The Difference Metaphysics Makes

I was reading through the Nicomachean Ethics recently, and something struck me: Aristotle has a lot in common with Buddhism. Or rather, it seems that a couple highly important doctrines of Buddhism can be found in Aristotle. But Aristotle and the Buddha end up in such different positions. While this could be due to any number of reasons and any one of many dissimilarities between them, I would like to advance the metaphysics of the human person as a key issue.

To sum up what I see as the similarities, both have an ethics based on the doctrine of the mean, and both have accounts of a non-permanent human soul. These, further, are at the very heart of Buddhism, second only to the notion that all life is suffering (duhkha). The doctrine of the mean at least is also key to Aristotle's ethics, though we may quibble over how important the supervenient soul is to Aristotle's anthropology (I would say that it is important, insofar as forms need to be enmattered for Aristotle, and matter is necessary for all change, so a permanent soul which may or may not exist in matter would go against the grain of Aristotle's physics). So the similarities are as such non-trivial.

But where Buddhism suggests that we therefore seek a way out of this life, Aristotle recommends that we seek to live this life to the fullest; the Buddha points to the suffering of life, while Aristotle looks at the excellence possible. And one difference which seems to me to push them in opposite directions is the fate of the human person. The Buddha believes in reincarnation; no matter how good this life is, you have to live again. And again, and again. For Aristotle, this life is what there is; your mind, your nous, may be immortal, but that doesn't have anything to do with what you consider to relate to your particular personhood.

So if you have to keep on living multiple lives, then what seemed to be excellence in this life may or may not have benefit in the next; the things considered to be "excellences" may actually harm you ultimately. At any rate, they may make one life more bearable, but leave the underlying problem unchanged. For Aristotle, there is no point in pushing things off to the next life. This is what there is, and wisdom concerns how to live this life well.

This also shows that the account of the human person does not necessarily determine what one should do about life. Granted, there are significant differences between the Buddha and Aristotle over the status of the person, but they both seem to agree that you are inseparable from your constituent material parts, which will come apart, and so to this extent you lack an enduring self. Buddhism likes to point out that recognition of this will lead to more compassionate, selfless behavior; but Aristotle champions aristocratic virtues concerned with building up what there is of the self.

So metaphysical problems concerning the afterlife do have an effect on our actions here and now, perhaps more so than the precise nature of the human being or general ethical theories.