Connections and Emptiness: Exploring the Affinities between Latour’s Irreductionism and Mahayana Buddhism’s Shunyata
During the pandemic, one afternoon I met up with some friends near an isolated stream surrounded by a forest. We brought along some beers and had a casual chat. It was during this gathering that my friend Dharme explained the concept of Kshunyatha (Emptiness) to me. I was vaguely familiar with the idea from Nawagattegama’s novel, but Dharme’s explanation provided a comprehensive understanding. Later, Dharme shared with me the Sinhala translation of Thich Nhat Hanh’s ‘Heart Sutra’, which was the book he had read about the concept.
At the time, I was diving into Actor-Network Theory by Bruno Latour as part of my research, and I’m still. As humans, I believe, we tend to compare and contrast new concepts with those we already know. In this blog post, I’d like to explore the affinities between two seemingly different ideas: Kshunyatha and Actor-Network Theory. I won’t be presenting a formal analysis, but rather a personal reflection on how my brain, wired to think in terms of Eastern ontologies, grapples with this Western (but not Western) theory. I’ll draw on my own experiences and intuition to show the affinities I noticed.
On one hand, Bruno Latour’s concept of irreductionism proposes that everything in the world is interconnected and that no phenomenon can be reduced to a single cause. According to Latour, every object is a complex network of interactions between various actors, both human and non-human. In other words, a thing is so utterly concrete that none of its features can be scraped away like cobwebs or moss, and all features belong to the actor itself. For instance, a hammer is not merely a contemporary tool used in our daily activities; rather, it embodies heterogenous temporalities, such as the mineral from which it was molded, the oak that provided the handle, and the 10 years since it was produced in a German factory for the market. When we grab the handle, we insert our gesture in a ‘garland of time,’ acknowledging the multiple actors and factors that have contributed to the existence of the hammer.
“The hammer that I find on my workbench is not contemporary to my action today: it keeps folded heterogenous temporalities, one of which has the antiquity of the planet, because of the mineral from which it has been moulded, while another has that of the age of the oak which provided the handle, while still another has the age of the 10 years since it came out of the German factory which produced it for the market. When I grab the handle, I insert my gesture in a ‘garland of time’..”
Morality and Technology ; The End of the Means (Bruno Latour, translated by Couze Venn)
On the other hand, the Buddhist concept of ‘Kshunyatha’ or emptiness refers to the idea that everything in the world is empty of inherent existence. This notion highlights the concept of dependent origination in Buddhism, which posits that all things arise in dependence on other factors, and nothing exists independently or inherently. The Heart Sutra’s passage, “Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form,” emphasizes that there is no separation between form and emptiness, existence, feelings, perceptions, and so forth. Therefore, we are not only connected to our family members, ancestors, and other beings, but also to the elements of the earth, such as water, sun, and air. In this view, we are all interconnected and interdependent, and there is no point in attempting to purify “who is me” because we are a part of every other thing.
Listen, Shariputra,
form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.
Form is not other than emptiness, emptiness
is not other than form.
The same is true with existence, feelings, perceptions …
Both the ideas of Catuṣkoṭi and Kshunyatha and the philosophy of Bruno Latour share a fundamental rejection of reductionism and the idea that everything can be explained by a single cause. Instead, they propose that everything is interconnected and interdependent and that there are multiple factors that contribute to the emergence of phenomena.
Another affinity between these two philosophies lies in how they position themselves in the existing debates of their respective eras. Catuṣkoṭi, a logical argument in Indian philosophy, purports to give all possible stances one could take on existence. The concept of Catuṣkoṭi is not exclusive to Buddhism. It is believed to have originated in Indian philosophy and may have been prevalent in other religions in the society before it was adopted by Mahayana Buddhism. The argument posits that there are four ways something could exist: objectively, subjectively, as a mix of both, or neither.
Existence as solely objective (P; that is being).
Existence as solely subjective (not P; that is not being).
Existence as a mix of objectivity and subjectivity (P and not P; that is being and not being).
Existence as neither subjective nor objective (not (P or not P); that is neither being nor not being).
Kshunyatha seemingly falls under the fourth corner of this argument, where the self does not exist objectively, subjectively, or as a mix of the two, but rather as a different phenomenon resulting from relations. Thus, Asking about the subjectivity or objectivity of things becomes a wrong question. The Vacchagotta’s Discourse on Fire (Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta) gives a simple analogy using fire to illustrate this idea. When fire ceases, it is incorrect to ask where it has gone or to say that it travels in a certain direction.
“ the Buddha declares, when “released from conceptions that pertain to materiality”, neither survives death nor fails to survive, is neither reborn nor not reborn, is neither liberated from nor ensnared within samsara. Moreover, the Buddha continues, because the tathagata is, like the great ocean, “deep, boundless, hard to fathom”, there is no one who is named the tathagata. *
*- Some suggest that the realization of the 4th level push towards the fifth corner (beyond linguistic arguments)
Similarly, Bruno Latour positions himself among modern and postmodern philosophers by criticizing the modernist attempts to purify things into subject and object. He critiques the idea of science as a matter of object and religion as a matter of mind (subject) and distinguishes his argument beyond a mere mix of subject and object. In his later works, he introduces the term “instauration” to build a better case beyond the saying that the world is a “construction,” which has a negative connotation like “fake or illusion”.
The idea could be explained through an example of a new music piece composed by an artist using an instrument. The music is a result of both the instruments and the artist, and the instruments make the artist as much as the artist makes the music, which was not in existence a moment ago. He argues that it is not the instruments that make the artist an artist or the artist who makes the music, but their interrelations that result in the music, as well as the artists and the instruments.
It is worth noting that both Catuṣkoṭi and Latour’s idea of ‘instauration’ are not simple in terms of digesting. Hence, The third and fourth lemmas of Catuṣkoṭi could easily be seen as equivalent, just as Latour has been labeled as a mere constructionist. Despite this, I cannot help but notice the similarities in their arguments and their efforts to present a distinct perspective.
As someone who has been influenced by the concept of interdependence from both ends, I do not see this as a unique position in Latour’s work or Mahayana Buddhism. Rather, it is part of a broader discourse that exists in the philosophical arguments of their respective time periods.
Furthermore, attempting to comprehend these notions raises a different question — “if things are mixed and the result of millions of other things, then what should I do?” I recall asking myself this same question when I first read ANT. “If you stand in this idea, then how can you design? Doesn’t it diminish your confidence as a designer?” I believe This realization links to Latour’s work on ecology and climate change and his criticism of the Western world for dividing the world into man and nature. In a way, this way of thinking fundamentally alters the way one interacts with the world.
I recall a statement by Stephen Hawking, which, in essence, stated that if you believe the world is flat, you will have questions about where the center or edge of the earth is. However, when you realize it is a globe, those directional questions vanish and are replaced by a new set of queries and ways of intervening.
Similarly, on that day and night when we were driving back home after Dharme’s introduction to Kshunyatha, something changed in us. A motorbike cut in front of us and raced ahead. On any other day, we would have raced with it. However, one of our friends said, “See, machan, this is me who raced and this is me who is behind, so chill.”
References
Harman, G. (2009). Prince of Networks :Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. In Re.press.
Jones, N. (2020). A Russellian Analysis of Buddhist Catuskoti. Comparative Philosophy: An International Journal of Constructive Engagement of Distinct Approaches toward World Philosophy, 11(2). https://doi.org/10.31979/2151-6014(2020).110206
Latour, B. (2013). An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence. In Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. http://www.elsevier.com/locate/scp
Latour, B., & Venn, C. (2002). Morality and Technology. Theory, Culture & Society, 19(5–6), 247–260. https://doi.org/10.1177/026327602761899246
Priest, G. (2018). The fifth corner of four: An essay on buddhist metaphysics and the catuṣkoṭi (First edition). Oxford University Press.
Rigopoulos, A. (1993). The Avyākatāni and the Catuṣkoṭi Form in the Pāli Sutta Piṭaka, 2. East and West, 43(1/4), 115–140.
