Category Archives: Sanskrit Philosophy

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Medhātithi on intention and action

In general, Medhātithi’s commentary systematizes the MDh. In the case of action and intention, he does his best to iron away seeming incongruities by explaining that intentional actions are liable to more blame than unintentional ones, which he accomplishes by adding the needed adverbs or adjective to the wording of MDh (e.g., in his commentary on 9.242 (on intentional vs unintentional crimes), 11.56, 11.77 (on the intentional vs unintentional killing of Brāhmaṇas), 11.125, 11.209 (on deciding expiations when no one is explicitly prescribed)). Accordingly, Medhātithi explains away the “unintentionally” in MDh 11.127, because the strength of the penalty implies that the action was performed intentionally.

As often the case in his commentary, Medhātithi derives his philosophical framework of reference from the deontic teachings of the philosophical school of Mīmāṃsā. For instance, he does not add his own definition of “action” and “intention”, but presupposes the Mīmāṃsā understanding of these concepts.
The speculation on action starts for Mīmāṃsā philosophers by considering the paradigmatic case of complex ritual actions. This means that they consider first and foremost actions spanning over a long period of time (hours or even days) and that cannot be easily explained as the result of ephemeral desires, but rather require what Alfred Mele calls “distal intentions” (intentions about the non-immediate future, see Mele 2006). Nonetheless, they all agree about the pivotal role of desire in action and, in this sense, ground each complex action ultimately in a “primitive” desire (i.e., a desire for something independently desirable, and not desirable for the sake of something else). Typical examples for primitive desires are desires for sons, rain, cattle, happiness, whereas desiring to know the meaning of a certain passage is considered subservient to some other desire, which has led one to read the corresponding text.
Accordingly, Mīmāṃsā authors distinguish between main actions and the activities they are composed of; one’s intention relates to the main action, whereas the intermediate activities are needed sub-steps, but are not independently intended. Therefore, different rules apply to the two sets. This bipartition is taken for granted also in the MDh and by Medhātithi. For instance, MDh 11.11–12 discuss the case of a main action (a sacrifice) being interrupted for want of an ingredient needed for an intermediate activity. Since the main action needs to be completed, one is allowed to complete it even by appropriating a single ingredient in a way which would not be normally allowed (taking it away from someone who does not need it). In other words, the need to complete the main action creates a situation of necessity that permits one to act in a sub-ideal way.
Intention is not dealt separately from blame in the Dharmasūtras nor in the MDh. However, Medhātithi is himself an insightful thinker and often takes up small clues in the MDh to open up a deeper discussion, and this happens in the case of his discussion of intention. Specifically, Medhātithi adds a second axis to the one examined above concerning intentions, prohibitions, and expiations, namely that of intention (saṅkalpa) and motivation. Near the beginning of the MDh, the elements underlying one’s observance of law is briefly outlined, including intention and desire:

To be motivated by desire is not commended, but it is impossible here to be free from desire; for it is desire that prompts vedic study and the performance of vedic rites.
Intention is the root of desire; intention is the wellspring of sacrifices; and intention triggers every religious observance and every rule of restraint—so the tradition declares. Nowhere in this world do we see any activity done by a man free from desire; for whatever at all that a man may do, it is the work of someone who desired it.
By engaging in them properly, a man attains the world of the immortals and, in this world, obtains all his desires just as he intended.

In this passage, Manu asserts a few things. First, he asserts that both engaging in activity and refraining from particular activities are “triggered” by intention (“intention triggers every religious observance and every rule of restraint”). The terminology suggests that Medhātithi is thinking of activities that would have otherwise taken place, and which demand effort on one’s side to be avoided (such as lightning a cigarette as the first thing in the morning for a passionate smoker). In other words, intention triggers one to change the present inertia, be it by undertaking something or refraining from acting inertially.
Second, he asserts—perhaps counter to intuitive notions—that it is intention that comes before and necessitates desire (“intention is the root of desire”). Third, he asserts that desire is a requirement for acting in the world (“Nowhere in this world do we see any activity done by a man free from desire; for whatever at all that a man may do, it is the work of someone who desired it”).
In his commentary, Medhātithi’s develops the ideas in this passage. Specifically, Medhātithi outlines the concept of intention and the required elements for action. Medhātithi introduces the topic of his commentary by first quoting a portion of Manu’s above passage:
Intention is the root of desire; intention is the wellspring of sacrifices; and intention triggers every religious observance and every rule of restraint—so the tradition declares.

Medhātithi then goes on to further explicate a view of how intention relates to desire and action, responding to various objections:

And therefore, he (Manu) spells out what has been said, namely that without a desire the nature of a sacrifice is not carried out. An intention is the root of sacrifices and similar actions, and of desire. A person who desires to perform a sacrifice or a similar action necessarily forms an intention. And when an intention is being formed, it is necessarily the case that a desire is also brought close as caused by it, even if this (desire) is itself not wished. Just like when a person aiming at cooking burns [wood-logs] also smoke is produced, even if unwished, insofar as it is caused by that same cause. In this regard, it is impossible that a sacrifice or a similar action is performed, if desire does not occur.

[Obj.:] Then, what is this intention, which you say to be the root of all actions?

[R:] It is the appearance (sandarśana) of consciousness (cetas), after which desiring (prārthanā) and ascertaining, one after the other, occur. In fact, these mental activities (vyāpāra) attain the role of root for the undertaking of all actions. For, it is not the case that material activities are possible without them. To elaborate: First of all, one ascertains the nature of a given thing, e.g. “This thing produces this effect”. This cognition is here called intention. Thereafter, desiring (prārthanā), i.e., will (icchā) occurs. This is desire (kāma). Once one has the will “How will I realise that (thing) through that (action)?”, one ascertains “I will do it”. This is the ascertaining. Thereafter, one undertakes an action with regard to an external activity which is the instrument to realise [one’s goal]. For instance, a person who wants to eat something first observes the action of eating [by someone else], then wishes “May I eat!”, then ascertains “I will abandon all other activities and eat!”. Then, he tells to the action, the cause, the place and the eligible person: ‘Come together, prepare (sajjīkṛ-) a succulent [food]’.

[Obj.:] But if this is the case, sacrifice and similar actions do not occur just because of an intention. Rather, they occur because of intention, desire and ascertaining. Thus, why does Manu say “sacrifices originate out of intentions”?

[R:] There is no flaw, since the intention is the original cause. For this very reason, he (Manu) will later say that one never sees any action by a person who does not desire anything.

These passages favour a plain reading of the claim in Manu whereby intentions are the root cause of engagement in sacrifices and other actions. At its core, the understanding of intention furthered here appears to be a basic consciousness of how certain acts relate to certain ends. While intentions have an initiatory role, desire and ascertainment necessarily follow. This approach is distinct from cognitivism (as defined by Sarah Paul), insofar as intentions are volitions and not identical with the corresponding beliefs.
In which sense can intention be the cause of desire and not the opposite? Is not it the case that we first experience appetites, then move on to form the intention to satisfy them and then perform the relevant sequence of acts? Let us start with Medhātithi’s starting point, namely that of complex actions, such as sacrifices, that extend through time. In their case, the claim that a basic appetite is what causes one to act, appears less plausible, because appetites are ephemeral and cannot sustain a longer cycle of activities. Accordingly, Medhātithi’s account makes perfect sense when it comes to actions that are performed not because of a basic appetite, but because of a conscious decision, but can it apply also to other kinds of actions?

While focus is placed in these passages on sacrificial and “similar actions”, which indicates a series of complex actions aimed at a particular result, Medhātithi makes it clear that the mental activities of intending, desiring, and ascertaining are the “root for the undertaking of all actions”. This sets up a fairly robust picture of action whereby actors hold in their minds a consciousness of how they understand their movements to interact with the world, which will result in a particular and desired end. In this sense, the psychological sequence Medhātithi sketched above could be a depiction of the phenomenological process through which a certain level of consciousness is a preliminary requirement for the process to be started, but cognition and appetite are also needed. The emphasis on phenomenology is due to the fact that it is hard to make sense of the statement that intentions generate desires (could one say “I intend to have dinner, therefore I am starting to feel hungry”?), but it makes sense that one only becomes aware of desire after having conceived the corresponding intention (“I intend to have dinner and realize that I am in fact hungry”). If taken to its extreme consequences, this would imply that there are no genuine conflicts between intentions and desires, because desires become available to one’s consciousness only once one has intended to do something. If desires are not directly responsible for our actions, how can Medhātithi explain episodes that are often ascribed to them, e.g. in case of what Euro-American philosophers call the “weakness of the will”? For instance, how could he explain the case of one failing to dress up to go to an opera even though they had previously formed the intention to go? Medhātithi could deal with is as a conflict among intentions, not among different causal factors (the intention to go and the desire to stay home) determining one’s actions. Alternatively, he could mention how inertial states take stronger intentions to be resisted and discuss such examples as based on a conflict between an intention and a hard-to-break inertial state. He could argue that it would be hard to dress up even independently of an active desire to stay home (thus proving that the problem is not due to a conflict between intentions and desires), because dressing up (like any act) involves effort, and all efforts are only undertaken if one sees that a bigger advantage will come of out them.

What do you think? Given Medhātithi’s premisses, does my extension of his thought to the above case make sense?

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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

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Veṅkaṭanātha on the pedagogy of emotions

Veṅkaṭanātha recognises two soteriological paths, namely bhakti (restricted to only few eligible people) and prapatti (being the only one accessible to normal people). In both cases, how can one get there?

Prapatti, to begin with, cannot be sought for independently, because one only becomes eligible for prapatti only after having become aware of one’s desperation because one cannot ever be eligible for bhakti (not to speak of karma- and jñānamārga). Thus, one’s only way to reach prapatti is by means of trying to achieve bhakti and becoming aware of one’s inability to do so and therefore deciding to just surrender to God or His spouse.

Bhakti, in turn, has an intellectual aspect and an emotional one. On the one hand, it is defined by Rāmānuja as a continuous meditation on the real nature of God, and therefore needs a preliminary ascertainment of what this nature could be. On the other, it is based on a surplus of loving affection, one that will never be satiated, not even in Vaikuṇṭha. Therefore, since the time of Rāmānuja’s Śaraṇāgatigadya, Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors have engaged in a pedagogy of emotions, one enhancing one’s raw emotions and transforming them into soteriologically-relevant ones. The former are temporary and might be about the wrong topic, the latter focus on God, and are able to last forever and become more intense with time. Veṅkaṭanātha tries to reach this level through his learned religious poetry, which is made to be listened/read, re-listened/re-read and pondered upon for a long time, since its many layers of theological meanings can only reveal themselves through a long perusal.

For instance, the detailed descriptions from head to toe (anubhava) of God’s body in various poems by Veṅkaṭanātha are meant to show how one can train one’s sense faculties to relish always more in their object, rather than being satiated by it. The same poems also underline the poet’s unworthiness, possibly so that the listener/reader can get a chance to contemplate their own unworthiness (for some beautifully translated poems by Veṅkaṭanātha, see Hopkins 2007).

Do you agree that emotions come at the end of one’s soteriological journey for Veṅkaṭanātha?

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Permissions for Prabhākara

Is it possible to command someone who is already inclined to act according to Prabhākara? 

Bṛhatī ad 6.1.1 says na pravṛttapravartane prayogaḥ āmantraṇādiṣu vyabhicārāt, literally: “[Exhortative endings] are not used to promote people who are already active, because of the deviant case (vyabhicāra) of invitations”. 

In fact, Prabhākara appears to believe that commands are always imparted on someone who is not yet active and who becomes active upon hearing them. The addressee of a command  desires something already and recognises themselves as the addressee through such desires (see Freschi 2012), but they are not active until they become enjoined.

Now, if Prabhākara means that active people are never promoted to act, why are āmantraṇas a good example? Orders (ājñā) are not used as a standard example because their being a clear case of promoting someone not already active had been attacked by the opponent in the previous line.

As for āmantraṇa, the situation with āmantraṇa is ambiguous, but Śālikanātha takes it as connected to a command uttered among peers (thus, it is not a clear case of a command uttered for people who are not already active). Moreover, what is the role of the vyabhicāra argument? How can a vyabhicāra argument be used to convince someone that something is *always* the case? A vyabhicāra can be used to show that it is incorrect to claim that “All As are B”, since there is at least one A that is not a B, but it can’t be used to corroborate “All As are B” by showing a further case of an A that is indeed B. In other words, why speaking of “vyabhicāra” and not of “yathāmantraṇeṣu” or the like if this was what he meant? The only possible explanation seems to be to think of āmantraṇādiṣu vyabhicārāt as “because the case of invitations, etc., deviates from the [opponent’s] claim”.  

Still, if it is impossible to command someone who is already inclined to act, how can Prabhākara make sense of permissions? When we are already about to light a cigarette and look around and ask whether it is OK and someone tells us “No problem, go ahead!”, isn’t the “go ahead” a command directed to someone who is already active? Could Prabhākara perhaps say that a command cannot enjoin someone who is already active because it would miss the apūrva element?

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Further thoughts on Sanskrit philosophical commentaries

The main thing about Sanskrit philosophical commentaries is that they are the standard way of doing philosophy. For centuries, they were almost the only way of doing philosophy. After Maṇḍana, one starts seeing monographs dedicated to a specific topic. Still, even those take often the form of verses+autocommentary and do not become the mainstream form of philosophy. Until today, Sanskrit philosophers think and write in the form of commentaries. This has several implications:

1. They do not value originality per se. I am probably preaching to the converted if I say that one can make incredible innovations while writing a commentary (and in fact, this routinely happened, with sources of knowledge being removed from the list, new accounts being added, completely different explanations being offered etc.). However, the genre “commentary” involves the habitus of intellectual humbleness. One does not praise one’s innovations and rather locates them in a tradition of exegesis of truths that were already available for everyone, if only one had paused long enough to see them.

2. Lower level explanations about word-meanings, sentence-syntax etc. are mixed with high level elaborations. This means that even the most self-confident intellectual will not disdain intellectual labour, because the two are contiguous.

3. Philosophy is constantly seen as a dialogue with one’s intellectual predecessors. In fact, and unlike in other philosophical traditions, Sanskrit commentaries typically take the form of dialogues among possible interpretations.

4. The constraints of the commentary open the way for the never-ending play of possible interpretations. Abhinavagupta lists 18 (if I remember correctly) interpretations for the word anuttara in his Paratriṃśikāvivaraṇa and everyone is aware of the amplifying potential of commenting on words and texts.

In later times, I would add two further features of commentaries:

5. Commentaries tend to take into account more and more networks of texts rather than single texts

6. Consequently, one comments not only on the texts of one’s schools, but also on influential texts one wants to appropriate (think of Śaṅkara’s inaugurating the use of commenting on the BhG and the Upaniṣads, as well as Abhinavagupta’s commentary on the Triṃśikā). Still later, one comments on the texts on one’s adversaries as a way to refute them, like Madhusādana Sarasvatī did in the case of Vyāsatīrtha.

UPDATE: I am sitting in a workshop about commentaries and Ash Geissinger points to something similar to No. 2 in Arabic commentaries to the Quran, and Y.K. Lo to something similar to No. 3 in Chinese commentaries.

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Thoughts on Realisms Interlinked by Arindam Chakrabarti/4

This post is part of a series discussing Arindam Chakrabarti’s Realisms Interlinked. The previous posts are available here, here and here.

The last chapter (chapter 16) of the second part is a discussion of the Nyāya theories for the existence of the self and it includes also discussions about the no-ownership theory (mental states don’t need to be *of someone*) and against physicalism (pp. 189–191). I especially enjoyed the discussion about the inner sense faculty (manas, already discussed in chapter 13) and its role as a connector among sense faculties. How else could we compare different sense data, given that sense faculties do not have autonomous agency and cannot communicate with each other? However, this seems to be a lot of burden placed on the shoulders of manas.  It seems straightforward to accept a sense-faculty for inner sensations, but how can one justify its extension to other functions? manas seems to grow to incorporate also what Sāṅkhya authors would have called a buddhi ‘intellect’. Can it do so and remain a sense-faculty? Can it really be responsible, e.g., for anuvyavasāya and *still* remain a sense-faculty?

Next, the third part (“Other subjects”) starts. In this third part, the book’s title (“Realisms interlinked”) increasingly looses its cogency and the book is more and more about “objects, subjects and other subjects”, including also less closely connected topics, such as the brilliant article on the ontology of shadows and Arindam’s theory of śabdapramāṇa —but Arindam waves them together nicely, e.g., by discussing how śabdapramāṇa is part of our acknowledging the existence of epistemic others, i.e., others we can learn from.

To be honest, I enjoyed the first part, but I enjoy even more this latter part, since it is more experimental and draws from more sources (whereas the first part was closer to keeping the Anglo-Analytic and Nyāya paradigms). For instance, the wonderful chapter 18, on the vocative reminded me of Martin Buber’s masterpiece, “I and Thou” and how relating to one by addressing them is different than discussing about them. The latter way to speak reifies them, the former means entering into a relation. Thus, whereas it is contradictory to say “I am now talking to God. I do not know whether They exist”, it is not meaningless to address God asking for faith, because addressing is not about existence, but about relation. 

As hinted at above, Arindam follows different philosophical inspirations in this part, starting with Abhinavagupta, whom, as discussed in a previous post, is also responsible for his moving beyond realism. We had already seen this influence at play, for instance in chapter 12, and within the third part again in chapter 17, while discussing how it is possible to know about the existence of others. The whole chapter discusses the arguments by analogy in Dharmakīrti and its critique by Strawson, which Arindam labels as “devastating”. Why so? The argument by analogy is, according to Arindam’s reading of Strawson, an induction. But how weak is an induction, if it is based on a single case? Moreover, according to Strawson, there is strictly speaking not even a single case the induction can be based on. In fact, predicates such as “happy” or “depressed” are completely different if they are experienced from within and attributed from the outside to other alleged subjects. And in which sense is a predicate a predicate if it is not predicable of others? Thus, for predicates to be predicates, they need to be applicable to more than one person, even if in one case through direct access and in the other through behaviour-observation. At this point, Abhinavagupta is ready to step in. But before getting to his solution as understood by Arindam, let me pause a little longer on why following Abhinavagupta.

Why would Arindam be ready to sacrifice direct realism and follow Abhinavagupta on this dangerous path? Because Arindam likes intelligent thinkers, but also because Abhinava allows for a rich conception of the ātman, which is dynamically evolving (against the permanent self of Nyāya and Vedānta), and can therefore be an agent and a knower of intentional contents (the Sāṅkhya and Advaita Vedānta subject could be aware, but of no contents, the Nyāya subject had knowledge as an additional quality). 

Thus, while holding Abhinavagupta’s hand, Arindam ends up coming out of the plains of naïve realism and ends up in transcendental idealism or panpsychism. And here comes the solution for the problem of the existence of other subjects. In Arindam’s words:

“Post-Cartesian Western thought finds the problem of the Other Mind challenging and the very presence of the Other existentially constraining and self-annihilating. Abhinavagupta, on the other hand, finds the You to be a foundational middle-reality between the pure Self and the apparent non-Self, in contrast and continuity with which the Self discovers its own playful knower-hood” (p. 202).

Next come chapters 19 and 20, which discuss the epistemology of testimony. Arindam is here preaching to the convert when it comes to me, but let me repeat that unless we accept testimony, we have no way to ensure knowledge of basic facts, like our name and date of birth. Arindam also convincingly shows that testimony cannot be reduced to inference (pp. 217–8). Can the Nyāya theory of śabdapramāṇa, which is based on descriptive language, work also in the case of prescriptive language. As a Mīmāṃsaka, I am biased against it, but also Arindam’s reconstruction seems to allow for some doubts (“You are a person who is qualified by the agency to do X” does not seem tantamount to “do X!” —the prescriptive character appears to be just missing).

A last word on chapter 21, which is one of the best pieces of writing by Arindam in general and which allows me to go back to a point I discussed in the second post of this series, namely Arindam’s way of doing philosophy through a dialogue with other authors. In chapter 21 Arindam mentions a sentence by Wittgenstein. The interesting point is that the sentence looks trivially true. It says: “In paintings darkness *can* also be depicted as black”. No source is given, and I don’t know Wittgenstein good enough to be able to identify and reproduce the original German and check whether there is any additional shade of meaning, but as it stands, the sentence looks banal. However, Arindam is able to go deeper and disagree with the ontological theory about shade it presupposes. The key point that became clear to me only at this point is that Arindam is a great philosopher because (or also because) he is a great interpreter. He is able to let sentences by Nyāya philosophers (or by Leonardo, Turner or Goethe) disquiet him, and then keeps on thinking about them until he can identify what they implicitly presuppose, spell it out, and continue thinking philosophically about them until he can elaborate a theory that answers all the objections he has contemplated and taken seriously.

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Thoughts on Realisms interlinked by Arindam Chakrabarti/3

Main thesis: While we move from realism about objects to realism about subjects and other subjects, Arindam’s commitment to naïve realism decreases. Since I have discussed in the first two previous posts about how Arindam’s methodology makes him do philosophy while talking with other philosophers, let me now say that he is moving from talking mostly with Naiyāyikas to engaging closely with Abhinavagupta. And in fact in his interview with M. Keating Arindam had complained that I had called him a ‘staunch realist’ in a previous post. I now know why, given that he is less of a realist in this second part of the book.
(The inclination towards Abhinavagupta is highlighted also in Ram-Prasad’s book review.)

First, the facts: The first part defended realism about objects, this second part is about the knowing subject. Arindam argues against fictionalism (especially in chapter 15, entitled “Fictionalism about the mental”), and in favour of the persistence through time of the knowing subject as proven through memory and recognition, but also through our capacity to correct our errors (how else could one correct oneself, if there were not a subject who is aware of the mistake and goes back to it?).

This leads to an important subtopic, namely the epistemology of the knowing subject, which occupies at least two chapters, namely “In Defense of an Inner Sense” (chapter 13) and “Our Knowledge and Error about Our Own Cognitions” (chapter 14).

Another interesting subtopic regards the nature of the defended subject. I have already revealed that Arindam does not defend the Naiyāyika ātman (which is inherently quality-less), but rather a full-fledged knowing subject, closer to an aham than to an ātman. Ram-Prasad’s review says that Arindam is more comfortable with P. Strawson’s concept of person. In Sanskrit terms, one might want to go back to the dialogue with Abhinavagupta (who gets the idea of aham, I believe, from Mīmāṃsā), but Arindam also adds further remarks on the usage of the first-person pronoun (chapter 10). This, in turn, leads to the problem of solipsism and the existence of other knowing subjects (chapter 11). The connection with Abhinavagupta also enables Arindam to discuss a topic which is very much discussed in the Pratyabhijñā school, namely how can one know a subject *qua* subject? Does not one transform it into an object, thus violating its nature, as soon as one approaches it (chapter 12)?

In fact, chapter 11 (a refutation of solipsism entitled “The Self at Other Times and in Other Bodies”) is connected with both the establishment of a first-person-like subject (the topic of chapter 10) and with the inaccessibility of subjects to objectification (dealt with in chapter 12). If we can know other subjects qua subjects, we can at the same time establish the existence of other subjects and the possibility of their non-objectification. Arindam does not mention it, but I can’t avoid thinking of Buber’s “I and Thou” for its emphasis on two modalities of knowledge (an objectifying one, which knows others as things, and a relation one, through which subjects enter in a dialogue).
Chapter 12 also discusses anuvyavasāya, the second cognition occurring after a first cognition during which one becomes aware of having had that first cognition. If we know our cognitions only through anuvyavasāya, then we are not only objectifying other subjects while knowing them, but even ourselves. In fact, we can’t know even ourselves *qua* subjects. By contrast, if Prabhākara is right and each cognitive act includes an awareness of the object, the subject and the cognition, we can know ourselves from within.

Chapter 13 discusses the elusive inner sense faculty (manas) and its domain. Manas is generally invoked to explain one’s perception of inner qualia, such as pleasure and pain and to justify the phenomenon of attention (and lack of thereof) and the impossibility of simultaneous perceptions.
Further, chapter 14 also discusses how manas works as the sense faculty for the successive awareness of a just occurred awareness event. In this case, the contact (sannikarṣa) at stake occurs not directly between manas and the object of the preceding awareness event, but rather via the awareness event itself. It is through this mānasapratyakṣa (my label, Arindam does not use it), that we can move from the perception of an apple to the awareness of “I have seen an apple”.
Moreover, Arindam also mentions manas’ role in the context of language-based knowledge: “In Navya Nyāya semantics, the resulting understanding of meaning is not classified as knowledge by testimony (śabdabodha) or information gathered from words, but as make-believe awareness generated by the manas (āhāryamanasa bodha), which can creatively put together a cow and chairing [found together in a non-sensical poem]” (p. 152). The āhārya (‘artificial’) suggests that manas can also play an active role, and in fact Arindam points out to this possibility while discussing the Yuktidīpikā stance about it. Can this work also in Nyāya? This artificial language-based understanding seems to suggest that manas can concoct a non-committal understanding. Along this line, is manas also able to lead to synaesthetic judgements (“I like this music more than I enjoyed the smell of the jasmine flowers”)? I would be inclined to say that it cannot (since it is a sense faculty, it cannot be responsible for judgements), but any synaesthetic judgement by the buddhi presupposes the manas as being able to run from one sense experience to the next so as to make the buddhi able to formulate a comparative judgement. Let me also follow Arindam’s lead and add an “Unscientific post-script”: Can manas also be responsible for proprio-perception (perception of one’s own body and its position in space as standing, sitting etc.)? Of inner sensations such as hunger? Or are they awareness events and as such cognised like any other awareness event?

Chapter 14 discusses epistemology and intrinsicism (svataḥprāmāṇy) and extrinsicism (parataḥprāmāṇya) in connection with some theories in Analytic epistemology, primarily internalism vs externalism, and then also fallibilism and reflexivism. I discussed aspects of this topic elsewhere (in a nutshell: I think that intrinsic validity disjoins elements that are generally found conjoined in internalism, namely access to cognitions and no external reasons needed). I am also not completely convinced of the connection between infallibilism and intrinsicism. On p. 160, Arindam writes: “If intrinsicism is correct, then once a true cognition is registered, it would be impossible to entertain a doubt about whether it is knowledge or error. But in certain circumstances, when for the first time cognition about an unfamiliar object occurs, it is often made the subject of subsequent doubt”. The last step evokes Gaṅgeśa’s distinction between familiar and unfamiliar circumstances and doubt being the default response only in the latter case. Gaṅgeśa’s was a good step forward if compared to the previous position considering doubt the default attitude in all cases (so that we would not be able to prepare a coffee with our usual coffee machine in the morning before having verified that it is really a coffee machine, that the tin really contains coffee, that the liquid coming from the tap is really water etc. etc.).
Still, I don’t think that the one described by Arindam is a counter-argument against intrinsicism. A svataḥprāmāṇyavādin would say that even in the case of an unfamiliar object, we initially cognise it as X, even if immediately thereafter we might switch on the light, correct ourselves and realise it was not an X but a Y. Overturning the previous cognition is not excluded by svataḥprāmāṇya (in fact, it is its very foundation!), that rather attacks the idea that doubt is our first response to familiar (or unfamiliar) circumstances.

A last word on methodology and the need of Global Philosophy, by Arindam himself: “Within the insular power-enclaves of philosophy, even a mention of non-Western theories […] is punished by polite exclusion. Well-preserved ignorance about other cultures and mono-cultural hubris define the mainstream of professional philosophy in Euro-America. In many cases, the discovery of exciting connections, sharp oppositions, or imaginable parallelisms is greeted with condescension or cold neglect” (p. 145).

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Sāṅkhya on śyena

The Sāṅkhya reached its acme before Mīmāṃsā and its position is therefore attacked as a useful departure point for deontic discussions, especially around the case of the śyena in Mīmāṃsā texts (in the following, I will refer to its representation in Veṅkaṭanātha’s TMK).

Interestingly, although the school accepted the authority of the Vedas, Sāṅkhya authors did not insist on their being necessarily consistent and instead highlighted that the prohibition to perform violence should not be overturned, not even in case of sacrificial violence. Accordingly, they understand the sequence:

  • 1. One should not perform violence on any living being
  • 2. If one desires to harm one’s enemy, they should sacrifice bewitching with the śyena

as implying that 1. invalidates 2. Interestingly, Sāṅkhya authors are ready to go as far as stating that this applies also to the following sequence:

  • 1. One should not perform violence on any living being
  • 3. One should sacrifice an animal within the agnīṣomīya sacrifice

Whereas all Mīmāṃsā authors agree that 2. should not be fulfilled (but out of different reasons than the one put forward by Sāṅkhya authors), no one among them would agree in extending this position to 3.

Sāṅkhya authors are therefore presupposing that Vedic commands do not necessarily form a consistent whole and, more importantly, that prohibitions are \emph{unrestricted in their application} (see TMK 5.78). This is connected to a point we will see developed by Maṇḍana, namely the incommensurability of the bad. Transgressing a prohibition involves accumulating pāpa, i.e., bad karman, and this bad output cannot be compensated by any good result one might gather. Prescriptions contrasting with prohibitions are automatically suspended, since prohibitions are unrestricted and always prevail. Only prescriptions not contrasting with prohibitions are valid.

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Changes and continuities in the practice of Sanskrit philosophical commentaries

What makes a text a “commentary”? The question is naive enough to allow a complicated answer.

In Sanskrit intellectual history there is not a single word for “commentary” and several words focus on different aspects (`bhāṣya’ for an extensive commentary spelling out aphorisms (MBh, ŚBh, ŚrīBh…), `vyākhya’ or `vyākhyāna’ literally meaning `explanation’ and often used as a synonym of bhāṣya when writing a subcommentary thereon, `vārttika’ originally for a concise commentary in aphoristic form (Kātyayana’s V), later for texts encompassing such form (NV), or written in verses (ŚV) or encompassing verses (PV, TV), `ṭīkā’ for a subcommentary (Bṛ, NVVTṬ…), `ṭīppaṇī’ for a commentary on only specific points here and there and so on, please read more in Preisendanz 2008 and Ganeri 2010). These plurality of words suggests (like the proverbial case of the many words for ‘snow’ in the Inuits’ language) a long familiarity with the practice of commenting, seen as entailing many different approaches to a text (or texts). (Btw: I am not at all claiming that this is unique to the Sanskrit world, don’t start telling me about many Latin words from glossa onwards).

Typically, these texts tend to focus either on the single text they are commenting on or on it together with the one this was, in turn, a commentary thereon (for instance, Vācaspati’s commentary on the NV, taking into account also the NBh and the NS). Another characteristic of such commentaries is that they will explicitly refer to texts of opposing schools, whereas they will just silently reuse texts of their own school, since they feel them as part of their own history, immediately recognisable to themselves and their audience.

Which kinds of texts would one comment upon?
1. In the standard case in philosophy, texts of one’s own school; but also
2. Authoritative (usually religious) texts that did not belong to one’s own tradition, but that one wanted to gain for one’s own tradition (for instance, Abhinavagupta’s commentary on the Paratriṃśikā).

What is the role of commentary in Sanskrit philosophy? It is the standard way of writing philosophy. There was a small number of aphoristic texts which did not present them as commentaries (but which often evoke other views and quote other authors), and starting possibly with Maṇḍana (8th c.) some monographs were written on specific topics, however, the practice of commentaries remained the standard and most common way of doing philosophy, enabling one to write about many topics. A common misunderstanding to be erased is therefore the equation of commentaries with non-original and pedantic work. This was most of the time not the case with philosophical commentaries.

However, the circumstances change with time (as to be expected) and if we look at commentaries post 13th c. the situation looks different.
I will focus on especially two aspects:

  1. 1. the relation between text and commentary
  2. 2. the relation between commentary and its sources

Concerning 1., many commentaries become increasingly not just about a single text (or a sequence of texts), but interact more with a network of texts (as I have discussed elsewhere in the case of Veṅkaṭanātha’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā, see Freschi 2018).
A very noteworthy case is that of the relation between the Advaitasiddhi and the Nyāyāmṛta. The latter is a very influential text of the Dvaita Vedānta school by Vyāsatīrtha, in some sense we could say that it is the text through which the Dvaita Vedānta becomes part of the mainstream philosophical discourse. How could this happen? Because Vyāsatīrtha took up Madhva’s (the founder of Dvaita Vedānta) central theses, but stripped them of Madhva’s idiosyncratic style and “repackaged” them in the powerful argumentative style of Navya Nyāya. Form is not only a matter of style when it comes to philosophical discourse and this change meant that Madhva’s core ideas and intuitions were now formulated in a strongly inferential form and made a really compelling case for their validity.

At this point, the Advaita Vedānta school could not continue to ignore Dvaita Vedānta. An Advaita Vedānta champion, Madhusūdana, took up the challenge and wrote a detailed response to the Nyāyāmṛta in the form of a detailed commentary (almost line-by-line) to it. This was not the kind of appropriation commentary I discussed above but rather a close rejoinder. At the same time, Madhusūdana needed to invoke his own set of authorities to join the discussion, thus contributing to the network-isaiton of the commentary.

Concerning 2., something I noticed in Veṅkaṭanātha’s commentaries is that they (against what I described above and in Freschi 2014) quote and mention people of Veṅkaṭanātha’s school and silently reuse opponents. Why so? It seems that quotations and reuse have shifted into a way to give prestige and authority to one’s position as part of the school, in a way that the reuse of opponents’ names and direct quotes would not be able to do.

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Thoughts on Arindam Chakrabarti’s Realisms Interlinked — 2

Almost all the chapters I will deal with in this second post (“Part 1″ in the book) are about a defence of objects. The next bunch of chapters will be about a defence of subjects and the last one will be about “other subjects”, meaning not just “other stuff” but also literally “other subjects”, like the ‘you’.

Basic thesis:
Arindam does not keep his card hidden. He speaks of a “suicidal movement of our thought about reality” “sloping from Naïve-realism to Absolute Skepticism through Idealism”, a suicidal movement that needs to be “blocked” (p. 75). It can be blocked, Arindam says, at three levels: 1. at a very early level, like Nyāya did (and Arindam wants to do), 2. by embracing some form of idealism while rejecting skepticism, 3. by embracing skepticism at the empirical level, but accepting the possibility of a mystical insight.

Methodology:
philosophia perennis: p. 101: ” ‘Contemporary; is a slippery word. Whether in language or in thought, those who worship what is current tend to ignore the timeless universal structures of human experience, thinking, and speech”
interaction with sources: ND asked in a meeting whether Arindam could have written the book by just “omitting the footnotes”, like Jan Westerhoff did with Madhyamaka philosophy. Now, my impression is that this is ethically unfair BUT ALSO impossible for Arindam’s book, since this is not based on a single argument (so that you can “delete” the footnotes), but rather on a dialogue among positions. It emerges from a tea-time-like conversation among colleagues in which it would be impossible to say “One might say that…” unless you specified which colleague is speaking, because their being a positivist or an idealist sheds a different light on their question. See, on this point, Arindam’s own perception of his contribution (p. 114): “In the context of the insightful infightings of the contemporary Western philosophers of language and the medieval Indian thinkers, I put forward my own conclusion about the meaning and reference of “I”.” We will see an example of this way of arguing already in chapter 6.

Defence of objects:
The main purpose of the first chapters is to go against idealism. Arindam presupposes that we can talk about “idealism” in general, as an over-arching category applicable to Berkeley, Śaṅkara and Yogācāra (and many more). However, behind this general framework, his discussions are more to-the-ground and focus on one specific speaker at a time.

Chapter 6 (pp. 65–75) focuses on how other idealists defeated idealism. It starts with 4 points in favour of idealism (in its Yogācāra fashion), namely:

  • 1. mid-sized objects lead to antinomies because they have parts (this will be refuted through the assumption of samavāya, p. 87);
  • 2. an object cannot be at the same time the cause of cognition and the thing featured in it. Atoms, for instance, cause the cognition, but don’t feature in it. Chairs etc. feature in the cognition, but don’t produce it.
  • 3. the well-known sahopalambhaniyama (discussed in a previous post).
  • 4. the argument from dreams shows that it is possible to experience objects without their mind-independent existence (this will be the topic of chapter 8).

Then, Arindam moves to Śaṅkara’s refutation of the Yogācāra position. For instance, how can something inner and mental *appear as* external, if we have never encountered anything external to begin with? How could we feign the external? (This is connected with the dream argument, as we will see below). Arindam suggests that Kant would be less vulnerable to this objection, since he could say that there is a specific function of our cognitive apparatus responsible for projecting things as external.

Arindam here reads Śaṅkara (and Kant) as accusing the Yogācāra of confusing the “phenomenal with the illusory” and he reads therefore Kant as an idealist who confutes idealism through the introduction of phenomena.
Here, by the way, Arindam attacks the Yogācāra because of a lack of distinction between saṃvṛtisat `conventionally real’ AND other forms of unreality. One should have been more nuanced, he thinks, in distinguishing between 1. what is phenomenal, 2. what is absolutely impossible (triangular flavours driving furiously) and 3. what is the result of illusions, dreams and illusions error. (By the way, Arindam’s first book was on absence, so let us consider him an expert here).

Arindam uses again Kant as an idealist defeating idealism when he uses him in order to justify the possibility of permanence of objects over time, given that we perceive ourselves as changing over times, something must remain stable so as to appreciate the change. But time is the form of our inner experience, so that no permanent element can be detected inside, unless through a comparison with something outside. (Arindam himself is not completely convinced by this argument, p. 73).

Chapter 7 focuses again on the sahopalambhaniyama problem and replies that “difference […] tolerates relatedness” (p. 79). It is true that we access objects through the mind, but this does not mean that they don’t exist also independently of it. Arindam takes advantage here of a characteristic of the English language (and of many others) and insists on paying attention to the `of’ when we speak of a `cognition *of* blue’: “I cannot experience or imagine a tree unless it is made as an object of some kind of awareness, but there is as much difference between the tree and my awareness of the tree as there is between the tree and its roots and branches. Inseparability does not mean identity” (p. 90).
It is a priori impossible to demonstrate the existence of uncognised things, but the very fact that everything is knowledge-accessible, says Arindam, presupposes that it really existed prior and independently of being cognised (p. 81). As suggested in a previous post, this thesis is closely linked with the one about how cognitions are never self-aware.
This chapter also gives Arindam a chance to discuss how he sees Nyāya realism. The objective world of Nyāya is a “world for the self”, that exists to enable selves to suffer and enjoy, thus different from the Cartesian dualism (where selves don’t really interact with matter) or from the world of imperceptible quarks in contemporary physics (p. 81).

Chapter 8 is about the Dream argument: How can we recognise something as a dream unless we wake up?

Chapter 9 on the Accusative is a good chance to discuss Arindam’s use of linguistic arguments. For some decades people working on Sanskrit philosophy thought that the linguistic turn was going to be the way Sanskrit philosophy could finally be vindicated. After all, did not Sanskrit philosophers understand ahead of time that the only way to access reality is via cognitions and that cognitions are inherently linguistics? Thus, analysing language is the best approach to reality after all. This dream was somehow scattered when philosophy of language became less popular in Anglo-Analytic philosophy. Still, Arindam has already explained that following contemporary fashions is not the only thing that counts. Hence, he could nonetheless write a fascinating chapter (chapter 10) on the reference of `I’, moving from Wittgenstein to Abhinavagupta. The main problem is what is the reference of `I’ (is it the ahaṅkāra? The ātman? Is it an empty term, because the very fact that it cannot go wrong means it cannot be correct either).