Further notes to self on having no self

I was listening to a podcast on the weekend from the Tricycle podcast channel featuring a guy talking about the key Buddhist idea of "no self".   He mentioned Hume as having a very similar take on there being no core soul - instead humans are just a constant stream of sensations - but made no comment on whether Hume was influenced by Buddhism.

Given that I have never paid much attention to Hume's philosophy, I was a bit surprised to learn that it does indeed sound as if his philosophy may have been Buddhist inspired.  But it seems there is only speculation as to how he might have heard of Buddhist ideas, as discussed in this article.  Here's the abstract:

Philosophers and Buddhist scholars have noted the affinities between
David Hume’s empiricism and the Buddhist philosophical tradition. I show
that it was possible for Hume to have had contact with Buddhist philosophical
views. The link to Buddhism comes through the Jesuit scholars at the Royal
College of La Flèche. Charles François Dolu was a Jesuit missionary who lived
at the Royal College from 1723–1740, overlapping with Hume’s stay. He had
extensive knowledge both of other religions and cultures and of scientific
ideas. Dolu had had first-hand experience with Theravada Buddhism as part
of the second French embassy to Siam in 1687–1688. In 1727, Dolu also had
talked with Ippolito Desideri, a Jesuit missionary who visited Tibet and made
an extensive study of Tibetan Buddhism from 1716–1721. It is at least possible
that Hume heard about Buddhist ideas through Dolu. 

As the article goes on to note:

...very little was known about Buddhism in the Europe of the 1730s, when Hume was writing A Treatise of Human Nature. Buddhism had died out in India, Japan was closed to the West, and European scholars in the Chinese court focused on the elite Confucian and Taoist traditions.2

The whole thing is worth reading.  It's always so interesting to note that Jesuits may have indirectly helped fuel enlightenment ideas due to the fact they were curious about everything.   

I liked this passage at the start of the article about the unclear way people can be influenced:

We know that psychologically, people can be influenced by ideas, even if they themselves forget the source of those ideas. In fact, this “source amnesia” is the rule rather than the exception. Information about sources is actually encoded in a different kind of memory, “autobiographical” or “episodic” memory, while ideas or facts themselves are stored in more robust “semantic memory.”4 We know that listeners can be influenced by ideas even when they are not advocated by the people who present them.5 Psychologically, arguing against a position, as well as arguing for it, can lead your interlocutor to encode and remember that position. And, psychologically and historically, even great philosophers
are not only influenced by other great philosophers (especially before they are great themselves!). They may pick up ideas from much more obscure figures who happen to be the people they find congenial or talk with on a regular basis—the equivalent of the guy in the next office.

And as for how Buddhist ideas are close to some of Hume's:

Three forms of this skeptical rejection are particularly relevant for early modern philosophy and for Hume. First, Buddhism rejects the idea of a metaphysically foundational God, though there may be particular gods. This is why writers like Desideri and La Loubere identified it as atheistic. Second, it rejects the idea that there is an independent substance that is the metaphysical foundation for our experience of the external world—the doctrine of “sunyata” or “emptiness.” Finally, and most radically, the tradition rejects the Cartesian idea that there is even a foundational self that is the locus of experience—the doctrine of “anatman” or “no-self.”

On the no-self position:

Within the general Buddhist tradition, Tsongkhapa argues for a particularly Humean “middle way” position. He argues that there is no foundational, ontological self, but that nevertheless the self-concept is psychologically real. “Thus there are two senses to the term ‘self’ a self conceived in terms of an intrinsic nature that exists by means of intrinsic being, and a self in the sense of the object of our simple natural thought ‘I am.’ Of these two the first is the object of negation by reasoning, while the second is not negated.” 93 Tsongkhapa’s “middle way” is reminiscent of the “turn” at the end of Book 1 of the Treatise where Hume claims that the skeptical arguments of the first part of the book need not undermine the pragmatics of everyday life (T 1.4.7; SBN 263–74) 

I should go finish listening to the podcast, because I thought he said that Hume - and someone else he referenced - allows for people being "persons", even though arguing that persons have no core self.   

Anyway, this all reminded me too of the whole lack of clarity within Buddhism of reincarnation if there is no self (something I think Western Buddhist academics who are into it for the meditation and calmness aspects like to ignore),  and also how Mahayana Buddhism is probably best understood as a reaction against the idea of Nirvana as extinction of the self.   Here was my post about that. 

All interesting, I reckon....