p. 321
In their book The Private Language Problem, Saunders
and Henze state that "it is primarily in the
twentieth century that questions regarding the nature
and possibility of a private language have received
specific formulation and specific attention."(1) This
statement is only true if the qualification "in the
West" is added, since the Buddhist tradition of
critical philosophy was implicity concerned with this
question in a central way for over two thousand
years, and explicitly since the time of Candrakiirti
(sixth century). Philosophers should no longer allow
themselves to remain ignorant of the planetary nature
of philosophy, in spite of the ingrained
presuppositions of the superiority of the West and of
modernity which make the contribution of the East so
startling. In the following essay, I intend to
establish the nearly total similarity between
Wittgenstein as mature critical philosopher and the
Praasa^ngika-maadhyamika philosophers ranging from
Candrakiirti (India, sixth to seventh centuries) to
Tso^n Khapa (Tibet, 1357-1420) in their treatment of
the philosophical questions related to the 'private
language problem'.
Saunders and Henze convey the general
philosophical relevance of the question in the
following striking passage:
The series of problems (i.e. physical world,
perception, self, etc. relating to PL question)...
may be said to constitute the egocentric predicament:
the predicament of one who begins "from his own case"
and attempts to analyze and justify his system of
beliefs and attitudes.... This is the predicament of
"how to get out," how to move justifiably from one's
own experiential data to the existence of an external
world.... If the egocentric predicament be taken as a
legitimate problem, then the response to this problem
will constitute one or another of the strands
composing what we have called the egocentric outlook.
This is the outlook of one who begins at home, with
the private object (with his own private experiential
data), and attempts, in one way or another, to "go
abroad."... If on the other hand, the egocentric
predicament be viewed as an illegitimate problem, a
pseudo problem, then the response to this "problem"
will be to repudiate the egocentric viewpoint. This
is the response of one who "begins abroad," who
begins in the public rather than in the private
domain, and attempts in one way or another to
understand both of these domains. It is the response
of one who holds that only via public standards of
justification can one system of beliefs be warranted
and understood. This sort of philosopher turns away
from PL1, rejects the private object, in his effort
to accomplish the latter task.(2)
This formulation is particularly striking for our
purposes since it aims to describe the
post-Wittgenstein debate but could equally well be
applied to the millennial Brahman-Buddhist debate in
India, or to the more subtle intra-Buddhist debate
between the Praasa^ngikas and all the other schools,
from Svaatantrika on down. The terms used frequently
by Saunders and Henze, "philosophical egocentrist"
and "philosophical nonegocentrist" are precisely
---------------------
R. A. F. Thurman is Associate Professor in the
Department of Philosophy and Religion, Amherst
College, Amherst, Massachusetts.
p. 322
adequate to translate the Sanskrit aatmavaadin
(literally, "self-advocate") and anaatmavaadin
(literally, "selflessness advocate"), and this most
central Indian philosophical dichotomy persists onto
the subtlest levels in a long debate over presence or
absence of svabhaava ("intrinsic reality") ,
svalak.sa.na ("intrinsic identity") and finally
svaatantrya ("logical privacy"). Once we notice this
obvious parallel, we naturally become interested in
the arguments used by both sides, considering the
longevity of the issue in India and Tibet, and its
relative newness in the West.
One major obstacle to appreciation of the
richness of the Buddhist nonegocentrist tradition by
modern philosophers, who would therein find so much
of interest and use, is the unwarranted prejudice
that Buddhist thought is "mysticism, " that is,
antiphilosophical or aphilosophical. This prejudice
has only been intensified by those contemporary
'mystics' who have pointed to the young
Wittgenstein's famous statement about silence in the
Tractatus as evidence of his similarity to the
imagined "silent sages of the East."(3) In actuality,
the vast majority of 'mystics', or nonrationalists,
both Eastern and Western, have usually belonged to
the egocentrist camp, at least tacitly if not
formally. Recourse to mysticism is a typical aspect
of being stuck in the egocentric predicament. The
mature Wittgenstein clearly exposes the tremendous
amount of mysticism involved in the uncritical use of
ordinary language, especially by the egocentrist
philosophers. He humorously points to our
predilection to reify things by constructing
realities out of concepts, substances out of
substantives, revealing the common notion of "naming
as, so to speak, an occult process... and... when the
philosopher tries to bring out the relation between
name and thing by staring at an object in front of
him and repeating a name or even the word 'this'....
And here we may fancy naming to be some remarkable
act of mind, as it were a baptism of an object..."
(PI 143).(4) An egocentrist philosopher, when yet
unwilling to surrender the notion as a mere mental
construction, quite typically resorts to 'ineffability',
'inexpressibility', and so forth, making a virtue of
his inability to find either a nonentity or its
absence.
On the other hand, the mainstream Buddhist
philosophers were typically nonegocentrist and
critical, not mystical, in approach. The famous
doctrine of "two realities" (satyadvaya) , the
absolute (paramaartha) and the contingent (sa.mv.rti)
or conventional (vyavahaara), is not at all mystical
but is rather an effective technical device for
analyzing apart the "queer," "occult," "mysterious,"
hence absolutistic element, to clear up the realm of
experience, causality, and action. The doctrine
properly puts the 'absolute' in its place as a
conceptual limiting case, which frees the
conventional world, the space of living, from
absolutism and its problems. The fundamental insight
is that egocentrist absolutisms, ranging from the
unconscious and perceptual to the theoretical and
ideological, all categorized under the rubric
"mis-knowledge" (avidyaa) , cause all evils and
problems. Thus, in the Buddhist tradition,
philosophical
p. 323
analysis was seen as the way to treat the prevalent
forms of 'misknowledge' by applying criticism to the
conceptual knots of the day. The level of
sophistication of the application varied according to
the sophistication of the philosophical knots,
resulting in a 'critical metaphysics' (Vaibhaa.sika)
as treatment of native realism (Vai'se.sika), a
'critical nominalism' (Sautraantika), a 'critical
idealism' (Vij~naavaada), and finally the critical
relativism of the Maadhyamikas.(5) The high point in
this phil osophical refinement process was reached in
the sixth century by Candrakiirti, who entered into
the refutation of logical privacy in order to clarify
the confusion of his colleague Bhaavaviveka, who, as
a relativist critic of others' absolutisms, was
stumbling by inadvertently letting a subtle form of
absolutism creep back into his philosophic
methodology. This refutation, as preserved in
Candra's Prasannapadaa, Chapter I, served as the
basis of a philosophical discussion that went on for
three more centuries in India. It then came down to
the present day preserved in lively traditions of the
Tibetan philosophical training colleges. Perhaps the
greatest master of this subject in Tibet was Tson
Khapa Blo Bzan Grags-pa (1357-1420), whose texture
of thought and analysis is most juxtaposable to that
of Wittgenstein and his followers.
One of the most remarkable things about
Wittgenstein was his great courage, his ability to
make a radical change in his thinking and publicly
repudiate his earlier statements. In PI 46-47, he
mentions his earlier attempt to find an absolutistic
peg in reality on which to hang language through
meaning, and he then repudiates it: "What lies behind
the idea that names really signify simples?--...
(then quoting Plato) "what exists in its own right
has to be... named without any other determination...
its name is all it has."... Both Russell's
'individuals' and my 'objects' (Tractatus...) were
such primary elements.... (However).... it makes no
sense at all to speak absolutely of the simple parts
of a chair'." Tson Khapa also describes the
'habitual mode of intellectual presumption' ('sgro
'dogs kun btags kyi 'dzin tshul) in parallel terms,
calling that 'essence' in things that anchors their
names "intrinsic identity" (svalak.sa.na) ,
indispensable for the egocentrist, impossible for the
nonegocentrist:
What sort of mental habit holds things to be
intrinsically identifiable?.... the Philosophers...
investigate the meaning of the conventional
expression "person" in such cases as this "this
person performed this action and experienced this
result," by such analysis as "is the 'person' the
very same thing as 'his' aggregates? Or is 'he'
something different from them?" When they discover
whichever possibility, sameness or difference, to be
the case, it gives them a basis for establishing that
'person', and they are then able to establish his
accumulation of action, etc. If they do not find any
such basis, they are unable to establish anything at
all, and hence they cannot rest content with the
simple use of the expression 'person'. Thus, such
establishment of 'person' through analytic
investigation into the referent of the conventional
designation 'person' is the establishment of 'person'
as having intrinsically identifiable status
(svalak.sa.nasiddhatva.m).(6)
p. 324
Now, Wittgenstein had been one of the foremost
investigators into the referents of names, looking
for the essences in objects they hooked onto; but,
unlike the egocentrist philosophers, he had not come
up with anything solid, nor did he solidify the
absence of that solidity into a nihilistic chaos. So,
he was able to return to the surface with the
nonegocentrists (albeit unbeknownst to him)
appreciating the conventionality of the expression,
content with that. Further, he was able to isolate
the mental habit that had caused him the whole
problem, revealing the egocentrist's dependence on
the 'private object,' internally designated via the
'private language'.
He mentions the 'private language' explicitly in
PI 243:
a language in which a person could write down or give
vocal expression to his inner experiences--his
feelings, moods, and the rest--for his private
use?--Well, can't we do so in our ordinary language?
--But that is not what I mean. The individual words
of this language are to refer to what can only be
known to the person speaking; to his immediate
private sensations. So another person cannot
understand the language.
It is clear he does not mean simply the private use
of language, the internal enunciation of the usual
public means of communication. Rather he means to
imagine a logically private language, a language in
principle unique to the individual who invents and
employs it, in Buddhist terms, an absolutely private
not relatively private language. But why does
Wittgenstein bother to imagine such a thing? He does
so as that is the best way to make explicit the
unconscious assumptions of 'reality', 'massiveness',
'ab soluteness', 'facticity', 'objectivity', and so
forth, that we habitually impose upon our
perceptions. Thus, logical privacy is the natural
absurd consequence (prasa^nga) forced upon the
philosophical egocentrist, as he tries to give an
account of his absolute 'given', 'simple', 'first',
'individual', 'essence', 'self', and so on, that is,
element constitutive of reality, self-evident,
irreducible, and indispensable to the coherence of
his world. The egocentrist is indeed so strongly
attached to his groundedness on this supposed solid
basis, he perceives any challenge as mere nihilistic
skepticism. Thus he is best approached by the
nonegocentrist, (for whom the very nonsolidity of
things itself is their actual workability) ,
critically, by demonstration of the absurdity of his
absolutism via either such as Wittgenstein's
hyperbolic imaginings of private language or via
Naagaarjuna's prasa^ngas.
Since the question is now seen to lie at the core
of a fundamental polarity in philosophy, before
tackling the actual refutations of privacy, ancient
and modern, let us develop a partial typology of
philosophical egocentrism and nonegocentrism.
The outlook of philosophical egocentrism is
characterized by an avid grasp of the "given," a sort
of 'private object', self-evident and indubitable,
the substance of all order, whether it be used to
justify materialism, skeptical nihilism,
phenomenalism, positivism, idealism, or any other
form of ancient or modern absolutism. The egocentrist
does employ critical methods in dealing
p. 325
with predecessors and adversaries, but once he feels
he has found the 'essence', he proceeds
constructively, systematizing reality dogmatically
according to discovered 'laws', 'principles', and so
forth. This essence then becomes the foundation of
practical life in social reality, and any
relativistic account of language, meaning, morals,
and so on, is dismissed as anarchistic and
nihilistic. He is absolutistic even in empirical
matters. Finally, he considers philosophy a
constructive activity, an elaboration of formal
structures of truth, beauty, and goodness. Hence his
contribution is always dated, useful in the period as
a temple and perhaps later as a museum, an edifice
that stands quite apart from the person himself.
In contrast, the nonegocentrist outlook is
essentially critical of all givens, not by taking as
given the essential unreliability of everything as
does the absolutistic skeptic, but by never being
satisfied with any supposedly analysisproof element,
and by sustaining the critical process itself as a
valid mode of thought, tolerant of less than absolute
security. The nonegocentrist's attitude toward the
empirical is thoroughly relativistic and
conventionalistic. Having found that life goes on
even without any irreducible element, he works
flexibly with what there is consensually established
and yet does not abdicate the task of refining the
consensus. He considers philosophy itself a
therapeutic process rather than a constructive
metascience. Instead of building up grand solutions,
he dissolves problems critically, finding the
inconsistencies in the terms of the question. He
perceives perplexity, 'misknowledge', a disease, and
the clarity and insight afforded by critical analysis
a cure. His philosophy tends to be less dated, less
systematic, and more informal than the egocentrist's,
since his refinement of thought, intensity of
insight, and attention to self-transformation render
philosophizing more accessible to perplexed thinkers
of later eras.
How do Wittgenstein and the Buddhist
nonegocentrists fit into this typology? It will
readily be granted that the mature Wittgenstein was
primarily critical in approach, and the Buddhists
were well known for their critical attitude toward
the 'given' as naively accepted in their host
cultures. Vipa'syana, or "transcendental analysis,"
is the main type of Mahaayaana meditation. Praj~naa,
the highest wisdom, is glossed as dharmapravicaya,
literally, the "analysis of things, "and it is
symbolized as a sword that cuts through the knot of
perplexity. But most striking of all is the
similarity of the actual texture of critical analysis
of the two nonegocentrists. First, Wittgenstein, in
PI 47:
Again, does my visual image of this tree, of this
chair, consist of parts? And what are its simple
component parts? Multi-colouredness is one kind of
complexity; another is, for example, that of a broken
outline composed of straight bits. And a curve can be
said to be composed of an ascending and a descending
segment.... But isn't a chessboard for instance,
obviously and absolutely composite?--You are probably
thinking of the composition out of thirty-two White
and thirty-two black squares. But could we not say,
for instance, that it was composed of the colours
black and white and the schema of the squares? And if
there are quite different ways of looking at it, do
you still want to say
p. 326
that the chessboard is absolutely composite?.... (Is
the colour of a square on a chessboard simple, or
does it consist of pure white and pure yellow? And is
white simple, or does it consist of the colours of
the rainbow?--)
He applies the same type of analysis to his feelings
as to objects, as in PI 642:
"At that moment I hated him."--What happened
here? Didn't it consist in thoughts, feelings, and
actions? And if I were to rehearse that moment to
myself, I should assume a particular expression,
think of certain happenings, breathe in a certain
way, arouse certain feelings in myself...
and even to himself analyzing himself, as in PI 413:
Here we have a case of introspection, not unlike that
from which William James got the idea that the "self"
consisted mainly of "peculiar motions in the head and
in between the head and the throat." And James'
introspection, showed not the meaning of the word
"self" (so far as it means something like "person,"
"human being," "he himself," "I myself"), nor any
analysis of any such thing, but the state of a
philosopher's attention when he says the word "self"
to himself and tries to analyze its meaning. (And a
good deal could be learned from this).
Examples from the Buddhist philosophical
literature abound, but particularly striking is Tson
Khapa's description of the critical techniques of his
predecessors, from EE, p. 161:
.. the absolute status of anything is refuted by
showing first of all, in the face of no matter what
assertion of Buddhist or non-Buddhist scholar, the
impossibility of an indivisible, a thing without a
plurality of parts such as periods of time, parts of
physical objects, or aspects of cognitive objects,
and then by demonstrating that, whereas conventional
objects may exist as unitary things while established
as composed of parts, as far as absolute status is
concerned, there are inevitable inconsistencies; for
example, if part and whole are absolutely different,
there can be no connection between them, and if part
and whole are absolutely the same, then the whole
becomes a plurality.... To give the actual line of
argument... "to refute absolute production of one
thing from another, the cause is first restricted to
being permanent or impermanent, and production from a
permanent thing is rejected. Then, production from an
impermanent thing is restricted to being either
sequential or simultaneous, and production from a
simultaneous cause is rejected. Then, a sequential
cause is restricted to being either destroyed or
undestroyed, and production from a destroyed cause is
rejected. Then production from a previously
undestroyed cause is restricted to being either
obstructed or unobstructed, and production from an
obstructed cause is rejected." The refutation thus
far is rather easy. "Then, production from an
unobstructed cause is restricted to being either
wholly unobstructed or partiaily unobstructed; then,
in the former case, an atom and (its aggregative
effects such as) a molecule must be confused as a
single object, (the causal atoms) being wholly
unobstructed; or else, in the latter case, as (the
cause, the indivisible, etc.) would have parts,
production would be relative (sa.mv.rti) (and not
absolute)."
Here the opponent, as the interlocutor in the PI
passage, is a philosophical absolutist, a
substantivist, who is "bewitched by language" into
perceiving things to be absolutely true, "really
real" before him, and the Wittgensteinian and
Maadhyamika nonegocentrist critical analyses intend
to force him to look
p. 327
deeper into things and processes by examining his
account of them to actually try to find the essence
assumed to correspond to the name, the "metaphysical
entity, " the "simple, " the "indivisible." The
absolutist's failure to find any such
analysis-resistant essence is the first step on the
road to liberation of his intelligence from the spell
of language. The century- and culture-spanning
similarity of therapeutic technique is startling.
Relativism or conventionalism about the
empirical, which includes language primarily, is a
central component of the nonegocentrist outlook, the
key to the nonegocentrist's avoidance of nihilistic
skepticism and mysticism. The egocentrist tends to
engage in one or the other of these alternatives when
his critical analysis goes further than usual, and he
sees through his previously accepted 'givens', such
as 'self', 'matter', 'object', or 'sense-contents',
and so on, and he feels his universe crumble. And
even if he never reaches such a frontier, he
perceives the nonegocentrist as courting chaos and
typically accuses him of nihilism. Wittgenstein
responds to the charge, in PI 304:
Not at all. It is not a something, but not a nothing
either! The conclusion was only that a nothing would
serve just as well as a something about which nothing
could be said. We have only rejected the grammar
which tries to force itself on us here. The paradox
disappears only if we make a radical break with the
idea that language always functions in one way....
He goes still further in response to another
challenge, in PI 118:
Where does our investigation get its importance from,
since it seems only to destroy everything
interesting, that is, all that is great and
important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving
behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are
destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are
clearing up the ground of language on which they
stand.
Thus it is precisely the reaffirmation of
language, free of any supposed absolute substratum,
as a practical, conventional process, an ordinary
activity of human beings, a "form of life, "
(Lebensform) that sets the nonegocentrist analytic
philosopher apart from the skeptic and the mystic,
who makes the classic absolutist mistake of thinking
that lack of an absolute basis is no basis at all,
lack of an absolute process is no process at all,
lack of an absolutistic, privately grounded language
is no language at all, lack of a mathematically
absolute, perfect logic is no logic at all, and so
on. Wittgenstein is most explicit about the sheer
conventionality of language, as in the following
group of statements:
(About) the 'language of our perceptions',... this
language, like any other, is founded on convention.
(PI 355)... One objects: "So you are saying that
human agreement decides what is true and what is
false?"--lt is what human beings say that is true and
false; and they agree in the language they use. That
is not agreement in opinions but in form of life (PI
241)...Here we strike rock bottom, that is, we have
come down to conventions. (BBB, p.24) ...When
philosophers use a word--'knowledge', 'being',
'object', 'I', 'proposition', 'name'--and try to
grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask
oneself:
p. 328
is the word ever actually used in this way in the
language-game which is its original home. What we do
is to bring words back from their metaphysical to
their everyday use. (PI 116)... The meaning of a
word is its use in the language (PI 43)... When I
talk about language (words, sentences, etc.) I must
speak the language of everyday. Is this language
somehow too coarse and material for what we want to
say? Then how is another one to be constructed? (PI
120)... And main source of our failure to understand
is that we do not command a clear view of the use of
our words (PI 122)... Philosophy may in no way
interfere with the actual use of language; it can in
the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any
foundation either. It leaves everything as it is (PI
124)... Essence is expressed by grammar (PI 371).
Grammar tells what kind of object anything is.
(Theology as grammar) (PI 373).
And finally, to ward off the temptation to feel
disappointed with settling for conventionality, aware
of the depth of absolutistic thought-patterns:
The great difficulty here is not to represent the
matter as if there were something one couldn't do. As
if there really were an object, from which I derive
its description, but I were unable to show it to
anyone.--And the best I can propose is that we should
yield to the temptation to use this picture, but then
investigate how the application of the picture goes
(PI 374).
The Praasa^ngika counterpart of this
conventionalism can be most clearly seen in Candra's
critique of Bhavya's use of the "head of Raahu"
example as justification for employing the expression
"hardness is the intrinsic identity of earth" as a
conventionally acceptable expression. (Raahu is a
mythological demon who is all head and no body, so
"head" and "Raahu" refer to the same thing, as do
"hardness" and "earth.") Candra states:
Moreover, this example is incorrect because the
expression... "Raahu" does exist among mundane
conventions, established without analysis, and does
apply to its referent... "head," just like the
conventional designation "person," (EE, p. 171).
Tson Khapa here comments:
... it is correct, according to conventions of social
communication, for a speaker to dispel the doubt of a
listener with the expression... 'Raahu' since the
latter has formed the notion of a... head from
hearing that word and is wondering "whose head? " The
speaker thus wishes to eliminate the possibility of
reference... to any head other than that of Raahu.
However, this example does not correspond to the case
of the expression "hardness is the intrinsic identity
of earth," there being no earth which is not hard,
and hence no need to dispel any such doubt (EE, 172).
The main target of the critique is the notion of
"intrinsic identity" which would not occur to the
ordinary hearer. "Hardness of earth" might fit with
the example, but there is no room for notions of
"intrinsic identity"--the hearer would not wonder
"whose intrinsic identity? " but only "whose
hardness?"
Candra again returns to the attack, saying that
conventionally 'head' and 'Raahu' are different,
hence the example cannot illustrate a supposed case
of
p. 329
essential nondifference. But then, rejoins the
essentialist (Bhavya), when one investigates the
referents of the expressions, they prove to be the
same thing. Candra then succinctly states his
conventionalism about language:
If you propose that the example is indeed applicable
since (... Raahu) is proved to be nothing other than
... 'head', since only the latter can finally be
apprehended, I say that is not so; for, in the usage
of mundane conventions, such a sort of analysis (as
that seeking essential identity, etc.) is not
employed, and further, the things of the world are
existent (only insofar) as unexamined critically (EE,
p. 173).
Candra states that once one looks analytically for
'head', 'Raahu', or anything else, nothing can be
found to withstand analysis, but still those things
are there when unanalytically accepted. He pursues
this idea then with a key concept:
Although analytically there is no self apart from
form etc., from the mundane superficial
(lokasa.mv.rtya) point of view such (a self) has its
existence dependent on the aggregates... (EE, p.
174).
Conventionally, even the abhorrent (to the
nonegocentrist) 'self' is reinstated, as 'part of the
grammar' of mundane communication. And thus the
feared nihilism, which the absolutist imagines lurks
at the end of the analysis that seeks a self and
cannot find anything, is avoided through the
reaffirmation of the mutually dependent, mundane,
conventional, nonanalytic existence of 'self'. Candra
finally shows his awareness of how such nihilism
cannot be avoided by any means other than such
thoroughgoing conventionalism, saying: "otherwise,
the superficial (reality) would no longer be the
superficial and would either lack validity entirely
or would become (ultimate) reality..." (EE, p.175).
Thus, no 'simple' analysis-resistant referential base
can be found to anchor the conventional, which is
precisely why it works as sheer conventionality, free
of the extremisms of absolutism and nihilism.
Here it should be noted that Candra's opponent
in this is by no means a naive absolutist, but is
only trying to uphold the "intrinsic identity"
(svalak.sa.na) of things conventionally, having
already, as he thinks, ruled them out absolutely.
Candra's thrust is thus to show the incompatibility
of the concepts of conventionality and intrinsicality.
Finally, to forestall any misunderstanding about the
sort of analysis that can be involved in calling the
conventional 'nonanalytic', Tson Khapa comments (with
intriguing implications for Wittgenstein's 'everyday'
use of language, even philosophically):
We might suppose here, as the mundane person engages
in a great deal of analysis--"Is it happening or
not?" or "Is it produced or not?"--that it must be
improper to reply to such inquiries "It happens" or
"it is produced." However, this type of
(conventional) inquiry and the above analytic method
(seeking absolute referential bases) are utterly
different. The mundane person is not inquiring into
coming and going through analysis into the meaning of
the use of the conventional expressions 'comer',
'goer' 'coming', 'going', out of dissatisfaction with
(the fact that they are) merely conventional usages.
He
p. 330
is rather making spontaneous inquiry into the
spontaneous usage of the expressions 'coming' and
'going' (EE, p. 178).
The mature Wittgenstein's refusal to pretend to a
system, his insistence on ordinary language (which so
frustrated logical absolutists such as Russell),
gains support when juxtaposed to Candra's view of
language, conceptual analysis, and philosophical
investigation as conventional procedures, programs
that function on the surface, the superficial level
(sa.mv.rti). Indeed, how could language, logic, and
understanding exclude themselves from the universal
relativity that permeates all causal processes?
The philosophical nonegocentrist's attitude
toward philosophy as therapy is attested to in
Wittgenstein's writings, as in the following famous
passages:
For the clarity we are aiming at is indeed complete
clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical
problems should completely disappear. The real
discovery is the one that makes me capable of
stopping doing philosophy when I want to.--The one
that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer
tormented by questions that bring itself into
question.--Instead, we now demonstrate a method, by
examples and the series of examples can be broken
off.-- problems are solved (difficulties eliminated),
not a single problem. There is not a philosophical
method, though there are indeed methods, like
different therapies (PI, p.133) ....The philosopher's
treatment of a question is like the treatment of an
illness (PI, p.255)....What is your aim in philosophy?
--To shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle (PI,
p.309).
What seemed to some of his contemporaries as
irreverence is perfectly in accord with Maadhyamika
tradition, for educated Buddhists see philosophy as a
means of liberation from the suffering of a
misknowledge-governed life. Naagaarjuna hails the
Buddha's teaching of relativity (pratiityasamutpaada)
as "that peace which is eradication of perplexities"
(prapa~ncopaa'sama.m'siva.m), and Candra states in
comment that Naagaarjuna himself wrote his
Fundamental Treatise on the Middle Way to help
suffering beings, and not merely for the love of
argument.(7)
Coming at last to the question of the logical
privacy, do we find Wittgenstein's exposure of the
unintelligibility of the notions of private object
and private language paralleled in the Praasa^ngika
sources? If we can demonstrate specific technical
parallels between them, after the general establishment
of a nonegocentrists' 'family resemblance', it forces
us to reflect deeply upon the many historical and
cultural notions we have that make the whole idea
seem so outlandish a priori. Tson Khapa introduces
the refutation as follows:
In general, the two masters (Buddhaapalita and
Candrakiirti) took as the ultimate in subtle and
profound philosophical reasonings those reasonings
proving the perfect viability of all systems such as
causality in the absence of any intrinsic reality
such as that (already) rejected as intrinsic
identifiability even conventionally, as well as those
reasonings negating the negandum of intrinsic
identity by the very reason of relativity, asserted
clearly as the relativity of all things,
transcendental as well as non-transcendental.
Moreover, they took this refutation of logical
privacy as the most subtle among them (EE, p. 218).
p. 331
Thus, the refutation of logical privacy is stated
to be a form of the refutation of intrinsic identity
(svalak.sa.na), at the final level of subtlety.
"Intrinsic identity, " as we have seen is the
egocentrist's designative base, the essentialist
private object, necessary for private or independent
reference and language. This is all accepted by
Bhaavaviveka, Candra's opponent here, and their
difference is in terms of philosophical method, as it
is there that Candra discerns the most subtle type of
egocentrist absolutism inadvertently returning to
trip up his colleague.
The word I have rendered in the preceding passage
as "logical privacy" is the Tibetan ran rgyud, which
renders the Sanskrit svaatantrya, previously rendered
in this context by Stcherbatski as "independence."
Mention of the Tibetan as well as the Sanskrit here
is important, since it was mainly in Tibet that
followers of Candra's thought elaborated this
question in great detail. The usual Tibetan
translation for Sanskrit svaatantrya (adjectivally,
svatantra) is ran dban, which is also the normal
Tibetan expression for 'independent', meaning
literally 'self-powered', opposed to 'other-powered'
(gzan dban, paratantra) . In this crucial philosophical
context, a context which generated centuries of
discussion and volumes of commentary and rigorous
analysis, why did the Tibetan translators and
scholars use ran rgyud, which literally means
"own-continuum," translating back into Sanskrit in
most contexts as svasa.mtaana, often "own
personality" or even "own mind"? To be sure, Tson
Khapa himself glosses ran rgyud with ran dban, (just
as Saunders and Henze gloss 'private language' as a
language whose words are "conceptually independent of
publicly observable phenomena"), but that does not
alter the fact that he and his colleagues persisted
in using ran rgyud, talking of the ran rgyud problem,
(which would not have been necessary if ran rgyud was
identical with ran dban), in all of its contexts.
Looking at these, we note that ran rgyud is used
nominally, as direct object of 'gog pa, to refute,
sgrub pa, to establish. "Independence" here, while
not wrong, is too vague, and does not specifically
connect to the philosophical issues involved. ran
rgyud is also used adjectivally with "reason" (hetu,
li^nga), "thesis" (pratij~naa), position (pak.sa),
"probandum" (saadhya), "syllogism" (anumaana), and
"validating cognition" (pramaa.na), all of which are
essentially linguistic phenomena, although to my
knowledge it is never used with "language"
(bhaa.sya). In all of these cases, it is contrasted,
not with "dependent" (paratantra), but with "public"
(paraprasiddha, literally, "other-acknowledged")
reason, thesis, and so forth. Finally, it crops up in
the name of Bhaavaviveka's Maadhyamika subschool,
Svaatantrika, the "school of those who use private
arguments," as opposed to Candra's Praasa^ngika, the
"school of those who use consequences" (prasa^nga) of
their opponent's absolutisms, the most public form of
philosophical approach. By derivation, the former can
be aptly called the "Dogmatic Maadhyamikas" in
contrast to the "Dialectical Maadhyamikas," as long
as it is understood that the reason for their
dogmatism, albeit only conventional, is their tacit
resurrection of
p. 332
intrinsic identity in the form of logical privacy as
the basis of language used rigorously in
philosophical arguments.(8)
Tson Khapa, in typical Tibetan philosophic
style, first cites the Indian Jayaananda's attack on
the private reason and then goes on to reject it as
the wrong approach.
In this regard, a certain pandit argues "the private
reason would be appropriate if there were
substantiation by validating cognition of both reason
and the invariable concomitance proving the
probandum; but it is not appropriate, such not being
the case. For it is wrong to assert that a reason can
be authoritatively substantiated for both protagonist
and antagonist, since the protagonist does not know
what is established by validating cognition for the
antagonist, not able to know the other's thoughts
either by perception or inference, nor does he know
what is established by right knowledge for himself,
as it is always possible his judgment is in error."
(But we respond that) this (approach) is utterly
wrong; for, if such were the case, it would also be
inappropriate to refute (an antagonist with a public)
syllogism) based on his own assertions; for one could
not know that antagonist's position, not knowing his
thoughts, and one's own refutation by advancing his
fallacies could be wrong, as it would always be
possible that one's judgment about those fallacies
could be mistaken (EE, p. 218).
This false start on the refutation of privacy is
strikingly reminiscent of Saunders and Henze's
formulation of the opening "prong" of the assault on
the private language, where the possibility of a
private language is challenged on grounds of the
unreliability of subjective memory impressions which
are not independently checkable or substantiated.(9)
But, just like Jayaananda's, this attack is not
conclusive, since the criterial demand itself is too
stringent, and the antagonist is able to throw the
same doubt back at public discourse--"you think you
can check public impressions based on other's
testimony, etc., but couldn't you hear them
wrong?"--and so forth.(10) The Wittgensteinian is
then required to come back stressing the conventional
acceptability of public substantiation and so on,
which anticipates Tson Khapa's progression, to which
we now return.
Tson Khapa elucidates Candra's assault on a
customary private syllogism of Bhaavaviveka. This
passage in the Prasannapadaa I, is considered the
locus classicus of the refutation of logical privacy.
Bhaavaviveka is arguing against a naive absolutist of
the Saa.mkhya school, who believes that an effect
preexists in its cause. Bhavya argues: "internal
sense media (such as eye-consciousness) are not
self-produced absolutely; because they exist, just
like consciousness itself." The reason that this
syllogism is private is that it is based, as far as
Bhaavaviveka is concerned and as far as he
understands his antagonist, on their respective
private objects, encountered by each in a private
perception of the subject of the syllogism
(eye-consciousness, and so on), the reason employed
(its existence), and the concomitance perceived in
the example, which are named in the argument and
understood by each via each object's conventional
intrinsic identity (vyavahaarikasvalak.sa.na), which
Bhaavaviveka maintains consistently to be
indispensable for conventional functionality. The
Saa.mkhya
p. 333
himself is much more grossly absolutistic, believing
that inner phenomena such as eye-consciousness are
absolutely existent, self-produced, and so on. And
this is why Bhaavaviveka feels it necessary to
qualify his argument, adding "absolutely"
(paramaarthata.h) , which Candra seizes upon as
evidence of his subtle absolutization of the
conventional. Candra attacks as follows:
Your use of the thesis-qualification "absolutely"
is unnecessary from your own standpoint, since you do
not accept self-production even superficially... and
as it relates to others' standpoints, it is better to
refute outsiders without any such qualifications,
since outsiders muddle the two realities and should
be refuted in terms of both. Further, as it is
inappropriate to refute the claim of self-production
in conventional terms, it is also inappropriate to
employ such qualifications in that context; for the
mundane person assents to mere arisal of effect
without any analytic inquiry as to whether it is
produced from self or other, etc. Again, if it is the
case that you wish to refute even the superficial
production of the eye, etc., which your antagonist
believes to be absolute, this then entails with
respect to yourself the thesis-fault of
groundlessness, since you yourself do not accept eye,
etc., as absolutely existent (EE, pp. 228-229).
Candra here is basically challenging Bhavya to
give an account of his supposed privately based
discourse, asking him how can he find any common
ground of discussion with his antagonist, since each
exists in a private, logically inaccessible world of
private objects, and so forth. Sensing these
difficulties, Bhavya sidesteps the necessity of the
qualification "absolutely," and instead tries to show
his argument's conventional viability, arguing for
the accessibility of a general subject of the
syllogism, mere eye-consciousness, and so on,
disregarding all qualifications. He gives the
plausible example of the argument between the
Buddhist Vaibhaa.sika and the Brahmanical Vai'se.sika
about the status of sound, which proceeds on the
basis of the general subject "mere sound" not
qualified as either "etheric sound" (unacceptable to
Vaibhaa.sika) or "material sound" (unacceptable to
Vai'se.sika) . This, Bhavya argues, evades the
thesis-fault of groundlessness, restores a "bare
datum" as the private object, in principle accessible
to both parties as basis of private syllogism.
This apparently reasonable tack proves calamitous
for Bhavya, as it enables Candra to expose his subtle
absolutism, his commitment to a private object as the
objectively real basis of perception, hence of
justification, language, even causality. Tson Khapa
paraphrases Candra's argument here:
It is wrong to posit mere eye, etc., disregarding
qualifications in light of two realities, as the
subject of the syllogism proving the absence of the
self-production of eye, etc.; because, (according to
your own system), the validating cognition must be
unmistaken about the intrinsic reality of eye, etc.;
and because, as unmistaken cognition does not mistake
intrinsic reality, the object it encounters cannot be
an erroneous object which falsely appears to have
intrinsic identifiability when in fact it does not
(EE, p. 231 following P, pp. 8 ff).
Candra argues that Bhavya cannot have a 'mere
object', general and unqualified, and still uphold
his 'private system', since according to that even a
'bare datum' can only exist if encountered by a
validating cognition which must
p. 334
not mistake the object's intrinsic identity. Such a
bare datum thus must be absolutely real, even to be
there for an absolutist who requires its
certification by a private, unmistaken, validating
cognition. Tson Khapa clarifies this point:
... in a philosophical system that claims that
whatever exists, exists in its own right objectively,
a (cognition) that errs in its perception of
intrinsic identifiability cannot be established as
discovering its proper object. Any sort of validating
cognition, either conceptual or nonconceptual, must
be unmistaken about the intrinsic identity of its
validated object.... Thus, a validating cognition
must derive its validity from an object which, not
being merely a conventiozal, nominal designation, has
an objectivity or intrinsic reality as its own
actual condition. And this is just what (Bhavya's)
own system claims (EE, p. 231, italics mine).
The refutation here comes down to the hyperbolic
private object, just as it does in the modern one.
How uncanny is the resonance of Saunder's and Henze's
description of the private "experiential-datum"
needed to anchor the term in private language.
(A private language is) A language, each word of
which refers to experiential data, although each of
these words is conceptually independent of publicly
observable phenomena. (When we say that an
experiential-datum term, "E," is conceptually
independent of publicly observable phenomena, we mean
this: the existence of an E neither entails nor is
entailed by the existence of any publicly observable
phenomena; nor is it part of the meaning of "E" that
publicly observable phenomena provide evidence for
the existence of an E) (PLP, pp. 6-7).
To recapitulate, Bhavya tries to reestablish his
private syllogism by employing a mere, general (that
is, publicly observable and ostensible) object as a
basis of discussion, thus tacitly acknowledging the
publicness of objects, subjects, syllogisms,
language, and so forth, which he cannot rightly do in
the framework of his system, which posits intrinsic,
not conventional, objectivity to genuine phenomena
and hence cannot tolerate their mere relativity and
superficiality. And Candra holds him to his own basic
outlook without letting him pay lip service to
conventionality, saying, as it were, your "bare
datum" must be absolute, intrinsically identifiable,
and hence privately cognizable and substantiable, if
only for you to perceive it at all, since for you
nothing can even exist unless it is thus established.
Candra then follows this point with a refutation
of Bhavya's example itself, pointing out its
inapplicability. Candra agrees that the Vaibhaa.sika
and the Vai'se.sika each can point out a mere sound
to argue about, since both tacitly share a sense of
the perceptual objectivity, the private "givenness"
of the object, its "thereness," as it were. However,
as Tson Khapa paraphrases:
... the case is different when the advocate of the
emptiness of intrinsic reality proves to the advocate
of nonemptiness of intrinsic reality that eye, etc.
are not self-produced. For not only can they not
discover any objective existence or even any
objective nonexistence, but also they can not point
out to each other "such a thing a 'this' we both
encounter as the actual thing to use as subject of
our argument (EE, p. 236).
p. 335
This is perhaps the most subtle point to grasp,
either in the Wittgensteinian or in the Praasa^ngika
context, because of our innate perceptual absolutism,
reinforced by culture through language, but the
attainment of the accomplished nonegocentrist
philosopher comes down even to this. In looking for
an object to use as the subject of a syllogism, the
nonegocentrist (that is, advocate of emptiness)
cannot find anything whatsoever, when he looks with a
truthdeterminant analysis at objects supposed to have
a cognitively objective status according to the
egocentrist (nonemptiness advocate) . Of course,
conventionally all sorts of unanalyzed objects are
right there without having to be looked for,
relative, designatively dependent, publicly
observable and so forth, easily accessible to the
nonanalytic attitude of everyday consciousness.
However, when he adopts the attitude called
"philosophical cognition analytic of ultimacy" (don
dam dpyod pai rigs 'ses) , which he does when
advocating emptiness to the absolutist in the attempt
to cure his absolutistic illness, he cannot find any
single thing that is intrinsically identifiable,
privately cognizable, or ostensively definable or
even accessible. Under this analysis, both public and
private disappear, as they can only exist in mutual
dependence. Only such an appreciation of the
transformative power of analytic vision can ever make
clear the otherwise cryptic statement of
Wittgenstein, the remarkable PI 398:
"But when I imagine something, or even actually see
objects, I have got something which my neighbor has
not!"--l understand you. You want to look about you
and say: "at any rate, only I have got THIS!" What
are these words for? They serve no purpose.--Can one
not add: "there is here no question of a 'seeing' and
therefore none of a 'having'--nor of a subject, nor
therefore of 'I' either?" Might I not ask: in what
sense have you got what you are talking about and
saying that only you have got it? Do you possess it?
You DO NOT EVEN SEE IT! And this too is clear: If as
a matter of logic you exclude other people's having
something, it loses its sense to say that you have
it. (Double underscore added.)
Here again we find Wittgenstein levelling the
clincher at his opponent, preceding what Saunders and
Henze call the "ascription argument" and attribute to
Strawson, namely, that no "private" object,
perception, or language can exist without the public
notion of "person," which thus vitiates the logical
privacy of them; as they put it, "the traditionist
(just like Svaatantrika) cannot treat the notions of
'I' and 'my experience' as logically primitive to
with respect to the notions of 'he' and 'his
experience' because one who does not possess the
latter notions lacks the former notions as well"(11)
(parentheses added). This argument topples the
traditionist's adherence to the private language,
enables Wittgenstein to exclaim to his absolutist
interlocutor "You do not even see it!" (PI 398), and
enables Candra to demolish Bhavya's sense of the
plausibility even of his example, as the two parties
in the supposed private argument cannot find either
any objective existence or any objective
nonexistence! Thus all three end up on the same
point, from which proceeds the methodology of the
nonegocentrist. He does not try to employ private
syllogisms, reasons, and
p.336
so forth, since antagonist and protagonist are so far
apart there is no ground of discussion established in
any satistactory manner, but rather makes his own
analytic, critical attitude available to his
antagonist dialectically, leading him through logical
ramifications of his position that end up with absurd
consequences. The antagonist thus is able to see the
awkwardness of his original position and gracefully
abandon it.
As Wittgenstein proposed, the nonegocentrist
should "yield to the temptation to use this
(absolutist's) picture (of the world) but then
investigate how the application of the picture goes"
(PI 374) (parentheses added). And, thus confirmed by
the more systematized Praasa^ngika methodology, it is
now obvious why Wittgenstein refused to appear too
systematic or formal in his mature investigations,
why he adopted an inner dialogue form, and why many
of his points are made through asking obviously
unanswerable questions. Indeed, it is amazing how
well he managed, all alone as he was, not knowing
that he was in fact a luminary of the
"anti-traditionist's tradition," and was applying to
European absolutism the same critique earlier applied
to Indian absolutism by the proponents of the Middle
Way!
In closing, I cannot resist a brief comment on the
implications for philosophy of the remarkable fact
that Wittgenstein and his successors are very close
to the Praasa^ngika tradition in many ways, without
ever knowing anything about them directly, simply
from pursuing the deepest questions of philosophy in
a rigorously critical way, and in spite of the
enormous temporal and cultural differences involved.
It means that philosophy today is crippled by
prejudices of a very nonphilosophical sort--racial,
cultural, and historical. It means that our ingrained
sense of the "progress" of knowledge is highly
suspect, not because of some sentimental appeal to
some imagined primitive stage of nature, but because
even rigorous technical matters were as well and even
better explored in ancient times by people in
supposed "non-technological'' cultures and times.
After all, we greatly respect Wittgenstein as a
shining star in the firmament of philosophy, even if
some of his twinklings elude us, and many of the
finest philosophical minds today follow him
indirectly if not directly in many aspects of their
thinking. If the type of critical vision he achieved
and cultivated on his own was highly developed
systematically already in a great tradition with
thousands of members in the most populous nations of
earth, (not that very many perhaps ever reached the
greatest heights or depths), then there must have
been a rather bountiful crop of unsung, unpublished
Wittgensteins over the twenty centuries during which
Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian
scholars pursued the goddess of wisdom, (the Sophia
of philosophy as Praj~naaparamitaa, "Transcendent
Wisdom") whose attainment was defined as the ultimate
liberation from the "fly-bottle" of perplexity. Such
being the case, or even the possibility, it behooves
us not to rest content with our one river of Western
tradition, but to explore and reveal to our young the
great ocean of world philosophy. It is all ours, we
are all
p. 337
human beings, and the Indian or Chinese heritage
belongs as much to us as to the Chinese or the
Indians. Especially the philosophical heritage of the
nonegocentrist, critical tradition which was born
from liberation from cultural conditioning at the
deepest levels, perceptual and ideological, never
belonged to any race, culture, or even linguistic
tradition, but always to those members of whatever
such tradition who dare to question what seems
self-evident right before them, what is
authoritatively told to them, what seems safe and
natural to them--those whose sensibilities demand
the surpassing peace that comes with the eradication
of perplexity.
NOTES
1. John T. Saunders and Donald F. Henze, The Private
Language Problem: A Philosophical Dialogue (New
York: 1976), p. 3; hereafter cited as PLP.
2. PLP, p. 11.
3. L.Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,
trans. Pears & McGuiness (London: 1974).
4. L.Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations,
trans.G.E.M.Anscomb (New York:1970), p.19e;
(hereafter PI)
5. My use of "relativism" here should be understood
as indicating a middle position between "absolutism"
and "nihilism," and not as equivalent to the latter.
6. Tson Khapa, Essence of the Eloquent, trans. Thurman,
unpublished manuscript, p.216 (hereafter cited as EE).
7. Candrakiirti, Prasannapada, Vaidya ed. (Darbhanga,
1962), p. 1.
8. Confer EE, Chapter V,n. 98.
9. PLP, pp. 28ff
10. PLP, p. 62ff.
11. PLP, p. 139. 6
