ABSTRACT

　　 Buddhist egology concurs with the Husserlian claim that the
　　 empirical ego is `constituted'. The Buddhist `deconstruction' of the
　　 ego will not, however, pace Husserl, permit the pronoun `I' to refer
　　 to a purported extra-linguistic entity. The insights here distilled
　　 from the unique mode of self-reference functional within the
　　 Vietnamese language secure for us an unmistakable confirmation of the
　　 Buddhist thesis and have profound consequences for the philosophical
　　 problems surrounding the existence and nature of the self and the
　　 existence of other minds.

To my knowledge, the Vietnamese language is utterly unique among languages
in its mode of self-reference. I wish to explore self-reference in
Vietnamese, but neither for its intrinsic linguistic interest alone, nor
solely for the sake of illuminating a significant aspect of a rich cultural
heritage. The mode of self-reference operative within the Vietnamese
language has a decidedly philosophical import, and can be generalised to
extend our contemporary understanding of self-reference. Moreover, as I
hope to "how, the Vietnamese-or more generally, a Vietnamese-like-use of
self-reference may have profound consequences for the philosophical
problems surrounding the existence and nature of the self and the existence
of other minds. In particular, the insights which we shall glean from our
investigation of self-reference in Vietnamese will secure for us a clear
and solid confirmation of the Husserlian doctrine that the empirical ego
does not by any means comprise an ultimately founding stratum of sense, but
is itself `constituted' (functions, that is, as the selfsame identity
revealed throughout a potentially endless manifold of profiles). [1] This
confirmation can be purchased, however, only at the expense of rejecting
certain early reflections of Husserl's regarding the logico-linguistic
function of `I'. We shall see, pace Husserl, that `I' cannot serve as a
referring expression. But this surface disagreement permits a more profound
agreement of substance. It is precisely because `I' does not refer to a
purported extra-linguistic `ego' that we can draw from Vietnamese the
appropriate confirmation of its constituted character.

For Husserl, the empirical ego, the `I' which we take, pre-reflectively and
naively, to be immersed in the world alongside the objects which it
confronts, [2] is, of course, phenomenal. But though I welcome certain
aspects of Husserl's theory of ego-constitution, my own Buddhist
predilections prevent acceptance of this phenomenon as benefundata, as
founded, that is, in a unitary and basal stratum of lived subjectivity. [3]
For at least a significant strand of Buddhist thought, the ego is `empty',
not merely `constituted', but ontologically dependent upon an array of
conditions external to itself. Its very being is `borrowed', as it were,
from these conditions, and there remains to it nothing which is properly
`its own'. There remains, that is, no `own-being' (svabhava), no
self-existence. [4] With only apparent paradox, we can say that the self
`itself' has no `self'. Buddhist egology (or `anti-egology' if you prefer)
is vitally concerned to `deconstruct' any notion of a unitary,
language-independent self or ego (atman) which subtends or directs the flow
of our conscious life. And while the Vietnamese language predates the
reception of Buddhism, and cannot, then, be said to exhibit, in its
structure, a pre-existing (anti-)egology, it is all the more remarkable, as
I hope to demonstrate, that the Vietnamese mode of self-reference mirrors
this deconstruction. The Buddha did not, of course, speak Vietnamese. And
it would be hopelessly arrogant (if not irrepressibly comical) to suppose
that the profound message of egolessness (Pali: anatta; sanskrit: anatman)
could only be formulated in a language which the Tathagata did not speak.
English, Pali and Vietnamese are equally efficient vehicles for expressing
the ontology of egolessness. The uniqueness of Vietnamese lies, not in its
capacity to articulate Buddhist doctrine, not, that is, in what it can say,
but in the fact that egolessness is reflected in the semantic conditions
for its `saying' anything at all.

　　　　　　　　 Vietnamese Self-Referential Pronouns

Remarkably, there is no self-referential expression in Vietnamese (no
`V-expression', as I shall affectionately call them) which can be
translated (into English), without serious distortion, as `I'. This is
because, whereas the English pronoun, `I' (along with its counterparts in
the various Indo-European languages) is, as we might say,