Is the term metaphysics helpful in interpreting Theravāda Buddhist thought? Consider: when Buddhaghosa, the fifth-century Sri Lankan Theravāda philosopher and commentator, says there is a mere common usage (vohāramatta) of the term “persons” but in a further or ultimate sense (paramattha) there is only name and form (nāmarūpa, Visuddhimagga XVIII.28), what is he talking about? Previous commentators (e.g. Collins 1994: 82) have viewed this passage as claiming that name and form is more ultimately real than the person – that is, as metaphysical claims.
Recent work by Maria Heim and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad (2018) and by Heim (2018) alone has challenged this view, arguing that Buddhaghosa’s work is best viewed only as phenomenology and not metaphysics. On their take, “metaphysics is about how things are and come to be what they are (on whatever construal of ‘things’ and ‘is’); in short, it is concerned with questions of existence… By way of contrast, on our reading of Buddhaghosa, he is not oriented to such a determination at all, but rather seeks to train attention toward experience in such a way as to make the perfection of such attention itself the purpose of the training.” (Heim and Ram-Prasad 2018: 1086) Heim (2020: 41) takes this supposed purely phenomenological orientation as a distinctive feature of Buddhaghosa’s ethics, contrasting it with Śāntideva’s attempt “to establish metaphysical support for his ethical thought.”
In response the proposed presentation takes up Heim and Ram-Prasad’s invitation to “offer further or contrasting interpretations” of Buddhaghosa based on textual analysis (1108–9), arguing that their anti-metaphysical interpretation is a misinterpretation. While not rejecting the value of phenomenology as a classificatory or interpretive category for describing Buddhaghosa’s work, I argue that we misunderstand Buddhaghosa if we deny that his work engaged in metaphysics. Thus the presentation insists on the importance of metaphysics as a category for understanding Theravāda philosophy, suggesting the category’s potential importance for other traditions as well.
Referring primarily but not exclusively to Buddhaghosa’s main work, the Visuddhimagga, I illustrate how, even in some of the very passages referred to by Heim and Ram-Prasad (most notably Visuddhimagga XVIII.28–30), Buddhaghosa makes claims about what exists and not merely what appears to experience – claims that are metaphysical and not merely phenomenological. I illustrate further, contra Heim and Ram-Prasad, that these claims are about an ultimate truth (paramattha sacca) which Buddhaghosa values more highly than the “mere” conventional (vohāramatta), because it is according to the way things are (yathābhūtam).
Thus on “name and form” (nāmarūpa), the core subject of Heim and Ram-Prasad’s article, I note that Buddhaghosa’s analogies identify not merely a phenomenological perception of form but something behind it, not usually visible. So the presentation takes Buddhaghosa at his word when he says that ultimately “there is” (atthi) only name and form; contra Heim and Ram-Prasad, it argues this “there is” refers to what exists, as it sounds like it does, not merely to what appears in our experience.
The presentation refuses the dichotomy in Heim’s and Ram-Prasad’s claim that Buddhaghosa is “not so much concerned with what one knows (an epistemological state determined by propositional content) but instead with how one knows (a transformation in knowing the world).” (1094) A transformation in knowing is required, but that transformation is one of learning to see things as they truly are, and there is propositional content to the way they are. Thus it examines Buddhaghosa’s contrast of the diṭṭhigata (“those who resort to views”) with yathābhūtadassana(“seeing correctly”). In contrast to Heim and Ram-Prasad, I argue that the relevant contrast for Buddhaghosa is not between diṭṭhi and dassana (two different forms of the same Pali root to describe seeing), but between correct and incorrect seeing. Thus, Buddhaghosa’s goal is not, as they say, to “develop the capacity to not seek… conclusions about how things ultimately are” (1095); rather, it is to ensure that one sees those things correctly, as they ultimately are. Buddhaghosa has a correspondence theory of truth – though what needs to correspond to reality is one’s seeing, not mere statements. In that regard, Buddhaghosa’s approach is closer to older Western correspondence theories like Aquinas’s adequatio rei et intellectus, where what needs to correspond to the real thing is the intellect (intellectus) rather than a statement.
Thus the presentation establishes, contra Heim, that Buddhaghosa and Śāntideva are engaged in comparable metaphysical-ethical projects: while the content of the metaphysical ultimate truth they advocate is considerably different (in Śāntideva it arguably has no content at all), their Buddhist ethical claims both rest on that claimed metaphysical truth.
References:
Collins, Steven. 1982. Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravāda Buddhism.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Heim, Maria. 2018. Voice of the Buddha: Buddhaghosa on the Immeasurable Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heim, Maria. 2020. Buddhist Ethics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Heim, Maria, and Ram-Prasad, Chakravarthi. 2018. “In a double way: nāmarūpa in Buddhaghosa’s phenomenology.” Philosophy East and West 68(4): 1085–1115.
This presentation challenges the interpretation by Maria Heim and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad that Buddhaghosa’s work is purely phenomenological and not metaphysical. Heim and Ram-Prasad argue that Buddhaghosa is not concerned with the nature of existence but with training attention toward experience. In contrast, the presentation contends that Buddhaghosa makes genuine metaphysical claims about what exists.