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Personal Identity and Rebirth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Michael Stoeber
Michael Stoeber
Affiliation:
University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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Extract

Western philosophers are generally very unsympathetic to the notion of reincarnation, especially the idea of rebirth in another body in this world. This paper will argue that retributive rebirth as it is traditionally understood in Hindu thought involves serious problems given the ambiguousness of personal identity in the conception, difficulties which are born out in a moral tenuousness and which bring the reasonableness of the belief into question. However, though this conception of rebirth is the culturally and historically dominant version in Indian thought, it is not the sole conception. The ‘soul-making’ version I will develop and defend in this paper does not overcome the ambiguity associated with personal identity in the retributive version, but it nevertheless reasonably overrides the problems retributive rebirth encounters in such an association. And though soul-making rebirth is quite different in tone and in emphasis from the traditionally dominant retributive version, it can be found in varying degrees in certain Hindu philosophies, most vividly perhaps in Aurobindo Ghose. Moreover, this conception is not exclusive to Hinduism and is compatible even with some Christian theologies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , December 1990 , pp. 493 - 500
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 John Hick comments on these sheaths of personality, characterizing them, as certain Indian philosophers have, as mental dispositions: ‘the linga sharira is the seat of the various emotional, spiritual, moral, aesthetic and intellectual modifications which are happening to us all the time in the course of our human existence. Such modifications are most adequately characterized in contemporary western categories as mental dispositions …’. See Death and Eternal Life (Glasgow: Collins, 1979), p. 316.Google Scholar

2 For example, G. C. Nayak proposes that our ‘misery and happiness are in exact proportion to our wickedness and virtue, and God's [Īśvara's] justice consists in the fact that nobody suffers or prospers undeservedly’ according to the traditional understanding of the notions of karma (actions and their effects on the future being) and samsāra (rebirth according to those actions). Evil, Karma and Reincarnation (Santiniken, West Bengal: Centre of Advanced Study in Philosophy, 1973), p. 55Google Scholar.

3 R. W. Perrett attempts to overcome these kinds of issues by suggesting that since ‘the reborn person is the karmic heir of the deceased, linked to him by both causally induced dispositions and latent q-memories, it is appropriate to regard them as the same agent, even if they are not strictly the same person’ (‘Rebirth’, Religious Studies, XXIII (1987), 55Google Scholar). But unless we substitute some criterion of identity for that of body and memory, we cannot even refer to him as the same ‘agent’.

4 It might be suggested that memory of past lives might be regained in a later life which would then explain present and past circumstances, hence secure personal identity and justify the retributivist hypothesis. Even if we ignore the fact that past-life memories would still involve uncertainty, such a move is to beg the question; we are looking for identity criteria – we cannot simply assume it. And anyway, we are looking for an identity connection for this or that particular life, not for a future or final life. Even if we hypothesize some identity connection between some future person and the person now, we have not shown the person now his connection to past lives. To suppose a future life where this memory criterion would be satisfied would not satisfy it for the person as he is existing now.

5 We can refer to our previous example to illustrate this latter point. Let us say that both Jeanine and John believe in retributive-rebirth and attribute their present difficult conditions and circumstances to be dependent upon their past misdeeds as this particular SS officer in the Second World War. They presume that their present life is justified in terms of their past, and they both claim past life experiences as evidence of this conviction. Yet, at least one of them (perhaps both of them) is mistaken, and there is no bodily criterion to satisfy the issue. Hence neither of them can be sure in attributing present circumstances to past misdeeds as the German officer. But in order to meet the retributive requirement that one be punished proportionately only for his or her misdeeds, they must be sure; their belief in retributive rebirth is undermined by the inherent uncertainty of personal associations in rebirth.

6 R. W. Perrett argues on this point that responsibility only requires belief in responsibility, not memory. I think he is correct, but such a belief requires evidence concerning specific past improprieties, a requirement which is not met in these cases. Cf. Perrett, p. 56.

7 The best Hindu version of this teleological view of rebirth which I have seen is that of Sri Aurobindo. See especially The Problem of Rebirth in The Birth Centenary Library, vol. 16, (Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1971)Google Scholar. Robert Minor discusses soul-making rebirth in terms of an ‘evolutionary karma’ propounded by Aurobindo as well as Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. See Minor's summary of both these Hindu versions in ‘In Defense of Karma and Rebirth: Evolutionary Karma’, in Karma and Rebirth: Post Classical Developments, Ronald W. Neufeldt, ed. (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 15–40Google Scholar). Also, a provocative Christian version of this view is espoused by an anonymous Mystic in Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, Robert A. Powell, tr. (Warwick, N.Y.: Amity House, 1985), especially pp. 92–4, 360–2, and 376Google Scholar.

8 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter 27, Section 6.

9 Evil, Karma and Reincarnation, p. 64.

10 I am indebted to Donald Evans and Mark Thornton of the University of Toronto. Donald Evans recognized serious confusions in an early draft of this paper and pushed my development of soul-making rebirth. Mark Thornton's astute comments helped me to refine my argument. Also, thanks to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, whose funding helped to make this paper possible.