Abstract
Does the Buddhist doctrine of no-self imply, simply put, no-other? Does this doctrine necessarily come into conflict with an ethics premised on the alterity of the other? This article explores these questions by situating Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics in the context of contemporary Japanese philosophy. The work of twentieth-century Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō provides a starting point from which to consider the ethics of the self-other relation in light of the Buddhist notion of emptiness. The philosophy of thirteenth-century Zen Master Dōgen casts doubt on Watsuji’s commitment to reciprocal self-other relationality, showing that the idea of self-emptiness disrupts any conventional understanding of reciprocity and promotes instead other-oriented compassion. Despite interesting similarities between the ethics of alterity and Buddhist compassion, a Buddhist-influenced understanding of alterity differs from Levinas on important points, by making possible the claim that all others—human, animal, plant, and mineral—are ethical others.
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Notes
Indeed, Dōgen was a relatively obscure figure from Buddhism’s history before Watsuji reinvented him as one of Japan’s earliest philosophers in a series of articles titled “Monk Dōgen,” which Watsuji wrote between 1920 and 1923. See Tanahashi (1985, p. 24).
Levinas (1961, p. 53).
Because I focus on the question of alterity, I rely mainly on Totality and Infinity as a resource. However, it would be equally interesting to problematize the question of subjectivity through a comparative study of the doctrine of no-self and the analysis of the subject given, for example, in Otherwise Than Being.
Aidagara can also be translated simply as “relationship,” but Watsuji is making explicit the occurrence of the character 間 in both aidagara 間柄 and ningen 人間 or “human.” On its own, 間 means “between”.
Watsuji (1996, p. 35).
Levinas (1961, p. 39).
Ibid., p. 24.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 26.
Robert Bernasconi, in his essay “‘Failure of Communication’ as a Surplus: Dialogue and Lack of Dialogue between Buber and Levinas,” discusses how Levinas’s readings of Buber change over time. Almost 15 years after the 1964 Philosophical Interrogations quoted above, Levinas revisits his objections to Buber in the 1978 “Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy” and in other essays throughout the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Eventually Levinas dismisses his earlier charge of reciprocity and locates the asymmetry of the I-Thou relation in Buber’s notion of grace. He similarly reconsiders his objections to betweenness, viewing it later as an expression of the intimate space of conversation between self and other. See Bernasconi (1988, p. 115).
Watsuji (1996, p. 15).
Ibid., pp. 20–21.
Ibid., p. 21.
Ibid., p. 23.
Ibid., p. 22.
Ibid., p. 124.
Levinas (1961, p. 298).
Watsuji (1996, p. 22).
See Levinas (1961, p. 251). He writes: “This inequality [between self and other] does not appear to the third party who would count us. It precisely signifies the absence of a third party capable of taking in me and the other, such that the primordial multiplicity is observed within the very face to face that constitutes it.
Watsuji (1996, pp. 120–121).
Levinas (1961, p. 53).
Levinas (1961, p. 51).
Watsuji (1996, p. 121).
Ibid.
Mayeda (2006, p. 96).
Yamazaki (1972, p. 189). My translation from Yamazaki’s compilation of the Shōbōgenzō zuimonki (正法眼蔵随聞記), a collection of Dōgen’s teachings purportedly recorded by his disciple Ejō.
Levinas (1961, p. 84). The text reads: “Discourse and Desire, where the Other presents himself as interlocutor, as him over whom I cannot have power [je ne peux pas pouvoir], whom I cannot kill, condition this shame, where, qua I, I am not innocent spontaneity but usurper and murderer.”
Ibid., p. 86. The text reads: “The welcoming of the Other is ipso facto the consciousness of my own injustice—the shame that freedom feels for itself”.
Tanahashi (1985, p. 46).
Dalmiya (2001, p. 70).
Levinas (1961, p. 37).
One could make the claim that this disagreement is with the Levinas of Totality and Infinity but not with the Levinas of Otherwise Than Being, who argues that subjectivity is “the other in the same.” An entire article could be devoted to this issue and to a comparative analysis of Levinasian subjectivity and the subjectivity of no-self. This would necessitate a detailed account of how terms such as self, ego, and “I” are used both by Levinas and within Buddhism. Still, in the end I think the disagreement would stand, since Levinas’s “other in the same” is tied up with his notion of substitution as the character of responsibility for the human other. In contrast, the Buddhist sense of alterity within the self produces a distinct loss of interiority which, I think, Levinas would resist; and which, as I speculate below, opens the door to the ethical force of non-human others.
Ibid., p. 290.
Qtd. in Kim (1987, p. 135).
Kim (1987, p. 120).
Ibid., p. 136.
Diehm (2004, p. 184).
References
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Kalmanson, L. Levinas in Japan: the ethics of alterity and the philosophy of no-self. Cont Philos Rev 43, 193–206 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9143-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9143-8