Bath Greek philosophy and Indian Buddhism exhibit bifurcated notions of the meaning of the ethical, oscillating between transcendent and immanent views. From Plato we are presented with a transcendent form of the Good, the ethical ideal that always remains beyond human attainment, only fully accessible after death. In Aristotle we find the ethical to be an immanent power of human rationality, contrasting with Plato in its attainability. Comparatively, the teachings of the early Buddhists deny the immanent goodness of the Brahmins in the assertion of anatta (no-self) and pratītya samutpāda (dependent origination), but find themselves making a similar claim in the attainment of arhatship. The MahAāyāna prajñāpāamitā literature attacks the claim of attainment made by the arhats and transcendentalizes the Buddhist path, where the bodhisattva vow leads one towards a goal that is not foreseeable in the lifetime of the practitioner. The uncertainty of this goal results in an anxiety within the tradition, leading to nations of an immanent Buddha-nature and Tantric promises of attainment in a single lifetime.
Structuring the ethical in terms of either transcendence or immanence has led to two kinds of ethical unsatisfactoriness. The transcendent view carries the burden of hopelessness where the ethical is negatively disclosed as human inadequacy, while immanence Leads to a self-assured blindness, concealing the possibilities of new visions of the ethical. Both continental philosophy and Japanese Buddhism share an inheritance of this transcendence/immanence problem, and we can comparatively examine how each of these movements of thought have attempted to overcome the limitations of adhering to either view of the ethical.
In Part I of this study, the works of 20th century French philosophers, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida are examined from the perspective of their respective treatments of the transcendence/immanence problem in the Western philosophical tradition. In Part II, major formative works of Japanese Buddhism from Kūkai, Shinran and Dōgen are also examined in regards to the transcendence/immanence problem they received from India, through China. A concluding chapter compares the meaning of the ethical found in these two traditions of thought and considers the ethical implications that result from presenting such meanings.
The study concludes that the French thinkers favor transcendence over immanence and non-attainment over attainment in order to assure an openness to ethical evolution while accepting the hopelessness that results from its uncertainty. The Japanese Buddhists assert the possibility of attainment without immanence, thus responding to both the problems of blind self-certainty and hopelessness. The Japanese Buddhist vision of attainment offers us the possibility of overcoming the central problem addressed in the study, however the vision of the ethical offered by 20th century French philosophers provides a protection of the ethical in the absence of full attainment.
