Series of Lectures: Aspects of No-SelfAspects of No-Self: Selfhood, Identity and Subjectivity

17 June 2014

One of the central principles of Buddhist thought, in its various manifestations, is the rejection of the ultimate existence of a permanent self. This view challenges the contemporary way we see ourselves, much like it did for centuries in South and East Asia. It evokes questions about what makes us who we are at each moment, and what makes us the same person over time; about our capacity for self-awareness, and the extent to which we can know others; and about the nature of the subject, as well as the relevance of subjectivity to ethics, psychology, and soteriology. The lecture series Aspects of No-Self will take the Buddhist critique of the self as a point of departure for exploring themes in selfhood, identity, and subjectivity from a traditional Buddhist point of view through the eyes of twenty-first century scholars.

[ 13.05.2014, 18:15 h ]
Where the Self and Other Meet: Buddhist Approaches to Inter-Subjectivity

How does our understanding of others and of the external world rely upon and in turn affect our understanding of ourselves? This question seems to underlie the longstanding philosophical engagement with the issue of intersubjectivity – i.e., the shared nature of our experiences, in particular of the external world. Intersubjective experiences are important not just for their role in bridging the self and others, but also because they present an emergent notion of objectivity – because the world is available to all of us, it seems we can assume that it exists independently of any of us. For Buddhist non-realist schools such as the early Indian Yogācāra – who have argued that the phenomenal world is mind dependent – this assumption posed a particularly tenacious philosophical challenge.  This presentation will therefore explore the way in which these Buddhist thinkers attempted to explain the possibility of intersubjectivity under a “mind-only” view. It will survey the links between the Yogācāra conception of intersubjectivity and its understanding of personal identity, of the world and of the other, paying special attention to the potential contribution of these ideas to the contemporary philosophical discussion of these issues.

Roy Tzohar is an Assistant Professor in the East and South Asian Studies Department at Tel Aviv University, where he teaches Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and classical Sanskrit philosophy and literature. He holds a PhD (with Distinction) from the Department of Religion at Columbia University (New York, 2011). His current research project dealing with intersubjectivity and hermeneutics in early Indian Yogācāra thought is supported by the Marie Curie IRG fellowship (CORDIS). He currently  resides in Berlin as an affiliated fellow (2013-2014) of  Zukunftsphilologie  at the Forum for Transregional Studies, Freie Universität Berlin.
Veranstaltungsort: Universität Hamburg, Asien-Afrika-Institut, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Ostflügel, Raum 221

[ 03.06.2014, 18:15 h ]
Konzepte zur Person und zur Subjektivität in der Yogācāra-Tradition des indischen Buddhismus

Der Vortrag widmet sich einigen philosophischen Konzepten zur Funktionsweise von geistigen Prozessen, wie der Wahrnehmung und des Denkens, die in der Yogācāra-Schule, einer der beiden philosophischen Hauptrichtungen des Mahāyāna-Buddhismus, vor dem Hintergrund der Lehre vom Nicht-Ich (anātman) entwickelt wurden. Die detaillierte Analyse des Geistes und der in ihm stattfindenden Vorgänge hat bei den Yogācāras eine besonders wichtige Rolle gespielt, so dass sich im Laufe der Zeit innerhalb dieser Schulrichtung bemerkenswerte Ideen dazu entwickelt haben, wie die Person ohne einen zentralen Wesenskern funktionieren kann, wie ihre Identität und Einheit über einen längeren Zeitraum gewahrt bleibt und wie das intuitive Ich-Gefühl zustande kommt. Die Philosophie der Yogācāras bietet Erklärungen unserer alltäglichen Sicht auf die Welt sowie der unser Verhalten steuernden Mechanismen und eröffnet damit beachtenswerte Perspektiven auf die Zusammenhänge zwischen Gefühlen, Emotionen und unseren gewohnheitsmäßigen Reaktionen auf die Objekte unserer Wahrnehmung. 

Jowita Kramer: Der Schwerpunkt von Jowita Kramers Forschung liegt auf der buddhistischen Philosophie Indiens und Tibets unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Yogācāra-Tradition. Darüber hinaus beschäftigt sie sich mit dem Themenkomplex Autorenschaft, Originalität und Intertextualität buddhistischer Kommentarliteratur sowie mit der biographischen Literatur Tibets. Nach Anstellungen an den Universitäten von Oxford, Heidelberg und Göttingen ist sie derzeit als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Universität München tätig. 
Veranstaltungsort: Universität Hamburg, Asien-Afrika-Institut, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Ostflügel, Raum 221

[ 17.06.2014, 18:15 h ]
A Buddhist critique of the Self: Against the Argument of Self-Recognition
Indian philosophy has long been an intellectual battlefield where competing religious groups, Hindu and Buddhist in particular, could debate while setting aside the authority of their scriptures. One of the major issues in this confrontation – which lasted for centuries and constituted a great source of philosophical creativity for both sides – is the existence of the Self (ātman in Sanskrit). While the various Hindu traditions consider that there is a Self, understood as a permanent substrate at the basis of all individual subjectivity, and that salvation consists in correctly apprehending this substrate, Buddhists contend that liberation from existential pain can only occur by casting aside the erroneous belief that we are enduring subjects and by realizing that there is no such thing as a Self.  One of the most persuasive Hindu arguments in favor of the Self’s existence was put forth by Kumārila, the 6th-century champion of Hindu orthodoxy. It is predicated on the idea of self-recognition, i.e. the fact that ‘I’, as a conscious entity, can recognize myself as the same consciousness at any given moment; therefore, if the individual were nothing but a series of discrete momentary conscious events, as the Buddhists contend, how could self-recognition ever occur? The aim of this lecture is to understand how Buddhist thinkers responded to this argument, one which threatened their doctrine of no-Self (nairātmya), by examining the first known Buddhist answer to Kumārila’s attack – formulated by Śāntarakṣita (c. 725-788) – and by assessing its influence on later Indian debates regarding the existence of the Self. 

Isabelle Ratié, a research fellow at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften), received her PhD in 2009 from the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Sorbonne, Paris). She has published two books and various articles on Śaiva and Buddhist philosophical systems and their interactions in medieval India.
Veranstaltungsort: Universität Hamburg, Asien-Afrika-Institut, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Ostflügel, Raum 221