Monthly Archives: January 2019

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Writing on South Asian philosophy

A few tips for younger colleagues

If you write on Plato, you should start in medias res. If you write on Thomas Aquinas, you can do the same (unless you are writing for a journal specialising on something completely different, say, business ethics). If you write on a slightly less known author, I would suggest adding at least the dates of birth and death and perhaps a short description of their main work (say “the epistemologist XW (1200–1250)”).
What about writing on South Asian philosophy? If you are writing for a non-specialist journal, you will need to explain a lot, since no one will know even the main authors and schools you will name. Nonetheless, this does not mean that each new piece on South Asian philosophy should resemble a pale summary of scholarhip on X. Even if you need to tell who Jayanta was and what Nyāyā means, this does not mean that you cannot make an original contribution to the debate.

  1. Just start with what you discovered. Did Jayanta think that justification is not needed in the case of the “ought” domain? Are you the first one who noticed this move? Be sure that this is your departing point.
  2. You can then move to the background needed to appreciate the depth of your discovery. Do not just start with the background, otherwise your reader will think there is nothing new and close your article before reaching its core.
  3. Be sure that theme and rheme are well distinguished in your article. The reader should not be confused about what is just a short summary of the background and what is your new and original contribution.
  4. Please remember that an article is not a book. You can only convey one point. Don’t try to overdo or you will not manage to convey anything at all.
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Chlodwig Werba (1955–2019)

You might not know yet that Chlodwig Werba passed away last Friday, the 25.1.2019.

Chlodwig was professor at the University of Vienna (ao. Universitätsprofessor) and served the University almost until the end with a dedication and loyalty that ranged from the carefulness with which he co-edited the Wiener Zeitschrift für Südasienkunde (WZKS) to the attention he paid in switching off all lights and closing all doors when he left in the evening. He was meticulous and extremely precise, always striving for perfection. He expected perfection and dedication from his students (and colleagues), but most of all from himself, because he regarded the study of Sanskrit (and of Indo-Iranian languages in general) as a sort of sacred duty, and every shallow study as a profanation.

His masterpiece, Verba Indoarica, has been used by students and scholars from all over the world. Others will remember his ability to move from Old Persian to Middle Indo Aryan languages via Vedic and Avestic and from a given Prakrit to Pāli and Sanskrit. Though primarily a linguist, he loved Sanskrit and Vedic poetry and though a “scientist” he spoke with enthusiasm of classical music (he played the piano throughout the weekend, he once told me).

If you also had the chance to meet him, read his work or receive his accurate comments on a piece you sent to WZKS, please feel free to share your experience in the comments. You can find some memories by, among others, Asko Parpola and Jan Houben in the January archive of the Indology mailing list.

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Emotions in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta philosophy: Distance and closeness

The main thing which stroke me when I started working on the theory of emotions in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta is that emotions can be useful and are not to be avoided. In other words, unlike some Sāṅkhya-Yoga philosophers, the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors do not think that one should aim at some form of ataraxìa. Why not? Because one needs emotions in order to start one’s path towards the good. Moreover, emotions are not just useful as preliminary steps, insofar as emotions are present also in the liberated state (again, unlike in the Sāṅkhya, Yoga and also Nyāya and Buddhist Theravāda schools).

This does not mean that all emotions are necessarily good. The emotions which are praised are, chronologically speaking, dejection and desperation and then confidence, love (ranging from friendship to passion and awe) and possibly compassion.

Dejection and the absolute desperation in one’s ability to improve one’s condition are absolutely needed at the start of one’s spiritual path. In fact, as long as one thinks to be able to achieve something, no matter how small, one is unconsciously doubting God’s omnipotence and locating oneself above Him. Paradoxically, one’s extreme dejection and the feeling that one will never be saved, since one is not even worthy of begging God for help, are therefore the preliminary step for God’s grace to take place. One’s feeling of extreme distance from God is therefore way closer to Him than the self-conscious confidence of a person who were to think that they are a good Vaiṣṇava.

Once God’s grace has touched one, one feels blissed and joyfully responds to God’s grace with an emotional overflow of confidence and of love. The hymns of the Āḻvārs, which have been recognised as being as authoritative as the Veda for Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, display a vast array of love. One can love God with maternal love (vātsalya), looking at Him as if he were the young Kṛṣṇa. One could also love God with admiration, looking at Him as the ideal king Rāma, and so on. This vast array is less variegated in the reflections of the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta philosophers, who rather focus on their feeling of reverence and awe for God. For instance, Tamil and Maṇipravāḷa texts insist on one’s being a slave (aṭiyēṉ) of God.

The interesting element here is that this feeling is not instrumental to the achievement of God’s favour. One does not present oneself as a slave in order to secure God’s favour and then be able to raise to a higher status. By contrast, one’s ideal condition, the liberated state one strives to reach is exactly permanent servitude (as described in Veṅkaṭanātha’s Rahasyatrayasāra).

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K.C. Bhattacharyya on the history of philosophy

“The historian here cannot begin his work at all unless he can live in sympathy into the details of an apparently outworn creed and recognise the truth in the first imperfect adumbrations of it. The attitude of the mere narrator has, in the case of the historian of philosophy, to be exchanged, as far as possible, for that of the sympathetic interpreter. There is the danger, no doubt, of too easily reading one’s philosophic creed into the history, but the opposite danger is more serious still. It is the danger of taking the philosophic type studied as a historic curiosity rather than a recipe for the human soul, and of seeking to explain the curiosity by natural causes instead of seriously examining its merits as philosophy. This unfortunately is sometimes the defect of Western expositions of Eastern philosophy and religion.”

(K.C. Bhattacharyya, Studies in Philosophy, Motilal Banarsidas, 1983, p. 2 —Thanks to Elise Coquereau-Saouma for the pointer).