The Ethics of Self-Knowledge in Platonic and Buddhist Philosophy

Abstract

This chapter explores the role of self-knowledge in the Socratic and Buddhist ethical traditions. Socrates (in Plato’s “early” dialogues) and the Buddha (in the Pāli Canon) diagnose the primary cause of human suffering as a widespread misunderstanding of the self. They recommend a radical reconceptualization of selfhood as a necessary step toward their ultimate concerns of human well-being (eudaimonia) and liberation (nirvāṇa). In particular, they argue, we wrongly identify bodies, physical states, social status, or possessions as self. But Socrates endorses a view that the Buddha rejects, namely, that certain conscious states of mind (psychē) are self. Buddhists would object that the irreducible complexity and impermanence of mental states render them implausible candidates for selfhood. Similar concerns motivated Plato to advance the metaphysical theory of Forms, which may offer resources for a reply. The chapter closes with a review of an apparent tension, shared by both traditions, between the goals of embodied social virtue and world-transcendence. The Platonic philosopher and the Mahayāna Bodhisattva both experience a liberating insight which motivates them to return to the “cave” of social service or saṃsāra: both motivations are susceptible to consequentialist, deontological, and virtue-ethical interpretations, and I suggest that the two traditions are mutually illuminating.