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Selfhood is the basis of morality and society.
In my book Meditations (2006), I argued that the self must be assumed to be a unity persisting during the whole life of an organism. Those reflections are very relevant to the present context.
According to Buddhist theory, the self has no continuity, i.e. our self of today is not the same person as our self of yesterday or of tomorrow. In this perspective, they are causatively connected, in the sense that earlier conglomerations of phenomena constituting a self ‘cause’ later ones – but there is no thread of constancy that can be identified as the underlying one and the same entity. It is not a case of mere succession of totally discrete events; but there is no essential identity between the events, either.
However, many (myself included) object to this theory on various grounds. While we may admit that one can logically regard selfhood (i.e. being a Subject and Agent) as punctual at every instant without having to assume its extension over a lifetime, we must realize that such an assumption removes all logical possibility of a concept of moral responsibility for past actions.
If one is no longer ever the same person as the person committing a past virtuous or vicious act, then no good deed may be claimed by anyone or rewarded, and no crime may be blamed on anyone or punished. Ex post facto, strictly speaking, the doer of any deed no longer exists. Similarly, looking forward, there is nothing to be gained or lost by any Agent in doing anything, since by the time any consequences of action emerge the Agent has already disappeared.
In such a framework, all personal morality and social harmony would be completely destroyed. There would be no justification for abstaining from vice or for pursuing virtue. Even the pursuit of spiritual realization would be absurd. Of course, some people do not mind such a prospect, which releases them from all moral obligations or responsibility and lets them go wild.
It is very doubtful that Buddhism (given its overall concerns and aims) supports such a nihilist thesis. In any case, such a viewpoint cannot be considered credible, in the light of all the above observations and arguments.
If we deny the self or soul, we deny, not only the functions of cognition, volition, and valuation, but morality and society. Without the continuity provided by the self, there is no responsibility. Without responsibility, there are no values, no virtues, no disvalues, no vices, no moral imperatives or prohibitions; anything goes. Without morality, not only is the individual unable to function intelligently, but society, the peaceful coexistence and cooperation of people, cannot exist. Social cohesion depends on respect of the individual, respect of his or her person, body and mind, and material and intellectual property. Without such respect, anyone can kill or maim anyone, torture or enslave anyone, steal their property, at will. There would be no justification for any laws or ethics.
The very facts that we have individual moral consciences and that more or less organized societies exist are proofs of our awareness that we have abiding souls, powers of consciousness, free will, and rational valuation, and consequent responsibilities. Even if the consciences of individuals vary considerably, and our societies are diverse and imperfect, the very existence of these psychological and social phenomena demonstrate that the human race, fundamentally, believes in soul, its powers, and its responsibility. The people who deny these things are just pretending; they are not honest witnesses. Sure, there are among us psychopaths and sociopaths; but these are exceptions, not true representative of humanity. And anyway, one may well wonder whether the psychopaths and sociopaths among us can be so characterized entirely – i.e. whether they are that sick or evil exclusively. More probably, just as they have human bodies and faculties, they have partly functioning souls.
‘First philosophy’[1] is concerned not only with the relatively abstract disciplines of philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and the theory of sense perception, but more concretely with biology and evolution, and with anthropology and sociology.
 

 

[1]              The term was, I believe, coined by Aristotle and revived by Descartes.
 

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