Category Archives: Philosophy

Posted on

What is the target of Kumārila’s atheist arguments?

Kumārila’s attacks certainly target the belief in supernatural beings who should be able to grant boons to human beings (the devatās), insofar as they show that this belief is inherently self-contradictory. For instance, these deities should be the actual recipients of ritual offerings. However, how could they receive offerings at the same time from different sacrificers in different places?

Kumārila also targets the belief in a Lord akin to the one defended by rational theology, both in Europe and in South Asia, again because this leads to contradictions. Kumārila explains that there is no need of such a Lord in order to explain the creation of the world, since there is no need to adduce further evidence in order to justify the world as it is now (i.e., existing), whereas one would need to adduce a strong external evidence to justify everything contradicting the world as we know it. Therefore, the continuous presence of the world becomes the default status and the theist has the burden of the proof and needs to be able to establish independently of his religious belief that there has been a time when the world did not exist. Similarly, Kumārila shows that the idea of a Lord who is at the same time all-mighty and benevolent is self-contradictory, since if the Lord where really all-might, he would avoid evil, and if he tolerates it, then he is cruel. If one says that evil is due to karman or other causes, Kumārila continues, then this shows that there is no need to add the Lord at all as a further cause and that everything can be explained just on the basis of karman or any other cause.

Are Kumārila’s criticisms also targeted at the idea of an impersonal and non-dual brahman? Kumārila does not explicitly address the issue of the possible distinction between one and the other target. However, a few scant hints may help readers. In a fragment from his lost Bṛhaṭṭīkā preserved in the work of a Buddhist opponent (the Tattvasaṅgraha), Kumārila speaks of deities as being vedadeha, i.e., ‘embodied in the Veda’ (so Yoshimizu 2008, fn. 78). In a verse of the TV, he says that they are ṛgvedādisamūheṣu […] pratiṣṭhitāḥ, i.e., ‘who reside in the Ṛgveda and all other [Vedic scriptures]’ (Yoshimizu 2007b, p. 221). Does this mean that Kumārila was accepting a conception of deities inhabiting the Vedas? I discussed the idea with a colleague who just said that the verses must be interpolated.

What do readers think? Was there local atheism in ancient India?

See also Yoshimizu’s comment to my post on Bhavanātha.

Posted on

On the philosophy of faith

A PhD student wrote me asking: “Being a student of theology, from the philosophical background, I have understood the role of reason in theology. But I cannot assimilate the place of faith in philosophy.”

I would answer quoting Anselm of Canterbury, who stated “credo ut intelligam, intelligo ut credam”, namely “I believe in order to understand, I understand in order to believe”. The latter part corresponds to what the students labelled as the role of reason in theology, namely the need to continue improving one’s understanding of theological truths in order to deepen one’s faith in them. The first part is an answer to the student’s query about the role of faith.
In other words, unless one had faith in, say, the real presence of Śrī Viṣṇu in a given idol, one would not start elaborating a theory about the arcāvatāra. In a Catholic milieu, one might think at Antoine Arnauld’s discussion of the signification of demonstrative pronouns inspired by his faith in the transubstantiation during the Mess (in his L’Art de penser).

Long story short:
1. Faith, I think, can motivate one to look at a topic one would have not thought of.
2. Moreover, it can help one overcome one’s initial disbelief and think more thoroughly about a topic.

This should not be confused, however, with the case of stiffening in a position without accepting to discuss counter-positions. Faith can promote philosophy if it is so self-confident to be able to lead to an open-minded intellectual journey.

What do readers think? Can faith help philosophical enterprises?

[T]he last few years have witnessed widespread interest in debates around atheism well beyond the boundaries of the academy. […] [M]any of these debates seem to be trapped within a particular mental world-view that is a product of Enlightenment modernity. The assumptions and history of this world-view are rarely questioned or even acknowledged, with the result that the world-view itself comes to appear as a timeless given rather than as an historical product. Participants in the debate may thus be forced into positions and faced with alternatives that are dictated by this world-view, and deprived of the opportunity of exploring alternative approaches and ways of thinking.

Gavin Hyman
A Short History of Atheism (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), IX-X
Posted on

The ultimate level of interpretation

Suppose you are a devout Christian and you think that the Bible has been inspired by God. Would this mean that you cannot discuss the historical layers of the Bible? Or would you continue to investigate them, thinking of them as the way in which God assumed a historical form and communicated with human beings? In other words, does not faith regard only the ultimate level, leaving all the others unchanged?

Posted on

Teaching ethics to a machine? You need some casuistic reasoning

Marcus Arvan convincingly argues in this article that while programming AI you can produce psychopathic behaviours both if you decide not to teach any moral target AND if you decide to teach moral targets.
Instead, you need to teach your machine some flexibility. Thus, I would argue, moral reasoning used for machines needs to be adjusted through a large set of cases and through rules dealing with specific cases. Can the Mīmāṃsā case-based application of rules help in such cases?

There was a thing in the emperor [Akbar] that rebelled against all this flummery, for was it not a kind of infantilization of the self to give up one’s power of agency and believe that such power resided outside oneself rather than within? This was also his objection to God, that his existence deprived human beings of the right to form ethical structures by themselves.

Salman Rushdie
The Enchantress of Florence (London: Vintage Books, 2009), 402

“Sire,” said Mogor dell’Amore, calmly, “I am attracted towards the great polytheist pantheons because the stories are better, more numerous, more dramatic, more humorous, more marvellous; and because the gods do not set us good examples, they are interfering, vain, petulant and badly behaved, which is, I confess, quite appealing”.
“We have the same feeling,” the emperor [Akbar] said, regaining his composure, “and our affection for these wanton, angry, playful, loving god is very great.”

Salman Rushdie
The Enchantress of Florence (London: Vintage Books, 2009), 175

“Your time has come,” the emperor assented. “So tell us truthfully before you go, what sort of paradise do you expect to discover when you have passed through the veil?” The Rana raised his mutilated face and looked the emperor in the eye. “In Paradise, the words worship and argument mean the same thing”, he declared. “The Almighty is not a tyrant. In the House of God all voices are free to speak as they choose, and that is the form of their devotion.”

Salman Rushdie
The Enchantress of Florence (London: Vintage Books, 2009), 43--44
Posted on

Siddha and sādhya in Viśiṣṭādvaitavedānta

Has anyone read the Bhagavadguṇadarpaṇa?

At the beginning of his Seśvaramīmāṃsā, Veṅkaṭanātha tries to synthetise what he (and Rāmānuja) calls Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāṃsā, with the further addition of the Devatā Mīmāṃsā.
In this connection he needs to address an apparent divergence, namely that between the siddha and sādhya interpretation of the Veda. In other words: Does the Veda always convey something to be done? Or does it always convey something established? The unity of the three Mīmāṃsās and of the Veda as their basis does not allow for a different interpretation of the statements in the Upaniṣads and in the Brāhmaṇas.

Veṅkaṭanātha cites Rāmānuja in order to show that there is no real opposition and that the sādhya-aspect is parasitical upon a siddha one. The example he reuses from Rāmānuja is that of taking action in regard to a hidden treasure: One starts acting only after having known that the treasure is really there. Thus, the sādhya element (taking action) depends on the siddha one (the acquired cognition of something existing).

At this point he also quotes from anoter Vaiṣṇava author, namely Parāśara Bhaṭṭa. His Bhagavadguṇadarpaṇa is a commmentary on the Viṣṇusahasranāma and here comes the quote: