Plurality of subjects in Mīmāṃsā: Kiyotaka Yoshimizu 2007

Is the plurality of subjects compatible with the idea of a Vedāntic kind of liberation (in which there seems to be no distinction among different souls)? And can there be an absolute brahman if there are still distinct subjects?

I just read Kiyotaka Yoshimizu's Kumārila's Reevaluation of the Sacrifice and the Veda from a Vedānta Perspective (in Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta, edited by Bronkhorst and Preisendanz, 2007). The paper elaborates on thematics close to the ones dealt with by Roque Mesquita (Die Idee der Erlösung bei Kumārilabhaṭṭa, WZKS 1994) and John Taber (Kumārila the Vedāntin?, in the same Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta) and adds to the debate Yoshimizu's close knowledge of Kumārila in general and of his less studied works in particular. The article focuses in fact on the Ṭupṭīkā, Kumārila's commentary on the last part of the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā sūtra, and compares it with the fragments of the Bṛhaṭṭīkā and with the Tantravārttika.
Kumārila is the chief exponent of the Bhāṭṭa school of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā and the Mīmāṃsā is mainly a school of Vedic exegesis. The Vedic sacrifices necessarily require someone responsible for their performance and responsibility is explicitly said to be individual. In other words, the Vedic injunctions enjoin specific individuals and not human beings in general. Thus, they require a plurality of subjects.
However, Yoshimizu shows how Kumārila accepts the notion of a paramātman 'supreme Self' in different passages of his works. paramātman can be used as a synonym of God, Īśvara, but is mostly used as a synonym of the all-encompassing brahman. The latter would contradict the plurality of subjects which is required by Mīmāṃsā.
Thus, we need to imagine that Kumārila's paramātman does not entail monism. What else could it mean, then, to say that liberation is the "attainment of the supreme Self" (paramātmaprāpti, TV, quoted in fn. 6). Given that the paramātman seems to be in all authors who mention it a single entity, the TV claim seems to entail that everyone achieves the dignity of the single paramātman. How can this not contradict pluralism?
One might suggest that pluralism only exists in the saṃsāra, but could a pluralistic ontology be compatible with its monistic evolution, given that the paramātman is said to exist also along the saṃsāra? Would it make sense to think of living beings as leaving the proscenio of their plural world one after the other, in order to dissolve into the paramātman?
Alternatively, one should think of Kumārila's claim as entailing an ontology akin to the one later known as Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, i.e., only God exists independently, but human beings are his features (viśeṣa) and are, hence, not identical with him.

Can you think of other ways out?

P.S. Yoshimizu kindly informed me that he might elaborate further on the topic of the paramātman a new paper for the next World Sanskrit Conference in Bangkok.

Kant's first critique in Sanskrit—प्रमितिप्रकारानुक्रमणिका

गणितमिति प्रमाणमूलम्, यच्च गणितेन प्रमितम्, तत् सुस्थमेव । सुस्थत्वं तु न प्रमितवस्त्वपेक्षं किन्तु प्रमात्रपेक्षमिति प्रागुक्तम् ।
अत एव यद्यत् वस्तुविषये प्रमितम् (यथा द्रव्यत्वम्, संख्या, करणत्वमित्यादि), तत्सर्वम् प्रमातर्येवाध्यवस्यते ।
तस्मात् प्रमातर्येव करणत्वेत्यादिप्रमितिप्रकाराः सन्ति । यथाहि −अग्निर्धूमस्य करणमितिप्रमितेर् मूलम् नाग्निधूमौ, किन्तु प्रमातुः करणत्वप्रमितिप्रकाराः ("categories") ।
काः प्रमितिप्रकाराः ? भूतकाले यवनदेशे, प्रसिद्धदर्शनिकारिस्तोतेलेस्-महोदयेन निर्णयानामनुक्रमणिका लिखिता । एष तस्यानुक्रमणिका−

(Aristotle's categories, वीकिपेद्य)

कन्तमहोदयस्य प्रमितिप्रकाराणामनुक्रमणिका तत्सादृशी, परन्तु कन्तमहोदयस्यानुक्रमाणिका प्रमातुः प्रमितिप्रकाराणामस्ति, वस्त्वनपेक्षा च ।

Kant's categories

न्यायवैशेषिकानां पदार्थानुक्रमणिकारिस्तोतेलेस-महोदयस्य निर्णयानुक्रमणिका सादृशी । उभे वस्तुनः वर्णनम्, प्रमात्रनपेक्षं च ।

The self is not changeless

If the self is changeless and eternal, how can it really act and know? If it does not really act nor know (as claimed by Sāṅkhya authors), how can it be conscious? If it is just conscious of itself, with no further content, who could desire liberation? Would you be satisfied of an eternal act of self-awareness, with no further content?

Mīmāṃsā authors took a different way and stated that the self is not changeless. Not in the abvoe way, at least.
A great contemporary Mīmāṃsā scholar, K.T. Pandurangi, writes:

"The concept of substance of the Bhāṭṭas and the Prābhākaras is the same as that of the Nyāya-vaiśeṣikas. However, in the case of ātman, which is considered as a substance, the Bhāṭṭas accept pariṇāma or avasthāntara in the process of cognition" (Pandurangi 2006, p. 104). "[T]here is am important difference between the Bhāṭṭa concept of ātman and the Nyāya-vaiśeṣikas concept of it. While cognition is an attribute of ātman according to Nyāya-vaiśeṣikas, it is a modification or a state of ātman according to Bhāṭṭas'' (Pandurangi 2006, p. 145).

Pandurangi's Pūrvamīmāṃsā from an interdisciplinary point of view is an excellent book. Unfortunately, very much like Indian classical works, it rarely mentions the exact source of a certain statement. In this case, it is probably Kumārila's Ślokavārttika, Ātmavāda:

It is not prohibited to say that the self is not fix (nitya) |

if what one means is just that it can evolve (vikriyā), [since] there is no cessation of it by that ||

If there were an absolute destruction of it, there would be destruction of the actions performed and accrual of actions non-performed |

but not in the case it reaches a different stage, like in the ordinary experience of childhood, youth and [adulthood] (when the same person is said to be a child, then a young person and then an adult) ||

(nānityaśabdavācyatvam ātmano vinivāryate | vikriyāmātravācitve na hy ucchedo 'sya tāvatā || syātām atyantanāśe 'sya kṛtanāśākṛtāgamau | na tv avasthāntaraprāptau loke bālayuvādivat || 22cd-23cd)

On the subject in Mīmāṃsā, see this post (on Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā views) and the tag "subject".

Shall we speak of "Oriental" philosophy?

Does it make any sense to speak of "Oriental philosophies" or even of "Oriental philosophy"?

I tend to hate the label "Oriental", since this seems to convey little information and since this little information also happens to be wrong. It conveys little information because if one hears the word "Oriental", one will only know that the topic one is dealing with occurred outside (America, Sub-Saharian Africa and) Western Europe (with the boundaries of Western Europe being themselves uncertain). It might have happened in Turkey, Egypt or Indonesia.
It conveys wrong information, because it implicitly presupposes a uniformity between cultures which have little to do with each other (e.g., Mongolian "shamans" and Arabian classical poetry). Furthermore, it implicitly presuppose that whatever culture belongs to the "Orient" is more distant to the "Occident" than to any other "Oriental" culture. But this is not the case, and Arabic philosophy has been influenced by Aristotle and not by Lao Tse.
To sum up, "Orient" only works as the alter ego of the "Occident". As shown by Said, its use only informs us about what "Occidentals" think (and often it tells us a lot about what they like and dislike). In this sense, the "Orientals" are akin to the "Extraterrestrials" of science fiction. The latter are our projction (for instance, they are often technologically advanced, like we would like to be; but look ugly, because we are too vain to accept not to be the best looking living beings).

This being said, is there any residual use of the word "Orient"? Perhaps, insofar as it forces us to reconsider what is different than us. The word "Ancient" may work in a similar way. What is "Ancient" and what is "Oriental" is "not-us". If one does not stop at the stereotype and accepts taking a trip into the little-known, one might find out a lot about oneself and even happen to learn something about Sanskrit, Buddhism, Shinto, etc.

Do you ever speak of "Orient"?
On labels, see here (on my dissatisfaction with areal studies) and here (on "Indology").

Intellectual biography

I have been forced to reflect on my intellectual biography while working on an application for a scholarhip. Here is what I wrote:

After completing my MA on Śaiva Siddhānta (an annotated translation and study of Sadyojyotis' Mokṣakārikā together with Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha's commentary thereon, dealing primarily with arguments aiming at establishing God's existence), I prosecuted my studies of Indian Philosophy and of Philosophy in general. This lead me to a second degree in Western Philosophy, whose final thesis was on Testimony in a 17th c. work, the Logique elaborated in Port Royal by D. Arnauld and P. Nicole. I continued working on Linguistic Communication as a means of knowledge ever since, primarily in the field of Indian Philosophy, but with constant references to philosophy in general.

My studies on Linguistic Communication (śabdapramāṇa) evolved in various directions, i.e., in broad investigations on the nature and evolution of this means of knowledge in all schools of Indian philosophy and particularly in Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya, in linguistic studies on language as conceived in Indian thought, especially in Mīmāṃsā, in epistemological, theological and hermeneutic matters related to this instrument of knowledge.

In order to understand the background of the Mīmāṃsā perspective on language and on Language as instrument of knowledge, I also worked more in-depth on this philosophical school in general. I started reading and translating the whole Tantrarahasya, a primer written by Rāmānujācārya on Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā. A book on this text containing a long introductory study, a critical edition and an annotated translation, together with indexes and glossary, is currently under review for Brill.

I then read extensive portions of Rāmānujācārya's direct sources, i.e., Pārthasārathi Miśra's Śāstradīpikā and Śālikanātha Miśra's Prakaraṇapañcikā, of the other available work by Rāmānujācārya (his Nāyakaratna commentary on Pārthasārathi Miśra's Nyāyaratnamālā) and of Rāmānujācārya's indirect sources (in decreasing order of completeness: Kumārila's Ślokavārttika together with Pārthasārathi Miśra's, Sucarita Miśra's and Uṃveka Bhaṭṭa's commentaries; Maṇḍana Miśra's Vidhiviveka together with Vācaspati Miśra's Nyāyakaṇikā thereon; Maṇḍana Miśra's Bhāvanāviveka; Kumārila's Tantravārttika with Someśvara's commentary, Prābhākara Miśra's Bṛhatī with Śālikanātha's Ṛjuvimalā thereon, Kumārila's Ṭupṭīkā). Within Mīmāṃsā, I worked primarily on Language as an instrument of knowledge, on linguistic theories about sentence-meaning and about exhortation, on the hermeneutics of Vedic injunctions, on absence as an instrument of knowledge, on error and on the phenomenological role of the subject in epistemology and hermeneutics. In all these cases, I have been aiming at bridging Indian philosophy and Western one, by using a terminology which could be appropriate to both cases and by trying to address Indian texts as philosophical texts, demanding to be understood in a philosophical way.

While working on Mīmāmsā as a school of philosophy, I noticed how stratified some of its key concepts are and hence started investigating into their history. I therefore dedicated a study to the evolution of vidhi and of its classifications and sub-types in Classical and Post Classical Mīmāṃsā and one to the evolution of prasaṅga and tantra in Jaimini, Śabara, and Later Mīmāṃsā, along with their parallel history within Grammar and Śrauta Sūtras. Both studies proved how Grammar, Mīmāṃsā and Kalpasūtra texts (with particular reference to Śrautasūtras and Dharmasūtras) share a common prehistory, as appears evidently in their shared terminology and methodological approaches.

Working on linguistic theories also lead me outside Mīmāṃsā proper, so that I read and translated parts of Bhaṭṭa Jayanta's Nyāyamañjarī (henceforth NM), especially of the books 3, 5 and 6 (all dedicated to language). I am currently translating the first part of NM 5, on exhortation and I am working on the translation of the second part of NM 6, on sentence-meaning, with Alessandro Graheli (University of Vienna). In this connection, together with some colleagues, I am about to submit for financing a research project focusing on the critical edition, translation and study of the fifth book of the Nyāyamañjarī. The project has already been presented to the “Open Pages in South Asian Studies” seminar held in Moscow, April 2011 and will be presented also at the World Sanskrit Conference to be hold in Delhi, January 2012.

Due to my interest for how the history of philosophy influences one's common-sense, I have also been working on theories about “nature” in Indian thought and how they differ from coeval and contemporary theories in the Western world.

Among my future projects are also a translation of the first pāda of Prabhākara's commentary on the Mīmāṃsāsūtra. Prābhākara's text is poorly transmitted and edited and is in itself extremely terse, yet it is a fundamental text of Indian philosophy, so that I plan to work on it as soon as my expertise in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā (acquired through Rāmānujācārya's and Śālikanātha's texts) is firm enough. Symmetrically, I plan to enlarge my field of investigation also by taking into account the later development of Mīmāṃsā in South India, when Mīmāṃsā and especially Prābhākara tenets have been embedded in Vaiṣṇava schools. In this connection I started translating Vedānta Deśika's Seśvaramīmāṃsā with Dr. Marion Rastelli (Austrian Academy of Sciences). Vedānta Deśika is one of the main theologians of the Viśiṣṭādvaita school and I hope to be able to better understand the link between belief in God and belief in the authority of Sacred Texts (deemed to be independent of their author) in post Classical Mīmāṃsā.

I do not think that critical editions of texts are an end in themselves, but I am firmly convinced that one's understanding of a text may be very much improved if it is soundly grounded. Hence, I improved the existing edition of Rāmānujācārya's Tantrarahasya by reading the only extant manuscript (in Telegu script) and I consulted manuscripts (in Malayalam, Śāradā and Devanagarī script) whenever I have been working on the Nyāyamañjarī.

Apart from the horrible experience of having to write it down, how would your intellectual biography sound like? Have you ever tried to detect its Leit-motives?

What happened between Śālikanātha and Rāmānujācārya?

As discussed in two previous posts (here and here) Śālikanātha Miśra (IX c.?) dedicates several pages to the ontology of the ātman. These pages appear neither innovative nor particularly original, yet Śālikanātha must have deemed the topic important enough to include it in his Prakaraṇapañcikā. By contrast, Rāmānujācārya (after the XIII c.) hardly if ever uses the term ātman and does not discuss at all any ontological argument about it. That the topic of the subject interests him is, however, proved by the many pages about its hermeneutical and epistemological phenomenology.

Why does Śālikanātha feel the need to add ontological arguments, probably borrowed from the Nyāya school? And why does not Rāmānujācārya feel the same need? What happened between the two?

The following answer is more than tentative and it is based mostly on the method of investigating into the history of ideas (Ideengeschichte). It is easy to see that one of Śālikanātha's principal opponents, namely the Buddhist Pramāṇavādin, is altogether absent in Rāmānujācārya's work. In fact, Rāmānujācārya was active in South India and at a time (after the XIII c.) when Buddhism was no longer a philosophical concurrent. Consequently, Śālikanātha might have felt the need to defend the ātman also from an ontological point of view, in order to resist to the Buddhist anātmavāda, whereas Rāmānujācārya was active at a time in which the existence of an ātman was common sense among philosophers. Consequently, he could rather focus on its epistemological and hermeneutic phenomenology.

Vincent Eltschinger has attempted (in his book Penser l'Autorité des Ecritures) a similar solution of the different approaches to the Buddha's word in Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. Do you deem it legitimate to use extra-philosophical arguments to interpret a philosopher's thought?

On Śālikanātha on the ātman, see here and here. I dedicated several posts to V. Eltschinger's book. See for instance, here (first post on the book), here (discussing why we need Sacred Texts) and here (discussing an expert's different fields of expertise).

Ontology and phenomenology of the ātman

A bright colleague of mine (Daniele Cuneo) pointed out that Śālikanātha's passage in yesterday's post might as well be interpreted as purely ontological. The point could be that the subject is fix and that it only seems manyfold in its epistemological role.
In fact, the emphasis on the subject as knower might be interpreted as just instrumental to the ontological foundation of the ātman. That this is not the case is at least suggested by the history of the Mīmāṃsā reflection on this subject, which originates from Vedic hermeneutic concerns and not from ontological ones. Historically, it is more probably the case that ontological arguments have been added in order to firmly ground the subject's phenomenological role in epistemology and ritual hermeneutics.
How comes, then, that the ontological approach is added to the phenomenological one? Hypothetically, one might propose that Śālikanātha adds to the standard Prābhākara argumentation, based on the Veda and, therefore, on the phenomenology of the subject and on its role in epistemology, a further line of argumentation, based on ontology and inspired by the arguments of its opposers, mainly Naiyāyika authors. Consider the following sequence of arguments (with no interruption in between) and note the shift to the usage of ātman in the ontological section:

(Vedic-based argument:) In regard to someone who [performs] no action, agency and experience would be [merely] hypothetical. [But] an agent and an experiencer, presupposed by the [Vedic] sentence about the one having the sacrifice's weapons [which refers to the ātman as the sacrificer and as the one who will enjoy heavenly bliss],¹ must be determined, hence the mention of recognition has been put forth.

(Nyāya-influenced argument:) And when this self has been recognised, then the self [endowed with] consciousness is its characteristic. Nor does it arise at a certain point from it (self) alone. For an effect whose [single] cause is always proximate would not arise [only] from time to time. […] Therefore this self, which is the inherent cause [of consciousness], requires a [further] cause, one that is inherent to it.²

1 “This sacrificer who has the sacrifice's weapons (the sacrifice's substances and tools), will go to the heavenly world quickly” (sa eṣa yajñāyudhī yajamāno 'ñjasā svargaṃ lokaṃ yāti). The sentence is discussed by Śabara, ŚBh ad MS 1.1.5. I could not locate a Vedic source for it.

2 According to the Nyāya school, there are three sorts of causes: 1. the samavāyikāraṇa 'inherent cause', such as the two halves of a pot, which inhere in the effect (the pot); 2. the asamavāyikāraṇa 'cause which does not inhere [in the effect, but rather inheres in the inherent cause], such as the colour of the two halves, which inheres in them, but not directly in the pot; 3. the nimittakāraṇa 'necessary condition', such as the potter.

Why does Śālikanātha feel the need to add ontological arguments? (My tentative answer will follow shortly, but I would be glad to read your opinion about it).

On more insights about the subject (this time in the Mānavadharmaśāstra) by Daniele Cuneo, see here.

Ontological or epistemological arguments for the subject?

Rāmānujācārya definitely favours a non-ontological approach to the problem of the subject. For him, the subject is what one becomes due to hearing and obeying to Vedic prescriptions.
What about his more systematic predecessor, Śālikanātha?

Since its very beginning, the chapter he dedicates to this topic (the Tattvāloka within his Prakaraṇapañcikā) seems to look for a balance between the two opposite tendencies. In its second verse, the first two padas are rather ontologically oriented, whereas the last two stress the role of the subject as the agent of cognitions we can experience in every day life:

The self, distinguished from intellect, sense faculties and from the body, is an all-pervasive substance |

different according to each field (of experience) [i.e., according to each empirical individual] , it shines forth in the act of understanding of the objects ||

(buddhīndriyaśarīrebhyo bhinna ātmā vibhur dhruvaḥ | nānābhūtaḥ pratikṣetram arthavittiṣu bhāsate || 2 ||)

Moreover, the subject is repeatedly identified as the knower (jñātṛ) and its necessity is demonstrated through epistemological arguments (such as the need for a reunification of different sense-cognitions and the possibility of memory).

How can the two approaches coexist?

On Rāmānujācārya's approach, see here. For further post on the topic of subjectivity, check the label "subject".

Struggling with one's preliminary understanding

One of the dilemmas of every philosophical paper is that it has to presuppose a general understanding of the terms it wants to investigate upon. This preliminary understanding is the conditio sine qua non that enables one's investigation but at the same time it hampers it because it is pre-critical and because its users might not be aware of its philosophical burden. So, one might want to describe the phenomenological approach to the ethical aspect of the sacrificer in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā and provisionally call the latter a "soul". In this way, each reader will project onto it lots of other thoughts (of Jewish or Christian origin, of Aristotelian or Cartesian influence…) and reify into an ontological category what was meant to be an ethical one. Even more risky is the fact that s/he will do it without being aware of it, just because of the intrinsic power of the word one has chosen.

However, one cannot define each word if not through other words. Hence, one will never be able to speak a natural language whose terms are not at all carrying the burden of their history. What to do? First, I suggest, one should be aware of the history of the terms one is using, in order not to be mislead in the same way as the naive reader described above. Second, one might choose to add a word of caution for the readers in case of particularly significant terms. The following is what I would say in the case of the Prābhākara "soul":

In the present case, terms such as “subject” will be defined in a closer way in due course and it will be eventually shown that the Prābhākara understanding of them might at times be strikingly different than the one common in contemporary Western thought. For the time being, suffice it to say that “subject” and any other term referring to it (such as “psychic”) are used just for lack of any better option and that they are to be intended in a very neutral sense, as referring to the “agent” (once again, an ambiguous term) of actions, acts of will and acts of cognition.

What do you do in your philosophical translation and essays?

On the importance of an historical approach, see here. On the Prābhākara concept of "subject", see here.

Philosophy and Anthropology on the Body

I happened to read a great paper by Vanessa Grotti (in this volume) about the way Christianity and one's feeling of oneself as a body interact among sedentarised tribes of the Amazonia. After the first pages, the paper is really a page-turner and raises many interesting issues. Beside the political ones (such as the legitimacy of the missionaries' intervention in pre-existing societies), I have been captured by the thematic core of the article, i.e., that one's body is not a stable entity.
"Wild people" and young children seem to be (yet) able to shift into another body. For instance, a "wild man" cannot be seen in the forest, because it becomes something else, perhaps an animal; and a young children is assumed to be able to become a monkey. Becoming sedentary (which is tantamount to become Christians, in that context) implies, on the other hand, becoming "educated" and, hence, loosing the possibilities an instable body can grant. The idea is really fascinating and it made me re-think our culturally loaden concept of "body". Nowadays, we might be inclined to think that a body is just an external object, clearly distinguished from others. The fact that living beings have bodies and that inert matter can be said to have a body only in a metaphorical sense, might add the idea that a body is an external object wherein organic processes take place. But this is not the only possible understanding of body. "Mainstream" Indian authors (Mīmāṃsakas, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas, Vedāntins…) tend to speak, instead, of the body as the receptacle of fruition, i.e., the place where experience (bhoga) can take place.
What is a "body" for an Amerindian? If I understood correctly V.G.'s article, it is a vehicle for experience. The inner "soul" can move from one body to another. But this "soul" seems to be just "animation". The characteristics of one's personality depend, by contrast, on the body one is using. A "wild man" becomes "educated", if we accepts the bodily habits of "educated" people. But he will turn back into a "wild being" if he goes back into the forest and, consequently, turn into an animal. In this sense, one's "soul" seems to be capable of descending in different bodies as a medium would do it, i.e., assuming all the features of the body s/he is entering.
To put it short, "body" is an ambiguous word and its understanding is culturally loaden. Do anthropologists engage with this sort of objections or is "body" a well-established anthropological term?

Photo found in http://www.ucsf.edu.
On plants' "bodies", see here. On the conclusion that plants do not have bodies, since they cannot experience, see here. On bodies as conceived by Materialists in Indian philosophy, see here.

Memory and experience

If we had an intellectual intuition (that is, a direct perception non mediated by any sense organ) of another person's memory's contents, would these contents appear as memory to us? No, answers the kaśmīri philosopher Utpaladeva, because the character of being past is not enough to identify a memory. On top of that, one needs the connection with an experience. We only identify as memory what is connected with our previous experience. A sheer object would not count as one. See below for a possible objection.


The Vivṛti (long gloss) of Utpaladeva on his ĪPK (see below for references):

It is not the case that in memory an object previously experienced is manifested in its sheer own form (kevala), like in an intellectual intuition (yogijñāna) having a past object as its content. For, in this way (if the object devoid of any connotation were manifested), it would not have its character of memory. It is said that in memory, the quality of being past only [occurs] through the experience, although the object is in itself changeless. Hence, the manifestation of the experience is here useful. Therefore [the author of the short gloss] says: "And a previously experienced object, together with the experience". And memory has the form of a cognition, therefore he speaks of "light of memory" (my translation).

(pūrvānubhūtasyaivārthasya kevalasya na smṛtau yogijñāna ivātītārthaviṣaye prakāśaḥ. tathā hi smṛtitvaṃ na syāt. anubhavamukhenaiva cārthasya svayaṃ sthiratve ’pi smṛtāv atītatvatvam ucyata ity anubhavaprakāśa evātropayogī. tad āha “pūrvānubhūtaś cārtho ’nubhavena saha” iti | smṛtiś ca jñānarūpaivety āha “smṛtiprakāśa” iti. The text has been edited by R. Torella, Festschrift Brunner, 2002).



Well, one could object that some psychological experiments have shown that in case one is provided with a single content, unconnected with experience and only characterised as past (for instance, an old photograph), one tends to make up a fake memory around it. Hence, the distinction may be less clear-cut… However, the same experiments show that the "trap" works by far better if one includes in the photograph the person one is analysing, thus strongly suggesting that that content is linked with her experience.
What do readers think?

On the metaphor of light as referring to cognition, see here.
I have dealt with memory and subjectivity in other posts. See here.

Metaphor of light

How pervasive is the metaphor of light for the activity of cognition? In Śaiva texts, not only is the metaphore absolutely common, but the authors even elaborate on it, using several different synonyms, at first sight with no different denotations.

The following is a stanza of Utpaladeva's Stanzas on the Recognition of the Lord (Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā).

Nor is the appearance of a remembered thing possible, if there is a separation [of the past experience] from memory, |
Therefore this knower is the unity of cognitions pertaining to different times || 1.4.3 ||

(na ca yuktaṃ smṛter bhede smaryamāṇasya bhāsanam | tenaikyaṃ bhinnakālānāṃ saṃvidāṃ veditaiṣa saḥ ||)

Next comes his Vṛtti (short commentary) thereon:

And the object which has been experienced before [and] which appears now together with that experience in the light of the memory regarding that time, must be unseparated from memory, because something separated from the light cannot shine. In this way, the unity of the cognitions such as experience and memory is the Self, the knower.

(pūrvānubhūtaś cārtho 'nubhavena saha tatkālikasmṛtiprakāśe 'vabhāsamānaḥ smṛtyabhinna eva prakāśād bhinnasya prakāśamānatānupapatteḥ. evam anubhavasmṛtyādisaṃvidām aikyaṃ sa eva cātmā vedakas.)
(Text edited by R. Torella, 2007; my translations)

The general idea is that something insentient cannot acquire the quality of being intelligible, because the process of cognition is not seen as involving an active side (the knower) and a purely passive side (the object known), but as an 'event', during which the object known becomes 'luminous'. Something intrinsically non-luminous would never be able to become luminous. Hence, even in matter there must be some latent trace of light. Hence, all is pervaded by the Self's light. This makes the Recognition with the Lord possible.

Do readers see any different connotations among these words?

On the topic of the argument from memory in Śaiva texts, see here.

Prescriptions and subjects

The Prābhākara texts claim that a subject becomes a person only upon being enjoined.

The Prābhākara literature does not further elaborate on the ontological existence of subjectivity prior to the injunction. Apparently, Prābhākaras were not concerned with a pre public stage of subjectivity, which is a sort of psychological noumenon. They focused on the full-blown personhood, which entails being aware of oneself as oneself and being part of an intersubjective net of relationships, which is only possible upon being enjoined. From an ontological point of view, however, one might admit the existence of a basic subject, with 'subject' in the Medieval sense of what is the locus for the action of something else (in this case, for the predication of the prescription). Such a subject would not be aware of himself/herself as a person, but would have some sort of basic intentional consciousness. In the Prābhākara terminology, this stage could be identified with the consciousness of oneself as knower that is involved in every cognitive act. IN fact, according to the Prābhākara epistemology, every cognitive act is thought to be reflexive and, hence, to necessarily entail a knower.

Thus, from an ontological point of view, one might suggest that a young child starts becoming aware of things around her/him and, hence, implicitly, of the fact that s/he is experiencing them. It is only through other people's injunctions, though, that s/he becomes aware of that experiencer as being himself/herself. This awareness of herself/himself, in summary, embeds the cognitive capacity within an intersubjectively shared personhood.

On children and subjects, see here.

Unity of the subject of memory and experience

The argument from memory has possibly been historically the most powerful tool in favour of the persistence of a subject through time. And this not only in the West, but also in India.

Raffaele Torella has recently identified and edited some large fragments of the previously unedited vivṛti (long gloss) of Utpaladeva on his own Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā (The Strophes about the Lord's Recognition). The fragment edited in Tantric Studies in Memory of Helène Brunner begins with the following passage (my translations, R.Torella's own one has not been published yet):

The author [of the Strophes] shows that:
1. at the time of recollection, there cannot be any difference [between the subject who is recollecting now a certain pot and the one who saw it in the past], because what is manifested in the present memory is the appareance of the object further determined [as having been perceived in] a previous time,
2. the same physical object of both the appearances [of it] in the [past] experience and in the [present] memory implies the unity of both.
By doing that, he proves that the [past] seer and the [present] recollector are one and the same.

(smṛtikāle ca pūrvakālāvacchedenārthābhāsasya samarthitasya vārtamānikasmṛtiprakāśād bhedo nopapadyata ity anubhavasmṛtyābhāsayoḥ śarīrībhūta eko ’rthaḥ tayor apy ekatam ākṣipatīti copadarśayan draṣṭāraṃ smartāraṃ caikam upapādayati.)

In other words, the object of memory is the same that has been experienced before. The only additional feature it displays is the fact that it is recollected as being related to a previous time. Since no one else could have access to that past object, apart from the one who saw it originally, the recollector and the original perceiver must be one and the same person.

The above translation has been modified after a discreet reader pointed out that "congruous" is a rather unusual English word and that the whole passage sounded cumbersome. Thanks!

On memory and the self, see here. On translations, see here.

What is the purpose of what we teach?

An acquaintance of mine, who took a degree in Pedagogy and is now an elementary teacher (and a mother) discussed Saturday with me about her pedagogical priorities:

1. 1. Make children aware of other people's feelings
2. 2. Help children know themselves.

No. 1, she maintains, is the only way we can hope to solve today's problems. We do not care about the North Pole's pack which is melting, she explained, because we do not identify with polar bears. Should we be able to identify with their suffrances, we would be able to undertake concrete steps to avoid them. The example of the polar bears is so extreme that I do not think I have to add more normal ones, such as identifiying with one neighbour before complaining about minor points and starting a fight.
No. 2 is, according to my acquaintance, the only way to achieve happiness.
I completely agree on No. 2 and No. 1 is (I am sorry to intrude with elements of my personal life) my resolution for 2011. Still, their "reversed" order surprised me. In Indian philosophy, concern with oneself always seems to be the primus movens of one's intellectual (and possibly also spiritual) journey. One considers one's misery and desires to escape it —even within Mahāyāna Buddhism, where one will ultimately realise that there is no "I" who suffers, nor suffrance, nor need to escape it. Theistic traditions seem to put service to God first, but not service to others. Moreover, even in these traditions, service to God is equated to one's supreme happiness. In short, one might ask: How can one make room for the Others once one's investigation is from its beginning determined by a self-concern? On the other hand, how could one care to identify with others, unless this made one happier (because helping other people makes one happy/being liked makes one happy/etc.)?

On a related, pedagogical topic:
I have already discussed my view about why should Sanskrit be learnt and taught here.

Is there room for Free Will in Indian Philosophy?

Where shall we look for Indian discussions on free will? Free will seems to have to do with action. Although one might not need to act, in order to have free will, the capacity to act if one wishes to is the core of free will. Hence, one might be inclined to look for discussions on Free Will in the context of a system's theory of action. Another interesting semantic field would be that of God, since He is one who is surely assumed to be omnipotent and is often declared to be free. And free will seems to me to be a presupposal for free omnipotency.

I just happened to read a passage defining agent-hood (kartṛtva):

Agency is the fact of having a direct knowledge of the material causes, of having desire to do and of being endowed with an [actual] action
(upādānagocarāparokṣajñānacikīrṣākṛtimattvaṃ kartṛtvam)

The text is Annambhaṭṭa's dīpikā on his Tarkasaṅgraha (on proposition 17). The context is that of the inference about the existence of a Lord, namely "A sprout is made by a doer, because it is a product, like a pot", so that the agency here described might be only the God's one. If this were not the case, one would have the following three requisites of agency in general:

1. 1. direct knowledge of the material causes (i.e., applied and unmediated knowledge)
2. 2. desire to do
3. 3. actual doing

As for 3., I would define free-will as just the capacity to do what one wishes, independent of whether one actually does it or not. But the stress on the actual action might be just a nicety of Annambhaṭṭa.
The cognitive element seems a more significant difference. The material causes are later defined as samavāyikārana (like clay in case of a pot). Direct knowledge is a typical requisite of God, since He does not need to depend on the complex epistemological system we are bound to, and can just know everything directly. If the definition does not only apply to Him, then it means that agency requires this sort of direct knowledge to the things you'll need in order to act. Does it refer only to practical actions, such as doing a pot, where you must have a direct knowledge of the clay? Or can it apply also to general concepts? And what would a "material cause" be, in such cases?

When do children become persons?

Ontologically, there may or may not exist a substance 'self' (be it the ātman or the brain). But when does one become aware of oneself as a subject? Prābhākara authors maintain that this only happens when an injunction (e.g., "the one who is desirous of heaven should sacrifice") addresses one, so that s/he can recognise herself/himself as the enjoined one and recognise in herself/himself what is said about him/her in the injunction.

But how can an injunction be uttered if it does not yet address any subject? A Vedic injunction does not concern a specific person, since it lacks any temporal dimension and hence any possible link with specific individuals. Rather, the injunction constitutes one as a subject insofar as it makes one aware of him- or herself as being so and so (in the Prābhākara account: as being desirous).
Prābhākara thinkers are mainly concerned with Vedic injunctions, but one could add that, in a similar way, a child acquires gradually awareness of him- or herself as a person, through the injunctions of his/her parents. Injunctions to children start to be uttered well-before they can be conceived of as subjects (and, consequently, as able to understand the order enjoined to them). By hearing them, the child him- or herself as the enjoined one, and, hence as one which can be enjoined, a person.
A young child starts becoming aware of things around him or her and, hence, implicitly, of the fact that s/he is experiencing them. It is only through other people's injunctions, however, that s/he becomes aware of that experiencer as being himself/herself. This awareness of himself/herself, in summary, embeds the cognitive capacity within an intersubjectively shared personhood.


On this topic, see also:
Does a phenomenological approach lead us to a self-as-consciousness?
Is the ātman 'me'?
(and many other posts with label "subject")

Is the ātman 'me'?

Can one identify the absolute consciousness of Vedānta (the ātman) as "himself'"/"herself"? The problem lies in the fact that the ātman is beyond this-worldly subjectivity, whereas "I", "my", etc. are this-worldy concepts, at least according to Advaita Vedānta.
Wolfgang Fasching (in his contribution to the Sussex conference I already discussed) suggests that nonetheless the ātman is what "I" truly am. Independently of all this-wordly connotations, "I" am first and foremost an ātman. This seems to be linked with Husserl's (and Zahavi's) claims about the mineness of experience. So re-phrased, the question sounds: Can ther be an "I" (and a "my") beyond or before this-worldly subjectivity? If one transcends not only one's identification with the body and some similar accidents (e.g., one's first or family name), but also whatever belongs to one's being different from the others, is there still an I left?
Fasching answers affirmatively:

Yet one could reply that my present experience is mine (the experience I am experiencing) totally independent of any distinction I draw to what is not me (i.e. of my having an I-concept).

That is, my experience would be felt as "mine" even if I would not feel my experience and myself distinct from the others and their experiences. Is it really so? Can there be an I which does not ipso facto posit a non-I? Does not "my experience" presuppose that I am experiencing something different from the experiencer?
I am not asking a metaphysical question, but a phenomenological one. I am not interested in knowing whether experiencer and experienced are ultimately real, but whether the event of experience can be experienced as belonging to one without implying its postulating an experienced object.

Fasching quotes Zahavi saying that

first-personal givenness ‘is not a contrastive phenomenon’, it ‘does not arise thanks to any discrimination between self and the world […].

But, he then asks, why should one call this non-contrasted experience of subjecthood "mine"? Because, Fasching explains, eventually the non-conventional subject we identify which does not exist, and "we" are nothing but that non-contrastive experiencer. Hence, the ātman is ontologically 'me'. What about its being 'me' from a phenomenological point of view? I tend to doubt it. Do Vedāntic readers have other clues?

Can one perceive other people's thoughts?

Śaiva authors believe the subject to be tantamount to cognition. There is no difference between the two and it does not make sense to say that the former has the latter. Consequently, a cognition should never become the object of another one, since it is intrinsically identical with the agent of the cognitive act. And it an agent could not become an object and still remain identical with its own nature of agent! But the upholders of this view have to face two powerful objections, that of memory, where a previous cognition seems to be the object of today's memory of it, and that of the yogic perception. In fact, yogins (or omniscient beings in general, the same applies to Buddhas) can allegedly have access to other people's thoughts. And this seem to imply that these thoughts are accessed as objects!

These objections are expressed in the text translated below, which is an excerpt of Utpaladeva's ĪPK-Vivṛti. Utpaladeva (the X c. Kaśmīrian founder of the "School of Recognition [of oneself as identical with the Supreme Lord]"), in fact, elaborates on these themes in his well-known Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā (stanzas on the recognition with the Lord, ĪPK). The stanzas have been commented by the author twice. His vṛtti is an essential comment, often just clarifying the meaning of the stanzas. The vivṛti, on the other hand, is an elaborated philosophical commentary, which could also be read on its own. To the only extant fragments of this text, Raffaele Torella dedicated several essays and many seminars. In this post, I will examine the text of the Vivṛti ad 1.4.5, edited by this scholar in Mélanges tantriques à la mémoire d'Hélène Brunner.

[Obj.:] But it is impossible that something (e.g., whatever an object) is illuminated if it does not penetrate into the light. Nor is there, by saying so, a singleness of what is illuminated and what illuminates, because the grasped-part, like an illuminated pot, distinct from the grasper, although it is [ultimately] inseparated from the light, shines forth [as if separated from it]. In the same way, in the case of yogins (who can allegedly have access to other people's minds) the cognition of other cognisers apperas as a "this", i.e., as something else. Else, there would follow an error [since yogins would not be able to distinguish other people's cognitions from their own]. Therefore, if [as you claim] the cognition cannot be grasped by another cognition, how can there be a unity of memory, which has as content a [previous] experience and the experience [itself]?

The text seems at first quite difficult, partly because of the overlapping terminology. "Grasper" is in fact the same as "light" and "illuminator" and they all refer to the agent of cognition.

Is there time without consciousness?

Time, as is well known, is according to Augustine extensio animi, an extension of one's soul. Hence, it does not exist apart from it.
However, Sartre maintained that the most fundamental level of consciousness is pre-egological and Husserl supported (only) a transcendental ego –that is, one which does not appear as such in consciousness. Buddhist thinkers were explicitly non-substantialist, at least after Vasubandhu.
Does time-consciousness entail a (transcendental, at least) ego?
Husserl's claim that there is a moment of retention within every instant of experience, might help one in avoiding to postulate an ego and yet account for time-consciousness. However, one might object, such a retention is itself momentary and hence cannot account for long-term memory.
While dealing with such questions, Matt MacKenzie admitted that retention is one of the conditions of possibility of memory, and it is still not the depiction implied by memory. In order to get it, one needs to add an account of the sedimentation of retention-traces (in Sanskrit one would call them vāsanā or saṃskāra). This is the role of the depository consciousnessm the ālayavijñāna. A presentist (and at the conference on Self: Hindu Responses to Buddhist Critiques this role has been performed by Jan Westerhoff) could instead object that there are, in fact, NO RECORDS of the past. What appears as a record of the past is in fact a present cognition, which we misinterpret as relating to the past. In other words, it only "looks" as a record, but it exists in the present as something else.