Is the self its parts, or their owner?

What you will work out

Describe the self Nāgārjuna argues against, and explain why the Buddhist analysis of a person into five aggregates is meant to be complete.
Reconstruct the argument of 18.1 that the self can be neither identical with the aggregates nor something other than them.
Explain how fire and fuel model a dependence that is neither identity nor difference, and why Nāgārjuna applies the model to the person.
Explain why chapter 27 refuses to conclude that there is no self, and assess the objection that qualities such as desire need a bearer.

A photograph at six

Suppose you find a photograph of yourself at the age of six. The body in it is a different size and shape. The fears, the favorite foods and the small store of words have almost all changed. Yet you point to the child and say, “That’s me.” And when you plan for next year, you plan for someone you expect to be you as well.

It is natural to think that something holds all this together: a self that has the body, feels the feelings, thinks the thoughts and makes the choices, and stays the same through every change. The first stage of this study asked whether things in the world could be what they are on their own. This lesson turns the question on the one who asks it.

What a self would have to be

Jan Westerhoff lists four features of the self Nāgārjuna argues against.[2] First, it is distinct from the body and from our thoughts and feelings: it is what has them. Second, it does not change in its essentials; in Westerhoff’s example, the same self is present in an elderly general and in the schoolboy he was sixty years before. Third, it unifies, gathering what we see, believe and want so that we can decide. Fourth, it acts: it is the self, as he puts it, and not the decisions, that occupies “the driver’s seat”. Westerhoff thinks this is a relatively accurate description of what, in everyday life, we intuitively take ourselves to be.

Buddhists had long denied that there is any such self. As the guided course’s lesson “Suffering, impermanence and not-self” explains, early Buddhist texts analyze a person into five aggregates, groupings of experience: form, the bodily aspect; feeling; perception; choices, the activities of intention; and consciousness. (Translations of these names differ.) Westerhoff stresses a feature of the list that is easy to miss: it is meant to be complete. It does not sample a person’s aspects; it lists everything a person consists of. So when a Buddhist argues that none of the aggregates is the self, that is not a hint that the self is something else.

Neither the parts nor something apart

Chapter 18 of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā opens with the central argument in a single verse. Skandha is the Sanskrit word the course translates as “aggregate”.[1]

If the self were the skandhas, it would participate in coming to be and passing away. If it were something other than the skandhas, it would be something having the defining characteristic of a non-skandha.

The first line supposes that the self simply is the aggregates, as a pile of bricks is nothing but the bricks; the comparison is the translators’. But the aggregates come into existence and pass away many times over within a single life. A self identical with them would do the same, and each of us would be a long succession of selves, although we take ourselves to be one thing that lasts.

The second line supposes that the self is something other than the aggregates: an owner standing behind the body, feelings and thoughts it owns. Then it would have none of their marks. It would not be bodily, would not feel, perceive or choose, and would not be aware, since each of those is an aggregate. The translators state the difficulty in terms of experience: such a self “should then be grasped as something with its own intrinsic nature”, yet “no such thing is ever grasped in our experience of persons.” Westerhoff draws out the consequence. A self that owned the body without being bodily, and had feelings without being any of them, would be a stranger to us; for all we could tell, “it might be an entity we have never even come across.” And since it would not depend on the aggregates for its existence, it could exist without any of them, with none of our memories or desires. It is hard to see why we should care about such a thing, or how it could make our decisions.[2]

Westerhoff compares David Hume’s report that whenever he looked inward he found some particular perception and never a self. He warns against pressing the parallel, though. For Hume the observation belonged to a theory of knowledge; for Buddhists the absence of a self lies at the center of their account of liberation.

The next verse draws a corollary: “The self not existing, how will there be ‘what belongs to the self’?” (18.2). With no owner, nothing is owned, and there is no “mine” either. The translators add that this need not mean there are no aggregates. It means only that, if there are, they do not belong to a self.

The Personalists and the fire

Not every Buddhist accepted this. A school the translators call the Pudgalavāda, the “Personalists”, argued that there must be a person who appropriates the aggregates, that is, who takes them as its own, just as an action requires someone who acts.[1] Their view was more careful than it may sound. They agreed with other Buddhists that there is no self. The person they defended, the translators report, did not exist ultimately, as a self was supposed to, and it was named and conceived in dependence on the aggregates. Yet it was meant to be more than a convenient name: something really stood to the aggregates as owner to what it owns.

To show how a person could depend on the aggregates without simply being them, the Personalists used an image: fire and fuel. As Candrakīrti explains the example, a fire depends on its fuel, since there is no fire without something burning, and yet it seems real in its own right, with heat as its nature. Chapter 10 examines the image and turns it against them.

If the fuel were identical with the fire, then agent and object would be one. If fire were distinct from fuel, then there would be fire without fuel.

If fire simply were its fuel, what burns and what is burned would be one thing, as though a potter were the pot. If fire were a separate thing, it could exist apart from fuel: it would need nothing to be lit, it would never go out, and lighting a fire would be pointless (10.2–3). Might the two be distinct and yet depend on each other? Then, Nāgārjuna asks, which comes first (10.8)? Whatever depends on something else for its existence cannot do the depending before it exists, and once it exists it no longer needs the other in order to exist (10.10–11). The chapter sums up:

Fire is not dependent on fuel; fire is not independent of fuel. Fuel is not dependent on fire; fuel is not independent of fire.

The classical commentator Bhāviveka, as the translators report him, points out that nothing is affirmed here about fire, fuel or their relation: each statement we might have taken to be ultimately true has simply been ruled out. The ordinary fact that fires burn wood is untouched.

Then comes the application to persons: “All ways without remainder of explaining subject and the appropriated, along with the pot, the cloth, and the like, are to be understood in terms of fire and fuel” (10.15). The person who appropriates and the aggregates appropriated are neither one thing nor two independent things. The chapter’s last verse is blunt about anyone who describes them “in terms of identity and difference”: such teachers, it says, are “not considered by us to be wise instructors in the teachings of the Buddha” (10.16).

So the image cuts against the people who chose it. On Candrakīrti’s explanation, the Personalists picked fire because it plainly depends on fuel and yet seems plainly real. Nāgārjuna’s reply is that fire and fuel depend on each other in a way that neither identity nor difference can describe, and that is exactly why neither can have a nature of its own.

Across a life, and across lives

Chapter 27 asks the same question across time, and its setting needs a word of explanation. Nāgārjuna and his audience took rebirth for granted: the belief that the actions of one life help bring about the birth and circumstances of a being in a later life, who is in some sense the same person. The chapter examines questions about the past and future of the “I” that the Buddha was asked and declined to answer. This study explains the belief because the arguments depend on it; it does not ask you to share it. And as Westerhoff’s reconstruction shows, the same questions about identity arise within a single life.

Could it be true that “I existed in the past”?[1]

It is not the case that the statement “I existed in the past” holds, for whoever existed in prior births is not this present person.

If the present “I” were simply the same as the one who lived before, then, on Candrakīrti’s reading, the act of appropriation would be identical with the one who appropriates, and agent and action would be one, which is absurd (27.4). If the self were nothing but the aggregates, it could not be one lasting self, because they arise and cease (27.6). If it were distinct from them, it would be perceived without them, and it never is (27.7). Then comes the summary:

Thus it is not distinct from appropriation, nor is it identical with appropriation. There is no self without appropriation, but neither is it ascertained that this does not exist.

The last line is easy to pass over, and it matters more than any other in this lesson. Nāgārjuna does not conclude that there is no self. The translators explain, following Candrakīrti, that the “I” is conceived in dependence on the aggregates. That makes it quite unlike the son of a barren woman, who is conceived in dependence on nothing and simply does not exist. Of that son we can say that he does not exist; of the “I” we cannot. “It should be noted,” the translators add, “that this is a denial of nonself and not the affirmation of an existent self.” They report a precedent: the Buddha once declined to accept the statement “There is no self”, concerned that his hearers would take it to mean that death annihilates the person.

The following verses reject the opposite claim, “I did not exist in the past” (27.9–12). If the present person were wholly distinct from the one who lived before, the earlier one’s ceasing could not bring the present one about, and the results of actions done by one would be reaped by another (27.10–11). The next lesson returns to that consequence. For what continues in place of a self, the chapter later offers an image already familiar from lesson 3: the aggregates form a series “like that of the flames of a lamp” (27.22), each flame giving rise to the next.

Ultimately, then, there is no self that is either identical with the aggregates or distinct from them, and none that endures from one life, or one year, to the next. Conventionally, the “I” is conceived in dependence on the aggregates, and “That’s me, at six” is true and useful. What the verses refuse is the step from “there is no self of that kind” to “there is no one at all”.

A self made of events

What picture of a person does that leave? Westerhoff offers one reconstruction.[2] The self, on his account, is a sequence of events standing in close causal relations: bodily processes cause sensations, sensations are framed by concepts, concepts inform decisions and decisions lead to actions that set new bodily processes going. It is not a steady core amid the changes but the whole connected set of them, like the light of the lamp. And the sequence is mistaken about itself: it takes itself to be a single unchanging agent standing apart from its body and thoughts.

He adds a point that separates Nāgārjuna from his Abhidharma opponents. Many Buddhists held that the self is only a name for a collection of ultimately real elements. On Westerhoff’s reading, Nāgārjuna cannot say even that, because the elements lack intrinsic nature too. In his words, “For the Mādhyamika not only is there no substantial self, there is also no substantial basis on which a nonsubstantial self could be built.”

Must qualities have a bearer?

A strong objection comes from outside Buddhism. The Nyāya school of Indian philosophy held that the self can be known by inference, and the Nyāya commentator Vātsyāyana, in Westerhoff’s translation, puts the argument in one sentence: “[D]esires are qualities, and qualities inhere in a substance, so that in which they inhere is the self.”[2] The Mādhyamika does not deny that desiring happens. But a quality must be the quality of something, the objection runs, so there must be something that desires.

Westerhoff answers with the pattern we met in lesson 3. When we describe a situation as an individual with properties, we pick one feature as what makes the individual what it is and treat the others as its properties. We speak of a tree that is green, not of a green thing that has treeness. That choice reflects, in his words, “our epistemic priorities and practical concerns”, not a division already present in the world. In the same way, from a stream of sensations, perceptions and decisions we select certain features, group the rest around them and call the result a self. Speaking of a self that has desires is fine, Westerhoff concludes, “as long as we do not assume that such talk is based on a distinction with an ontological grounding”, that is, a distinction in reality itself.

The reply is only as strong as its premise. A defender of Nyāya holds a different view of substances and qualities and can reject Westerhoff’s claim that the line between an individual and its properties is ours to draw. The dispute then moves to that more general question.

Try the argument from ownership

Imagine Lorenzo making a list of everything he can find in himself: his body, his feelings, his perceptions, his choices and his awareness. Then he argues: “All of these are had by someone. Qualities need a bearer. So besides all of them, there must be me, the one who has them.”

Using 18.1 and the pattern of fire and fuel, explain what goes wrong in Lorenzo’s argument, and what Nāgārjuna does not conclude from its failure. Writing an answer is optional.

A full explanatory answer

Lorenzo’s argument goes wrong at its last step, where “had by someone” becomes “had by a separate owner”.

Suppose there were such an owner, distinct from everything on his list. Then, as 18.1 says, it would have none of the marks of the aggregates. It would have no body and would not feel, perceive, choose or be aware, since each of those is on the list. It could not be the one who feels or chooses, which is the very role Lorenzo wanted it to fill. Fire and fuel make the same point: a fire wholly separate from fuel would burn nothing, and an owner wholly separate from what it owns would own nothing.

His premise that qualities need a bearer also assumes that the situation divides into an individual and properties that exist independently of each other. That is the Nyāya view. On Westerhoff’s reading, Nāgārjuna rejects it: which features we treat as “the individual” and which as its qualities is our way of describing, not a division in reality. Lorenzo may go on saying that he has feelings, provided he does not infer from the grammar an owner who exists apart from them.

Nor does Nāgārjuna conclude that Lorenzo does not exist. The self is neither identical with the aggregates nor distinct from them, but, as 27.8 insists, it is not established that it does not exist. Lorenzo is conceived in dependence on his body and mind, and conventionally he is the one who has them.

One question is left standing. Rejecting a separate owner does not by itself explain what makes these experiences Lorenzo’s rather than someone else’s. Westerhoff himself counts that question, where one person ends and another begins, among the hard problems for any view of this kind.

Carry this forward

If the self is conceived in dependence on changing processes, what becomes of promises, blame and the care we take for our own future? The next lesson, “Who acts, and who answers for it?”, follows Nāgārjuna’s analysis of action and its results.

Sources and limits

[1] Nāgārjuna, Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, translated with commentary by Mark Siderits and Shōryū Katsura (Wisdom Publications, 2013), for chapters 9, 10, 18 and 27 and the translators’ commentary.

The Personalists’ view: chapter 9, verses 1–12 with commentary, pp. 99–107, especially the commentary on 9.1–2 (pp. 100–101) and 9.9 (pp. 104–105); chapter 10’s introduction, with Candrakīrti’s explanation of the fire example, p. 109.
Chapter 10: all sixteen verses with commentary, pp. 109–120. The verses quoted are 10.1 (p. 110), 10.12 (p. 116), 10.15 (p. 118) and 10.16 (p. 119); Bhāviveka’s remark on 10.12 is on p. 116.
Chapter 18: verses 1–2 with commentary, pp. 195–196, including the pile of bricks on p. 195.
Chapter 27: all thirty verses with commentary, pp. 317–335. The verses quoted are 27.3 (p. 319), 27.8 (p. 322) and 27.22 (p. 330); the translators’ commentary on 27.8, with Candrakīrti’s contrast and the Buddha’s precedent, is on pp. 322–323.

Words in square brackets are the translators’. Candrakīrti and Bhāviveka are reported only as the translators report them, and no Pudgalavāda text was read; the Personalists’ view is described in the translators’ terms. The translators describe the Personalists’ aim in two ways: in chapter 9 the person “does not exist ultimately” (p. 101), while the introduction to chapter 10 has the opponent offer fire and fuel to show how appropriator and appropriated “can be in a relation of mutual dependence and yet both be ultimately real” (p. 109). The lesson follows chapter 9’s fuller account and reports the chapter 10 framing only through Candrakīrti’s explanation of the example. The rebirth setting of chapter 27 is explained, not endorsed. Some modern scholars doubt that chapters 26–27 are Nāgārjuna’s work, although Bhāviveka and Candrakīrti accepted them; the translators take no stand (end of chapter 25, p. 305).

[2] Jan Westerhoff, Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2009), chapter 7, “The Self”, for his account of the substantial self, the arguments against it, the Nyāya objection and his reconstruction of a Madhyamaka view of persons. Chapter 7 and its endnotes were read in full.

The four features of a substantial self: p. 154, with the general and the schoolboy and “the driver’s seat”.
The aggregates and the completeness of the list: §7.1, pp. 154–155.
A self distinct from the aggregates; the comparison with Hume and its limit: pp. 156–157, with “never even come across” on p. 156.
Vātsyāyana’s argument and the reply: §7.2, pp. 158–160, with the quotation on p. 159 and “ontological grounding” on p. 160.
The self as a sequence of events; “no substantial basis”: §7.4, pp. 162–163.
The unity of a person as a problem: §10.2, pp. 210–211.

Westerhoff’s account is one philosopher’s reconstruction, and the lesson attributes it to him. Hume, Vātsyāyana’s commentary on the Nyāya-sūtra and the other works Westerhoff cites were not read.

The photograph at six and Lorenzo’s list are original teaching examples; the general and the schoolboy are Westerhoff’s.