Selfless Agency and the Cultivation of a Moral Character: Insights from Vasubandhu and Derek Parfit
Becoming a good person requires sustained effort. One needs to repeatedly apply oneself to the exercise of virtuous mental states, constantly correct flaws in one's internal attitudes and external behavior, and maintain a moral vision that guides one's efforts over months and years, and possibly an entire lifetime (or several lifetimes, according to some). Thus, the ethical project of cultivating a moral character presupposes and necessitates a temporally enduring life plan, and more essentially, a temporally persisting character. All of these are prima facie undermined by philosophical positions held by the majority of classical Buddhist thinkers, as well as by certain Western philosophers, such as David Hume and Derek Parfit, who entirely reject the idea of an enduring personal identity (a term signifying in philosophy the persistence of persons over time). 1 According to such views, denying the existence of a substantial self is the most convincing philosophical response to the constant physical and psychological changes that people undergo, which call into question the widely held belief that we are persisting selves. Furthermore, as Buddhist thinkers tend to argue, accepting the impermanent nature of our personal identity is to acknowledge not only what is metaphysically true, but also what is a necessary condition for development. After all, Buddhist philosophers ask, how is it possible for us to change and craft a moral character if we possess an unchanging identity?.
