Philosophy in Classical India: the Proper Work of Reason
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Philosophy in Classical India Recent years have seen the beginning of a radical reassessment of the philosophical literature of ancient and classical India. The analytical techniques of contemporary philosophy are being deployed towards fresh and original interpretations of the texts. This rational, rather than mystical, approach towards Indian philosophical theory has resulted in a need for a work which explains afresh its central methods, concepts and devices. This book meets that need. Assuming no prior familiarity with the texts, Jonardon Ganeri offers new interpretations which bring out the richness of Indian theory and the sophistication of its methods. Original in both approach and content, Philosophy in Classical India contains many new results, analyses and explanations. Discussing a diverse range of key Indian thinkers, Ganeri asks: What is the goal of their philosophical project and what are the methods of rational inquiry used in their pursuit? Recognising reason as the instrument of all philosophers, this book studies the active rational principles that drive classical Indian philosophy. The philosophers discussed here form a network of mutual reference and criticism, influence and response, and in their work one finds a broad vein of critical rationality in which reason is at once used constructively and to call itself into question. The inquiries of the classical Indian philosophers into the possibilities of human reason are considered afresh: new philosophical paradigms are unravelled, new applications for the concept of reason are discovered, and a common philosophical vocabulary is thereby enriched. Philosophy in Classical India rescues a story suppressed in Orientalist discourses of the East – the story of reason in a land too often defined as reason’s Other. Jonardon Ganeri read mathematics at Cambridge before pursuing graduate studies in philosophy at London and Oxford. He is the author of Semantic Powers: Meaning and the Mesans of Knowing in Classical Indian Philosophy (Clarendon Press, 1999). He is currently Spalding Fellow in Comparative Religions, Clare Hall, Cambridge. Philosophy in Classical India The proper work of reason Jonardon Ganeri London and New York First published 2001 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “Disclaimer: For copyright reasons, some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook.” “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2001 Jonardon Ganeri All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-15827-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-18011-9 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-24034-4 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-24035-2 (pbk) Contents Introduction 1 1The motive and method of rational inquiry 7 1.1 Early recognition of a ‘practice of reason’ 7 1.2 Rationality in the Nya-ya-sutra 10 1.3 Rationality and the ends of life 15 1.4 Perception 17 1.5 Mind, attention and the soul 22 1.6 Rationality and extrapolation 25 1.7 Rationality and debate 28 1.8 Reason, scripture and testimony 35 1.9 Reason’s checks and balances 37 Further reading 40 2Rationality, emptiness and the objective view 42 2.1 Thought and reality 42 2.2 Emptiness and the objective view 43 2.3 Rationality in Madhyamaka 47 2.4 On causation 51 2.5 The impossibility of proof 58 2.6 A new paradox of motion 63 2.7 Self-refutation 66 Further reading 68 3The rational basis of metaphysics 71 3.1 Order in nature 71 3.2 The categorial hierarchy 72 3.3 The structure of the world 77 3.4 The taxonomy of natural kinds 79 3.5 Absence as a type of entity 82 3.6 Higher-order absence 85 vi Philosophy in classical India 3.7 Navya-Nya-ya logic 89 3.8 Number 91 Further reading 95 4Reduction, exclusion and rational reconstruction 97 4.1 How to practise poverty in metaphysics 97 4.2 A skeletal ontology 98 4.3 Marking and similarity 100 4.4 The role of language in conceptual construction 104 4.5 The exclusion theory of meaning 106 4.6 Sentence meaning 111 4.7 Conditions on rational extrapolation 114 4.8 Reasoning from specifics 118 4.9 Are reason–target relations law-like? 121 4.10 The problem of grounding 123 Further reading 126 5Rationality, harmony and perspective 128 5.1 A rationality of reconciliation 128 5.2 The many-sided nature of things 128 5.3 Disagreement defused 130 5.4 The epistemology of perspective 134 5.5 The logic of assertion 137 5.6 Assertion and the unassertible 141 5.7 The mark of a good reason 144 5.8 Integration and complete knowledge 147 Further reading 149 6Reason in equilibrium 151 6.1 Reason and the management of doubt 151 6.2 The burden of proof 153 6.3 Criteria for rational rejection 155 6.4 Supposition and pretence 158 6.5 A new doxastic ascent 159 6.6 Epistemic equilibrium 162 Further reading 167 Notes 169 Texts 184 Bibliography 192 Index 203 Introduction This is a book about philosophical theory in classical India. It is an attempt to understand the nature of the classical Indian philosophical endeavour, and in so doing to reveal a richness of projects and a diversity of methods. Reason is the instrument of all philosophers, but conceptions of the nature and function of reason vary along with varying ideas about the work for which reason is properly employed. Manu, the lawmaker, said that those whose only guide is reason should be banished from the company of the virtuous. That is the view too of the great narrators of the Indian epics. Reason unchecked was seen as a threat to the stability of Brahminical social order, as the tool of heretics and troublemakers. But the epic horror of pure reason was a disdain not for reason itself, but only for its capricious use, to undermine belief rather than to support it, to criticise and not to defend. Philosophy in India, or so I argue in Chapter 1, flourished in the space this distinction affords. The mortal finger in Michelangelo’s Creation stretches out, but cannot touch the divine hand. Is this an appropriate metaphor for reason itself? Does the subjectivity that goes along with being situated in the world preclude our attaining through reason an objective conception of it? Is the idea that human reason can find nature intelligible in some fundamental way misguided? This ancient problem is but one of the leitmotivs of philosophical inquiry in classical India, where radical critiques of reason are as plentiful as more moderate applications. Brahman, the still divinity, the Upanisadic symbol for objectivity itself, is that from which ‘before they reach it, words turn back, together with the mind’.1 But if there are limits to language and reason, can we by reason come to know what they are and where they lie? Or are the limits of reason themselves beyond reason’s limit? Can it be rational to strive to transcend the boundaries of reason, to attempt what one knows to be impossible? If reason is by its very nature limited, then perhaps the subversion of reason itself becomes a rational end. That appears to be the conclusion of Nagarjuna, the founder of Madhyamaka Buddhism, whose philosophical method I examine in Chapter 2. He reasons that the constructs of reason are as empty as the magician’s hat, and he welcomes the predictable retort that his own reasoning is empty too. 2 Philosophy in classical India Other paradigms abound in India of the nature of philosophical inquiry and the proper work of reason. Some are familiar, for instance the instrumentalist conception of reason as promoted by Kautilya, a royal minister, strategist and educator. Others, less so. In Chapter 3, I show how the Vaisesika metaphysicians find in reason a tool for the construction of a formal ontology. A hierarchical theory of categories and natural taxonomies, alleged to be the metaphysics encoded in the Sanskrit language itself, is interpreted graphically, giving metaphysics a formal basis. The Yogacara Buddhist, Dinnaga is, by contrast, an ontological reductionist and a nominalist. He is uncompromising in his search for unity and simplicity in philosophical explanation, and he uses the method of rational reconstruction to rebuild our old conceptual superstructures on new, leaner, foundations. His system is my concern in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 concerns the Jaina philosophers, who look to reason as an instrument of harmonisation. The ancient philosophical controversies – so resistant to solution, so intractable to the up-front reasoning of debate, argument and evidence – call, it seems, for a new rationality, one whose function is to subvert the way ordinary language works, making explicit the hidden parameters in assertion, and so enabling the reasoner to harmonise apparently conflicting beliefs. The task of reason is again different in the new epistemology of the later classical writers. The problem now is whether the norms of reason can themselves be rationally justified, and the idea to be defended is that reason sustains a wide reflective equilibrium of beliefs, actions, principles and theories.