Podcast: Owen Flanagan
Philosophers call theories that promote happiness "eudaimonistic." Aristotle and J.S. Mill are eudaimonistic philosophers. Kant, who famously said "it is one thing to be happy another to be good," is non-eudaimonistic. Is Buddhism eudaimonistic?
The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Eudaimonia - Buddhist Style
In the following lecture, the philosopher Owen Flanagan explores whether Buddhism is eudaimonistic. In so doing, he presents some interpretive points about the general structure of Buddhist ethics, and the plausibility of empirical claims about Buddhism and happiness.
This podcast was produced by the Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy. To find out more about the CSCP, and our lecture series, please visit our website.
I'm currently reading Flanagan's The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them and will have some things to say about it in a future post.
I finally got around to listening to the second hour of this podcast.
In the second half I found myself less enthusiastic about Owen’s presentation. I find it hard to hear someone present fiction as fact…I can understand how someone not a belonging to a tradition can speak for that tradition. He even suggested that the Dalai Lama doesn’t believe in rebirth! I love thought provoking discussions, I mean to did link to this podcast in the first place but, I was disappointed by the second Question and answer section.
If you are into philosophy this podcast is worth a listen. Owen is thought provoking. There are some assertions he puts forward as Buddhist theories that are simply incorrect and this is a shame.
Minute 10.35 At one point his says that Buddhist ethics is rich although.
He goes on to say the practice of compassion and loving-kindness for all beings might be way too demanding but it is nonetheless ethically rich.
This shows me that he really doesn’t get the process of transformation presented in Buddhist meditation. Yet he says at the very start of the lecture that he is a skeptic in regards to whether Buddhist meditation can produce eudaimonistic.Is this tantamount to not believing in modern physics just because the experiments were not done by you the individual? I NOTsaying that he should just accept Buddhist theories on the production on eudaimonistic or what Buddhist yogis would call the bliss of meditation. What I am saying is it is not good science to dismiss them outright without first doing the tests.
He also over simplifies the Buddhist theory of emptiness. Minute 9.40 His description of the self as a psychologically continuous and connected being is classic Sautrantika’s view of selflessness and this is not emptiness. It is not the final view of the Buddha nor that of Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti or Tsong Khapa.
Also he says that Jay Garfield says that the Dalai Lama is pandering to Westerners by presenting Buddhadharma as a path to happiness. Because the Buddha first teaching was about removing suffering.
I think that there is something in that statement that is worth looking at.
Happiness for the sake of happiness, or put another way, happiness as the goal is not a Buddhist practice. However it is a byproduct of the path and to suggest otherwise is simply silly.
Having said all that, I really enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to the next one.
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