Ethics of atomism – Democritus, Vasubandhu, and the skepticism that wasn’t

ABSTRACTDemocritus’ atomism aims to respond to threats of Parmenidean monism. In so doing, it deploys a familiar epistemological distinction between what is known by the senses and what is known by the mind. This turns out to be a risky strategy, however, leading to inadvertent skepticism with only diffuse and contrary ethical implications. Vasubandhu’s more explicitly metaphysical atomism, by contrast, relies on a different principle to get to its results, and aims to address different concerns. It leaves us with a view that positively implies a concrete mode of practical engagement, and resources for a critical stance. Even if certain atoms end up proven incoherent, there is no danger of slipping into the morally fatal indifference of inadvertent skepticism. For the ethical implications, it matters how one arrives at one’s atomism.KEYWORDS: AtomismDemocritusVasubandhuBuddhistskepticism AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Ugo Zilioni, whose invitation to participate in a conference on atomism first prompted this work; and also the conference participants themselves, particularly David Sedley, whose contributions offered a valuable perspective on Democritus and Vasubandhu. My thanks are also due to Oren Hanner, whose invitation to participate in a conference on skepticism provided the opportunity to investigate the ethical dimensions of atomism which this paper addresses; and again the conference participants themselves, particularly Mark Siderits, were invaluable in sharpening my arguments. Audiences at the Universität Paderborn, Uppsala Universitet, Boston University, and Columbia University were terrific interlocutors, whose questions have helped to focus and clarify the ideas presented here, and Sylvia Berryman and Ugo Zilioni offered helpful comments on the penultimate draft. Nicholas Lua provided invaluable research assistance.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Abbreviationsadv. Math. =Against the ProfessorsAKBh.=Vasubandhu, Abhidharmakośabhāṣya [Treasury of Abhidharma, with Commentary]DK=Diels, rev. Kranz, Die Fragmente der VorsokratikerKRS=Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, The Presocratic PhilosophersMN=Majjhima Nikāya [Middle-Length Discourses]MP=Milindapañha [Questions of King Milinda]PTS=Pali Text SocietySN=Saṃyutta Nikāya [Connected Discourses]Notes1 Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, 342. The following quotations are from pages 345, 345, and 349 of the same.2 And this is so even if one does not share Barnes’ own dismissive view of the very possibility of a meaningful connection between Democritus’ ethics with his metaphysics (see Presocratic Philosophers, 533–4).3 Aristotle in de caelo Γ4, 303a5 reports that Democritus and Leucippus “say that their primary magnitudes are infinite in number and indivisible in magnitude” (KRS 577).4 Whether atoms have weight is contested. Aristotle attributes weight to the atoms at de gen et corr. A8, 326a9; and Barnes claims “ample evidence” speaks in favour (DK 68A60, 61, 135), though “orthodoxy now lies with Aëtius”, against. For discussion see KRS ad 573–6, pp. 421–3.5 “There is an infinite number, and they are invisible because of the smallness of the particles” writes Aristotle, de gen. et corr. A8, 325a30–31 (KRS 545) – though reports differ (for discussion see KRS, pp. 415–6).6 In Metaphysics Α4, 985b14–15, Aristotle says that the “differences [between the atoms] are three – shape, arrangement and position” (KRS 555), though shape may be expected to take size within its compass; Simplicius, for instance, reports that the atoms “have all sorts of forms and shapes and differences in size” (de caelo 295, KRS 556, DK 68A37).7 Aristotle, Metaphysics A4, 985b7 “full and solid”; “indivisible and impassive”, according to Simplicius de caelo 242.18 (KRS 557, DK 67A14)8 Simplicius de caelo 242.21 (KRS 584, DK 67A14); or as Aristotle has it, atoms colliding and associating “are the causes of other things” (Metaphy. Α4, 985b13).9 See also Aristotle's account in de gen. et corr. A8, “from what is truly one no plurality could come into being, nor a unity from what is truly a plurality - that is impossible” (KRS 545); and in de caelo “the many does not come from one nor one from many” (KRS 479).10 On the authority of Aristotle, de gen. et corr. A8, 325a2. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield comment that “Leucippus was generally agreed to have evolved his theory of atoms in answer to the Eleatic elenchus” (KRS, p. 403); “Leucippus or Melitus had associated with Parmenides in philosophy” (KRS 539). This is not to say that Protagorean subjectivism had no influence on Democritus’ development of his position (see below), as discussed for instance by Mi-Kyoung Lee in Epistemology after Protagoras. On Eleatic monism see note 12, below.11 KRS comment (p. 408), “The atomists rejected Zeno’s attempt to show that the members of a plurality are infinitely divisible, and therefore subject to absurd consequences”.12 While Simplicius credits Parmenides with the view that reality is monoeides and indivisible (Simpl., in Phys. 145.1–146.25, DK28B8), strong monism may in fact be more Melissan than Parmenidean (so Barnes, 204–7), and Zeno is especially associated with paradoxes arising from plurality. However, Plato strongly associates this notion with Parmenides in his dialogue by that name, and the tradition since Aristotle associated Parmenides with the rejection of plurality on the basis that reality is one (Aristotle, Metaphysics 986b29).13 KRS comment (p. 408), “It is curiously hard to find a text which explicitly calls the atoms uncreated and imperishable, although this is implied by the frequent description of atoms and void as elements and principles, e.g. 555”.14 νόμῳ γάρ φησι γλυκὺ καὶ νόμῳ πικρόν, νόμῳ θϵρμόν, νόμῳ ψυχρόν, νόμῳ χροιή´ ἐτϵῇ δὲ ἄτομα καὶ κϵνόν. See also DK 68A49 and DK68B125. Barnes prefers Plutarch’s version in adv. Col.1110Ε, which adds the generality “and every combination (sunkrisin)”. This may make the difference as to whether we read Democritus as a reductionist, or as an eliminativist (as argued by Eleni Kechagia in Plutarch Against Colates, Chapter 6).15 Sedley’s argument on this point, in “Why Aren’t Atoms Coloured?”, is persuasive.16 Sedley (“Why Aren’t Atoms Coloured?”, 68–69) finds such evidence in Galen, although he judges the tradition’s association of nomisti with the verbal root to have been mistaken.17 Adv. Math. VII.139; Sextus carries on, “Then, by way of judging [προκρίνων] the genuine one superior to [ἐπιφέρϵι] the bastard one, he adds these words: ‘when the bastard one is no longer able either to see in the direction of greater smallness, nor to hear or smell or taste or sense by touch other things in the direction of greater fineness’” (translation by Sedley in “The Atomist Criteria of Truth”).18 Judging in Republic V is more obscure (σκοτωδέστϵρον, 478c, 479c) compared to the clarity of knowing, and in Republic VI pertains to sensibles (ὁρατόν, 509d4; see also 510b4–5, 510d6–511a2, 511a8–10) as opposed to the intelligible (νοητόν, 509d4; τὸ γνωστόν, 510a9).19 Notice how Republic V, a locus classicus for Plato’s distinction between superior and inferior cognition, describes inferior cognitions as being of “the many nomina of the many”, (τὰ τῶν πολλῶν πολλὰ νόμιμα, Rep. 479d2–3). Burnyeat writes, “there is plenty of evidence that Democritean Atomism was based on a priori reasoning, not on observation” citing “clear evidence that his epistemology had a thoroughly rationalist character” (“‘All the World’s a Stage-Painting’”, 66).20 DKB207, tr. James Warren, with apt discussion, in Democritean Ethics, 48–51. DK68B74 similarly distinguishes pleasantness from benefit.21 Consider further DK 68B264 for Socratic sentiments about shame before oneself; and DK 68B252 for Platonic (and very unEpicurean) views about the importance and priority of civic responsibilities. Vlastos recognises these Socratic-Platonic elements of Democritus’ ethics, in “Ethics and Physics in Democritus”; and although he insists that “the contrast [of Democritus] with Socrates and Plato remains unbridgeable” (582), he concludes by observing that “Sextus’ association of the materialist Democritus with the idealist, Plato, in opposition to Protagorean phenomenoalism is profoundly true” (592). As we shall see below, however, it is not so easy for Democritus to avoid the pull towards Protagoreanism, just inasmuch as the contrast with Platonic metaphysics and epistemology remains unbridgeable.22 James Warren’s Epicurus and Democritean Ethics (Chapter 2, passim, esp. p. 72) is especially wise in its discussion of how many contrary positions might be legitimately supported by plausible interpretations of Democritus’ ethical remarks. Retrospectively pinning a specific ethical view definitively onto Democritus is made still more difficult by the uncertainty over exactly which of the surviving ‘Democritean’ texts are indeed by Democritus.23 Plato acknowledges a version of this worry in the Parmenides’ knowledge paradox, the separation argument which purports to show that sensibles and intelligibles can have no bearing on one another (Parm. 13a–135c), discussed in my “Separation Anxieties”; see also Sandra Peterson, “The Greatest Difficulty”. As Burnyeat observes, “Democritus does not think that appearances give us a sight or grasp (katalēpsis) of things unseen … the senses do not lead you on, there is no such thing as seeing the four columns as implying more of the same sort” (“‘All the World’s a Stage-Painting’”, 67).24 David Sedley has argued that Democritus’ presumed authority and distrust of the senses need not be contradictory – but it would leave him a skeptic of an empiricist sort. As Sedley puts it, “Democritus could quite consistently hold both that the senses do indeed command the evidence available to the mind, and that we know nothing for certain, because the senses are themselves unreliable” (“Atomist Criterion of Truth”, 38). Sedley credits Myles Burnyeat with the observation that the two assertions can be consistent.25 “We neither perceive ‘real reality’ (atoms and void), nor even macroscopic objects and their properties (for example, a square tower),” writes Katja Vogt (“Ancient Skepticism”). “Democritus seems to have argued along these lines (SE M 7.135–9; cf. fr. 9, SE M 7.136; Theophrastus, De Sensibus 2.60–1, 63–4), and accordingly his atomist view of perception can be seen as grounding a kind of proto-skepticism”.26 Democritus, Sextus relates, writes “in the text On the Forms, ‘With the help of these rules, man should realise [γιγνώσκϵιν] he is far from truth’. And again, ‘This discussion too shows that we in reality [ἐτϵῇ] know [ἴσμϵν] nothing about anything, rather for each there is a reconfiguring – a belief [ἐπιρυσμίν]’. And further, ‘Indeed it will be clear that it is not possible to know [γιγνώσκϵιν] what each thing is in reality [ἐτϵῇ]’. Here he puts nearly every possibility of knowledge in question, although he primarily refers only to sensory perception” (adv. Math VII.137, my translation).27 According to some of his successors, even Plato did not avoid it, animated as he was by similar distinctions and concerns.28 Indeed, in texts that go through and beyond atomism – e.g. the 10th C. syncretist Śāntarakṣita relies much on the principle that something cannot be both one and many.29 See Willemen in Sarvāstivāda Buddhist Scholasticism for the association of Vasubandhu with the Mūlasarvāstivādins (who Willamen identifies, controversially, with the Sautrāntikas), as opposed to the rival Sarvāstivādins, based nearby.30 Translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi in The Connected Discourses of the Buddha. All quotations of the Connected Discourses are drawn from this source.31 Probably, although there is only the one text that actually adds ‘and so with every mixture’ (see note 14), rather than focusing specifically on sensible properties as the ‘merely considered so’.32 Democritus seems to have thought there was a soul, but it is not clear he had a good atomist account of this. Was it an agglomeration of atoms, or a single atom? The evidence of Aristotle tells in favour of a heap of spherical fiery atoms (de Anima I.2, 403b30–404a9), but the implication that a soul is therefore real only by opinion seems not to have been drawn. Nor did Democritus seem to confront the difficulty of a multiplicity of soul atoms accounting for the necessary unity of the mental in cognition (this was a point on which the non-Buddhist Nyāya philosophers pushed the Buddhist no-self theory particularly trenchantly). In his accounts of cognition and his ethics, Democritus seems rather to have helped himself to a unity of soul which his metaphysics ought to have undermined.33 And although Diṅnāga will later define perception as that which is free from conceptual construction (Pramāṇasamuccaya I.i.3c and I.i.6ab) – and although perception is the superior pramāṇa throughout Buddhist thought, while inference is tainted by conceptualizing and is, therefore, distorting – still, this epistemological allegiance to perception was not the reason for positing dharmas as simples and ultimately real in the first place. Simple ultimately real constituents of reality seem to have been driven instead by logical (what is different cannot be the same) and metaphysical considerations (as the mereological reductionism of Milinda’s chariot, below).34 See Siderits, Buddhism as Philosophy, 53–6, for analysis of this passage in these terms; and Carpenter, Indian Buddhist Philosophy, 35–47.35 Carpenter, Indian Buddhist Philosophy, 40–2, examines the apparent slippage between ‘not identical to all of its parts’ and ‘not identical to some subset of its parts’, and offers an argument for why the latter, apparently more plausible option is also unsatisfactory.36 The distinction between the ‘two truths’, as they are called, fundamentally frames Sanskrit Buddhist philosophy and its successors, with different philosophers drawing the distinction in different ways. Sonam Thakchoe, “The Theory of Two Truths in India”, and Guy Newland, Appearance and Reality, both offer overviews and exposition of this contrasting pair, informed significantly by Tibetan doxographers.37 Trenton Merricks observes (in conversation, UVa, 20 Nov. 2020) that it is not this principle alone which does the work, but this principle plus a rejection of a building principle (as Karen Bennett calls them, in Making Things Up). Since any building principle (e.g. the constitutes relation, the composes relation, the inherence relation) is tantamount to an assertion of a multiplicity that it is indeed a real unity, I do not think the rejection of composition is anything over and above insisting that one cannot be many, thus putting the onus on any defender of a purported principle of composition to explain how it could be otherwise. In this debate, there are no direct arguments for or against the validity of any such principle: The Abhidharma Buddhist, like Theodor Sider (“Against Parthood”) will appeal to parsimony; their opponent to explanatory power. (In the contemporary discourse, the anti-nihilist may also point to the nihilist’s reliance on the appeal to ‘constituents arranged chair-wise’; but the Ābhidharmika is on firmer ground here, since they do not admit that the chariot-wise arrangement of simples is itself ultimately real). However, considerations of why some subset of chariot parts – let us say, those essential to its definitive function (an essentially Aristotelian option) – are not the real essence of the chariot are found in Carpenter, Indian Buddhist Philosophy, 40–3. My “Persons Keeping Their Karma Together” considers a minority Buddhist position which did seem to think that organismal unity calls for some additional explanatory principle; Vasubandhu argues against this Buddhist Personalist position in his “Treatise on the Negation of the Person”, traditionally found as Abhidharmakośabhāṣya IX, and available in a useful contemporary translation by Kapstein as Chapter 14, Part I, of his Reason’s Traces.38 I call this a ‘correlate’ because there are good reasons to be cautious about simply identifying them – not least because the appearing quality is not an apt way of distinguishing one side of the Buddhist distinction from the other.39 This and all translations of Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya are adapted from Pruden’s translation, with modifications by reference to Pradhan’s Sanskrit edition.40 See Cox, “From Category to Ontology” for discussion of the difference between these (and their contrast terms paramārthasat and dravyasat) and the evolution in early Buddhist philosophy from the one to the other, and towards conflating them. Karunadasa’s “The Dhamma Theory” describes how the canonical Abhidharma text, the Dhammasangani, already elaborates samutti as conceptual (paññatti/prajñapti), and how even in early Buddhism the distinction between ultimate and conventional “distinguishes between those types of entities that truly exist independently of the cognitive act and those that owe their being to the act of cognition itself” (20).41 I analyse Vasubandhu’s atomism in detail, including his rejoinder to the Problem of Contact, in “Atoms and Orientation”.42 Goodman, “The Treasury of Metaphysics”, offers detailed philosophical examination along these lines, though his further claim that Vasubandhu’s is a ‘two-tiered’ ontology is neither textually nor argumentatively warranted (see “Atoms and Orientation”, notes 16 and 18 for details). For Vasubandhu as offering a trope theory, see also Siderits, “Buddhist Reductionism”; and Ganeri, Philosophy in Classical India, 101–2.43 In brief: simples cannot decay (since that would imply parts), but only either exist or fail to exist. A non-existence cannot be created through external agency, so the cause of going out of existence must belong to the simple itself. But a simple cannot gradually ‘actualise’ different parts of itself or powers any more than it can gradually decay. Therefore this internal power to cause its own destruction must be fully realised upon the moment of the atom’s arising. Therefore, any simple must have strictly momentary existence.44 It also underscores the rejection of substance-property metaphysics implicit in dharma-theory (on which, see Williams, “On the Abhidharma Ontology”), as well as the way in which dharmas are more event-like than substance-like (on which, see Warder, “Dharmas and Data”, especially pp. 275 and 290).45 The precise argument here is obscure, and the dialectical relationship between the Twenty Verses and the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya is complicated. But here we may take the Twenty Verses passage to be putting forward for its own purposes the view that Vasubandhu has articulated (apparently) in his own voice in the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya.46 Nāgārjuna famously challenged whether this distinction could coherently be made, arguing that individuation itself is always dependent on contrasted ‘others’, and due to mental activity (see Carpenter, “Dependent Arising”). Vasubandhu does not seem to feel the challenge is a serious one.47 In fact, Democritus’ distinction between sensation and intellection as sources respectively of mis-information and information takes as granted and unproblematic the existence of the body, and this body distinct from others – e.g. “In the Confirmations, although he had promised to assign the power of assurance to the senses, he is nonetheless found condemning them, for he says, ‘But we in actuality grasp nothing precisely as it is, but rather as it shifts according to the condition of the body and things entering and pressing upon it’” (Sextus Empiricus, adv. Math. VII.136 (=DK 68B9) modified translation of KRS 553).48 Unless, of course, it leads to Platonism – which is just the assertion that the mind does indeed give us access to non-sensory reality as it is.49 Strictly speaking, so could Democritus’ atomism, if it were taken in a non-skeptical Platonic direction, with a robust account of the intelligible and intelligibility – and essentially left off being atomist. (That is to say, Democritus must give his non-bastard mode of cognition some appropriate objects to cognise). This is certainly not a lineage that either the subsequent atomist or skeptical traditions, or Plato himself, recognized.50 For instance, the sort of cultural relativism we might worry McDowell’s or MacIntyre’s views lead to by tying the very meaning and intelligibility of concepts to our shared practices. For McDowell, see his “Virtue and Reason” and “Two Sorts of Naturalism”; for MacIntyre see his After Virtue, especially Chapters 14 and 15. The spectre of the dismal slough of relativism is a crucial area of intra-Buddhist debate, as certain Madhyamaka Buddhist views seem unable to retain such a prospect of knowing a distinct ultimate reality and thus are in danger of pernicious relativism; on this, see Tillemans, “How Far Can a Mādhyamika Buddhist Reform Conventional Truth?”. For the record, it may be that the historical Protagoras’ relativism was in fact of the sophisticated sort, rather than the capricious individual sort that Plato first characterizes it as in the Theaetetus.51 See the prefatory verse and first two verses of Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya for his articulation of the claim, which I discuss in “Explanation or Insight?”.52 I argue for the importance of such an impersonal, unworldly ideal in “Ideals and Ethical Formation”, and explore the associated psychological implications in “Explanation or Insight?”.53 Witness the nature of many Buddhist meditational exercises, especially various analytic practices. Such meditational exercises were considered indispensable mental cultivation, and essentially salutary.54 For instance, Buddhaghosa in Visudhimagga IX, and Śāntideva in Bodhicaryāvatāra VI (for discussion of which, see, Carpenter, “Ethics Without Justice”).55 Is ‘minimisation of crime’ the goal? If so, does conceiving of individuals as divorced from their social context, and building practices of accountability on ascriptions of an internal autonomous will, actually reduce crime?56 Note that since this question only arises upon properly grasping the impersonal, non-substantial and processive nature of reality, it only arises as a question when the interpretation of it as ‘what is good for me?’ no longer makes sense.57 These ethical advantages even survive what one might think of as the ‘creeping skepticism’ of idealism. This would be a longer tale to tell. But Vasubandhu himself pushes Abhidharma Buddhism towards idealism; and yet in his idealist text, the Twenty Verses, with Commentary, he offers glimpses at Verses 8–10 of how the transition to full-blown idealism retains the ethical practices and advantages of discerning and analysing conventional reality. Moreover, Vasubandhu’s Yogācāra, both here and as articulated for instance in the Thirty Verses, retains a firm distinction between (realisation of) ultimate reality and conventional cognition. Indeed retaining an ultimate reality that was not conventional was something for which the Mādhyamika Candrakīrti could not forgive Yogācāra Buddhism.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by provided the Ministry of Education, Singapore, material support, through research grant number R-607-263-215-121; and by the Templeton Religion Trust, with a fellowship under the auspices of the Beacon Project.