{"id":21126,"date":"2019-03-18T11:23:54","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T15:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=21126"},"modified":"2024-08-19T14:35:15","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T18:35:15","slug":"how-to-think-about-other-peoples-interests-rawls-buddhism-and-empathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=21126","title":{"rendered":"how to think about other people’s interests: Rawls, Buddhism, and empathy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last week, my colleague Erin Kelly and I taught excerpts from John Rawls\u2019 Theory of Justice <\/em>along with Emily McRae\u2019s chapter, \u201cEmpathy, Compassion, and ‘Exchanging Self and Other’ in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism,\u201d from the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy<\/em>. I then attended a conference on empathy.<\/a> As a result, I\u2019ve been thinking about Rawls\u2019 famous thought-experiment, Buddhist exercises for moral improvement–and how empathy relates to both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rawls argues that to know\nwhat justice demands, you should collect all the relevant available information\nabout how the society in general works, but you should then imagine that you\ndon\u2019t know your own position in the society and ask what rules and institutions\nyou would favor–in your own interest–under this \u201cveil of ignorance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make that method seem intuitive, imagine that I am considering (in the light of last week\u2019s scandalous news about college admissions) whether it is desirable for such institutions as Yale University to exist. I should try to understand how Yale functions, today and in the past, in the broader society. But I should try not to be influenced by the fact that I was admitted to Yale and graduated from there. I should ask whether the existence of Yale would be a good thing if I did not know whether I would ever get anywhere near it. Thus general knowledge plus self-interest plus ignorance about my own circumstance equals justice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We could think of this thought-experiment as a way of modeling <\/em>justice. Just as we test a model of a new airplane in a wind tunnel, so we test a theory of justice by using Rawls\u2019 veil of ignorance, because that will yield the same results as justice itself would yield if we could know directly what justice says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now compare Rawls’ method to those developed in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. McRae begins her chapter: “Imagine yourself as an old yak \u2026 your back weighed down with a load far too heavy, a rope pulling you by the nostrils, your flanks whipped, your ribs bruised by the stirrups.” She is quoting the nineteenth-century Tibetan master Parrul Rinpoche, who offers it as an exercise in empathy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

McRae defines bodhicitta<\/em> as a \u201cradically altruistic moral orientation that centrally involves cultivating oneself in order to be the kind of person who can reliably, effectively, and wisely benefit others\u2026 . The cultivation involved in becoming a person with bodhicitta<\/em>–a bodhisattva — \u2026 includes developing virtues such as patience, generosity, and wisdom, and moral skills such as mindfulness, moral reasoning, responsiveness, and, arguably, empathy. \u2026 .Empathy practices [such as imagining that you are a yak] are traditionally presented in the context of cultivating bodhicitta<\/em>, since empathy triggers both virtuous emotionality (through the Four Immeasurable Qualities practices) and the realization of no-self (through exchanging self and other practices), both of which are necessary for bodhicitta<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some differences:<\/p>\n\n\n\n