The news of the death of Paolo De Benedetti reached me while I was reading a short book of him (E l’asina disse…).

Paolo De Benedetti is well-known especially for his studies on Hebraism, but here I would rather like to remember him for his articles and books on animals’ and plants’ theology. This is a problem which is much less evident in South Asian religions, given the general acceptance of a (hierarchical) continuity between animal and human lives. Yet, as already discussed here, the same continuity is not generally accepted in the case of plants.
De Benedetti used Singer’s arguments about suffering as the distinctive character shared by all living beings and keeping them alike. Unlike Singer, however, De Benedetti saw the commonality of animals, human beings and plants in a theological perspective: They are all created, not natural beings and their being alive is what God has donated to them.

The sentience of plants is one of the topics I keep on thinking of. You can read my last post about it here.

If you have followed the debate about the sentience of plants through Lambert Schmitausen’s two short monographies (1991a and 1991b) and in E.B. Findly’s book (2008), you will be pleased to know that Schmithausen also authored a longer monography on the topic, where he discusses, among others, Findly’s arguments. He sympathises with her basic claim (plants are alive and plant lives matter) but disagrees with her insofas as she is sure to find this claim substantiated in several early Buddhist philosophical texts. Schmithausen’s philological acumen shows that in the Buddhist Canon we can find evidences of popular belief in the sentience of plants, not of the monks’ belief in it. The expression ekindriya jīva “living beings with one sense-faculty”, which would show that plants are alive and (though in a limited way) sentient is in fact invariably attributed to lay people, not to Buddhist monks:

Hence, the references to plants as living beings with one sense-faculty, intepreted in their context, rather suggests that the authors of these Vinaya passages did not share this view. This is explicitly stated in the Mahāsāṅghika version: “Although [in reality] they (i.e., trees) have no life, one should not cause people to become upset.” (pp. 38–39).

 

 
In other words (and now it is me speaking and no longer L. Schmithausen), Buddhist thought was part of a rationalising tendency which regarded beliefs in the sentience of plants as some sort of folk belief. The marginal evidence available for the inclusion of plants within living and sentient beings, such as when herbs and trees figure at the beginning of a long enumeration of living beings, should be considered as the residual inclusion of a pre- or non-philosophical worldview.

This does not say anything, however, about the beliefs shared by the majority of Buddhist practitioners, who might have been much more inclined towards acccepting the sentience of plants than their rationalising “theologians”.

You can read my review of Findly, referring to Schmithausen, here. Another article of mind on plants and “nature” in Indian philosophy can be read here.

saṃhataparārthatvāt triguṇādiviparyayād adhiṣṭhānāt |
puruṣo ‘sti bhoktṛbhāvāt kaivalyārthapravṛtteś ca ||

Since the assemblage of sensible objects is for another’s use; since the converse of that which has the three qualities with other properties (before mentioned) must exist; since there must be superintendencel since there must be one to enjoy, since there is a tendency to abstraction; therefore soul is. (Colebrook’s edition and translation)

Veṅkaṭanātha first focuses on the first logical reason (“since the assemblage is for another’s use”) and contexts it with some counter-arguments:

sāṅkhyādyuktāny anumānāni tv asādhakatamāni. paṭhanti hi saṅghātaparārthatvād iti. atrādye patyādiśarīrārthair bhāryādiśarīrais siddhasādhanatā. na ca tāvad atiriktaṃ khaṭvādidṛṣṭānte ‘pi dṛṣṭam.
anavasthābhayāt tasyāsaṃhatatvakalpanād
[…]
varaṃ śarīrasyānanyārthatvakalpanam | (SĀS ad TMK 2.2).

The inferences [about the self] said by Sāṅkhya and similar schools do not prove [their point]. In fact, they recite that “[the self is different than the natura naturans] because a complex (like that of body, sense-organs, etc.) is for the sake of something else” (SK 17). In this [kārikā], the first [logical reason] establishes something already established, since, for instance, the body of a servant is for the sake of the body of her master. Nor, to begin with, is this an isolated [case]; it is seen also in the example of couches and other (pieces of furniture) [which are for the sake of someone else]. (Thus, even if it is true that complex entities are for the sake of something else, this does not prove that the natura naturans is for the sake of precisely the self.) […] It would be better to postulate that the body has no other purpose (apart from serving the self).

What is exactly the point here? In my opinion, Vedānta Deśika says that showing that being complex is being for something else is a well known thing, and that this does not prove that it is for the sake of the ātman, which should have been the purpose of the kārikā.

Probably not. At least, this is the thesis of a recent article of mine (a pre-print version of which is available here, please email me for the final version), in which the case of Mīmāṃsā is at the center, but Buddhist and Vedāntic approaches are also in the background. My conclusion is that “nature” is a history-loaden concept, most likely not translatable in a milieu which does not share the (US-Australian-NewZealand-…)European background made of Latin distinctions between natura naturans and natura naturata and Romantic rediscoveries of “wilderness” (reaching until Environmentalism).
For instance, the Mīmāṃsā texts I analysed do not distinguish among human beings, animals and plants as three fundamental categories. On the one hand, there are many more sub-categories which make the distinction less sharp. On the other, human beings are not so far from the other animals (unlike, e.g., in Réné Descartes).

What do readers think? How do the texts you work on discuss “nature”? Do they categorise all animals together? And all plants? Do they distinguish animals and plants from human beings?

(cross-posted also on the Indian Philosophy blog)
Looking for more posts on nature? Check this category and read the reviews of the book by Chris Framarin here and here and this post.

Note also that the Search Committee particularly welcomes applicants with expertise in Hinduism, though the search leaves open the successful candidate’s area of research focus as regards religious tradition, language expertise, and historical period of study.

The Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia invites applicants for a tenure-track Assistant or tenured Associate Professor position, focused on Religion, Nature, and Culture in South Asia. These hires are part of a multiyear initiative in the environmental humanities, supported by the Andrew H. Mellon Foundation and the College of Arts & Sciences.

Area of research is open to multiple religious traditions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and other formations, including those communities referred to as “indigenous” or “tribal” (adivasi). Knowledge of Hinduism, modern or premodern, is particularly sought after.

The successful candidate will have teaching and research expertise in classical or contemporary literature (facility with both is welcome), and facility with the relevant languages (such as Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Tamil, Hindi-Urdu, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali, among others). The candidate should have interest in environmental humanities, broadly construed, and could have expertise in such issues as: how classical knowledge systems may inform contemporary environmental debates; intersections between particular traditions and changing ecosystems; pre-modern environmental histories addressing the emergence of religious formations, including their roles in the regional systems that connected Europe and East Asia; connections of political ecology to social or religious marginalization; the continuities and discontinuities of human and non-human worlds (including relations with animals) as mediated through religious and cultural sensibilities; South Asian and postcolonial perspectives on environmental discourses.

During the first year of the appointment the new hire will be appointed as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow of the Institute of Humanities and Global Cultures and will receive one course release. The Fellow will be an actively engaged member of the IHGC community and will serve on the IHGC Faculty Advisory Committee.

Review of applications will begin on November 20, 2015. The appointment start date will begin August 25, 2016. Applicants must be on track to receive a Ph.D. in the relevant field by May 2016 and must hold a Ph.D. at the time of appointment.

To apply candidates must submit a Candidate Profile through Jobs@UVa (https://jobs.virginia.edu), search on posting number 0617540 and electronically attach a cover letter describing research agenda and teaching experience, C.V., and names of three references. Please arrange for three confidential letters of reference to be sent to Julie Garmel, jg4e@virginia.edu.

Questions about the position may be directed to, Willis Jenkins, Chair of the Search, at willis.jenkins@virginia.edu.

The University will perform background checks on all new faculty hires prior to making a final offer of employment.

The University of Virginia is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Women, minorities, veterans and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

from http://www.popsci.com/should-animals-same-rights-people

1. If, in fact, humans have more rights than animals because they are the dominant group, then this resembles very much racism or any other dominion of one group over the other.
2. If, by contrast, humans have more rights than animals because they are different than animals, then what does this difference consist of? If it amounts to rationality, should psychically empaired human beings have no rights?

Since after the end of the Nazi experiments a (more or less) general consensus has been achieved about the fact that psychically empaired human beings deserve the same rights, one is led back either to No. 1 or to a different basis of the human claim for rights. This could be Peter Singer’s claim that one’s moral stand should be calculated not on the basis of one’s ability to reach a soteriological goal or one’s rational value but on the basis of one’s ability of experiencing pain (Singer 1975). This includes psychically empaired human beings. But it also includes at least many animals (one might argue about the fact that many invertebrates with no nerve ganglia cannot literally speaking experience pain).

The discussion about the inclusion of animals within the realm of beings to whom human rights can be ascribed, thus, seems to hit a nerve in Western thought. It seems that no straight line can be legitimately drawn to separate animals and humans and that there is more a net of family resemblances than a straight opposition between the two groups (a dolphin or a gorilla, just to take an obvious example, seem to me to resemble a human being much more than they resemble an amoeba, although all three can be used for the sake of medical research or kept in zoo-like institutions).

The situation is slighly different in other traditions of thought. In Classical Chinese Confucian philosophy, for instance, the idea that we have stronger obligations towards the members of our extended family and towards further “proximate” people is a viable option and one could easily extend this model to animals, so that it would be legitimate to attribute rights first to the members of our families, then to members of our communities, then to further human beings, then to pet-animals, then to further animals with whom we are somehow connected and only at last to further animals. However, this option clashes with the Western ambition of building a universal ethical system, does not it?*

I wrote about Indian reflections on this topic in a forthcoming article (a preliminary draft of which is available here), where I basically argue that most Indian thinkers seem to see non-human and human animals along a hierarchical sequence with no brisk interruption.
Daya Krishna connects this with the utilitaristic approach to knowledge which characterises most Indian explicit reflections about it:

The usual Indian analysis is centered around the hedonistic view of human nature which sees it as naturally seeking pleasure and avoding pain and has a pragmatic view of knowledge which sees the `truth’ of knowledge in terms of its ability to avoid pain and afford pleasure to the humanking. But on this view no distinction is possible between the human and the animal world as the latter also is supposed to seek pleasure or avoid pain and `sees’ the `truth’ of its knowledge in terms of the `success’ achieved by it in this enterprise. In fact, the whole learning theory in modern psychology and the training of animals is based on this premiss (2004, p. 237)

Let me just add that Daya Krishna is thinking of the first aphorism in the foundational text of the Nyāya school (NS 1.1.1), where knowledge is linked to the achievement of one’s summum bonum. In another philosophical school, the Mīmāṃsā, animals are also considered on the same level as humans when it comes to the fact of desiring happiness (PMS chapter 6).

* I am grateful to L.E. for having discussed this topic with me. For a critical discussion of the concept of “rights”, see Amod Lele’s discussion here (and in the previous posts). On why I am citing Daya Krishna, see this post. Within Chinese philosophy, on Confucius vs. Mozi regarding the universality of rights see this post by Eric Schwitzgebel.

A Vaiṣṇava who starts doing philosophy after centuries of religious texts speaking of Viṣṇu’s manifestations (vibhūti), of His qualities and His spouse Lakṣmī (or Śrī or other names), is in a similar difficult situation.

A Śaiva like Somānanda or Sadyojyotis might have had a slightly easier start, given that the Sacred Texts of his school had not yet entered the philosophical stage. In this sense, these philosophers were free to interpret their Sacted Texts almost freely (think of Abhinavagupta monist commentary of a dualist text like the Paratriṃśikā). The boundaries they needed to face were those of their creed, but not of the external expectations regarding their creed’s theology. The former made them add further tattvas to the Sāṅkhya list, the lack of the latter made them adaptively reuse the Sāṅkhya framework (see, on this topic, Torella 1999).

By contrast, Veṅkaṭanātha’s titanic effort of making Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta a robust philosophic system meant that he needed to find his way between the two competing ontologies of Vedānta and Nyāya, while at the same time remaining loyal to the distinctive Pāñcarātra theologemes, which were already known also to philosophers because of their presence in the Mahābhārata and in Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya

The Nyāyasūtra proposes a fundamental division of realities into dravya ‘substances’, guṇa ‘qualities’, karman ‘actions’, with the former as the substrate of the latter two. This leads to two difficulties for Veṅkaṭanātha’s agenda. On the one hand, the radical distinction between substance and attribute means that, Nyāya authors imagine liberation as the end of the connection of the ātman ‘self’ to all attributes, from sufferance to consciousness. By contrast, Veṅkaṭanātha, would never accept consciousness to be separated from the individual soul and even less from God. The other difficulty regards the theology of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. Since the beginnings of Pāñcarātra, one of its chief doctrines has been that of the manifestations (vibhūti) of Viṣṇu, which are dependent on Him but co-eternal with Him and in this sense are unexplainable according to the division of substances into eternal and transient.

To that, Veṅkaṭanātha opposes more than one classification, so that it is clear that Veṅkaṭanātha’s main point is addressing the above mentioned problems with the Nyāya ontology, rather than establishing in full detail a distinct ontology.

The first proposal found in the Nyāyapariśuddhi is based on the idea of a two fold division, into dravya ‘substance’ and adravya ‘non-substance’ and defines substance as the `substrate of possible accidental characteristics’ (āgantukadharmāśraya). The attribute ‘accidental’ hints at the fact that a dravya is not completely independent of all its characteristics. Veṅkaṭanātha’s definition allows him to maintain that some attributes, primarily consciousness, are never severed from God or from the liberated soul.

The subclassifications goes further, with substance being divided into inert and alive. The former category includes the natura naturans of Sāṅkhya and time, which is thus no longer a quality (guṇa) as in Nyāya. The latter category (alive substance) includes separate and heteronomous substances. Within the former are individual souls and God, whereas the latter includes cognition as essential to God (dharmabhūtajñāna, see the paragraph immediately above) and the permanent manifestations of God, which are logically dependent on Him, but have not been created by Him.

The final result is a patchwork ontology, with several elements common to the other Vedāntic schools, such as the embedment of the Sāṅkhya structure, but distinctive appears to be the genealogy of the ajaḍa part of the classification, as opposed to the Vedāntic pariṇāmavāda ‘theory of the evolution [of the brahman into the world]’, —according to which the brahman is the material cause of the world— and also to the māyāvāda ‘theory of the illusory [evolution of the brahman in the world]’ —according to which only the brahman exists and everything else is just an illusion. Veṅkaṭanātha’s ontology, in this sense, is not at all Vedāntic insofar as it has God as its emanation point, but not as its only component.

The ajaḍa part of the classification is, instead, directly connected to Yāmuna’s stress on dharmabhūtajñāna and to Veṅkaṭanātha’s dissociation of the personal aspect of God from any material ontology. Noteworthy in this connection is the fact that the vibhūtis are substances but devoid of any materiality. It is in this light that the concept of God’s body (see the end of this post) assumes its significance.

On Veṅkaṭanātha’s approach to ontology, see this post.

Therefore, this śarīra is of two types: permanent and impermanent. Among them, permanent are God’s body —consisting of auspicious substrates, namely substances with the three qualities, time and [individual] souls— and the intrinsic form of Garuḍa, the snake (Ananta), etc. belonging to permanent [deities]. The impermanent [body] is of two types: not made of karman and made of karman. The first one has the form of the primordial natura naturans (the prakṛti of Sāṅkhya), etc.* of God. In the same way, [an impermanent body not made of karman] assumes this or that form according to the wish of the liberated souls, such as Ananta and Garuḍa. Also the [body] made of karman is of two types: made out of one’s decision and karman and made out of karman alone. The first type belongs to great [souls] like the Muni Saubhari. The other one belongs to the other low [souls] (i.e., all normal human beings and the other conscious living beings). Moreover, the body in general is of two types, movable and unmovable. Wood (i.e., trees) and other [plants] and rocks and other [minerals] are unmovable. […] That there are souls also in rock-bodies is established through stories such as that of Ahalyā.

tad etat śarīraṃ dvividham —nityam anityañ ceti. tatra nityaṃ triguṇadravyakālajīvaśubhāśrayādyātmakam īśvaraśarīram; nityānāñ ca svābhāvikagaruḍabhujagādirūpam. anityañ ca dvividham —akarmakṛtaṃ karmakṛtañ ceti. prathamam īśvarasya mahadādirūpam. tathā anantagaruḍādīnāṃ muktānāñ ca icchākṛtatattadrūpam. karmakṛtam api dvividham. svasaṅkalpasahakṛtakarmakṛtaṃ kevalakarmakṛtañ ceti. pūrvaṃ mahatāṃ saubhariprabhṛtīnām. uttarañ ca anyeṣāṃ kṣudrāṇām. punaḥ śarīraṃ sāmānyato dvidhā jaṅgamam ajaṅgamañ ceti. kāṣṭhādīnāṃ śilādīnāñ ca ajaṅgamatvam eva. […] śilādiśarīriṇo ‘pi jīvā vidyante iti ahalyādivṛttāntaśravaṇāt siddham (Nyāyasiddhāñjana, pp. 174–176).

Thus, the deities have an intrinsic form which is permanent and can assume further impermanent ones at wish, not depending on karman.
As for rocks and stones, the rationale of their inclusion is the story of Ahalyā, who was transformed into a stone and then back into a woman, a fact which proves that a soul was present also while she was a stone. Her story is told, e.g., in the Rāmāyaṇa.

*The first commentary explains this ādi as referring to God’s emanations, the vyūhas, which are a typical mark of Pāñcarātra theology throughout its history.

Note the limitation in the precinct of application of karman, which seem to only determine one’s body and not one’s entire life. Further, why do you think Veṅkaṭanātha does not explain away Ahalyā’s story? What is he aiming at through the inclusion of stones?

On nature and sentience of plants in Classical Indian Philosophy, see this post and this one (in general) and this one (on Buddhist philosophy) and in general this label in my old blog. On Veṅkaṭanātha, see this label.

1. Art scholars neither use nor appreciate hand outs (which I had prepared, following a comment here)
2. All art scholars, including the ones who do not discuss works of art, use slides and know how to do it (not too many, not too much text, not too few…), which is something I generally appreciate
3. Unlike scholars of Indian art (who do not generally feel they need to master an Indian language), it seems that many (or most) scholars of Chinese art master Chinese. Zhou Xiangpin even delivered (against expectations) his paper in Chinese language. If this had happened in a conference on Indian art, I imagine that most of the audience would have left, whereas in this case the audience seemed not to be distressed at all

The latter point, together with the presence of many young scholars from China, who probably had their travel financed by their home institutions, made me think a lot about the cultural agenda of the Chinese government. The Indian government seems much less interested in guiding Indological studies. (I can think of many reasons for that, but if you have further ones, please drop a comment below).

As for the contents of the conference, there were several parallel sessions, so that I could only attend some papers. I will dedicate a separate post on the topic of my panel, namely reuse. As for the others, I especially liked:

• Bianca Maria Rinaldi‘s paper on the Western reception of Chinese gardens: Bianca explained how the political attitude towards China modified the way the Western audience reacted to Chinese gardens. China was first presented by 17th–18th c. Jesuits as a model state, in which intellectuals ruled, whereas Europe was ruled by aristocratic feudataries. Chinese gardens were consequently appreciated for their simplicity, opposed to the magnitude of Versailles’ gardens. This meant that Chinese gardens were appreciated and their style was embraced by British planners as an alternative to the French (and Italian) style of gardening. Later on, namely by the end of the 18th c., however, the appreciation of China sinked and its gardens were rather blamed because of their lack of largeness and wide perspective. Bianca clearly explained how the latter was a conscious choice of Chinese gardeners who wanted to create one different scene after the other, highly valueing the surprise they would have generated in the viewers. However, Europeans rather decided to interpret it as a sign of the Chinese’s lack of courage, softness and decadence, with European gardens interpreted as more “adult” ones.

• (Here I am conditioned by my personal interests:) Valdas Jaskūnas’ paper on the influence of the Gurjara-Pratīhara dynasty on the structure and iconography in Early Medieval Vaiṣṇava temples and in the earliest Purāṇas. Valdas follows Ronald Inden’s idea that the Purāṇas were the result of an agency aiming at the creation of empires and consequently interpreted the earliest descriptions of temple-building in the Agni Purāṇa, the Matsya Purāṇa, the Garuḍa Purāṇa and —interestingly— the Hayaśīrṣa Pāñcarātra Saṃhitā. In fact, Vaslav argues, temples with an ambulatory around them constitute a three-level structure, with first the garbhagṛha, then the upper zone, to which only the emperor and his family could access, and then the outer level. Furthermore, the Pratīharas, maintains Vaslav, chose Vaiṣṇavism as a source of legitimation and this is reflected in the icongoraphy of the temple, especially in the dikpālas ‘direction guardians’.

As with previous conferences, this post only reflects my impressions of the conference. All errors (especially in fields I am not a specialist of, such as Chinese art) are entirely mine!
Should you be interested in my remarks on the history of gardens as a mirror of a society’s understanding of “nature”, read this article.