Category Archives: Philosophy

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Alternative theisms and atheisms (part 1)

One of the main advantages of dealing with worldviews other than the one you grew up in is the fact that you are exposed to doubts and alternatives. One of such cases regards the nebulous category of religion (to which Amod dedicated some illuminating posts on this blog), which in Europe and America is often confused with just “belief in (a) god(s)”. Part of the definition of religion is its being other than philosophy, so much that philosophy is looked upon with suspicion when it is mixed with “religious” purposes, like in the case of soteriology.

However, as soon as one encounters Buddhism, one is faced with the alternative: Either Buddhism is a religion (in which case, one would need to update one’s definition of religion) or it is a philososophy (in which case, one would need to update one’s definition of philosophy).

A similar case regards categories such as “Atheism”. Atheism as it is common nowadays is a relatively recent phenomenon in the Euro-American world, so much that one risks to postulate that it is a result of the Enlightenment, of Positivism, of the success of Science etc. A glance at South Asia shows that this is not the only way atheism can find its place in the history of philosophy. As shown by Larry McCrea, atheism might have been the rule rather than the exception in South Asian philosophy until the end of the first millennium. This also means that the later shift towards theism has a completely different flavour, insofar as it comes out of a different background.

I am especially intrigued by the moment in which this turn took place, with thinkers composing theistic texts and/or reinterpreting their texts and traditions in a theistic way. A typical example is the adoption and adaptation of Mīmāṃsā (originally an atheist philosophy) within theist Vedānta in the first centuries of the second millennium CE. I have already discussed about the various steps of this incorporation by Rāmānuja and Veṅkaṭanātha. What remains fascinating is

  1. how Mīmāṃsā was rebuilt through this encounter, with its atheism reconfigurated as negation of a given form of theos, but not of any form whatsoever.
  2. how Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta was challenged to produce a sustainable version of theism.

To elaborate: Theism in South Asia needed to grow in an environment in which atheist objections where the norm. It had, therefore, to inoculate itself with possible answers to these objections and to rethink an idea of the divine which could resist these attacks.

How could this phenomenon be studied? As usual with South Asian philosophy, many of the fundamental texts have never been edited and remain in manuscript form. Of the ones which have been edited, only a tiny minority has been translated. Of these translations, only a minority can be understood on its own right and independently of the Sanskrit (or Maṇipravāḷa) original. Still less common are works elaborating on the theology entailed in these texts (among the exceptions let me name Carman, Clooney, Mumme and Oberhammer; Ram-Prasad’s Divine Self especially focuses on Rāmānuja’s different concept of God). In short, texts need to be edited, translated, studied, compared with each other and read keeping in sight the goal of understanding the phenomenon of the convergence of theism and atheism.

Why at all should it be studied? The Mīmāṃsā author Kumārila Bhaṭṭa writes that without a purpose, even a foolish does not act, and in fact Sanskrit authors regularly announce at the beginning of their treatises the proximate and remote purpose of their works. In the present case, the proximate cause is the desire to understand the interactions between atheism and theism by looking at them from an unexpected perspective and to throw light on a fundamental chapter in the history of South Asian philosophy.

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What happens when the Veda prescribes malefic actions?

Vīrarāghavācārya's take on the Śyena

To my knowledge, Veṅkaṭanātha’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā (henceforth SM) has been commented upon only once in Sanskrit, namely in the 20th c. by Abhinava Deśika Vīrarāghavācārya.
Vīrarāghavācārya continues Veṅkaṭanātha’s agenda in reinterpreting Mīmāṃsā tenets in a Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta way.

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On Uttamur T. Vīrarāghavācārya

Have you ever seen a copy of the Upayukta Mīmāṃsā?

I already discussed here my admiration and fascination for Uttamur T. Viraraghavacarya and his work. Vīrarāghavācarya is known in his Tamil works as Uttamur (or Uthamur) T. Vīrarāghavācarya (with various graphic variants) and in his Sanskrit works mainly as Abhinava Deśika Vīrarāghavācarya.

He wrote countless books, mostly commentaries on Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta books in Tamil, Maṇipravāḷa and Sanskrit. However, he also wrote directly on texts he deemed important for religious, e.g., stotras and Upaniṣads, theological, e.g., Udayana’s Nyāyakusumañjali, and philosophical reasons, e.g., Kaṇāda’s Vaiśeṣika Sūtra and Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī. His commentaries display his originality and deepness as a thinker, an instance of which has been discussed here.

The Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta community also reveres the figure of U.T. Vīrarāghavācārya, so that one can find on the web several interesting webpages dedicated to him and many of his works have been uploaded on archive.org (mostly under the name “Uttamur T. Viraraghavacharya”, see here). However, I could not find in any library or catalogue a copy of a text he refers to in his commentary on Vedānta Deśika’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā, namely his Upayukta Mīmāṃsā. According to the way he presents it (in his commentary on the beginning of the SM), this should constitute an attempt of making Pūrva Mīmāṃsā consistent with Vedānta, thus a very interesting topic. It is also referred to, for instance, in this and this page dedicated to U.T. Vīrarāghavācārya, still not a copy seems to be available for purchase (or download).

Do readers have suggestions about where to look for a copy of it?
(I already wrote to the Uttamur Swami Trust)

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Maṇḍana on the Śyena

We already discussed (here, on November the 30th 2017) Jayanta’s position on the Śyena sacrifice. In this post we will observe that Jayanta was in fact inspired by Maṇḍana and, perhaps, by Maṇḍana’s commentator Vācaspati (it is still unsure whether Vācaspati was inspired by Jayanta or the other way around).

According to Maṇḍana, there are two kinds of Vedic prescriptions, the ones regarding the person (puruṣārtha) and the ones regarding the sacrifice (kratvartha).

In the case of puruṣārtha actions, the Vedic prescriptions do not motivate people to undertake them, since one would undertake them anyway because thery lead to happiness (prīti).
Rather, the Vedic prescriptions motivate people to undertake these actions with a certain set of auxiliaries. Similarly, in the case of the Śyena, the prescription about it does not promote it, since it is in itself puruṣārtha. The Śyena remains an anartha. (Vidhiviveka, p. 279, Goswami edition)

(ef and Sudipta Munsi)

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Being a Mīmāṃsaka and believing in God might be hard

To my knowledge, Veṅkaṭanātha’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā has been commented upon only once in Sanskrit, namely in the 20th c. by Abhinavadeśika Vīrarāghavācārya.
At times, the Sūkṣmārthaṭīkā‘s author seems to disagree with Veṅkaṭanātha insofar as he stresses that a certain position by the Mīmāṃsā school is “not accepted by us” (i.e., by the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntins). Many such cases pertain to the core teachings about language and the Veda being fix according to Mīmāṃsā and depending on God according to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. In the commentary on SM ad PMS 1.1.29, the Sūkṣmārthaṭīkā is quite explicit:

By contrast, we do not accept the inference said by Mīmāṃsakas, namely ”Each recitation of the Veda has been preceded by one’s teacher’s teaching one the recitation of the Veda, because it is a Vedic recitation, like the present ones”. We do not accept it, because there is an exception, since the probans is absent in the recitation performed by Brahmā of the [Vedic text] based on the Lord (who was Brahmā’s inner controller, so that Brahmā did not need to learn the Veda from a teacher) as well as in the present recitation of the Veda, when it is performed by an ascetic who has made it present (and therefore can see it without the need of a teacher).
And we also do not accept the syllogism because it contradicts the sacred texts speaking of creation and dissolution [of the entire world].

vedādhyayanaṃ sarvaṃ gurvadhyapanapūrvakam adhyayanatvād ity anumānaṃ tu mīmāṃsakoktaṃ necchāmaḥ. īśvaramūlacaturmukhakartṛkādhyayane sākṣātkāritapasvikārite ādyādhyayane ca sādhyābhāvāt vyabhicārāt (ad SM ad 1.1.29, 1971 edition p. 128).

It is easy to see how a Mīmāṃsaka could not have agreed less with Vīrarāghavācārya’s arguments. Mīmāṃsā authors in general believe in a beginningless time and think that the idea of creations and dissolutions is only an unwarranted assumption. Even more dangerous is the idea that an ascetic might see directly the Veda, since this could open the door to yogipratyakṣa and to autonomous religious experiences.

In all the above ways, the Sūkṣmārthaṭīkā‘s author also indirectly points out the gigantic effort Veṅkaṭanātha undertook, almost seven centuries before, when he tried to propose a synthesis of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta.

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nitya and eternality

During the three days of this workshop on philosophy of language in South Asia I have been repeatedly asked why I would want to “remove” the aspect of eternality from the concept of nitya. In fact, I think the situation is rather the opposite.

“Eternality” is a later overinterpretation of a term which, in my opinion, originally did not mean that, and continued not to have eternality as its primary meaning throughout its history.

nitya (as shown by Minoru Hara, JAOS 79.2) is etymologically adjective meaning ‘inherent’. This meaning is completely in harmony with its use in the same semantic field as siddha, autpattika, apauruṣeya and svābhāvika in Vyākaraṇa and Mīmāṃsā, as well as dhruva.*

So, how comes that one starts speaking about temporality in connection with nitya? In my hypothesis, there are three steps:

  1. In connection with the Mīmāṃsā vs Nyāya controversy, Mīmāṃsā authors insist on the apauruṣeya aspect of language, whereas Nyāya authors insist on language as pauruṣeya. Since language is pauruṣeya, it is not nitya in the sense of being kṛtaka ‘made up’, ‘artificial’. Thus, once again, nitya is not opposed to ‘temporal’ but to ‘artificial’, once again pointing to an opposition which does not have “eternality” as its primary focus.
  2. The Mīmāṃsā vs Nyāya controversy evolved also into a Mīmāṃsā vs Buddhist Epistemology controversy. For Buddhist epistemologists, whatever is kṛtaka is also kṣaṇika. Here temporality comes into the picture. Still, the point is not about “eternality” vs, “temporality”, but rather about “fixed/permanent/ummovable” vs “ephemeral”, as shown by the examples mentioned (mountains and rivers are said to be respectively kūṭastha– and pravāhanitya).
  3. Euro-American interpreters are used to the topic of temporality and to the concept of eternality, which plays a big role in the Graeco-Roman and in the Judaeo-Christian worldviews. Thus, they are inclined to interpret concepts in this sense, just like it happens with concepts like “Scripture”, “God”, “letter” and the like, which have been introduced uncritically in the Indian debate.

*Yes, you might find nitya also in connection to anādi ‘beginningless’, which might be interpreted temporally (I rather think it just means “for which no beginning can be proved”). But this is just one among the many terms used in juxtaposition with nitya (see above for several others).

P.S. I recently wrote an article on nitya. You can read the pre-print version here.

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50th Annual Conference of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy

This anniversary edition, hosted by the Pedagogical University of Krakow, will take place in Krakow (Cracow), Poland, June 8-11th 2018.

CONFERENCE THEME: Power and Creativity.

Keynote Speaker: Graham Parkes (University of Vienna), “Will to Power and the Field of Dao/De: Nietzsche and Zhuangzi on Creative Experience”.

Deadline for Abstracts and Panel Proposals: January 31, 2018.

Presentation and panel proposal abstracts should be sent electronically to the Secretary of the Society, Marzenna Jakubczak, atsacp2018@gmail.com. Abstracts for presentations should be between 200-300 words, and include a filename that begins with the presenter’s last name and closes with the name of our organization and the year of the conference, e.g., ‘Berger – SACP 2018’.

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Is anything at all understood out of false sentences?

Before answering that you do obviously understand something out of false sentences, too, consider that this would lead to:

—distinguishing between understanding the meaning of a sentence and knowing it to be true

—assuming a non-committal understanding of the meaning of a sentence

—understanding fitness as a requirement for the sentence meaning (yogyatā) as limited to the lack of obvious inconsistencies and not as regarding truth

—(possibly) assuming that the meaning of a sentence is not an entity out there (since there is no out-there entity in the case of false sentences), but rather a mental one

 

If you are now inclined to say that Indian authors on a whole could not answer yes to the question in the title, read the following sentence by Veṅkaṭanātha:

śaśaviṣāṇavākyād api bodho jāyata eva

Also out of the sentence claiming that hares have horns (e.g., out of an obviously false sentence), an awareness does indeed arise (SM ad 1.1.25, 1971 edition p. 114).

 

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Śyena reinterpreted: You can kill your enemy, if he is about to kill you

The Śyena sacrifice is a sacrifice aiming at the death of one’s enemy. The usual interpretation of the Śyena sacrifice is that you just don’t perform it, because it is violent and violence is prohibited (unless it is performed as an element of a rite, e.g., in the Agnīṣomīya). Here comes, however, a novel interpretation:

“For Mīmāṃsā, it is not the case that violence in itself is the cause for pāpa (evil karman), only prohibited violence is. The killing of the sacrificial animal performed within the Jyotiṣṭoma is [just] effecting that the sacrifice is complete with all its elements.
Out of the result of the Śyena sacrifice anartha is produced. Out of this result, which consists in the killing of one’s enemy, there is anartha in the form o reaching suffering, i.e., hell. [For] the killing of one’s enemy, which is the result of the Śyena sacrifice, is not known through a prescription. However, If the enemy is already ready to kill (ātatāyin), then his killing is prescribed. Since in that case violence is prescribed, the Śyena sacrifice does not produce anartha. Therefore, it is established that the Śyena sacrifice does not in itself lead to anartha as result.”
(p. 25 of Rāmaśaṅkara Bhaṭṭācārya’s commentary (called Jyotiṣmatī) on Sāṃkhyatattvakaumudī)

The author of this work, Dr. Ram Shankar Bhattacharya (1927-1996), was a scholar of international repute, well-known for his ground-breaking works in the field of Indological scholarship in general and Sanskrit in particular. He was a pupil of Hariharānanda Āraṇya and then of his successor, Dharmamegha Āraṇya. He has at least 30 works and hundreds of articles in various languages (English, Bengali, Hindi and Sanskrit) dealing with Purāṇas, Sānkhya and Yoga philosophies, Sanskrit grammar, Indian History, etc. to his credit. He co-edited (along with Prof. Gerald James Larson) the volumes on Sānkhya and Yoga philosophies of the Encyclopaedia of Indian Philosophies series, published under the general editorship of Karl H. Potter, by M/S Motilal Banarsidass. He also served as the scholar-in-residence (sabhāpaṇḍita) of His Royal Highness, the King of Benaras, and the editor of the bi-annual multi-language journal, Purāṇam, published by the All-India Kashiraj Trust, for years, which contains innumerable research articles from his pen. Besides, he also edited four Purāṇas (Agni, Vāmana, Kūrma and Garuḍa) for the same institution.

What remains to be researched, is what it means for an enemy to be ātatāyin (lit. `with one’s bow stretched’, i.e., ready to shoot). Should the enemy be literally about to kill one? If so, there would be no time to perform a Śyena sacrifice. So, either Rāmaśaṅkara Bhaṭṭācārya thinks of preventive actions against people who are known to be about to kill someone or his is just a theoretical discussion.

In order to partly solve this problem, we checked the definition of ātatāyin in the Śabdakalpadruma (a famous Skt-Skt dictionary). This states `ready to kill’ and then quotes a verse from the commentary of Śrīdhara on the BhG discussing six types of such villains: people who are about to set something on fire, poisoners, people with a sword or a knife (śastra) in their hands, robbers, people taking away one’s wife or fields (perhaps: the products of one’s fields?). Śrīdhara then concludes: “There is no flaw in killing an ātatāyin”.

The Vācaspatyam (Skt-Skt) dictionary has a much longer entry. I am still not sure whether someone can be defined an ātatāyin for just plotting a killing —something which would allow one to prepare and perform the Śyena sacrifice.
Sudipta thinks that plotting should be included, since otherwise it might be too late to take action against the ātatāyin and the prescription about killing an ātatāyin found in Dharmaśāstra would be futile. Sudipta accordingly thinks that the Śyena is not prohibited in the case of preventing, e.g., a terrorist attack and that it is only prohibited if performed for one’s own sake, as an offensive action.

(This post has been jointly discussed by EF and Sudipta Munsi, who kindly showed me the quote mentioned above.)