Buddhism as Philosophy

Citation

Siderits, M. (2021). Buddhism as Philosophy (2nd ed.). Hackett Publishing Company.

Chapter Summary

The second edition runs to about 384 pages: a note "About This Book", a guide to translation sources and pronunciation, an introduction, nine chapters, a glossary and an index. It treats only the South Asian part of the Buddhist tradition, which the author says already fills a long book. Each chapter pairs passages from Indian Buddhist sources with an explanation and evaluation of the arguments in them, and some chapters add comparisons with positions in Western philosophy.

Introduction: Buddhism As Philosophy?

Three sections ask what philosophy is, what Buddhism is, and what it means to examine Buddhism as philosophy. The opening pages describe philosophy as a matter of method and argument across ethics, metaphysics and epistemology, and note that classical India, like ancient Greece, developed such a tradition.

Chapter 1: Early Buddhism: Basic Teachings

The Buddha, his first teachings, the cause and cure of suffering, and what it means to live without suffering. This chapter supplies the doctrinal background for the rest.

Chapter 2: Empty Persons

The longest of the opening chapters, built around the doctrine of non-self. It covers the idea of self as essence, the five skandhas, an argument for non-self from impermanence, the controller argument, "person" as a convenient designator, two kinds of truth, persons as conventionally real, and the relation of non-self to rebirth.

Chapter 3: Buddhist Ethics

Whether nirvana can be described and what it might be like, then the grounding of moral obligation (through an argument of the eighth-century philosopher Śāntideva) and whether a causal series of sets of skandhas can have free will.

Chapter 4: A Nyāya Interlude

A pause to present a rival school: the Nyāya scheme of categories, its account of the means of knowledge, an argument for the existence of the self, and whether the self's existence can be denied.

Chapter 5: Abhidharma: The Metaphysics of Empty Persons

A long chapter on Abhidharma metaphysics. It gives two arguments for mereological nihilism, then dharmas as the ultimately real entities, which dharmas there are, momentariness, memory and the self, the "shifting coalitions" strategy, and two arguments for representationalism (the time-lag argument and one from atomism).

Chapter 6: The Rise of Mahāyāna

Historical roots, the bodhisattva ideal and emptiness, and Vimalakīrti as an ideal Mahāyāna figure. By the page numbers in the contents it is the shortest chapter, and it prepares for the next two.

Chapter 7: Yogācāra: Impressions-Only and the Denial of Physical Objects

What we are aware of in sensory experience, the evidence for realism, Vasubandhu's argument from lightness, the trouble with atoms, further objections to impressions-only, its soteriological point, and inexpressibility as a way to avoid nihilism.

Chapter 8: Madhyamaka: The Doctrine of Emptiness

Ways of interpreting the emptiness claim, then arguments against motion, against the āyatanas and dhātus, and about whether dharmas can originate; whether an assemblage could bring about origination; whether everything is connected to everything else; and the soteriological point of emptiness.

Chapter 9: The School of Dignāga: Buddhist Epistemology

Perception and inference as the two means of knowledge, Yogācāra-Sautrāntika nominalism, perception and perceptual judgment, inference, the apoha theory of word meaning, talk about unreal things, and whether cognition cognizes itself.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Teachings, non-self and ethics

• Non-self: the denial that persons have an enduring essence, argued from impermanence and through the controller argument.
• Two kinds of truth: the distinction introduced in section 2.6 and used in 2.7 to discuss persons as conventionally real.
• Skandhas: the five constituents into which a person is analysed.

Chapters 4–5: Nyāya and Abhidharma

• Means of knowledge: the Nyāya account of the sources of knowledge, which later chapters meet again in Dignāga.
• Mereological nihilism: the thesis, defended by two arguments, that composite wholes are not ultimately real.
• Dharmas and momentariness: the ultimately real entities of Abhidharma, treated as momentary.

Chapters 6–9: Mahāyāna schools and epistemology

• Impressions-only: Yogācāra's denial of physical objects, tested through Vasubandhu's arguments.
• Emptiness: the Madhyamaka doctrine, argued through the attack on motion and origination.
• Apoha: the theory of word meaning developed in the school of Dignāga.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Primary sources with argument. Reviewers quoted on the publisher's page stress the pairing of translated passages with analysis. Malcolm Keating calls it a balance between fidelity to the sources and application to general philosophical problems, and Jessica Wilson cites its new organization and clarified argument.
• Honest guidance about use. The author's note says which parts to skip under time pressure (4.4, 9.6, 5.9 and 7.7), which sections depart from the historical record (3.4, 3.5, 5.2), and why Yogācāra precedes Madhyamaka. It also gives a plan for using Chapters 1–3 as a Buddhist module inside a Western-philosophy course.
• Written for philosophy students. Jones Irwin, in a review in Teaching Philosophy quoted on the publisher's page, calls the book a readable and original introduction that foregrounds the philosophical side of Buddhism. A. N. Weiss, in CHOICE, notes that it removes everything but the essential philosophical points.
• Disclosed scope. The author sets out the book's limits at the start, so readers know it is not a general survey of Buddhism.

Limitations

• South Asia only. The note excludes Southeast Asian, Tibetan and East Asian developments. Readers who want Chan or Zen thought, for example, need other books.
• Interpretive debates left out. The author says that scholarly disagreements, such as whether Yogācāra is a form of external-world antirealism, are not discussed. Students get one defensible reading and must look to the further-reading lists for others.
• Demanding stretches. The note itself says some material is challenging for students new to philosophy, that Chapters 5 and 7 are lengthy, and that Chapter 9 may be "a chapter too far" in some courses.
• Order is not strictly historical. Yogācāra (Chapter 7) comes before Madhyamaka (Chapter 8), reversing the order in which the schools arose; an instructor committed to chronology must reorder the chapters.

Where It Fits in the Course

In this course, Siderits is the sustained treatment of one tradition's arguments. Sue Hamilton's Indian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction and Michael Carrithers's The Buddha: A Very Short Introduction are short and suit a first look: Carrithers on early Buddhism in its fifth- and fourth-century BCE setting, Hamilton on the range of Indian thought, both before Siderits's Chapters 1 and 2. Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri's Classical Indian Philosophy covers many schools in short chapters (Buddhist, Jain and Brahmanical), and is the better choice for breadth, while Siderits gives more depth on the Buddhist side.

For Chinese philosophy in the same course, Bryan Van Norden's Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy is an introductory comparison of method, and A. C. Graham's Disputers of the Tao is a history that reconstructs the arguments of ancient Chinese thinkers from the sources. They cover a different tradition from Siderits, and each makes a useful counterpart in a course on Asian philosophy.

How to Use This Book

The author wrote it for undergraduate philosophy courses on Buddhist thought, and says it can probably be covered responsibly in an advanced undergraduate course. No knowledge of Buddhism is assumed, though a first philosophy course helps. The introduction explains in a footnote what philosophers mean by "argument", for readers new to the subject.

A practical plan:

• Core: the Introduction and Chapters 1–3. For a short course, the author suggests that Chapters 1–3 (possibly omitting 3.5) be followed by selected sections: 5.1, 5.3–5.5 on Abhidharma, 7.1–7.4 and 7.6 on Yogācāra, and 8.1–8.4 and 8.7 on Madhyamaka.
• Extension: Chapter 4 (the Nyāya interlude), the rest of Chapters 5, 7 and 8, and Chapter 9 on epistemology for readers heading toward logic and philosophy of language.
• Skip on a first pass: 4.4, 5.9, 7.7 and 9.6, as the author suggests.

Assign one section or a few sections at a time rather than whole chapters. Read the translated passage first, state its argument in your own words, and only then read the explanation. Use the further-reading lists at the end of each chapter for the interpretive disagreements the text sets aside.