Category Archives: methodology

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Growing ambitions: Philosophy of ritual/deontics and philosophy of religion

What I today call philosophy of ritual comprises a complex set of philosophical approaches seeking to solve questions and problems arising in connection with ritual. Different philosophers of ritual aim at reconstructing rituals in a highly structured, rigorous manner, curbing religious metaphors to the strict discipline of their linguistic analysis. As a result, they examine religious texts according to exegetical rules to extract all meaning and intelligibility from them. Another set of philosophical questions connected with rituals concerns duty. How are duties conveyed? How can one avoid contradictions within texts prescribing duties? I started using deontic logic, as initially developed by G.H. von Wright, to formalise contrary-to-duty situations and think about commands, especially thanks to the collaboration with the amazing Agata Ciabattoni and her brave team at the Theory and Logic Group of the TU in Vienna. Ciabattoni had not heard of logic apart from the Euro-American mathematical logic. Before meeting her, I had not heard, let alone worked on intuitionistic logic nor on fuzzy logic. By joining forces, we could explore new formalisations to make sense of seemingly puzzling texts (see mimamsa.logic.at).

Working with people outside one’s comfort zone is demanding, since one cannot assume any shared research background and needs to explain each element of one’s research. However, exactly this deconstructive operation means that one needs to rethink each step analytically, often being able to identify for the first time problems and resources one had overlooked.

For instance, our ongoing work on permissions in ritual is going to highlight the advantages of the Mīmāṃsā approach in denying the interdefinability of the operators of permission, prescription and prohibition and thus avoiding the ambiguity of the former (which in common linguistic use as well as in much Euro-American deontic logic can mean “permitted, but discouraged”, “permitted and encouraged” as well as “permitted and neutral” and in Euro-American deontic logic even “permitted and prescribed”). By contrast, permissions in Mīmāṃsā are always “rather-not” permissions, whereas what is encouraged though not prescribed is rather covered by different operators.

Within the next weeks, I plan to put the finishing touches and submit to a publisher a first book dedicated to deontics and philosophy of ritual not in the Euro-American or Chinese worlds. The book, entitled Maṇḍana on Commands, aims at providing both scholars of philosophy and of deontics in general a comprehensive access to the thought and work of a key (but unacknowledged) deontic thinker and his attempt to reduce commands to statements about the instrumental value of actions against the background of its philosophical alternatives. I plan to continue working on deontics and philosophy of ritual with an intercultural perspective and with cross-disciplinary collaborations.

Within Philosophy of Religion, I aim primarily at using an intercultural perspective to rethink the categories of “god” and the connected category ofatheism”. Scholars who have not thought critically about the topic, might think that there is only one concept of “god” that is discussed within philosophy, and that this is the omnipotent and omniscient Lord of rational theology, whose existence is necessary and independent of anything They created. But this is not the case in European philosophy (especially in the parts of it which have been more influenced by Jewish philosophy) and it is certainly not so outside of European philosophy. For instance, Tamil and Bengali philosophers of religion will think about and worship a personal and relational God, one for whom existence is not intrinsically necessary, but dependent on His (Her) relation to His (Her) devotees. Similarly, looking at Buddhist authors allows one to see how atheism can be constructed in a religious context, namely as the negation of one (or multiple) concept(s) ofgod”, typically focusing on the negation of mythological deities and the contradictions they entail. I plan to submit a project on new ways to conceptualise atheism from an intercultural perspective and to continue working on the concept of a relational God, deriving my inspiration especially from Medieval Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta theologians like Veṅkaṭanātha.

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Growing ambitions…

More than a decade ago, I wrote that I aspired at “making Indian philosophy part of mainstream philosophy”. I still do, but with more far-reaching goals and an evolved methodology. Let me explain: In the past, I focused on recognized areas of philosophy to which Sanskrit philosophy has contributed in a significant manner. Philosophy of language, one of the main realms of philosophy in the Sanskrit cosmopolis, comes to mind, as does epistemology of testimony. I aimed at showing how both fields would benefit from philosophical contributions coming from outside the Euro-American worlds by expanding philosophers’ understanding and interpretations.

Today, however, my scholarly ambitions go further. Rather than simply broaden extant concepts, I work to help readers rethink the core of what makes “philosophy” by looking at what different traditions consider “philosophical”. For instance, ritual is not generally considered worthy of philosophical investigation, even during a time in which philosophy constantly expands to, e.g. “philosophy of biology” and “philosophy of sex”. However, many Sanskrit, Jewish and Chinese authors have spent thousands of years and of pages to think about rituals as complex systems requiring internal consistency and principled justification.
Accordingly, I strive to convince philosophers and readers of the philosophical value of speculations on ritual and on duty as found in the Mīmāṃsā school of Sanskrit philosophy, in the Talmud hermeneutics or around the concept of li in Confucian philosophy, and to therefore establish “philosophy of ritual”. Similarly, within philosophy of religion, I see my work on various sources as contributing especially to the rethinking of central categories that are taken for granted by the field, such as that of the notion of God as an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being and the notion of “atheism” as equivalent to non-religiosity.

Methodologically speaking, I work on primary texts, predominantly in Sanskrit, but also in Maṇipravāḷam, Tamil and Tibetan, and I believe in looking at their history as key to a philosophical engagement with such texts. Without their historical context, texts risk being misunderstood and “domesticated” into something their readers consider more plausible because they are familiar with it. Examining their history, by contrast, helps me preserving their philosophical originality, even when it may be disruptive. One might object that linguistic and cultural competence cannot be a requirement for philosophical work, since otherwise one would need to master “all languages”, which is impossible. My answer to that is my insistence on collaborations. It is unlikely that my knowledge of Japanese or Bantu will ever be enough to read Japanese or Bantu philosophy, but I will remain open to collaborations working on it. I don’t work on 17th c. Mexican culture, but I can collaborate with scholars working on Juana Inés de la Cruz’ epistemology and we can mutually profit from each other’s work.

The last twenty-six months within the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto have made me better aware of the obstacles that prevent many colleagues from using philosophical sources that are not yet “mainstream”, such as the fact that not enough philosophically-informed translations are available, and that not enough work has been done to enucleate the contribution of single philosophers (many colleagues are still under the impression that there were just “schools” of Sanskrit and Chinese philosophy, and that there is a single pre-contemporary Africana philosophy, without individual contributions). I have consequently doubled my efforts as an interpreter of philosophy in both directions.

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Mapping the territory: Sanskrit cosmopolis, 1500–today

There is a lot to do in the European intellectual history, with, e.g., major theories that await an improved understanding and connections among scholars that have been overseen or understudied. Using a simile, one might say that a lot of the territory between some important peaks (say, the contributions of Hume, Kant, Hegel or Heidegger) is still to be thoroughly investigated.

When one works on the intellectual history of the Sanskrit cosmopolis*, by contrast, one still needs to map the entire territory, whose extension still escapes us. Very few elements of the landscape have been fixated, and might still need to be re-assessed.

What are the mountains, main cities as well as rivers, bridges, routes that we would need to fix on the map? Key authors, key theories, key schools, as well as languages and manners of communication and how they worked (public debates? where? how?).
I mentioned authors before schools because for decades intellectual historians looking at the Sanskrit cosmopolis emphasized, and often overemphasized the role of schools at the expense of the fundamental role of individual thinkers, thus risking to oversee their individual contributions and to flatten historical developments, as if nothing had changed in astronomy or philosophy for centuries. This hermeneutic mistake is due to the fact that while the norm in Europe and North America after Descartes and the Enlightenment has been increasingly to highlight novelty, originality is constantly understated in the Sanskrit cosmopolis. It is not socially acceptable to claim to be novel and original in the Sanskrit world, just like it is not acceptable to be just “continuing a project” in a grant application in Europe or North America.
Still, schools are often the departure point for any investigation, since they give one a first basic understanding of the landscape. How does this exactly work?
For instance, we know that the Vedānta systems were a major player in the intellectual arena, with all other religious and philosophical schools having to face them, in some form of the other. However, it is not at all clear which schools within Vedānta were broadly influential, where within South Asia, and in which languages. Michael Allen, among others, worked extensively on Advaita Vedānta in Hindī sources, but were they read also by Sanskrit authors and did the latter react to them? Were Hindī texts on Vedānta read only in the Gangetic valley or throughout the Indian subcontinent? The same questions should be investigated with regard to the other schools of Vedānta (Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Śaivādvaita…), the other vernacular languages they interacted with (respectively: Tamil and Maṇipravāḷam, Kannaḍa…), and the regions of the Indian subcontinent they originated in. And this is just about Vedānta schools.
Similarly, we still have to understand which other schools entered into a debate with philosophy and among each other and which interdisciplinary debates took place. Scholars of European intellectual history know how Kepler was influenced by Platonism and how Galileo influenced the development of philosophy. What happened in the Sanskrit cosmopolis?
Dagmar Wujastyk recently focused on the intersection of medicine (āyurveda) alchemy (rasaśāstra) and yoga. Which other disciplines were in a constant dialogue? Who read mathematical and astronomical texts, for instance? It is clear, because many texts themselves often repeat it, that Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya and Vyākaraṇa (hermeneutics, logic and grammar) were considered a sort of basic trivium, to be known by every learned person. But the very exclusion of Vedānta from the trivium (it cannot be considered to be included in “Mīmāṃsā” unless in the Viśiṣṭādvaita self-interpretation) shows that the trivium is only the starting point of one’s instruction and is not at all exhaustive. And we have not even started to look at many disciplines, from music to rhetorics.

One might wonder whether it is not enough to look at reports by today’s or yesterday’s Sanskrit intellectuals themselves in order to know what is worth reading and why. However, as discussed above, such reports would not boast about innovations and main breakthroughs. Sanskrit philosophy (and the same probably applies to Sanskrit mathematics etc.) is primarily commentarial. That is, authors presuppose a basic shared background knowledge and innovate while engaging with it rather than imagining to be pioneers in a new world of ideas. In a commentarial philosophy, innovations are concealed and breakthroughs are present, but not emphasised. Hence, one needs a lot of background knowledge to recognise them.

I would like to map the territory to realise who was studying what, where and how. How can this be done? The main obstacle is the amount of unpublished material, literally millions of manuscripts that still remain to be read, edited, translated and studied (I am relying on David Pingree’s estimate). Editing and translating them all requires a multi-generational effort of hundreds of people. However, a quick survey of them, ideally through an enhanced ORC technology, would enable scholars to figure out which languages were used, which theories and topics were debated, which authors were mentioned, and who was replying to whom.

This approach will remind some readers of the distant reading proposed by Franco Moretti. I am personally a trained philologist and a spokesperson for close reading. However, moving back and forth between the two methods seems to be the most productive methodology if the purpose is mapping an unknown territory. Close reading alone will keep one busy for decades and will not enable one to start the hermeneutic circle through which one’s knowledge of the situation of communication helps one better understanding even the content of the text one is closely focusing on. As hinted at above, this is particularly crucial in the case of a commentarial philosophy, where one needs to be able to master a lot of the author’s background in order to evaluate his contribution.

*As discussed several times elsewhere, I use “Sanskrit philosophy” or “Sanskrit intellectual history” as a short term for “philosophy in a cosmopolis in which Sanskrit was the dominant language of culture and everyone had to come to terms with it”, as with the use of “philosophy in the Islamic world”, that includes also thinkers part of the Islamic world but who were not themselves Muslims.

(The above are just quick notes. Any feedback is welcome!)

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Reconstructing Viśiṣṭādvaitavedānta: Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution

The book on Veṅkaṭanātha I am working on is an attempt of doing history of philosophy in the Sanskrit context, given that no agreed canon, chronology, list of main figures or main questions has been established for the history of Sanskrit philosophy. Therefore, in the Sanskrit context, doing history of philosophy does not amount to reconstruct some aspects within an established picture, but rather to understand what is the picture altogether. This also means that it is impossible or counter-productive to do history of philosophy in just an antiquarian way in the Sanskrit context.
The book also takes on the challenge of talking about Sanskrit philosophy without reducing it to ahistorical “schools” which are depicted as unchanging through time, so that while talking of Nyāya one can mix 5 c. CE sources with 11 c. ones. In contrast to this approach, the book focuses on the role of individual philosophers within such schools.

Accordingly, the book reconstructs the intellectual figure of Veṅkaṭanātha and his philosophical and theological contribution to what we now call “Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta”. Its main thesis is that Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta as we know it now is mostly a product of Veṅkaṭanātha’s brilliant mind. He connected various texts and theories into a harmonious whole, so that readers and practitioners looking at the time before Veṅkaṭanātha now recognise them as pieces of a puzzle. Once Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution is in place it is in fact easy to look back at authors before him and recognise them as pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle. However, it is only due to Veṅkaṭanātha that the entire jigsaw puzzle exists and the various texts and ideas could have remained disconnected, or could have led to different developments without him. The book analyses Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution in shaping the school, a con- tribution that goes so deep that it is hard to imagine Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta through a different lens. Veṅkaṭanātha’s synthesis was not, or not just, the result of a juxtaposition, but itself a philosophical enterprise. Veṅkaṭanātha re-interpreted a large amount of texts and ideas connecting them in a higher-order theory. In this sense, he is a philosopher doing history of philosophy as his primary methodological tool.

The book investigates this synthesis, its range and its theoretical foundations. In this way, it also attempts to reframe the usual understanding of Veṅkaṭanātha’s impact on Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, shifting him from the position of a learned successor of Rāmānuja to that of a builder of a new system, with a different scope (ranging well beyond Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and incorporating much more into it) and possibly with a different basis. Consequently, this book deals with philosophical themes in connection with their intellectual development.

Among the tools used by Veṅkaṭanātha in crafting his synthesis, of particular interest is his emphasis on the unity of the system holding between Vedānta and another school, called Mīmāṃsā. This is a school focusing on the exegesis of the Vedas and therefore on epistemology, deontics, philosophy of language and hermeneutics. Veṅkaṭanātha borrowed from it the tools to reconcile sacred texts seemingly mutually contradictory, as well as a well- developed dynamic ontology and account of subjectivity. However, the Mīmāṃsā school was also atheistic and considered the Vedas to be only enjoying a deontic authority, not an epistemic one. Both claims (especially the first one) contradict basic tenets of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. Therefore, in crafting a single system out of Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta Veṅkaṭanātha needed to find a way not to deny these claims while at the same time transcending them. Last, some readers not too familiar with Sanskrit philosophy might find a lot of topics Veṅkaṭanātha deals with “non-philosophical” or at least “non-philosophical enough”. For instance, why does he spend so much time on the injunction to learn the Vedas by heart? As an interpreter, I might have just used the debate in order to extract from it what is relevant for what is recognised today as “philosophy of action”, e.g.: Can someone be motivated to undertake an action whose results will only take place after years ? Does this even count as an action? What at all counts as motivation with regard to a course of action involving multiple years? Can a cost-benefit analysis still work in such cases? Which concept of subjectivity is needed for complex actions extending over multiple years? Alternatively, I might have just depicted the relevance of the debate in the historical setting in which it took place. In general, I gave hints going in both directions, but I primarily tried to reconstruct the debate in its own terms, because a global approach to philosophy means being open not just to new answers to old questions and to new questions within known fields, but also to altogether new fields of investigation. The unitary Mīmāṃsā system is in this sense a treasure house of ideas leading to a philosophy of exegesis and a philosophy of ritual.

Comments and criticisms, as usual, more than welcome!

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Very basic elements of a bibliography—UPDATED for premodern sources

Some students may wonder whether they should follow the Chicago Manual of Style or any other convention. My answer to such a question would be to focus on what is a bibliography meant for, i.e., enabling your readers to check your sources.

As a consequence of that, any convention will do, if only:

  1. Sources are easily identifiable (“Potter 1994” will not be enough, unless there is a bibliography at the end of the paper stating title and journal (or publishing house and place in case of a book). Doing that means that you have understood the role of sources for the epistemology of testimony, which is not just a formal thing, but a philosophically relevant aspect of your research.
  2. Sources are consistently listed. Listing once the title, then the author, then the date of publication and last the journal, and next the other way round, suggests that you are not familiar with the principle of an ordered classification. And classifying is primarily a logical exercise, not just a meaningless formality. Follow the Chicago Manual of Style or any other convention, but be consistent.

This being said, there are further points which need a separate treatment:

A. Because of 1., the bibliography at the end of one’s paper needs to be in alphabetic order according to the author’s last name. Put everything a person wrote or edited according to the year of publication. Don’t put all books first and then all edited volumes etc. But: First put all publications by, e.g. Ram Smith, and then start listing collaborations like “Smith, Ram and Devadatta Bhaṭṭa”. As for the alphabetic order of surnames, this is trivially easy when one only deals with contemporary Euro-American authors, but might be difficult outside of this narrow precinct. Where to put “Kumārila Bhaṭṭa” or “Dvarikadāsa Śāstrī Svāmī” or “Saint Augustine”? Let 1. guide you: Your source need to be easily identified. “Saint” or “Professor”, like “Bhaṭṭa” and “Svāmi” are not at all identifying elements. There are thousands of professors, saints and svāmins and dozens of Bhaṭṭas. Thus, chose instead the less common (and most identifiable) part of the name. If in doubt, check worldcat.org, where many of these problems have already been succesfully dealt with.

B. However, there is a point in which the worldcat.org might be irritating, namely when it comes to distinguish between the contribution of author, editor and translator. Thus, let me add my humble opinion: Saying “Kumārila Bhaṭṭa and Dvarikadāsa Śāstrī (1978), Ślokavārttika…” conveys the erroneous thought that Kumārila and Dvarikadāsa sat together and wrote the ŚV as a joint effort. This is not the case. Same with “Martin Buber, Walter Arnold Kaufmann (1970), I and Thou…”. Buber and Kaufmann did not collaborate on that book, whose sole author is Buber. Kaufmann is its translator, like Dvarikadāsa is the editor of Kumārila’s Ślokavārttika. Be sure to convey it. E.g., by saying “Martin Buber, I and Thou, translated by W.A. Kaufmann”. Similarly, state clearly whether someone is the author or the editor of a certain article or book. For instance, suppose that Rāma Miśra contributed an article called “The role of lakṣaṇā in Kumārila Bhaṭṭa” in a book edited by Kalpanā Dvivedi and called “Mīmāṃsā Philosophy of Language”. It would be incorrect to write “Miśra, Rāma and Kalpanā Dvivedi, “The role of lakṣaṇā in Kumārila Bhaṭṭa”. Rather, write as follows (adjust according to the system you follow): Miśra, Rāma, 2001. “The role of lakṣaṇā in Kumārila Bhaṭṭa”. In Kalpanā Dvivedi (ed.), Mīmāṃsā Philosophy of Language, Amsterdam: Bloomsbury, pp. 1–23.

C. In the case of websites, before citing them ask yourself whether their authors fulfil the Nyāya criteria (is the author competent? honest? desirous to communicate?). If you don’t know (e.g., in the case of Wikipedia or any other website without a precise author), DON’T USE IT (unless it’s for an anthropological research). If it has a reliable author, cite it as if it were a scholarly publication (e.g. “Kraut, Richard, “Plato”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/plato/>.”).
What about websites that are easy summaries by reliable authors, e.g., Plantinga’s videos summarizing his philosophy? Use them as an entrance gate into his philosophy, but then go the extra mile and quote his books or articles.

Since we are discussing the final bibliography, let me add a few lines about how to refer to your sources within your essay:

(i) Don’t cheat, quote. You are not looking smarter by not saying whence you know where a certain philosopher was born. Testimony is a valid source of knowledge, whereas vague hearsay is not. Thus, state your sources.

(ii) Add quotation marks when you are quoting. It is not enough to add the name of the author at the end of a passage.

(iii) Add page numbers! You can’t expect your readers to have to read a whole article or book in order to check what you said.

 

Now, for pros: What about pre-modern sources? If there is a standard critical edition, you have to refer to it. However, I would also suggest adding ways for your reader to locate the passage even if they have a different edition at hand. For instance, if you are citing a passage from the Nyāyabhāṣya, mention the aphorism it is commenting on. Thus:

—worst option: NBh, p. 121 (of a random edition)

—intermediate option: NBh, p. 131 (of Anantalal Thakur’s edition)

—best option: NBh on 1.1.2, p. 131 of Anantalal Thakur’s edition

What if your text is not a commentary on a set of aphorisms? Surely it has another internal partition. For instance, if you are quoting the Vidhiviveka, you might clearly identify the verses (they are numbered) and identify the portion of text commenting on a given verse as “VV on v. 2.6” and the like. Since the Vidhiviveka has been critically edited and the critical edition by Stern is a monumental achievement, it makes sense to also refer to Stern’s partitions of the text (e.g., chapter 11.6.1).

Colleagues and students: What can I add to make this list more helpful?

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Studying Sanskrit philosophy as an undergraduate —UPDATED

First, some perspective: “Wikipedia’s list of ancient Greek philosophers (seemingly based on Anthony Preus’ books) lists 316 authors –of many of them not a single work survived. How many works and authors do you think are covered by the label ‘Sanskrit philosophy’?” When I asked this question in class, I got answers ranging from 5 (!) to 312 authors. Karl Potter’s Bibliography of Indian Philosophy (by no means complete) lists 9,631 authors.

A further important point in this connection: Sanskrit philosophy does not only deal with “religious topics” (although religion is discussed in it!). There is a big emphasis on philosophy of language and epistemology, plenty of ontology and logic and then many other philosophical discussions (the only topics being relatively neglected are political philosophy, as well as philosophy of race, of gender etc.).

Thus, we are dealing with a world, geographically, chronologically and culturally comparable with “European philosophy” (400 BCE–1900 CE). Thus, just like no one would expect you to master the latter after a term, so don’t expect that a class will be enough to master “Sanskrit Philosophy”.

In a nutshell: Invest some time with the topic and make fun of whoever among your colleagues thinks that Sanskrit philosophy is a smaller field than “Philosophy of the young Wittgenstein”.

Second, why should you at all want to undertake such a journey? For a few reasons: 1. Sanskrit philosophy (like other philosophical traditions) will enrich you with a treasure-house of new questions and answers. 2. No matter what you will specialise in, having a perspective from far away will shatter your prejudices and make you aware of your unconscious biases.

Third, what does it take? Will you need to learn the relevant languages? Will it be hard? Answer: It will be hard, because philosophy is hard. If it looks easy, you are not trying hard enough. But it should not be harder than any other philosophical tradition, apart from extra-philosophical elements, such as getting accustomed to the idea that male names end with -a. You do not need to learn the relevant languages, although I will encourage you to learn Sanskrit if you will decide to specialise in the field in three years.

Forth, should you decide to specialise in a historically underrepresented philosophical tradition, let me warn you about something else. You will be “hireable” by departments of areal studies (and/or religious studies) as well as of philosophy. This is due to the fact that in the last decades scholars of Sanskrit philosophy have not been mainly hired by philosophy departments, but often by “Asian studies” or “Religious studies” ones. (I will not discuss the reasons for such historical circumstances.) This also means that you will end up having to convince two different sets of people that you are a serious scholar. You will need to show that you are accurate and sensitive to the context when talking to the first group of colleagues, while at the same time needing to show to your philosophical colleagues, every year again, how philosophically cool is what you are doing.

The UofT is not like that, so I routinely forget and am chilled again when colleagues point out that it is not at all obvious that there is “philosophy” outside of the Euro-American world, see below for a nice example (I don’t want to engage with mean or plainly racist cases):

To summarise: If you’ll specialise in Sanskrit philosophy, you will be cheered up by a vibrant community (it’s a small world, apart from India, so we are all very welcoming), and you’ll have the wonderful experience of being a pioneer in many respects (there are literally MILLIONS of texts which expect to be properly studied!). But, you’ll have to learn to deal with objections like the ones I mentioned above.

Colleagues and students: What did I forget?

How to use parentheses and brackets in your translation? My tips

Specific attention needs to be dedicated to the use of parentheses and brackets in translations meant for a public who knows the language you are translating from (in this case, Sanskrit). I use parentheses: (more…)

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How to deal with Sanskrit words in an English article

I already discussed in this post how to transcribe Sanskrit, and how to separate Sanskrit words in transcription. Here I would like to address a further problem many of my students appear to encounter, namely how to deal with Sanskrit words in an article.

First of all, how many Sanskrit words should you keep in your article? The answer depends on your audience. If you address an audience of non-Sanskritists, use as few Sanskrit words as possible. If you address a Sanskritist audience, use Sanskrit words in parentheses the first time you introduce a given translation, so that readers can understand what you mean by your translation, e.g.:

Authors of Dharmakīrti’s school think that linguistic communication (śabda) is not an independent instrument of knowledge (pramāṇa), but should rather be subsumed under inference (anumāna).

Then, the next time you’ll speak of inference, etc., you will not need to explain which term you are translating. You do not need to use the Sanskrit words in case it is obvious or irrelevant. If, for instance, you want to discuss Dharmakīrti’s soteriology, it is probably not needed to say that when you speak of `word’ he used pada and so on. In other words, focus on just a few termini technici for which you want to give the Sanskrit equivalent. Sanskrit words are italicised and therefore attract the attention of the reader. Use them sparingly or your reader will be just confused.

A further connected issue is: In which form should you mention Sanskrit words? As usual, consistency is key. You can decide among of the following three options, but then stick to it:

  1. You mention the word’s stem (e.g., puruṣa, ātman, pratyakṣa).
  2. You mention the word in the nominative singular (e.g. puruṣaḥ, ātmā, pratyakṣam).
  3. You mention the word in the case in which it is mentioned in the sentence you are translating (e.g. “A person’s (puruṣasya) self (ātmā) cannot be grasped through sense-perception (pratyakṣena).
What you should avoid is mixing the three methods, and especially the first two.

Now, you might think that these are all details and are not as important as the thesis you want to convey in your article. This is true, but your peer-reviewers will be disturbed by your sloppiness and annoyed. They might even be inclined to think that your translations are probably also sloppy, given that you are not even able to transcribe Sanskrit accurately. Don’t risk a rejection because of inaccuracy. What do experienced readers think? What annoys you as reader? What do you recommend to students?

 

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South Asian philosophy on twitter — and how to persuade your colleagues that there is philosophy in South Asia

You might have noticed it already (since I am well-known for being a late adapter), but there are now several scholars of South Asian philosophy on twitter, such as Jonathan Duquette, Marco Ferrante, Marzenna Jakubczak, Malcolm Keating, Birgit Kellner, Amod Lele, Ethan Mills, Cat Prueitt, Evan Thompson… Please feel free to mention the many I am missing in the comments.

I am, as already said, a late adapter, but twitter made me get in touch with interesting people coming from outside my direct field and I enjoyed several insightful conversations. One such conversation is directly relevant for many readers and I would be glad to read your opinion about it.

Short premiss: Someone (teaching in another institute) writes me explaining that their university would like to open a position on “Indian philosophy”, but that some colleagues are against it, claiming that “it is all religion”. Now, it might at times be disheartening to hear such opinions coming from colleague philosophers, but how would you react after a few deep breaths?

Here below comes my first reaction:

There will always be people who think they know what there is even in places they never visited, and I guess it must be hard for you to be patient and try to explain your reasons without getting angry. Usually, books like Matilal’s and Ganeri’s ones are really helpful here. Perhaps, you might also point them to the podcast by Ganeri and Peter Adamson on the history of Indian Philosophy? […] Many philosophers (especially historians of philosophy) know and trust P. Adamson and might be convinced by his opinion.

Also, perhaps you might try to understand where these people come from. Are they historians of philosophy? Analytic philosophers? Phenomenologists? Using Matilal and Mohanty for the latter two groups respectively might really help… Ch. Ram-Prasad’s books are also great to reach people working in the so-called “continental philosophy”.

Last resort: Give them a book which looks “religious”, like Parimal Patil’s Against a Hindu God and ask them what they think of the Buddhist syllogisms and their refutations of the Brahmanical ones.

P.S. I know that your colleagues meant “religion” in a derogatory way, but South Asian philosophy that engages with religion is intellectually extremely stimulating, too (and would they really want to cancel Thomas Aquinas or Augustinus from their philosophical syllabi?)

How do you react in such cases? I have strong hopes in young colleagues (like many of the ones I mentioned above) and in the positive effect their contribution will have, especially once added to the tasks which have already been accomplished by their forerunners. Till that moment comes, however, we will have to think of convincing and polite answers. What will your answer be?

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Wrestling with the angel: Fight all night

Further thoughts on intercultural philosophy

I hope that readers will bear with me while I keep on exploiting the metaphor of wrestling with the angel. There are a few more indications, in fact, we can take out of it. First, Jacob fights. He does not just encounter the angel, he fights with him. Similarly, in order for the encounter with another philosopher to be really transformative, one should not just engage with a restatement of one’s ideas, and rather look for points of difference and not just of harmony. One is not transformed with the encounter of the n-th philosopher who agrees with oneself.