pratityasamutpada.pdf

HEGELIAN ‘ABSOLUTE IDEALISM’

WITH YOG ¯ C ¯ RA BUDDHISM ON

CONSCIOUSNESS, CONCEPT

(BEGRIFF), AND CO-DEPENDENT

ORIGINATION

(PRAT ¯ TYASAMUTP ¯ DA)

Adam Scarfe

Introduction

Drawing from Hegel’s limited understanding of Buddhism evident

throughout his canon, this paper argues that Hegel’s system of Absolute Idealism

has much more in common with Buddhism than he suggests, especially in relation

to Yog¯ c¯ ra Buddhism, the ‘Cognition-only’ School. Particularly, I ﬁrst provide an

examination of the points of connection between their respective stances in

respect to the role of nothingness, negation, scepticism, and discrimination (i.e.

the negative) in the process by which consciousness is developed. Second, I argue

that Hegel’s mature understanding of the ongoing dialectical development of the

logical Concept parallels the uniﬁed constellation of Yog¯ c¯ ra, M¯ dhyamika, and

Hua-Yen schools of M¯ h¯ yana Buddhism in their own respective articulations of

the awareness of ‘co-dependent origination’. Hegel’s dialectic and Mah¯ y¯ na

Buddhism’s concept of ‘co-dependent origination’ can be interpreted as parallel

intuitions regarding the nature of reality, distinctively articulated by eastern and

western philosophical and religious sources.

Toward a Philosophical Dialogue between ‘Absolute Idealism’ and

Mah¯y¯na Buddhism

A handful of scholars have pointed out that the Hegelian paradigm of

‘Absolute Idealism’ and some of the doctrines of the various branches of

Mah¯ y¯ na Buddhism, such as the Yog¯ c¯ ra, M¯ dhyamika, and Hua-Yen schools,

have a common foundation in the awareness of the dialectical process. 1

On the

Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 7, No. 1, May 2006

ISSN 1463-9947 print/1476-7953 online/06/010047-73

q 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14639940600877994

48 A. SCARFE

one hand, for G.W.F. Hegel, the dialectical progression of the logical Concept

(Begriff) underlies consciousness and constitutes the internal principle of all

existing things. On the other hand, for Mah ¯ y ¯ na Buddhism in general, the

awareness of ‘co-dependent origination’ ( prat¯tyasamutp¯da) is a key factor in

releasing beings from suffering (duhkha). For it is said in the Buddhist canon that

‘he who perceives the dependent origination perceives the truth; and he who

perceives the truth perceives the dependent origination’. 2 Here, I undertake to

create a novel dialogue between scholars of both traditions by further articulating

the analogy between Hegel’s dialectic and the Buddhist concept of co-dependent

origination.

One problem for comparative scholarship between Hegel and Mah ¯ y ¯ na

Buddhism lies in the fact that Hegel’s philosophical career took place at the

beginning of the nineteenth century, a time when Christian Europe still knew fairly

little about the ancient religions of the East. Although Hegel writes about and

mentions Buddhism in most of his major texts and lectures, these meditations

demonstrate no exception to the lack of sources and information about Buddhism

in his day. As noted by the various editors of his works, Hegel’s reﬂections on

Buddhism are quite limited in scope and accuracy. 3 Therefore, my comparison of

the two traditions, here, will proceed on the basis that Hegel’s lack of recognition

of the afﬁnities between Buddhism and his own philosophy is due to an

impoverished acquaintance with Buddhism. In this paper, I show how Hegel likens

Buddhism to previous western forms of scepticism in their absolutizing of

nothingness. However, against Hegel’s own narrow, one-sided synopsis of

Buddhism, I argue, ﬁrst, that Hegel’s system of Absolute Idealism has much more

in common with Buddhism than he suggests, especially in terms of its treatment

of negation, nothingness, the philosophical centrality of consciousness, and the

dialectical process. As can be seen from Sthiramati’s Trim ´ ik¯-Vij ˜ apti-Bh¯sya,or

Commentary on Vasubandhu’s Treatise in Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only, 4

Yog ¯ c ¯ ra Buddhism, like Hegel, intends to set forth a multi-perspectival, ‘process’-

view of consciousness. Second, I suggest that Hegel’s mature understanding of

the ongoing dialectical development of the logical concept directly parallels the

uniﬁed constellation of Yog ¯ c ¯ ra, M ¯ dhyamika, and Hua-Yen schools of M ¯ h ¯ yana

Buddhism in their own respective articulations of the awareness of co-dependent

origination. That is to say, Hegel’s dialectic and Buddhism’s concept of co-

dependent origination can be interpreted as parallel intuitions regarding the

nature of reality, distinctively articulated by eastern and western philosophical and

religious sources.

Hegel’s Interpretation of Buddhism and its Distinction from

Absolute Idealism

In Hegel’s limited synopsis, Buddhism basically stands for only one principle,

which may be summarized as the philosophical attunement to the notion ‘that

Nothingness is the principle of all things—that all proceeded from and returns to

HEGELIAN ‘ABSOLUTE IDEALISM’ WITH YOG ¯ C ¯ RA BUDDHISM 49

Nothingness’ (1991b, 168). 5 In the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Vol. 2),

Hegel describes how the Buddhists apply this principle by sheer negation, thereby

immersing themselves in nothingness in order that they may reach a state ‘no

longer subject to the ills of obesity, old age, sickness, and death’ (1985b, 314 – 15).

In conjunction with the allegation that, for Buddhism, nothingness is an ultimate

principle, elsewhere (in the Logic) Hegel makes a fundamental distinction between

Buddhist philosophy and his own system. He maintains that while negation and

nothingness are intrinsic elements of the dialectical progression of the logical

Concept, ‘speculative philosophy must not be charged with making negation or

nothing an ultimate: negation is as little an ultimate for philosophy as reality is for

it truth’ (Hegel 1969, 113). Rather, in his speculative system of Absolute Idealism,

the dialectical progression of the logical Concept is rooted in becoming. That is to

say, his system does not simply hold fast to the primacy of negation in opposition

to afﬁrmation. Instead, he holds to the primacy of ‘process’. To be sure, he states:

as we know, in the oriental systems, principally in Buddhism, nothing, the void, is

the absolute principle. Against that simple and one-sided abstraction the deep-

thinking Heraclitus brought forward the higher, total concept of becoming and

said: [ ... ] all ﬂows, which means, all is a becoming. (Hegel 1969, 83)

Here, it is clear that Hegel likens Buddhism to those previous types of

scepticism that posit nothingness as an absolute principle, such as the Ancient

Greek Scepticism of Sextus Empiricus. Against those sceptical systems, Hegel sides

with Heraclitus in emphasizing the dialectical process of becoming as opposed to

holding any one-sided determination of the understanding (e.g. ‘nothingness’) as

ultimate. Upon further investigation, however, the fact remains that the dialectic

in the Logic begins with a four-fold dialectic, similar to that of N ¯ g ¯ rjuna’s tetra-

lemma (iti) logic of: (1) either ‘a’ or (2) ‘b’, (3) both ‘a’ and ‘b’, and (4) neither ‘a’ nor

‘b’. For although Hegel states that the dialectic in the Logic starts with one term—

‘being’—the dialectical interplay of the four determinations—of (1) being, (2)

nothing, (3) becoming, and (4) the nothing from which nothing comes—

constitutes the initial movement of the logical Concept. 6 Therefore, later in this

paper, against Hegel’s limited synopsis, we shall see that Buddhism does not one-

sidedly absolutize nothingness, and is closer to his own presentation of the

dialectic than he thinks.

The Centrality of Consciousness and the Role of ‘Determinate

Negation’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit

Hegel’s (1977b) Phenomenology of Spirit is primarily representative of a

philosophy of consciousness (Bewusstsein), which prepares the ground for his later

presentation of the dialectic in The Science of Logic (Hegel 1969). As cognition is

made objective by way of our reading of the Phenomenology, Hegel provides us

with a mature philosophical understanding of the progressive dialectical character

of our own thinking. In the Phenomenology, Hegel traces the dialectical odyssey of

50 A. SCARFE

consciousness, as it confronts various situations and objects in the world,

including, for example, its experience of itself, of others, and of religious objects.

The text provides a blueprint of the series of ﬁnite forms of consciousness that

develop dialectically, each negating and establishing themselves against the

previous form. Hegel’s presentation starts with simple sense-certainty and

eventually leads up to Absolute Knowing, which is, for him, the plateau of

philosophical and cognitive progress. In this way, negation is a central factor in

Hegel’s elaboration of the ongoing dialectical movement of thinking, as it was for

his predecessor, Fichte. For Fichte, the ego’s act (die Tathandlung) of self-positing

occurs as a result of the negation of what it is not. Thus, for Absolute Idealism, the

self has its basis in negation. Particularly, for Fichte, the meaning of identity is

found to be the negation of what something is not. In a parallel manner to Fichte,

in elucidating the nature of the subject – object dichotomy intrinsic to

consciousness, Hegel states that:

the disparity which exists in consciousness between the ‘I’ and the substance

which is its object is the distinction between them, the negative in general [ ... ]

which moves them. That is why some of the ancients conceived the void as the

principle of motion, for they rightly saw the moving principle as the negative.

(1977b, 21)

Although here Hegel afﬁrms that the negative is the fundamental principle

of movement in the process of cognition, he also guards against the interpretation

that negativity is the overriding, absolute principle in the progression of the ﬁnite

forms of consciousness. For, in contrast to those previous forms of scepticism that

absolutize nothingness, Hegel afﬁrms that the real meaning of the dialectic may

be conceived as a ‘determinate negation’ (bestimmte negation) of the ﬁnite, which

may be said to ‘move’, or ‘drive’, the cognitive process. He states:

The necessary progression and interconnection of the forms of the unreal

consciousness will by itself bring to pass the completion of the series. To make

this more intelligible, it may be remarked, in a preliminary way, that the

exposition of the untrue consciousness in its untruth is not a merely negative

procedure. The natural consciousness itself normally takes this one-sided view of

it; and a knowledge which makes this one-sidedness its very essence is itself one

of the patterns of incomplete consciousness which occurs on the road itself, and

will manifest itself in due course. This is just the scepticism which only ever sees

pure nothingness in its result and abstracts from the fact that this nothingness is

speciﬁcally the nothingness of that from which it results. For it is only when it is

taken as the result of that which it emerges, that it is, in fact, the true result; in

that case it is itself a determinate nothingness, one which has a content. The

scepticism that ends up with the bare abstraction of nothingness or emptiness

cannot get any further from there, but must wait to see whether something new

comes along and what it is, in order to throw it too into the same empty abyss. But

when, on the other hand, the result is conceived as it is in truth, namely as a

HEGELIAN ‘ABSOLUTE IDEALISM’ WITH YOG ¯ C ¯ RA BUDDHISM 51

determinate negation, a new form has thereby immediately arisen, and in the

negation the transition is made through which the progress through the

complete series of forms comes about of itself.

But the goal is as necessarily ﬁxed for knowledge as the serial progression; it is

the point where knowledge no longer needs to go beyond itself, where

knowledge ﬁnds itself, where (Concept) corresponds to object and object to

(Concept). (Hegel 1977b, 50 – 1; emphasis added)

In this passage, Hegel is responding to the conclusion of the Ancient Sceptics that

if the ﬁnite forms of consciousness continually overturn themselves, then pure

nothingness must be the result of every dialectical opposition. His main

contention is that it is a one-sided and biased point of view to think that the only

result of the dialectic is ‘nothingness’. Following from his mature understanding of

the dialectical movement of the logical Concept, Hegel explains that nothingness

can only come to be in virtue of the negation of a previous ﬁnite form of

consciousness. And, since each form is the negation of the previous form, the

result of the dialectic may always be construed as a negation of a previous

negation. Therefore, in distinction from the conclusion of the Ancient Greek

Sceptics that the end result of the dialectic is an empty nothingness, Hegel’s own

position is that ‘determinate negation’ denotes a negation of negation: the natural

movement of the logical Concept, which occurs of itself. In other words, the

notion of determinate negation does not attribute to the process of cognition a

connotation of the ﬁnality of nothingness as many previous forms of scepticism

have done.

The subtlety of Hegel’s position regarding negation and nothingness

becomes evident as he deﬁnes the notion of ‘sublation’ (Aufhebung), central in his

system. ‘Sublation’ is his way of articulating the dialectical movement of the logical

Concept, which is the internal principle of all existing things. As he states:

to sublate, and the sublated [ ... ] constitute one of the most important notions

in philosophy. It is a fundamental determination which repeatedly occurs

throughout the whole of philosophy, the meaning of which is to be clearly

grasped and especially distinguished from nothing. What is sublated is not

thereby reduced to nothing. Nothing is immediate; what is sublated, on the

other hand, is the result of mediation; it is a non-being but as a result which had

its origin in a being. It still has, therefore, in itself the determinateness from which

it originates. (Hegel 1969, 106 – 7)

Clearly, the meaning of ‘sublation’, articulating the dialectical movement of the

logical Concept, lies in Hegel’s response to the sceptics, and has a three-fold

meaning within itself. In German, the term aufheben simultaneously stands for

‘cancellation’ (tollere), ‘preservation’ (conservare), and ‘raising up’ (elevare). Against

antecedent forms of scepticism, the concept of ‘sublation’, as a description of

dialectical process, stands for the notion that whatever is negated (namely,

anything ﬁnite) is also preserved and raised up into a new content. 7 Thus, for him,

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