مطالب

This paper focuses on the Anatman experience as described by Guatma(6th century BCE). Many Buddhist philosophers consider the absence of self as a foundational experience of Buddhism. This paper elaborates the Buddhist Absence of Self from the View of Existential Phenomenology. The paper articulates the phenomenological difference between the Ontic-Ontological absence of Self in early Buddhism and the Ontic-Ontological presence of Self in Contemporary Existential Phenomenology. Throughout the paper there is an Existential Phenomenological focus on the intertwining of our Sense of Self and our Sense of Being. The sense of self in early Buddhism is being-less, baseless and empty. Empty of What? Empty of Being! There is no presence of Being and no Being of presence. There is no experience of Being. There is no source of Being. There is no source of Being for our mind. The mind is absent of Being. There is no source of Being for us as person. In early Buddhism the absence of self is the absence of Being-ness.

.It is apt and usual to cogitate and ratiocinate man and human rights; it is less so about or with (other) animal rights; and much more less and lesser so with/about “plant rights” and (possibly) the rights of cloned/the artificially intelligent agents’. This condition is unfair and not ideal because man, other animals, plants, and other human manipulations (AI) from nature constitute varying levels of being; therefore, they possess varying levels of rights. Hence there is need to espouse the nature/levels of being, on the one hand, and to adumbrate the nature/types of rights and as related to being as such—which is the imperative of this article. Dwelling on the cornucopia of literature/and common biological (and other) features in nature as basis for analysis, this article, first, seeks to establish that man, other animals, plants, and other human manipulations from nature constitute varying levels of being; and second, argues that each level of being as such possesses some rights associated with it. It argues further that either all beings have rights, or they don’t. The work concludes that if one accepts that all the levels of being possess rights (accordingly including plant, cloned and AI agents), then one has certain obligation to all levels of being; but accepting either poses the most existential and ontological threat to humanity and all of nature.