants nothing more than
their happiness. The purpose of the bodhisattva’s discourse is not ineffability; the emphasis on
ineffability is meant to bring enlightenment to the greatest amount of sentient beings.
Therefore bodhisattvas would probably not be qualified by Rorty as ascetic priests.
By the way, irony is involved in his discription of the ascetic priest; it was deliberately
exaggerated. Moreover, he says that every philosopher carries something of the ascetic priest
within him:

We all hanker after essence and share a taste for theory as opposed to narrative. If we did not,
we should probably have gone into some other line of work. (Balslev 1999: 109).

Be that as it may, ascetic priests may have a false consciousness, but according to Rorty a
civilization cannot exist without them:

It is easy (...) to make such seekers after ineffability and immateriality sound obnoxious. But
to do them justice, we should remind ourselves that ascetic priests are very useful people. It is

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 unlikely that there would have been much high culture in either West or East if there had not
been a lot of ascetic priests in each place. (Ibid.:. 111).

According to Rorty, ascetic priests have always tried to rise above the language of their own
tribe. By doing so, they have enriched language for later generations of the tribe. If a society
can afford many ascetic priests, then there is an elite of exempt persons who can put their
imagination to work. The more ascetic priests a society has, the greater the chance that its
language and projects will be enriched.

The spin-offs from private projects of purification turn out to have enormous social utility.
Ascetic priests are often not much fun to be around, and usually are useless if what you are
interested in is happiness, but they have been the traditional vehicles of linguistic novelty, the
means by which a culture is able to have a future interestingly different from its past. They
have enabled cultures to change themselves, to break out of tradition into a previously
unimagined future. (Ibid.).

It is the breakout that both Rorty and Mādhyamikas want. Not because they share a
repugnance for tradition per se, but because traditions sometimes involve cultural,
psychological and moral imprisonment. The eccentricity of poets, artists, scientists, siddhis
and priests move away from the center of conventional life, not because they have found a
new center, but because they are eager to draw new “circles” in the void, imagining ways to
overcome challenges. They often do so by describing the world in such a way that problems
come to light that previously were not experienced as problematic. During the drawing of the
new circles, ironists have to face irritation by peers or the masses. Seldom, the admiration
they get is adequate to their mission, because their redescriptions can only be understood after
their findings are processed by the community of “lovers of wisdom.”

4.8. Conclusion

One could easily think that Rorty’s idea of solidarity is just a matter of taste. From that
perspective, it could be held that other people’s suffering should be minimalized because one
might feel rotten if one gets confronted with the misery of others. However, if one is a sadist
or a sociopath deprived of the neurophysical capacities of empathy and sympathy, other
people’s suffering might instead be a source of joy. It seems that the desire for a liberal
society that minimizes the suffering of its citizens would then not be a matter of ethics but of
aesthetics.
Solidarity cannot be founded in objectivity, as Rorty has pointed out so frequently.

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This, however, warrants our questioning whether constructing an ethic is just a matter of taste.
If we were all sociopaths, the ethic of solidarity would be quite absurd. But the fact is that
most of us are sane and equipped with the faculties of empathy and sympathy. And because of
this vast majority, the presence of those faculties is called “natural,” not because they
represent an objective status called “human nature,” but because the evolutionary and
contingent concurrence of circumstances has caused the existence of this majority.
Notwithstanding this evolutionary perspective, Rorty would also point out that taste is not a
matter of free choice; it has no moral structure but a strict contingent character. In contrast
with Kant, he rejects aesthetics as an academic discipline that teaches us how to identify good
taste, beauty, and sublimity. However, one could choose to learn how to become “tasteful,” in
the sense of learning to affirm the appreciation of a certain cultural elite. In the same matter,
liberal elites might put pressure on the less tasteful crowd to learn to appreciate their liberal
agenda. Herein, this echoes Nietzsche’s analysis of the societal genealogy of what is revered
as the moral good: it is the result of the power play of rulers138. However, Rorty is not
bothered by that because whatever the aims are to establish and realize solidarity,
metaphysical or religious notions as “child of God,” “humanity,” “rational being,” “truth for
its own sake,” and “art for art’s sake” have done ‘an enormous amount of good,’ Rorty says
(Rorty 1989: 195). The philosophical problems only arise ‘when a handy bit of rhetoric is
taken to be a fit subject for “conceptual analysis,”’; in other words: ‘when we start asking
about the “nature” of truth, or art, or humanity’ (ibid.).

When questions of this sort sound as artificial as they have come to sound since Nietzsche,
people may begin to have doubts about the notion of human solidarity. To keep this notion,

138
Rüdiger Safranski writes: ‘The real horror and foundations of terror come up elsewhere, namely in
Nietzsche’s sketch called “European Nihilism,” dated June 10, 1887, which provided essential groundwork for
his planned Will to Power, “European Nihilism” depicts true horror in the face of nature, pointing up the
overwhelming injustice and ruthlessness inherent in it. Nature produces the weak and the strong, the advantaged
and disadvantaged. There is no benevolent providence and no equitable distribution of chances to get ahead in
life. Before this backdrop, morality can be defined as an attempt to even out the “injustice” of nature and create
counterbalances. The power of natural destinies needs to be broken. In Nietzsche's view, Christianity represented
an absolutely brilliant attempt to accomplish this aim. It offered the “underprivileged” three advantages. First, it
granted man an “absolute value, in contrast to man's smallness and coincidental status in the flux of becoming
and passing on.” Second, suffering and evil were rendered tolerable once they had “meaning.” Finally, the belief
in creation made people regard the world as infused with spirit and therefore recognizable and valuable.
Christianity thereby prevented people who were disadvantaged by nature from “hating themselves as people and
taking sides against life.” The Christian doctrine subdued the cruelty of nature, roused people to life, and kept
those who might otherwise have despaired clinging to hope. In a word, it sheltered “the underprivileged from
nihilism.” If we consider it a commandment of humanity not just simply to let nature take its course but to
establish a livable order for as many as possible, we ought to be grateful to Christianity for introducing its
“theory of morality” to the world. Nietzsche greedily admired the power of Christianity to set values, but he was
not grateful to it, because its consideration for the weak and the morality of evening things out impeded the
progress and development of a higher stage of mankind.’ (Safranski 2002: 295-296).

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 while granting Nietzsche his point about the contingently historical character of our sense of
moral obligation, we need to realize that focus imaginarius is none the worse for being an
invention rather than (as Kant thought it) a built-in feature of the human mind. The right way
to take the slogan “We have obligations to human beings simply as such” is as a means of
reminding ourselves to keep trying to expand our sense of “us” as far as we can. That slogan
urges us to extrapolate further in the direction set by certain events in the past - the inclusion
among “us” of the family in the next cave, then of the tribe across the river, then of the tribal
confederation beyond the mountains, then of the unbelievers beyond the seas (and, perhaps
last of all, of the menials who, all this time, have been doing our dirty work). This is a process
which we should try to keep going. We should stay on the lookout for marginalized people -
people whom we still instinctively think of as “they” rather than “us.” We should try to notice
our similarities with them. The right way to construe the slogan is as urging us to create a
more expansive sense of solidarity than we presently have. The wrong way is to think of it as
urging us to recognize such a solidarity, as something that exists antecedently to our
recognition of it. For then we leave ourselves open to the pointlessly skeptical question “Is this
solidarity real?” We leave ourselves open to Nietzsche's insinuation that the end of religion
and metaphysics should mean the end of our attempts not to be cruel. (Ibid.: 196).

As we have seen, irony in the Rortyan sense is not so much the attitude of a disinterested
observer, but actually of an interested participant. The liberal ironist’s interest lays in two
worlds139: in the private sphere and in the public sphere. Regarding the private sphere, the
ironist’s interest is aimed at self-creation; regarding the public sphere, there is the pursuit of
increasing freedom and the creation of a political culture where debates and discussions are
being held to help leaders to redescribe realities that are not yet present in the awareness of
the public. Whether redescriptions have been successful, such can be measured by the results
of the new institutes that have been established so as to help citizens to overcome their
hardship. That is the only norm. Prescriptive ethics, philosophical thought that determines
what is good or bad, is rejected, not only by Rorty but also, according to the exponents of the
Western philosophical interpretation of Madhyamaka, by most of the Mādhyamikas. Moral
normativity is determined by the empathic faculty of the human brain. But sometimes that
faculty fails because of some blind spots, which make it impossible to become aware of
misery. A redescriptive ethic has, therefore, to be followed in order to illuminate those blind
spots. Such an ethic can recommend mental training that aims for an enlarged sensitivity to
suffering. Highly trained practitioners on the bodhisattva path are sensitive to the misery of all
sentient beings, not only humans. Their wisdom gives them the skillful means (upāya) to

139
James Conant considers it as one of the eight Rortyan theses that public and private goods are
incommensurable. “They point in opposite directions: the one away from others to private pursuits and the
cultivation of individuality; the other outwards to the community at large and the amelioration of its public
constitutions and shared practices” (Brandom 2000: 276-277). In his response, Rorty does not dispute that. But I
think there is a connection between the two worlds: the poet as the self-created being who lets society benefit
from his cross-bordering creations.

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overcome borders and dichotomies, including those that demarcate boundaries between
human and non-human life. In Rorty’s philosophical work, there is, as far as I have been able
to find, not a single remark about animals140. “Animal rights141,” and “animal liberation” are
notions that do not belong to Rorty’s dictionary. But, in my opinion, it should belong to the
liberal ironist’s dictionary, because it is no more than logical that it can be expected that the
ironic poets will find new signs and sounds to call for solidarity with all sentient beings.
Language can never capture ultimate reality. “Words fall short,” is a cliché, but true in
the sense that it matches the experience of most language users. However, that – as we have
seen in this chapter, does not prevent a certain group of language users from repeatedly
expanding existing vocabularies with metaphors by virtue of their imagination, so that
unfamiliar phenomena can be experienced as meaningful. Rorty calls these language users
poets. They are the ironists who help others by using their creative skills to see the world
differently than what was previously experienced as being common. An effect of this might
be that existing customs will be eradicated, because experienced against the backdrop of that
newly constructed horizon, they have become unacceptable atrocities. This is what every
liberal ironist hopes for. But new vocabularies can also bring about the opposite: that new
atrocities are created. Here the liberal ironist can find help from another form of irony: the
skills of the bodhisattva called upāyakauśalya. This could bring our query to a clarification of
our problems regarding irony: How is normativity possible if the Rortyan ironist considers
herself only a disinterested observer, and if solidarity is only a matter of taste? How could
others be persuaded to care? By changing the ironist gaze through the creation of a new
perspective: the liberation from suffering, the only telos of upāya. This telos constitutes a
non-teleological and non-consequentialist kind of normativity. However, we have yet to
investigate the nature of this telos. Is this orientation a manifestation of good will, or is it a
natural consequence of the realization of emptiness? In short: what drives compassion? And
what can the liberal ironist learn from answers to these questions as she seeks to expand her
solidarity? This is what we are going to investigate in the next chapter. After having showed

140
In spite of the fact that he was a nature lover and that his hobby was bird-watching (Jenkins 2007).
141
Ruth Abbey wrote an article entitled “Closer kinships: Rortyan resources for animal rights,” published in:
Contemporary Political Theory, March 2016. She argues that ‘Rorty’s thinking holds a number of attractions for
proponents of animal rights’, says the publisher. ‘It is further argued that Rorty’s thinking about rights avoids
many of the problems that animal ethic-of-care theorists have found in rights discourse being applied to animals.
Rorty’s work thus provides a valuable resource for bringing these two major strands within the animal ethics
literature into closer theoretical kinship.’

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that the Madhyamaka normativity is transmoral, I will argue that the figure of the bodhisattva
– ultimately a non-person – can also be considered a telos.

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Chapter Five:
SOLIDARITY & MAHĀKARUṆĀ
For whom should we care?

Chapter overview

Having compared Rortyan irony and upāya, we will now examine the connection between
Rorty’s idea of solidarity and the Western interpretations of the Madhyamaka approach to the
Buddhist concept of compassion.
After the Introduction, I elaborate on Rorty’s idea of solidarity (section 2) and the
problem of his ethnocentricity (section 3). In the next section, I discuss some Western
accounts of the Mahāyāna distinction between karuṇā (“compassion”) and mahākaruṇā
(“great compassion”). Then, in section 5, I explore the so-called non-dual nature of great
compassion. For this, I rely again wholly on the authors mentioned in the Introduction to this
dissertation rather than primary Buddhological sources. In section 6, I examine the
relationship between wisdom and compassion. Therein, I query whether or not compassion
presupposes wisdom; in short, can one be wise without being compassionate?’ Pivoting from
this inquiry, I then proceed to discuss briefly one of the Mahāyāna scriptures, often mentioned
in the works of the relevant Western Buddhist philosophers, wherein the subject matter of
karuṇā is elaborated: the Diamond Sūtra (section 7). From this exploration, I return to the
subject matter of morality, whereby I argue that mahākaruṇā is transmoral (section 8). In the
conclusive section, I come back to the central question of this chapter to clarify the problem
of Rorty’s ethnocentrism, arguing that the ethic of the bodhisattva could help liberal ironists
move toward the construction of a global ethic.

5.1. Introduction

Chapter 3 raised the question of why we should care about anything. Looking at this question
from the perspective of the Western interpretation of what is known in Mahāyāna as
bodhisattvayāna, we learned that this question can be deconstructed by replacing it with the
question “Whence karuṇā?” As we will see later, the highest grade of compassion of the

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person who has realized śūnyatā is a consequence of that realization.
Chapter 4 was about how to persuade others to act compassionately. We saw that
ironists could benefit from a specific aspect of bodhisattvayāna in their choice to pursue a
more solidary world, despite their fundamental attitude of doubt. Although it has proved futile
to persuade others argumentatively to join this endeavor, from the standpoint of
bodhisattvayāna, the persuasive nature of recruiting as many people as possible to the cause
of solidarity is enriched by the notion of upāya: the set of means employed by bodhisattvas in
order to thereby deftly combat suffering in the world.
In this chapter, we have come to the point of asking how far our compassion should
actually extend: “For whom should we care?” This seems an unnecessary question because
one is rather quick to answer these days: “For everyone.” Nevertheless, only some individuals
will genuinely believe that one should always and everywhere be focused on the suffering of
all individuals in the world. Solidarity and compassion are not just basic attitudes; they also
spur action. However, who has the strength to care about the suffering of all humanity
actively? In that respect, is it not wise to care for one’s loved ones and neighbors first? For
Rorty, this is not only wise but also a necessary starting point for any liberal ethic.
As we have seen in section 1.2.2., in Rorty’s ideal world, civilization considers
solidarity not as a preordained constitution of human nature and its destiny but as an objective
of the shared desire of an ever-expanding group of human individuals. Civilization
accomplishes solidarity through the imagination that enables us to perceive strangers as
fellow sufferers. Reflection does not reveal solidarity, but it produces solidarity by sharpening
our awareness of the specifics of the suffering and humiliation experienced by different,
unfamiliar types of people. In Rorty’s utopia, intellectual and artistic activities increase
sensitivity to such an extent that it becomes hard to marginalize humans different from
ourselves.
However, this approach of solidarity is inevitably ethnocentric. From that outlook, how
can our we-group be extended to a universal us? It seems problematic that increased
sensitivity to the suffering of other sentient beings disrupts the boundaries between familiarity
and unfamiliarity. After all, there is more to human reality that binds or separates groups than
mere suffering. Why should we care for sufferers outside our own group? According to Rorty,
reflection does not reveal a sort of innate global ethic. Still, liberal ironists yearn for such an
ethic. But why? Moreover, for whom and/or what should we care in Rorty’s utopia?

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5.2. Solidarity as liberal goal

The English adjective solidary means “united by togetherness.” It comes from the French
word solidaire, meaning “linked by common interests and responsibility,” and is derived from
the Latin solidus (“firm”, “tight,” “compact”) and sollus (“whole,” “entire,” “unbroken”).
“Solidarity” is often a concept that refers to a political state of affairs in which a unified front
of members of specific groups aims for a solid societal position, reflected in the slogan
“Together we’re strong.” That is, for instance, the case with labor unions appealing to
solidarity.
The main aim of the liberal project Rorty supports is expanding solidarity. However,
political solidity per se is not the objective; for Rorty, solidarity is always connected with the
desire to overcome cruelty, liberate from suffering, and enlarge personal freedom.
Expanding solidarity is a laborious process of training our sympathies rather than
through the awareness of prior criteria that prescribe what different groups have in common
(Ramberg & Dieleman 2021). It is brought about through progressive and contingent
expansions of the scope of “we.” Rorty believes that by exposing ourselves to types of pain
we had previously ignored, we might develop our sympathies. Therefore, the intellectual’s
responsibility in terms of social advancement is not to improve social and ethical theory but to
make us aware of the pain and tribulations of individuals who are not members of our “we-
group.”
A liberal democracy that aims for the togetherness of all citizens has a double moral
task, says Rorty:

such a democracy employs and empowers both connoisseurs of diversity and guardians of
universality. The former insist that there are people out there whom society has failed to
notice. They make these candidates for admission visible by showing how to explain their odd
behavior in terms of a coherent, if unfamiliar, set of beliefs and desires – as opposed to
explaining this behavior with terms like stupidity, madness, baseness or sin. The latter, the
guardians of universality, make sure that once these people are admitted as citizens, once they
have been shepherded into the light by the connoisseurs of diversity, they are treated just like
all the rest of us. (Rorty 1991a: 206).

Although Rorty speaks of universality, expanding solidarity always starts from an individual
group, ending up in a democratic state or a union of such states, Rorty holds. His idea of
solidarity presupposes the distinction between “us” and “them.” It seems that this idea
excludes the possibility of a global ethic.

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5.3. Ethnocentricity

Is a global ethic possible from the ethnocentric outlook on solidarity? Considering the
Western philosophical interpretation of Madhyamaka (M’), the answer is quite simple: yes.
There is nothing wrong with, for instance, following the global ethic called “The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights,” even not when you decline the concepts of universality and
humanity. Applying the doctrine of the Two Truths, we could say these concepts could be
seen as sheer conventional. But are they conventionally true? As pragmatically used notions
to refer to the totality of worlds and the phenomenon of humanity, they are not truth-apt. As
metaphysical concepts are used in phrases where it is claimed that they mirror the really real,
they can be considered to be true, but not by pragmatists. And even if pragmatists would be
totally aware of Madhyamaka teaching, they have no problem at all with the mentioned
concepts as long as they prove to be useful in the sense of making the world more liberal and
of giving all proper facilities for “self-creation.”
Let us now look into the problem of ethnocentrism and its alleged correlation with
“relativism,” against which Rorty continued to defend142 himself in the last decades of his life.
One of the first traces of Rorty’s ethnocentrism is in his Philosophy and the Mirror of
Nature. The term itself does not appear there, not even once. In Chapter VIII, entitled
“Philosophy Without Mirrors,” we find the passage that comes before his plea for “edifying
philosophy” – the point of it is ‘to keep the conversation going rather than to find objective
truth’:

To abandon the notion that philosophy must show all possible discourse naturally converging
to a consensus, just as normal inquiry does, would be to abandon the hope of being anything
more than merely human. It would thus be to abandon the Platonic notions of Truth and
Reality and Goodness as entities which may not be even dimly mirrored by present practices
and beliefs, and to settle back into the “relativism” which assumes that our only useful notions
of “true” and ”real” and “good” are extrapolations from those practices and beliefs. (Rorty
2009: 377).

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E.g., (note the martial tone): ‘Anyone who says, as I did (...), that truth is not “out there” will be suspected of
relativism and irrationalism. Anyone who casts doubt on the distinction between morality and prudence, as I did
(...), will be suspected of immorality. To fend off such suspicions, I need to argue that the distinctions between
absolutism and relativism, between rationality and irrationality, and between morality and expedience are
obsolete and clumsy tool – remnant of a vocabulary we should try to replace. But “argument” is not the right
word. For on my account of intellectual progress as the literalization of selected metaphors, rebutting objections
to one’s redescriptions of something will be largely a matter of redescribing other things, trying to outflank the
objections by enlarging the scope of one’s favorite metaphors. So my strategy will be to try to make the
vocabulary in which these objections are phrased look bad, thereby changing the subject, rather than granting the
objector his choice of weapons and terrain by meeting his criticisms head-on.’ (Rorty 1989: 44).

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The meaning of the word “relativism” he uses here is not the same as the one his critics will
use; it is an ironic – in the ordinary sense – usage. His most significant word here is
“extrapolations.” Barry Allen, one of Rorty’s “canonical”143 critics, says that these
extrapolations would require that we use the mentioned notions ‘in new cases with the same
normative meaning as in the past.’ But they are not going to be ‘predictable from information
about a past pattern of agreement - unless, of course, the predictor is one of us, a member of
our community, following our rules, attuned to our way of going on’ (Brandom 2000: 224).
Allen sees this as ethnocentric.
Later, Rorty used the word “ethnocentricity” himself in a lecture144 in, for instance, the
passages:

The pragmatist admits that he has no ahistorical standpoint from which to endorse the habits
of modern democracies he wishes to praise. These consequences are just what partisans of
solidarity expect. But among partisans of objectivity they give rise, once again, to fears of the
dilemma formed by ethnocentrism on the one hand and relativism on the other. Either we
attach a special privilege to our own community, or we pretend an impossible tolerance for
every other group. I have been arguing that we pragmatists should grasp the ethnocentric horn
of this dilemma. We should say that we must, in practice, privilege our own group, even
though there can be no noncircular justification for doing so. We must insist that the fact that
nothing is immune from criticism does not mean that we have a duty to justify everything. We
Western liberal intellectuals should accept the fact that we have to start from where we are,
and that this means that there are lots of views which we simply cannot take seriously. (Rorty
1991a: 29).
The pragmatist, dominated by the desire for solidarity, can only be criticized for taking his
own community too seriously. He can only be criticized for ethnocentrism, not for relativism.
To be ethnocentric is to divide the human race into the people to whom one must justify one's
beliefs and the others. The first group - one's ethnos - comprises those who share enough of
one's beliefs to make fruitful conversation possible. In this sense, everybody is ethnocentric
when engaged in actual debate, no matter how much realist rhetoric about objectivity he
produces in his study. (Ibid.: 30).
Allen remarks that ethnocentrism is supposed to be bad. No one ever calls himself
“ethnocentric,” he says.

We reserve this term for our opponents; it is always someone else, with whom you disagree,
who is ethnocentric. But Rorty is not advocating the fallacy that anthropologists (and others)
love to denounce – the colonialist assumption that unlike the savage our way of doing things is
especially favored by reason, nature, or God. It is, however, especially favored by us, and
Rorty thinks the difference is important. This point has often been missed. His endorsement of
ethnocentrism does not make sense without liberalism; without liberalism, ethnocentrism
would be awful. But Rorty sees nothing objectionable about ethnocentrism when the ethnos at

143
Allen is one of the authors in Rorty And His Critics (Brandom 2000).
144
A few years after the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature in 1979, Rorty gave the Howison
Lecture in Philosophy, at Berkeley (January 1983). His topic was “Relativism”. Revised versions resulted in his
famous essay “Objectivity or Solidarity,” bundled in for instance Rorty 1991a.

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 the center is a liberal democratic society that makes openness to others central to its own self-
image. Our ethnocentrism is different from everybody else’s. When we are ethnocentric, we
are not ethnocentric. When we are true to our traditions, we are open to other traditions, when
we are interested in ourselves, we are interested in what is new and different, happy (at our
best) to accommodate and learn from it. (Brandom 2000: 224).
Philosophically, Rorty considers himself ethnocentric, but practically145 not so much,
especially in this day and age, wherein, thanks to advanced information and communication
technology, the world’s different cultures tend to come together in one big agora. Although
communication between the different cultures remains a hermeneutical challenge, all humans
have in common that they are mortal and live on the same planet146. But is that enough for the
construction of one universal us, the biggest we-group possible? As long as humanity consists
of a large variety of perspectives, this we-group will never be universalized. And since the
construction of one human perspective seems an unrealistic project, a universal we-group is
an impossibility147. The only thing liberal utopists can do is promote edifying communication
and engage in the political struggle for greater equality and against exclusion. Sadly, the
present situation in the world shows little to no progress on those fronts.
Rorty’s ethnos belongs historically to a culture that has struggled to develop democracy

145
In his correspondence with A.N. Balslev, Rorty writes in Letter 6 that he finds the topic of “otherness” a bit
‘baffling.’ ‘This is because, as a good pragmatist, I am uncomfortable with notions of incommunicability, with
the idea that some special sort of things (God, the inside of another human being, the experience of the
oppressed) are impossible, or at least very difficult, to put into language. When I am told that the oppressed are
very different from me, a white male inhabitant of the richest part of the globe, I am inclined to say, “Of course
they are. They have a lot less money and power, they are always on the edge of starvation and always threatened
by brutality, and I’m not. That makes them very different all right, but it doesn’t raise any deep philosophical
question about our relations, or our knowledge of each other. It just raises practical questions of how to
redistribute money and power – how to get a global socio-economic system going that will level things off.”’
(Balslev 1999: 98).
146
James W. Heisig of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, one of the masters of interreligious
dialogue, is a strong advocate for a shared ecological agenda. According to him, the only wise thing everybody
should talk about now, is the future of life on our planet. Without a shared concern for “our common house,” it is
almost a luxury to talk about cross-cultural topics. ‘Given the current progress of civilization’s onslaught against
the natural world, only a refusal to look at the facts can allow a people to compliment itself any longer on its love
of nature. Such self-flattery is based on a distinctively modern habit of thought that I will call the
“sentimentalization of nature” [,] a phenomenon that takes different forms in different cultures. But it also cuts
across traditional cultural borderlines and indeed has become one of the mainstays of the process of
“internationalization” that has resulted in what we are now accustomed to call “global culture.” The dominant
cultural attitude toward nature today conforms to a uniform measure of the quality of life that we may call
“economic-developmental.” (…) When all is said and done, the necessary change of heart, the resolve to resist
the gigantic pressures toward unlimited development of the environment, calls for the very thing that nature
itself—the animals and plants, the earth and water and air—have joined in chorus to shout out at us: Let nature
be nature! We have but to learn to listen.’ (Heisig 2003: 33-46).
147
Cf. ‘I think that the idea of a society in which everyone loves everyone equally, or as they love themselves, is
an impossible ideal. The ideal of a society in which everyone has enough respect for other people not to presume
that one of their desires is intrinsically evil is a possible ideal. And it is the latter ideal that, through the growth of
social democracy and tolerance, we have been gradually achieving in the last two centuries.’ (Rorty 2011: 20).

162
and liberty. From that perspective, it can be seen as a kind of colonialism to export these
political values to cultures where autocratic systems are broadly accepted. Universalizing
certain value systems is possible and even defendable as long as it is not being done from the
conviction that truth and moral goodness are metaphysically founded. Still, Rorty claims that
liberty is some conditioning value for truth: ‘A true statement is just one that a free
community can agree to be true. If we take care of political freedom, we get truth as a bonus,’
Rorty once said in an interview (Mendicta 2006: 58). From this, I conclude that taking care of
freedom is the global ethic that Rorty advocates. In this, he proves to belong to the American
ethnos, in which these words are revered as sacred:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness. (Preamble of “The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States
of America,” July 4th, 1776).
Culturally impregnated with the Enlightened tenet that liberty is an absolute value, Rorty
treats it in his work almost as such. He holds it, of course, not as a by the creator of
humankind endowed unalienable right, and he certainly does not maintain that this
endowment has a self-evident truth. That would contrast with his non-foundationalism.
Holding truth as a collateral effect of taking care of political freedom, we can understand that
as consistent pragmatism. However, also freedom should be seen as being an effect of
something. This something might be our desire. Now, while it is true that not every desire will
lead to good things, Rorty does not worry about that because he thinks there is no alternative
– at least not one that is tolerable for pragmatists – to deal with the issue of freedom.
Still, this remains unsatisfactory since it seems that Rorty treats liberal aspiration too
much as a permanent given rather than an endangered force under increasing pressure in this
day and age of rising religious fanaticism and the clash of superpowers for economic,
military, and cultural dominance. Without seeking a transcendent source of the desire for
freedom, it might make sense not to take its existence for granted but to place it in a
soteriological framework. The purpose of this is not to ground the urge for liberty as yet
metaphysically but to practically secure it from attempts by cynics to smash it. In my opinion,
this soteriological framework could be provided by the contemporary Western account of
Madhyamaka, especially its approach to compassion. As we will see in the next section, this
involves a distinction between karuṇā and mahākaruṇā.

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5.4. Karuṇā and mahākaruṇā

The Pāli and Sanskrit word karuṇā is generally translated as “compassion,” derived from the
Latin com- (“together”) and pati (“to suffer”). Because of this, Charles Goodman and Sonam
Thakchöe think that “compassion” is ‘ill-fitting’ (Cowherds 2016: 15). As they point out,
karuṇā is not the same as pity; it does not mean “suffering together with others” but it refers
to having ‘the sincere wish for others to be free from suffering’ (ibid.). “Passion” presupposes
passiveness, hence the word’s double meaning: suffering and strong emotion (for instance
passionate love for a person or a hobby). According to Goodman and Thakchöe, karuṇā is
quite the opposite of passiveness since the word shares with karma the root kṛ, meaning “to
do” (Cowherds 2016: 16). Both authors suggest that “care” would be more accurate to
emphasize the more active aspect of karuṇā. Jay L. Garfield also prefers “care” as the better
translation (Garfield 2015: 366, Garfield 2022: 112). However, despite these interpretative
perspectives, I will use “compassion” because of its common use in the English literature on
Buddhism (e.g., Harvey 2000) and because “care” also means “concern,” “worry,” “interest,”
and “nurture,” which are alien to the Buddhist connotation of karuṇā.
The Buddhist idea of compassion is sincerely wishing that others were free from
suffering (Cowherds 2016: 15). Wishing that the other is liberated from dukkha is the virtue
of the arahant. In the early Buddhist schools as well as in modern Theravāda Buddhism, the
arahant (Pāli) or arhat (Sanskrit) is the person who succeeded in walking the eightfold path
toward the liberation of the circle of life and death (saṃsāra) (Garfield 2015: 16). One of the
virtues he has realized is being compassionate. Because he knows the way to enlightenment,
he knows that this way would stop the suffering of others too (Garfield 2022, 72-75). A
bodhisatta (Sanskrit: bodhisattva; an “enlightened being”) is someone who has made a
resolution to become a Buddha, and has also received a confirmation or prediction from a
living Buddha that this will be so. The notion of what it means to become a bodhisattva
changed during the rise of the Great Vehicle (Mahāyāna). It now referred to someone who
decides to postpone his ascension into nirvāṇa in order to help others to realize awakening.
This new type of Buddhism also redefined karuṇā. In section 5 of this chapter, we will read
parts of the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, also known as the Diamond Sūtra. This
holy scripture is one of the most important documents of the Mahāyāna-canon because
therein, the Buddha teaches the doctrine of emptiness and all its moral and philosophical
horizons.

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 Compassion in Theravāda is quite another thing than compassion in Mahāyāna. In order
to make a distinction between the two, Indian authors spoke of the latter as mahākaruṇā:
‘great compassion oriented toward the alleviation of suffering of all sentient beings’ (Finnigan
2017: 45).
Rorty’s notion of solidarity is like karuṇā, the genuine activity of helping others.
Feeling sorry for others is not enough in Buddhism nor Rorty’s liberalism. It is all about
action. In both the Rortyan sense and the Theravada sense, action is needed to stop the
suffering. Rorty’s active path is politics, sustained by literature, journalism, and art; the
Buddhist path is the path of eliminating one’s own ignorance, meditation, begging, (self-
)discipline, preaching, and teaching148.
Karuṇā is also a state of mind that can be developed by meditation. Compassion is one
of the four so-called ‘divine abidings’149 (brahmavihāras); the other three are lovingkindness,
empathetic joy, and equanimity (Harvey 2000: 104; Finnigan 2017: 37-40). All four
presuppose each other. Without equanimity, compassion becomes a passion and thus a
generator of suffering; without compassion, equanimity becomes indifference; without
empathetic joy, compassion becomes blind for spiritual success – empathetic joy is
compassion if the passion-part of the word represents joy; etcetera. In short, only those
practitioners who cultivate the four “immeasurable qualities” reach nibbāna.
In Mahāyāna, however, the distinction between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra disappears. The
Mādhyamikas explained this new insight with their doctrine of śūnyata: everything lacks
svabhāva. Consequently, the concepts of nirvāṇa and saṃsāra, too, are empty, thus rendering
the distinction between those concepts to lose their traditional meaning. Rorty would say: they
do not represent an objective state of being; they are just utterances which are a part of a man-
made vocabulary (Rorty 1989: 21). The Buddha used both concepts in a oppositional sense
just to get the attention of his first public, Mahāyānists say. Trying to get enlightened and
reach nirvāṇa by overcoming the tribulations of saṃsāra belongs to the so-called Hīnayāna,

148
Sometimes Western activists accuse Buddhists of escapism because they appear indifferent to the societal
injustices and have, in their abstinence of sociopolitical commitment, no interest in changing the world. The
Vietnamese Zen teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh, the great inspirer of so-called Engaged Buddhism, has proven the
contrary.
149
These “divine abidings” are not cognitive, which contrasts with Aristotle’s virtue theory, yet opens up a
comparative horizon with the virtue theory of David Hume, who believed that empathy is a natural moral
sentiment.

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the Lesser150 Vehicle. In Mahāyāna, the ideal of becoming an arhat is a good start but
certainly not the ultimate goal of realizing the Dharma. Nirvāṇa, as total awakening, can only
be attained once the practitioner realizes that there is nothing to attain.
Every destination is void. Total awakening is the complete “embrace” of everything,
knowing that ultimately all things do not have an inherent existence. This complete
“embrace” is mahākaruṇā, which I contend to be transmoral; indeed, great compassion
transcends conventional morality as a consequence of the realization of the awareness that
nirvāṇa is saṃsāra and saṃsāra is nirvāṇa. If mahākaruṇā would be an ordinary moral
category, then the bodhisattva has to be presented as the person who has learned to love and
care for all sentient beings. Of course, a bodhisattva is the result of a learning process, but the
ultimate lesson one learns on the bodhisattva path is that everything is connected; connected –
not in the manner of a network between substantial substances, but in the manner that also the
connection is empty. “Everything is connected”, according to the Middle School of
Mahāyāna, has normative significance that cannot be expressed in language. “Everything is
connected” does not represent an ultimate state of affairs, but a normative metaphor used in a
religious discourse. This discourse belongs to the level of conventional truth. However, that
being said: ‘Without a foundation in the conventional truth, the significance of the ultimate
truth cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation is
not achieved’, says Nāgārjuna in stanza XXIV:10 of his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Garfield
1995: 68).
By explaining the difference between moral and transmoral compassion, we can
proceed by pointing out the distinction of three different types of compassion (Cowherds
2016: 101): sattvalambāna-karuṇā (compassion with beings for its object); dharmālambana-
karuṇā (compassion with phenomena), and anālambana-karuṇā (objectless compassion). The
first type is the conventional moral compassion. The second type is the interim phase of
becoming aware that all sentient beings have no inherent existence. The third type is
mahākaruṇā. It concerns the awareness of the meaninglessness of all dichotomies. Observing
objects or phenomenons and being an observant have been overcome because there is nothing
to be observed. Observing the unobservable is, therefore, an expression of religious poetry

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‘As its name, the “Great Vehicle,” indicates, Mahāyāna is characterized by its opposition to the other schools
of Buddhism, which came to be known by the rather condescending name given them by Mahāyānists: the
Hīnayāna, or “Lesser Vehicle.” ‘This term, no longer accepted by modern scholars, was applied summarily to
the complicated and historically murky formation of sects within early Buddhism’ (Dumoulin 2005a: 27).
Garfield remarks on this: ‘Hīnayāna means inferior vehicle, a term of derision used by some Mahāyāna
practitioners, but understandably rejected by those to whom it refers’ (Garfield 2015: 16, n.7). The use of the
name “Great Vehicle” remains, however, politically correct.

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instead of a metaphysical statement. The Sanskrit word for the meaninglessness of the
dichotomous episteme is advaya (= “non-two”). The “observance” of this of non-duality, as
modern Western scholars call it151, is advayajñāna. In Madhyamaka, however, this superior
knowledge is rooted in conventional knowledge. ‘Nondual knowledge steers a middle path
between the belief that things exist as they appear to ordinary perception and the belief that
things lack even nominal existence’ (Lang 2003: 18).

5.5. The non-duality of great compassion

Let us begin this section with a verse of Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra (1: 1cd, 2a),
translated by C.W. Huntington and Geshé Namgyal Wangchen:

The generative causes of the sons of the conquerers (or bodhisattvas) are the thought of
compassion, non-dualistic knowledge, and the thought of awakening. Before all else I praise
compassion. (Candrakīrti 1989: 149).

What causes the realization of becoming a bodhisattva? In this verse, Candrakīrti does not use
the term “cause” because he wants to reflect on the exact meaning of causation as Nāgārjuna
did in the first twenty five stanzas of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Instead, he wants to name
the conditions of becoming a bodhisattva, in the conventional sense of causation and
conditioning. Candrakīrti sees three causes: a compassionate mind, nondualistic awareness,
and the aspiration for enlightenment (bodhicitta).
Garfield points out that, according to Mahāyāna theorists, the goal of the bodhisattva
path is that bodhicitta and karuṇā arise spontaneously (Garfield 2022: 115). The bodhisattva’s
response to the suffering of others is not achieved through deliberation; instead, it is an
immediate response. This is ‘why Candrakīrti characterizes karuṇā as the seed, the rain, and
the harvest: it is the seed as aspirational, the rain as practice, and the harvest as a spontaneous
comportment to the world, reflecting the kinds of object that the attitude of care can take’
(ibid. 115-116).
Is caring always a good thing? Are compassionate deeds done from a wrong view better
than doing nothing and having a right view? In any case, the bodhisattva knows that
compassion as a moral virtue cannot be upheld without advayajñāna. Compassion fatigue is
due to set in once the practitioner feels that his spiritual wellbeing is dependent on his do-
gooding. ‘Without insight in sūnyatā, the Buddhist practitioner is taking the risk to interfere

151
E.g., Loy 1988.

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as an ennobled boy-scout with his fellow man, continuously aspiring to perform good deeds’
(van der Braak 2012).
The practitioner who has realized śūnyatā knows that her moral task to be
compassionate with other beings is grounded in the lack of distance between subject and
object. This non-duality in suffering entails that the bodhisattva cannot be compassionate with
only the suffering she perceives in the phenomenal world. Her compassion is universal, hence
her vow to liberate all sentient beings from duḥkha. In taking the vow, she is committing
herself to an impossible task, at least when we look at it in a conventional way. But in this
vow, the two truths are intertwined. Taking a vow as a subject is being done at the saṁvṛti-
level. It is a moral thing to promise this. But at the paramārtha-level, the object of the vow
seems sheer nonsense. So, what does it entail ultimately? Herein, we have a significant
philosophical problem on our hands. In short, there are no suffering subjects or objects,
ultimately. So why bother? If even the bodhisattva is a non-existing thing, how can she attain
her universal goal? Moreover, what does it mean that the bodhisattva’s great compassion is a
manifestation of her nature if her nature is ultimately empty?
What we can say about reality at the paramārtha-level is nonsense. By the word
“nonsense,” I mean the inadequacy of lingual statements as bearers of meaning. To drive this
point home, I have to put forward this great insight, vis-à-vis sūnyatā, proffered by
Nāgārjuna: sunyata-sūnyatā. Emptiness itself is empty. In other words: emptiness has no
inherent meaning; it is dependent from something else, which is ultimately empty as well. The
whole idea of Madhyamaka is non-duality at all levels. Dichotomies that were used in
Abhidhamma, such as saṃsāra/nibbana and dukkha/bodhi, are no longer tenable. The same
goes for saṁvṛti/paramārtha. The conventional truth cannot be fully grasped without the
ultimate truth; and the ultimate truth is useless unless it is rooted in conventional truth. This
was formulated by Nāgārjuna in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (XXIV, 10):

Without a foundation in the conventional truth,

The significance of the ultimate cannot be taught.
Without understanding the significance of the ultimate,
Liberation is not achieved. (Garfield 1995: 68).

Let us go back to the bodhisattva vow. In promising to save all the beings, however
innumerable they are, the subject “I” cannot be interpreted as an individual person because at
a conventional level, we have learned that ultimately there is no such thing as a person. But
since we cannot live without this illusion of persons, the existence of individual persons is a
true fact, conventionally. Without the existence of persons, talking about taking vows is

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meaningless. So, the grammar of the conventional world must be used to say anything useful
for getting subjects who are capable to take vows, into a state of mind in which they can
connect with a body that transcends all bodies. This body is what Mahāyānins call the
Dharma Body (dharmakāya). But since everything lacks svabhāva, also this Dharma Body is
totally empty. And because emptiness is empty, the Dharma Body exists conventionally as the
point of reference for practitioners. Presenting this Dharma Body is utter nonsense, but a very
useful fiction. It is what Mahāyānins consider to be a part of upāya, the pedagogical aspect of
leading practitioners on the path to universal liberation from suffering.
Another element of the intertwining of saṁvṛti and paramārtha in the bodhisattva vow
is the concept of innumerability: ‘However innumerable beings are, I vow to save them.’ At
the conventional level, it means the number of beings is so large that they cannot be counted;
at the ultimate level, it means that they cannot be counted because their number is zero152.
We have seen that advayajñāna is an essential part of the soteriological framework we
are presenting to tackle the problem of Rorty’s muteness toward the origin of the urge for
liberty. Let us now look at that of which, according to Madhyamaka soteriology, advayajñāna
is the nature: prajñā.
The Sanskrit word prajñā literally means something like “strong awareness.” The prefix
pra- has a reinforcing function toward the word that follows. Jñā means “awareness,”
“knowledge,” and “understanding.” Prajñā is usually translated as “wisdom” or “insight”
(Westerhoff 2018: 140-141). The Pāli equivalent, used in Abhidhamma, is paññā, which has
the same meaning as prajñā.
In Abhidhamma, paññā is considered to be a virtue. It is defined as the formidable
insight into the Three Characteristics of Existence, impermanence (anicca), suffering
(dukkha), and non-self (anattā), and into the Four Noble Truths. Paññā is also the first section
of the Noble Eightfold Path – the other two are sīla (morality) and samādhi (meditation) – and
consists of sammā diṭṭhi (the right view) and sammā sankappa (the right intention). Sammā
diṭṭhi is the necessary knowledge every Buddhist practitioner is required to have in order to
follow through on the path to nibbāna. Sammā sankappa is the cultivation of unselfish,
loving, caring and peaceful thoughts.
But what is prajñā in Mahāyāna? One could argue that it is exactly the same as paññā
in early Buddhism. However, in order to grasp the new views of the Great Vehicle, a higher

152
For us the English word zero has an interesting etymology: from the French zéro or directly from its source,
the Italian zero, from Medieval Latin zephirum, from Arabic ṣifr (Hoad 1996: 77, 551), a loan translation of the
Sanskrit śūnya (Durant 1950: 251; Aczel 2015: 106, 127, 162).

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level of prajñā is required. And that is called the Perfection of Wisdom (prajñāpāramitā).
Pāramitā, which literally means “across the riverbank,” can also be translated as
“transcendent.” Sometimes the two words prajñā and prajñāpāramitā are being used for the
same concept.
Prajñāpāramitā and mahākaruṇā are, according to the Mahāyānins, the two wheels of
the Vehicle of the Enlightened Being (bodhisattvayāna). Prajñāpāramitā is also one of the six
perfections153 of the bodhisattva. Huntington writes:

The nature of prajñā as “nondualistic knowledge” (advayajñāna) is the key to its relationship
with the other perfections. According to the Mahāyāna literature, all five perfections must be
practiced for eons, during which time they are purified by perfect wisdom and so purged of all
associations with the reified concepts “agent,” “action,” or “recipient.” Accompanied by full
comprehension of the emptiness of all things, the practice of these virtues releases one from
the obscuring force of mental and emotional afflictions and reified thought. Actualization of
emptiness releases us from the grip of the observational language and natural interpretations
that are useful in their own right but spiritually dangerous unless placed in contrast with an
alternative, soteriological truth. (Huntington 1989: 89).

5.6. Self and others

The main source for the śūnyatavāda turn in Buddhism is the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā
Sūtra154. It is said this scripture was part of the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, the most important
corpus of the Mahāyāna canon155. In this corpus, a new meaning of the Dharma156 is presented

153
Dāna (‘generosity’), śīla (‘morality’), kṣānti (‘patience’), vīrya (‘effort’), dhyāna (‘meditation’), and prajñā
(‘wisdom’) (Westerhoff 2018: 272).

154
It is thought that the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (also named Vajra Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra or just
Vajra Sūtra) is a short version of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā, maybe composed from 300 to 500, ‘though in some form
may have existed in the early days of this literature’ (Harvey 2012: 115). Hajime Nakumara says that the
Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra is the ninth section of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra. ‘It came into
existence especially early. Its antiquity is inferred from the fact that its contents are sermons which were
exclusively delivered to only 1250 monks at Jetavana. There are copies of the original of this sūtra, which have
been discovered in Central Asia. Fragments of it in the North Aryan language or Khotanese have also been
discovered. This sūtra was very enthusiastically transmitted, recited, explained and commented upon in Tibet,
China and Japan. Its popularity is greater in these countries than in India, the land of its inception’ (Nakumara
1987: 160-161).
155
Its origins is quite a mystery. The oldest known Mahāyāna text, the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra
(“Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines”) is among these scriptures. Scholars estimate it was written in the first
century BCE and CE; ‘its contents were expanded, in the period to 300 CE, to form works of 1,.000, 25,000 and
100.000 verses’ (Harvey 2012: 114).
156
Peter Sloterdijk eloquently writes about the presentation of the Dharma: ‘The teaching grows from the
paradoxical act of breaking a silence in full awareness of the fact that the spoken words can never be taken
merely at their propositional value, but predominantly as therapeutic directives. The pronouncements of the
spiritual teacher are “indirect messages” of a more hygienic than dogmatic tendency. Equipped with a starting

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(Garfield 2022: 110). Where did this doctrine come from?157 Why did the Buddha, also
known by the name Śākyamuni because Siddhārtha Gautama belonged to the Śākya clan,
reveal these teachings not earlier? Why did it take centuries to develop this new vision, called
Mahāyāna?158 Was it a heterodox version of the original Dharma or was the publicly preached
Dharma in Śākyamuni’s days not meant to be orthodox? According to a commonly used
narrative, the “first turning” of the Wheel of Dharma, that had taken place in the Deer Park in
Sarnath, consisted of the doctrine of the Four Noble Truths; during the “second turning” the
Buddha revealed prajñāpāramitā159 in Vulture Peak Mountain in Rājagṛha; the “third turning”
happened in Śrāvastī, where he taught about tathāgatagarbha or Buddha-nature. The
explanation for the above questions is often: upayā. Śākyamuni adapted his teachings
skillfully to the developing level of his hearing in steps.
One of the meanings of the Sanskrit word vajracchedikā is “diamond cutter” or “knife
of diamond.” The name of this 300 verse scripture comes from the passage160 where the main

paradox of such power, Buddhism sought to sow the seeds of the incommunicable and unfolded into one of the
most loquacious movements in global spiritual culture.’ (Sloterdijk 2013: 281-282)
157
Joseph Walser argues that the origins of Mahāyāna are intractable due to the neglect of political and social
power in the scholarly imagination of the history of Buddhism. Accoring to him there was no Mahāyāna
revolution (Walser 2018: 4).
158
One story tells about the concealment of the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras in the realm of the Nāgas, Indian gods
taking the form of huge cobras. And when the heavenly Buddha thought the time was ripe, the Nāgas were
assigned to reveal the teachings of prajñāpāramitā. And there is the legend that Nāgarāja, the king of the Nāgas,
gave Śākyamuni’s secret sūtras to Nāgārjuna. ‘Nāgārjuna possessed the profound understanding that eradicates
the two extremes, possessed the treasure of profound good doctrine, and burned the fuel of bad views, thus
clearing away mental darkness. Also, just as Arjuna [the great hero in the Mahabharata epos] protected the
kingdom and tamed the enemies, so Nāgārjuna protected the kingdom of doctrine and conquered the foe, cyclical
existence, itself. Therefore, he was called Nāga-Arjuna, Nāgārjuna.’ (Hopkins 1996: 356-357).

159
The propagation of prajñāpāramitā by its adherents – later called Mahāyānins – met the resistance of the
followers of the old schools. What the latter found hard to understand was that the former ‘insisted in presenting
these new writings, manifestly composed centuries after the Buddha’s death, as the very words of the Buddha
Himself’ (Conze 1980: 31). ‘In order to make room for the new dispensation, they minimiz[ed] the importance
of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni, whom they replaced by the Buddha who is the embodiment of Dharma
(dharmakāya)’ (ibid.). However, as Mu Soeng points out, it did not lead to a disruptive breach like in Western
Christendom in the sixteenth century. ‘The European orientalists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
tended to see the appearance of Mahayana as a dramatic and cataclysmic rupture within the Buddhist church,
along the lines of Martin Luther (…). Modern Buddhist scholarship, however, generally agrees that the
Mahayana was a gradual, mitigatory, reformist impuls almost from the beginning of the formation of the sangha
(…).’ (Mu Soeng 2000: 3).
160
There are different version and translations of this passage, for instance this one by Alex Johnson:
‘Subhuti said to the Buddha, “By what name shall we know this Sutra, so that it can be honored and studied?”
The lord Buddha replied, “This Sutra shall be known as
The Diamond that Cuts through Illusion.
By this name it shall be revered and studied and observed. What does this name mean? It means that when the
Buddha named it, he did not have in mind any definite or arbitrary conception, and so named it. This Sutra is hard
and sharp, like a diamond that will cut away all arbitrary conceptions and bring one to the other shore of

171
character, the Buddha, says to the other character, his disciple Subhuti, that this sūtra must be
called “The Sūtra of the Vajra of Perfect Wisdom,” and revered as such. The meaning of the
title ‘refers metaphorically to prajñā’ (Hsüan Hua 1974: 30). The word vajra161 is most of the
time translated as “diamond”; however, it also has the meaning “thunderbolt.”
The Diamond (or Thunderbolt) Sūtra consist of 300 verses, divided over 32 chapters. It
is structured as a dialogue between Śākyamuni (addressed to as Bhagavān [= “Blessed One”
or “Venerable One”] and Tathāgata) and Subhūti, one of the Ten Great Hearers (Śrāvakas) of
the Buddha. In the old Buddhist traditions, this bhikkhu (“monk”) was known for his loving-
kindness. In Mahāyāna, his name became famous because of his appearance as a character in
the Diamond Sūtra, where it is Subhūti who acts like the perfect pupil by giving the right
answers to his master’s questions on emptiness.
One of the characteristics of the sūtra is the rather bizarre use of statements that appear
to be contractions; for example162:

Yet of the immeasurable, boundless numbers of living beings thus taken across to extinction,
there is actually no living being taken across to extinction. (Hsüan Hua 1974: 77).
Subhūti, Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras is spoken of by the Buddha as no Prajñā Pāramitā, therefore it
is called Prajñā Pāramitā. (Ibid.: 144).
Subhūti, good dharmas are spoken of by the Tathāgata as no good dharmas. Therefore they are
called good dharmas. (Ibid.: 221).

According to Gerald Doherty’s interpretation of this sūtra, it is a self-deconstructive text ‘in

so far as it underscores both its own status as discursive phenomenon and the contradiction
involved in mistaking its declaration for either literal or metaphorical truth’ (Doherty 1983:
115). And: ‘What Nāgārjuna demonstrated through his use of the negative dialectics, the Sūtra
enacts through its rhetorical strategies: that words take on meaning from their relationship to

Enlightenment.’ (Johnson n.d.: ch. 13).

161
In Indian iconography, the Vedic god Indra, Lord of Lightning and Thunder, is often depicted as a king
carrying a vajra, an attribute symbolizing lightning. ‘Vajra is durable, luminous, and able to cut. The substance
of vajra is durable, able to destroy what nothing else can, and yet is itself indestructible. The substance of vajra
fully controls devious influences, including heavenly demons and outside ways. The light, which is the
characteristic mark of vajra, has the power to break up all darkness, yet protects itself from all destruction. Light
dawns when darkness is destroyed. In protecting the faultless dharma, vajra eradicates all that is divergent and
perverted. When deviant dharmas are allowed to persist in the world, then darkness flourishes. When deviant
dharmas are destroyed, the faultless proper dharma shines forth more brightly to abide far longer in the world.
As light is the characteristic mark of vajra, cutting is its function. Vajra can cut like the keen blade of a knife.
Cutting metal, carving jade, slicing through steel as if slicing through mud — that is the power of vajra. Such
sharpness pierces all obstructions and controls all deviations. Nothing can defeat it.’ (Hsüan Hua 1974: 30-31).

162
Translated by Hsüan Hua (1974).

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other words in the system and not from any intrinsic relationship to extra-linguistic entities’
(ibid.: 120).
Let us now turn to the theme of ethics. In the following verses of chapter 23,
Śākyamuni speaks of the self, of charitability and kindness, and of kindness as a concept.

Furthermore Subhuti, what I have attained in total enlightenment (Anuttarasaṃyaksaṃbodhi)

is the same as what all others have attained. It is undifferentiated, regarded neither as a high
state, nor a low state. It is wholly independent of any definite or arbitrary conceptions of an
individual self, other selves, living beings, or a universal self.
Subhuti, when someone is selflessly charitable, they should also practice being ethical by
remembering that there is no distinction between one’s self and the selfhood of others. Thus
one practices charity by giving not only gifts, but through kindness and sympathy. Practice
kindness and charity without attachment and you can become fully enlightened.
Subhuti, what I just said about kindness does not mean that when someone is being charitable
they should hold onto arbitrary conceptions about kindness, for kindness is, after all, only a
word and charity needs to be spontaneous and selfless, done without regard for appearances.
(Johnson n.d.: ch. 23).

Being a buddha, Śākyamuni teaches that there is no distance between others and himself
because all beings lack substantiality. Only at the saṁvṛiti-level, he is to be considered as a
moral individual. Since paramārthasatya cannot be understood unless it is considered as
being founded in conventionality, a person who is charitable and kind to others conditions
himself amongst other means to become totally aware that there are no others. And only then,
he reaches the state of anuttara-saṃyak-saṃbodhi (= “highest complete enlightenment,”)
because he knows that he did not reach anything. By now, it must be clear that this is not a
contradiction, not even a paradox. It is the logical conclusion of the premises:

1) paramārtha as a soteriological concept presupposes saṁvṛitisatya;

2) at the saṁvṛiti-level, nirvāṇa is the end of saṃsāra;
3) at the paramārtha-level, nirvāṇa equals saṃsāra;
4) at the saṁvṛiti-level, moral perfection is necessary to have the right disposition to
realize śūnyatā;
5) to realize śūnyatā (= reaching the state of anuttarasaṃyaksaṃbodhi) is to be freed
from morality.

To be freed from ordinary morality means that the awareness of subjectivity with all its
feelings of responsibility, obligation, and duty is transformed into a supra-individual
awareness of ultimate freedom.
In Mahāyāna, this freedom of the bodhisattvayāna allows enlightened beings

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sometimes, if it is required by mahākaruṇā, to do things that are immoral in the conventional
world, such as killing, stealing, having sex out of wedlock, lying (Harvey 2012: 135-139).
These breakings of the moral precepts are considered to be skillful means (upāya) to fulfill the
bodhisattva vow to redeem sentient beings from suffering. But are these breakings acceptable
for all bodhisattvas? asks Harvey. He refers to the Upāya-kauśalya Sūtra163, wherein the
potential danger of its doctrine of skillful means certainly is acknowledged; the use of upāya,
so it reads, should, therefore, be kept from non-Mahāyānins (ibid.: 140). After all,
Theravādins would be allegedly appalled because, according to a dominant narrative, they fail
to understand the doctrine of universal emptiness and, therefore, also the transmoral character
of mahākaruṇā.

5.7. Mahākaruṇā and solidarity

Are mahākaruṇā and the Rortyan account of solidarity comparable? I think they are because
both concepts are related to the desire to overcome suffering. However, they differ in focus.
Mahākaruṇā is compassion with all sentient beings, while solidarity is compassion with
beings that can be regarded as a person. For Rorty, a person is a human being with whom one
can enter into an “I-you”-relationship. Rorty problematizes the relationship between the self
and others. He opposes the search for a rational foundation on which both personal morality
and social ethics are founded. Hence, Rorty distinguishes two projects: that of self-creation
and that of solidarity. The first benefits greatly from the reading of sophisticated literature and
the use of that literature as a guide in the retelling of one’s personal history. The other project,
in which literature is also indispensable, is the public effort on behalf of suffering persons.
That effort is solidarity.
According to Rorty, solidarity as the personal identification with humanity as such is
impossible. What is possible, however, is the solidarity associated with the ironic disposition
toward the contingency of language, the self, and society. Rorty calls this disposition “self-
doubt” (Rorty 1989: 198)164. He believes that this self-doubt characterizes the very first period

163
This early Mahāyāna sūtra is famous for its discussion of a liberal application of upāya. While the
bodhisattva’s ethic is generally based upon the code for all monks and nuns, it is not circumscribed by it, teaches
this sūtra. ‘Skill in means may supersede the monastic rule. The Buddha [as the protoganist of this sūtra]
illustrates this supersession with the most shocking examples he can discover in his own past lives. Not only did
he commit murder, he also broke celibacy,’ writes Mark Tatz who translated this sūtra in English (Tatz 1994: 3-
4).
164
See also section 2.2. of this dissertation.

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in history in which large groups of people appeared to be able to distinguish between two
questions: “Do you believe and desire what we believe and desire?” and “Do you suffer?”165
In a culture where this self-doubt is fully realized, the poets, novelists, ethnographers,
and journalists have the same task as the philosophers and theologians have in a liberal
metaphysical culture: increasing the political willingness to intensify the efforts of solidarity.
The difference is that the latter group tries to find a common human nature, while the former
group has the job ‘to sensitize one to the pain of those who do not speak our language’ (ibid.:
94). The acceptance of this job is a moral matter. Unlike mahākaruṇā, actions of solidarity are
not a manifestation of an enlightened state that breaks through once wisdom is completely
realized. Unless irony is transformed into prajñā. What if the Rortyan “self-doubt” would
become an attitude of trying to be aware of selflessness, not in the moral sense, but in the
Madhyamaka sense? If a liberal culture teaches the emptiness of the self, a major challenge
could be tackled. It would allow one to prevent irony from lapsing into cynicism. After all, it
is conceivable that cynics are prompted by the very notion of contingency to sensitize the
public to become indifferent toward the pain of others by placing the other outside the we-
group.

5.8. Conclusion

In this chapter, we have seen that compassion, parallel to the Madhyamaka distinction
between the conventional truth and the ultimate truth, has two levels: the conventional level
(karuṇā) and the ultimate level (mahākaruṇā). We have learned that the second level
manifests the realization of emptiness. This manifestation happens within conventional
reality, in which there is a multitude of suffering beings and moral subjects. By using her
“skillful means,” the bodhisattva can act morally and even immorally to transmorally move
her illusive entity toward the telos of ending all suffering. In this manner, the path of the
bodhisattva might benefit liberal ironists in finding a new language to promote solidarity by
reducing cruelty. From that perspective, bodhisattvayāna could be a soteriological framework
for what can be considered the global ethic that Rorty advocates: cultivating the desire for
liberty. According to him, such an ethic is only possible starting from one’s own ethnos.
Rorty’s ethnocentricism is supposed to make his public aware that liberty, as the principal
societal value of American culture, works centrifugally: it wants to spread to other cultures.

165
Ibidem.

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The eagerness of liberal pragmatists to help spread liberty through its solidarity-enlarging
ethic is not metaphysically grounded. However, contemporary Western interpretations of
Madhyamaka could help secure this eagerness soteriologically. As we have seen, wisdom as
advayajñāna helps Buddhist practitioners orient compassionate deeds to all sentient beings. In
analogy, supporters of the liberal project could enlarge their actions of solidarity toward the
entire animal kingdom; however, without “nondualistic knowledge,” compassion can become
a moral and fatiguing enterprise, leading to more suffering.
For whom should we care? According to the discussed Western accounts of
Madhyamaka tenets, the object of our care must be enlarged to all sentient beings but also
subjected to the centripetal force of the soteriological notion of śūnyatā because ultimately,
the world does not ‘contain multitudes’166 and even the mind as the center is empty.

166
Borrowed from Section 51 of the poem Song of Myself by Walt Whitman.

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PART THREE

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Chapter Six:
CONCLUSION

Chapter overview

In this final chapter, we first turn to the three questions that were raised at the beginning of
our study. They will be outlined in the first section of this chapter, together with a summary of
the clarifications already given in the respective chapter conclusions. Then in section 2, I will
discuss my so-called graftage metaphor, applied in a new discourse: Soterio-pragmatism.
Section 3 provides answers to the question of how a Western scholarly interpretation of
Madhyamaka (M’) can clarify difficulties in Rortyan pragmatism concerning the relationship
between compassion, morality, and rationality.

6.1. Clarifications

My main research question of this dissertation was: ‘How can a hermeneutical engagement
with contemporary Western Madhyamaka interpreters (Finnigan, Garfield, Harris,
Huntington, Siderits, Westerhoff, and others) clarify philosophical problems around Rorty’s
concepts of contingency, irony, and solidarity?’
The answers to this research question led along five sub-questions, divided over two
parts: a preliminary part wherein I set the stage for the second part, which consists of two
chapters that provided clarity on the issues preceding the discussion of the three problems.
In the first chapter of Part One, I showed the historical context of Rorty’s moral non-
foundationalism, of which I explained that this account creates three problems:

1. How is an ethics possible when self and world are contingent?

Why should we care? (contingency and śūnyatā).
2. How is, according to Rorty, normativity possible when his moral appeal to solidarity
is only a matter of taste?
How can we persuade others to care? (irony and upāya).

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 3. Rorty’s approach seems to be inevitably ethnocentric. How can our we-group be
extended to a universal us? Is a global ethic possible?
For whom should we care? (solidarity and mahākaruṇā).

I announced that these problems could be clarified by Western interpretations of the

Madhyamakan approach to the Buddhist concepts of emptiness, wisdom, and compassion.
In Chapter Two, the second chapter of Part One, I explained that using the term “ethics”
could be problematic, especially in the context of Rorty’s thought on morality and of the
Buddhist account of right behavior. Instead, I called the path of the bodhisattva an “ethic.”
Essential for constructing a Western account of Madhyamaka ethics is investigating the
relationship between the doctrine of śūnyatā and the ethic of the bodhisattva. The ethics of
this ethic can only be understood by the distinction between an ultimate and a conventional
level of reality, which is further discussed in Chapter Three. The altruism of the bodhisattva
presupposes the difference between the self and others. However, this difference only exists
on a conventional level; consequently, a Madhyamaka ethics only refers to conventional
reality. Ultimately, universal emptiness has no implications for ethical theory. Nevertheless,
the realization of śūnyatā, according to the Western interpretation of the leading Mādhyamika
works, results in an ethic of wholesome behavior and perfect thoughts.
In Chapter Three, first chapter of Part Two, I have explained the nature of the
relationship between morality and contingency. I used Rorty’s account of Freud’s theory of
the self. According to Freud, the moral subject has no substantial core. The self is nothing but
a phenomenon that has a strong tendency to act as if it is an autonomous thing. As Rorty
points out, Freud’s psychoanalysis shows that not only the ego is led by this craving, but also
the unconscious. In Rorty’s interpretation, the “Freudian” unconscious – wherein also moral
codes are stored – is a stream of thoughts and emotions not yet integrated in a meaningful
story and also a manifestation of other egos. All the different egos in one subject are engaged
in a permanent struggle to become the self. Self-knowledge can only be achieved through a
hermeneutic conversation about behaviors and thoughts in such a manner that the egos with
the most pragmatic value win the “battle of the self”; it will always remain a project, a work
that is never finished because there is no substantial self to be discovered behind the
horizon167. This contingency makes a prescriptive ethics impossible since normativity is not a
result of moral reasoning but a description of the manifestations of the egos that have emerged
from this existential strife. Rorty built on this by claiming that the maximum achievable goal

167
In that respect, the maxim “Just be yourself” is quite ridiculous.

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of philosophers is to help people integrate their personal story – i.e. the story of the most
dominant egos in a subject – into the collective story so that they are better equipped to
enhance their moral capacities.
I conclude that the Rortyan account of Freud’s theory of the self has much in common
with the Buddhist doctrine of the non-self and also with the Madhyamaka concept of
emptiness. After having discussed this concept by explaining the different stages in the
development of the doctrine of the Two Truths, I compared the Rortyan notion of the
contingency of the self with the Madhyamaka outlook on the moral subject. It appears that
emptiness and contingency are almost synonymous insofar as they both mean that nothing in
this world is permanent, necessary, and absolute. In both neopragmatism and M’, the moral
subject is therefore ultimately an impermanent, accidental, and undetermined agent.
In Chapter Three, I also discussed the way Western Buddhist philosophers deal with
śūnyatā and the Two Truths. As we have seen, Garfield is convinced that Nāgārjuna’s method
is profoundly rational. Huntington agrees, but has a different perspective in evaluating that
rationality. I presented his account as a Rortyan one. Huntington follows Candrakīrti’s line,
contending that śūnyatāvāda cannot be defended logically by using positive propositions. Yet
it is language that puts us on the track of the realization of ultimate reality. Huntington places
Nāgārjuna’s linguistic style outside the discourse of logicians by connecting it to the spiritual
path of liberation from attachments. In his novel Maya, Huntington links his insight to the
metaethical query into the relationship between rationality and morality. This results in an
account that strongly reminds us of Rorty’s moral non-foundationalism. Finally, I discussed
how Siderits explains that, while our conventional language is incapable of reference, it can
show that all things are empty, which in turn gives a hint of the ultimate truth.
In Chapter Four, I further explored how language can help us get used to renouncing
metaphysical claims while making us more sensitive to the many kinds of suffering in the
world. The question I raised was whether Buddhist non-referential and soteriological
language has affinities with Rortyan irony. I mentioned the language users group that Rorty
called poets. From his perspective, they are ironists par excellence because they expand
existing final vocabularies with metaphors by virtue of their imagination. Their goal is to
create conditions in which unfamiliar phenomena can be experienced as meaningful. They
help people by using their creative skills to see the world differently than what was previously
experienced as unfamiliar. According to Rorty, poets can, in that manner, contribute to moral
progress, meaning that more people become sensitized to the sufferings of others. In the same
manner, language is used by Buddhist sages. The skills of the bodhisattva called

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upāyakauśalya (or just upāya) has a telos: the liberation from suffering.
In Chapter Five, I started investigating the telos of the liberal project Rorty supports:
enlarging solidarity. His approach to this telos is ethnocentric because it starts with the –
according to him – inevitable distinction between “us” and “them.” He thinks it is impossible
to sympathize with other beings that one cannot address as belonging to one’s own group.
Therefore, a moral appeal for universal solidarity with all sentient beings is, according to
Rorty, naive and utopian. That raises the question: How far could our solidarity extend? For
whom should we care? Next, I discussed the nature of the bodhisattva’s telos. What is its
range? Is the moral orientation of the bodhisattva a manifestation of good will, or is it a
natural consequence of the realization of emptiness? In short: What drives compassion? I
showed that parallel to the Madhyamaka distinction between saṃvṛti-satya and paramārtha-
satya that compassion has two levels: the conventional level (karuṇā) and the ultimate level
(mahākaruṇā). The second level is a manifestation of the realization of śūnyatā. Ironically,
this manifestation happens within saṃvṛti-satya, in which there is a multitude of moral
subjects. By using upāya, the bodhisattva can act morally and even immorally so as to move
her illusive entity toward her telos transmorally. The bodhisattva is beyond the reach of
ethicists because no rational ground can be found for her behavior. Hence, her ethic cannot be
classified as teleological. Metaethically, śūnyatāvāda belongs to emotivism since the only
meaningful thing we can say about the bodhisattva’s ethic is that it stems from her emotional
aversion to suffering. This aversion is shared by the liberal ironists. It is, however, too
reductive to identify mahākaruṇā with the Rortyan idea of solidarity. The great compassion is
directed toward all sentient beings and not just humans. According to Rorty, liberal
democracies and their institutions can only strive to maximize the expansion of the we-
groups, but for now, it seems that, for instance, ants are beyond the reach of that moral
ambition, while for Buddhists, ants also share in the universal suffering and therefore have to
be liberated.
There is another difference: unlike mahākaruṇā, actions of solidarity are not a
manifestation of an enlightened state that breaks through once wisdom is completely realized.
Unless, I claimed, irony is transformed into prajñā producing upāya. I suggested that new
horizons could appear if the Rortyan “self-doubt” would become an attitude of trying to be
aware of selflessness, not in the moral sense, but in the Madhyamaka sense. A significant
challenge could be tackled if a liberal culture would teach the emptiness of the self. Maybe it
prevents irony from lapsing into cynicism. Cynics are prompted by the very notion of
contingency to sensitize the public to become indifferent toward the pain of others by placing

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the other outside the we-group. Liberal ironists who have the opposite ambition may benefit
from the bodhisattva’s wisdom that teaches that every I-you-relationship and every we-group
is empty and that there is only duḥkha to deal with, whether it is felt by a human friend or an
ant.
In this conclusive chapter, we revisit our three problems, regarding morality and
contingency, irony and care, and ethnocentrism and solidarity.
The first problem arose from the appearance that an ethics is hardly possible when
language, the self, and the world are contingent. Indeed, that seemed impossible simply
because of the void of an autonomous agent and the obsolescence of the question of free will.
Nevertheless, that does not mean that morality is an absurd concept. The Madhyamaka
doctrine of emptiness produces an ethic from the awareness of universal interconnectedness.
This interconnectedness, however, is only there in the conventional reality, because ultimately
there are no entities with an interconnection. As we have seen, the path to realize śūnyatā
involves complying with a moral code. For a Buddhist practitioner killing remains bad,
whether there are ultimately no beings that can be killed or not. A well-defined Buddhist ethic
is a precondition for the achievement of the bodhisattva-state; however, a bodhisattva can
break moral codes if that would be necessary for her salvific work.
Why is the bodhisattva working so hard to help others if she is fully aware that there are
no others, ultimately? At the deepest level, there is no answer to this, because that would
presuppose the existence of a moral foundation. Her ethic is just a manifestation of her nature.
We have learned that also her own nature is empty. Ultimately, there is no bodhisattva, not
even Buddha. However, since the doctrine of emptiness also teaches that there is no
ontological difference between the conventional and the ultimate nature of reality, the
bodhisattva is called to emerge herself completely in universal interconnectedness by helping
all sentient beings as if they were real entities with inner cores in showing that they are
ultimately empty.
The second problem occurred after noticing that for a Rortyan ironist, no fundamental
normativity seems conceivable and that solidarity seems only a matter of taste. I answered
that this is true and that it ceases to be a problem if normativity is understood in a non-
foundationalist, liberal way and if solidarity becomes mahākaruṇā. In Rorty’s pragmatism,
there is no room for an extrahuman foundation on which to base moral standards. That does
not mean that there are no norms. Normativity in liberal pragmatism enables us to measure
moral progress. This progress is nothing more than the increasing readiness to actively
contribute to reducing suffering. The desire for this reduction is indeed a matter of taste.

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However, the quality of one’s taste can be improved, for instance, by training. Highly trained
practitioners on the bodhisattva path are not only sensitive to the misery of humans but of all
sentient beings. Their prajñā gives them, through their “skillful means” (upāya), the ability to
overcome borders and dichotomies, including those that demarcate boundaries between
human and non-human life.
The third problem was: Rorty’s ethnocentric approach seems to create obstacles to a
global ethic, which is so necessary in this age of urgent global challenges. I answered that this
approach partly obstructs a global ethic but also that the obstruction would disappear once
liberal pragmatists would engage in the practice of śūnyatāvāda.
Rorty’s ethnos made him believe that liberty should be universalized. That would only
be defendable when it is not being done from the conviction that truth and moral goodness are
metaphysically founded. However, it appears that Rorty contends that liberty is some
conditioning value for truth. From this, I concluded that taking care of freedom is the global
ethic that he advocates. Rorty treats liberty almost as an absolute value. Moreover, he
considers truth a collateral effect of taking care of political freedom. I argued that also
freedom should be seen as an effect of something, suggesting this something is the desire to
end all cruelty. Solidarity based upon this desire remains a matter of taste. When solidarity is
enriched with the power of mahākaruṇā, it might stand as a defensive ideal of the liberal strife
against cynics who claim that life is meaningless and that acts of compassion or social sense
of duty are a waste of time. Liberal pragmatists do not convince anybody that solidarity is a
good thing; M’, however, shows that solidarity from the awareness of universal emptiness is
not an ordinary moral appeal but a transmoral manifestation of a fully realized ultimate
nature.
Now, I will make suggestions for research in order to find new ways of reflecting on the
aforementioned issues. Those ways could be generated by “graftage”; Madhyamaka, as
interpreted by several established Western Buddhist philosophers (M’), could be “grafted”
upon Rortyan pragmatism and vice versa; this graft could grow into a new tradition.

6.2. “Graftage”: soterio-pragmatism

In this section, I reflect on our clarifications of the addressed problems with the help of a
fictional backdrop: a room where liberal pragmatists and M’-exponents are having an edifying
conversation with each other.
After having considered all relevant issues and having suggested possible clarifications

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to the three problems in question, I will come to the point of briefly presenting my concept of
a possible future intellectual project. That involves what I called in the introduction of this
dissertation the “grafting” of M’ and Rorty’s pragmatism.
Graftage is a horticultural technique with a variety of techniques. Two different plants
or trees are brought together in such a manner that they will grow together in order to generate
an ennobled organism. Their propagation is asexual. The lower part of this combination is
called “rootstock,” and the upper part is called “scion.” One of the graftage techniques is
called “whip and tongue grafting,” where the rootstock and the scion – both have more or less
the same thickness – are being cut in order that the latter can be placed on the former; after
that, they are bound together by tape or rope.
Using this image as a metaphor, I present this graft: Rortyan thought is the rootstock
and M’ the scion. Because Madhyamaka and neopragmatism come from different cultures and
ages, their togetherness could not be, let us say, “sexual.” They never had the chance to start a
dialogue within the same cultural and philosophical theatre. The only way to bind them
together is by first “cutting” them so that there is a fruitful connection, albeit an artificial one.
Our Western Buddhist authors have done the cutting at the Madhyamaka side, resulting in M’.
My interpretation of Rorty did the cutting at the other side.
Whereas Rorty stays within the margins of edifying conversations about self-creation
and liberal politics, M’ could make these conversations even more edifying by involving them
in an outspoken religious purpose: mokṣa, sōtēria, or liberation. The result of this dual “tree,”
I call “Soterio-pragmatism.”
Although I use the Christian concept of sōtēria168 here, I do not intend to equate the
Buddhist notion of enlightenment and liberation with the theistic notion of a Savior coming to
bring salvation from sin and evil. Indeed, in Madhyamaka it is undoubtedly not about
salvation through an incarnated deity but about liberation from suffering through the
realization of emptiness. So I use “soterio-” here in the broadest sense.
Soterio-pragmatism would be a pragmatism with a telos without being teleological. It
would be different from the ancient Greco-Roman schools of Pythagoreanism, Epicureanism,
and Stoicism. According to Foucault, those schools were primarily concerned with ‘the care
of the self’ (Foucault 2005). In soterio-pragmatism, the concern is not the self but the
liberation from the self. As pragmatism, soterio-pragmatism would be focused on the
consequences of the practice of care for the alleged innate capacity of finding a way out of the

168
The Greek word σωτηρία means “salvation,” from σωτήρ (sōtēr): “savior,” “redeemer.”

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dominance of the self (and the non-self169). What would a society look like when, for
instance, pupils in school would learn that they have to get rid of their egos and eventually
even from the notion of a self? Furthermore, what should be done if only a small group would
be able to cope with this wisdom and the masses are only troubled by it?
A soterio-pragmatist would also be a Rortyan ironist. No vocabulary would ever get the
status of dogma. In soterio-pragmatism, it is continuously searching for new ways to achieve
possibilities of attaining sōtēria. In the Rortyan sense, sōtēria is utilitarian: the highest
amount of happiness and the lowest amount of suffering. Rorty’s concept of an edifying
conversation is an element in an ideal society where intellectuals are servants of the culture
that prevents cruelty. As the Darwinist that he is, Rorty sees some utility of cruelty. However,
he also believes that where this cruelty goes beyond its utility, poets, artists, and journalists
can help mobilize people to overcome manifestations of non-constructive cruelty170.
In soterio-pragmatism, the sōtēria-part is the scion, and the pragmatism is the rootstock.
That means that this new interest in liberation is rooted in anti-metaphysics. Rorty, who called
himself an anti-clericalist (Rorty 2001: 12), says that upholding the Platonic distinction of the
Real and the Not-Real is damaging because of the risk of not respecting secularism. There is
another reason why anti-clericalists hope that institutionalized religion will finally disappear,
said Rorty after being awarded the Meister Eckhart Prize (ibid.). He thinks that
otherworldliness is dangerous since – and here he quotes his pragmatist forerunner John
Dewey – ‘[M]en have never fully used the powers they possess to advance the good in life,
because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the
work they are responsible for doing’ (Dewey 2013: 42-43).
The “upper side” of soterio-pragmatism is M’. However, also Mādhyamikas – as
interpreted by Western Buddhist philosophers – reject otherworldliness and the existence of
an external divine power. The difference with Dewey’s account is that Mādhyamikas have a
different perspective on the moral subject and, therefore, also on “responsibility for doing.”
Within the religious horizon of Indian culture, the historical Mādhyamikas were brought up
with the notion of karma. Early Indian Madhyamaka changed this notion by undermining the

169
In Madhyamaka, both self and non-self (including their notions) are empty.
170
A good example for such a mobilization is the Dutch campaign against bullying (stoppestennu.nl). Whether
this campaign is successful in reducing the amount of suffering, I do not know. Adherents of classical
utilitarianism would be interested in the positive results of being bullied as well. There might be people who
were bullied as a child but, as a result, became stronger. If that is the case, also soterio-pragmatists are interested
whether educative programs that cultivate Nietzsche’s aphorism ‘What does not kill me makes me stronger’
(Twilight of the Idols, 1888) indeed lead to the increase of mental strength and maybe also to happiness.

185
discourse about the karmic subject and the related topic of rebirth, which in M’ is
characterized as a “useful fiction” (Finnigan 2023: 5). In his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā,
Nāgārjuna examines the Indian-religious tenet of karma in what is now called Chapter XVII.
Garfield writes in his comments on the 33 stanzas of this chapter that saṃsāra, action, and
karma are, by analogy of, for instance, mirages, real empirical phenomena but empty. ‘While
they may appear to exist inherently, either as persistent phenomena, as processes or elements
of processes, or as abstract phenomena […] they do not so exist. For to exist in those ways
would in fact be incoherent’ (Garfield 1995: 244). But what about the existence or non-
existence of agents and the self? According to Garfield: ‘Both the terms “self” and “non-self”
together with any conceptions that can be associated with them, Nāgārjuna claims, are
conventional designations. They may be soteriologically and analytically useful antidotes to
extreme metaphysical views and to the disturbances those view occasion. But to neither
corresponds an entity – neither a thing that we could ever find on analysis and identify with
the self, nor a thing or a state that we could identify with no-self’ (ibid.: 249).
We have seen that emptiness is a soteriological idea and not a metaphysical notion. In
M’, liberation is presented as an accomplishment of the Dharma practitioner who fully
succeeded in realizing śūnyatā. After this realization, there is still the experience of the ego
but the belief in its inherent existence has dissolved into the abyss of the void.
Contrary to the ironic and ethnocentrist pragmatist, the ideal figure in Madhyamaka,
the bodhisattva, is able to break down any boundary with others. She is constantly sensitive to
the special details of the pain and humiliation of other beings. She does not need novels or
journalistic reports to stretch the boundaries of the “we.” The experience of śunyatā has
already crushed every boundary. The suffering of the other has thus become her suffering.
This is the big difference with ironic pragmatism. The pragmatist’s awareness of contingency
does not necessarily give rise to a desire for solidarity with suffering beings. But the soterio-
pragmatist cultivates this awareness and analyzes any idea that generates suffering in order to
almost preach the way out of these destructive conceptions. Soterio-pragmatism, strongly
resembling a religion, is not a religion but a Foucaultian spirituality, a technology of the self,
helping to overcome the self. And that takes practice, much practice171.

171
One of the epigraphs of (Sloterdijk 2013) is a quote from Nietzsche’s The Dawn of Day (‘Morgenröte’), § 22,
in which he rejects the Lutheran tenet Sola fide (‘By faith alone’). In German: ‘Vor allem und zuerst die Werke!
Das heißt Übung, Übung, Übung! Der dazugehörige “Glaube” wird sich schon einstellen, – dessen seid
versichert!’ In (Sloterdijk 2013) a bad translation has been used: ‘… doing, doing, doing!’ instead of ‘…
practice, practice, practice.’

186
 What should be practiced in order to achieve the realization of śunyatā would be a very
important thing172 for both pragmatists and pragmatic persons because they are more
interested in how things are done, rather than cultivating myths about religious enlightenment.
In contemporary continental philosophy, there is one author who has shown special interest in
soteriological myths, doctrines, and methods. In his book You Must Change Your Life, the
German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk tells the story of what he calls “anthropotechnics.”
According to Sloterdijk, philosophy has lost its position as a theoretical mouthpiece of
that which transcends the world of needs. As a result, she is no longer able to derive moral
principles from the transcendent. She has turned, according to Sloterdijk, into a consultant
who explains to her client the advantage of no longer living in the so-called Iron Age, the era
that was ruled by the five needs: material scarcity, the burden of existence, the sexual drive,
alienation, and inescapable death. The knowledge needed to tackle these needs was
considered heroic in that era. But now, in Silver Age, philosophy functions only as a
translation agency that transposes heroic knowledge into civic knowledge. What Sloterdijk
says next about Rorty is interesting.

It was Richard Rorty who promoted this translation work most coherently and appealingly in
the last decades – appealingly primarily because, despite his Dewey-inspired advocacy for the
priority of democracy over philosophy, he made no secret of his sympathy for the
exaggerations of heroic thought ( which he also called romantic or inspiring thought). What
places the American Rorty in the better traditions of European Baroque philosophy and the
British-French-German Enlightenment is his unshakeable fidelity to the idea of world
improvement, a fidelity that finds its most old-fashioned and stimulating manifestation in his
book on the improvement of America [Rorty 1998a]. Rorty was, next to Hans Jonas , the only
thinker of the last half-century from whom one could learn why a philosopher with an
understanding of the times must have the courage to strive for simplicity; only in a jargon-free
language can one discuss with one's contemporaries why we as members of modern
civilization, may not have entered a Golden Age, but should not still view ourselves as citizens
of the Iron Age either. (Sloterdijk 2013: 423).

While philosophy has lost its former position, another discipline is on the rise again. In his
introduction, Sloterdijk alludes to the famous opening of the Communist Manifesto of Marx
and Engels:

A spectre is haunting the Western world – the spectre of religion. All over the country we hear
that after an extended absence, it has now returned and is among the people of the modern

172
The Ancient Greek word πρᾶγμα (pragma) not only means “act” and “fact,” but also “thing,” “affair,” and
“issue” (cf. the Old English word þing, which means “assembly to discuss an important issue”; Bruno Latour
points out the political connotation of pragma, Latour & Weibel 2005: 28).

187
 world, and that one would do well to reckon seriously with its renewed presence. (Sloterdijk
2013: 1).
However, Sloterdijk says, it only seems that religion – in the sense of cultic belief systems –
has returned; in reality, it is anthropotechnics that regains significance. He says that the
distinction between believers and non-believers is a ‘false dichotomy’ because it has become
obsolete. The new dichotomy is the ‘distinction between the practicing and the untrained, or
those who train differently’ (ibid.: 3).
This dichotomy also applies in soterio-pragmatism, except in a different sense. The
untrained are not the members of the weaker meek still living in the mud of a lesser humanity
but the ones mentioned in the bodhisattva vow, the ones who still suffer. The trained are not
the ones with a super-self but the ones who are trained in the praxis of great compassion.

6.3. Rortyan thought deepened by Western interpretations of Madhyamaka

I have presented M’ as a tool to clarify problems that occur in Rorty’s non-foundational

utilitarianism. But how does M’ shine light upon Rorty’s neopragmatism? Can we make more
sense of his anti-authoritarian striving for a society that can effectively fight against minds,
habits, and structures of cruelty? In many ways it does, as we have seen. M’ deepens our
understanding of what Rorty has pointed out about the contingency of language, of selfhood,
and of a liberal community. It also deepens the Rortyan notion of private irony and of self-
creation. Furthermore, it deepens Rorty’s analysis of evil as cruelty and his liberal hope of
solidarity.
Rorty’s notion of the contingency of language leads him to the conclusion that there is
no truth “out there.” If truth is a property of sentences and sentences belong to vocabularies
and vocabularies are human constructions, then truths are human constructions as well. And
yet, Rorty does not call himself a relativist because he thinks that the dichotomy
absolute/relative belongs to an obsolete vocabulary. It is the Mādhyamikan distinction
between the ultimate and the conventional, which is according to M’ not a dichotomy, that
deepens this Rortyan outlook. Rorty never claimed that there is no ultimate reality, but only
that our mind is not capable of mirroring it. No sentence can ever represent ultimate reality, so
there is no ultimate truth. In Madhyamaka, as is said by the M’-exponents, there is no
distinction between reality and truth. The Sanskrit word satya can mean both “truth” and
“reality.” The doctrine of the two satyas says that all our linguistic utterances are merely

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expressions at the “conventional” (saṃvṛti) level. However, conventionally we can speak
about the ultimate truth (paramārthasatya); the only thing we can say about the ultimate truth
is that it stands for the universal “emptiness” (śūnyatā); or as Siderits formulates it: “the
ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth.” This means that the sentence “everything is
empty” does not represents the Ultimate Reality because every representation is always
conventional; nothing conventional can ever be a representation of the ultimate. This insight
shows that the Western dichotomy absolute/relative is – as Rorty says – a ‘clumsy tool’
((Rorty 1989: 44) because from the perspective of M’, any statement that implies “absolute
truths” is not only absurd but dangerous as well, since it conditions duḥkha.
M’ can also shine light upon Rorty’s account on the contingency of selfhood. Behind
the phenomenon that is being experienced as a self is nothing that can be scientifically proven
to exist. Nevertheless, we experience our existences as the manifestations of a self. According
to Rorty, it is pointless to ask about the ontological status of the subject of this experience. If
we would elaborate on this, using the M’-outlook, we understand that asking ontological
questions is not only absurd but also fueling tṛ́ṣṇā.
Rorty follows Freud’s analysis of the psyche, stating that the self is like a hollow
vessel, to be filled with desirable content. In early Buddhism, as told in many Western
accounts, this experience of the self is referred to as the root of all suffering since the self is
the source of all cravings. In Madhyamaka, as we learned from our M’-authors, this doctrine
of anātman is integrated in the wisdom of the bodhisattva, who fills the hollow vessel with
compassion in order to free all sentient beings – being aware that ultimately there is no single
sentient being – of suffering.
Thanks to M’, Rorty’s account of the self can play a more organic role in cultivating
hope for a more liberal society. The individual effort toward the liberation from suffering is
not without meaning, but yet void. Only when the notion of the self is decomposed will the
effort be raised to the level of great compassion, being the manifestation of the realized
śūnyatā. This also ties in with Rorty’s observation that the community striving for less cruelty
does not have an essence determined from eternity like a Platonic polis but a political
constellation grown by historical circumstances that should be considered anything but fixed.
If this collective struggle for liberty – i.e., being freed from cruelty – were to depend on the
individual will, the need for political myths or theocratic leadership might increase, with all
its cruel consequences. No individual is that strong that one can rely upon one’s own value
system in one’s liberal endeavors. One will seek help from others who have the same desires.
The question is then: how long will it take before the community of liberals will become

189
attached to certain ideologies or beliefs in order to ground their desires? Also, what needs to
be considered is the occurrence of apostasy: when members of the liberal community lose
their faith in the dominant political myths. As history has shown, new and more aggressive
myths emerge, as well as political indifference and egotistic cynicism.
How can the concept of the Rortyan irony be elucidated by M’? Irony as the radical and
continuing doubt about one’s final vocabulary is presupposed by the abjection of the myth
that there is truth outside the human community. Irony is the basic attitude that prompts the
development of a richer language, i.e. a language that is more capable to describe new
situations in an ever changing world. However, the success of the new description cannot be
measured from a neutral point of view because there is no such thing as neutrality amongst
language users. If this would be translated in the categories of M’, we turn to the insight that
nirvāṇa and saṃsāra cannot be separated. ‘There is not the slightest difference between
saṃsāra and nirvāṇa,’ says Nāgārjuna according to Garfield (1995: 75). If nirvāṇa is the state
of completely being liberated from suffering, there is no way that this could be experienced at
the same time one wants to help others to be freed from suffering. The bodhisattva can only
speak of nirvāṇa from the experience of saṃsāra. The bodhisattva uses her skillful means in
order to be more efficient in her salvific work. With this in mind, the liberal ironist can only
speak of the liberation from cruelty from the experience of cruelty in order to help her
audience to understand that certain conditions generate cruelty. Like the bodhisattva, the
successful liberal ironist has to be wise. Irony is a wisdom because it adapts language to new
situations that are not yet being processed by the minds of the many. The ironist has to use her
poetic skills, just as the bodhisattva uses upāya. In this manner we have enriched the notion of
Rortyan irony. We also learn what the ironist lacks: the capacity to break down any boundary
with others. The observation of contingency does not necessarily produce a desire for
solidarity with suffering beings. The bodhisattva, as I noted in Chapter Seven, section 5.2, is
constantly sensitive to the particular details of pain and humiliation of other beings. Her
experienced realization of śūnyatā has already crushed every boundary between individuals
and groups of individuals. ‘Without exception, no sufferings belong to anyone. They must be
warded off simply because they are suffering. Why is any limitation put on this?’ says the
Mādhyamika philosopher-poet Śāntideva in his Bodhicaryāvatāra according to Kate Crosby
and Andrew Skilton (Śāntideva 2008: 97).
Śāntideva, as interpreted by most M’-scholars, teaches from the notion of universal
emptiness the awareness that suffering as such has to be battled. This shows the weakness of
the Nietzschean account of self-creation that Rorty uses. Although it can be considered as an

190
attempt to change the self in order to become fitter to deal with the world’s tribulations, it
does not necessarily crush boundaries between people. The moral orientation of self-creation
in Rorty’s pragmatism depends on the existence of one’s particular hope for a liberal society.
In contrast, the self-creation of the bodhisattva is necessarily connected with her telos, the end
of all suffering. From that outlook, we can much better understand that the ethic of the liberal
pragmatist totally depends on the individual feelings that make one a liberal. After all, in
Rortyan pragmatism per se, there is no rational impulse inciting the pragmatist to contribute
significantly to constructing an ideal world without cruelty.

6.4. Closing remarks

In 1989, Huntington wrote that Rorty’s idea of philosophy as a conversation might go far
enough to avoid the impasse of escaping the dichotomy between objectivity and relativity.
Madhyamaka, he added, offered in any case an ‘interesting alternative in its radically
pragmatic approach’ to this problem (Huntington 1989: 138). ‘Here philosophy is conceived
of neither as an attempt to define an ahistorical ground, nor as a continuing intellectual
conversation, but as the working out of a “justified prejudice” productive of knowledge
grounded in a new form of life’ (ibid.). Since then, dozens of Western scholars have dived
into this philosophy. In this study, I have tried to present their accounts relevant to clarifying
three problems I encountered in Rorty’s ethics.
If the self and the world, and all our images of the self and the world, are contingent,
then ethics as a philosophical system designed to distinguish right from wrong has to fail.
With the help of M’, this insight can escape relativism and cynicism by pointing out that there
is a way to resist the inclination to cooperate with sustaining harm-doing structures. While
some conclusions of certain philosophical systems can contribute to constituting those
structures, evil cannot be fought by doing philosophy. However, the Western contemporary
Buddhist scholars quoted in this hermenetutical study have shown that evil, defined as cruelty,
can be overcome by affirming the path of the bodhisattva that ultimately is focused on the end
of all suffering.
This path starts with the observation that the root of all suffering is the subject’s
attachment to the idea of the self and other substances. The doctrine of emptiness provides an
intellectual tool to dismantle the subject as an autonomous agent and all things as ultimately
illusory. Nevertheless, this teaching also shows that intellectual awareness is not sufficient
and that cognitive and moral practice is necessary to dissolve attachment to the things which
191
have been exposed by reason as empty.
How is normativity possible if one upholds the image of the epistemic subject as only
an ironic, disinterested observer and if solidarity is only a matter of taste? I tried to show that,
from M’, one could conclude that it is precisely irony that provides the wisdom that helps us
to realize emptiness. If being disinterested means being free from clinging to Platonist notions
such as the True and the Good, then disinterest could open the mind to the experience that
everything is connected to everything and nothing is substantial. The result of this awareness
might generate the experience of universal compassion. This experience could put at ease the
desire for solidarity if it has become a fatiguing urge to end the suffering of all individual
members of our we-group. For solidarity enriched by the insights of M’ elevates the moral
effort to the level of mahākaruṇā. This extraordinary ethic of complete involvement in this
world is the transmoral manifestation of the full awareness of everything being empty. It
should result in upayā: unique ways of compassionately teaching emptiness on all levels of
human cognition in conventional reality. Once śūnyatā is realized, the question of why we
should care for others appears to have become redundant. For the ones who have not yet
reached this stage, philosophical exercise, moral exhortations, and meditation practice are
means of persuasion to care. To care for whom and what? For everyone who and everything
that needs it.

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APPENDIX A

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APPENDIX B

C.N. Gijsbrechts. Trompe l'oeil. Bagsiden af et indrammet maleri. Statens Museum for Kunst.
Kopenhagen, Denmark. Public domain.

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SUMMARY

This dissertation falls within the framework of philosophy. It attempts to hermeneutically

relate the work of Richard Rorty (1931-2007) with specific Western interpretations of the
Indian Buddhist philosophy of Madhyamaka, a tradition founded by Nāgārjuna (ca 150-250
CE). These interpretations may show how a dialogue within the scope of Western philosophy
could deliver some new points of view on morality. It concerns three difficulties I have
identified regarding Rorty’s moral non-foundationalism. This position boils down to the
following: morality is not based upon something non-human, whether the Will of God or the
Intrinsic Nature of Reality; everything in the world is contingent, including language, the self,
and society; the only way to deal with this is through irony; moral progress is nothing else
than making society less cruel. The three problems posed by this account are: (a) it seems that
an ethics is hardly possible when everything is contingent; (b) it seems that for a Rortyan
ironist, solidarity is only a matter of taste; (c) it seems that Rorty’s ethnocentric approach
creates obstacles to a global ethic.
My research is focused on the following question: ‘How can a hermeneutical
engagement with contemporary Western Madhyamaka interpreters (Finnigan, Garfield,
Harris, Huntington, Siderits, Westerhoff, and others) clarify philosophical problems around
Rorty’s concepts of contingency, irony, and solidarity?’
Before solving those problems, I distinguish five sub-questions:
1. What is the historical context of Rorty’s moral non-foundationalism? (Chapter One);
2. What does “ethics” mean for Rorty and contemporary Western Madhyamaka interpreters?
(Chapter Two);
3. How can Western interpretations of the Madhyamakan approach to Buddhist emptiness
clarify problems around Rorty’s concept of contingency? (Chapter Three);
4. How can Western interpretations of the Madhyamakan approach to Buddhist wisdom
clarify problems around Rorty’s concept of irony? (Chapter Four);
5. How can Western interpretations of the Madhyamakan approach to Buddhist compassion
clarify problems around Rorty’s concept of solidarity? (Chapter Five).
To these questions, I answer: (ad 1) Rorty’s outlook is utilitarian without basing utility
on human nature; (ad 2) although there is little that counts as ethical theory, ethics is crucial in
Madhyamaka; morality, according to Rorty a result of a contingent process of development, is
the willingness to be touched by the suffering of others; (ad 3) the realization of emptiness

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enlarges this willingness to care; (ad 4) the only wisdom with which to build a better world is
irony; however, irony may lapse into cynicism; teaching the doctrine of emptiness can prevent
that; (ad 5) conventional compassion is driven by the contingent presence of moral feeling;
great compassion, expressed by the figure of the bodhisattva, is transmoral since it is a
manifestation of the realized state of emptiness.
Regarding problem (a), I argue that Rorty’s liberal ironism can benefit from
Madhyamaka since it produces an ethic from the awareness of universal connectedness; this
connectedness, however, is only there in the conventional reality because, ultimately, there
are no entities with an interconnection.
Regarding problem (b), I argue that solidarity, being only a matter of taste, ceases to be
a problem if normativity is understood in a non-foundationalist, liberal way and if solidarity
becomes “great compassion” (mahākaruṇā).
Regarding problem (c), I argue that Rorty’s ethnocentrism partly obstructs a global
ethic but also that the obstruction would disappear once liberal pragmatists engage in the
practice of śūnyatāvāda.
In this dissertation, I also make research suggestions to find a new way of thinking.
This way might be generated by “graftage”; Madhyamaka, as interpreted by established
Western Buddhist philosophers (M’), could be “grafted” upon Rortyan pragmatism (“Soterio-
pragmatism”).

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CURRICULUM VITAE AUCTORIS

Christianus Adrianus Anthonius van der Heijden (Mierlo, North Brabant; 1968) is a
philosopher, a journalist, and a chaplain in psychogeriatric care. He studied Philosophy,
Theology, and Spirituality at the Seminary of the R.C. Diocese of ’s-Hertogenbosch. He
studied Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), where he earned a Bachelor of
Arts in 2009 and a Master of Arts in 2011. He worked as a lecturer at the Design Academy
Eindhoven (2000-2007), at the Thomas More Hogeschool in Rotterdam (2011-2012), and at
the Faculty of Religion and Theology at VU Amsterdam (2014-2015).

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