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48 Prabuddha Bharata

of Indian . It also emphasises the ur- have begun his book by quoting the first scene gency to engage with Eastern schools of thought of Macbeth. and break free of the lopsided emphasis on Anglo- Another problem with this book is that it phone and Eurocentric philosophising. has no lecture by any Indian philosopher or for Swami Narasimhananda that matter, by any Asian philosopher. Perhaps Editor, Prabuddha Bharata this is unconscious colonial erasure, or perhaps, even now, Indian philosophy is erroneously con- flated with Indic religious studies. For instance, Philosophers of Our Times the work now being done by Jonardon Ganeri on Edited by Ted Honderich medieval Indian logic and is par- Oxford University Press, Great Clar- adigm-shifting, and Ganeri revises the domain endon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP. of logic within philosophy. Despite this, Gan- UK. Website: https://global.oup. eri finds no mention in this book which asserts com. 2015. 384 pp. £21.99. hb. isbn that ‘If reading main-line philosophy is never 9780198712503. like reading a novel, it is something you can be prepared for’ (2). In his hurry to tutor us in the eviewing Ted Honderich’s anthology one methods of reading ‘main-line philosophy’, Hon- R understands why some of the Russell Group derich demonstrates a lack of of of universities had annihilated their philosophy the rationality aimed at by philosophers by ig- departments. Honderich’s book is an excellent noring Asian philosophers and especially con- place to begin understanding how stale and it- temporary philosophers who are refashioning erative most contemporary Western philosophers Hindu thought. have become. This, notwithstanding Honderich’s Philosophers included in this anthology range claim in his ‘Introduction’ (1–3): ‘Philosophy in my from , Simon Blackburn to Noam [Honderich’s] view is a greater concentration than Chomsky. It is in passing that we should note that that of science on the logic of ordinary — no foil to Western empiricism is possible through on clarity, consistency and validity, completeness, philosophy unless one brings Nyaya and Navya and generality’ (2). Nyaya into play. Honderich and his philosophers Accordingly, they can be understood by miss this focus on Nyaya and Navya Nyaya en- anyone interested in the hard questions of life: tirely and thus, Honderich’s anthology cannot ‘How is what it is like to be a bat related to the bat? really claim to be representative of the state of [Obviously referring to Thomas Nagel’sWhat Is It either philosophy or philosophers now. Like to Be a Bat? (1974)] … Where did begin? While rambling about philosophy in his ‘Intro- With spiders? … Is the problem of free will a solved duction’, Honderich suddenly attacks the genre problem of but a remaining problem of the novel again: ‘Reading all the lectures is for neurobiology? Are you a human being?’ (1). reading mainstream philosophy, which is indeed With these and other questions which are unlike reading a novel or anything else. ... They weird in the sense that S T Joshi (b. 1958) uses demonstrate the falsehood, perhaps the hopeful in another context, we begin a book meant to falsehood, of the [anecdotal] utterance of a noted represent the best of our times. It is es- scientist that philosophy is dead, a scientist un- sential to mention the literary critic Joshi since aware of the truth among others that the subject bats, spiders, and being human are all dealt with has always buried its undertakers’ (3). by Joshi in his work on bats, spiders, and being Honderich’s disparagement of the novel shows human. Moreover, Honderich disdains litera- that he has not read anyone from Fyodor Dos- ture. Thus the need to bring in Joshi’s of toevsky to Iris Murdoch. Otherwise, he would the weird. In the name of clarity, we have Hon- not have made these weird comments regarding derich mouthing unbeknownst to Honderich, the novel-form. As will be seen, Honderich and strangely tricky questions. Honderich should his philosophers have become the undertakers

380 PB March 2020 Reviews 49 of their own discipline through jabberwocky- or speak of the without venom and nonsense. One wonders what Hon- mentioning Thomas Nagel and Edith Stein re- derich means by mainstream philosophy when spectively, then that philosopher would be con- he has included the angry young man of phil- sidered a plagiarist. Honderich’s write-up on osophy, Chomsky in this weird anthology of age- Burge shows how Honderich has either delib- ing philosophers. erately or through colonially provoked amnesia Tyler Burge’s ‘Perception: Where Mind Begins’ forgotten about Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, or Shinto (43–57) derives from Indic thought-systems. about the mind. The chastisement that ‘ig- Burge reiterates the ideas of many Indian think- norance is no excuse’ apparently does not apply ers. One example will suffice. Burge’s reflections to first world thinkers. Now we return to Burge’s on the non-sentient mind have their roots in the exegesis of perception: works of Acharya Umaswati’s Tattvartha Sutra’s Where does mind begin? This seems like a nat- chapters on the soul, an early Jain scripture traced ural question. Rocks and fires, floating in empty to be between 2 CE and 5 CE. This is not to say space, are overwhelmingly the dominant large that Burge’s work is only based on the Tattvartha citizens of the universe. Most of us are confi- Sutra, but in its complacent but rational analysis dent that rocks and fires do not have minds. We of within both sentient and non-sen- humans have minds. Do any other terrestrial tient beings, Burge and Honderich who intro- beings have minds? If so, which ones? … duces Burge (41–2), do not have the humility to Do other types of terrestrial animals have say anywhere that their arguments are not ori- minds? If so, which ones? … ginal. Here is Honderich on Burge: Most of us think that apes and dolphins have We come finally to the answer to an initial ques- minds. And cats and dogs. The cats seem willful. tion. In the scale of things from rocks to us, rep- The dogs seem to want to be with us. Both have resentation or representational mind begins eyes that seem to express mindfulness. And we with bees, spiders, locusts, and other arthropods. hear all the time about how smart apes and dol- They are the simplest things to exhibit percep- phins are. Willfulness, wanting, expressiveness, tual representation, including constancies. smarts [sic] all seem to be signs of mind. What Implicit in all this is the conviction that there about birds, with their bird brains? What of fish can be perception without consciousness, and that with their lifeless eyes? What of snakes with we don’t know where on the scale consciousness their robotic, mindless-seeming reflexes? (43). as distinct from representation begins. The lecture is an instance of the lecturer’s resistance to over- Through humorous veridical ratiocination, intellectualizing in philosophy. If it is to me phil- Tyler Burge comes to this conclusion: osophy understood as concentration on ordinary In any case, it is not a scientific requirement on logic, it is also an instance of what can non-pejora- perception that it be conscious. We know that tively be called a scientizing of philosophy. Psych- bees and spiders have perception. We do not ology figures large in it, and its initial question is know whether they are conscious. Moreover, indeed a question that is at home in the theory of there is empirical reason to believe that some evolution, wherever else it may turn up. (42) perception in bees, and in us, is unconscious. Moreover, not all consciousness involves per- The initial question and the theory of evo- ception, or even representation. Awareness of the lution Honderich writes of have all been delib- felt quality of (as distinguished from propri- erated on by Asian philosophers long ago. But oceptive locating of pain) does not require repre- ensconced in tenured and well-funded academic sentational content or perceptual constancies (56). chairs often got through old boys’ clubs’ ‘quid pro quos’, no white philosopher need bother about Tyler Burge is entirely right in his conclusions, Asian thinkers. If any Indian philosopher were to but the question remains that these are fore- so much as speak of a bat in a philosophy paper, gone conclusions. Then how is Burge an original

PB March 2020 381 50 Prabuddha Bharata

thinker worth our attention? Even the Pre-Socrat- all statements such as ‘God is good’ or ‘God is ics in their own ways deliberated on whether ‘fires perfect’ can be reduced to the formula, ‘To be enjoy their dancing’ (44). So while Burge is a great God is to be’. In Thomas’s view, the wisdom of iterative thinker, he is not all what Ted Honderich sacra doctrina is not learning more of what can makes him out to be. be said about God, but in coming to appreciate ’s ‘Simple Truths, Hard Prob- more and more fully the mystery of God’s un- lems: Some Thoughts on Terror, Justice, and Self- knowable existence by exploring how language Defence’ (273–92) is the usual rant from someone falls short of knowing or naming God (84–5). who is unwilling to settle outside the US, but is willing to comment on poor nations while dol- Bernard McGinn does an excellent job in writ- ing out scholarships to those of his impoverished ing the history of the Summa which acolytes he considers are most Chomskian than is a massive work, containing over a million and Chomsky himself. In a moment of rare insight, a half words divided into three large parts con- Chomsky writes that he thought of calling his taining 512 topics (quaestiones) and no fewer than piece: ‘In Praise of Platitudes’ (274). In his linguis- 2,668 articles (articuli) dealing with particular tic theories elsewhere which Chomsky passes on issues (some topics are given only two articles; as his own, without ever referring to the that the longest receives seventeen). In the transla- each letter of the Sanskrit alphabet corresponds tion of the English Dominicans published in the to a ‘matrika’ and thus language is existentially early decades of the past century the Summa contingent, we have him at last having a break takes up 2,565 double-column pages. Even more from his usual narcissistic harangues. At least, he daunting is the vast literature that has been de- realises he is banal. voted to explaining the Summa. Although the This book reads like a penny dreadful. This work was contentious from the start, and its with the caveat, most penny dreadfuls were better history has had ups and downs, the Summa has than this weird anthology. never lacked for readers and commentators (2). Subhasis Chattopadhyay Despite the book’s length and its complexities, it exerts an influence on the Christian mind only as Thomas Aquinas’s Summa much as the works of Acharya Shankara continues Theologiae: A Biography to do so on the Hindu mind. This is a fact that Bernard McGinn McGinn, who is an expert on the historiography of Press, 41 Wil- Christianity, does not mention in the book under liam Street, Princeton, New Jersey review. Nonetheless, he summarises the effect of 08540. Website: https://press.princ- the Summa well: ‘The interest of Jewish philoso- eton.edu. 2014. 272 pp. £24.95. hb. phers in the thought of Thomas as a way to counter isbn 9780691154268. Averroistic readings of Aristotle that conflicted with ernard McGinn explains existence according the Hebrew Bible, something that had begun in to the Summa Theologiae: the late thirteenth century with thinkers like Rabbi BThe pure act of existence is not a concept, a prop- Hillel of Verona and Jehudah ben Daniel Romano, erty or an attribute. Rather, it is what we affirm continued on during the fourteenth century’ (136). when we make the judgment that God is. In this McGinn, in his hurry to really summarise the sense, questions 3 to 13 of the Prima Pars are an Summa, forgets to write that the Summa is the exercise in transcendental tautology in which we bridge between St Augustine of Hippo’s works learn that our attempts to capture the absolute and the works of the postmodernists like Han- simpleness of God in human language simply nah Arendt and Jean Francois Lyotard. With- cannot apply to God. Because there is no differ- out Thomas’s mediation, St Augustine would ence in God between his essence and his exist- not have come to us. And neither Arendt, nor ence, or between his perfections and his nature, Lyotard would have worked on Augustine and

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