Ethics of atomism – Democritus, Vasubandhu, and the skepticism that wasn’t

1.1. Democritus’ epistemology

Democritean atomism thus makes a strong and clear appearance-reality distinction, highlighted in the perhaps most oft-repeated idea associated with Democritus: “By opinion sweet, by opinion bitter, by opinion hot, by opinion cold, by opinion colour; but in reality atoms and void” (Sextus, adv. Math VII.136, DK68B9, my trans.).Footnote¹⁴

The word nomōi here is usually translated as ‘by convention’, picking up the meaning of the noun, nomos, of ‘custom’. But Democritus cannot mean this in the sense of ‘consensus’, since his point is precisely the non-consensus on perceptible qualities;Footnote¹⁵ and there is evidence that he himself glossed nomōi in this context with nomisti, perhaps picking up the verbal root nomizein – to think, judge or opine.Footnote¹⁶ Indeed Sextus introduces the Democritean dictum by describing sensations as being ‘kata doxan’ (according to judgement/opinion) as opposed to ‘kata alētheian’ (according to truth), and his elaboration of the meaning of nomōi elsewhere is not by reference to social conventions, but rather “sensibles are considered [νομίζϵται] and judged [δοξάζϵται] to exist” (adv. Math VII.135). So the emphasis in the contrast is on what is merely thought, believed or judged – or indeed exists only by being so judged – as opposed to what really is.

Thus, as the connotations of ‘cognition’ in nomōi as well as the selection of things that are nomōi suggest, Democritus will make his appearance-reality distinction epistemologically, according to the route by which our cognitions come to us. What is merely considered so is whatever comes to us through a dubious route; whatever is in fact so is what comes to us through a more reliable source. Sextus’ formulation captures this epistemological distinction driving the metaphysical view.

This distinction between intellect and senses is familiar in the European tradition; Plato adopts and develops it extensively.Footnote¹⁸ It is so familiar as to seem unproblematic, and yet the problems it raises are themselves a familiar part of the European tradition. Of the two truth-apt experiences available to us, sensation (αἴσθησις), as opposed to reasoning or intellect, is unreliable and idiosyncratic. It gives us awareness only of our own bodily changes, how we are affected by things; it can tell us nothing of the nature of things themselves (Sextus adv. Math. VII.137 glosses it this way). Theophrastus plausibly suggests (de Sens 63–64; DK 68A135) that Protagorean-type concerns underlie Democritus’ suspicion of sensation: Sensible particulars, for Democritus, are not in reality because different creatures experience things differently.

Thus, on Democritus’ view no less than on Parmenides’, the world is not as we experience it. There are no middle-sized dry goods – it took Aristotle to try to salvage that phenomenon; there are only unchanging, indivisibles of varying shapes and sizes, moving in space so that position and orientation and thereby relations to one another vary over time, thus creating the appearance for us as of middle-sized dry goods, and as of living organisms growing and reproducing. All sensible properties are not properties of these bodies, but are rather ways that we are affected by the size and shape, motion, position, and relations of these indivisible bodies.

1.2. Democritus’ ethics

If there were to be an ethics associated with this form of atomism, it would likely take a Platonic stripe, in virtue of this fundamental mistrust of the senses as authoritative in preference to reason.Footnote¹⁹ “Faring well and poorly belongs to the soul” (DK 68B170-71 = Stob. 2, 7, 3i), and it is consistently ascribed to wisdom, intelligence or calculation (e.g. DK 68B197; see also DK68B2, B160), while all sorts of vice is ascribed to and described as failures of intelligence (e.g. DK 68B160, 199–201). And indeed, among the (copious and anodyne) ethical fragments of Democritus, we find, for instance

Of course, this is very much not the direction in which Epicurus took Democritus’ thought, and there are certainly materials enough in the disparate fragments for the ethical direction Epicurus did take.Footnote²² But then notice crucially that Epicurus inverts Democritus’ epistemology, too, legitimizing the offspring of sense-experience at the expense of reason, and thus validating an affective euthymia over other aspects of Democritus’ ethical thought.

While Democritus’ ethics is far from univocal, the Platonising strand within it is, I think, no accident, but rather is closely related to Democritus’ epistemic way of making the appearance-reality distinction, according to our mode of access. For it is by picking up this distinction that Plato infamously ends up committed to a real reality not at all atomist. He sees – as perhaps Democritus did not – that once the senses are called into question, no physical properties are safe. Weight, solidity (impassivity), shape, and size are no more immune from whatever infection ‘being known via the senses’ carries than are colour or heat. But it was in no way Democritus’ intention to go the way of Platonism – his physicalist atomism was meant to save natural change from Parmenidean onslaught, not to redeem a whole world of changeless, non-sensible Parmenidean ‘ones’.

There is a related difficulty. The more properties that fall under the dubious, sensible sort, the more obscure the supposedly pure sort of cognition becomes. The only pure cognition will be that which operates entirely independently of experience. And whatever that tells us – if anything at all – it will tell us nothing about, well, experience. The impure cognition, for its part, tells us only about experiences, and not the things experienced. So any access to ordinary things – cats and cows and carbuncles – seems ruled out entirely: they cannot be known, because they do not really exist (only atoms and void really exist); nor can they be perceived by sense-perception, for that is only of our affects, and a cat is not an affect.Footnote²³

Quite likely Democritus anticipates something of this, for he is recorded fairly early on as having a positively dismal view of our possibilities for attaining knowledge at all. “Which of them [the sense-impressions] are true or false is unclear, for these are no more true than those, but of equal standing”, writes Aristotle, in Metaphysics Γ5 (1009b7). “This is why Democritus, at any rate, says that either nothing is true, or it is unclear to us”. The difficulty seems to be that intelligence has no canon or criterion for adjudicating one sense-impression reliable and another not. The only resources intelligence could appeal to would be those provided by sensation itself – and these are deemed congenitally unreliable. And yet, “Wretched mind, do you take your assurances from us and then overthrow us? Our overthrow is your downfall” (KRS 552).Footnote²⁴ It is hardly any wonder, then, that Democritus was also taken by some in antiquity for a skeptic.Footnote²⁵ Diogenes Laertius tells us Pyrrho thought highly of him; and apparently his own student, Metrodorus, became a skeptic.

Small wonder too that Sextus Empiricus later cheerfully presses Democritus into service in the skeptic cause.Footnote²⁶ But as he also drily observes, no one who says “in reality atoms and void” – or “in reality” anything at all – can be a skeptic (M. 1, OP I.xxx). But since it is hard to see what could warrant the assertion of atomism except the need to explain the appearance of change – that is, experienced phenomena – the precipice of skepticism is near at hand.Footnote²⁷ I call skepticism a ‘precipice’ in Democritus’ case because there is no hint that he locates the source of our unhappiness in our indecision or all-too-dogmatic judgements, nor that he thinks we would be either better people or happier if we refrained from judgement altogether. If Democritus’ atomism leads to skepticism he has wandered into it accidentally, and an accidental skepticism is a dangerous thing.

1.3. Summary of Democritus

In sum, Democritus distinguishes mere appearance from real reality epistemologically, according to our route of cognitive access to each. But this is a dangerous way of proceeding because, as seen above, there is pressure towards putting more and more into that which is arrived at through deviant, impure means, leaving nothing to be the object of the pure means of cognition, by which we cognize reality instead of our appearances – and no way of bringing that reality to bear on the adjudication of conflicting appearances. The pressure increases to ask Descartes’ question – whether this supposedly kosher form of cognition itself is not just another way appearances arise for us – and to find no satisfactory reply. Not only are weight, size and shape, on examination, just further deliverances of the senses, but also conversely all manner of non-sensory cognitions qualify as mere appearances. It appears to us that there are horses and houses, but in reality there are only atoms and void. Such conceptually rich appearings, as Plato argues in the Theaetetus against ‘Protagoras’, are just as non-adjudicable as diverse sense-impressions; and they are not limited to appearances of objects but extend also to appearances of goodness and benefit.

These appearances themselves are, as Aristotle says and Protagoras said before him, all equally valid and true, for there is no criterion of validity other than their appearing. If what is available to rational cognition is vanishingly little and in any case utterly cut off from everyday experiences, which are one and all mere appearings and ‘by opinion’, all on a par, then even the doctor’s expertise is nothing other than the power to induce impressions of wellness in others. By rejecting the Protagorean claim that such appearings are knowledge, you may get to keep your epistemic humility, but it is an abject humility; for it comes at the price of all appearings being equal, with no reasons to count anything better or worse, nor closer or further from a correct grasp of how things are. It is not just your atomism which has now flown out the window. As Plato emphatically underlined in the discussion staged between Socrates and Protagoras in the Theaetetus, where there is no reason – and no prospect for reason – there is only power.

2.1. Origins of Vasubandhu’s atomism

Vasubandhu was active in the 4th century a.d., and his Treasury of Abhidharma, with Commentary (Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya) offers a systematic exposition of one of the most prominent strands of Abhidharma philosophy, the [Mūla]Sarvāstivāda.Footnote²⁹ Abhidharma philosophy itself is multi-vocal, comprising competing positions on a range of metaphysical, ethical, psychological, cosmological, and epistemological topics growing out of the first systemisations of the Buddha’s thought.

Among the earliest articulations of this thought from which Abhidharma philosophy drew, the signature ‘no-self’, anattā (Pāli; Sanskrit, anātman), claim is the most salient for our current examination of Vasubandhu’s metaphysics. An indicative passage from the suttas (Skt. sūtras) – the discourses of the Buddha recorded after his passing away – is this passage from the Connected Discourses:

The metaphysical picture implicit in these claims is articulated by the nun Vajirā in a well-known image found in a passage from the Connected Discourses. Approached by Māra with the challenge, “By whom has this being been created? … Where has the being arisen? Where does the being cease?” Vajirā replies:

Notice how this sounds like Democritus in the distinction between reality (a heap of sheer formations is all that is really there) and convention. But then notice too how very different are the items picked out as belonging to each kind. Vajirā identified complex wholes – chariots and persons – as ‘by convention’; Democritus would likely agree about the chariots,Footnote³¹ but seems to have thought persons – the primary target of Buddhist deconstruction – were real.Footnote³² Conversely, the ‘hot’ and ‘bitter’ that Democritus singles out as dubious mere appearances would be among the ‘formations’ Vajirā counts as really existing without implying a self or ‘being’ as the bearer of these properties or haver of these experiences.

Vajirā’s aggregates – which, when heaped together, are called ‘chariot’ or ‘person’ or being of some sort – are all the particular and varied qualities, mental as well as physical, that arise and fall away. This particular volition is as real as this particular occurrence of red, or that instance of solidity. There is nothing especially suspect in the affects, or any other sort of mental event. Suspicion lies rather on apparent complex unities as such: the supposed one thing which all these many things comprise is what is dismissed as not really existing.

One of the reasons for this difference in what counts as really real is that the Buddhist does not rely on an epistemic distinction to distinguish between appearance and reality.Footnote³³ Vajirā does not rest her distinction on a supposed difference in our cognitive powers, and she makes no tacit appeal to bastard and pure-bred forms of cognizing. Another key difference is that there is no threat of changeless monism standing in the background of any of these texts. That there is change is not in doubt, nor is it seen as being in need of justification (if anything, it was Buddhist flux theory that gave impetus to Vedanta monism, rather than the other way around).

Of course it might be churlishly observed that Vajirā does not rest her claim on a difference in our cognitive powers because she does not offer any argument at all – she just makes the claim. So let us turn to a much discussed passage from the Questions of King Milinda (the Milindapañha, composed probably some time between the first century before and the first century after the common era), which makes of Vajirā’s assertion a distinctively mereological argument.Footnote³⁴

Taking up the chariot as analogous to persons, the monk Nāgasena explains to King Milinda that the chariot is neither identical to any one of its parts, nor identical to all of its parts, nor is it something quite separate from its parts. In this sense, there is no chariot; and in just this sense there is no Nāgasena or Milinda, either. Nāgasena is neither distinct from his psycho-physical constituents, nor identical to any one or several of them.Footnote³⁵ Nevertheless, this does not make Nāgasena a liar when he gives his name, nor the king wrong when he says he came by chariot. For because of their respective parts, ‘chariot’ and ‘Nāgasena’ and all organisms or artefacts “exist as a denotation, appellation, designation, as a current usage, merely as a name” (MP I.28, tr. Horner). From this, we get the distinction between existing as a designation and really existing or existing ultimately (paramārthasat), which for the moment is simply ‘not like that’.Footnote³⁶

Without analysing this argument for its success, it is clear that if it works at all, it works at every level of analysis, regarding any sort of complex whole, and pretty transparently so. If I can run the argument on chariots, I can run it on parts of the chariot; if it applies to the chariot’s wheel, then it applies equally to the wheel’s parts, the spoke and rim; and if to spoke, then to its parts. So similarly, if I am not my body, nor my mind, then neither is my body the flesh or the finger and neither is my mind this or that faculty or constituent cognition … and so on until there is no plurality of distinct constituents identifiable. The principle acting as the universal solvent in all this is:

Quite generally, one thing cannot be several things; a complex thing cannot be one of its constituents; nothing complex exists separately from its constituents. Since one thing cannot be many, any cognition of a multitude as a single thing owes the unity cognized to the cognizing and not to the object cognized. Therefore all terms denoting a multitude as a single thing are mere designations; all cognitions as of unified multiplicities are ways of conceiving, and not recognitions of reality as it is. It is worth reiterating that this general principle is quite unrestricted. Since there is nothing here about extension and mathematical divisibility, there is nothing that restricts the argument’s validity to bodies. It is thus a short hop indeed from giving any reason at all for non-fundamentality of persons to a distinctively Abhidharma atomism.Footnote³⁷

We have also along the way picked up the Abhidharma correlate to Democritus’ appearance/reality distinction in the difference Nāgasena draws between the constituents which really exist (exist ultimately) and chariots and persons and all other complexes which exist ‘as a designation’.Footnote³⁸

2.2. Vasubandhu’s atomism and the principle of analysability

In his canonical codification of this Abhidharma distinction between existing ultimately and a secondary sort of existing, Vasubandhu thus draws the line rather differently from Democritus:

Vasubandhu specifies two kinds of divisibility, physical and mental; to neither of these may what is ultimately real be liable. But since physical divisibility implies conceptual divisibility, but not the other way round, the latter is the more aggressive solvent, and the one really at issue. That is to say, complex things – whether physically separable or not, indeed whether they are physical existents or not – whatever is liable to conceptual analysis of any kind does not exist fundamentally or ultimately.

Such conceptual analysability is importantly different from what Barnes characterizes as “theoretically divisible”, when he presents Democritus as concerned about whether a body is divisible in principle, even if not in fact. For Vasubandhu, no worries about the infinite divisibility of extension stand in the background. Vasubandhu’s analysability is concerned rather with distinguishability – and concerned with whether the analysand retains its identity once distinguishable aspects, which are not identical with the analysand, are clearly identified as distinct, and “thought away”. Water may be both fluid and cool; but coolness is not the same as fluidity, and neither of them is identical to water. Yet, separate them out, and there is nothing remaining which is the water itself. This is the chariot argument at the microscopic level. And, having nothing to do with extension, it may operate as effectively in analysing mental existents, should there in fact be, as the Ābhidharmikas supposed, non-physical existents.

By contrast, form (rūpa: materiality, or non-mentality) is basic, for when you strip away any of the particular characteristics, the very notion of form itself, simple and unqualified, remains.

Indeed even motion itself is only apparent and not ultimately real. For, Vasubandhu argues, true atoms cannot endure. The simples which remain once constituents are distinguished and thus “analysed away” must necessarily have only momentary existence (AKBh. IV.2b-3b); and a momentary existence cannot undergo change of place any more than it can undergo any other change. Vasubandhu’s ingenious argument for this would take us too far afield to consider here;Footnote⁴³ but his position and his argument for it underscores the extreme simplicity of whatever may lay claim to being ultimately real.Footnote⁴⁴

Thus, rather than Democritus’ eternally moving atoms, Vasubandhu offers just the arising and ceasing of property-particular events, or the instantaneous occurrences of simple properties, including mental property-events. Where Democritus preserved the appearance of change by making motion possible, Vasubandhu gives us just the appearance of motion through the actual occurrence of manifold simple and momentary events.

3.1 Ethical implications of Vasubandhu's atomism

Identifying items as constructed is pertinent because constructing is something we do – not consciously, not deliberately, and certainly not in a way that we could just choose to do otherwise should we wish. Nevertheless, individuating one cluster of properties from another is something we contribute to our experienced reality. And wherever we do something there is some purpose. By highlighting the individuation of complex wholes as an active practice we engage in, such individuation is thus highlighted as motivated. Each of these points make all the difference for the ethical implications of the view. Vasubandhu’s atomism does not just avoid inadvertent skepticism; it thereby offers an angle for evaluation and critique of these ordinary experiences.

Ordinary experiences of complex wholes are not, as Democritus’ mere appearances, just hopelessly false and illusory. Vasubandhu’s way of distinguishing real from apparent tells us more: in particular, it tells us that complex wholes are put together by mental activity. Among the simples are some pleasures and pains, some inclinations and aversions, which vary according to how we individuate phenomena, and which in turn drive that activity of individuating.

Recall Democritus’ difficulty. When Democritus said “by opinion cold, by opinion hot”, he was taken as asserting merely that these properties are not really real – acknowledging the truth in Protagoreanism (these are just our impressions), while reserving some firm ground of real reality, however inaccessible to us. That these experiences of sensible properties could neither be interrogated nor reveal anything about anything except that we have such-and-such an experience can lead only to a pessimistic shrug at the dim prospects for true knowledge – a resigned and reluctant skepticism.Footnote⁴⁸

It is resigned because there is nothing we can do to approach real reality, or adjudicate conflicting appearances. Every possible experience for us is equally removed from how things really are, and nothing we can do could even improve our cognitive situation. It is reluctant because Democritus wanted to save the appearances (namely, of change) and save a real and shared reality distinct from appearances, so that we do not get lost in a miserable Protagorean solipsism, or a lofty Parmenidean one. But if sense-perception is illegitimate cognition in the way he sets out, then his atomist theory does not even matter – it is just the way things appear to be to him, and it is not needed to explain ‘real’ change of bodies in space, because we cannot even know if there are any such things and even if there are, our only access to them is the appearances, which lie.

Vasubandhu’s atomism avoids these pitfalls, and moreover suggests a concrete alternative. Consider first the difference between Democritus’ epistemological basis for distinguishing misleading appearances, and Vasubandhu’s direct appeal to the simplicity or otherwise of the objects of cognition. Naturally, Vasubandhu’s principle, and the distinction between conventional and ultimate reality as the Buddhists make it generally, also recommends suspicion – suspicion not of sense-perception rather than intellect however, but suspicion of all of our experiences as of independent, complex wholes. In fact, Democritus’ bastard sensible properties are, for the Buddhist, one of the few things that could lay claim to not being conventional – if we but saw them truly. But even this suspicion of our cognitions of non-simples does not warrant their blunt dismissal for failure to be knowledge of real reality. It rather invites analysis into sources of such constructions, the motivations for them, and even evaluation of the purposes they serve.

To observe that ‘Nāgasena’ exists as a conventional designation does not mean that anyone might call him whatever they like, or reject the appellation altogether. But it focuses attention to the constructed nature of the shared practice of picking out that shifting and imprecisely circumscribed subset of simples as a single thing, for which it is useful to have a single name – and, indeed, the same name for us all, Nāgasena. To recognize its constructed or conventional nature is to see the usefulness of having such terms; and to acknowledge its usefulness is to be bound by the conditions under which it is useful – namely, in the first instance, that the practice be a shared one.

This presents already one advantage over Democritean atomism. For to recognize this as our activity is to be able to correctly locate the standards of correctness to which we are liable. In contrast to the hopelessly idiosyncratic nature of Democritus’ appearances, Buddhist conventional reality is a shared one, and there are acknowledged conditions for applicability of our conventional terms, as well as a now explicable degree of elasticity in these conditions. Being both shared and constructed in all cases for the purpose of communicating and coordinating with others, conventional reality can be known, claims can be adjudicated true or false, valid or invalid, by reference to a public standard of whether taking this subset of simples as a unity enables one to communicate and coordinate effectively.

So for Vasubandhu there can be knowledge and discernment among appearances – it is, after all, called conventional truth or reality. Names and concepts designate ways of bundling and individuating simples which enable us to conceive and achieve shared and unshared goals. This gives us standards of correctness, even where correctly discerning ultimate reality fails: calling Nāgasena ‘chariot’ is just false, even if neither Nāgasena nor the chariot exist as real individuals; and bundling together Nāgasena’s hair with the chariot’s wheel into a supposed single entity is not a creative extension of language and practice because such a synthetic ‘unity’ does not serve the purpose just as well. So even among what is not ultimately real, there is no danger of a flat Protagorean relativism.

3.2. Deconstructing and reconstructing reality

But we can go further. Vasubandhu’s non-epistemically based atomism retains not only a criterion of correctness in conventional truth, but also retains the prospect of coming to know real reality – of discerning the simples unconstructed, as they are.Footnote⁴⁹ While we certainly do not ordinarily directly experience unconstructed simples, since there is no essential flaw in our cognitive capacities, there is no reason why we may not hope for improvement in this direction and perhaps even, ultimately, success in cognizing reality as it is. This has several implications, and will be the key to Vasubandhu forestalling the worry that his view escapes a simple personal relativism only to land in a sophisticated cultural relativism where our very agreement secures us against any critique.Footnote⁵⁰

Most important from a Buddhist point of view, is simply that ultimate, real reality remains knowable, for only seeing reality as it is will truly eliminate suffering.Footnote⁵¹ In addition, recognizing the possibility for such knowledge, even before fully attaining it, involves the basic recognition of our constructed cognitions as constructed. This is already a better appreciation of how the world really is, and it has psychological as well as logical and practical implications. Psychologically, the pursuit of knowledge of ultimate reality so conceived engenders a certain wholesome detachment from the presumptive authority of conventional wisdom, and even from our own unquestioned aims and motivations. Conceptually, it contains implicit levers for modifying conventional reality as well as a stable cognitive ideal outside the claims of everyday life, by which to critically evaluate conventions.Footnote⁵²

To recognize conventional reality as conventional implies a more accurate understanding of complex wholes as constructed, not given by nature. It also, in its implicit appeal to usefulness in adjudicating conventional truth, highlights the teleological character of the practices constructing our conventions: ‘useful’ is only what is useful for some purpose or another. Only because we aim to communicate and coordinate is it useful to have shared forms of individuating at all; and only because our specific goals and purposes are what they are do some, but not other, forms of bundling simples together prove efficacious. This means that to see ordinary experience as conventionally real at the same time first brings into view the role of aims and purposes in structuring our reality, which in turn points to the space where practical alternatives might get a foothold.

Moreover, coming to see real reality is not just a matter of drawing this general conclusion. Rather, the activity of knowledge-seeking involves indentifying in detail the particular elements, including the purposes and desires, that go into constructing complex wholes.Footnote⁵³ This brings to light not just the degree to which our presumed categories and aims are dependent for their meaning and intelligibility on each other, our histories, our concepts for construing things and so on. It highlights precisely which elements depend on which in this complex system of dependencies, and habituates us into a practice of identifying these in our everyday experience. Identifying these dependencies is an opportunity– for seeing that prevailing categories structuring experience are not forced upon us gives us also the necessary tools to consider whether there might be other ways of individuating and evaluating that are preferable, and how these might be engendered.

If our ordinary reality is constructed so as to enable us to achieve our purposes and satisfy our aims, then this immediately suggests a point of internal critique ready to hand. For once granted that we carve the world so as to achieve our goals, we can always ask, ‘Does our current way of carving up and conceptualising experience in fact enable us to achieve our goals?’ Take, for instance, practices of punishment and justified anger – a feature of ordinary life to which Buddhist themselves devoted attention.Footnote⁵⁴ We construct standards of guilt, notions of action, responsibility, blame and punishment for certain purposes. What are those purposes? And is the way we are doing it in fact achieving those purposes?Footnote⁵⁵ Since we are well practiced in identifying the elements of experience that do in fact follow on from one another or are associated with one another, we are in a position to make a realistic assessment of which sorts of modifications in how we delineate multitudinous reality will effect changes which better meet our goals. And since which elements do in fact associate with or arise subsequent to one another is a matter of ultimate reality – and not of our preferences – we have a firm basis for debating the matter among ourselves.

But there is also the opportunity for more radical critique. If our distinctions and categories are not forced on us by an impervious reality, then neither are our goals or purposes. Once we have identified to what purpose, to what end, we are distinguishing things in this way, it is possible to raise the further question, ‘Should this be our goal? Are these intentions – and framing the world in terms of these intentions – actually doing any good?’Footnote⁵⁶ Indeed, exactly this was the radical challenge the Buddha posed: Fame, pleasure, wealth, repute – all the supposed goods that move us to structure our more proximate ends – are fundamentally misguided.

Here the in principle possibility of real knowledge of ultimate reality becomes important. For in order to interrogate the worthwhileness of goals and purposes themselves, one must be able to appeal to something else more certainly good, by reference to which one purpose shows up more poorly than another. For the Buddhist in general this fundamental good is clearly the cessation of suffering. For Vasubandhu, as for other Buddhists, this is identical with awakening, which itself consists in knowing reality as it is. That is to say, if we are prepared to evaluate the relative worth of our purposes themselves, and re-conceive how we individuate accordingly, those teleologically constructed conceptual systems are to be preferred which more promote the attainment of enlightenment, or the knowledge of ultimate reality.

It is not a matter of indifference whether our ways of conceptualizing and organizing experience and our interactions create more suffering or less, whether they inhibit or promote the ability for all beings to know ultimate reality as it is and thus to eliminate suffering. While the final and more famous Buddhist goal may be the deconstruction of all categories of being and all conceptualizing, it is well recognized and frequently reiterated that astute use of the conventional is indispensable to reaching the ultimate – how we think of everyday life matters because only through this can we hope to transform experience into something less pervaded by suffering.