Buddhism and Political Theory Hardcover – 11 August 2016
by Moore (Author)
----
Hardcover : 208 pages
Publisher : Oxford University Press USA (11 August 2016)
Product description
Review
"Moore breaks new ground in two academic disciplines: Buddhist studies and political science, particularly in the area of political theory. Moore initiates a much-needed critical conversation between Buddhist and Western thinkers about the nature of the self, ethics, and the value of political engagement. In this way, this book breaks new ground in political theory particularly and Buddhist studies in general. Summing up: Essential." --P. O. Ingram, Pacific Lutheran University (Emeritus) "What do the ancient teachings of Buddhism have to do with politics and political theory in the twenty-first century? In this lucid and inspiring text Matthew Moore illuminates entanglements between images of the self, the ontological dimension of life, an invitational ethos, and an enlightened perspective on politics. Moving back and forth between classic teachings and contemporary theorists, Moore makes an indispensable contribution to political thought." --William E. Connolly, author of "The Fragility of Things: Self-Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism" "A fascinating and long-overdue contribution to political theory. Moore effectively reminds us that Buddhist thought is valuable as a rich tradition in its own right, but also that it is an important and challenging conversation partner for Western political thinking. Western thinkers, he argues, have a great deal to learn not simply about Buddhist political thought, but also from Buddhist political thought. This book promises to further expand our ever-contested definition of what constitutes political theory, while offering a roadmap for those interested in engaging with this important tradition." --Farah Godrej, author of "Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Method, Practice, Discipline" "Matthew Moore's Buddhism and Political Theory is a ground-breaking contribution to the growing literature on comparative political thought that situates Buddhism centrally in scholarly debates long dominated by Western traditions. The book introduces unfamiliar readers to Buddhism and the history of Buddhist theories of government, from the earliest accounts of Buddha's teachings to 20th century practices, and from Burma to Thailand to the Tibetan government in exile. This platform allows Moore to inaugurate a critical conversation between Buddhism and Western thinkers about the nature of the self, ethics, and the value of political action that opens up a rich terrain for political theorists to explore."
--Michaele L. Ferguson, author of 'Sharing Democracy'
About the Author
Moore is Associate Professor of Political Science at California Polytechnic State Un
---
Buddhism and political theory: a three part dialogue between two worlds
Buddhism and political theory, by Matthew Moore, New York, Oxford University
Press, 2016, 208 pp., £56.00 (hardback), ISBN 9780190465513
---
Buddhist thought has not had much of an innings in the social sciences. Or, to put it in the words of the author reviewed here, it has been neglected and by political theorists most especially.
While very rich dialogues have begun between Western psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, psychiatry and to some degree sociology, political theory has remained obtusely deaf to the contributions o!ered by Buddhist thought.
"is book addresses that neglect and steps honourably into the gap. Moore is a political theorist who has immersed himself in canonical Buddhist texts to produce a book of great value and insight: a solid foundation for a long overdue dialogue. "e book’s rationale is hinted at in the title, ‘Buddhism and (my italics) political theory’, not ‘Buddhist political theory’ or, ‘Buddhism in political theory’. It is a book intended to inform ‘political theory’ about relevant Buddhist thought, and is thus primarily a synthetic exercise. Its rationale suggests that there
is something called ‘political theory’, distinct from something called ‘Buddhism’, a structural conceit necessary to support the dialogue Moore is a#er rather than a statement of fact, for, as Moore ably shows, Buddhist thought does contain political theory and political theory (for Moore, the body of thought produced in the ‘West’ about how government works) does contain ideas that may be conceived as of Buddhist or at least with which it shares a great deal. Because,
as students of Buddhism learn rather rapidly, no one and no particular place or time ‘owns’ Buddhist thought. Moreover, rather than o!ering substantive normative propositions, Buddhist thought is principally an ontology based on statements about how things are in the world from which, depending on context and relationally, insights worthy of a sociology, a psychology or a political theory can be drawn. Hershock (2003, p. 2) argues that the application of Buddhist
thought necessitates improvisation, or a virtuosity, to make sense of its ontological foundations: indeterminacy, the ontological primacy of relationships and the ‘inexpungible co-implication of facts and values’. For him Buddhist thought o!ers an exit from the ‘incestuous’ evaluative circle
constructed as Western thought attempts to bridge its long standing body-mind duality by using the very tools produced by that duality (Hershock 2006). In rejecting the principle of the excluded middle, Buddhism proposes that ‘rationality’ and the ‘emotions’ are not absolutely distinct but, like all things, are interdependent. It is exactly because Buddhist thought is outside Western
epistemologies and ontologies that it can cut through some of the log jams of Western thought.
"is point $ags a challenge faced by Moore in attempting to make intelligible the thought of the person known as the Buddha, and its manifestation in traditional and modern Buddhist societies, to produce a meaningful dialogue with Western political thought. Buddhist thought cannot be whisked or folded into either the categorical structures of the Western mind or the foundation concepts and categories of Western political theory. "is untranslatability though is precisely the source of bounty, and Moore places some of the inherent challenges front and
centre to shape his enquiry and the book’s structure. For him we thus begin with three statements of di!erence. First is Buddhism’s repudiation of the idea of a ‘self ’, or, the idea that there is something that remains continuous and reasonably stable over time and can be understood as the basis of sel%ood or personality (p. 2). Second is Buddhism’s repudiation of politics as an inherently valuable activity. "irdly there is Buddhism’s particular take on ethics, distinct because of its (a) naturalism – it is derived from natural facts about the universe rather than supernatural sources and (b) its irrealism – its claims serve as a guide, and hence are advisory rather than obligatory. With these three distilled opening statements and through circumscribing his understanding of political theory to what he calls a ‘narrow, conservative de&nition’ (as stated above: a theory of what government does), Moore marks out the borders of the dialogue to follow. "at it inevitably excludes other rich possibilities for dialogue is unavoidable. Every dialogue needs a container and, I assume, he will return again to build on these foundations.
Some general statements about the book’s framework might be helpful here. It is written
without assuming any knowledge of Buddhism on the part of the reader. It posits Buddhism as a religious/philosophical system, derived from the teachings (known as the ‘dharma’ or the ‘damma’) of Siddhartha Gotama, or the Buddha, and its primary source is the Pali Canon, the standard collection of teachings &rst delivered orally by the Buddha, then memorised, repeatedly recited but not written down until some several hundred years a#er his death. Moore argues that this provides a shared base for all forms of Buddhism that grew outwards from India some two thousand-odd years ago, today customarily characterised with reference to three di!erent schools: "eravada (of South Asian origin), Mahayana (East Asian such as Japanese Zen or Chinese Chan) and Vajrayana (of Tibetan and Mongolian origin). Exclusive reliance on the Pali Canon prompts a question as to what then is ‘Buddhist’ thought. Each of these three schools produced additional foundation texts as Buddhism was transmitted and incorporated into widely di!erent cultures across space and time.1
In addition, many living Buddhist teachers and thinkers have been engaging directly with contemporary debates about democracy, equality, feminism and so on, and by reinterpreting the Pali Canon for a modern age. Exemplary here is Stephen Batchelor’s reading of Buddhist thought, stripped of what he calls its root in the ‘cosmology and metaphysics of ancient India’ to produce a wholly secular account (Batchelor 2015, p. 18).
Moreover, the authenticity of the Pali Canon is contested and interpretations di!er depending on which translation is being used. Moore’s argument is meretricious however given, again, the task of beginning a dialogue and echoes Western political theory’s traditional return to its own (contested) cannon again and again. "us this caveat is minor, o!ered principally to keep a door open for other accounts of Buddhism’s contribution to political theory, but still noting that a more explicit treatment of the di'culties with authenticity and foundationalism involved in reliance on the Pali Canon would have been helpful.
"e book is divided into two parts. "e &rst treats, in chapter one, the theory of government,
and relevant political statements, derived from the texts comprising the Pali Canon and their manifestation in Buddhist Asian societies, later adapted and amended as those societies and Buddhism itself modernised (chapters two and three). "is section functions to lay out the ideational and historical context. From chapter one we learn that the early Buddhist theory of government constitutes ‘another iteration of a very familiar defence of enlightened monarchy based on a primeval and unrecoverable social contract’ (p. 27). Of itself, Moore notes, not much di!erent from what is found in the Republic or in Leviathan. But what is distinct, says Moore, is the triumvirate identi&ed above: the de$ationary account of the role of politics, the naturalistic and irrealist theory of morality or ethics, and the illusory nature of self or individual identity. As the Pali Canon makes clear, Buddhism understands that radical change, social improvements, happiness and ful&lment will come from ‘the transformation of individuals’ and is only ‘modestly a!ected by politics’ (p. 30) and, critically, that such transformation necessitates an acceptance of the illusory nature of ‘self ’. Chapters two and three are taken up with a summarised and largely descriptive account of the incorporation of the dharma into both traditional and modernising political regimes. Here a driving question is the response by modernising Buddhist societies to the transformation to republican statehood and how modernisers squared o! their e!orts given the very long standing tradition of monarchy sacralisation in the Pali Canon. Moore
considers events in Tibet, Burma/Myanmar, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, "ailand and Sri Lanka
but excludes China, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia and Japan where a displacement of Buddhism predated the republican transition and also India where Buddhism had already died out. He discerns three distinct approaches (and one indeterminate) but concludes overall that political
leaders across the case studies examined both utilised Buddhist thought cynically to justify
new power structures or drew on Buddhist thought sincerely, and with textual justi&cation, to
support republicanism. Most Buddhist political writings, on his reading, also endorse versions of
democratic government but, he argues, given di!erential national, doctrinal and political points
of view, no single Buddhist political theory is discernible from this historical period. Rather
we have di!erent strains though, he suggests, all built on the same normative assumptions. It is
these, namely again the triumvirate already delineated, that he moves to in the second section
where the dialogic core of the book is hosted.
For the remainder of the book, Moore devotes a chapter to each point of the triumvirate, each
treated in turn with reference to points of convergence and divergence with Western political
theorists selected principally for degrees of substantive overlap or convergence. Beginning with
the idea of no-self, Moore turns (chapter four) in the main to Nietzsche wherein, he suggests, a
shared view is found in the latter’s theory of under souls (p. 65). Both Nietzsche and the Buddha
deny the existence of a metaphysical self and argue instead that what we as humans think of as
our self is in fact ‘unstable multiplicities of experiences’ (p. 80). However, argues Moore, beyond
this is divergence. Nietzsche’s medicine was to propose egoic construction while the Buddha’s
was quite the opposite. In Buddhism, our task is to let go entirely of our sense of ‘self ’ or the
idea that there is some permanent, stable entity at the centre of our being. We can think instead
of the self as a ‘space, a forum, in which competing forces both external and internal interact’
(p. 142), a state of a!airs that potentially liberates each person from the idea that there is some
agenda, or determinate interest, to pursue defensively or o!ensively. Rather each person can
make decisions and act by consciously reconciling to the various forces that are met continuously, such as memory, knowledge, desire, hatred, greed, without having to attach attendant
qualities of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Signi&cant for political theory, to frame it in Nietzschean terms, is
Buddhism’s account of human autonomy that mediates between the polarities of nihilism and
the politics of ressentiment. To claim the self as socially constructed is not all together radical
in political theory (Moore points to echoes in Hume and Kant for instance) but on this point,
as Moore correctly argues, Buddhism’s thorough going embrace of the emptiness of ‘self ’ goes
much further than Western political thought has yet gone.
Chapter &ve treats Buddhism’s repudiation of the inherent value of politics and Moore suggests strong echoes in theories of limited citizenship such as articulated by Epicurus, "oreau
and some versions of Christianity. Contra Weber’s account of Buddhism as a withdrawal from
political life, Moore extrapolates from the Pali Canon a much more nuanced view that argues
for politics as merely a supporting actor in what is truly important, vis ‘spiritual progress’ (p.
135) or, in classical Buddhist terms, ‘enlightenment’. "us a bad social or political environment
will not halt moral progress and, in turn, a good social environment will not necessarily produce moral progress or stop people from ‘deteriorating morally’ (p. 135). Hence, our manifest
citizenship, our engagement with political institutions and processes, is limited when it comes
to the real task of life: to live ethically while minimizing human su!ering, our own and that
of others. Paraphrasing Rousseau, Moore argues that Buddhism’s wisdom – that good laws do
not necessarily make good citizens and that fundamental social change will not be led by the
political system but rather by the ‘many personal transformations of individual citizens’ (p.
137) – provides a better account of political life today, one that is more in tune with the reality
of many people.
Finally, in chapter six, Moore o!ers a dialogue on ethics. While there is no disagreement on
Buddhism’s naturalism there are disputes, referenced here by Moore, as to whether Buddhist ethics are consequentialist or virtue ethics. Moore positions his contribution in meta-ethics
and plumps for a hypothetical reading of the cannon; that claims as to the best way to live are
hypothetical, as are distinctions between right and wrong. In taking this view Moore stands
against the more normative understanding of Buddhist ethics such as articulated by Harvey
(2000) and considerable attention is given to the justi&cation for the hypothetical framework.
Moore argues for instance, if Buddhist ethical truths were indeed categorical, they would be
uniquely in its cosmology, endowed with permanence and unchangeable essence (p. 124). For
Moore, Buddhism’s naturalism renders it unique in spiritual traditions and ties it into a long
Western tradition of avoiding appeals to the supernatural or mystical, from Epicurus, to Spinoza,
to Deleuze and Guatarri and its hypothetical approach renders it particularly sympathetic to
William Connolly’s immanence politics. In the same way that immanence theorists defuse many
problems of ethical reasoning by ‘staking positive claims but acknowledging their contestability’,
Buddhist ethics also o!er such pragmatic and theoretically defensible approaches to dealing with
di!erence, though, he suggests, Buddhism here has much to learn from Western theorists such
as Connolly. A consideration of Buddhist ethics, whether hypothetical or more normative, must
inevitably confront the role of kamma (or karma), an understanding about cause and e!ect that
states that every action leads to some reaction and creates wholesome or unwholesome e!ects
for ourselves and for others. Given his source in the Pali Canon, Moore’s articulation of karma
necessarily includes, though he does not dwell on it, its relationship to reincarnation wherein
according to traditional understandings, the possibility of being reborn into great su!ering
governs our behaviour in the present. For many contemporary Buddhist thinkers and practitioners, such in the Zen tradition, the Pali Canon requires great improvisation on this aspect.2
In his conclusion, Moore makes the case that the value of a Buddhist account is that it upends
and empties out a triad of Western political thought; its attachment to the idea of the ‘self ’, its
search for normative ethics and its espousal of the inherent value if not obligatory nature of
politics and political engagement. "at Buddhist thought upends in a manner that is theoretically interesting is evidenced by ideas treated engagingly throughout the book. But as becomes
clear in the conclusion, for Moore it also a manner wholesome and wise, for as he argues in the
&nal paragraphs, there is indeed no ‘self ’; the goal of life is enlightenment whether manifest in
transcendence or implicated in the quotidian world; moral judgement is indeed hypothetical
(there are no absolutes) and each of us is free to act, think and behave accordingly guided by
making ‘our experience of our experience’ (p. 145) as pleasant as possible.
Moore makes Buddhist thought unstrange to political theory and the book will provide an
exciting, robust and imaginative entry into Buddhist political thought for both students and
established scholars. I had two caveats about the book, however, &rstly to do with its overall
narrative coherence and secondly to do with the ideational triad that gives it conceptual cohesion. It seemed to me that much of chapters two and three, though contextually relevant, was
not necessary to the overall argument and the book reads more like a collection of somewhat
disparate essays. In relation to the triad, I struggled throughout to accept the centrality of the
idea of limited citizenship as a pivotal foundation of Buddhist thought or a central organizing
principle for a Buddhist account of politics. It might help explain why Buddhists tend not to
be overly represented in political activism, or indeed why Buddhism has been criticized for its
political and social quietism, but it might not help answer the question ‘what would the Buddha
do’ (or ‘what can Buddhist theory advise us here’) in the face of any political choice or contest.
As a doctrine, non-self is core to any Buddhist account of political life, but its full understanding
beyond ontology necessitates saying something about its relationship to karuna or compassion as
the guiding principle for all actions and thoughts and without which a short-changed Buddhist
political theory could emerge. Edwards (1998) for instance has argued that compassion is the
root of all political and social dissent and is the basic ground of the radical politics that, he argues,
$ows from Buddhist thought. More philosophically, we can think about the idea of the emptiness of self as itself a shorthand way to speak of interdependence of all being and things (Loy 2008,
p. 22), the view that concomitantly posits compassion as the natural mode of being and the
supreme and enduring guide for all relationships. Compassion, thus, more than a refutation of
the inherent value of politics, might have generated a richer motherlode for the conversation.
As this book illustrates, there are many threads of thought, East and West, yet to be pursued,
to push both political theory and Buddhist thought in interesting and challenging directions.
Moore is to be congratulated for bringing these worlds together and it can be assumed (and
hoped) that he will return again to the tapestry he has woven here.
Notes
1. Japanese Buddhism, both in Asia and outside, draws also on the work of thirteenth Century writer
DŌgen, the founder of Soto Zen whose extensive writings are canonical in that tradition. See Parkes
(2013) for a take on DŌgen and environmental politics today.
2. For instance see a contrasting views of Buddhist ethics found in Aitken (1984) and Loy (2003). While
sharing the hypothetical view, these authors repudiate the necessity of a role for reincarnation in Buddhist
ethics.
----
References
Eilís Ward
About the Author
Moore is Associate Professor of Political Science at California Polytechnic State Un
---
Buddhism and political theory: a three part dialogue between two worlds
Buddhism and political theory, by Matthew Moore, New York, Oxford University
Press, 2016, 208 pp., £56.00 (hardback), ISBN 9780190465513
---
Buddhist thought has not had much of an innings in the social sciences. Or, to put it in the words of the author reviewed here, it has been neglected and by political theorists most especially.
While very rich dialogues have begun between Western psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, psychiatry and to some degree sociology, political theory has remained obtusely deaf to the contributions o!ered by Buddhist thought.
"is book addresses that neglect and steps honourably into the gap. Moore is a political theorist who has immersed himself in canonical Buddhist texts to produce a book of great value and insight: a solid foundation for a long overdue dialogue. "e book’s rationale is hinted at in the title, ‘Buddhism and (my italics) political theory’, not ‘Buddhist political theory’ or, ‘Buddhism in political theory’. It is a book intended to inform ‘political theory’ about relevant Buddhist thought, and is thus primarily a synthetic exercise. Its rationale suggests that there
is something called ‘political theory’, distinct from something called ‘Buddhism’, a structural conceit necessary to support the dialogue Moore is a#er rather than a statement of fact, for, as Moore ably shows, Buddhist thought does contain political theory and political theory (for Moore, the body of thought produced in the ‘West’ about how government works) does contain ideas that may be conceived as of Buddhist or at least with which it shares a great deal. Because,
as students of Buddhism learn rather rapidly, no one and no particular place or time ‘owns’ Buddhist thought. Moreover, rather than o!ering substantive normative propositions, Buddhist thought is principally an ontology based on statements about how things are in the world from which, depending on context and relationally, insights worthy of a sociology, a psychology or a political theory can be drawn. Hershock (2003, p. 2) argues that the application of Buddhist
thought necessitates improvisation, or a virtuosity, to make sense of its ontological foundations: indeterminacy, the ontological primacy of relationships and the ‘inexpungible co-implication of facts and values’. For him Buddhist thought o!ers an exit from the ‘incestuous’ evaluative circle
constructed as Western thought attempts to bridge its long standing body-mind duality by using the very tools produced by that duality (Hershock 2006). In rejecting the principle of the excluded middle, Buddhism proposes that ‘rationality’ and the ‘emotions’ are not absolutely distinct but, like all things, are interdependent. It is exactly because Buddhist thought is outside Western
epistemologies and ontologies that it can cut through some of the log jams of Western thought.
"is point $ags a challenge faced by Moore in attempting to make intelligible the thought of the person known as the Buddha, and its manifestation in traditional and modern Buddhist societies, to produce a meaningful dialogue with Western political thought. Buddhist thought cannot be whisked or folded into either the categorical structures of the Western mind or the foundation concepts and categories of Western political theory. "is untranslatability though is precisely the source of bounty, and Moore places some of the inherent challenges front and
centre to shape his enquiry and the book’s structure. For him we thus begin with three statements of di!erence. First is Buddhism’s repudiation of the idea of a ‘self ’, or, the idea that there is something that remains continuous and reasonably stable over time and can be understood as the basis of sel%ood or personality (p. 2). Second is Buddhism’s repudiation of politics as an inherently valuable activity. "irdly there is Buddhism’s particular take on ethics, distinct because of its (a) naturalism – it is derived from natural facts about the universe rather than supernatural sources and (b) its irrealism – its claims serve as a guide, and hence are advisory rather than obligatory. With these three distilled opening statements and through circumscribing his understanding of political theory to what he calls a ‘narrow, conservative de&nition’ (as stated above: a theory of what government does), Moore marks out the borders of the dialogue to follow. "at it inevitably excludes other rich possibilities for dialogue is unavoidable. Every dialogue needs a container and, I assume, he will return again to build on these foundations.
Some general statements about the book’s framework might be helpful here. It is written
without assuming any knowledge of Buddhism on the part of the reader. It posits Buddhism as a religious/philosophical system, derived from the teachings (known as the ‘dharma’ or the ‘damma’) of Siddhartha Gotama, or the Buddha, and its primary source is the Pali Canon, the standard collection of teachings &rst delivered orally by the Buddha, then memorised, repeatedly recited but not written down until some several hundred years a#er his death. Moore argues that this provides a shared base for all forms of Buddhism that grew outwards from India some two thousand-odd years ago, today customarily characterised with reference to three di!erent schools: "eravada (of South Asian origin), Mahayana (East Asian such as Japanese Zen or Chinese Chan) and Vajrayana (of Tibetan and Mongolian origin). Exclusive reliance on the Pali Canon prompts a question as to what then is ‘Buddhist’ thought. Each of these three schools produced additional foundation texts as Buddhism was transmitted and incorporated into widely di!erent cultures across space and time.1
In addition, many living Buddhist teachers and thinkers have been engaging directly with contemporary debates about democracy, equality, feminism and so on, and by reinterpreting the Pali Canon for a modern age. Exemplary here is Stephen Batchelor’s reading of Buddhist thought, stripped of what he calls its root in the ‘cosmology and metaphysics of ancient India’ to produce a wholly secular account (Batchelor 2015, p. 18).
Moreover, the authenticity of the Pali Canon is contested and interpretations di!er depending on which translation is being used. Moore’s argument is meretricious however given, again, the task of beginning a dialogue and echoes Western political theory’s traditional return to its own (contested) cannon again and again. "us this caveat is minor, o!ered principally to keep a door open for other accounts of Buddhism’s contribution to political theory, but still noting that a more explicit treatment of the di'culties with authenticity and foundationalism involved in reliance on the Pali Canon would have been helpful.
"e book is divided into two parts. "e &rst treats, in chapter one, the theory of government,
and relevant political statements, derived from the texts comprising the Pali Canon and their manifestation in Buddhist Asian societies, later adapted and amended as those societies and Buddhism itself modernised (chapters two and three). "is section functions to lay out the ideational and historical context. From chapter one we learn that the early Buddhist theory of government constitutes ‘another iteration of a very familiar defence of enlightened monarchy based on a primeval and unrecoverable social contract’ (p. 27). Of itself, Moore notes, not much di!erent from what is found in the Republic or in Leviathan. But what is distinct, says Moore, is the triumvirate identi&ed above: the de$ationary account of the role of politics, the naturalistic and irrealist theory of morality or ethics, and the illusory nature of self or individual identity. As the Pali Canon makes clear, Buddhism understands that radical change, social improvements, happiness and ful&lment will come from ‘the transformation of individuals’ and is only ‘modestly a!ected by politics’ (p. 30) and, critically, that such transformation necessitates an acceptance of the illusory nature of ‘self ’. Chapters two and three are taken up with a summarised and largely descriptive account of the incorporation of the dharma into both traditional and modernising political regimes. Here a driving question is the response by modernising Buddhist societies to the transformation to republican statehood and how modernisers squared o! their e!orts given the very long standing tradition of monarchy sacralisation in the Pali Canon. Moore
considers events in Tibet, Burma/Myanmar, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, "ailand and Sri Lanka
but excludes China, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia and Japan where a displacement of Buddhism predated the republican transition and also India where Buddhism had already died out. He discerns three distinct approaches (and one indeterminate) but concludes overall that political
leaders across the case studies examined both utilised Buddhist thought cynically to justify
new power structures or drew on Buddhist thought sincerely, and with textual justi&cation, to
support republicanism. Most Buddhist political writings, on his reading, also endorse versions of
democratic government but, he argues, given di!erential national, doctrinal and political points
of view, no single Buddhist political theory is discernible from this historical period. Rather
we have di!erent strains though, he suggests, all built on the same normative assumptions. It is
these, namely again the triumvirate already delineated, that he moves to in the second section
where the dialogic core of the book is hosted.
For the remainder of the book, Moore devotes a chapter to each point of the triumvirate, each
treated in turn with reference to points of convergence and divergence with Western political
theorists selected principally for degrees of substantive overlap or convergence. Beginning with
the idea of no-self, Moore turns (chapter four) in the main to Nietzsche wherein, he suggests, a
shared view is found in the latter’s theory of under souls (p. 65). Both Nietzsche and the Buddha
deny the existence of a metaphysical self and argue instead that what we as humans think of as
our self is in fact ‘unstable multiplicities of experiences’ (p. 80). However, argues Moore, beyond
this is divergence. Nietzsche’s medicine was to propose egoic construction while the Buddha’s
was quite the opposite. In Buddhism, our task is to let go entirely of our sense of ‘self ’ or the
idea that there is some permanent, stable entity at the centre of our being. We can think instead
of the self as a ‘space, a forum, in which competing forces both external and internal interact’
(p. 142), a state of a!airs that potentially liberates each person from the idea that there is some
agenda, or determinate interest, to pursue defensively or o!ensively. Rather each person can
make decisions and act by consciously reconciling to the various forces that are met continuously, such as memory, knowledge, desire, hatred, greed, without having to attach attendant
qualities of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Signi&cant for political theory, to frame it in Nietzschean terms, is
Buddhism’s account of human autonomy that mediates between the polarities of nihilism and
the politics of ressentiment. To claim the self as socially constructed is not all together radical
in political theory (Moore points to echoes in Hume and Kant for instance) but on this point,
as Moore correctly argues, Buddhism’s thorough going embrace of the emptiness of ‘self ’ goes
much further than Western political thought has yet gone.
Chapter &ve treats Buddhism’s repudiation of the inherent value of politics and Moore suggests strong echoes in theories of limited citizenship such as articulated by Epicurus, "oreau
and some versions of Christianity. Contra Weber’s account of Buddhism as a withdrawal from
political life, Moore extrapolates from the Pali Canon a much more nuanced view that argues
for politics as merely a supporting actor in what is truly important, vis ‘spiritual progress’ (p.
135) or, in classical Buddhist terms, ‘enlightenment’. "us a bad social or political environment
will not halt moral progress and, in turn, a good social environment will not necessarily produce moral progress or stop people from ‘deteriorating morally’ (p. 135). Hence, our manifest
citizenship, our engagement with political institutions and processes, is limited when it comes
to the real task of life: to live ethically while minimizing human su!ering, our own and that
of others. Paraphrasing Rousseau, Moore argues that Buddhism’s wisdom – that good laws do
not necessarily make good citizens and that fundamental social change will not be led by the
political system but rather by the ‘many personal transformations of individual citizens’ (p.
137) – provides a better account of political life today, one that is more in tune with the reality
of many people.
Finally, in chapter six, Moore o!ers a dialogue on ethics. While there is no disagreement on
Buddhism’s naturalism there are disputes, referenced here by Moore, as to whether Buddhist ethics are consequentialist or virtue ethics. Moore positions his contribution in meta-ethics
and plumps for a hypothetical reading of the cannon; that claims as to the best way to live are
hypothetical, as are distinctions between right and wrong. In taking this view Moore stands
against the more normative understanding of Buddhist ethics such as articulated by Harvey
(2000) and considerable attention is given to the justi&cation for the hypothetical framework.
Moore argues for instance, if Buddhist ethical truths were indeed categorical, they would be
uniquely in its cosmology, endowed with permanence and unchangeable essence (p. 124). For
Moore, Buddhism’s naturalism renders it unique in spiritual traditions and ties it into a long
Western tradition of avoiding appeals to the supernatural or mystical, from Epicurus, to Spinoza,
to Deleuze and Guatarri and its hypothetical approach renders it particularly sympathetic to
William Connolly’s immanence politics. In the same way that immanence theorists defuse many
problems of ethical reasoning by ‘staking positive claims but acknowledging their contestability’,
Buddhist ethics also o!er such pragmatic and theoretically defensible approaches to dealing with
di!erence, though, he suggests, Buddhism here has much to learn from Western theorists such
as Connolly. A consideration of Buddhist ethics, whether hypothetical or more normative, must
inevitably confront the role of kamma (or karma), an understanding about cause and e!ect that
states that every action leads to some reaction and creates wholesome or unwholesome e!ects
for ourselves and for others. Given his source in the Pali Canon, Moore’s articulation of karma
necessarily includes, though he does not dwell on it, its relationship to reincarnation wherein
according to traditional understandings, the possibility of being reborn into great su!ering
governs our behaviour in the present. For many contemporary Buddhist thinkers and practitioners, such in the Zen tradition, the Pali Canon requires great improvisation on this aspect.2
In his conclusion, Moore makes the case that the value of a Buddhist account is that it upends
and empties out a triad of Western political thought; its attachment to the idea of the ‘self ’, its
search for normative ethics and its espousal of the inherent value if not obligatory nature of
politics and political engagement. "at Buddhist thought upends in a manner that is theoretically interesting is evidenced by ideas treated engagingly throughout the book. But as becomes
clear in the conclusion, for Moore it also a manner wholesome and wise, for as he argues in the
&nal paragraphs, there is indeed no ‘self ’; the goal of life is enlightenment whether manifest in
transcendence or implicated in the quotidian world; moral judgement is indeed hypothetical
(there are no absolutes) and each of us is free to act, think and behave accordingly guided by
making ‘our experience of our experience’ (p. 145) as pleasant as possible.
Moore makes Buddhist thought unstrange to political theory and the book will provide an
exciting, robust and imaginative entry into Buddhist political thought for both students and
established scholars. I had two caveats about the book, however, &rstly to do with its overall
narrative coherence and secondly to do with the ideational triad that gives it conceptual cohesion. It seemed to me that much of chapters two and three, though contextually relevant, was
not necessary to the overall argument and the book reads more like a collection of somewhat
disparate essays. In relation to the triad, I struggled throughout to accept the centrality of the
idea of limited citizenship as a pivotal foundation of Buddhist thought or a central organizing
principle for a Buddhist account of politics. It might help explain why Buddhists tend not to
be overly represented in political activism, or indeed why Buddhism has been criticized for its
political and social quietism, but it might not help answer the question ‘what would the Buddha
do’ (or ‘what can Buddhist theory advise us here’) in the face of any political choice or contest.
As a doctrine, non-self is core to any Buddhist account of political life, but its full understanding
beyond ontology necessitates saying something about its relationship to karuna or compassion as
the guiding principle for all actions and thoughts and without which a short-changed Buddhist
political theory could emerge. Edwards (1998) for instance has argued that compassion is the
root of all political and social dissent and is the basic ground of the radical politics that, he argues,
$ows from Buddhist thought. More philosophically, we can think about the idea of the emptiness of self as itself a shorthand way to speak of interdependence of all being and things (Loy 2008,
p. 22), the view that concomitantly posits compassion as the natural mode of being and the
supreme and enduring guide for all relationships. Compassion, thus, more than a refutation of
the inherent value of politics, might have generated a richer motherlode for the conversation.
As this book illustrates, there are many threads of thought, East and West, yet to be pursued,
to push both political theory and Buddhist thought in interesting and challenging directions.
Moore is to be congratulated for bringing these worlds together and it can be assumed (and
hoped) that he will return again to the tapestry he has woven here.
Notes
1. Japanese Buddhism, both in Asia and outside, draws also on the work of thirteenth Century writer
DŌgen, the founder of Soto Zen whose extensive writings are canonical in that tradition. See Parkes
(2013) for a take on DŌgen and environmental politics today.
2. For instance see a contrasting views of Buddhist ethics found in Aitken (1984) and Loy (2003). While
sharing the hypothetical view, these authors repudiate the necessity of a role for reincarnation in Buddhist
ethics.
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References
- Aitken, R., 1984. !e mind of clover: essays in Zen Buddhist ethics. New York: North Point Press.
- Batchelor, S., 2015. A"er Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Edwards, D., 1998. !e compassionate revolution: radical politics and Buddhism. Dartington: Green Books.
- Harvey, P., 2000. An introduction to Buddhist ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Hershock, P., 2003. Renegade emotion: Buddhist precedents for returning rationality to the heart. Philosophy East and West, 53 (2), 251–270.
- Hershock, Peter, 2006. Buddhism in the public sphere: reorienting global Interdependence. London and New York: Routledge.
- Loy, D., 2003. !e great awakening: A Buddhist social theory. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications.
- Loy, D., 2008. Money, Sex, War, Karma. Somerville: Wisdom Publications.
- Parkes, G., 2013. Kukai and DŌgen as exemplars of ecological engagement. Journal of Japanese Philosophy, 1, 85–110.
Eilís Ward
