Philosophy as Therapeia

253 Pages·2010·1.384 MB·English

by  Ganeri, Jonardon, Carlisle, Clare

Philosophy as Therapeia
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 66
Edited by Jonardon Ganeri & Clare Carlisle
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Philosophy as
Therapeia
ROYALINSTITUTEOFPHILOSOPHYSUPPLEMENT:66
EDITEDBY
Clare Carlisle &
Jonardon Ganeri
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ii
Contents
NotesonContributors v
Introduction 1
MedicalAnalogiesinBuddhistandHellenisticThought:
TranquillityandAnger 11
CHRISTOPHER W. GOWANS
RationalityastheTherapyofSelf-LiberationinSpinoza’sEthics 35
MICHAEL HAMPE
TwoPedagogiesforHappiness:HealingGoalsandHealing
MethodsintheSummaTheologiaeofThomasAquinasand
theŚrīBhāsỵaofRāmānuja 51
MARTIN GANERI
TheThinkerandtheDraughtsman:Wittgenstein,Perspicuous
Relations,and‘WorkingonOneself’ 67
GARRY L. HAGBERG
TherapyandTheoryReconstructed:PlatoandhisSuccessors 83
STEPHEN R. L. CLARK
TheTeacherasMotherorMidwife?AComparisonof
BrahminicalandSocraticMethodsofEducation 103
KATE WHARTON
AReturntotheSelf:IndiansandGreeksonLifeasArtand
PhilosophicalTherapy 119
JONARDON GANERI
ForMortalSouls:PhilosophyandTherapeiainNietzsche’sDawn 137
KEITH ANSELL PEARSON
ThePhilosopherasPathogenicAgent,PatientandTherapist:
TheCaseofWilliamJames 165
LOGI GUNNARSSON
CuringDiseasesofBeliefandDesire:BuddhistPhilosophical
Therapy 187
DAVID BURTON
Patañjali’sYogaasTherapeia 219
JAYANDRA SONI
Bibliography 233
iii
Notes on Contributors
Keith Ansell Pearson
Keith Ansell Pearson is Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Warwick. His research interests are in 19th and
20th century European philosophy. He has published studies
of Nietzsche, Bergson, and Deleuze, as well as introductions
and edited volumes, and has served on the editorial boards of
Nietzsche-Studien and Journal of Nietzsche Studies.
David Burton
David Burton is Senior Lecturer in the Department of
Theology and Religious Studies at Canterbury Christ Church
University. His doctoral dissertation was on epistemological
and ontological issues in Madhyamaka Buddhism, and he has
interests in religious language, comparative philosophy, and
the philosophyof religion. Along with a numberof articles, he
has published two books: Buddhism, Knowledge and
Liberation: A Philosophical Study (Ashgate, 2004), and
Emptiness Appraised: A Critical Study of Nāgārjuna's
Philosophy (RoutledgeCurzon, 1999).
Clare Carlisle
Clare Carlisle is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of
Liverpool. Her research interests include Kierkegaard,
the philosophy of habit, philosophy of religion, and
Buddhist philosophy. Among her publications are
Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Becoming (State University of
New York Press, 2005), Kierkegaard's ‘Fear and
Trembling’: A Reader's Guide (Continuum, 2010), and the
first English translation of Félix Ravaisson's Of Habit
(Continuum, 2008).
Stephen R. L. Clark
StephenR.L.ClarkisProfessorofPhilosophyattheUniversity
of Liverpool. His research interests include Plotinus, animals,
science fiction and philosophy of religion. Among his many
books, the most recent are Understanding Faith: Religious
Belief and its Place in Society (Imprint Academic, 2009),
Biology and Christian Ethics (Peking, 2006) and G.
K. Chesterton: Thinking Backward, Looking Forward
(Templeton Foundation Press, 2006).
v
Notes on Contributors
Jonardon Ganeri
JonardonGaneriisProfessorofPhilosophyattheUniversityof
Sussex. His books include The Concealed Art of the Soul:
Theories of Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and
Epistemology (Clarendon Press, 2007) and Philosophy in
Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason (Routledge, 2001).
His interests include the Hindu-Buddhist dialogue in
Classical India, Indian philosophy in Early Modernity, and
theories of reason and philosophies of mind and self.
Martin Ganeri O. P.
Martin Ganeri O. P. is Prior, Blackfriars, Cambridge. He is
Lecturer in Theology, Heythrop College, University of
London. He has worked extensively on the theologies of
Thomas Aquinas and Rāmānuja.
Christopher W. Gowans
Christopher W. Gowans is Professor of Philosophy in the
Philosophy Department at Fordham University in New York
City. His areas of research are contemporary moral
philosophy, Buddhism and Hellenistic philosophy, and
Buddhist moral and political philosophy. He has published
Philosophy of the Buddha (Routledge, 2003) and Innocence
Lost: An Examination of Inescapable Moral Wrongdoing
(Oxford, 1994).
Logi Gunnarsson
Logi Gunnarsson is Professorof Philosophyat TU Dortmund
University, Germany. He is the author of Making Moral
Sense: Beyond Habermas and Gauthier (Cambridge University
Press, 2000) and Philosophy of Personal Identity and Multiple
Personality (Routledge, 2010).
Garry L. Hagberg
Garry L. Hagberg is Professor of Philosophyat the University
of East Anglia, and has for some years served as the James H.
Ottaway Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at Bard
College. His books include Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein
and Autobiographical Consciousness (Oxford University Press,
2008), and an edited collection, Art and Ethical Criticism
(Blackwell, 2008). He is joint editor of the journal Philosophy
and Literature, and co-edited The Blackwell Companion to the
Philosophyof Literature (Blackwell, 2009).
vi
Notes on Contributors
Michael Hampe
Michael Hampe is Chair of Philosophy at Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology Zürich, and President of the Spinoza-
Foundation. He studied philosophy and biology at Heidelberg
and Cambridge. After professorships in Dublin, Kassel and
Bamberg he teaches early modern philosophy and history of
cosmology in Zürich.
Jayandra Soni
Jayandra Soni is Lecturer in the Department of Indology and
Tibetology, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. He
holds Ph.D.'s from Benaras Hindu University and McMaster
University, and has published widely on Śaiva Siddhānta,
Jaina philosophyand otheraspects of Indian thought.
Kate Wharton
KateWhartonisafull-timeresearcheroninter-religiousaffairs
for the Archbishop of Canterbury. She completed her Ph.D.
thesis, Philosophyas a Practice of Freedom in Ancient India and
Ancient Greece, at the School of Oriental and African Studies,
in London in 2008, and offers courses on Hindu and Buddhist
Philosophy for Birkbeck College, London.
vii
Introduction
‘Empty are the words of that philosopher who offers therapy for no
human suffering. For just as there is no use in medical expertise if
it does not give therapy for bodily diseases, so too there is no use in
philosophy if it does not expel the suffering of the soul.’ The philo-
sopherEpicurus(341–271BCE)gavefamousvoicetoaconceptionof
philosophy as a cure or remedy for the maladies of the human soul,
and this recurring theme in Hellenistic thought has been the
subject of two important recent studies.1 What has not until now
received a comparable degree of attention is just how prominent an
idea it has been across a whole spectrum of philosophical tradition.
Scholars of Buddhism have known for some time that a medical
analogy features strongly in Buddhist conceptions of philosophical
practice,butthisfacthasrarelybeentheobjectofexplicitdiscussion.
The idea that philosophy should be therapeutic, indeed that this is
philosophy’s first function, was indeed widely spread in India, and
the analogy between philosophyand medicinewas put to important
use in several other, non-Buddhist, Indian schools. In the West,
too, this conception of philosophy has displayed a great resilience,
persisting long past the Hellenistic age. It can and will be argued
that medieval scholasticism, a mode of philosophizing now so often
and often so naively criticised, should be understood as therapeutic
inintent.Ifthatisrightitisimportant,becauseitallowsustoseecon-
tinuitiesbetweenancient,medievalandearlymodernthoughtwhere
too often discontinuities alone are emphasised. For Spinoza too
thought of philosophy as therapeutic, and after him Nietzsche and
Wittgenstein. So the conception of philosophy as therapeia allows
for,andevennecessitates,anewreadingofthehistoryofphilosophy,
one in which deep continuities come into vision which have been
obscured, a reading which also contradicts those who have wanted
to maintain that philosophy is a peculiarly European cultural
product, and instead affirms its identity as a global intellectual
practice.2
1 Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation
to Christian Temptation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), and, Martha
Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic
Ethics(Princeton,NJ:PrincetonUniversityPress,1994).
2 The idea that philosophy is peculiarly European is most explicitly
articulatedbyHegel,Husserl,andHeidegger.ItistruethatEuropeanphil-
osophy and Indian philosophy are intellectual disciplines with different
doi:10.1017/S135824610999021X ©TheRoyalInstituteofPhilosophyandthecontributors2010
RoyalInstituteofPhilosophySupplement 66 2010 1
Introduction
With this in mind, we have assembled together here a set of new
essays, all specially commissioned for our volume. We begin where
the studies by Nussbaum and Sorabji leave off, with discussions of
thetherapeuticmodelfromtwoleadingvoicesinBuddhistphilosophy.
One of these studies, by Christopher Gowans, an expert in both
HellenisticandearlyBuddhistphilosophy,focussesonthemanysimi-
laritiesbetweenHellenisticandBuddhistusesofthemodel.Theother,
by David Burton, goes deeply into the Buddhist sources, including
Tibetan along with later Indian contributions. As per their brief,
neither writer merely documents, both instead putting challenging
questions to the literature they survey. For it was our intention that
the volume contain a thorough examination both of the scope and of
thelimitsofthemedicinalmodel.KateWharton,emphasisingadisa-
nalogy, very creatively plays with the use of two educational meta-
phors, juxtaposing the maieutic Socrates with the Vedic teacher who
gestates his students; and Stephen Clark, in a complementary way,
traces the original meaning of the word “therapeia” to an idea of
service.Thesetwo essays pressusto think through the valuewe now
habituallyattachtonotionsofautonomy.JayandraSoniusesthethera-
peuticparadigmtodemonstratethattheschoolofYogaphilosophyhas
far more in common with a Hellenistic school than its contemporary
imagewouldleadonetothink.
ThechapterbyMartinGaneriisapivotalone.Hearguesprecisely
thatscholasticism embodiesatherapeutic conception ofphilosophy,
and does so by bringing into dialogue two great scholastic thinkers,
Aquinas and Rāmānuja. His chapter thus simultaneously displays
the two dimensions of continuity that this volume aims to demon-
strate, those that obtain within and across philosophical traditions.
With a view to tracing this continuity through the work of more
modern thinkers, we invited experts on Spinoza, Nietzsche,
WilliamJamesandWittgensteintoexaminehowthesephilosophers
takeupthetheme.MichaelHampehasshownhowSpinozawasable
to rejuvenate the conception of philosophy as therapeia and finesse
difficulties in earlier formulations. Keith Ansell Pearson has
written for this volume on Nietzsche, and contributes to the
growing body of work on Nietzsche as a therapeutic philosopher
with a new reading of Nietzsche’s Dawn or Daybreak. In an age
when thoughts about immortality—whether in the shape of
the hope for an after-life, or in the form of a fear of endless
histories and methods; the fallacy in the argument consists in the false
assumptionthattheterm‘philosophy’denotesaspeciesandnotthegenus.
2