Steven M. Emmanuel is Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Susan S. Goode School of Arts and Humanities at Virginia Wesleyan University. He is a recipient of the SCHEV Outstanding Faculty Award, Virginia Wesleyan’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the Batten Distinguished Scholar Award, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace and Justice Award. His research and teaching interests lie mainly in the history of philosophy, with a special focus on comparative moral, political, and religious thought. His most recent book, Philosophy’s Big Questions, features essays that draw on comparative and cross-cultural perspectives to address some of philosophy’s most enduring questions. By engaging with Buddhist perspectives, they challenge our thinking in fundamental ways and offer new conceptual tools and insights for not only understanding the world, but also knowing how to live in it.
What is the work about?
The essays in this book look to the seminal figures and texts of the Buddhist tradition for fresh insight into some of philosophy’s big questions about happiness and the good life, the nature and scope of human knowledge, the ultimate structure of reality, the nature of consciousness, the relation between causality and free will, the pervasiveness of human suffering, and the conditions for a just and flourishing society.
The contributors are all trained in the Western tradition, but have a deep grounding in Buddhist philosophical literature. Although the approach they take is comparative, it is not merely descriptive. Each discussion is set up in a way that creates a genuine cross-cultural dialogue by engaging Buddhist thinkers on their own terms. One of the benefits of this approach is that it challenges us to take a critical look at some central ideas, theories, and assumptions underlying Western thought—to see that there are other conceptual and methodological strategies for thinking about philosophical problems, and that these may produce new and unexpected kinds of questions and answers. The engagement with Buddhist thought also reminds us that philosophy has a practical—as well as a theoretical—aim: to discover and live the best life possible for a human being. Comparing the way Buddhist and Western thinkers have wrestled with the big questions is therefore more than just an intellectual exercise; it is an opportunity to gain new conceptual tools, methods, and insights that we can use in our own pursuit of a good and happy life.
What topics are discussed in the work, and why are they important to discuss?
The work is divided into eight chapters under the following headings:
- How Should We Live?
- What is Knowledge?
- Does Reality Have a Ground?
- Can Consciousness Be Explained?
- Is Anything We Do Really Up to Us?
- Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?
- How Much is Enough?
- What Do We Owe Future Generations?
It is important to note that these questions are intended to indicate the general topic or philosophical territory under discussion. This allows the contributors the freedom to show where and how the philosophical interests of Buddhist and Western thinkers intersect and inform each other, while paying close attention to the distinctive ways in which they frame and answer the big questions.
The topics were chosen with several considerations in mind. First, I wanted to keep the focus on philosophy’s most basic questions. Second, in order to enhance the usefulness of the book for teaching purposes, I wanted to include topics that students would find appealing and relevant. Finally, in terms of coverage, I wanted to include some topics that haven’t received as much attention in the secondary literature as they deserve. Thus, whereas most collections on Buddhist philosophy tend to focus heavily on philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics, the present work gives ample attention to concerns related to ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion.
To ask about the importance of discussing these questions is really to ask about the value of philosophy itself. There are, of course, many people (including some of our colleagues and students in other disciplines) who doubt the value of philosophy on the grounds that it produces very little in the way of useful results. This perception is reinforced by the fact that philosophers continue to debate many of the same questions that have been around since ancient times. However, as Bertrand Russell observed, the value of philosophy doesn’t depend on producing definite or settled answers to its questions. Rather, philosophy is valuable because of the effects that it has on the minds and lives of those who study it. As Russell put it, the kind of knowledge that philosophy seeks “results from a critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs.” One of the benefits of this critical activity is that it liberates us from the tyranny of dogmatism and prejudice. Moreover, by instilling in us a greater awareness of the uncertainty and partiality that underlies our claims to know things, philosophy fosters an intellectual humility which, from ancient times to the present, has been regarded as a mark of wisdom.
Although philosophy diminishes our sense of certainty about things, this doesn’t mean that it fails to make any progress toward answering the big questions. On the contrary, philosophy expands and clarifies our understanding of what is possible. Even though we may never settle these questions once and for all, Russell insisted that it is part of the business of philosophy to take them up with seriousness and rigor—to examine all the different ways in which earlier philosophers have approached them; to scrutinize the various answers which have been proposed; to explore new ways of thinking about them; and perhaps most important of all, to keep alive that sense of wonder and curiosity which is “apt to be killed by confining ourselves to definitely ascertainable knowledge.”
How does this work fit in with your larger research project?
Philosophy’s Big Questions builds on two earlier works: A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy (2013) and Buddhist Philosophy: A Comparative Approach (2018). Both volumes were inspired by a desire to contribute to the project of globalizing the philosophy curriculum. The first was aimed at providing students and specialists with a comprehensive overview of the Buddhist tradition, highlighting its contributions to all the major branches of philosophical inquiry. The second volume focused on points of convergence between the two traditions, with a view to showing how a Buddhist perspective could be integrated into a wide variety of philosophy courses.
In the same spirit, Philosophy’s Big Questions seeks to expand our philosophical horizons by exploring new possibilities for thinking about old questions. While many of the essays make original and important contributions to the contemporary debate, the content and structure of the volume also make it ideally suitable for use as a cross-cultural introduction to philosophy. There are two features of the work that enhance its value for classroom use. For readers who are unfamiliar with the Buddhist tradition, Stephen Laumakis’s opening chapter (How Should We Live?) provides some historical context, as well as a general overview of the Buddha’s core teachings. There is also a section at the back of the volume (For Further Reading and Study) that features a select bibliography, as well as a curated list of online resources, including digital archives of original texts, translations, commentaries, study aids, glossaries, and online dictionaries.
Which of your insights or conclusions do you find most exciting?
While all the essays in the volume succeed in advancing the conversation about their questions, they do so in different and sometimes quite surprising ways. To mention just a few examples:
In Chapter 3 (Does Reality Have a Ground?), Jan Westerhoff articulates and defends a Madhyamaka Buddhist theory of non-foundationalism that has no significant parallel in Western metaphysics.
In Chapter 4 (Can Consciousness Be Explained?), Dan Arnold uses the arguments of prominent Yogācāra Buddhist philosophers to derive a more conceptually basic version of the “hard problem” in philosophy of mind—one that doesn’t depend on the assumption that consciousness is a physical phenomenon. The upshot of Arnold’s discussion is that the “hard problem” may be even harder than it seems.
In Chapter 6 (Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?), Amber Carpenter argues that the early Buddhist understanding of suffering challenges a core presupposition underlying the “problem of evil” in both its theistic and non-theistic forms, namely that suffering must in some sense be deserved. From a Buddhist perspective, the concepts of guilt and innocence, blame and desert not only fail to provide an adequate explanation for suffering, but are symptomatic of the kind of confusion that gives rise to suffering in the first place.
How do you hope readers will respond?
My hope is that this volume will not only encourage readers to learn more about the Buddhist philosophical tradition, but that it will convince them of the value of diversifying the philosophy curriculum. After all, if we are truly interested in making progress toward answering the big questions, then we should be open to exploring new and different ways of investigating them. We need all the insight we can get. Allowing diverse voices and cultural perspectives to enter the conversation enriches our philosophical imagination and expands the possibilities for thought. Indeed, as the essays in this volume clearly demonstrate, a rigorous and respectful engagement with thinkers in other traditions can produce the very kinds of insights that we need in order to advance our understanding of the world and our place in it.
Steven M. Emmanuel
Steven M. Emmanuel is Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Susan S. Goode School of Arts and Humanities at Virginia Wesleyan University. His research and teaching interests lie mainly in the history of philosophy, with a special focus on comparative moral, political, and religious thought.
Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen is the APA Blog's Diversity and Inclusion Editor and Research Editor. She graduated from the London School of Economics with an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy in 2023 and currently works in strategic communications. Her philosophical interests include conceptual engineering, normative ethics, philosophy of technology, and how to live a good life.
Emmanuel writes…
“There are, of course, many people (including some of our colleagues and students in other disciplines) who doubt the value of philosophy on the grounds that it produces very little in the way of useful results.”
Such doubts seem very much in the spirit of philosophy. In addition, the doubts seem largely valid, but it is not necessary that this be so. Here’s an example…
While the question “what is knowledge?” would certainly seem to qualify as a classic topic of philosophy, that question seems rather less practical than an examination of our relationship with knowledge, give that this relationship forms the foundation of our modern science driven culture, and is the fundamental source of many of the threats our culture faces.
“One of the benefits of this critical activity is that it liberates us from the tyranny of dogmatism and prejudice.”
I would agree that perhaps the most important function philosophers can provide to society is to examine all forms of the group consensus in search of unexamined assumptions which may be in error.
The challenge I see here is that once one turns philosophy in to a business, one can no longer afford to challenge the group consensus to a degree the group will perceive as a threat. Presenting an effective challenge to the group consensus is a path to unpopularity, which is bad for business.
Although my knowledge of Buddhism is quite modest, my impression is that at it’s best it may question an assumption that what we’re really looking for as human beings can be found in the realm of thought. If true, that would obviously present a challenge to the field of philosophy.
If one should define the best philosophy as one that is mostly closely aligned with the nature of reality, it can be helpful to observe that the overwhelming vast majority of reality at every scale is that which we typically label as being nothing.
Put another way, it is the space between our words that gives them their meaning.
It is good to see some evidence of concern for the big questions of philosophy, rather than the McDonaldized, puny concerns which dominates so much of modern philosophical discourse. McDonaldized concerns constitute a bifurcation of nature dividing the human race into different categories and minute subdivisions. Questions of ultimate concern unite mankind. What is knowledge? How should I live? Can consciousness be explained? These queries unite us! Regardless of whether you are white, African, Arab, Native American or any other ethnicity, these are the ultimate concerns of all men and women or at least should be. McDonaldized philosophy and the supposed goddess of diversity divides us and will continue to divide us if left unchallenged. The ultimate questions in this book unite us in in a common quest. Different traditions may have diverse answers to these questions, yet the ultimate consequence is mostly positive and certainly better than the alternative.