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Essays on Indian Philosophy
- Shri Krishna Saksena
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- Language: English
- Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
- Copyright year: 1970
- Audience: Professional and scholarly;
- Main content: 136
- Published: May 25, 2021
- ISBN: 9780824885953
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The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy
Jonardon Ganeri, Professor of Philosophy, Fellow of the British Academy
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The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy tells the story of philosophy in India through a series of exceptional individual acts of philosophical virtuosity. It brings together forty leading international scholars to record the diverse figures, movements, and approaches that constitute philosophy in the geographical region of the Indian subcontinent, a region sometimes nowadays designated South Asia. The chapters provide a synopsis of the liveliest areas of contemporary research and set new agendas for nascent directions of exploration. Each of the chapters provides compelling evidence that in the global exercise of human intellectual skills India, throughout its history, has been a hugely sophisticated and important presence, host to an astonishing range of exceptionally creative minds engaged in an extraordinary diversity of the most astute philosophical exploration conceivable. It spans philosophy of law, logic, politics, environment, and society, but is most strongly associated with wide-ranging discussions in the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology and metaphysics (how we know and what is there to be known), ethics, meta-ethics, and aesthetics, and meta-philosophy. The reach of Indian ideas has been vast, both historically and geographically, and it has been and continues to be a major influence in world philosophy. In the breadth as well as the depth of its philosophical investigation, in the sheer bulk of surviving texts and in the diffusion of its ideas, the philosophical heritage of India easily stands comparison with that of China, Greece, the Latin West, or the Islamic world.
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Historiography of Indian Philosophy: Reflections on Periodization and Conceptualization
- Published: 06 March 2022
- Volume 39 , pages 57–68, ( 2022 )
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- Balaganapathi Devarakonda ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3412-5931 1
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This paper provides one of the many ways of doing historiography, specifically concerning Indian philosophy. After making some general observations on the limitations of a historian and a historiographer in general—it would provide a brief analysis of the historiography of Indian philosophy by looking at the recent attempts at periodization. The development of 'Indian philosophy' as a label to a concept, issues concerning the use of darśana for its representation, and reeking it as a space of strange intellectual landscape by contemporary scholars are discussed subsequently. While using historiography implicitly as a methodological tool, an attempt is made to probe into the contemporary conception of Indian philosophy. Though it doesn’t claim to provide any determinate conclusions regarding either periodization or conceptualization of Indian philosophy, the paper emphasizes the need to probe these concerns further and the need to use a historiographical approach to such a study.
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Following Robin Winks ( 1999 : xiii) historiography can be described as ‘a study of how a subject has been written about, how trends and interests in research have changed’ and more importantly ‘how and why a people have come to comprehend themselves in a certain way’. Thus, historiography, for Winks, is more than a record of what has been written and is an examination of why a body of writing has taken the shape it has.
Refer to Balaganapathi, D. “History of Indian philosophy: Analysis of contemporary understanding of the classical through colonial” in Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Journal of the Inter-University Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences , VOL. XIX, No. 1, 2012. pp 47–54.
D. P. Chattopadhyaya and Daya Krishna have jointly edited a special issue of the Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research on the theme “Historiography of Civilizations” (June 1996) that includes diverse perspectives on historiography in general and Indian philosophy in particular.
Intending to reconsider the chronological frameworks of different trends in Indian philosophy, Eli Franco organized a panel discussion on “On the Historiography and Periodisation of Indian Philosophy” at the 14 th World Sanskrit Conference held in Kyoto in September 2009 proceedings of which are published later in 2013 with the same title.
Please refer to my work “History of Indian Philosophy: Analysis of Contemporary understanding of the classical through colonial” in Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Journal of the Inter-University Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences , VOL. XIX, No. 1, 2012. pp 47–54.
anvīkṣikī trayī vārtā daṇḍanītisćeti vidyāh l sānkhyam yógó Lókāyatam ceti anvīkṣikī ll.
What does anvīkṣiki do? It helps people by testing the strengths of trayī, vārta and daṇḍanīti on the touchstone of reason. It stabilizes the mind both in good and bad times. It sharpens the skills of mind, speech and deeds.
Dharmādharmau trayyām. Arthānarthau vārtāyām. Nayāpanayau daṇḍanītyām. Balābale chaitāsām hetubhih anvikshamānānvīkṣiki lókasyópakaróti, vyasane abhyudaye ca budhim avasthāpayati, prajnāvākyakriyāvaisāradyam ca karóti . (Arthaśāstra Chapter1.).
baudham naiyanikam sankhyam jainam vaisesikam tatha l jaiminiyanca namani darsana nama munayoh ll (1.3).
It includes the Lokayatas , Jainas , four schools of Buddhism ( Madhyamika , Yogachara , Sautrantika and Vaibhāshika ), Vaiśeṣika , Nyāya , Purva- mimamsa (Kumārila and Prabhākara), Sāṁkhya , Yoga , Vedanta of Sankara and the philosophy of Vedavyāsa (i.e., the philosophy of the Mahābharata ). Interestingly, this list of 13 schools for the first time, includes philosophy of Mahābharata which was written by Vyāsa as one of the philosophical schools of Indian philosophy.
This work mentions 16 Darsanas viz., Carvaka , Baudha , Arhata , Ramanuja , Madhva (with the name of Purana Prajna ), Panini’s grammatical system followed by four Saivate schools, ( Nakulisā , Saiva Sidhānta , Pratyabhijna and Raśeswara ) Akshapāda , Aulukhya , Jaimini , Sāṁkhya , Patanjala and Sankara.
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Devarakonda, B. Historiography of Indian Philosophy: Reflections on Periodization and Conceptualization. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 39 , 57–68 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-022-00274-w
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Indian Philosophy
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Spotlight on Indian Philosophy
Hindu Philosophy
The compound “Hindu philosophy” is ambiguous. Minimally it stands for a tradition of Indian philosophical thinking. However, it could be interpreted as designating one comprehensive philosophical doctrine, shared by all Hindu thinkers. The term “Hindu philosophy” is often used loosely in this philosophical or doctrinal sense, but this usage is misleading. There is no single, comprehensive philosophical doctrine shared by all Hindus that distinguishes their view from contrary philosophical views associated with other Indian religious movements such as Buddhism or Jainism on issues of epistemology, metaphysics, logic, ethics or cosmology. Hence, historians of Indian philosophy typically understand the term “Hindu philosophy” as standing for the collection of philosophical views that share a textual connection to certain core Hindu religious texts (the Vedas), and they do not identify “Hindu philosophy” with a particular comprehensive philosophical doctrine. Hindu philosophy, thus understood, not only includes the philosophical doctrines present in Hindu texts of primary and secondary religious importance, but also the systematic philosophies of the Hindu schools: Nyāya, Vaiśe ṣ ika, S ā ṅ khya, Yoga, P ū rvam ī m ā ṃ s ā and Ved ā nta.
For more, see the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on Hinduism .
ProQuest Ancient and Modern Indian Philosophy (Current Research)
Origins and Overview of Indian Philosophy
The philosophical depth and richness of Indian philosophy rivals that of European philosophy, and to do justice to it would require a book-length survey. Still, this introductory discussion is intended to show the richness of various Indian philosophical traditions that are more ancient than the Greek origins of European philosophy. Beginning with the Vedic texts, which date from between the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, Indian philosophical traditions are a few centuries older than the earliest European philosophical traditions.
An important parallel between Greek and Roman philosophy and Indian philosophy lies in their respective conceptions of philosophy. Philosophers from both of these traditions understand philosophy as something more than a theoretical activity. For all of these ancient philosophical traditions, philosophy is a practical endeavor. It is a way of life.
The Vedic Tradition
The earliest philosophical texts in India constitute the Vedic tradition. The four Vedas are the oldest of the Hindu scriptures. They are the Rigveda , the Samaveda , the Yajurveda , and the Atharvaveda . The four Vedas were composed between 1500 and 900 BCE by the Indo-Aryan tribes that had settled in northern India. The Vedas are also called Shruti, which means “hearing” in Sanskrit. This is because for hundreds of years, the Vedas were recited orally. Hindus believe that the Vedas were divinely inspired; priests were orally transmitting the divine word through the generations.
The Rigveda is the most ancient of the four Vedic texts. The text is a collection of the “family books” of 10 clans, each of which were reluctant to part with their secret ancestral knowledge. However, when the Kuru monarchs unified these clans, they organized and codified this knowledge around 1200 BCE. The Brahmanic, or priestly, culture arose under the Kuru dynasty (Witzel 1997) and produced the three remaining Vedas. The Samaveda contains many of the Rigveda hymns but ascribes to those hymns melodies so that they can be chanted. The Yajurveda contains hymns that accompany rites of healing and other types of rituals. These two texts shine light on the history of Indo-Aryans during the Vedic period, the deities they worshipped, and their ideas about the nature of the world, its creation, and humans. The Atharvaveda incorporates rituals that reveal the daily customs and beliefs of the people, including their traditions surrounding birth and death. This text also contains philosophical speculation about the purpose of the rituals (Witzel 1997).
The Later Texts and Organization
Later Hindu texts developed during the Vedic and post-Vedic periods were integrated into the four Vedas such that each Veda now consists of four sections: (1) the Samhitas, or mantras and benedictions—the original hymns of the Vedas; (2) the Aranyakas, or directives about rituals and sacrifice; (3) the Brahmanas, or commentaries on these rituals; and (4) the Upanishads, which consists of two Indian epics as well as philosophical reflections.
The Upanishad epics include the Bhagavad Gita (Song of the Lord), which is part of a much longer poem called the Mahabharata, and the Ramayana. The Mahabharata is an epic depicting the battles of the noble house of Bharata, while the Ramayana focuses on the ancient king Rama during his 14-year exile. There are 13 principal Upanishads and more than 100 minor ones, composed between 800 and 200 BCE in a mix of prose and verse. Upanishad derives from the Sanskrit words upa (near), ni (down), and shad (to sit), which comes from the fact that these texts were taught to students who sat at their teachers’ feet. Additionally, the term signifies that these texts reveal esoteric doctrines about the true nature of reality beyond the realm of sense perception. The Upanishads became the philosophical core of Hinduism.
Metaphysical Thought in the Vedic Texts
The Vedic texts state that through reflection on the self, one comes to understand the cosmos. Like the Greeks much later, these texts claim that there is a structural analogy between the self and the universe, with one sharing the form of the other. Through inner reflection on oneself, one can then understand the nature of the world.
Figure 3.6 The Vedic texts state that reflection on the self can lead to knowledge of the cosmos, proposing that the two share the same form. (credit: “Nightfall” by Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
The Rigveda examines the origin of the universe and asks whether the gods created humanity or humans created the gods—a question that would later be posed by the Greek philosopher Xenophanes. More than half of the verses in the Rigveda are devoted to metaphysical speculation concerning cosmological theories and the relationship between the individual and the universe. The idea that emerges within Hinduism is that the universe is cyclical in nature. The cycle of the seasons and the cyclical nature of other natural processes are understood to mirror the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth among humans and other animals. Related to this conception is the philosophical question of how one puts an end to this cycle. The Hindus suggest that the answer lies in purification, with ascetic rituals provided as means to achieve freedom from the cycle of reincarnation.
Another area of similarity between the universe and humanity is that both are understood to have a hierarchical structure. Hindu theology assigns a rigid hierarchy to the cosmos, with the triple deity, Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva, standing above the other gods. India first developed its hierarchical caste system during the Vedic period. Vedic rituals cemented caste hierarchies, the remnants of which still structure Indian society today.
Classical Indian Darshanas
The word darshana derives from a Sanskrit word meaning “to view.” In Hindu philosophy, darshana refers to the beholding of a god, a holy person, or a sacred object. This experience is reciprocal: the religious believer beholds the deity and is beheld by the deity in turn. Those who behold the sacred are blessed by this encounter. The term darshana is also used to refer to six classical schools of thought based on views or manifestations of the divine—six ways of seeing and being seen by the divine. The six principal orthodox Hindu darshanas are Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa, and Vedanta. Non-Hindu or heterodox darshanas include Buddhism and Jainism.
Samkhya is a dualistic school of philosophy that holds that everything is composed of purusha (pure, absolute consciousness) and prakriti (matter). An evolutionary process gets underway when purusha comes into contact with prakriti . These admixtures of mind and matter produce more or less pure things such as the human mind, the five senses, the intellect, and the ego as well as various manifestations of material things. Living beings occur when purusha and prakriti bond together. Liberation finally occurs when mind is freed from the bondage of matter.
When purusha first focuses on prakriti , buddhi , or spiritual awareness, results. Spiritual awareness gives rise to the individualized ego or I-consciousness that creates five gross elements (space, air, earth, fire, water) and then five fine elements (sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste). These in turn give rise to the five sense organs, the five organs of activity (used to speak, grasp, move, procreate, and evacuate), and the mind that coordinates them.
Figure 3.7 In Hinduism, the interaction between purusha (pure, absolute consciousness) and prakriti (matter) is understood to result in many elements of existence. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)
Yoga has become popularized as a fitness practice throughout the world, but the Westernization of this concept has emptied it of much of its original content. Although yoga instructors will still sometimes use Sanskrit terms for various poses, the movement has largely lost its cultural and spiritual vitality as it has become popular in the West. It originally developed during the Vedic period and influenced Buddhist meditation practices.
First mentioned in the Rigveda , Yoga is the mental process through which an individual’s soul joins with the supreme soul. Originally a part of the Samkhya school, it emerged as a practice during the first millennium BCE. The teachings of the sage Patanjali, who lived circa 400 BCE, regarding ancient Yoga traditions and beliefs were compiled into approximately 200 Yoga sutras. The purpose of Yoga is the stopping of the movement of thought. Only then do individuals encounter their true selves, and only then is the distinction between the observer and that which is being observed overcome (Rodrigues 2018).
Yoga involves eight limbs. The first involves the observance of the yamas , moral restraints that keep individuals from being violent, lying, stealing, hoarding, and squandering vital energies (often interpreted as a practice of celibacy). The second limb consists of personal codes of conduct, known as the niyamas —purity, discipline, self-study, contentment (gratitude and nonattachment), and surrender to the higher being. The third and fourth limbs, familiar to Western practitioners, are the postures, asana , and breath control, pranayama . The fifth and sixth limbs involve the mastering of the senses needed to achieve a peaceful mind and focus, the ability to concentrate deeply on one thing—a mental image, a word, or a spot on the wall (Showkeir and Showkeir 2013). The seventh limb involves meditation, which allows one to reach the eight limb, samadhi , the oneness of the self and true reality, the supreme soul.
During the Upanishadic period (900–200 BCE), Yoga was incorporated into the new philosophic traditions that gave rise to Jainism and Buddhism. Yoga influenced the emergence of Bhakti and Sufism within Islamic culture in the 15th century CE following the conquest of India by Islamic leaders. New schools and theories of Yoga evolved. Swami Vivekananda’s translations of scriptures into English facilitated the spread of Yoga in the West in the 19th century. Today, Yoga is practiced as a form of spirituality across the globe (Pradhan 2015).
Nyaya, which can be translated as “method” or “rule,” focuses on logic and epistemology. Scholars seek to develop four of the Hindu pramanas , or proofs, as reliable ways of gaining knowledge: perception, inference, comparison, and testimony. Practitioners seek liberation from suffering through right knowledge. They believe that everything that exists could be directly perceived and understood if only one had the proper method for doing so. False knowledge is delusion that precludes purification and enlightenment.
Vaisheshika
The Vaisheshika system developed independently of Nyaya but gradually came to share many of its core ideas. Its epistemology is simpler, allowing for only perception and inference as forms of reliable knowledge. It is known for its naturalism, and scholars of the Vaisheshika school developed a form of atomism. The atoms themselves are understood to be indestructible in their pure state, but as they enter into combinations with one another, these mixtures can be decomposed. Members of the Vaisheshika school believe that only complete knowledge can lead to purification and liberation.
The Mimamsa school was one of the earliest philosophical schools of Hinduism, grounded in the interpretation of the Vedic texts. It seeks to investigate dharma , or the duties, rituals, and norms present in society. The gods themselves are irrelevant to this endeavor, so there are both theistic and atheistic aspects of this school. Scholars of the Mimamsa school carefully investigate language because they believe that language prescribes how humans ought to behave.
Vedanta comprises a number of schools that focus on the Upanishads, and the term itself signifies the end or culmination of the Vedas. All the various Vedanta schools hold that brahman exists as the unchanging cause of the universe. The self is the agent of its own acts ( karma ), and each agent gets their due as a result of karma. As with the other Hindu schools, adherents of Vedanta seek liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth.
Like many philosophical traditions, classical Indian philosophy casts the living world as something to ultimately escape. Practices and teachings such as Yoga provide a particularly explicit set of instructions on how one might go about achieving this transcendent aim. The incorporation of these teachings into other traditions and cultures, in both the past and the present, points to their broad and enduring appeal.
“Introduction to Philosophy” by Smith, Browne, Conkling, Friedman, Fritz, Garro, Gallegos, Gill, Horton, Bosco, Longtin, McCall, Stuke is licensed under CC BY 4.0 / Elements edited
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Personhood in Classical Indian Philosophy
Selves and persons are often used as synonyms in contemporary philosophy, and sometimes also in the history of Western philosophy. This is almost never the case in classical Indian philosophical traditions. The Sanskrit term ‘ ātman ’ properly translated as self stands for whatever it is that is the essence of individual humans ( manuṣya ) or the psychophysical complex ( pudgala ) which includes the mind, body and sense organs. There is disagreement among the philosophical schools about whether the essence is a substantial soul or pure consciousness and whether there is such an essence at all. The Buddhist no-self theorists and the Cārvāka materialists deny that there is any such essence, the psychophysical complex is all there is. Finding an equivalent term across the classical Indian philosophical schools that properly can be translated as person is a bit more challenging. The concept of ‘ pudgala ’ used to signify the psychophysical complex as whole in Buddhist philosophy is properly translated as person. But ‘ pudgala ’ is not used with this strict meaning across the philosophical spectrum. The Jaina philosophers use it as an equivalent for matter or material object. There are several terms in Sanskrit, for example, ‘ jīva-ātma ’, ‘ puruṣa ’, ‘ manuṣya ’ which are often used to indicate persons, but these terms have wider meanings and do not apply strictly to persons. The lack of an exact equivalent in Sanskrit does not, however, mean that the concept of personhood was not central to classical Indian philosophies other than Buddhism.
A primary concern that motivated most philosophers in ancient India was to find the best way forward in an individual person’s quest for liberation from suffering. All living beings are trapped in the cycle of birth and rebirth ( saṃsāra ) which according to most classical Indian philosophers, is characterised by suffering. The highest goal of life is liberation ( mokṣa or nirvāṇa ). Except the Cārvāka materialists who believed that death is the end and there is nothing like rebirth or liberation, all other philosophical schools believed in the possibility of liberation in this life or in future lifetimes. The ultimate aim of the classical Indian philosophy teachings is thus to help individual persons attain liberation or at least a better life in this life and future lifetimes. Most classical Indian philosophers agreed that our ignorance about “who we really are” is the source and the means to bringing an end to suffering. Thus, metaphysical debates about the nature of individual persons and the universe and our place in it are central to the classical Indian philosophical traditions. These debates, however, tended to focus on the essence of persons, the self ( ātman ) or the soul substance.
This is in contrast with contemporary Western philosophy where questions about personal identity and its normative significance are at the forefront at least since Parfit (1984). In Section 2, we turn briefly to the contemporary debates about personal identity and reflect on how they might benefit from paying attention to the discussions of personhood in classical Indian philosophy. But before we attempt that, in Sections 1 and 2, we describe the different conceptions of personhood in classical Indian philosophy. As I said, there is not much explicit discussion of personhood, so most of the time I draw out the conceptions of persons from other discussions that implicitly refers to persons.
1.1 Vedic Conception of Persons: Upaniṣads
1.2 spiritual conceptions of persons, 1.3 worldly persons, 2.2 buddhist, 2.3 cārvāka, 3. what do we need persons for, other internet resources, related entries, 1. classical indian conceptions of persons.
Hindu philosophical schools develop their philosophical position as an attempt to interpret and defend the various metaphysical theses that are found in the Vedas (the foundational Hindu scriptures) and more specifically the Upaniṣads. The Upaniṣads, literally “the last chapters, parts of the Veda”, are often thought of as expressing the crux or the purpose of the Veda. The concept of ātman (soul, self) as the essence of individual persons and knowledge of that ātman is the central focus in all of the Upanishads. The self ( ātman ) is primarily conceived of in the Upaniṣads as a pure subject of experiences, detached from the objects of its consciousness, enduring and changeless and separate and independent of its mental and physical states. In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, the sage Yājñavalkya says
The sages call it the eternal self. It is neither big nor small, neither long nor short, neither hot nor cold, neither bright nor dark, neither air nor space. It is without attachment, without taste, smell, or touch, without eyes, ears, tongue, mouth, breath, or mind, without movement, without limitation, without inside or outside. It consumes nothing, and nothing consumes it. The Self is the seer, Gargi, though unseen; the hearer, though unheard; the thinker, though unthought; the knower, though unknown. Nothing other than the Self can see, hear, think, or know (BU 3.7, 8, 11).
This picture of the self as a witnessing subject is in sharp contrast with another Upaniṣadic conception: that of persons as agents, the doers and the enjoyers of the fruits of their actions. This conception of persons is also found in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad:
What a man turns out to be depends on how he acts and on how he conducts himself. If his actions are good, he will turn into something good. If his actions are bad, he will turn into something bad. A man turns into something good by good action and into something bad by bad action. And so people say: “A person here consists simply of desire.” A man resolves in accordance with his desire, acts in accordance with his resolve, and turns out to be in accordance with his action. (BU 4.4, 5)
And again, in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, we find talk of person as an embodied soul. Chapter 5 explains the cycle of birth and rebirth of individual persons as process of soul (self) becoming embodied as a result of being entangled in the material qualities ( Guṇas ):
Only he [the person] who gets attached to the pleasurable qualities of things does work for the sake of its fruits, and enjoys the fruits of his own deeds. Though really the master of the senses, he becomes bound by Guṇas , and assuming various forms, wanders about the three paths as a result of his own deeds.
By desire, contact, sight and delusion, the embodied soul assumes successively various forms in various places according to his deeds, just as the body grows nourished by showers of food and drink.
The embodied soul chooses many forms, gross and subtle, based on the qualities belonging to himself, to the actions and to the mind. The cause of their combination is found to be still another. (ŚVU 5. 7, 10, 11)
The agential conception of persons assumes the Vedic doctrine of karma , so it deserves to a short explication. The doctrine of karma has two dimensions: a moral cosmology and a psychological dimension (Phillips 1997, 329). According to the thesis of moral cosmology, actions have immediate as well as non-immediate consequences. The latter embody a moral dimension: good actions result in rewards, bad actions in punishments in the form of karmic residues which ripen and bear fruit in this lifetime or in future lifetimes. According to the psychological thesis, actions create a tendency, a disposition to repeat that act. The two dimensions together might seem to entail fatalism, bad actions result in acquisition of bad karmic residues and bad habits that dispose the agent to repeat the same offences with the result that the agent is doomed to inferior rebirths with no possibility of liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth. This impression is mistaken. The individual person is free at all times to break the bad habits and perform novel good actions in accordance with duty ( dharma ) and thereby inculcate the right dispositions that incline the agent to good actions and superior births and finally liberation. There is an important caveat though, “duty has to be performed for the sake of duty alone” not because of attachment to pleasures or fruits of actions because that results in bondage of the soul to the material qualities and many different rebirths follow. The quality of the deeds, good or bad, determines the kind of embodiment (physical and psychological characteristics, caste), length of life, quality of experiences, dreams and much else that is to be endured by person while it is entrapped in the cycle of birth and rebirth. Although the soul is thought of as the controller of the senses, once it is embodied, the qualities of material form have the habit of taking over and driving individual persons on account of their attachments to sensual pleasures. And it is on account of the quality of its actions and their karmic fruits, in this birth, that the embodied soul is reborn in (another) new form. The only way out of suffering in the perpetual the cycle of birth and rebirth is knowledge the real nature of the individual person and its entanglement in the material world.
The Upaniṣadic philosophers recognize the conception of the self as the pure detached subject of experiences separate and unaffected by the material world ( nivṛtti ) and the person as an active agent engaged with the material world ( pravṛtti ). The nivṛtti tradition is the exemplified in the later Upaniṣadic renunciant tradition and is also developed by Hindu schools such as the Vedānta and Sāṃkhya-Yoga. In contrast the pravṛtti tradition exemplified in the Vedic ritualistic tradition is developed by the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Mīmāṃsā schools. This difference in emphasis is also brought out in the various paths to liberation: the path of action ( karma yoga ) and the path of knowledge ( jñāna yoga ). The nivṛtti tradition stresses the importance of knowledge of the self ( ātma-vidyā ) sometimes equated with mystical awareness of Brahman ( brahma-vidyā ). This, according to Upaniṣads, is the most promising route to the supreme good, liberation ( mokṣa ). But it is not exclusive or independent of karma yoga , because knowledge of the self will result in transformation of a person’s attitudes towards sensual pleasure and earthly goods, and desires which contribute to action. And conversely, the training in karma yoga together with the doctrine of rebirth and transmigration will result in a transformation of how the person views the self.
The Upaniṣadic conception of person is that of an ‘embodied soul’. The soul is essence of the person and it is what makes us the same person over time (possibly even across lifetimes). The Hindu schools defend what is contemporary philosophers call the Non-Reductionist view of persons. According to the Non-Reductionist view, the continued existence of persons is a deep, further fact, distinct from physical and psychological continuity, and a fact that holds completely or not at all (Parfit 1984, 445). Parfit notes that a Cartesian Ego, would be one such entity. The soul ( ātman ) as described by the Vedas and explicated by Hindu would be another. These ideas from the Upaniṣads are developed into various conceptions of persons by the Hindu philosophical schools which will be discussed in turn Sections 1.2 and 1.3 before we turn to unorthodox conceptions in Section 1.4.
The Vedānta and Sāṃkhya-Yoga is the most important school that develop the spiritual and mystical insights in the Upaniṣads. The Advaita Vedānta is well-known for upholding monism, there is only one reality and that is Brahman. Furthermore, the Advaita Vedānta philosophers argue that the individual self and the supreme Self ( Brahman ) are identical. The plurality of the external world of everyday experience is explained away as an illusory projection ( māyā ), a cosmic illusion which is a product of our ignorance. The nature of this self is simply pure consciousness. Self, according to the Advaita Vedānta is not to be understood as a substance that has the property of consciousness but rather it is consciousness itself, the principle of illumination or manifestation ( prakāśa ). This consciousness manifests all things. Just as without the sunlight, the universe would be shrouded in darkness, similarly without consciousness nothing would be known or manifested’ (Gupta 2003: 31–2; cf. 106). According to the Advaitins,
consciousness has no form, no content; its only function, like that of light, is to show the object on which it is focused…. The Advaitins argue that, that which manifests everything cannot have the form of any particular thing; manifestation is its only function. (Gupta 2003: 119–20)
The Advaita Vedānta thesis is that this consciousness is what a person is at the most fundamental level, the self ( ātman ). But as far as my sense of myself as a person is concerned, I take myself to be a psychophysical thing among others, having certain properties and relations, such as belonging to a certain family (caste, according to the Hindus) and having a certain social role. The Advaita Vedānta philosophers argue that this sense of self is a result of a false identification with aspects of the projected world. Person (an empirical self in their terminology) in their sense has no ultimate reality, it is merely another projection of the cosmic illusion. Though the person is ordinarily experienced as a particular entity in the world and standing in manifold relations to other entities, it is dismissed as a product of ignorance. Their concern is with the ‘self/supreme Self’ identity and with self-knowledge as the most promising route to liberation ( mokṣa ). Once we understand the true nature of ourselves, primarily through the study of the Upaniṣads complemented by the practice of meditation, we will grasp that essence of an individual ( ātman ) is identical with the real Self ( Brahman ). The person or empirical self will fall away as merely an illusory projection of consciousness.
The Sāṃkhya and Yoga schools draw inspiration for their metaphysics of persons from the Upaniṣads and develop the insight that the real essence of a person is the soul or in Sāṃkhya terminology, the Spirit ( puruṣa ). But unlike the Vedānta, the Sāṃkhya and Yoga philosophers do not regard the multiplicity of true persons as a mere illusion. They speak of the absolute puruṣa ( īśvara ) and individual puruṣas ( jīvas ). Verse 18 of the Sāṃkhya-kārikā offers a proof and explanation for the existence of multiplicity of real persons
The incidence of birth and death and the action of the sense faculties different for different individuals; all people not having the same inclinations at the same time; the thoughts arising out of the action of the three guṇas being different for different people – it follows that souls ( puruṣas ) are many (each person having a separate soul). (Translation adapted from Radhanath Phukan 1960).
Every individual person ( jīva ) is a manifestation or instantiation of the absolute puruṣa , which is present as an undivided whole in every person. The puruṣa is thus the universal aspect in virtue of which we are persons. But each individual person is also a finite particular. The particular aspect of an individual person is derived from the material form or nature ( prakṛti ) which supplies the physical body and its adjuncts (sense organs, etc.). Nature ( prakṛti ) works through three guṇas which are its functional forces, known as existence or beingness ( sattva ), force of bringing about change ( rajas ), and force for restrains change ( tamas ). Sattva exhibits the physical characteristic of buoyancy and illumination, and the psychological characteristic of pleasure. Rajas exhibits the physical characteristic of stimulation and movement and the psychological characteristics of pain and passion. Tamas exhibits the physical characteristic of weight and resistance and the characteristics of dejection and despondency. The disturbance in the equipoise of the three guṇas starts the process of evolution which is the process of creation. As explained in the quote above, each individual person is a unique composition of guṇas that determine her physical and psychological characteristics, for example those with a predominance of tamas will be naturally disposed to resist change and activity.
According to Sāṃkhya philosophers, the relation between prakṛ ti and puruṣa in an individual person is said to be eternal and irresolvable. This raises a problem for the Sāṃkhya, namely, how are we to explain the bondage (coming together) of prakṛ ti and puruṣa (soul), and how is the final release liberation of puruṣa possible? The clue lies in understanding the process of evolution. Verse 21 of the Sāṃkhya-kārikā offers a succinct answer:
For the sake of puruṣa ’s perception of prakṛ ti and for the sake of his release, a union of the two takes place, which resembles the union of the lame and the blind (translation adapted from Majumdar 1930, 77).
The author of the Kārikā makes use of an analogy often exploited in classical Indian philosophy, of the union of the lame and the blind who happen to encounter each other and decide to cooperate for their mutual benefit which is to reach their desired destination (metaphorically liberation). The lame man (soul) mounts the shoulders of the blind man (matter) and directs both to the desired destination. And, just as the blind man and the lame man part company when they reach their mutual destination, so do soul and matter. Creation of an individual person results from the desire to perceive and experience prakṛ ti and her manifestations in the form of sensual pleasures derived from material objects. Creation is more properly understood as evolution of prakṛti to reveal her many forms to the soul for the sake of his enjoyment, even though the union of prakṛ ti and puruṣa is eternal. Bondage results in the soul being tricked by the various forms of prakṛ ti especially the ego-sense ( ahaṃkāra ) and the physical body to the extent of identifying with these material forms as part of the soul. This identification results in the soul forgetting its true nature and being totally spell-bound by prakṛti and the many pleasures afforded by material forms. This forgetfulness results in alienation of the soul which causes in unhappiness and misery. Most of us, ordinary persons, are in fact in this situation. But because the enjoyment of the material forms and the union of matter and soul is tainted with suffering and pain, persons seek liberation. The way out for an individual person is to dispel the delusion of the soul by developing the right kind of psychical conditions. The right kind of psychical development requires proper moral and religious training though it may take an inordinately long time, possibly many rebirths. The end of the delusion also means the end of bondage and with it goes all unhappiness and misery. Liberation of the soul consists in indifference towards the manifestation of prakṛti and with it the renunciation of many sensual pleasures and material objects. The puruṣa thus returns to its native enlightened state of bliss. (For an elaborate account of such a delusion and its consequences, see the Śāntiparvan of the Māhābhārata, Chapter 302 (verse 41–49) and Chapter 303).
The Yoga school shares much with the Sāṃkhya regarding the nature of the true self and the individual person, differing in its emphasis on the yogic practices (psychophysical techniques centering on meditation) as the means of discovering the true nature of the real self. The Sāṃkhya and Yoga philosophers disagree with the Advaitic thesis that individual persons ( jīvas ) are only delusions, but agree that the true self, the essence of the person is the soul or consciousness untainted by matter. There is no value to development of persons as such, according to these spiritual philosophies, the only activity worthy of pursuit is the search for the true self.
The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Mīmāṃsā philosophers differ from the philosophers of Advaita-Vedānta in that they emphasise the reality of distinct many distinct individual persons ( jīva ). However, because of their allegiance to the Vedas there is not much explicit discussion of persons, the focus is on the search for is the essence of persons ( ātman ) and their pursuit of the highest good, liberation ( mokṣa ). Ordinary persons are embodied souls, according to these philosophers. The soul ( ātman ) is the essence of the person; the mind, body and the senses are merely adjuncts. The soul is a distinct and independent substance, possessing the property of consciousness. The philosophers belonging to Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Mīmāṃsā traditions, contra the spiritual philosophers, emphasized that the soul is not just an experiencer but more importantly an agent – a knower and a doer and enjoyer (of karmic consequences). But, one may ask how might a disembodied separate soul substance be a doer and knower and enjoyer? We return this question below in the discussion of these views.
The focus of the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika is on the self rather than the person. The individual self ( jīva-ātma is their preferred term) occupies a central place in the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika ontology. Selves are really distinct individuals and do not merge into one ultimate reality at liberation. Much attention has been paid to the Nyāya arguments for the existence of the self, the ways of knowing the self, the characteristics of the self and the means to liberation. Let us begin by noting Nyāya-sūtra 1.1.10, which provides the famous ‘characteristics of the self’ as well as the basis of the inferential proof for the existence of the self:
Desire, aversion, volition ( prayatna ), pleasure, pain, and cognition are characteristics of the self. (NS 1.1.10)
Dasti writes that for Nyāya, agency is a special expression of the self’s different capacities and potentialities, which coherently ties together all its distinctive characteristics (2013, 114). Dasti is right to emphasise that the Nyāya self is much more than a subject of experience, that it is more importantly an agent – a doer and a knower. But Dasti and others in contemporary literature fail to emphasise that the distinctive qualities ( viśeṣa ) of the self, desire, cognition, pain, etc., are transitory and come into existence only when the self is in contact with the mind-sense organs-body complex. The substance-quality distinction which is the hallmark of Nyāya ontology, and an important tool that accounts for all the goods afforded by the Nyāya postulation of the self as distinct substance. As Dasti puts it:
Nyāya’s account of personhood involves substances and properties: an enduring substantial self with its fluctuating, world-engaging properties like memory, awareness, and volition allow for full personhood. Like Sāṃkhya, Nyāya allows for a self which endures through time, survives bodily death, and participates in ultimate liberation. But like the Buddhists, Nyāya’s person is directly engaged in the world. We are here now (2013: 135).
Dasti rightly uses the term personhood as signifying the self together with its properties and talks about person (rather than the self) as directly engaged in the world, but he fails to note that the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika account is plagued with problems. Problems arise when we pay attention to the fact that according to the Nyāya philosophers, although the self is a substance which is separate from the mind-sense organs-body complex, the self is totally dependent on this complex for its functionality. The mind-sense organs-body contact is needed to engender cognition, desire, etc., the self cannot bring cognition into being by itself. Reflection and memory too require the self to be in contact with the mind. Even the effort of the self is induced by the mind-sense-body contact, so it seems that the self cannot initiate any activity by itself. Self by itself is causally impotent (this is, indeed, exactly the Buddhist argument against the existence of the Nyāya self). It seems that the self by itself is just a bearer of its distinctive qualities which are induced by mind-sense organs-body contact. It is merely the passive observer of activity and remote carrier of the mediate ( karmic ) consequences of actions. Therefore, it is not the self by itself but the embodied self or person that is the agent, doer and originator of all actions and the enjoyer of the results of the action.
Furthermore, the distinctive qualities of the self are not its essential qualities. The self is without its qualities temporarily during sleep and similar states and loses these qualities permanently in the state of liberation (mokṣa). The self in the state of liberation is totally lacking in consciousness, Dravid describing it as ‘an insentient stone-like condition’ (1995, 1). The firm separation between the self and its qualities means that even though the latter are always changing, the self is totally unaffected by these changes. The Buddhist objects if the self remains totally unaffected by changes in its qualities it would not be able to register the changes, that is to say that the self by itself would not be able to perceive those changes (Watson, 2018, 337). This robs the self of its status as the cognizer ( jñātṛ ); it is rather the embodied worldly self or persons that perceive. So, it seems that the Nyāya self by itself can’t even be an experiencer. To ensure that self can really live up to its job description as an agent and experiencer the Nyāya discussion should have been focused on the embodied wordly self or person that is the agent ( kartṛ ), enjoyer ( bhōktṛ ) and cognizer ( jñātṛ ), rather than the self.
Most Nyāya philosophers claim that the agential self is not perceived but can only be inferred from the actions of the body. The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophers offer the analogy of inferring the driver of a chariot when you see it moving along the road, avoiding potholes and other moving vehicles and persons. The analogy might remind us of Descartes’ analogy of a sailor in the ship. But as Descartes pointed out in the sixth Meditation that the connection between self (conceived of as the referent of ‘I’) and body has to be much more intimate than that of a sailor in the ship, otherwise the self would not feel pain when the body was hurt, but would merely perceive the damage just as a sailor perceives by sight if his ship is broken (Cottingham, 1996, 56). The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika self in the driver’s seat, independent and separate from the chariot (body), doesn’t quite do justice to the relationship between the self and its body.
The Nyāya philosophers have two options at this point. They must give up on the notion of the self as a separate substance untouched by its qualities. The talk of the remote self needs to be replaced with embodied selves (or persons). Or, they need to conceive of the self in the way the Bhaṭṭa Mīmāṃsā do as more closely connected with its qualities, so that it can undergo modification. The second option is available, but does it suffice? We will revisit this question after drawing out the conception of person implicit in Mīmāṃsā.
The stated goal of Mīmāṃsā is to interpret the statements of the Vedas, and thus to provide specific guidance to Hindus for performing the rituals and sacrifices they enjoin. The Mīmāṃsā philosophers agree with other Hindu schools that the true self that we cognize in self-recognition is a single thing that remains identical over time and thus it cannot be identified with the mind, body and the sense organs (See Taber 1992 for the Mīmāṃsā argument for a self). There is not much discussion of their notion of a person directly in the texts. However, there is implicit discussion of wordly persons in the context of the performance of duty ( dharma ) and religious rituals. A person is one who performs the rituals and follows the dharma , the doer of the deeds and enjoyer of the fruits of the deeds in accordance with the karma doctrine. Every religious ritual or sacrifice, according to the Mīmāṃsā philosophers, is said to have a specific result and characterized by an eligible persons ( adhikāra ) (Freschi, et al. 2019). The eligibility identifies the person who is enjoined by the Vedas to perform a religious ritual or sacrifice, has the means to perform it and will be the bearer of the karmic result accrued on account of the performance. This is particularly relevant in the context of Vedic sacrifices, since they always include many performers. An eligible person ( adhikārin ) is the one who is enjoined by the Vedas to perform the sacrifice and entitled to its result; the former implies that one can hear or read a Vedic injunction and understand oneself as the addressee, which, in turn, implies that one belongs to one of the social groups that is traditionally expected to study the Vedas. Being eligible further implies having physical ability (see Exegetic Aphorisms 6.1.42) and material resources ( Exegetic Aphorisms 6.7.18–20) to organize the performance of a sacrifice (Freschi, et al. 2019). The latter, the entitlement to the result of the successful performance of a sacrifice is automatically guaranteed by the law of karma. This notion of a person implicit in this discussion of injunctions by Mīmāṃsā philosophers suggests that persons are embodied beings, belonging to a certain social class, possessing material wealth or otherwise, the bearers of karmic residues and the enjoyers of karmic results.
The Bhaṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, specifically Kumārila, argues that the self can undergo transformation even though it is eternal. Pleasure, pain etc. are qualities of the self, changes in these qualities entail a change in the self, but it is mere qualitative change. The self can be transformed but it remains numerically identical through the change in its qualities. Some aspects of the self are permanent, for example its consciousness, existence and substantiality, but other aspects such as pleasure, pain etc. undergo change. The self, Kumārila says, can be compared to a piece of gold that can be remoulded into a necklace or earrings or a gold coin. The stuff of which the self is composed is eternal, just like the eternal gold atoms. The self can change, but to count as the same self there can be no change in whatsoever in its essence, it must remain the very same substance. In this sense, the self remains a pure subject untainted by physicality. The Vedic assumption that the self is a separate soul substance is difficult to square with the conception of the self as cognizer, agent and the enjoyer. The Hindu philosophers who want to maintain this conception must reject the assumption of an eternal separate soul substance. An embodied self or person, by contrast, is a more suitable candidate for it can be the cognizer and characterized by agency and by enjoyment.
2. Unorthodox Conceptions of Persons
Among the non-Hindu traditions, we begin with Jaina conception of persons because it is closest to the Hindu conception, specifically that of the Bhaṭṭa Mīmāṃsā and Sāṃkhya schools. Like the Sāṃkhya, the Jainas are essentially dualistic. The universe is constituted by two kinds of things: living ( jīva ) and non-living ( ajīva ) akin to puruṣa anf prakṛti . The self is described in Jaina from the noumenal and the phenomenal points of view. From the ultimate or noumenal points of view the self or the soul is pure and perfect, characterised by pure consciousness. It is a simple, immaterial and formless substance. From the phenomenal point of view, the soul is described as life force ( prāna ) which in conjunction the non-living forces is manifested in various life forms, including human persons. The Jainas posit only four non-living ( ajīva ) forces: matter or pudgala which is manifested as karma, time, space and movement (Kalghatgi, 1965). The coming together of these things is the Jaina conception of life as pervading all aspects of the natural world. Each life-form stands within a hierarchy of ascent from elemental beings, microbes and plants, worms, insects and the array of fish, reptiles, amphibians and mammals all the way to persons. The nature of the next birth is dependent of the actions performed in the immediate past body, plants and microbes can be reborn higher up in the hierarchy, or mammals can be demoted to lower forms. Persons too depending on whether their actions are virtuous or vicious can be reborn in a heavenly realm, or suffer torture in one of the seven hells. Persons at the top of the hierarchy, are unique in that they are able to perform the karmic necessary purgations to attain freedom or liberation ( kevala ), the highest end which is break free from the cycle of birth and rebirth. The story so far is not very different from what we find in the Hindu texts, except that karma is literally a material force.
The Jainas also agree with the Bhaṭṭa Mīmāṃsā that the essence and the qualities of the self are not totally separate from each other. They are two aspects of the same thing: one and the same self substance is unchanging and eternal when viewed from one point of view, and changing when viewed from another point of view. Its permanence is indexed to its essence and its impermanence to its qualities to allow for the very same self to be transformed through the cycle of birth and rebirth. Though there is much similarity between Jaina and the Bhaṭṭa Mīmāṃsā view, there is a curious difference. The Jainas think that though the self is immaterial, it changes it size according to the body with which it is associated. The self, so to say, fits the body it is housed in.
Again, though there is not much explicit discussion of persons in the Jaina tradition, the notion of a person is present as a moral agent with the capacity for attaining the highest freedom or liberation. Persons alone have the capacity to escape the cycle of birth and rebirth. Moral agency requires sensitivity to the nature of our world, according to which all living beings are said to be interconnected. This brings with it a moral obligation to respect all living beings including plants and not be unscrupulous in using natural resources. What makes us the same person over time is the soul substance, so the Jainas would also be classified as Non-Reductionists about persons in contemporary parlance.
The next group of philosophers to consider in this section are the Buddhists. The Buddhist tradition is unique in having a clear concept of a person as distinct from a self. Mark Siderits sums up the Buddhist distinction between persons and selves succinctly: “By ‘self’ ( ātman ) they understand whatever counts as the essence of the psychophysical complex, while by ‘person’ ( pudgala ) they understand the psychophysical complex as a whole” (2019, 303). It is well-known that the Buddhists reject the self, but it is not so well known that some Buddhists defended the reality of persons. There are many different Buddhist schools and the most well-known for an ardent defenders of persons, against fellow Buddhists, are called Pudgalavādins or personalists. The main impetus for the introduction of persons in Buddhist philosophy, in the absence of selves, is the need for a bearer of moral responsibility. We need a bearer to support the notion of moral responsibility, which is a constitutive element of their theory of karma and rebirth. Buddhists believe in rebirth without appeal to transmigration of self. All Buddhists allude to the Buddha’s talk of persons in the Bhārahārasūtra (the sūtra on the bearer of the burden) as one of the most important reasons to consider the question about the reality of persons. The text reads as follows:
I am going to teach you, O monks, the burden, the taking up of the burden, the laying down of the burden, and the bearer of the burden. Listen to it, pay attention carefully and well. I am going to speak. Of what does the burden consist? It consists of the five constituents to which one clings. Which five? The constituent to which one clings that consists of corporeality, [and] the [four] constituents to which one clings that consist of [affective] sensation, ideation, the conditioning factors, and cognition. Of what does the taking up of the burden consist? It consists of craving, which leads to rebirth [and] which, accompanied by desire for joys, takes delight here and there. Of what does the laying down of the burden consist? It is the total elimination, the abandonment, the removal, the exhaustion, the avoidance, the cessation, the extinction, and the disappearance of that very craving which leads to rebirth [and] which, accompanied by desire for joys, takes delight here and there. Of what does the bearer of the burden consist? One could say: ‘A person’, i.e., that sir who has such a name, who has such an origin(/birth), who belongs to such a family(/lineage), who has such a livelihood, who experiences such pleasure and pain, who has such a long life span, who remains for such a long time, whose life has such an end. [I have thus] answered to what I [promised to] say, i.e., “I am going to teach you, O monks, the burden, the taking up of the burden, the laying down of the burden, and the bearer of the burden”. The Blessed One said this. Having said this, the Sugata, the Teacher, further said this: “Having laid down the heavy burden, one would not take up another one, [for] taking up the burden is suffering, [while] laying down the burden is bliss. Having, due to the exhaustion of all fetters, eliminated all craving [and] thoroughly known all substrates [of existence], one no [longer] falls into rebirth.” (Eltschinger 2014: 457).
The originality of this sūtra lies in introducing the notion of a burden-bearer ( bhārahāra ) defined as a ‘person’ (pudgala ). In the text, the term ‘burden’ is interpreted as desire or craving that is the root cause of morally wrong action, which in turn is the cause of rebirth and suffering according to the Buddhist doctrine of karma. The person is introduced in the original sūtra as the bearer of moral desert.
The controversy over persons raged among Indian Buddhists for more than a millennium. The question is whether the ‘person’ in the sūtra is to be interpreted as ultimately real, as Pudgalavādins (Personalists) did, or, as only conventionally real, as the mainstream Abhidharma Buddhists did. According to the Abhidharma doctrine, the only things that are ultimately real are the indivisible, momentary physical and mental dharmas (best understood as tropes; see Ganeri 2001). Everything else that can be decomposed into parts, physically or conceptually, is only conventionally real. Siderits explains the Ābhidharmika position thus:
A statement is said to be ultimately true iff it corresponds to how things are independently of the concepts one happens to employ. Such a statement can neither assert nor presuppose the existence of any composite entity… . Many entities in people’s folk ontology are not ultimately real: chariots, forests, trees, pots, and so on. Such entities are said to be conventionally real, mere conceptual fictions. (2019: 314)
Different schools in the Indian Buddhist tradition have different strategies for making sense of the Buddha’s thought and talk of persons. The Pudgalavādins are alone in holding that persons are ultimately or substantially real. The dispute between the Pudgalavādins and their opponents is not just an attempt to lay claim to ‘what the Buddha taught’, but it is also motivated by philosophical considerations about consistency with the no-self doctrine and other important Buddhist theses, for example impermanence, dependent origination, and the karma theory. The Pudgalavādin position on persons is best placed in the Emergentist camp, they try to steer a middle path between Hindu Non-Reductionism (eternalism) and Abhidharma Buddhist Reductionism (annihilationism) (Ganeri, 2012; Carpenter, 2015). They regard persons as emergent entities not reducible to mental and psychological and mental atoms ( dharmas ), although they depend on those atoms. The Abhidharma and Madhyamaka traditions hold very different views about persons.
According to the Mādhyamikas, the pragmatic usefulness of person-talk is important as a catechetic device for teaching the doctrine to the uninitiated. The Buddha’s talk about persons and other continuing entities in the sūtras is aimed at ordinary people who, due to ignorance are beset with the false view of a self. As Vincent Eltschinger puts it, “these preliminary and merely provisional teachings are meant to offer a transition between the adhesion to worldly beliefs and the intuition of universal emptiness” (2014, 470). The Prāsaṇgika Mādhyamikas not only deny the inherent existence of persons at the ultimate level but also deny the inherent existence of persons at even the conventional level. In doing so the Prāsaṇgikas take themselves to be faithful to the original teachings of Nāgārjuna, the founder of Madhyamaka. Nāgārjuna denies both that the person is the same as the psychophysical constituents to which the Buddhist Reductionists try to reduce it and that it is other than those constituents in the way that the Hindu Non-Reductionists claim. Nāgārjuna warns: “Beyond good and evil, profound and liberating, this [doctrine of emptiness] has not been tasted by those who fear what is entirely groundless.” In contemporary terms, Madhymaka position can be likened to minimalism (Perrett, 2002). As Johnston argues in “the particular case of personal identity, minimalism implies that any metaphysical view of persons which we might have is either epiphenomenal or a redundant basis for our practice of making judgements about personal identity and organizing our practical concerns around this relation” (Johnston 1997, 150).
Nāgārjuna, and his follower Candrakīrti denied that persons are reducible to the aggregates and that they are distinct from the aggregates. They are irrealists about selves and persons. According to Candrakīrti the proper explanation of this is that our everyday conception of self or person consists in ‘an appropriative act of laying claim to the elements of the psycho-physical aggregate, an act that does not require there to be any object that is the person, nor any of the usual apparatus of reference to things. The term ‘I’ does not refer to selves or persons. In support of Candrakīrti’s view, Ganeri notes that that Reductionist accounts fail to explain the significance of the distinction between the anticipation of one’s own future pain and the concern one feels for the future pain of another (2007, 195). He further claims that irrealists are able to avoid this problem by substituting for a positive account of the metaphysics of persons an account of how one’s sense of self arises from the psycho-physical stream. According to this irrealist account, in spite of appearances the function of person-talk is not to talk about persons, or selves, but to appropriate experiences, emotions, and bodies.
The Ābhidharmikas, on the other hand, did not think of ‘person’ as a useful pragmatic device or skillful means but emphasized that it is nothing but a conventional designation, a mere name for a group of psychophysical aggregates, ultimately the collections of dharmas The Abhidharma position has been classified by Siderits as Reductionism. Parfit claims that on the Reductionist view, “persons do exist. But they exist only in the way in which nations exist. Persons are not, as we mistakenly believe fundamental. This view in this sense is more impersonal” (1984, 445). So-called Abhidharma Reductionism about persons was first championed by Mark Siderits in his classic paper “Buddhist Reductionism” (1997, see also Perett 2002). More recently, this interpretation has been challenged in literature. Chadha (2021) argues that Vasubandhu’s Abhidharma is best construed as an Eliminativism about persons. Vasubandhu’s argument against the Pudgalavādins is based on the causal efficacy principle: everything that is real or substantial ( dravya ) is causally efficient, having specifiable cause-and-effect relations with other entities (see, for example, Gold 2015). Everything else is a conceptual construct, a mere convention ( prajñapti ), and thus should be rejected as only conventionally real. Vasubandhu’s uses the same principle to argue against the self as posited by the Hindu philosophers (in particular the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika). Selves too, according to Vasubandhu, are only conventionally real.
What does Vasubandhu mean by saying that persons are only conventionally real? The term person is just a collective term for a group of aggregates, ultimately collection of physical and mental dharmas, just as milk is a term for a collection of tropes—such as whitishness, liquidness, and potability. For Vasubandhu, only dharmas or tropes exist ultimately or substantially. All other things exist in name only. Siderits explains the idea thus: ‘The point about “chariot” and “person” is that they are opaque enumerative expressions: when taken at face value they seem to denote individual entities, only further analysis shows them to be ways of referring to a plurality of entities in a certain arrangement’ (2019: 313). So, persons, chariots and pots are conceptual fictions. Siderits adds, ‘The idea here is that the enumerative term “pot” represents a concept that has proven useful for creatures with certain interests (in this case, for storage) and certain cognitive limitations (such as the inability to track all the many parts)… . Now conventional truths do typically guide one to successful practice. This would be difficult to explain if the truth-makers for conventionally true statements consisted of nothing but mere conceptual fictions. Thus conventionally real entities are said to supervene on ultimately real entities’ (2019: 314–15). The idea of conventional realities like persons being useful fictions was introduced in Siderits (1997) as a faithful interpretation of Abhidharma. Recently, this too has been contested (Chadha 2021). Some conventional entities may well be useful fictions, for example, chariots, armies and nations. But persons cannot be on that list. Persons inherit the work of the selves, so they are just as dangerous as selves. The Buddhist Eliminativist about selves cannot and should not condone persons.
The last group of philosophers to consider in this section are the Cārvākas. Cārvāka philosophers are materialists in the classical Indian tradition and the most ardent critics of the Vedas and scriptural authority among the heterodox schools. They deny the existence of the self, as the essence of the person and with it the possibility of transmigration and rebirth. They are the only philosophers in the classical Indian tradition that rejected the doctrine of karma and liberation or freedom. Death of the body is the end of the person. The Cārvāka philosophers are best thought of as defending animalism or the biological view of personal identity. The Cārvāka philosophers argued that a person, just like everything else in the world, is just a body, an aggregate of material elements qualifies by consciousness. Consciousness is an emergent property of the four material elements (earth, water, fire and air) in a specific proportion. The Cārvākas offer the analogy of an Indian after dinner treat called “ paan ” which releases red colour when chewed even though none of its ingredients (betel leaf, chopped betelnut (areca) and slaked lime (calcium hydroxide)), are red. Just so consciousness emerges when several material elements come together in a specific proportion that constitutes a person. Their view is surprisingly close to modern day physicalism. They did not believe in the existence of the soul as the essence of the individual person or any other immaterial substance. The main argument against the existence of the self rests on an epistemological principle: perception is the only source of knowledge. The argument can be stated thus:
P1: The self cannot be perceived. P2: Whatever exists must be perceived. C: The self does not exist.
Another argument offered by the Cārvākas for the claim that a person is identical with the body is a linguistic argument. Consider sentences: “I am youthful”, “I am stout”. In these sentences the “I” refers to the body. Linguistic arguments were quite common in classical Indian philosophy because of the influence of the grammarians and also because the Indian philosophers paid attention to common speech behaviour which presumably expresses what common sense teaches us. With respect to the conception of a self, philosophers in the Indian tradition paid attention to the usages employing the first-person pronoun as data that any philosophical theory of the self must account for. The Nyāya philosophers also relied on arguments from language to respond to the Cārvāka philosophers. The Nyāya philosophers claim that the referent of ‘I’, whatever it is, appears in our consciousness as something internal. Therefore, ‘I’ cannot refer to the body. Furthermore, the word ‘I’ in each person’s mouth refers to (picks out, denotes) that person uniquely. The referent of ‘I’ cannot be a generic body (material object) because it does not refer to the body of another person. Nor can ‘I’ refer to one’s own body because properties of the body (physical characteristics) are not sufficient to identify a unique person. Any physical property, for example, the shape of the body is an essential property of the body, but other bodies can have exactly the same shape. If the term ‘I’ referred properties of the body, two persons who have exactly the same shape would be equally good candidates for the referent of a given use of ‘I’ by either of them. Therefore, ‘I’ cannot refer to the body. And lastly, the Naiyāyikas challenged the Cārvākas to account for phrases like ‘my body’. Such phrases suggest that there is a distinction between me and the body, it implies that there is something, the referent of ‘I’, a self, which has or possesses a body. The Cārvākas dismiss such phrases as ‘my body’ are mere metaphors and do not indicate that there is a self that is separate from the body. It is worth noting that the Naiyāyikas and other Hindu philosophers have a similar problem accounting for statements such as “I am fat”, “I am tall” etc.
To conclude, it is worth noting that apart from Abhidharma Buddhism and Advaita Vedānta, most Buddhist philosophers and other classical Indian philosophers accept that persons are real.
Contemporary philosophical investigation into questions about the nature of persons and personal identity may seem very far from these ancient discussions in classical Indian philosophy. The Non-Reductionist view so popular among the mainstream Hindus is not in favour these days. The most important reason to deny that we are separately existing non-physical soul substances is that such things are impossible to trace through space-time. If we are essentially non-physical souls, there still would be no way to know that you now are one and the same person that committed the crime at an earlier time. If judgments about personal identity were grounded on judgements about the identities of immaterial souls, then personal identity would be completely mysterious (Perry 1978, 402–3). It is true that we sometimes lack epistemic access to metaphysical truths. But if this were the right metaphysical theory it should undermine all confidence in our judgments of identity in a way that seems bizarre (Shoemaker and Tobia, forthcoming). That might seem bizarre from a contemporary point of view, but the Hindu Non-Reductionists are not going to be worried by these objections. Most classical Indian philosophers, except the Cārvākas, agree that ignorance about our own natures— about who and what we are—is the cause of our bondage in the cycle of birth and rebirth and the suffering that comes with it. The Upaniṣadic sages were no strangers to metaphors and mysteries. Their strategy was to heighten the mystery associated with knowledge, “not so much in a self‐serving secretiveness or a disinclination to share the knowledge that gives them power but as response to a deep respect for the power of that knowledge, and a recognition of the need not to be frivolous either with the knowledge itself or with its potential recipients” (Ganeri 2007,13). The Katha Upaniṣad puts it thus: “Hidden in all the beings, this self is not visibly displayed. Yet, people of keen vision see him with eminent and sharp minds.” (KU 3.12).
Most contemporary philosophers assume that Reductionism is true. The Reductionists draw inspiration from Locke, perhaps the first philosopher in the history of Western philosophy to put forward a version of the psychological continuity view that was developed by Parfit. But there is another more important point that Locke brought centre-stage to the discussion about personal identity: theorizing about persons is motivated by a distinctive normative concern about moral responsibility. Locke writes:
In this personal Identity is founded all the Right and Justice of Reward and Punishment; Happiness and Misery, being that, for which every one is concerned for himself…the Apostle tells us, that at the Great Day, when every one shall receive according to his doings, the secrets of all Hearts shall be laid open. The Sentence shall be justified by the consciousness all Persons shall have, that they themselves in what Bodies soever they appear, or what Substances soever that consciousness adheres to, are the same, that committed those Actions, and deserve that Punishment for them. (Locke 1690 [1975, 341–347])
In the classical Indian context, as we have seen above, it is the same concerns that led to the search for an eternal soul as the essence of persons by the Hindu philosophers and also motivated the Buddhist personalists to introduce persons ( pudgala ) as ‘burden-bearers’. Classical Indian philosophers did not invoke God but relied on karma to dole out just rewards and punishments in the course of the cycle of birth and rebirth. Normative concerns about responsibility are thus an important motivating concern across the East-West divide.
Contemporary philosophers, however, have broadened the scope of normative concerns beyond that of moral responsibility. Shoemaker (2007, 318–9) helpfully presents a list of practical concerns that are presumably grounded in personal identity which includes moral responsibility but adds many more: anticipation of future experiences; special self-concern for one’s own future self; surviving death and anticipation of the afterlife; compensation, maximizing utility intrapersonally but not interpersonally; self-conscious emotions (pride, regret, etc.); special non-derivative concern and other-regarding emotions I have for a certain limited network of people, all of whom bear certain sorts of special relations to me; first-person reidentification and self-regarding emotions I have for my past and future self. This long list is likely to put pressure on any single criterion of personal identity.
The psychological continuity criterion originally proposed by Locke and developed most famously by Parfit (1984) does well to account for moral responsibility and anticipation of the afterlife and survival but falls short on compensation and maximizing utility intrapersonally. The animalist or biological continuity criterion does not fare well in accounting for concern about moral responsibility, but it does much better on compensation and special non-derivative concern and other-regarding emotions I have for a certain limited network of people, all of whom bear certain sorts of special relations to me (DeGrazia 2005). These are not the only competitors though. Some might suggest, as do Tierney et al., that we can be pluralists about personal identity. Rather ‘empirical evidence and philosophical thought experiments indicate that judgments about personal identity are regimented by two different criteria, one in terms of psychological traits and one that largely conforms to biological criteria’ (Tierney et al. 2014, 198). Shoemaker (2007) goes further to settle for a wide-ranging pluralism in the face of the disunity of our practical concerns. But Shoemaker stops short of giving up on persons and person-related concerns in the hope that there is a theory (or theories!) of the relation between personal identity and our person-related practices and concerns. He says, ‘several concessions may be required, including admission, perhaps, of (a) the irrelevance of certain powerful and popular criteria of personal identity for (at least some of) our practices and concerns, (b) the ultimate disunity of these practices and concerns (such that multiple types of theories of the relation between them and the metaphysics may be called for), and/or (c) the possibility of different types of rational grounding—justification and rendering-possible—where justification may actually be off the table altogether for some practices and concerns’ (2007, 354).
Some others though develop a different approach to the problem of personal identity which upends the debate between the supporters of animalism and psychological continuity theorists. One example of such an approach is the “characterisation” criterion that has been recently developed by Marya Schectman (2014). In her words, personal identity “just consists in the fact that the person before us now is viewed as, treated as, and acts as the same locus of normative concerns as the [previous] person” (Schectman 2014, 152). Although Schectman has only four normative concerns in mind from the above list (moral responsibility, special self-interested concern, compensation, and survival), her move ensures that these normative concerns trump any metaphysical considerations. According to Schectman, a person is, whatever it is, that is the locus of our normative concerns. Another recent view that deserves a mention in this context is the Minimalist view, defended in a series of papers by Mark Johnston (1987, 1992, 1997). According to Minimalism, the metaphysical “deep” facts of personal identity are irrelevant to the justification of our person-related practices and practical concerns. Our practices are grounded not on a metaphysics of persons but on our circumstances and needs. Johnston writes: “in the particular case of personal identity, minimalism implies that any metaphysical view of persons which we might have is either epiphenomenal or a redundant basis for our practice of making judgements about personal identity and organizing our practical concerns around this relation” (Johnston 1997, 150). The characterisation criterion and Minimalism extol the primacy of our normative practices and concerns suggesting the latter
may actually authoritatively constrain, shape, or even be immune or irrelevant to one’s theory of personal identity. This is a general methodological dispute about the proper direction of argumentation in the arena of personal identity and ethics. (from section 7 of the entry personal identity and ethics , Winter 2021 Edition)
This is, however, not the only dispute. The biggest problem is that we have no settled conception of persons or personal identity. I’ve discussed four different views here, and there are many more. There seems to be no clear winner.
Revisionism about personal identity has been popular since Parfit’s Reasons and Persons . But contemporary philosophers stop short of questioning our normative concerns and practices. Parfit flirted with revisionism about normative concerns about practices in proposing the Extreme Claim, according to which, one’s moral and prudential concerns cannot be grounded without a deep separate fact about personal identity. But Parfit thinks that another view is also defensible. This view results from the combination of reductionism with the Moderate Claim, which says that our moral and prudential concerns may well be grounded in what does matter in personal identity. This, according to Parfit, is psychological connectedness and/or continuity (1984, 311). Parfit believed that the Extreme Claim is defensible, he retracted it only because he did not have an argument to defend it. But if we run with the Extreme Claim it entails that our person-related practices and concerns are ungrounded, period. This opens the door for reconsideration of our person-related practices. However, this option is ignored in contemporary philosophy. Philosophers, as we saw, are willing to consider pluralism about criteria of personal identity, pluralism about theories of the relation between personal identity and person-related practices. Shoemaker, as we saw above, is also willing to consider the disunity of practices. But no one is willing to consider revising the practices themselves. But why are the practices considered sacrosanct? P.F. Strawson balks at such a question. He writes, ‘I shall reply, first, that such a question could seem real only to one who had utterly failed to grasp the purport of … the fact of our natural human commitment to ordinary inter-personal attitudes. This commitment is part of the general framework of human life, not something that can come up for review ’ (1974: 14, emphasis added). Strawson is not only claiming that it is hard for us to give up our interpersonal attitudes and concerns, but he also thinks to give up these would be to give up on our humanity.
A thoroughgoing revisionist willing to explore the consequences of endorsing the Extreme Claim would reconsider some of our person-related concerns and practices and attitudes. That is exactly the strategy adopted by the Abhidharma Buddhist Reductionist. Buddhist Reductionists are willing to revisit our ordinary normative practices and concerns, especially those to do with self-concern and the special concern that we have for those we love dearly. The Buddhists do recognize that it is built-in precondition of our form of life that we have self-concern and special concern for our loved ones. That is why the Buddhists do not recommend giving up on this self-concern or special concern for our loved ones. Rather they recommend expanding similar concern to all others, including one’s enemies. And they do not think that such an expansion comes easy to us given our human nature: it has to be inculcated by extensive training in ‘spiritual exercises’ which include meditation, knowledge of the Buddhist texts and insight. This expansion is not to be thought of as the giving up of one’s humanity, as feared by Strawson, rather the idea is to enlarge our humanity.
It is important for us to realise that any set of norms or value system is not immune to revision, just because it is, as Strawson puts, ‘part of the general framework of human life’. The problem is that there is no such ‘general’ framework. The normative concerns and practices of human societies are varied, and not such as to be weighed systematically against each other. The practices we regard as important because they are ‘part of the general framework of human life’ cannot be justified as having been chosen by ideally rational beings. Persons as moral beings are a product of our histories and culturally constrained preferences. Imagine being in a world in which the Buddhist thesis of the no self was widely held. Or consider a culture where the really significant entities are family lines, and it is axiomatic that children are justly to be held responsible for their parents’ wrongdoing. What evidence is there against such a code, or in favour of ‘our’ belief that persons are separate individuals, responsible for their own crimes. It is therefore not clear that we should assume that all normative systems must include some special concern for one’s future self and those that we love dearly. The anticipation of one’s own future self or one’s survival are also up for question. These important assumptions that often goes unnoticed because they basically treated as “part of the general framework”. Buddhist philosophy invites us to ask the question: Is there such a framework?
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.
- Bartley, Christopher, 2014, Review of Free Will, Agency, and Selfhood in Indian Philosophy , Matthew R. Dasti and Edwin F. Bryant (eds.) , in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews .
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Debates in Indian Philosophy: Classical, Colonial, and Contemporary
A. Raghuramaraju, Debates in Indian Philosophy: Classical, Colonial, and Contemporary , Oxford University Press, 2006, 139pp., $24.95 (hbk), ISBN 0195671511.
Reviewed by Thom Brooks, University of Newcastle
The Indian philosophical tradition has been overlooked by Western commentators for too long. Most especially, there is a particular neglect of contemporary Indian philosophy. When we think of 'Indian philosophy' in general, what often comes to mind is only classical Indian thought. Chiefly, we think of the Vedic period (the Vedas and the Upsanisads ) and the Epic period (the Bhagavad Gītā in the Mahābhārata , The Laws of Manu , and Kautilya's Artha-śstraā ), writings that were produced roughly between 600 (or earlier) BC and 200 A.D. Whilst a rich philosophical tradition continued afterwards -- giving us various schools of Jain, Buddhist, and Advainta Vedanta thought -- this receives far less attention than what little is given to the more classical Indian philosophical texts. Contemporary work in Indian philosophy escapes notice in the West altogether.
This presents us with a growing problem. Our world continues to get smaller. Political philosophers once spoke chiefly about justice within the state: now work on global justice is in ascendancy. Western philosophers in all areas continue to make great progress in thinking about philosophy beyond their borders. The primary defect is its complete failure to engage at all with philosophies beyond their borders. We speak of reasonableness in terms no one might reasonably reject from within our tradition, without considering how such views might be received within other traditions. To claim that the future of philosophy -- at least in areas such as global justice -- will lie in a greater engagement with non-Western philosophies is too certain to be a prophecy.
When we do begin engaging with other traditions, such as those developed in India, we quickly find our efforts rather fruitful. The dynamism, complexity, and interchange between canonical figures we enjoy in the Western tradition are no less present in the Indian philosophical tradition. We have much we can learn. What the Indian philosophical tradition might teach us extends far beyond simply developing our understanding of the philosophy of religion more genuinely, although this is also the case.
Perhaps the main reason the Indian philosophical tradition has escaped notice in the West is in part because what little was known was considered 'religious,' not 'philosophical,' and 'classical,' not 'contemporary.' (In fact, Raghuramaraju notes that only recently did the Journal of Indian Philosophy change its editorial policy and begin publishing work on Indian philosophy beyond its classical period (28).) Despite the appearance of many important contemporary figures in the Indian literature, we unfortunately have difficulty finding them in the Western literature.
Raghuramaraju has written a most wonderful book meant to introduce contemporary Indian philosophy to the West, while making a contribution to Indian philosophy as well. He divides the book essentially into three main chapters that examine key debates between two major thinkers. In each case study, Raghuramaraju seeks to not only explain what a major figure on each side of the debate sought to say, but also to clarify the nature of their disagreement, sometimes in disagreement with recent work in India on these topics. Thus, he attempts to make contribution beyond simply introducing us to important persons and ideas.
The first major chapter examines India's relationship with colonialism, comparing Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi. Vivekananda is said to defend a more accommodating position with the West. That is, he recognizes both the existence and extent of India's poverty due to its lack of economic development, while celebrating India's spiritual past. The way forward is to modernize, but without sacrificing India's spiritual heritage. For example, he says:
Material civilization … is necessary to create work for the poor. Bread! Bread! I do not believe in a God, who cannot give me bread here, giving me eternal bliss in heaven! Pooh! India is to be raised, the poor are to be fed (43).
Vivekananda believes India has much to learn from the West in terms of economic development. However, India can give something back: spiritual development to the West. He says: 'If we have to learn from them the ways and methods of making ourselves happy in this life, why, in return, should we not give them the methods and ways that would make them happy for all eternity?' (47). A balance can be struck in a mutually beneficial relationship whereby a materialist West can bring economic development to the East and a spiritual East can bring religious development to the West.
This view is challenged by Mahatma Gandhi, who denied that materialism and spirituality could be brought together in a harmonious way. Gandhi argued that what characterized modern civilization is its replacement of God with materialism (51). Thus, modern civilization is not merely incompatible with spirituality, but, in truth, 'Satanic' (51). Materialism, for Gandhi, did not merely oppress non-Western societies, but it also oppressed Western societies. Thus, like Vivekananda, Gandhi associates materialism with the West and spirituality with the East, but where they part is Gandhi's rejection of materialism.
The second major chapter focuses on religion and politics, again looking at Mahatma Gandhi, but contrasting his views on this topic with V. D. Savarkar and his ideology of Hindutva. Savarkar distinguishes 'Hinduism' from 'Hindutva.' Hinduism is a religion. Hindutva is not religion, but personal: it is a community of persons who share a pre-British and pre-Islamic history, who speak Hindi, who are Hindus, and enjoy 'a common culture and law' (78). Curiously, Savarkar argued that those who are Hindutva should join the British Indian army. Their task was not to help the British, but rather to acquire military training they could not acquire otherwise in order to eventually drive the British from India (see 79-80). There is, thus, a militancy about the Hindutva ideology that is modern, not classical.
Gandhi shares with Savarkar the view that religion and politics should be interwined. Where they part views is on the fact that Gandhi believes that political power is a means (namely, to reform), rather than an end. He says:
If then I want political power, it is for the sake of the reforms for which the Congress stands. Therefore, when the energy to be spent in gaining that power means so much loss of energy required for the reforms, as threatened to be the case if the country is to engage in a duel with the Mussalmans or Sikhs, I would most decidedly advise the country to let the Mussalmans and Sikhs take all the power and I would go on with developing the reforms (85).
Politics can serve useful ends, but it is only an instrument by which we may enjoy such ends. Moreover, Gandhi's religious thought held Hinduism as a religion of love, not political might, in keeping with a doctrine of non-violence. Thus, while Gandhi may have wanted to spiritualize politics, he rejected Savarkar's militant views on politicizing spirituality.
The third and final major chapter compares Sri Aurobindo and Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya on science and spirituality. Sri Aurobindo argued that (materialist) science was compatible with Hindu spirituality. Hinduism often downplays the physical world as a sphere of illusion, or maya , turning its focus instead on an eternal beyond this world. Materialist science is incomplete, yet complements this traditional Indian picture. Where this picture is lacking, science can fill its gaps and vice versa . He says:
The mistake made by European materialism is to suppose the basis to be everything and confuse it with the source. The source of life and energy is not material, but spiritual, but the basis, the foundation on which the life and energy stand and work, is physical (98).
Both East and West have much to gain from combining their understandings of the world.
Bhattacharyya disagrees. He argues that science views its objects as 'knowable and usable,' whereas our true 'spiritual demand is that nature should be contemplated and not merely used or manipulated' (105). Reality is something more than what we can measure. Science denies the presence of what we cannot measure, a metaphysics beyond matter. This view is captured well by Tagore: 'Truth is the infinite pursued by metaphysics; fact is the infinite pursued by science' (112n3).
The book concludes with a magnificent closing chapter that contemplates the future for Indian philosophy. One thing many readers will note is that while the various figures discussed offer a variety of interesting and exciting claims, these claims are not particularly rigorously argued. Raghuramaraju is well aware of this problem, claiming that the lack of rigor is particular to contemporary Indian philosophy and not classical Indian philosophy (see 118). It is easy to get a real sense from this chapter that colonialism damaged India, not least its self-confidence and flourishing philosophical tradition. The good news is that this tradition lives on with new figures and new ideas, often building off of India's intellectual past, but also in combination with imported Western ideas. In this sense, contemporary Indian philosophy is ahead of its Western counterparts in forging an awareness and possibility for a common ground.
Despite my strong praise of Raghuramaraju's work and complete endorsement of his greater project (i.e., bringing Indian and Western philosophy into greater contact with one another), this should not prevent my voicing a few critical remarks about Debates in Indian Philosophy .
My first criticism is that the focus is entirely on Indian philosophers who are Hindu. This gives the misleading impression that Hindu philosophers are the only figures of importance in contemporary Indian debates. Nothing could be further from the truth: contemporary Indian philosophy is as diverse as ever. Of course, I recognize that no book can cover every topic and figure. However, I was very surprised to find no mention at all of B. R. Ambedkar, a Buddhist convert who studied with John Dewey at Columbia and returned to India, widely credited with being the drafter of India's constitution.
A second criticism is that perhaps the two Hindu writers most worthy of inclusion were excluded: Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Rabindranath Tagore. Perhaps other than Mahatma Gandhi (who receives ample attention), few other Indian writers have received greater attention in the West than Radhakrishnan and Tagore. Radhakrishnan was well versed in both Western and Indian traditions, working with the British Idealist John Henry Muirhead, including a co-edited book, Contemporary Indian Philosophy , published in 1952. Tagore is cited often in Raghuramaraju's notes supporting the views of less well known contemporary figures. However, it is a pity Tagore's words did not merit greater attention in the main text, given his phenomenal influence on Indian thought at his time and afterwards.
Third, I believe Raghuramaraju could have made the book more accessible to a Western audience. Whilst his summaries are excellent and I think he chose wisely to include many extended remarks from Indian figures (whose work may otherwise be quite unknown to the West), these passages convey a number of important concepts that prevail in Indian philosophy, but are largely unknown in the West, such as kharma , maya , mukti , samkara , and others. The Western reader would have benefited greatly from some explanation of these terms either in the chapters where they arise or in a glossary.
These criticisms should not detract from how strongly I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in expanding their horizons and exploring the development of current Indian philosophical thought. I have profited from its pages. As our world continues to shrink, an engagement with other philosophical traditions will become ever more necessary. Perhaps it will take one of our finest Western moral and political philosophers to bring Indian philosophy to the centre of our attention: indeed, Martha C. Nussbaum has begun doing just this for many years and increasingly so.
Raghuramaraju's Debates in Indian Philosophy is the first of what I hope will be many steps in this project of bringing Western and Indian philosophies into conversation with each other. He does admirably well in this task and his book is a tremendous achievement. I recommend it without reservation. Let us hope that much more is to follow.
- 3.1 Indigenous Philosophy
- Introduction
- 1.1 What Is Philosophy?
- 1.2 How Do Philosophers Arrive at Truth?
- 1.3 Socrates as a Paradigmatic Historical Philosopher
- 1.4 An Overview of Contemporary Philosophy
- Review Questions
- Further Reading
- 2.1 The Brain Is an Inference Machine
- 2.2 Overcoming Cognitive Biases and Engaging in Critical Reflection
- 2.3 Developing Good Habits of Mind
- 2.4 Gathering Information, Evaluating Sources, and Understanding Evidence
- 2.5 Reading Philosophy
- 2.6 Writing Philosophy Papers
- 3.2 Classical Indian Philosophy
- 3.3 Classical Chinese Philosophy
- 4.1 Historiography and the History of Philosophy
- 4.2 Classical Philosophy
- 4.3 Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Philosophy
- 5.1 Philosophical Methods for Discovering Truth
- 5.2 Logical Statements
- 5.3 Arguments
- 5.4 Types of Inferences
- 5.5 Informal Fallacies
- 6.1 Substance
- 6.2 Self and Identity
- 6.3 Cosmology and the Existence of God
- 6.4 Free Will
- 7.1 What Epistemology Studies
- 7.2 Knowledge
- 7.3 Justification
- 7.4 Skepticism
- 7.5 Applied Epistemology
- 8.1 The Fact-Value Distinction
- 8.2 Basic Questions about Values
- 8.3 Metaethics
- 8.4 Well-Being
- 8.5 Aesthetics
- 9.1 Requirements of a Normative Moral Theory
- 9.2 Consequentialism
- 9.3 Deontology
- 9.4 Virtue Ethics
- 9.6 Feminist Theories of Ethics
- 10.1 The Challenge of Bioethics
- 10.2 Environmental Ethics
- 10.3 Business Ethics and Emerging Technology
- 11.1 Historical Perspectives on Government
- 11.2 Forms of Government
- 11.3 Political Legitimacy and Duty
- 11.4 Political Ideologies
- 12.1 Enlightenment Social Theory
- 12.2 The Marxist Solution
- 12.3 Continental Philosophy’s Challenge to Enlightenment Theories
- 12.4 The Frankfurt School
- 12.5 Postmodernism
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Identify challenges in the study of Indigenous philosophies.
- Describe metaphysical and epistemological ideas explored by Indigenous African philosophies.
- Describe metaphysical and epistemological ideas explored by Indigenous Native American philosophies.
- Describe metaphysical and epistemological ideas explored by Mesoamerican philosophies.
Some of the best-known ancient texts, connected to many of the great civilizations around the world, are religious or mythological in nature. Examples include the Vedas of India, the earliest literature of China , and the Jewish Torah . These texts introduce aspects of philosophical inquiry—such as questions concerning the origins of the cosmos and the nature and purpose of human life, morality, justice, human excellence, knowledge, and so forth—in terms of stories and explanations that rely on the supernatural. These stories provide context, meaning, and direction for human life within a framework that assumes that the natural world is infused with supernatural importance. Such texts are a testament to the fundamental and binding nature of religion in human societies.
When humans shift from religious answers to questions about purpose and meaning to more naturalistic and logical answers, they move from the realm of myth to the realm of reason. In Greek, this movement is described as a move from mythos to logos , where mythos signifies the supernatural stories people tell, while logos signifies the rational, logical, and scientific stories they tell. This distinction may lead one to believe that there is a clear transition from religious thought to philosophical or scientific thought, but this is not the case. The earliest philosophers in Greece, Rome, India, China, and North Africa all used mythological and analogical (analogy-based) stories to explain their rational systems, while religious texts from the same period often engage in serious, logical argumentation. Rather than seeing a decisive break between mythological thinking and rational thinking, one should understand the transition from mythos to logos as a gradual, uneven, and zig-zagging progression. This progression teaches that there are close connections between religion, philosophy, and science in terms of the desire to understand, explain, and find purpose for human existence.
Challenges in Researching Indigenous Philosophy
There is growing interest in Indigenous philosophy in contemporary academic philosophy, as a way of engaging with both the historical and present-day thought of Indigenous peoples around the world. Indigenous philosophy broadly refers to the ideas of Indigenous peoples pertaining to the nature of the world, human existence, ethics, ideal social and political structures, and other topics also considered by traditional academic philosophy. Unlike the philosophies of ancient Greece, India, and China, Indigenous philosophies did not spread across vast territorial empires or feature centers of formal learning that documented and developed philosophical ideas over hundreds or thousands of years. The study of Indigenous philosophies, or ethnophilosophy , often must rely on different methods than typical academic philosophy. Indigenous philosophy is not usually recorded in texts that can be read and analyzed. Instead, those seeking to understand Indigenous philosophical thinking must engage in the kind of research often used in ethnographic and sociological study, including identifying individuals who hold and transmit cultural knowledge about philosophical thought and recording interviews and conversations with them. Most of the philosophy of Indigenous peoples has been passed down through oral traditions , in much the same way that prehistoric thought was transmitted.
There are additional challenges to studying Indigenous philosophy. The discipline of academic philosophy has traditionally dismissed or ignored the philosophical thought of Indigenous peoples, considering it to lie outside the realm of logos. The long history of erasure of Indigenous philosophical thought in academic philosophy makes it difficult to engage in academic discussion with it. There is an absence of past scholarship in this field in the West. Indigenous peoples have also been subjected to racist practices, such as forced education in languages other than their own, that make it difficult for them to retain a lively philosophical tradition. Furthermore, many Indigenous customs have been lost because of the loss of life and cultural heritage among Indigenous peoples following colonization by Europeans and Americans.
Indigenous African Philosophy
If the transition from mythos to logos is predicated on the development of written language, then this transition may have first occurred in Africa . Africa was home to the development of many ancient writing systems, including the system of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that developed during the fourth millennium BCE. The modern Western understanding of the deep history of philosophy is severely hampered by the lack of scholarship in English and other European languages, the loss of collective cultural knowledge exacerbated by colonialism, and the sometimes deliberate destruction of historical records, such as the burning of the Library of Alexandria. As a result, research has relied heavily on oral traditions or the rediscovery and translation of written evidence. The philosophical legacy of ancient Egypt is discussed in the chapter on classical philosophy . This chapter will examine research into ethnophilosophy from other regions of Africa.
The seizure of the city of Ceuta, bordering present-day Morocco, by the Portuguese in 1415 marks the first attempts by Europeans to colonize Africa. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European nations were engaging in what is called the “scramble for Africa.” Prior to this period, European settlement in Africa had been limited by the mosquito-borne disease malaria, the inappropriateness of African terrain to equine (horse-based) conquest, and the power of strong coastal states. European nations now gained access to the interior of Africa with the help of the discovery of quinine to treat malaria and the development of mechanized vehicles and advanced weaponry. During the colonial era , young Africans identified as having intellectual promise were sent to study at European universities, where they read Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and other Western philosophers. Whether the intent was to help these communities enter the modern age or to create local administrations that would further the interests of Western parties—or both—the result was the failure to preserve knowledge about the history and thought of localities and regions.
In later decades, some Western-educated Africans began to engage directly with African philosophies. In 1910, Congolese philosopher Stefano Kaoze (c. 1885–1951) described the thought of the Bantu people pertaining to moral values, knowledge, and God in an essay entitled “The Psychology of the Bantus” (Dübgen and Skupien, 2019). Bantu is a blanket term for hundreds of different ethnic groups in Central and Southern African that speak what are referred to as Bantu languages and share many cultural features (see Figure 3.2 ). In later writings, Kaoze explored other African thought systems, arguing that these systems had much to teach Western thought systems grounded in Christianity (Nkulu Kabamba and Mpala Mbabula 2017).
It was not until 1945, when Belgian missionary Placide Tempels (1906–1977) published Bantu Philosophy , that the topic of African philosophy gained significant attention in the West. Tempels rejected the characterization of African philosophy and theology as consisting of magic, animism, and ancestor worship, instead exploring the richness of Bantu thought pertaining to individuals, society, and the divine. Tempels described Bantu peoples as believing in a “vital force,” the source of which is God. He observed that what Western thinkers envisioned as a divine being, the Bantu understood as various forces, including human forces, animal forces, and mineral forces. They viewed the universe as comprising all of these forces, and these forces could directly impact the “life force” of an individual (Okafor 1982, 84).
Later African scholars and theologians, such John Mbiti (1931–2019) and Alexis Kagame (1912–1981), indicated that Tempels was somewhat inventive in his descriptions and interpretations. They engaged in a more authentic study of Bantu philosophy, recording and analyzing African proverbs, stories, art, and music to illuminate what they presented as a shared worldview. One example of this shared worldview is the Zulu term ubuntu , which can be translated as “humanity.” Variations on the term appear in many other Bantu languages, all referring to a similar concept, expressed through maxims such as “I am because we are.” The concept of ubuntu holds that human beings have a deep natural interdependence, to the point that we are mutually dependent on one another even for our existence. The notion of ubuntu has inspired a uniquely African approach to communitarian philosophy , which refers to ideas about politics and society that privilege the community over the individual.
Nigerian philosopher Sophie Olúwọlé (1935–2018) was a practitioner and scholar of Yoruba philosophy. The Yoruba are a prominent ethnic group in Nigeria and other locations in sub-Saharan Africa. Among other accomplishments, Olúwọlé translated the Odu Ifá , the oral history concerning the pantheon and divination system of Ifá, the religion of the Yoruba peoples. Olúwọlé proposed that Ọ̀rúnmìlà , the high priest featured in the Odu Ifá, was a historical figure and the first Yoruba philosopher. She argued that Ọ̀rúnmìlà had an equal claim to that of Socrates as the founder of philosophy. In Socrates and Ọ̀rúnmìlà: Two Patron Saints of Classical Philosophy (2015), Olúwọlé compares the two philosophers and finds many similarities. Both are considered founders of philosophical traditions. Neither wrote anything down during their lifetimes. They both placed a primacy on the concepts of virtue and learning to live in keeping with virtue. Surprisingly, they shared cosmological views, such as a belief in reincarnation and predestination. Olúwọlé compiled quotes from each philosopher on specific topics, some of which are listed in Table 3.1 . Olúwọlé argues that Yoruba ideas as conveyed through the Odu Ifá should be given full standing as a philosophy.
Olúwọlé does identify one important distinction between the ideas of Socrates and Ọ̀rúnmìlà. Socrates held a binary metaphysical theory of matter and ideas, contrasting the unchanging eternal with the forms in which the eternal manifests itself in the physical world. By contrast, Ọ̀rúnmìlà taught that matter and ideas are inseparable. Similarly, while Socrates distinguished the concepts of good and bad, Ọ̀rúnmìlà held that they are “an inseparable pair” (Olúwọlé 2015, 64). The strict binary of the Greeks and of the West, Olúwọlé concludes, leads to an either-or perspective on truth and debate. The Yoruba , she contends, maintain a complementary dualist view of reality.
Watch Professor Olúwọlé discuss what Socrates and Ọ̀rúnmìlà have in common.
Write like a philosopher.
Review the contents of Table 3.1 . Translate each of the quotes into everyday language and compare your translations of the sayings of Ọ̀rúnmìlà and Socrates. Where do they agree, and how do they differ?
In the 1970s, Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka (1944–1995) launched a field study to record the philosophical thoughts of sages in modern-day Kenya . Researchers interviewed individual thinkers from various ethnic groups and questioned them about their views on central concepts in Western philosophy and issues related to applied ethics. Among other aims, this project was intended to demonstrate that philosophy is not an undertaking that is unique to the literate world. Odera Oruka’s findings were published in 1990, but no systematic attempt has been made to analyze them (Presbey 2017).
As these philosophers and their work demonstrate, African philosophy has emerged as a body of thought that stands on its own. The philosophy of African peoples, both those living on the African continent and those elsewhere in the world, is rooted in and developed out of concepts that both complement and challenge the Western tradition.
Connections
The chapter on classical philosophy discusses Egyptian and Ethiopian philosophers who contributed to the development of classical philosophy in the ancient and early modern worlds.
Indigenous North American Philosophical Thought
Work on Native American philosophy has expanded in recent years, as philosophers, many of them Native American themselves, have engaged in collective research on Native American thought. This work has included the development of academic societies and journals devoted to the topic. Like many Indigenous African peoples, Native American peoples did not rely on written documents to preserve their history and culture but instead preserved knowledge through oral tradition. These oral traditions included rituals, ceremonies, songs, stories, and dance. What is known about Native American philosophy comes from this oral tradition as well as the experiences and thoughts of contemporary Native American people.
Any attempt to define Indigenous North American philosophical thought is further complicated by the fact that thousands of distinct societies have existed on the continent, each with their own ideas about how the world was created, what are the basic elements of reality, what constitutes the self, and other metaphysical issues. There is a rich expanse of philosophical views to synthesize—and for every possible generalization, there are exceptions. Still, some generalizations of Indigenous North American philosophy are true more often than not. One such generalization is the perception that the creative process of the universe is akin to the thought process. Another is that more than one being is responsible for the creation of the universe—and that these beings do not take on anthropomorphic forms (Forbes 2001).
Additionally, there are a number of characteristics common to Indigenous North American metaphysical concepts. Many Native American peoples, for example, emphasize balance, complementarity, and exchange between the different entities that make up the world. For instance, the Diné see breath as a fundamental force in nature, with the exchange of the internal and the external passing through all natural processes. Similarly, the Zuni note that twins, such as the twin Evening Star and the Morning Star—both of which are actually Venus – share a complementary and mirrored existence, serving as a reminder that there can be multiple manifestations of the same thing in nature. Additionally, concepts such as gender identity are understood as animated, nonbinary, and non-discrete, such that gender may develop and change over time (Waters 2004, 107). These generalizations point to a Native American metaphysics that is based on animate processes that are complementary, interactive, and integrated.
North American Indigenous peoples also have views of the self that differ from the European tradition. The Pueblo possess a sense of personal and community identity shaped by both place and time. Known as a transformative model of identity , this social identity is understood to spiral both outward and inward through expanding and retracting influences over a certain area of land (Jojola 2004). Extant petroglyphic spirals show the migration of a clan outward to the boundaries of its physical and spiritual territory as well as the inward journey homeward. These journeys also reflect a temporal component, as they were coordinated with the cycles of the solstice calendar. Such metaphysical understandings are reflected in the tendency of many Native American cultures to build moral and ethical concepts on the idea that human beings are fundamentally social rather than individual—a “we,” not an “I.”
Mesoamerican Philosophy
Mesoamerican peoples include an array of tribes and cultures, speaking multiple languages, that developed several sophisticated civilizations between 2000 BCE and the arrival of European colonialists in the 1500s CE. This area of the world developed both pictographic/hieroglyphic and alphabetic/phonetic forms of writing that allowed them to record thoughts and ideas, providing modern scholars access to some of the philosophical reflection that occurred within these societies. This section will examine some examples of the thought of Mesoamerican peoples by looking at the preserved writings of the Maya and the Aztec. Though the philosophical thought of each civilization is examined as if it were uniform, note that each encompassed many diverse tribes and cultures with a variety of languages, cultural practices, and religious beliefs.
Mayan Writings
The Maya first settled in villages in the area that runs from southern Mexico through Guatemala and northern Belize around 1500 BCE. Between 750 and 500 BCE, large city-states arose and established a trading network. At the height of their civilization, between approximately 250 CE and 900 CE, the Maya possessed a written language that appears to have been a combination of an alphabetic/phonetic language and a pictographic/hieroglyphic language, used not only by the priesthood but also by the urban elite. This writing appears on stone slabs, pottery, and sculptures as well as in books called codices (plural of codex ), written on a paper made from tree bark.
The Maya possessed advanced knowledge of mathematics and natural philosophy. However, following the Spanish conquest of this territory, Catholic priests burned almost all of the Maya codices as well as their scientific and technical manuals ( Yucatan Times 2019). In the years that followed the conquest, the Maya lost their written language. However, some writings in clay did survive, providing scholars a glimpse into Maya thought. They implemented a numerical system using symbols that allowed for representation of very large numbers, and they may have been the first to use the number 0 in mathematics. This numerical system enabled the Maya to gain insights into arithmetic and geometry that surpassed those of the Egyptians. Their knowledge of astronomy was so advanced that they could correctly predict the timing of solar eclipses. Unlike other early civilizations, the Maya had a highly sophisticated calendar and a unique conception of time.
Maya Calendar
The Maya developed a calendar that tracked many cycles simultaneously, including the solar year and the “calendar round,” a period of 52 years. The calendar played a central role in Maya rituals and sacred celebrations. Astronomical events, in particular the position of Venus relative to the sun and moon, have been noted to align with the dates of historical battles, causing some to hypothesize that the Maya may have scheduled battles to coincide with these cycles. The Maya placed great importance on customs and rituals surrounding the solar calendar. Using these calendars, the Maya were able to record complex histories of their civilization.
Maya Concept of Time and Divinity
The Maya had a complex understanding of time. They recognized an experiential or existential aspect of time—for instance, observing that disinterest or concentration can elongate or shorten time. The experience of “awe” was considered particularly important because of its ability to bring a person into the present moment, increasing their awareness of the immediate effect of fundamental forces such as the energy of the sun and making them more capable of clear thinking, decision-making, and understanding.
Although the Maya worshipped an array of gods, they believed in a single godlike force, the sun’s force or energy, called K’in . This force was understood in terms of the position of the sun relative to the planets and the moon during different periods of the calendar. The king served as a conduit through which this divine force, the solar energy, passed to subjects. The Maya also believed that time is the expression of K’in . The ability of rulers and priests to predict natural events, such as an eclipse or the coming of spring, and thus seemingly to control time served to secure the allegiance of their subjects and legitimized their rule.
Aztec Metaphysical Thought
For the Aztecs, the fundamental and total character of the universe was captured by the concept of teotl , a godlike force or energy that is the basis for all reality. They considered this energy to be a sacred source fueling all life, actions, and desires as well as the motion and power of inanimate objects. In this sense, Aztec metaphysics adopted a view of the world that was pantheistic and monist, meaning that it viewed all reality as composed of a single kind of thing and that thing was divine in nature. However, teotl is not an agent or moral force, like the Abrahamic God, but rather a power or energy that is entirely amoral.
Teotl is not a static substance but a process through which nature unfolds. It changes continually and develops through time toward an endpoint or goal, a view that philosophers call teleological . For the Aztecs, time was not linear but rather cyclical. Thus, even though teotl tends toward an end point and there is an end of humanity and Earth as we know it, from the point of view of the universe, this is part of a cycle, just like leaves fall from trees before winter. Moreover, because teotl is both the matter from which everything in the universe is made and the force by which things are created, change, and move, it is an all-encompassing, dynamic, and immanent force within nature (Maffie 2013).
Teotl has three different shapes, aspects, or manifestations, each with different characteristics, including different motions, powers, and goals. These three aspects of teotl have been assigned metaphorical positions related to weaving, aligning an important cultural practice of the Aztecs with their conception of fundamental reality.
Aztec Epistemological Thought
Philosophers use the term epistemology to refer to the study of knowledge involving questions such as how we know what we know, what is the nature of true knowledge, and what are the limits to what humans can know. Aztec epistemology understood the concept of knowledge and truth as “well-rootedness.” To say that someone knows or understands the truth is to say that they are well-grounded or stably founded in reality. The Aztecs understood truth not in reference to some belief or proposition of reality but as a property of one’s character when one is well-grounded. Being well-grounded means understanding the ways reality presents itself and being capable of acting according to what reality dictates. Being well-rooted in reality allows one to grow and develop, following the metaphor of a plant that is able to thrive because of its well-rootedness in the soil. This concept has both an epistemological aspect (relating to knowledge) and an ethical aspect (providing the means by which people may flourish).
In Aztec culture, rooting oneself in the constantly changing and growing power of teotl was considered necessary because existence on Earth was considered to be “slippery,” meaning that it is part of a process of cyclic change that is constantly evolving. The fundamental question for human beings is, How does one maintain balance on the slippery earth? This question motivates the need to develop the type of character that allows one to remain well-rooted and to find stability and balance, given the shifting and changing nature of Earth.
Read Like a Philosopher
In the short article “ What the Aztecs Can Teach Us about Happiness and the Good Life ”, Sebastian Purcell outlines an Aztec approach to virtue and the good life grounded in the Aztec folk wisdom that “the earth is slippery, slick.” In response to this state of affairs, Aztec thinkers advocated for living a well-rooted life. What does it mean to say that “the earth is slippery”? Do you think this is accurate? What does it mean to live a well-rooted life? What are the levels of well-rootedness? How might well-rootedness facilitate happiness and a good life? Do you think that this accurately describes the way one might achieve happiness? What is missing?
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- Authors: Nathan Smith
- Publisher/website: OpenStax
- Book title: Introduction to Philosophy
- Publication date: Jun 15, 2022
- Location: Houston, Texas
- Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-philosophy/pages/1-introduction
- Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-philosophy/pages/3-1-indigenous-philosophy
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Essays on Indian philosophy traditional and modern
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Indian philosophy, the systems of thought and reflection that were developed by the civilizations of the Indian subcontinent. They include both orthodox ( astika) systems, namely, the Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Purva-Mimamsa (or Mimamsa ), and Vedanta schools of philosophy, and unorthodox ( nastika) systems, such as Buddhism and Jainism.
Through detailed explorations of the full range of Indian philosophical concerns, including some metaphilosophical issues, it provides readers with non-Western perspectives on central areas of philosophy, including epistemology, logic, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of religion.
A traditional Hindu classification divides āstika and nāstika schools of philosophy, depending on one of three alternate criteria: whether it believes the Vedas as a valid source of knowledge; whether the school believes in the premises of Brahman and Atman; and whether the school believes in afterlife and Devas. [2] [3] [4]
Hindu Philosophy The compound "Hindu philosophy" is ambiguous. Minimally it stands for a tradition of Indian philosophical thinking. However, it could be interpreted as designating one comprehensive philosophical doctrine, shared by all Hindu thinkers.
What does it take for philosophy to be 'contemporary Indian philosophy'? Can this be more than a particular geographical and temporal characterization? Is it enough to be Indian to qualify as an Indian philosopher? Is 'Indian philosophy' philosophy done by Indians and/or about Indians?
ISBN: 9780824885953 Indian philosophy is perhaps the earliest record of man's philosophical thought, with a history spanning more than four thousand years. Its diversities and complexities have often been misunderstood and misinterpreted.
Logic in Classical Indian Philosophy First published Tue Apr 19, 2011; substantive revision Wed Aug 23, 2023 The exercise of reasoning and the practice of argument are recorded in the early texts of India.
Some of the essays included in this anthology revisit the first generation modern Indian academic philosophers such as Brajendra Nath Seal (1864-1938), Hiralal Haldar (1865-1942), Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya (1875-1949), Ghanshamdas Ratanmal Malkani (1892-1977), Rasvihary Das (1894-1973), and Ghanshyam Nevandram Mathrani (1914-1994) as w...
Identify key Indian metaphysical concepts. Distinguish between major schools of Indian thought. Compare and contrast Indian philosophical writings with other areas of philosophy. The philosophical depth and richness of Indian philosophy rivals that of European philosophy, and to do justice to it would require a book-length survey.
The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy tells the story of philosophy in India through a series of exceptional individual acts of philosophical virtuosity.
I Considering Vedic texts to be the source, the history of Indian philosophy extends to more than 2500 years. This lengthy period of history has witnessed the growth of a wide variety of philosophical thought presented in a plethora of works written by an innumerable number of scholars.
Summary. Indian Philosophy encompasses the systems of thought and reflection that developed on the Indian subcontinent. They include philosophical systems generally classified as orthodox ( astika, from the Sanskrit asti "there is") such as Nyāya ("Rule" or "Method"), Vaiśeṣika ("Particular"), Saṃkhya ("Enumeration" or "Number"), Yoga ...
The earliest philosophical texts in India constitute the Vedic tradition. The four Vedas are the oldest of the Hindu scriptures. They are the Rigveda, the Samaveda, the Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda. The four Vedas were composed between 1500 and 900 BCE by the Indo-Aryan tribes that had settled in northern India.
Selves and persons are often used as synonyms in contemporary philosophy, and sometimes also in the history of Western philosophy. This is almost never the case in classical Indian philosophical traditions. The Sanskrit term ' ātman ' properly translated as self stands for whatever it is that is the essence of individual humans ( manuṣya ...
2006.12.14 The Indian philosophical tradition has been overlooked by Western commentators for too long. Most especially, there is a particular neglect of contemporary Indian philosophy. When we think of 'Indian philosophy' in general, what often comes to mind is only classical Indian thought.
Indigenous philosophy broadly refers to the ideas of Indigenous peoples pertaining to the nature of the world, human existence, ethics, ideal social and political structures, and other topics also considered by traditional academic philosophy. Unlike the philosophies of ancient Greece, India, and China, Indigenous philosophies did not spread ...
This paper engages with a little-known controversy between Jakob Stuchlik and Walter Slaje on the involvement of Erich Frauwallner, the renowned scholar of Indian philosophy (1898-1974), with NS ...
September 1989 · Southern Communication Journal William G. Kirkwood By revealing the link between truthfulness and spiritual liberation in Indian philosophy, this essay shows why truthfulness...
Ganeśwar Miśra † was educated at Patna University and London where he received his Ph.D. under A.J. Ayer. He taught at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar and was a past president of the Indian Philosophical Congress. J.N. Mohanty, is a Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, Philadelphia, and is a past President of the Indian Philosophical Congress and is a co-editor of Husserl Studies.
BUDDHISM IN INDIAN PHILOSOPHY: AN OVER REVIEW Dr. Janardhanarao Salla Dept. of Philosophy Andhra University Visakhapatnam Abstract : S. Radhakrishnan tries to absorb Buddhism into Hinduism. He undertook this task in Volume I of his magnum opus, Indian Philosophy.
xxxvii, 347 p. ; 22 cm. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2020-10-10 06:06:06 Associated-names Bilimoria, Puruṣottama
Indian philosophy Essays Siddharta's Connection With The Indian Culture And Philosophy 804 Words | 4 Pages our daily existence that made us swerve on a path that we never knew existed. The motivation of Herman Hesse to write Siddharta is his connection with the Indian culture and philosophy.
In this paper I suggest that New Materialism might profit from the thought of a brilliant 11th century Indian thinker, Abhinavagupta. Abhinavagupta offers a novel theory of selfhood and sentience—for his own world, as a way to solve the thorny conundrum of the mind-body gap, a problem these medieval Indians faced, no less than us today.
The term Indian philosophy (Sanskrit: Darshanas), may refer to any of several traditions of philosophical thought that originated in the Indian subcontinent, including Hindu philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, and Jain philosophy. Having the same or rather intertwined origins, all of these philosophies have a common underlying theme of Dharma, and ...