Letting go of our Western fictions

Over the years, I have found that hardly anyone becomes a successful Buddhist realizing even for a split second pure Mind without first letting go of their belief in Western ‘truth and knowledge’, which includes science (especially mathematics).  In one word, it is all a grand ‘fiction’—but a useful and important fiction—but a fiction nevertheless!  (This is why I have done a few blogs on Stephen Batchelor.  He is one of those purblind Western Buddhists who can’t see through the West’s fictional curtain; who believes Buddhism needs to be Westernized!)

A philosopher I have only recently discovered; one who can be of great value in helping Western Buddhists dump the West’s grand fictions is the German philosopher Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933).  His important work is entitled, The Philosophy of ‘As if’: A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind (1925).  I have copied the following section from Fears and Symbols: An Introduction to the Study of Western Civilization (2001) by Elemér Hankiss.  It will help the reader of this blog to get a good grasp on where Vaihinger is coming from.

According to Vaihinger, fictions are constructs of the human mind and imagination: concepts, classifications, relationships, logical devices, and 'laws'.  They are ideas which have no counterpart in reality, but which enable us to deal with it better than we otherwise could (Ansbacher and Ansbacher, 1956, 77).  They are tools, catalysts, guideposts, which help us orient ourselves and survive in this world.  They constitute a scaffolding around an unknown reality.  They must be discarded "if no longer needed", that is, after they have helped us to handle—and not necessarily understand—the piece of reality in question.  They are not 'true' in the sense of 'adequately representing reality'.  They misrepresent reality, they are 'errors', but "expedient errors...of great practical value", without which we could not control reality (Ansbacher and Ansbacher, 1956, 83; Vaihinger, 1924, 108, 145).

From among the many examples analyzed by Vaihinger, let me mention the lines of longitude and latitude: they do not exist in reality but are indispensable instruments for navigation.  The parts of the day, 'morning' and 'evening', or the very concept of time as we use it, not to mention our everyday concept of space, are constructs without which we could barely have survived.  Zero-degree centigrade is also a useful but artificial construct, just as the rules of logic, the juristic fiction of laws, utopias, or works of art are fictions, but useful fictions.  Myths and religions, the concept of the 'soul' in psychology, and the concept of human freedom in philosophy are, according to Vaihinger, fictions, but also indispensable preconditions of moral responsibility and social coexistence (Vaihinger, 1924, xiii, 28, 147).

Vaihinger states that fictions appeared relatively late in the history of European thought because their existence implied "an emancipation from immediate perceptions and from the belief that thought is identical with reality".  Plato recognized the fictional character of myths, and Aristotle that of some mathematical abstractions.  In scholastic philosophy, the nominalist school emphasized the fictional character of ideas.  But "fictions were first extensively employed from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, particularly in the fields of mathematics, physics, sociology and philosophy" (1924, xvi, 135–42, 145, 153)" (pp. 277–278).

One thing that Buddhism does is it helps us to get off the Western “scaffolding around an unknown reality” so that we might be able to set foot on this unknown reality or Suchness—a reality scaffold-free.  For those Buddhists who are afraid to let go of the Western scaffolding; who fight with those of us trying to pry their fingers loose, I only have this to say, “Your fears are unnecessary.”

 

Comments

[K Grey]

Yes, knowledge is not Wisdom. This is neither a modern, nor Western, concern alone - nor is it a problem. It's just an aspect of what is. Vital to be aware of the 'empty' nature of ideas and beliefs, so keep spreadin' the word.

[Kojizen]

I don't read The Zennist as messaging ignore science. It is more like "realize the limits of science. It provides useful fictions."

[Bob Morris]

I think the converse may (also?) be true: the ultimately mysterious nature of "physical reality" is being gradually revealed by western science. (Scientists know that theory in itself is artifice, read Feynman's Lectures on Physics.)

Ignoring science is irresponsible.