Monism in Indian philosophy: the coherence, complexity, and connectivity of reality in Śaṃkara's arguments for Brahman (original) (raw)
Related papers
Monism in Indian Philosophy: The Coherence, Complexity & Connection Arguments in Samkara
Religious Studies, 2022
Classical Indian thought contains a number of arguments for monism that reject the cogency of metaphysical pluralism's account of change, development, and causation in the world. They do this on the basis of (a) the coherence of changes that we see in the world, (b) the difficulty of limning absolute distinctions between individuals, and (c) the prerequisite need for some medium explaining causal interactions. This article provides some background to Indian philosophical thought about a basic fabric of reality that grounds changing forms, containing the telos of their evolution in potentia. It then sets out Coherence, Complexity, and Connection Arguments for monism as employed by the Vedāntic scholastic philosopher Śaṃkara. Along the way, we clarify the Vedāntic conception of a single material, efficient, and formal cause that provides a medium for connection and combination, is naturally replete with generative order and impetus, and in which the teloi of all forms are embedded. We will briefly consider what the argument shows, if it succeeds – comparing with current philosophical approaches to monism. Finally, we observe that this rich monism, describing a single vertiginous reality of many levels and powers, is central to classical Hindu conceptions of what makes something ‘divine’.
Philosophies of being in India I: Pluralism, nihilism, and monism
Philosophy Compass, 2024
Is Being a mere sum of separate things variously recombined over time? Or is it not there at all, arising from nothing more than the projection of a fevered metaphysical imagination? Or might it be the intrawoven phenomenon of all we experience, grounded in a single underlying all‐ determining nature? This is the first of a pair of articles on the ontological issues that prompted a philosophical fork between pluralism, nihilism, and monism in India. The present article will focus on Indian critiques of metaphysical pluralism based on the apparent incoherence of ultimately individuating reality's building blocks. The second article will focus on debates about grounding of the causal powers that shape the world and fix it modally. I trace critiques of pluralism (the view found in Vaiśeṣika and Abhidharma that Being is composed of plural fundamental bits’) through to the competing conclusions of the Madhyamaka ‘emptiness’ view, and Vedānta's idea that there is a single ground of all Being. For the nihilists, commonsense realism about Being must be repudiated in such a way as to destroy the notion of Being itself. For the monists, the philosophical problems with a pluralistic ontology show that Being is a complex yet holistic medium, and the ground of a cosmos‐defining modal inheritance. Thus in each article I tell the story of how debates about individuation, relation, causation, recombination, and modal inheritance blossomed into some of history's most radical philosophies of Being— and in each I set out some prospects for the monistic view's core ontological claims that Being is, and is one.
New Perspectives in Indian Philosophy.
While paying tribute to C.F. Andrews, the person who, attracted by Tagore, settled in Shantiniketan, Bhattacharyya alluded to the relentless struggle of Andrews against evil and injustice in any part of the globe. And all these he wanted to do in the name of religion. Following many of his compatriots like Tagore and Gandhi, Andrews sacrificed his life to end man's alienation and the resulting boredom through non-violence. Non-violence is a fight not against the oppressor as human, but against the evil forces that dominate him. The danger with violence is that it might produce a new cycle of oppression by ending the old one. Tagore, of course, brings in the idea of identification to fight all the varieties of alienation. Bhattacharyya does not forget to mention that on some decisions of Gandhi, Andrews had the honesty to dissent. As for Gandhi, religion and politics intermingle, so is with Andrews. Andrews was more of a 'religious politician'. He left Santiniketan as many New Perspectives in Indian Philosophy on the other, in one point they agree. It is that consciousness is no attribute of the self, but is the self itself. In other words, the self is no substance, if substance is to be distinguished from attributes. If, however, by substance one means a permanent standing entity, the pure consciousness of the Sāṃkhya, the Yoga, and the Advaita Vedānta may well be called a substance. For, certainly, as neither an attribute nor an act nor a function, it is a permanent standing entity. Here lies the difference between these philosophers, on the one hand, and Kant, Gentile, and the Vijñānavādi Buddhist, on the other. These latter understand by 'self' pure consciousness as an act; and the Vijñānavādin's ālayavijñāna, though agreeing largely with the Advaita Vedāntin's pure consciousness, is never a standing separate entity, but, even as autonomous, distributes itself among mental states. Some Buddhists deny self altogether, and are content with the series of mental states. Others, mainly of the Vaibhāśika school, do not deny it altogether, but yet take it as wholly indefinite. To the Mādhyamikas, it is neither assertible, nor deniable, nor both assertible and deniable, nor neither of these two. The Nyāya, the Vaiśeṣika, the Mīmāṃsā, the Viśiṣṭādvaita and some other types of Indian philosophy, which are all arranged against the Buddhists in that they admit a standing permanent self as substance, do not, however, equate self with consciousness. The self, according to them, is a substance, to which consciousness belongs either as an attribute or as essence. While the Nyāya and the Vaiśeṣika regard consciousness as an accidental attribute of the self, consciousness or knowledge sometime occurring and sometimes not occurring in the self, for the Viśiṣṭādvaita consciousness is an essential feature of the self-the self never failing to be conscious. And for the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsakas, the self is as much conscious as no conscious, i.e. in part conscious and in part non-conscious. Consciousness and that which has it, are subjective, and so whatever is non-The Mīmāṃsāka themselves do not admit God, though many Dharmaśāstras, and Smṛtis allow it.
This paper engages with Johaness Bronkhorst's recognition of a "correspondence principle" as an underlying assumption of Nāgārjuna's thought. Bronkhorst believes that this assumption was shared by most Indian thinkers of Nāgārjuna's day, and that it stimulated a broad and fascinating attempt to cope with Nāgārjuna's arguments so that the principle of correspondence may be maintained in light of his forceful critique of reality. For Bronkhorst, the principle refers to the relation between the words of a sentence and the realities they are meant to convey. While I accept this basic intuition of correspondence, this paper argues that a finer understanding of the principle can be offered. In light of a set of verses from Nāgārjuna's Śūnyatāsaptati (45-57), it is maintained that for Nāgārjuna, the deeper level of correspondence involves a structural identity he envisions between understanding and reality. Here Nāgārjuna claims that in order for things to exist, a conceptual definition of their nature must be available; in order for there to be a real world and reliable knowledge, a svabhāva of things must be perceived and accounted for. Svabhāva is thus reflected as a knowable essence. Thus, Nāgārjuna's arguments attacks the accountability of both concepts and things, a position which leaves us with nothing more than mistaken forms of understanding as the reality of the empty. This markedly metaphysical approach is next analyzed in light of the debate Nāgārjuna conducts with a Nyāya interlocutor in his Vigrahavyāvartanī. The correspondence principle is here used to highlight the metaphysical aspect of the debate and to point out the ontological vision of Nāgārjuna's theory of emptiness. In the analysis of the Vigrahavyāvartanī it becomes clear that the discussion revolves around a foundational metaphysical deliberation regarding the reality or unreality of svabhāva. In this dispute, Nāgārjuna fails to answer the most crucial point raised by his opponent-what is that he defines as empty?