Plato and Śāntideva agree: 1) that conventional persons are not homogeneous units, but consist of related elements; 2) that the goal of analysing persons into elements is to design strategies towards achieving harmony among the related elements.

Harmony obtains: if the elements belong to a whole managed by a good ruler (Plato); if, in case of trouble, within or across conventional persons, rebalancing is possible (Śāntideva).

Both kinds of strategies require creativity: the capacity to devise something cannot be derived mechanically from one’s previous knowledge. I will focus on the creativity needed by Plato’s rulers in bringing about harmonious relations.

Platonic ontology, according to Plato himself, constitutes a balanced synthesis between two extreme views, the eternalism of Eleatic metaphysics and the mobilism of Ionian physics. But while reading Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, it becomes striking that, by using emptiness (śūnyatā) as a heuristic concept and the tetralemma (catuṣkoṭi) as a logical map, the elements of Plato’s ontological scale could be understood as resulting from a generative combination instead of being just found in a contingent way. Thus, is it possible to admit several ways in the middle and through the middle, a Buddhist way and a Platonic way?

This paper examines what one does in coming to know reality, and what this does to one engaging in this process and practice of coming to know reality. One the one hand I want to show in each case – the Buddhist and the Platonist – that the implicit claim that (striving to) know reality is good for us is not gratuitous, implausibly intellectualist, or a matter only for experts and dispensable for the rest of us. On the other hand, I want to show that what these processes consist in for each party, and what the desired outcome (the improved state) is like, is deeply different for the Buddhist and for the Platonist—even if there are important similarities in the moral psychology worth recognising. This, in turn, means that the conspicuous metaphysical differences between the two, tied so closely to the epistemology, cannot be waved away or simply set aside when considering ethical matters. Metaphysics are, in each case, deeply normative; and for all the important structural similarities in their ethics—both in conceiving ethics as a matter of transformation through knowing impersonal reality, and in conceiving appetites as arising from egocentric confusions and leading to suffering—there are values contained in each which are absent from the other. In this regard, I will discuss briefly beauty and acceptance.

The Socratic ideal of self-knowledge articulates not simply a conception of ourselves as knower(s) (gignōskōn), but also, and more importantly, of what this pursuit entails, namely that one can, and perhaps ought to, get to know oneself (gignōskōn autōs sauton). A similar ideal is at work in the Buddha’s admonition to seek the guidance of one’s reasoned deliberations and disciplined practice. However, reasoned deliberations in the service of the examined life are not a presuppositionless mode of inquiry. One’s metaphysical commitments matter: a view of reality as reducible to a domain of immutable principles is going to paint a rather different picture of what self-knowledge entails than commitment to an ontology of dependently arisen concrete property-particulars. This paper explores the tension between the constitutive and dialogical dimensions of self-knowledge in these two traditions. I argue that while both traditions recognise that recollection (anamnesis; smṛti) and practices of self-control (sōphrosūne) and cultivation (bhāvana) must complement the dialogical/debating methods (dialektikē; vāda) that provide justification for our beliefs, they differ with regard to what these methods are supposed to deliver.

The trope of dreaming helps illustrate the apprehension of reality both in Plato’s Theaetetus (151-160) and Vasubandhu’s Viṃśatikā. Both philosophers address the challenge that their proposed theory cannot distinguish between waking and dreaming perception. Both turn the apparent vice into virtue: [NoD] there is no difference in kind between the two states! I argue that in both cases NoD goes hand-in-hand with complete idealism, i.e. the thesis that neither subjects, nor objects of experience exist independently of cognition. I close by considering why, despite their shared metaphysical framework, NoD leads Vasubandhu to claim that all perception is illusory, whereas all perception is true for Theaetetus.

This paper explores virtuous self-unification in Platonist and Buddhist philosophy, focusing on the systematising projects of Proclus and Buddhaghosa. Buddhist “path” literature, like Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga, is structured around the thesis that (1) restraint of habitual reactions to impressions (sīla) facilitates (2) single-pointed concentration (samādhi), culminating in (3) transformative insight (paññā). I argue that this “triple training” offers an appealing perspective on the Neoplatonist “ladder of virtues,” a curricular sequence from motivational harmony to concentration (katharsis) and contemplation (theōria) of Forms. I focus on both traditions’ construction of practices of mental unification (cittass’ ekaggatā) against different metaphysical backgrounds.

I argue that Plato’s Parmenides (especially its second part, the so-called “dialectical” exercise) and Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā exhibit several suggestive parallels, suggesting shared central problems, in their critical arguments that the two works direct toward, respectively, the One (to hen) and svabhāva. I argue that many of the issues these problems raise can usefully be understood as issues of the unity of predication: the unity that is exhibited by predicative sentences attributing some feature or features to some entity or asserting a relationship to hold between two or more entities. Finally, I argue that at least some of the common problems of predicative unity that are effectively posed by Nāgārjuna and have parallels in the Parmenides are not resolved by later attempts to “fix” the structure of predication in the face of the problems of the dialogue, including Plato’s own such attempts.

The article explores the common concern Bhāviveka (6th century) and Plotinus (3rd century) shared regarding the possibility and necessity of speaking about a reality posited as non-discursive. The discursive account of non-discursive reality is a paradox, yet not a contradiction, they both embrace and overcome by providing two different models: that of the unfolding of a condensed reality for Plotinus and that of the two kinds of ultimate for Bhāviveka. By comparing these two models, the article proposes to reflect upon the possibility of the “expression” of the absolute at the same time as preserving its claim of absoluteness.

According to a prominent strand in contemporary metaphysics and cognitive science, we operate with two distinct concepts of cause: production and dependency. Using this framework, this paper argues that Plato’s discussions of the causes of coming-to-be (Phaedo, Timaeus, Statesman) elaborate a production concept modelled on craft, according to which intelligence is the cause and other necessary conditions are tools, thereby incorporating dependency-judgments within the production concept. By contrast, Vasubandhu’s account of dependent origination uses the dependency conception as an umbrella to cover various causal relations but must enrich it with production-judgments in order to accommodate karma.

In this paper I interrogate and ultimately reject the standard, egoistic view of Socratic ethics by studying the eudaimonist implications of the so-called prudential principle (the principle that everyone desires the good) in light of Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra. I first discuss the work that the prudential principle is commonly made to do in rational eudaimonist accounts of Socratic ethics. I then contrast the altruism inherent in Śāntideva’s treatment of what he calls the “sama dukha sukhaa sarveheh: the equality of all beings with respect to well-being and suffering,” with prudential principle in the Socratic dialogues is not tied in any substantive way to eudaimonism construed as agent-centred. In the second part of this paper, I compare the function of arguments from transmigration in Śāntideva’s text and in Plato’s text in terms of how such arguments are used to undermine strictly egoistic accounts of rational motivation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the virtue of equanimity as discussed by both authors. I argue that the Socratic dialogue has the intended, though not necessarily realised goal of creating an association between persons who will the good based on the shared awareness that everyone desires the good. This awareness, that everyone desires the good, has its own motivating force that can be expressed as the desire to benefit others. Fundamental to Socratic ethics is this orientation of extending the good. Thus I want to underscore the importance of the prudential principle for an interpretation of Socratic eudaimonism in which the equality of self and other form a part of Socratic teaching. I hope that by studying this principle of equality as it appears in the 7th century Madhyamaka text alongside of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, we can test the meaning of Classical Greek eudaimonism.

Giorgio Agamben diagnoses a fracture at the heart of Platonic thought between knowledge and pleasure, truth and beauty, which is mediated by the figure of Eros and reconciled by reconfiguring knowledge as taste or enjoyment. I argue that a parallel fracture found in Buddhist philosophy is reconciled via the cultivation of knowledge as taste in Tantric articulations of Buddhism. In both Plato and Buddhist Tantra, philosophical education and practice cultivate an aesthetics of truth, on the one hand, and the truth of erotic and sensual pleasure, on the other, which meet in taste. A dialogue between these two approaches helps us to both unpack the Tantric Buddhist trajectory of truth as pleasure, and to critically appraise the Platonic reconciliation of knowledge and pleasure from a Buddhist perspective.

In the Theaetetus, Protagoras is said to subscribe to a Heraclitean metaphysics of flux. This flux doctrine holds broad similarities with the Buddhist metaphysics of dependent origination – nothing exists stably, but exists in a process of constant becoming. But where Plato portrayed relativism as the inevitable result of flux, this wasn’t the automatic conclusion for Abhidharma Buddhist philosophers. Truth is importantly not up to us when it comes to ultimately real dharmas. Through exploring an argument between Vasubandhu and the Vaibhāṣikas on the mechanics of dependent arising, I suggest reasons for this difference.

This essay examines a pair of concerns facing both Plato and Śāntideva in their application of theoretical reason (for Plato) and the wisdom realising emptiness (for Śāntideva) to practices of caring for others.

For Plato, this takes the form of governance by the philosopher; for Śāntideva, the bodhisattva’s compassionate commitment to liberate all beings. Both thinkers must explain how apparently world-negating insight enables effective interaction with ordinary reality.

Likewise, each must consider whether returning to the city or remaining in saṃsāra is detrimental to well-being. I develop Śāntideva’s Mahāyāna Buddhist response to these challenges, and consider whether it can be adapted to a Platonic framework.