Conference on “Spiritual exercises, self-transformation and liberation in philosophy, theology and religion”

Pawel Odyniec, who is among the foremost experts on Vedānta and on K.C. Bhattacharya, organised a conference that looks extremely thought-provoking on May 22nd–24th. Please read more about the participants (among which Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, James Madaio, Jessica Frazier, Karl-Stephan Bouthilette…) and the program, and how to register at the link below:
https://konferens.ht.lu.se/spiritual-exercises

Maṇḍana on sacrificial duties

Maṇḍana’s theory of commands centers around his attempt to reduce them to statements of instrumentality. Commanding to X to do Y would amount to say that Y is the instrument to realise a goal of X. Maṇḍana establishes (in his eyes) this point in the first part of the siddhānta within one of his masterpieces, the Vidhiviveka ‘Discrimination about Commands’. This consists in some verses and a very extended autocommentary thereon. The first part of the Vidhiviveka covers objectors, the second one (the siddhānta) opens with six verses and commentary explaining this view.

However, Maṇḍana then has to harmonize this point with the pre-existing Mīmāṃsā account of duties distinguishing between three sets of sacrifices, namely:

  1. —nitya karman ‘fixed sacrifice’, to be performed regularly (typically each day), no matter what, but where a performance yathāśakti ‘as much as one can’ is acceptable.
  2. —naimittika karman ‘occasional sacrifice’, to be performed whenever the occasion arises (e.g., an eclypse or the birth of a son). As in the above case, yathāśakti performance is acceptable.
  3. -kāmya karman ‘elective sacrifice’, to be performed only if one wants their results and which needs to be performed exactly as prescribed (yathāvidhi or yathānyāya), no relaxing of the norms allowed.

Once a sacrifice has been undertaken, even if it is kāmya, its completion becomes compulsory and the way of such completion remains yathāvidhi in the case of kāmya sacrifices.
How can this difference be kept if all commands are nothing but statements about instrumentality? Would not a statement about instrumentality correspond only to the kāmya category?

Maṇḍana dedicates to this problem the next verses and commentary of his Vidhiviveka, where he examines several possibilities. The main constraints, are, again, keeping the distinction between nitya/naimittika sacrifices on the one hand and kāmya sacrifices on the other hand, as well as the distinction between yathāśakti and yathāvidhi modes of performance. He therefore explores multiple possible understanding of śakti ‘ability’, phala ‘result’ and adhikāra ‘eligibility, especially in conversation with Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā interlocutors insisting on how all sacrifices are compulsory and how the mentions of result found in conjunction with kāmya rituals is only a way to identify the adhikārin ‘eligible person’ for their performance. For instance, which kind of result could make it possible for a command about a nitya karman to lead one to perform the sacrifice every single day? Are there really results that are always desired? And even if such a result could be found, why would one need to keep a distinction in the yathāśakti and yathānyāya performance? If all sacrifices are instruments to realise a certain result, why would some of them need an accurate performance and other not so? The situation is further complicated by the presence of elective sacrifices prescribed to people ‘who desire heaven’ (svargakāma). In which sense are they different from nitya sacrifices, that also lead to heaven?

Unfortunately, the Vidhiviveka is characterised by a terse style, to say the least. Maṇḍana was probably so much into the topic that at times he seems to take important intermediate passages for granted and just leaves the reader wonder. Fortunately, a more generous commentator, Vācaspati, solves most of the doubt and adds further interesting discussions in his Nyāyakaṇikā.
Last, Sanskritists and philosophers of duty have a duty of gratitude to Elliot Stern, who created the first critical edition of the text, including also its previously unpublished commentaries.

Curious to know more? We will discuss chapters 12–14 of the Vidhiviveka in this workshop: https://philosophy.utoronto.ca/event/workshop-maṇḍana-on-ritual-duties/

Workshop on Vaiṣṇava material culture

Workshop on Vaiṣṇava material culture (in South India)
(8—10 December 2021, virtually held per zoom)

Organisers: Suganya Anandakichenin, Elisa Freschi, Naresh Keerthi, Srilata Raman

(Photo by Suganya Anandakichenin)

Please register (with an email stating your interests and affiliation) by December the 1st at this address: elisa.freschi@utoronto.ca (places are limited, apologies in advance if your request cannot be accommodated)

Program:


8.12 (vegetable and edible substances)9.12 (ritual emblemes)10.12 (new lives of texts)
8:15—8:30welcoming address (Srilata)welcoming address (N+S)welcoming address (E)
8:30—9:00practical demo (Srinivasa Rajan Swami: “A look at the Araiyar’s outfit”)
practical demo (M.A.V. Madhusudanan Svāmī on śaṭharī)practical demo (Thillaisthanam Parthasarathy: “From traditional to contemporary: Srivaisnava wedding cards”)
9:00—9:45Srilata Raman “From Pāyasam to Puḷiyōtarai – Food in Śrīvaiṣṇava Domestic Culture”
Borayin Larios (The Divine Thief and the Solidification of Dairy: Kṛṣṇa’s Butterball in Mahabalipuram) Ilanit Loewy Shacham “The commentary in the hand of the ācārya”
9:45—10:30Andrea Gutiérrez “Feeding Aranganathar “Feeding Devotees:  Recovering Recipes from Medieval Temple Inscriptions at Srirangam”Suganya Anandakichenin “The worship of the Ācārya’s pādukās among the Śrīvaiṣṇavas”Harshita Mruthinti Kamath “Temple Poems on Copperplates: The Material Life of Annamayya’s Telugu Padams”
coffee break


10:45—11:30Naresh Keerthi “Goddess in a Flowerpot — Towards a Theobotanical Account of Tulasī”Ute Huesken “A god’s second life: Āti Atti Varatar Vaipavam”Jonathan Peterson (“Branding the Sensuous Body: Taptamudrā and Material Practice in Early Modern South Asia”)
11:30—12:15Vasudha Narayanan “Food for thought, Food for Body and Soul: Srivaishnava Temple Prasada”Marzenna Czerniak-Drożdżowicz “Material body of god’s representations – how to establish it and how to mend it”final round table
lunch break


12:30—13:15James Mc Hugh “Preliminary Thoughts on Betel (pān) in Hindu Vaiṣṇava Worship”practical demo (T.A.Chari and Malini Chari: “Gifting Rāmānuja’s vigraha”)

Discussants: Anusha Rao, Jesse Pruitt, Mirela Stosic, Manasicha Akepiyapornchai, Sathvik Rayala, Janani Mandayam Comar, Prathik Murali, Giulia Buriola

Summary of the 9th CBC conference in Oxford

A guest post by Yiming Shen

Thanks to the generous support from the Lorne Thyssen Research Fund for Ancient World Topics (Wolfson College, Oxford), Max Müller Fund (Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford), and Wolfson College Academic Committee (Oxford), the 9th Coffee Break Conference has successfully taken place at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, on 4-6 Dec 2018.

The theme of the conference was “Science and Technology in Premodern Asia”, and there
were altogether 5 panels, on Medicine, Music, Astronomy and Mathematics, Language
Science, and Technology. On the first morning (4 Dec), Prof. Christopher Minkowski from the
Faculty of Oriental Studies delivered the keynote speech titled “The Study of Science and
the Study of Indian Science”, and after that altogether 23 speakers delivered their papers
over the three days. The speakers were mostly from different parts of Europe, but also a
few were coming from the United States and India. For details of the talks and their
presenters, please see the conference program here.

On the final day of the conference (6 Dec), we organised the following two activities: Show
& Tell of manuscripts at the Weston Library, and a visit to the Museum of the History of
Science. On the whole, the conference went on smoothly, according to our plan. Currently,
the possibilities of publishing the conference proceedings are being discussed.

Yiming Shen is a PhD student in Oxford.

Can we speak of “multiple Renaissances”? What are the historical and political consequences of this use?

I just came back from a conference on the many Renaissances in Asia. Since it was part of the Coffee Break Conference project, it was meant to be most of all an open discussion on a fascinating topic (rethinking the concept of Renaissance and asking whether this could be applied also outside its original context, and more specifically in South Asia). The starting point of the discussion was Jack Goody’s book “Renaissances: The one or the many?”, which has been analysed from very different perspectives in the opening talks by Camillo Formigatti and Antony Pattathu and to which most of the following talks referred back to. There was a general consensus about the fact that Goody’s depiction of South Asia is at best incomplete and at worst repeats some orientalist prejudices about its being changeless.

Die Lange Nacht der Forschung: How do we present our research to the public?

Two days ago I visited a part of the “Long night of research”, an event having the purpose of presenting research to the public. Universities, the academy of sciences and various private funds supporting scientific research (like the Rotary club) had a small portion of an open space to present their highlights. The idea is that people just stroll from one location to the other and spend only some minutes in each. Thus, an effective communication needs to be essential, catchy and striking enough to mould the audience’s memory.

The public included many children and their parents. It goes without saying, I guess, that the institutes focusing on natural sciences were way more successful in gaining the attention of young visitors. In the photograph, you can see two 13 ys old boys operating a fake brain.

God and the reality of the world — UPDATED

Marginal notes about a workshop in Hawai’i, part 3

Do we need God to make sense of the world’s reality? Michael Dummett, who was surely not known for his religious fanatism came to this conclusion. God is, for this well-known philosopher, the objective perspective from which the world is intelligible as it is. In this sense, God could also be said to be needed in order to avoid the idea of a world as noúmenon, i.e., real but never grasped as it really is.

Against that, one might object that there is no intrinsic reason whence the world needs be intelligible. Yes, it would be hard to imagine that the world is unintelligible for us. But being “hard to believe” is not enough to rule out a view, unless you have a fundamental premiss saying that you prefer what looks reasonable (i.e. harmonises with your background belief). The “reasonability” premiss would rule out all gnostic or Matrix-like world-views, but there is no intrinsic reason to choose it over them.

In other words: Dummett’s thesis is based on the premiss that it is unintelligible to conceive the universe as never having been observed. Dummett sees this premiss as needed in order to safeguard subject-independent direct realism.

However, as it has been argued by Alex Watson, this premiss is not necessarily shared by Indian realists. Some of them, like most Mīmāṃsakas and the author(s) of the Vaiśeṣikasūtra, and even theists among them like Praśastapāda and Udayana do not mention God in relation to the thesis that all existents are knowable. So, even after God has been introduced into Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika, He does not play the role of rescuer of the external world. In other words, in spite of claiming that the world is intelligible, Indian realists did not see this as committing them to idealism (the world is not just contained in God’s thoughts) and even less do they see God as the rescuer of the external world.

My contribution, by contrast, focussed on another problem connected with the idea of God as support for the world’s reality, namely the conception of God it requires.

NOTE: The post has been updated thanks to Alex Watson’s thoughtful comments. All shortcomings remain mine only.

The first two parts of my marginal notes on the workshop on Omniscience, Realism and God/no-God have been published here and here.

God and realism

Marginal notes on a workshop in Hawai'i, part 2

Can God as the perfect omniscient knower guarantee the possibility of a reality disidentified from all local perspectives and thus independent of them, though remaining inherently intelligible (by God Himself)? It depends on how one understands God.

As discussed already here, Indian authors can mean at least four different things when they speak about “God”, namely:

  1. —the devatās of mythology, like Indra and Zeus (during this workshop in Hawai’s, Andrew Nicholson has shown several examples of how philosophers make fun of this naive conception of Gods)
  2. —the īśvara of rational theology. He is usually omniscient and omnipotent and mostly also benevolent. In Indian thought, He can be proven to exist and to be such through rational arguments (e.g., through an inference from the fact that mountains, being an effect, need a creator, like pots).
  3. —the brahman of Advaita Vedānta is an impersonal Deity. In some forms of Vedānta it is interpreted pantheistically as tantamount to the universe.
  4. —the bhagavat kind of God is the one one is linked to through a personal relationship. His or Her devotees might consider Him omniscient or omnipotent, but in fact their reasons for loving Him of Her are different and regard their being in relation with Him or Her.

Which God can help guaranteeing the world’s reality? The devatā kind of Gods are clearly irrelevant for this purpose, since they are not even omniscient and surely do not represent an impartial perspective. The brahman kind of God is omniscient only in a sense akin to the Buddha’s being omniscient, namely insofar as it does not lack any relevant information, but it does not at all guarantee the reality of the world of direct realism. In fact, the world is for Advaita Vedāntins an illusion.

The īśvara kind of God seems the best candidate. But which kind of īśvara? Matthew Dasti‘s talk elaborated on the early history of īśvara in Nyāya, showing how the system’s basic premisses at least facilitated the elaboration of an īśvara concept. This evolution culminates in a full-fledged rational theology by Udayana. For Udayana, the īśvara he tries to prove rationally is not just any intelligent maker that can be inferred as the cause from the premise that the earth, mountains and plants sprouting from it are effects. That intelligent maker had to be:*

  • A super-soul with eternal knowledge of everything, and especially of the past and future good and bad actions of all human beings that ever lived.
  • One who has natural control or lordship over the material universe and other individual souls whose bodies he creates according to their beginninglessly earned merits and demerits.
  • One who joins the eternal atoms in the beginning of each cosmic cycle according to a remembered blue-print giving rise to the two-ness in a dyad by his primordial act of counting.
  • One who makes the otherwise unconscious “destiny” (unseen karmic traces, adṛṣṭa)) or law of moral retribution work.
  • One who acts directly through his eternal will and agency without the mediation of a body, although all the “intelligent makers” one has ever encountered produce effects with a body of their own.
  • One who composes the Vedas which tell human beings how to live a good life, through “do”s and “don’t”s, which would otherwise be devoid of the imperative force that they command.
  • One who establishes the conventional connection between primitive words and their meant entities.
  • One who, after creating the world, also sustains and in the fullness of time destroys it.
  • Showers grace on humans and other creatures so that each soul can eventually attain their summum bonum—final liberation from all ensnaring karma and suffering.
  • One who remains constantly and uniformly blissful through all these actions which do not touch his changeless essence and for which he has no “need”.

Such an īśvara has been discussed by Arindam Chakrabarti in his final talk on Vācaspati, insofar as He seems to be the only kind of God who can be said to be omniscient in the “hard” sense of possessing a complete knowledge of all states of affairs. However, He is vulnerable to objections to omniscience raised both in European and Indian philosophy. E.g.: How to delimit the range of “all” in “omniscience“? Can He really know also future events? If so, this seems to contradict our free will and even the possibility of non-necessary, contingent events. More in general, how can God know past and future events as such, though being Himself atemporal (this topic has been dealt with by Shinya Moriyama in his talk as well as in his 2014 book)? Not to speak of the pragmatic problems caused by omniscience, namely that it is altogether different from the way we usually experience knowledge to happen, i.e. in a processual way, and that one could never be sure that anyone (even God) is omniscient, since we are not omniscient and, therefore, could not test Him. Last, as outlined by Arindam (and by Patrick Grimm’s Cantorian argument against omniscience), God’s omniscience seems deemed to fail, since it cannot be proven to be logically conceivable.

The general problem appears to me to be that the īśvara is at the same time the knower of all and part of the system which He should know completely, so that He cannot escape the restrictions which apply to this world (in which knowledge is experienced to be processual, entities are not at the same time temporal and non-temporal, and one element cannot know the whole).

*The following points are all discussed by Udayana. For further details, see Chemparathy 1972. The present formulation of the list is largely indebted to Arindam Chakrabarti.

Shinya Moriyama also wrote a report about the same workshop, unfortunately (for me) in Japanese. Google translate was enough to understand that it is quite interesting and gives one a perceptive insight in the Philosophy Department in Hawai’i. You can read it here.

Omniscience and realism

Marginal notes about a workshop in Hawai'i

A non-intelligible entity cannot be conceived to exist. But, if the world needs to be known in order to exist, we need to postulate a non-partial perspective out of which it can be known. Since the perspectives of all human beings (as well as those of other animals, I would add) are necessarily partial and cannot be reconciled (how could one reconcile our perspective of the world with that of a bat?), this perspective needs to be God.

In case you are in Cracow next week

You might want to come and raise some interesting objection at one of the two lectures below:

Body and self in Śrīvaiṣṇavism. A “hands-on” discussion of Veṅkaṭanātha’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā (ad 1.1.5) (Wed, 11 am)
—Knowing the unknowable: Vedānta Deśika on supersensory perception (at the Pedagogical University of Cracow, Wednesday, 4 pm).