Fan Zhen (3): Essay on the Extinction of the Soul

I mentioned in two previous posts that I learned of Fan Zhen (450 - 515 AD) via Esperanto, then sought-out English language sources. I have finally located a translation of a key essay, preceded by a biographical and political contextualization of Fan Zhen's intervention against Buddhism:

The First Chinese Materialist / Essay on the Extinction of the Soul (Etienne Balazs / Fan Zhen)

Fan Zhen's materialism is in his argument on the mind-body problem. As is historically the case in much of Chinese philosophical discourse, here there is a mixture of logical argument, anecdotal historical references, appeals to tradition and sages and other authorities. Fan Zhen links his argument against the persistence of the soul after death to the parasitism, otherworldly diversion, and false promises of Buddhist monks he alleges.

Mukai Kyorai (1651-1704): leaving Buddhist haiku behind

Aki kaze ya

Ware ni kami nashi

Hotoke nashi

The wind in autumn

As for me, there are no gods,

There are no Buddhas.

Fan Zhen (450 - 515 AD) revisited

As I indicated in my previous entry on this Chinese thinker, information in English is rather scarce. In the course of looking up Wang Ch'ung (Wang Chong, 27–c. 100 AD), I came across another link to Fan Zhen on a rather eccentric web site:

Rationalism and materialist philosophy in China: Fan Zhen, Wang Chung

Once again, the Esperanto page, which also has English links, can be found on my site:

Ateisto Fan Ĝen

Religion & Hate (2)

Regarding the group discussion of Feb. 22 mentioned in the previous post: To the extent that there were different schools of thought or aspects of the question represented in this discussion, here is how the various opinions expressed cluster:

(1) Whatever there is to be said about ‘human nature’ or tendencies with or without religion towards hostility and dominance, religion specifically exacerbates this tendency or adds ingredients all its own.

• All religions make competing truth-claims.
  
• Religious truth claims are exclusive.
  
• Other belief systems are not only wrong, but constitute a threat.
  
• All orthodox (specifically Abrahamic) religions foster hatred of outgroups: there is a demonstrable correlation.
  
• In the distant past, there were local deities. Modern theism makes matters worse.
  
• Religion does not permit for testability of truth claims.
  
• Religion lends an absolute authority to prejudices.
  
• Religion is a map that bends reality to fit the map.

(2) Defense of religion or specific religions, and disputes over same occurred.

• Hate is only felt by individuals, not religions.
  
• Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are counter-examples of religion’s hatefulness.
  
• Buddhism is nonviolent. Various claims & counter-claims:
• Buddhism is philosophy not religion.
  
• Japanese Buddhism fed into Japanese nationalism.
  
• There is definitive documentation of Buddhist atrocities.
  
• Tibetan Buddhism is not what the fans of the Dalai Lama make it out to be.
  
• The American version of Buddhism is not the same as Buddhism in Asia.
• The Axial Age saw the birth of more humane belief systems.
  
• St. Paul instituted a major shift to cosmopolitanism.
  
• Stalinism was a secular religion.
  
• There is a universal attraction to religion: religion tells people how to live.

(3) Claims about human nature were rampant, and questions over the uniqueness of religion as a causal factor.

• The fundamental question is one of in-groups vs. out-groups.
  
• Religion is not more hate-inducing than other things.
  
• There are various pretexts & rationalizations. (In the case of religion, there’s an appeal to an absolute authority—an argument used by some against religion.)
  
• Religion is mixed in with cultural & other rivalries.
• Group conflict may be a perennial phenomenon, preceding religion.
  
• Experiments show that any differentiating factor can serve as a catalyst for the delineation of in and out groups.
  
• There are other ideologies of contention, especially nationalism.
  
• Someone asserted that gender is primary.
  
• Someone introduced the observation that “America” is a god.
  
• Do all groups inspire hate? Are aggression and violence universals?
  
• Several factors were put forward as stimulating aggressive tendencies:
• Population density.
  
• Pecking order: leaders start wars.
  
• Testosterone: young males are the main culprits.
  
• Males & females engage in difference types of conflict.
  
• Unattached males are most likely to be prone to warfare.

(4) What is the basis of morality? Is or can there be a science of morality?

• Religion is not necessary to morality.
  
• Relativism should be opposed.
  
• There is a difference between subjective & objective reasoning.
  
• There is the issue of the testability of claims.
  
• There is a scientific basis to morality.
  
• Morality is not a science yet, but there is progress. More study is needed to render morality scientific.

(5) Miscellaneous points:

• The inconsistencies in religion are exploited to different ends.
  
• An example of twisted reasoning is gratitude toward God for ‘sparing’ selected individuals from disasters in which many others perish.
  
• Missionaries have by and large been awful people.
  
• How does one weigh the good and bad aspects associated with religion?
  
• Something was said about Freud or psychoanalysis, but I couldn’t make out what it was.

(6) Definitional & methodological questions:

• What is meant by hatred? Does hatred = violence = war?
  
• Is preference hatred?
  
• Who gets to define what a religion is?
  
• Can one factor out religion from everything else?
  
• Someone oriented toward social science is not satisfied with exclusively biological explanations for socially/historically determinant phenomena.

Fan Zhen (450 - 515 AD), Chinese philosopher

Fan Zhen (范縝, hanyupinyin Fàn Zhěn, also transliterated as Fan Chen, occasionally Fan Zen) was a Chinese philosopher whose life span is listed as (circa) 450 - 515 AD. Extensive information about him in English is extraordinarily difficult to find, and his major work Shen Mie Lun appears not to have been translated into English. I could not find him in my two major English language compendia of Chinese philosophy, Fung Yu-lan's A Short History of Chinese Philosophy and Wing-Tsit Chan's A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy.

Here is what I have found in English. The most information is concentrated in a Wikipedia article on Fan Zhen.

On Food for Thought, a web site of heretical quotations, this one can be found:

The spirit is to the body what the sharpness is to the knife. We have never heard that after the knife has been destroyed the sharpness can persist.

Fan Chen (c.450-c.515)
Thung Chien Kang Mu, Chapter 28
Translated by Leon Wieger (1856-1933)
Textes Historiques, 1905 

Fan Zhen gets singled out in John C. Plott's Global History of Philosophy: The Patristic-Sutra Period, Volume 3. He gets two sentences in Rom Harré's One Thousand Years of Philosophy: From Rāmānuja to Wittgenstein.

Fan Zhen is best known for his opposition to Buddhism and his denial of the immortality of the soul, in effect a materialism denying the separate existence of the soul. According to the Wikipedia article, he got in big trouble for this.

I first learned of Fan Zhen via Esperanto: Ateisto Fan Ĝen, a chapter in Antikvaj Filozofoj de Ĉinio [Ancient Philosophers of China] by Hoŭ Ĝjŭeljang, translated from the Chinese. Fan Zhen is labeled an atheist. He also opposed the putative law of karma and its justification for the existence of rich and poor. There is some detail in this short chapter of the Fan Zhen's ideas of the material basis of the "soul". Perhaps one day, in lieu of further sources in English, I will translate this chapter.

In the meantime, we can thank Esperanto as a bridge language from Chinese culture, and we can enroll Fan Zhen as a hero in the annals of freethought.