Not long ago I uploaded a piece here about the apparent tension between obtaining the goods of the world and what might be called an Eastern take on craving–any position according to which desires are essentially harmful to the desirer. However, as I mentioned in that entry, it is arguable that trying to conquer the natural tendency to want things in the world might itself be seen as just one more desire. This tension has sometimes been called “the paradox of desire.” In an interesting 1979 paper in Philosophy East and West, A.L. Herman provided what he termed a solution to this paradox of someone achieving a condition of desirelessness through desiring it. His way out was to suggest that desirelessness can be obtained not by wanting it, but by coming to understand that one cannot actually obtain it by wanting it. Instead, after the manner of a certain McCartney, one has to “let it be.”
Before going into this matter in more detail, I probably should indicate again what this issue, which has mostly stayed within the boundaries of Buddhology, has to do with democratic theory. Unlike most (maybe all?) other normative democratic theories, I attempt in my book to derive electoral procedures from conclusions I reach regarding what makes states of affairs good for persons or groups. My inquiry into prudential value relies on an axiom according to which, for both individuals and polities, The More Good, The Better. The goods I settle on, based on a post-WWII suggestion by American value theorist Everett Hall, are successful free choices--even if they are imprudent choices in the long run. But if all successful choices are a breeding ground for future desires because craving is in reality always bad for the person doing it, this would seem to be a big problem for my theory. Furthermore, to be fair to my critics, an aspiration to live a certain way seems quite a distance from the sort of choice that could be part of the basis for public policy. Surely it can be argued that this association is largely metaphorical. So I will take this opportunity to investigate the issue further here.
One particularly engaging philosopher and Buddhologist, David Burton, has devoted a significant portion of his work to the question of why so many Buddhist schools are focused on (i) the connection between craving and suffering (dukkha), (ii) exactly how appropriative desires (i.e., the bad type) might be thought to be the cause of unhappiness even when one gets what one wants, and (iii) what people must do to free themselves from what is taken to be the principal cause of human suffering. Burton centers his discussion of these issues on the Buddhist contention that all items in the universe–not just those resembling such things as garden rakes (or ideas of them), but things like persons and prime numbers–are fleeting and impermanent: little more than short-lived ghosts. The Buddhist theory regarding the consequence of omnipresent impermanence is intuitive: Why wouldn't an impermanent thing's desire for the lasting appropriation of some other impermanent thing--say, fame, fortune, sexual pleasure, physical health or a comfortable home life, cause unhappiness? Burton accepts this (arguably questionable empirical) conclusion and then considers how one might transcend such proclivities. He thinks one can do so only by reaching a deeper understanding of the claimed essential impermanence of absolutely everything. The idea is that if we really (REALLY) understand that nothing lasts, we will stop wanting to appropriate things in order to have them always with us. Given this picture, can happiness be found. And, contrary to any theory like mine that relies on the principle of The More Good, The Better, achieving well-being does not require the choosing of any "goods" at all.
Burton recognizes that he and many others already do seem to realize that many (perhaps most) desired items in the world are fleeting, and some of these folks, including Burton himself, also hold that there are no permanent souls, i.e., they take even persons, soul-free as they believe we are, to be in no sense everlasting. But he can't deny that such recognition generally does not cause the extermination of either suffering or future cravings. That seems problematic. How have the many generations of Buddhist sages failed to see that understanding that everything is fleeting simply doesn't put an end to either desire or misery? Well, says Burton, there’s knowing and then there's knowing. He says that we must distinguish a flimsy sort of propositional knowledge (“knowledge by description”) from a deeper perceptual kind of knowledge (“knowledge by acquaintance”).
Those who have taken one or two philosophy courses are likely to agree that both Frank Jackson’s famous Mary, who knows everything about the color red but has never herself experienced redness, and the fellow in John Searle’s “Chinese Room,” who in a quite limited sense can be said to know the definition of every word in some foreign language with which he's basically unfamiliar because he has learned to match each one of them with a synonymous word or phrase in that same foreign language, are both missing something crucial. Surely their "understanding" is severely limited. So, Burton speculates, some of those who seem to understand that every worldly thing is impermanent may have only a bloodless, propositional type of knowledge of the fact that nothing in the universe is lasting, and it could be that that isn't enough to develop a thoroughly life-changing dismissal of all appropriative desires.
Burton is untroubled by Herman’s paradox of desire, because he sees two ways out. First, he notes that many Buddhists have long distinguished lustful, grasping types of desire from what might be called “aspirations.” Wanting to rid oneself of all cravings would, of course, be considered an example of the latter, beneficial-rather-than-harmful, type of wanting. And, as I have conceded above, it doesn't seem to be quite fair to count such a "desire" as included in the sort of "choices" made a body politic. In any case, Burton says that rather than craving desirelessness, we can, as Herman had also suggested, strive for it in some less appropriative way. Alternatively, if one doesn't want to distinguish two types of wants, one can instead throw a partition between two sorts of objects of desire: those for things that are good for us and those generally addictive items that not only don’t make us particularly happy when we get them, but actually make our lives worse the more we obtain them. Either solution saves us from any alleged paradox according to which we can get what we’re looking for only if we can get to a state where we don't want or get anything at all. (My own Hallian position on prudential values doesn't make a sharp separation between those two approaches, since it makes a CHOICE a matter involving both the wanting and an obtaining.)
Returning to the types of knowing distinguished by Burton, that scholar suggests that only one sort–acquaintance–is the sort of thing that can transport us to where he believes we should all like to be (Nirvana), I do agree with him that we need to distinguish two quite distinct types of knowledge here. I just think he’s settled on the wrong two. A more natural distinction to turn to here, would, I think, be that between knowing that and knowing how. It is this distinction, made famous by English Philosopher Gilbert Ryle, that clarifies that it is not propositional knowledge that enables one to, e.g., ride a bicycle, but an entirely different thing: a bodily ability. We cannot rely on book learning to stay afloat when trying to swim, and, to look at it from the other direction, it's also true that we are unlikely to be able to write a book about the mechanics of swimming just because we have learned how to do a couple of strokes, because providing theory requires propositional knowledge. Knowing that and knowing how are importantly different animals.
Why does Burton not just turn to knowing how to give up our cravings when that move would seem to take care of any possible paradox? I think it's because he has the terribly ambitious goal of reaching "Arahantship." That is, it’s not just equanimity that he’s looking for, i.e., relief from occasional bouts of dukkha, but full Awakening--a permanent escape from the wheel of Samsara altogether. He thus thinks that complete understanding is necessary, and knowing how just can't supply anything of that depth. What Burton is seeking must provide what might be called a thorough “grokking” of the natures of impermanence, selfhood, craving, clinging, and suffering. So, while he understands the possibility of a move toward "mere ability," he is not interested in taking that tack himself. Instead, he embraces what has been a so-called “intellectualist position” regarding knowing how to do things. On his Awakening-oriented view, the ability to stop craving requires an entire elimination of ignorance, the achievement of wisdom. Thus, for Burton, “mindfulness,” which one would naturally consider a technique that might be used to kill off this or that particular craving, must, to be effective, be a form of knowledge by acquaintance, for only that would be inconsistent with ignorance in the relevant area. As he puts it, “craving and ignorance [are] interwoven and mutually supportive. They cause one another, and the weakening of one results in the weakening of the other.”* So, while he doesn't deny that there is an ability that must be obtained, he elaborates that,
When one begins to practice the Eightfold Path, one would gradually acquire what modern epistemologists refer to as ' competence knowledge', 'capacity knowledge' , or 'knowing how' . That is, with experience and effort one would learn how to cut off craving and attachment by applying the Buddhist teachings about right action, right speech, right effort, and so forth. One would not simply know the theory; one would actually be doing it…. In this respect, the Buddhist training can be likened to the acquisition of a skill like riding a bicycle or learning to swim…. Thus, one's conviction that craving causes suffering and that cutting off craving is the way to eliminate suffering would become stronger. Furthermore, one would become convinced that the Buddhist path is the way to achieve this result.*
While Burton acknowledges this connection between these two types of knowledge, he seems to remain unsatisfied with any "mere skill"--even if it might be claimed to allow one to stop craving or clinging to a troublesome attachment. Instead, he seems to insist that any such aptitude be associated with a grand theory about what the self and world are like. In other words, it's Burton's contention that to achieve the real Buddhist prize of Nirvana, what we learn on the craving/aversion front must eventually lead to total Awakening, That means that meditation/mindfulness cannot be used simply to learn how to disengage pleasure or pain from particular experiences.** It can't just be a practice that enables us to dissociate some experience from pleasure or suffering: there has to be an entire epistemological/metaphysical theory interwoven with these concepts that is both believed and demonstrable.
I think Burton is wrong about this, and I take it to be an entirely empirical question whether any non-sage has ever learned to stop craving this or that item. I myself believe that one can (i) want to get out of the craving/aversion business and (ii) gradually learn to do so without embracing a vast quantity of highly controversial philosophical theory. But I understand too, that that means lowering one's bar and accepting the possibility that Arahantship may simply be too lofty a goal for most mere mortals.In any case, political theory is not made for gods but for regular folk.
To conclude, if I may descend now from the heights of Buddhist metaphysics to the more mundane world of democratic theorizing, let me conclude by saying that I think it is fairly obvious that an ability to discard inutile graspings in order that a person's or group's remaining choices can be for items that actually make lives better (if only for a moment) is an ability that many can learn/obtain without becoming monks, sages or Kant-level philosophers. The existence of that potential is all one needs to justly claim that there is nothing at all paradoxical in insisting that The More Goods Chosen, The Better. Put another way, even devout, practicing Buddhists can be considered to be learning how to achieve equanimity through giving up particular unhealthy cravings/clingings, rather than necessarily to be reaching for the goal of obtaining some sort of perceptual knowledge that will eventually carry them to Nirvana. Furthermore, whether or not one shares the Buddhist belief that acting on such a goal will actually improve one's own or anybody else's life (or extinguish anyone's ignorance), intentional progress on such a path carries with it no accompanying tincture of paradox.
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