Practical purposes of Indian philosophy

Are we studying Indian philosophy in order to solve problem?

In an interesting comment to this post, Aleix Ruiz-Falqués asks:

There are many problems nowadays (War, Famine, Economic Crisis, etc) and the role of philosophy is to offer a guideline for thinking correctly about these problems, so that we can solve them. This is exactly the practical approach of Indian philosophers. But I wonder if we (philologists and doxographers) are as practical as ancient and modern philosophers. I have heard many times, from academics, that "we are not here to solve problems, but to point them out" - to "problematize", as they call it. I think this is bullshit, because the real agenda is to preserve a teaching post per saecula saeculorum. What do you think? For instance: starting from Mīmāṃsā, how do you approach the recent tensions between Israel and Iran? I remember a Nyāya pandit once told me something like: "For the naiyāyikas, the problems of terrorism are simple to solve: you send the army..." etc.etc. He was Indian, of course, and 100% philosopher.

 I am not completely sure I can subscribe to the idea that Indian philosophers are "practical". I guess that many of them were and many others were not. And problematizing is my favourite activity…

Nonetheless, I see Aleix' point and it is difficult to deny that if philosophers want to be paid through taxes (i.e. by the money earned by simple people) they must be ready to have also a social function. Plus, luckily enough he did not claim that philosophers should solve problem, bur rather offer a guideline to think correctly about them.
This social function amount to, in my opinion, instructing people in the following:

• logical thinking: e.g., show that if B is included in A and if X claims that ~A (e.g.: no European fundings for agriculture, we do not want to pay taxes for that!), he or she cannot then claim that B (e.g.: more European fundings for tobacco-farms of my county!).
• epistemological thinking: e.g., show that one cannot believe that A because "someone" (e.g. Wikipedia) said it, unless this "someone" is a reliable source.
• looking at the broader picture: due to our psychology (or perhaps physiology), we tend to focus on today's egg and cannot take into account the disasters the egg-industry might produce. A philosopher should be brave enough to logically warn about the consequences of today's actions and choices (be it about climate change or about women's instruction).

As for the problems with religious and political fundamentalism, I can see Mīmāṃsā's contribution as highlighting the distinction between a descriptive and a prescriptive reading of Sacred Texts. Once Sacred Texts are not read as descriptions of the way the world is, one will no longer have to condemn people for believing in the existence of dinosaurs, nor will one speak about the "contrast" of religion and science.

What do you consider the purpose of scholars of (Indian) philosophy?

For my thoughts on applied Indian philosophy, see this post. The present discussion with A. Ruiz-Falqués started on this post.

Philosophy and Philology of Sanskrit works

Are we doing philosophy, when we are trying to understand what jāti means in Bhartṛhari? Consider the following passage from a comment by Aleix Ruiz-Falqués to this post:

I think […] that doxography includes studying the views of old philosophers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxography
What I mean is that when we study (let's say) Kant, we spend more time discussing what he really says than what he says. So instead of learning from Kant, we speculate about Kant, as if unearthing a treasure, as if Kant's philosophy was not explained in Kant's books. In Indian Philosophy there is a lot of doxography. I'm reading right now a book on Bhartṛhari and Dignāga, and I can't believe there are so many different interpretations of the word jāti in Bartrhari (let alone other words in Bhartṛhari, let alone the word jāti in other philosophers). I think that when we spend hours and hours trying to understand what Bhartṛhari means by "jāti", we are doing philology, not philosophy. Philology is great, no doubt. But we should not be confused about this: one can do philology on philosophical texts, and still one is not doing philosophy. I think we should do philosophy, without giving up philology. The first ones that come to my mind are Schopenhauer and Chomsky (among those influential Western thinkers who benefited from Indian ideas). I have no special sympathy for any of them, but still, they are or were modern thinkers and they did/do not read Indian Philosophy esoterically (emphasis added by me, EF). 

This is a very important point and I am grateful to Aleix for being brave enough to raise it. Personally speaking (see also the last paragraph below), I tend to think that trying to understand what Kant really meant is not just philology, because understanding requires the exercise of one's critical thinking. But let me be more precise:

• Suppose I try to understand what Dharmakīrti means while referring to the non-conceptual perception of a patch of blue. Now suppose that I dive into the concept of "blue" (nīla) and read kāvya and other texts to understand what exactly is meant by this term in Sanskrit (speculating about the fact that it must be a darker blue than the one of the sky in a sunny day, given that Kṛṣṇa's complexion is said to be so black that it becomes blue and so on). This is a valuable exercise, one for which one needs to know texts and context and it is part of philology.

• Suppose, by contrast, that I choose to focus on "non-conceptual perception" (nirvikalpapratyakṣa). I might need to read a lot of Dharmakīrti, and of Kumārila's criticism against it. In several cases (e.g., in Taber's Kumārila On Perception), one will also consider the concept of perception in Russell and in several other contemporary philosophers. Would not you say that this is part of a philosophical enterprise? 

More in general,

• does not philosophy amount (also) to "thinking clearly" (the definition is Daya Krishna's)?
• is exegesis not part of philosophy (at least after H.-G. Gadamer)?

This does not mean to say that we should only pause on terms and forget about the broader picture. On the contrary, we can only understand the meaning of each key-term of a philosopher once we have understood her whole thinking. But assuming that this is by itself clear might be misleading. I am personally not convinced by the idea that Kant is crystal clear and that one only needs to read him in order to understand him. Not to speak about Dharmakīrti, whose context was so far away from ours that we surely need plenty of philological work to reconstruct it and whose contribution needs plenty of philosophical efforts in order to be evaluated.

Moreover,

• it is probably true that in most countries of Europe Indian philosophers are examined overwhelmingly from a philological point of view,
• but elsewhere they are dealt with "philosophically" almost independently of what they actually said.

It lies on the shoulders of researchers to find a suitable balance. Have you found it? Which authors do you think did find it? I have my own list, if someone is interested.

(When I read Aleix' comment, I could not help thinking "touchée", since I am exactly working on an article where I discuss the meaning of jāti (vyakti, artha, viṣaya, piṇḍa… and various other terms related to the semantic sphere of "meaning" and "referent") in Jayanta, thus be warned: I might be biased.)

The post which originated this interesting discussion is this one. For my own thoughts on philosophy vs. history of philosophy, see this post.

Mediating between Western and Indian Philosophy

Western philosophy, to the extent that it refuses to take an interest in these texts, will remain, as I've said before (paraphrasing Nietzsche), nothing more than a catalogue of its own prejudices.

(Justin Erik Halldór Smith)

Without knowing anything of Sanskrit philosophy, one cannot be a "genuine" philosopher, but rather someone who is avoiding dangerous questions (i.e., the very core of the philosophical enterprise).

If one were to object that one cannot be an expert on everything, and that one consequently neglects Indian philosophy because of lack of time, the appropriate answer would be, in my opinion: team work. One cannot be an expert on everything, but one ought to know that one is not and one ought to seek advice and help. From whom? From people who must be aware of both Indian and Western tradition and must be able to mediate and "translate". In the same post where I read the line reproduced here above, J.E.H. Smith also claims that he would like to become such a philosopher. I cannot but wish him good luck (and offer him my help, in case he could need it).

Do you share a similar agenda? Or similar concerns? Why (not)?

You can read the entire blog post by J.E.H. Smith here. And you can read a similar program in my own "about" page in Academia.

Where to publish "Indological" staff?

Shall we have our contributions published by Indian publishers or by Western ones? Within "Indological" journals or discipline-specific ones?

I am very  much convinced of the benefit of publishing on journals which are read by a wider audience, so that you are read by people specializing on your discipline, but within different scenarios. This has the advantage for you of receiving impartial criticisms and for them to get aquainted with South Asian materials (which becomes, in the long run, a benefit for you, too, since it enhances the chances of South Asian topics being taught, and, consequently, of South Asian positions opening).

However, the risk is big. Writing about sphoṭa on a journal on linguistics means that no one of the people you are usually in touch with will probably even know about your article. In addition, you will have to explain obvious points (e.g.: who was Bhartṛhari, what is the impact of Grammar in India, and so on). Thus, my usual solution is a compromise and I try to publish on both sides.

The problem is amplified in the case of books, since the choice becomes even more complex there, as Indian publishers come decisively into the picture. They offer at least two advantages: lower prices (and, hence, more accessibility) and the possibility of being read also in India. The alternatives are publishing in the West within an "Indological" series or within a "discipline-specific" one. To these two cases, my comments above apply.

What do you choose to do? And why?

For my doubts about the label "Indology" and about areal boundaries in general, see this post and this one (with many interesting comments).

Still working on your PhD in Sanskrit and looking for a job?

A few weeks ago I posted about a vacancy in the University of Vienna. The deadline was close and many thought that this meant that applications were not really welcome. However, this was not the case and I am pretty sure that the Department did not appreciate the fact that it received only an extremely low number of applications. This time, there is a little bit more time.
 
The Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies) of the University of Vienna is looking for someone who could fill the vacancy of a full-time pre-doctoral position in South Asian Studies.

Maximum duration of employment: 4 years
Degree of employment: 30 hours/week [in my experience, this means that you must physically be at the Department for at least 30 hourse per week]
Profile:
• Mag.phil., MA or comparable degree in South Asian Studies, Indology or a related discipline in the Humanities
• Excellent knowledge of Sanskrit
• Good command of German
• Good command of English
• Good general computer skills and familiarity with IT applications and solutions relevant to text-based pre-modern South Asian Studies
• Capacity for teamwork, organizational talent, reliability, thoroughness

Applications should include the following documents:
• Letter of motivation
• Curriculum Vitae
• Two letters of reference

Applications should be submitted to the Job Center of the University of Vienna (http://jobcenter.univie.ac.at) no later than October 10, 2012, with reference to job identification number 3399.

Personally, I might add that a pre-doc position does NOT imply you must be starting now your PhD, but just that you have not finished it yet.

Commands and assertions in Indian and Western Philosophy

Are commands re-phrasable as assertions?
Time and again, both in India and in the West, someone tried to rephrase commands and to make them look like assertive statements. Why? Because assertive statements are "easier" to handle. They have truth-values, one can build correct inferences out of them, etc.
As for the Indian essays, the most interesting one is, in my opinion, Maṇḍana's. Maṇḍana explained that "X must do A!" is tantamount to "A is conducive to something X desires". For instance, "You must sacrifice!" is tantamount to "Sacrifice is the tool to realise something desirable (such as happiness, the obtainment of cattle and so on)".
As for the Western side of the enterprise, centuries later Karl Menger (1939) construed "X must do A!" as "Either X does A or there is a sanction". In logical language:

X does A v S

Georg von Wright has slightly rephrased the S as meaning not "Sanction" but "Liability to being sanctioned", but this does not alter too much  its "Lutheranic" allure.

A further attempt (Mark Fischer 1962 and others) has been that of attributing truth values to commands via their obedience: obedience would then be to commands what truth is to assertive statements.

But the problem remains that an assertive statement might be true or false independently of further circumstances, whereas a command has intrinsically different characteristics: it requires a specific addressee, a connection with time, and it must be "uttered", i.e., given. It does not exists in a vacuum.

Am I forgetting any interesting example, either in India or in the West?

On the truth value of imperatives, see this post. On Maṇḍana and contemporary ethics, see this post.

Do you want to work as a Sanskritist? Learn Hindī!

A few weeks ago I posted an advertisement of the University of Vienna, looking for a new employee within their project on the critical edition of the Nyāyabhāṣya. The position has been advertised only very late, there was little time left to gather the papers required, plus it was Summer. Anyway, the result was: a strikingly low number of people applied. This is surprising, given that there seem to be that many bright and unemployed Sanskritists all over the world. Thus, if you want to work as a Sanskritist, you might consider moving to Vienna.
If not, this is my second-best advice:

Free yourself from your self-inflicted time boundaries. 

In the last months, the Indology mailing list has hosted far more announcements regarding positions in Modern and Contemporary South Asia than in Classical India. Why don't "we" apply? Because we figure out we are not qualified nor interested. But this is only due to the contingent fact that we were trained to think of "Indology" as a distinct field (which is not the case, in my opinion). We are, rather, interested in poetry (with Sanskrit poetry as our favourite one), or in history (with Sanskrit manuscripts, etc., being such an interesting witness), or in soteriology (with perhaps a particular predilection for some Sankrit religious works), etc. If we could focus on what really drives us, we could get rid of the time frame we have chosen and start considering it also within a different time setting. And it would be easier to find a job, then…

Are you interested in Literature? Do work also on contemporary Hindī (or Bengalī, or Urdū, etc.) novels. Are you interested in Yoga, Ayurveda, dance? Do not neglect their contemporary evolutions. Are you fascinated by languages? Sanskrit and Vedic are great, but Hindī still awaits its Pāṇini, who can make it look as crystal clear as Sanskrit. "The earlier the better" is just a wrong syllogism (if it were not, we would all have to study prehistorical art and literature only). In my field, i.e., philosophy, I can say that K.C. Bhattacharya is incredibly fascinating and intriguing and it is hard to understand why he is relatively neglected by both scholars working on Western philosophy (who are busy with Heidegger and Analytical Philosophy) and scholars working on Indian one (who do not read anything written in English nor in Sanskrit after the 18th c. at latest).

If you were to object that time is too short to start working within a later scenario, let me rephrase: Life is too short to work on something you do not like or enjoy. But is it really the case that you enjoy all works written in Sanskrit better than all works written in any other Indian language? If this is the case, and you are a "real" Indologist, please leave a comment and explain how it works!

(In case you were wondering: I studied a lot of Hindī and of contemporary Tibetan and a little bit of Bengalī and forgot most of all of them. I wrote a little bit on contemporary Indian philosophy, and I enjoy reading it.)

For my doubts about the label "Indology", see this post and this one (with many interesting comments).