A Tale of Two Philosophies: Phenomenology and Buddhism on the Ethical Jon Joey Telebrico, CMC ’23
External Submission – Second Place for Best Essay I. Introduction The dominant tradition of phenomenology is characterized and known as a philosophical methodology through which one’s “lived experiences” are described. In doing so, the fundamental subjective insights developed through the practice and application of phenomenology serve to illuminate broader notions of philosophical significance. This essay is concerned with two primary questions: first, how do we achieve the moral experiences that guide us to the ethical, and second, what do these experiences tell us about that which is ethical? To resolve these two questions, I first ground my analysis of the subject within moral strands of phenomenology and its relevance to ethical matters and move to highlighting the affective dimension of Buddhist ethics and practices such as Qigong as one possible means of guiding moral experiences and ethical orientations. Throughout this essay I aim to ultimately examine phenomenology’s value as a means with which to arbitrate over ethical concerns, drawing upon moral phenomenology to identify a metaethical paradigm made possible through alternative Buddhist philosophies and their phenomenological undertakings.
the centuries-long historical contingency of Buddhist reflection on how consciousness is affected through various meditative states, arguing that this is indeed a form of phenomenology. While there are certainly differences between the tenets of Buddhism and phenomenology—namely, the ontological characterization of essence—Jingjing Li argues that the overlap between particular ideas within Husserl’s phenomenology, such as emptiness as the affirmation of the existent and the situation of essence within Buddhist idealism, are actually compatible with one another, and function to resolve some of the differences that would function to delineate the two as incommensurable traditions. Similar to comparative scholars who turn to epistemology to prevent dichotomizing the two,1 I seek to analyze the traditions’ affective moral dimensions and construct a broader metaethics by illuminating how particular Buddhist meditative practices can achieve moral phenomenological reflections. To begin, my analysis is rooted at the primary site of the body and more broadly, the key phenomenological concept of embodiment. Rather than conceptualizing the body as a physical substance, Edmund Husserl—one of the most prominent of phenomenology’s scholars—considers the body as a locus, or lived center, of experience defined by our movement capabilities, sensations, and perceptions.2 Building upon this insight, phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty establishes in Phenomenology of Perception that the body and the world are inextricably linked: we come to know the world through the medium of our bodies.3 In coming to understand that the body both structures the self and our experiences,
II. Phenomenological Perspectives and Groundwork First, I will outline how the bifurcated Eastern and Western philosophical traditions might come into dialogue with one another in order to establish a conceptual framework that the essay’s analysis will build off of. One might presume that the relation between Buddhist philosophy and phenomenology’s place in continental European philosophy appears loosely connected. However, the essay turns to 9
