Originally posted by twhitehead
That is an excellent way to put it. Chinese philosophy has a similar paradox whereby you try to achieve 'the way' in order to benefit from it, but at the same time, seeking 'the way' for gain will not get you there.
In both cases the question then is 'why should we do it?'. Why should one obeys Christs commandment if there is not personal benefit, or why should one seek 'the way'?
“I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I
know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein,
On Certainty
Kissing the picture of one's beloved... it
aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.
—Wittgenstein,
Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough
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You are quite right. But when we ask certain questions—in this case those quite natural-sounding “why should we” questions—I am reminded of the above quotations. And the Meister Eckhart quote below (Eckhart is perhaps the most appreciated of Christian thinkers among Buddhists). And so my response is deliberately a bit oblique—
Why
should I love my wife? “I didn’t know that I was
supposed to.”
Why
should I prefer feeling well to feeling ill? “Ought I to want to feel ill?”
For what reason
should I prefer that you feel ill, rather than well? (Wouldn’t any reason require that I know you, and have some specific animus? Otherwise, wouldn’t we say that some pathology is likely in play?)
Why do you think I
should like Bach? “I don’t; I just like Bach and thought that you might.”
“I
know that’s my wife.” “Was there doubt in your mind?”
Why
should you appreciate beauty? “I wasn’t aware that I shouldn’t.”
Etc., etc.
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“The path is beautiful and joyful and pleasant and familiar”
—Meister Eckhart, Christian theologian (1260 – c.1329)
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So perhaps the real question is why personal benefit is necessarily a problem. Is my act on behalf of another—that involves some sacrifice on my part—somehow suspect if I love them? Does loving them turn altruism into self-centeredness? Does it make my act more, or less, moral? "Should" I care? As I said, I don’t think that I am “good” because I love someone deeply enough that I couldn’t imagine not making the “sacrifice” you proposed—without any “should” thinking at all. Need I adhere without feeling to some “categorical imperative”—that is somehow undone if I love?
Such questions seem quite soon to lose meaning for me.
And to belabor it—as I, too, have a tendency to do—seems now to me like philosophizing in the garden: It isn’t insane—it’s just an idle intellectual pastime. One that I myself seem to spend far too much time pursuing.
EDIT: Of course, it was the very questions that moved me (or returned me) to this point; so perhaps not so idle after all--just a reflection of my own confusion.