Hume as a Western Mādhyamika: The Case from Ethics

Abstract

There are obvious homologies between Hume’s metaphysics and the commitments of Madhyamaka Buddhism, to be found in his treatment of personal identity, the status of the external world and causality. But few have noticed that these homologies extend to ethics. In this essay I argue that Hume’s account of the relation between the metaphysics of the person and ethics, as well as his account of the basis of ethics in natural sympathy (extended through the power of the moral imagination to transform moral perception), also mirror Madhyamaka theory. Comparisons are drawn with the Madhyamaka ethical reflections of Santideva in particular. I do not rest my case on the claim that Hume was indirectly influenced by Buddhist ideas (as has been claimed by others recently, in connection with French intermediaries of the early eighteenth century). In any case, Hume is – in effect – a Mādhyamika through and through.