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Altruistic conduct can be helpful or harmful for an individual depending on whether an individual has the capacity to attain a Buddhist-type salvation (through renouncing the will to life). Personal suffering is a necessary requisite for salvation (for those who have the capacity to attain salvation).

Case 1: One has the capacity to attain salvation: In this case, altruistic conduct is not helpful since it removes suffering. It impedes the attainment of salvation (by removing suffering).
Case 2: One does not have the capacity to attain salvation: in this case, altruistic conduct is helpful (the removal of suffering will not hinder the individual since the individual will not reach salvation).

Does it then follow that this is an epistemic paradox?: how does an altruistic person know that the
person one “helps” via altruistic conduct action is not thereby being hindered with respect to their path to salvation?

Danzr wrote:Altruistic conduct can be helpful or harmful for an individual depending on whether an individual has the capacity to attain a Buddhist-type salvation (through renouncing the will to life). Personal suffering is a necessary requisite for salvation (for those who have the capacity to attain salvation).

Case 1: One has the capacity to attain salvation: In this case, altruistic conduct is not helpful since it removes suffering. It impedes the attainment of salvation (by removing suffering).
Case 2: One does not have the capacity to attain salvation: in this case, altruistic conduct is helpful (the removal of suffering will not hinder the individual since the individual will not reach salvation).

Does it then follow that this is an epistemic paradox?: how does an altruistic person know that the
person one “helps” via altruistic conduct action is not thereby being hindered with respect to their path to salvation?

I would be willing to wear a badge stating that I have no capacity to attain salvation if it means I get treated better.

Buddhism doesn't mean to renounce life or beeing extremely altruistic, it's the 4 noble truths and the eightfold path you have to follow. That includes not beeing to over exaggerating in everything as well to renounce life. Budda sat close to a river meanwhile abnegating the real world through ascetiscism, when he listened to a a bycoming boat where a teacher explained a music instrument and said that the player shouldnt sound the strings neither too hard nor to tough for playing a good song. Overwhelmed by this insight he left his ascetic life and tried to live more balanced , that meant for him more some kind of satori (enlightenment). This little story that i heard as a western cultured person which is even depicted in the film "Litte Buddha" with Keanu Reeves should give you a clue that buddhism cannot be a radical way, even with altruism and with leading an ascetic life. To lead a very ascetic life is more a hinduistic way and more practised by the saddhus , enlightned holy ascetic people for this religion.

Danzr wrote:Personal suffering is a necessary requisite for salvation (for those who have the capacity to attain salvation).

Your mistake is highlighted in red.

Personal suffering, in general, is not what is required for salvation. It's more particular than that. It's not just any suffering that leads to salvation, but rather only certain kinds of suffering. And in general, voluntary suffering gives better results than involuntary suffering.

Not to mention that, if you are a student of Eastern doctrine, you should also know that one of the requisites of salvation is to be free of thought. A man should just help, or not help, without deliberating about it. And this is actually far more important than whether or not actual help was given or not.

Philanthropist help thyself? Or zero sum? de Maistre thought good and evil a zero sum game. Evil is good, or at least, by some process known only to him, makes for more good in the world. Therefore, do evil. But to whom does the good then accrue? Isn't it the same paradox? If so, the terms good and evil are merely cyphers underscoring a real dilemma of reason. Oppositions fail to resolve reality into distinct and certain categories until reason can, by the same token, establish distinct and certain equivalence. Which simply cannot be done. Mathematical and logical equivalence is intrinsically ambivalence. Just try to explain how 1 can be the same with and yet added to itself, or how A=A and yet A=B and B=C can preserve the law of the excluded middle!

Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology often deals with questions concerning what entities exist or may be said to exist and how such entities may be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.

Ordered into what? Or as what? I mean, if ontologically what, metaphysically which one? Or, contrariwise, if ontologically which one, metaphysically what? You see, the problem is that 'one' doesn't mean one thing. Kierkegaard demands we be one thing. But which one thing? What we are, or which one? 'One' cannot be the same 'one' in one's metaphysics as in one's ontology. I'm not entirely clear which one is which, or what either is, but I can say with due confidence that the distinction orbits the difference, and a kind of loyalty or affiliation (or dogmatic disposition!) between 'one' being what one is and 'one' being which one it is. But neither can be all that 'one' would be, even if being were one. Which it isn't. Nor is it 'many', as such. What it is is incomplete alone. What cannot be alone cannot be 'one', and so cannot be resolved between its metaphysics and its ontology. Evil is what would keep that incompleteness unrecognized. The epistemological paradox is that knowledge cannot be unilateral. It either knows what and is unrecognized which one, or knows which one and is unrecognized what. Nothing can be its own completion. Only evil can suppose otherwise.

Gary_M_Washburn wrote:Kierkegaard demands we be one thing.

Who the hell does he think he is?