Moral Struggle and Religious Ethics: On the Person as Classic in Comparative Theological Contexts

253 Pages·2011·0.93 MB·English

by  David A. Clairmont

Praise for Moral Struggle and Religious Ethics
“Over the past several years, comparative religious ethics has emerged as a centrally important
interdisciplinary line of research, crossing the boundaries among religious studies, history,
anthropology, and ethics. David Clairmont’s book offers a strikingly original contribution to
this emerging field. In contrast to most earlier work, he directs our attention away from the
comparative study of texts, toward the moral and religious vision, and also the struggle and
frustration, of the individual adherents of a given tradition. Admittedly, we normally have access
to individual experience only indirectly, and primarily through texts, but if these texts are
approached with an aim to identifying what they say or imply about individual struggles and
perceptions, they can teach us a great deal. The person him or herself, mediated through the
text, can be regarded as a religious classic, in David Tracy’s terms, not so much as a representa-
tive of an ideal, but as an exemplar of ongoing struggle with both personal and communal
weaknesses and blind spots. The individual is exemplary in his or her struggles, precisely because
sustained engagement with one’s weaknesses is by no means an optional academic exercise – on
the contrary, this kind of ongoing struggle will inevitably characterize the life of any serious and
self-aware believer. This focus on individual experiences of personal limitation and moral f ailure,
seen in all their power to disrupt intellectual certainties and moral self-satisfaction, offers a
powerful corrective to pervasive tendencies to presuppose that fundamental disagreements on
these matters can only reflect the blindness or bad faith of one’s interlocutors. On the contrary,
Clairmont shows that a serious and deep encounter with the very different religious and moral
perspectives that we encounter everyday is not just a matter of courtesy or (much less) a way of
instructing ‘them’ in ‘our’ values – it is, rather, a reflection of our own urgent need to learn
from them.”
Jean Porter, John A. O’Brien Professor of Theological Ethics, University of Notre Dame
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To Michelle Ann Pinard Clairmont
With love and thanks for your patience and encouragement
As disciples of Jesus we stand side by side with all people. Like them we are burdened
by the same struggles and beset by the same weaknesses; like them we are made new
by the same Lord’s love; like them we hope for a world where justice and love
prevail.
Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross (2.12)
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Moral Struggle and
Religious Ethics
On the Person as Classic in
Comparative Theological Contexts
David A. Clairmont
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
Clairmont_ffirs.indd i 12/21/2010 9:20:24 PM
This edition first published 2011
© 2011 Wiley-Blackwell
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clairmont, David A.
Moral struggle and religious ethics : on the person as classic in comparative theological contexts / David
A. Clairmont.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-1-4443-3682-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Bonaventure, Saint, Cardinal, ca. 1217–1274. 2. Christian ethics–Catholic authors. 3. Theological
anthropology–Catholic Church. 4. Buddhaghosa. 5. Buddhist ethics. 6. Theological anthropology–
Theravada Buddhism. 7. Religious ethics–Comparative studies. 8. Theological anthropology– Comparative
studies. I. Title.
B765.B74C63 2011
241′.042–dc22
2010033790
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book is published in the following electronic formats: eBook 9781444393620; Wiley Online Library
9781444393644; ePub 9781444393637
Set in 10/12.5pt Galliard by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Singapore
1 2011
Clairmont_ffirs.indd iv 12/21/2010 9:20:24 PM
Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgments vi
List of Abbreviations x
Introduction 1
Part I Questions and Contexts 7
1 Person as Classic: Questions, Limits, and Religious Motivations 9
Persons, Limits, and Religious Classics 13
Classics: questions and limits in thought and action 14
Religious ethics: interpreting limited persons 17
The model of person as classic 19
Classic Persons: Ideas, Practices, and Questions 21
Bonaventure as mediator of classic ideas and practices 22
Buddhaghosa as mediator of classic ideas and practices 24
Moral struggle as classic question 28
2 C ontext: The Symbolic Religious Cosmologies
of Roman Catholicism and Therava-da Buddhism 38
Moral Struggle in Greek, Roman, and Christian Philosophy 40
Weakness of will and volition in classical philosophy 40
Law, love, and wisdom in Christian scriptures 43
Love, sin, and self-examination in Patristic theology 45
Natural law and rational appetite in medieval theology 47
Moral Struggle in Indian and Buddhist Philosophy 49
Universal dharma and individual dharma in the Vedas and epics 49
Self and world in the Upani.sads 54
Moral perfection in the Buddhist Nika-yas 56
The Symbolic Religious Cosmology of the Trinity 59
Trinitarian doctrine 59
Trinitarian symbolism 60
Trinitarian exemplarity 62
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vi Contents
The Symbolic Religious Cosmology of Buddhist Abhidhamma 64
Constitution of persons: aggregates, characteristics,
and ultimate realities 65
The nature of reality and the structure of causality 67
Intention, volition, and personal continuity in Buddhist Abhidhamma 69
Abhidhamma and Trinity as Comparative Contexts and Categories 71
3 Context: Material Simplicity in Christian and Buddhist Life 82
Historical Introduction to Material Simplicity 83
Poverty and avarice in Bonaventure’s Europe 84
Simplicity and sponsorship in Buddhaghosa’s Ceylon 86
Bonaventure on Material Simplicity 88
Material sufficiency in institutional life 90
Voluntary poverty in individual life 92
Buddhaghosa on Material Simplicity 95
Wealth, giving, and the sacrifice of purification 101
On the twofold nature of materiality 105
Material Simplicity and the Problem of Moral Struggle 110
Part II Ideas, Practices, and Persons 119
4 Bonaventure and Buddhaghosa: From Ideas to Practices 121
Bonaventure’s Continuity with Medieval Debates on the Nature of Will 122
Buddhaghosa’s Manual of Practical Abhidhamma 128
Bonaventure on the Connection Between Sacrament and Virtue 137
Buddhaghosa on the Connection Between Morality and Meditation 141
5 Bonaventure and Buddhaghosa: From Practices to Persons 153
Bonaventure on Prayer 154
Buddhaghosa on Meditation 164
Bonaventure on Moral Exemplars 171
Buddhaghosa on Moral Exemplars 174
C omparing Persons in the Process of Struggle: Two Notions
of Person as Classic 180
6 P ersonal Horizons: Moral Struggle, Religious Humility,
and the Possibility of a Comparative Theological Ethics 189
Bonaventure and Buddhaghosa on Personal Struggle 189
Comparative Theology and Comparative Ethics:
A Religious-Interpretive Work 192
The Methodological Struggles of Comparative Persons:
Five Roads of Return 198
Struggles for a Comparative Horizon: Religious Humility
and the Problem of Conversion 206
Appendix: S ome Common Buddhist Lists, Their Relation,
and Their Significance in Abhidhamma 214
Bibliography 26
Index 241
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Figures
Figure 2.1 Relationship of khandhas to dhammas 66
Figure 4.1 B onaventure on the parts of the soul, its powers
and its perfections 127
Figure 4.2 Division of questions in Visuddhimagga 132
Figure 5.1 Introductory pattern of Itinerarium mentis in Deum 160
Figure 5.2 Bonaventure’s schematic of the threefold way 162
Figure 5.3 S ummary of the 37 “factors contributing to awakening”
(bodhi-pakhiya-dhamma-) 179
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Acknowledgments
Scholarly work is collaborative work, even if its results are credited to individual
p ersons. This book began as a doctoral thesis submitted to the faculty of the Divinity
School at the University of Chicago. I want to thank first and foremost my advisor,
William Schweiker, who guided me through many formulations of its central ideas
and always gave unfailing support to all of us among his advisee group who wanted to
pursue comparative studies within the larger discipline of ethics. I also want to thank
the other members of my thesis committee, Frank Reynolds and David Tracy, for their
patience, encouragement, constructive criticisms, and suggestions that this draft of a
project’s ideas addresses. Special thanks also to Richard Rosengarten and Don
Browning for their work leading and empowering a community of scholars of religion
dedicated to serving the world through careful conversations. My gratitude also to
many teachers and friends at the University of Chicago: Franklin Gamwell, Anne Carr,
Steven Collins, David Wray, Margaret Mitchell, Kevin Jung, Kelly Brotzman, Melanie
Barrett, Warren Chain, Sandra Peppers, Elizabeth Bucar, Michael Hogue, Michael
Johnson, William Wood, Jonathan Schofer, Jamie Schillinger, Yuki Miyamoto, Bruce
Rittenhouse, and John Wall.
The University of Chicago Divinity School provided generous financial support
throughout my studies; the Henry Luce Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson
Institute continued that support of my research in its later stages; and James Halstead
and the Department of Religious Studies at DePaul University provided me with a
welcome opportunity to teach. Among my colleagues and friends at the University of
Notre Dame, I would like to thank especially John Cavadini, Paulinus Odozor, Jean
Porter, Lawrence Cunningham, Gerald McKenny, Matthew Ashley, M. Catherine
Hilkert, Cyril O’Regan, Robert Gimello, Jennifer Herdt, Michael Connors, Paul
Doyle, Mark Poorman, Dorothy Anderson, David Lantigua, Kathleen Grimes, Conor
Kelly, Brain Hamilton, and Deonna Neal.
Special thanks to Rebecca Harkin, Bridget Jennings, Lucy Boon, Isobel Bainton
and Sarah Dancy of Wiley-Blackwell for their support of this work and for guidance
through the p rocess. Thanks also to Claire Creffield for copy-editing the book, to the
Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame for
f unding to s upport preparation of the index, and to James Martin for compiling it.
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Acknowledgments ix
I am also grateful to Georgetown University Press and Columbia University Press for
permission to reprint portions of previously published work in this book: “Bonaventure
on Moral Motivation: Trajectories of Exemplification in his Treatment of Voluntary
Poverty,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 25.2 (Fall/Winter 2005): 109–36;
and “Comparative Religion, Ethics, and American Family Life: Concluding Questions
and Future Directions,” in American Religions and the Family: How Faith Traditions
Cope with Modernization and Democracy, Don S. Browning and David A. Clairmont,
eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 244–58.
Finally, my debt for the support by my family and friends is great: Norman and
Kathleen Clairmont; Matthew Spates; Robert Kelly and Sarah Ramsey; Jennifer Malin
and Joseph Kelly; Louis and Elaine Pinard; Jackson Marvel, Paul Foster, and Patrick
Moeschen. Lastly, my greatest thanks to my wife Michelle: for being with me every
step of the way, for patiently reading every page of this book, for setting the highest
example of labor for love of family, and for our sons, Joseph and John, who will face
a beautiful but difficult world.
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