Abstract

The Buddhist project is to show how it is possible to be both autonomous and shadow-like, how there can be actions and experiences without a substantial detached self. In this chapter, the author draws on the distinction between self and other that is made available by empathetic attention in order to construct an account of persons. Persons are not merely causally connected chains of psycho-physical events, nor are they physical objects that happen to instantiate mental properties; they are loci of value and significance. The boundaries of a person are defined by what is excluded as alien, and so the notion of a person is apophatic rather than forensic.