Gavin Hyman explains in his 2007 contribution to Martin’s Cambdride Companion to Atheism as well as in his 2010 A Short History of Atheism that atheism is always the refusal of a given form of theism. In particular, in European history, atheism is the refusal of theism as conceived in modern times, with God as one “thing” among others. This claim might raise the eyebrows of readers of Julian Baggini, who in his 2003 Atheism. A very short introduction maintained that atheism is independent of theism, since it is tantamount to naturalism. The two claims are, however, less far than it might look like.
Category Archives: Sanskrit Philosophy
A quote from the Mahābhārata on sphoṭa?
Within a discussion on the sphoṭa in the Seśvaramīmāṃsā, Veṅkaṭanātha adds a quote he ascribes to the Mahābhārata. The quote is found in a different form in other printed works by Veṅkaṭanātha and in the various manuscripts of the Seśvaramīmāṃsā. However, I could not identify anything similar in the Mahābhārata itself.
The SM 1902 edition reads:
sphoṭas tvaṃ varṇasaṃghasthaḥ iti mahābhāratavacanam
The Mahābhārata statement “You are the sphoṭa, which is present in the conjunction of phonemes”.
Can you guess what manuscripts say?
A debate on sphoṭa
I am editing a portion of the Seśvaramīmāṃsā on a linguistic controversy about what is the vehicle of meaning. As often the case in Indian philosophy, an upholder of the sphoṭa theory speaks and says that the sphoṭa is the vehicle of the meaning, as hinted at by our own intuition that we understand a meaning śabdāt, i.e., from a unitary linguistic unit, not from various phonemes. The opponent replies saying that no independent sphoṭa exists independently and above the single phonemes, like no unitary assembly (pariṣad) exists independently of the single people composing it. The Sphoṭavādin replies that phonemes are unable to convey the meaning either one by one or collectively (because they never exist as a collective entity, given that they disappear right after having been pronounced.
Maṇḍana on fixed sacrifices
The eight century philosopher Maṇḍana tried to streamline the distinction among various types of sacrifices he inherited from the Mīmāṃsā school. The Mīmāṃsā distinguishes between:
- fixed sacrifices one has to perform throughout one’s life
- occasional sacrifices one performs when the occasion arises (e.g., the birth of a son)
- elective sacrifices one performs in order to obtain a coveted result
It is also noteworthy that the auxiliary acts of fixed and occasional sacrifices can be performed “as much as one can”, whereas auxiliaries of elective sacrifices need to be performed exactly as prescribed.
The motivator of the former two groups seems to be the fact that the Veda prescribes them, whereas the motivator of the latter group seems to be the fact that one desires their result. But this is weird, given that they are enjoined by prescriptions which have a comparable form. Maṇḍana tried to find a way to have the same motivator for all. This is how he develops his argument:
- Prima facie view: The motivator can only be the fact that one desires a given result. In the case of fixed sacrifices, the result needs to be something one desires fixedly, like happiness.
- This hypothesis does not stand to reason, because the following three aspects of fixed sacrifices remain irreconcilable, namely their being fixed, their having a result and the fact that their auxiliaries needs only to be performed as much as possible. In fact, if they need to have a result, they cannot be fixed, since one would cease performing them as soon as one’s desire for them were appeased.
- Hence, the desire for the result can be the motivator for the actively undertaking of sacrifices, whereas the fear for a sanction needs to be the motivator for the not-ceasing to perform them.
- Final view: No, the above contradiction can be avoided because the fixedness is not just something one arrives at pragmatically, due to the fact that one happens to desire happiness all the time. Rather, their fixedness is prescribed in the Veda, hence it is surely not the case that it ceases. Consequently, one just needs to correctly identify a desire which never ceases, and this is the desire to eliminate accumulated bad karman. People who are currently suffering will be keen in eliminating bad karman in order to eliminate the cause of their sufferings. And people who want to achieve new goals will also want to eliminate bad karman, since they know that this could hinder them.
- Thus, it is true that all sacrifices are motivated by desire. The desire motivating fixed sacrifices never ceases and needs to be identified as the destruction of bad karman, because its fixed nature is itself prescribed by the Veda.
As often the case, the pars destruens is almost more interesting than the pars construens.
Adding theism on top of atheism
The “chapter on the refutation of a connection” is the chapter Kumārila uses to discuss his anti-theistic arguments. Bhavanātha does it too, but he then adds, at the very end of his discussion:
evam īśvare paroktam eva anumānaṃ nirastam, na tv īśvaro ‘pi.
In this way I have refuted the inference to the existence of the Lord said by other scholars, but I have not refuted the Lord Himself. (NV, tarkapāda, end of sambandhākṣepaparihāra)
Thus, it is quite clear that:
- Bhavanātha (and perhaps also other Mīmāṃsā authors?) did not understand Kumārila’s refutation of theism as a refutation of any form of theism.
- This distinction might have looked obvious enough to Bhavanātha, since he did not feel the need to elaborate about that.
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.
Talk on Mīmāṃsā and deontic logic in Vienna
In case you are in Vienna and you have not heard me talking about Mīmāṃsā and deontic logic yet, here is the chance to do it now (better: on Tuesday).
Bhavanātha and the move towards theistic Mīmāṃsā
The Mīmāṃsā school of Indian philosophy started as an atheist school since its first extant text, Jaimini’s Mīmāṃsā Sūtra. At a certain point in its history, however, it reinterpreted its atheist arguments as aiming only at a certain conception of god(s). In other words, it reinterpreted its atheism as being not a global atheism, but a form of local atheism, denying a certain specific form of god(s) and not any form whatsoever.
How should we call half-baked editions?
After my last post on critical and diplomatic editions, a colleague wrote me inviting me to consider the case of half-baked editions. How should we call them?
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?