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AND BUDDHISM
1 Hazel Barnes, An Existentialist Ethics (New York: Alfred Knopf, I967) , p. ~o7I.
SELF-RESPONSIBILITY IN EXISTENTIALISM AND BUDDHISM 81
I
Every thinker is "morally responsible for the use he makes of his
existence," Kierkegaard writes ~. This position is not peculiar to the
Danish philosopher; it is a doctrine shared by all existential phi-
losophers. Sartre, perhaps more than anyone else, has articulated
eloquently and popularly this notion of self-responsibility.
Man alone, maintains Sartre, is responsible for making himself
what he is. True, he is born into the world not of his making nor
was he ever consulted on the matter, but the fact that counts is that
from the moment man surges into the world, he assumes the respon-
sibility for perpetuating that existence and all its subsequent con-
duct. So the "first principle of existentialism" is that
man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself . . . .
Thus the first effect of existentialism is that it puts everyman
in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire
responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own
shoulders?
These remarks clearly embody a philosophy which takes the
business of existing with an ultimate sense of seriousness and con-
cern. Contrary to what some critics claim, existential philosophy
does not advocate irresponsible living; it urges man to assume the
total responsibility for the way he lives, the lifestyle he chooses. And,
his being is determined by how he exists. Left without any excuse, he
becomes the incontestable author of his individual deeds. In fact,
Sartre goes so far as to say that nothing can happen to a man with-
out his consenting to it. So a drunkard is a drunkard because he
freely chooses the life of a drunkard; so also, presumably, is a drug
addict.
This existentialist doctrine of responsibility, made popular by
Sartre, is not new. It is really an old Eastern wine put in a new
2 Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. D. F. Swenson & W. Lowrie (Prince-
ton: Princeton Univ. Press, i94i), p. 3o7, footnote.
3 Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism in Walter K a u f m a n n (ed.), Existentialism from
Dostoevsky to Sartre (Cleveland: Meridian Books, I956), p. 291.
82 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Milindapanha in W. Theodore de Bary (ed.), Buddhist Tradition in India, China, and oTapan
(New York: Random House, t969) , p. 25.
SELF-RESPONSIBILITY IN EXISTENTIALISM AND BUDDHISM 83
II
The doctrine of karma in Buddhism is problematic; its empirical
status is far from established. Professor Edward Conze, for example,
admits that "the factual evidence for karma and r e b i r t h . . , is
scientifically inconclusive" and that the doctrine contains
two fairly unverifiable statements; it claims (I) that behind
the natural causality which links events in the world of sense
there are other, invisible, chains of moral causality which
ensures that all good acts are rewarded, all bad actions
punished; and (2) that this chain of moral sequences is not
interrupted by death, but continues from one life to another. 1~
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, tr. Hazel Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library,
I956), P. 555.
s Ibid., p. 554-
9 C. H. Hamilton (ed.), Buddhism: Selectionsfrom Buddhist Literature (Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1952), pp. 64-65.
,0 Conze, Buddhist Thought in india (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, I967) , p. 50.
SELF-RESPONSIBILITY IN EXISTENTIALISM AND BUDDHISM 85
I n the same lecture just referred to, Sartre himself actually refuses
to choose for another. H e tells the story of one of his students who
came to ask him d u r i n g the G e r m a n o c c u p a t i o n of F r a n c e w h e t h e r
he should go to E n g l a n d to join the Free F r e n c h Forces or to stay
h o m e to care for his n e e d y mother. Sartre's counsel was: "'You are
free, therefore choose - that is to say, invent. ''19 This advice, even if
it sounds cruelly unhelpful to the confused and perplexed student,
is perfectly consistent with the existentialist m o r a l principle of self-
choice.
O n the one h a n d , w h e n we choose we are supposed to choose also
for all men, and on the other, Sartre was not willing to choose for
his student. This a p p a r e n t inconsistency is resolved by Sartre him-
self in the following passage:
half of the sentence tells us the real reason for making the un-
Sartrean statement. The notion of an individual "deciding for the
whole of mankind" is introduced for the purposes of dramatizing,
exaggerating the awesome weight of responsibility that follows every
act, every choice that an individual makes. In order to induce, to
generate in an individual a feeling of urgency and total responsibi-
lity for his conduct, Sartre resorts to a fiction of acting for all man-
kind. He is asking us to act "as if" we are acting for the whole h u m a n
race and that it is the destiny of mankind itself which is at stake in
that choice rather than merely that of the individual himself. It
takes such an ethical fiction to impregnate the situation with a sense
of ultimate seriousness.
The interpretation herein proposed is fully consistent with the
existentialist ethics of self-choice and self-responsibility. Professor
Alfred Stern has offered us a similar interpretation of Sartre's ethics.
He writes:
Considered not as a metaphysical reality but as an ethical
"as if", Sartre's concept of freedom certainly could fulfil its
whole moral mission by helping to prevent biological and
sociological determinism from becoming a pretext for moral
laziness and fatalism. The drunkard has to act "as if" he
were free to become a sober man, although alcoholism runs
in his f a m i l y . . .
The same is true of r e s p o n s i b i l i t y . . . As soon as we consider
the Sartre-Dostoyevsky idea - everybody is responsible for
everything to everybody - not as a metaphysical principle
but as an ethical fiction, as a moral "as if," we can harvest all
its benefits for ethics. I f we had said to a French citizen du-
ring the German occupation that he "is" responsible for the
war Hitler had started, he would have rejected this accusa-
tion as false. But if we had said to him that he ought to act
"as if" he were responsible for the war, our suggestion
might have enhanced his sense of responsibility31
In her attempt to drive a wedge between the existentialist and
Buddhist ethics, Hazel Barnes unwittingly brings the two closer
along the lines of interpretation suggested in this paper, when she
~1 Stern, Sartre: His Philosophy and Existential Psychoanalysis, and ed. (New York: Delta
Book, ~967), pp. 345-46.
SELF-RESPONSIBILITY IN EXISTENTIALISM AND BUDDHISM 89
3o I b i d . , p. 346.
31 I b i d . , p. 353; see also pp. 347, 348, 35 TM
32 I b i d . , p. 352.