Action, desire and subjectivity in Rāmānujācārya

Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2020

The article concerns a mediaeval Indian debate over whether, and if so how, we can know that a self (ātman) exists, understood here as a subject of cognition (jñātṛ) that outlives individual cognitions, being their common substrate. A passage that has not yet been translated from Sanskrit into a European language, from Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s Nyāyamañjarī (c. 890 CE), ‘Blossoms of Reasoning’, is examined. This rich passage reveals something not yet noted in secondary literature, namely that Mīmāṃsakas advanced four different models of what happens when the self perceives itself. The article clarifies the differences between the four, and the historical and logical relationships between them. It also hypothesizes pressures that constituted the need for the creation of the newer views, i.e. perceived problems with the earlier views, which the proponents of the newer views saw themselves as overcoming.

This article investigates the emergence of the concept of “subject” in Mīmāṃsā philosophy, both from a historical and a theoretical point of view. Historically, Mīmāṃsakas probably started inquiring into a “subject” because of the Vedic prescriptions related to the agent of sacrifice. As a matter of fact, they interpret Upaniṣadic statements about the ātman as referring to the agent of sacrifice, thus relating the ātman with concrete instances of an agent. Such an agent is in turn identified by his desire for the result of the sacrifice. In summary, the agent emerges as “subject” because of his desire for something. The inseparable bond of subject and desire seems to contradict the common view that liberation is attained through the extinction of desires. Either this stand-point is not shared by Mīmāṃsakas, or the Mīmāṃsā theory of the subject is meant to explain only the worldly status of the subject and the subject who attains liberation is out of its precinct of application.

Religions of South Asia, 2023

Advaita Vedānta is often approached as a philosophy of non-dualism. However, I show that approaching the tradition as a Śārīraka Mīmāṃsā, a hermeneutics of embodiment, better captures some of its core concerns. On this account, the Upaniṣads are primarily invested in clarifying the complex dynamics of human embodiment and the self’s immersion in various domains of materiality. To this extent, Advaita is well-placed to make unique interventions in the materialist turn in philosophy and religion, articulating a coherent discourse of embodied experience and pedagogy. Thus while the Vedantic project may be framed in terms of God or Brahman as its hermeneutic centre, it is the unfoldment of the nature of the śarīrin, the embodied, that drives the project at the first place. This requires discerning superimposed layers of identity (adhyāsa), exfoliating each to arrive at the embodied one beneath the self’s embodying environs. This is not a negative process of withdrawing an ‘authentic’ self from its material or psychic entanglements, that is, desuperimposition (apavāda). Rather, Advaitic method enjoins an embrace of the self ’s immersion in its bodily environs, opening the phenomenal landscape of consciousness to hitherto unrecognized domains of phenomenal being submerged beneath conscious awareness. This is an expansive process that recalibrates one’s sense of self preparing it for more subtle forms of discernment in a graded phenomenal itinerary. I distinguish between two terms, adhyāsa and adhyāropa, that, while mapping the same dynamics of embodiment, deploy it along different ends. Failure to appreciate this can obscure the precise work done by deliberate superimposition (adhyāropa) in Advaita.

The aim of this article is to take up three closely connected questions. First, does consciousness essentially involve subjectivity? Second, what is the connection, if any, between pre-reflective self-consciousness and subjectivity? And, third, does consciousness necessarily involve an ego or self? I will draw on the Yogācāra–Madhyamaka synthesis of Śāntaraks:ita (eighth century common era) to develop an account of the relation between consciousness, subjectivity, and the self. I will argue, first, that phenomenal consciousness is reflexive or self-illuminating (svaprakāśya). Second, I will argue that consciousness necessarily involves minimal subjectivity. Third, I will argue that neither the reflexivity nor the subjectivity of consciousness implies that there is any entity such as the self or ego over and above reflexive consciousness. Fourth, I will argue that what we normally think of as ‘the self’ is best understood as a complex, multi-layered process (ahaṁkāra, ‘I-making’) that emerges within the pre-egoic flow of subjective consciousness.

In: Rivista degli Studi Orientali 87, 2014

Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2000

A famous and important debate within the classical brahminical, exegetical traditions concerns the issue of whether action (karma) according to injunctions (codana) over ritual (and indirectly, virtuous) (dharma) is the means to the final good (śreyasa) that is liberation (moks . a), or whether it is right cognition (jñāna) of the nature of self (ātman) that is the means (and, indeed, the content) of liberation. The Mīmām . sakas (the pūrva or earlier -mīmām . sakas or exegetes) hold the former view, the Advaitins (the uttara -or later -mīmām . sakas) the latter.

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.

2019

India has a rich and diverse history of philosophy. The integral understanding of ‘Self’ is often neglected, which is given by Indian philosophy and the western view is more popular. This essay starts with the introduction of main orthodox and heterodox schools of Indian philosophy. Then discussion on six major epistemologies followed by these schools, which follow these epistemologies in-parts or as whole is presented. Further the article looks into an analytical discussion on the concept of ‘self’ as given by these classical Indian schools, especially Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas, Vedanta and Buddhism in detail. In the conclusion, the answer to the question -What is the comparison and contrast of their views with popular western philosophers such as Locke, Sartre, Hume, Descartes and Kant?, is given.

1990

Nyaya, one of Hinduism's six orthodox schools of philosophy has been of interest to western philosophers largely because of its sophisticated analysis of logical and linguistic problems. In India, the purpose of the orthodox school (or dar'ana - "view") has been to lead the student toward liberation (moka). Hence Nyaya's preoccupation with logic should not in itself preclude a real concern with moka. The broad aim of my thesis therefore, is to determine how Nyya functions as a complete darana, to see if indeed the various aspects of the system stand together as a coherent mokamarga (way to release). Because Hindus conceive of salvation as the realization of a transcendental Self (tman), and because the nature of such a Self has been a prime focus for Indian philosophical debate, this thesis will concentrate on the Nyaya understanding of atman, and the logical arguments for its existence. Nyaya philosophers played a leading role in arguing against their Buddhist...