Did Buddhism Anticipate Pragmatism?

Abstract

Writers presenting Buddhism to European and North American audiences have often availed themselves of philosophical terminology from modern traditions to convey presumably less familiar ideas coming from various classical and medieval Asian settings. Since the Buddha and many philosophers who developed his ideas seem to have stressed the importance of practice over theory, Buddhism is frequently described as practical or even pragmatic in its orientation. Since there have been few unpleasant clashes between traditional Buddhist beliefs and the findings of modern science, and nothing that would compare in importance to the confrontations between Darwinians and Creationists, many Buddhist apologists have been able to get away with characterizing theirs as a religion that is scientific in spirit; many Buddhists, especially Theravādins from Sri Lanka and Thailand, prefer not to designate Buddhism as a religion at all, since they seem to fear that calling anything a religion is tantamount to saying that it is not scientific. Describing Buddhism as practical or pragmatic in orientation is of course hardly equivalent to saying that it is an anticipation of Pragmatism, but there may be several other aspects of Buddhism and Pragmatism that makes comparing them a useful exercise. Some resemblances and differences between some forms of Buddhism and some forms of Pragmatism have been pointed out by Kamala Kumari (1987), John Powers (1992) and others. Some examples of the resemblances that one can easily find are 1) a tendency in both systems to be suspicious of authoritarianism, 2) a tendency to eschew doctrines that are not demonstrably relevant to the concerns of people who have not yet taken up permanent residence in a graveyard, and 3) a belief that virtue (or good character) is not innate but can be acquired—a belief that results in an emphasis on the development of good character through the influence of education. These similarities between Buddhism and Pragmatism are enough to warrant closer examination, and the authors named above have al-