Departamento de Comunicação, Filosofia e Política
Permanent URI for this community
Browse
Browsing Departamento de Comunicação, Filosofia e Política by Author "Afroza, Nargish"
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- Conceptions of Self in David Hume and Early Buddhism: Similarities, Dissimilarities, and an AnalysisPublication . Afroza, Nargish; Nascimento, André Barata; Rosa, José Maria da Silva; Abranches, Alexandra Maria Lafaia MachadoThe question of personal identity is concerned with what makes me the same individual over the course of time through the obvious changes I undergo, either physical or psychological terms. Analysing such theories, it is surprising to note that the founder of Buddhist philosophy, the Buddha’s doctrine of “anātman”, bears a significant similarity to the eighteenth-century phi-losopher David Hume’s theory of personal identity. As Hume points out in “A Treatise of Human Nature” (Hume, 1739), since the soul is nothing more than a bundle of perceptions, always chang-ing and temporary, so the soul can never be a clear concept. Similarly, according to Buddhists, anātmanvāda also carries the same theory that they said 2500 years ago (Kyokai, 2005). The Buddha clarified in the “Discourse on No-self Characteristics: Anattā Lakkhana Sutta” (Sayādaw, 2013a) that the soul is nothing but the aggregate of the five elements, it is ever-changing and impermanent, so the soul can never be acknowledged. Given this analogy, many have argued that Hume’s theory of personal identity may derived from Buddhist concepts, as Alison Gopnik (Go-pnik, 2009) and Jacobson (Jacobson, 1969) have argued. Therefore, this thesis aims to explore this interesting connection with reference to the the-ory of personal identity. In this context, the theories that have been analysed are i) David Hume’s historical examination of the idea of soul, ii) Whether Hume was really influenced by Buddhist scriptures in his writing “A Treatise of Human Nature”, and iii) Finding similarities and contrasts between them about their philosophical thoughts. This thesis provided a thorough discussion on the above-mentioned concepts and provides a detailed discussion.