Indian Ethics

Classical Traditions and Contemporary Challenges: Volume I

Purushottama Bilimoria, Joseph Prabhu, Renuka Sharma, Purushottama Bilimoria, Joseph Prabhu, Renuka Sharma

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351928069
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Indian ethics is one of the great traditions of moral thought in world philosophy whose insights have influenced thinkers in early Greece, Europe, Asia, and the New World. This is the first such systematic study of the spectrum of moral reflections from India, engaging a critical cross-cultural perspective and attending to modern secular sensibilities. The volume explores the scope and limits of Indian ethical thinking, reflecting on the interpretation and application of its teachings and practices in the comparative and contemporary contexts. The chapters chart orthodox and heterodox debates, from early classical Hindu texts to Buddhist, Jaina, Yoga, and Gandhian ethics. The range of issues includes: life-values and virtues, karma and dharma, evil and suffering, renunciation and enlightenment; and extends to questions of human rights and justice, ecology and animal ethics, nonviolence and democracy. Ramifications for rethinking ethics in a postmodern and global era are also explored. Indian Ethics offers an invaluable resource for students of philosophy, religion, human sciences and cultural studies, and to those interested in South Asian responses to moral dilemmas in the postcolonial era.

Introduction to Part A:


Early Indian Ethics – Vedas to the Gītā; dharma, rites to ‘right’

Thus we begin, again, with the most general remark that the early Indian people – perhaps like human beings everywhere in their practical moral judgments – placed on the side of the ‘good’, such things as: happiness, health, survival, progeny, pleasure, calmness, friendship, knowledge and truth. On the side of ‘bad’ were, more or less, their opposites or disvalues: misery or suffering, sickness and injury, death, barrenness, pain, anger, enmity, ignorance or error, and untruth. These positive and negative qualities are universalized, in principle at least, for all sentient beings, for it is felt that the highest good is possible when the whole world (gods included) can enjoy the good things that the cosmos has to offer. The highest good (summum bonum), however, expresses itself in the total harmony of the cosmic or natural order characterized as ṛta: this is the telos, the creative purpose that underpins human behaviour. The prescribed pattern of social and moral order is thus conceived as a correlate of the natural order. This is the ordered course of things, the truth of being or reality (sat) and hence the ‘law’.¹

One’s actions are therefore consistent with that which promotes the good so perceived, and desists from doing that which promotes or stimulates the bad so that the ṛta is not unduly disturbed. An act is therefore right if it conforms to this general principle, and an act is wrong if it contravenes it (and so is anṛta).² Since to do what is right safeguards the good of all qua ṛta (the factual/descriptive order), it is assumed that it is more or less obligatory to do or perform the right acts (the ‘ought’ or moral/ prescriptive order). This convergence of the cosmic and the moral orders is universally commended in due course in the all-embracing appellation of dharma (from its earlier sense of ‘religious ordinances and fixed principles’).³

The ‘right’ or rightness is simply identified with ‘rite’: it is formalized, taking in varying contexts (i.e. the obligation that is derived from a value, say, survival of the race, becomes the sui generic value itself; for example, sacrifice, regardless of what is offered in the act). Rite now comes to possess an intrinsic moral worth. (of course, not every moral value entails a duty.)

Thereafter rite tends to assume, as it were, an imperious power all of its own, and people forget the original motivation or rationale underlying the imperative. Rites become increasingly pursued for egoistic ends, optatively, and are adjudged in respect of their utility. One group claims knowledge and therefore privilege over others in accordance with the (prescribed) rites, their correct performance, utility, and so on. This leads to the establishment of differential duties and moral codes for the different major groups or ‘classes’ in society. Each ‘class’ constitutes a needful functional unit in the larger complex. The stages or lifecycles an individual goes through may entail distinct or differently arranged moral rules, roles, and goals or values for the group or sub-group he or she belongs to. Likewise for kings and rulers, with added responsibilities and advantages. Differentia are superimposed on the organic unity of nature. A kind of oblique distributive justice is assumed, and in time the question of moral choice is categorically left out: one either does it or one does not, and enjoys the rewards or suffers the consequences thereof. Herein lie the rudiments of the idea of karma, which we develop later.

What counts as ethics then is largely the normative preoccupations; the justification is usually that this is the ‘divine’ ordering of things (in the sense of locating the order in some transcendental plenum or law, depicted in the imageless and, later, iconic gods, not necessarily in an absolute or supremely existent being, as God). This is akin to the ancient, especially in the Stoics’, conception of natural law in the Western tradition. This may also provide a basis for belief in the absoluteness of the moral law from which the rules and norms are supposed to have been derived. But virtually no attempt is made, until perhaps much later, or elsewhere in the broad tradition, at self-reflexively analyzing the logic of the ethical concepts and reasoning used. Indeed, questions such as: ‘What do we mean when we say of an action that it is morally right (or morally wrong)?’ can hardly be said to have attracted the kind of critical attention attended upon (meta-)ethical thinking in recent times.

That is not to say, however, that genuine issues, concerns and paradoxes of ethical relevance are not raised, even if they are couched in religious, mystical or mythological ideas or terms. To give an illustration: Scriptures proscribe injury to creatures and meat-eating, but a priest would wrong the gods if he did not partake of the remains of a certain ritual animal sacrifice. With the gods wronged, ṛta cannot be maintained: what then should he do?⁴ It also follows that meat-eating is not unambiguously decried in the Scriptures, as more recent studies have attempted to show.

What we have presented above is, admittedly, a sweeping account that essentially covers the very early period (c. 1500-800 BCE) during which time the Brahmanical tradition grew and flourished. It provides a general framework within which we can continue to see how moral consciousness, certain ethical concepts and various, albeit conflicting, moral schemes are developed and articulated in later periods, which may collectively be identified as the ‘Hindu’ tradition. (For this account we shall have to use more Sanskrit terms as their exact English equivalents, and the converse, is wanting.)

I. Brāhmaṅical-Hindu Ethics

First we shall make three concrete observations about Brāhmaṅical society.

1. The Vedas, the canonical collection of texts, are regarded to be supremely authoritative. (The usual Judeo-Christian idea of a God to whom the source of the scriptures is owed is lacking here.⁵) Their contents are simply ‘seen’ or ‘heard’ (śruti); and their principles are embodied in the gods, who are models for human conduct. How far this idea of ‘authority’ unpacks in real moral terms, and impacts on the social lives of people, is an issue taken up in the ensuing chapters in Part A.

2. A particular principle of social ordering is adopted (probably introduced into India by the Aryans around 2000 BCE), according to which society is organized into a fourfold (but originally threefold) functional division or ‘class’, called varṇa (literally, ‘colour’ or ‘category’). These are, namely, brāhmaṇa (brahmin), for religious and educational tasks; kṣatriya, for sovereign and defence tasks; vaiśya for agriculture and economic tasks; and śūdra, for menial tasks. (one is reminded here of Plato’s ‘stations-of-life’ division.) overall, the sources of power get distributed evenly at different places, and ideally differences in function need not entail differences in interests, rights and privileges; but the outcome in practice shows otherwise. A system of sub-divisions or ‘castes’ (jāti) further proliferates the class functions, gradually turning varṇa into a discriminatory hereditary-based institution. In any event, the brahmins certainly enjoy the better end of the system and they wield enormous power. A life-affirming but rigidly casuistic morality develops. In Max Weber’s judgment, the Vedas ‘do not contain a rational ethic’ – if such an ethic did exist anywhere that far back!⁶

Exactly who the Aryans are and who the non-Aryans, is a discussion that strays into anthropology and history, but it has some relevance in the context of ‘oneself and the other’, which is indeed an issue within the purview of ethics.

3. Despite the overall ritualistic Weltanschauung, the Vedic hymns are evocative of certain humanistic virtues and ethical ideals, such as being truthful (satya), giving (dāna), restraint (dama), austerities (tapas), affection and gratitude, fidelity, forgiveness, non-thieving, non-cheating, giving others their just desert, avoiding injury or hiṃsā to all creatures, and being responsive to the guest/stranger.⁷ As the gods, who portray these ideals, recede from the people’s consciousness, the people are encouraged to take more responsibility upon themselves, and transform these ideals into virtues, habits and dispositions, with corresponding moral ‘objects’ in the world. Old ethical problems achieve new meaning. Thus the question of whether the princely god Indra should slay the obstructive demon Vṛtra becomes a question for the king: should he vanquish the ascetics who stand in the way of his sovereignty?⁸

Vedic authority becomes normative in the later periods; the Vedas are invoked as the source of ethics (but there is now much more to the Vedas than the earlier hymnal and ritual texts might appear to suggest). To be noted is one other important institution, where three morally significant concepts emerge, namely, āśrama, dharma, and karma (or karman), culminating in the ethical concept of puruṣārthas, all of which are central to classical Hindu ethics. These concepts are extensively discussed in at least the first three chapters. But before giving a thumbnail overview of these concepts, one further point awaits mentioning.

There are doubtless other ways of appraising ethics in the Vedas, rudimentary as this might appear to be. In this context, laurie Patton’s chapter is suggestive of a rather creative interpretation. This sample summary is offered here by way of illustrating how individual authors have taken up the themes for this section and engaged the texts and tradition on a range of issues central to such a discussion. Hence, laurie Patton’s chapter, ‘The Fires of Strangers: A Levinasian Approach to Vedic Ethics’ begins by briefly tracing the recent move away from the absolute and toward the contextual and situational in the study of Hindu ethics. This intellectual environment presents an ideal moment for the engagement of a Levinasian approach which takes seriously the complexity of attitudes toward alterity. Recent studies of the Veda have focused on the ‘other,’ but more exclusively on the non-Aryan other, rather than on the Levinasian ‘other’ who makes moral obligations on the self. Hoping to add this more phenomenological approach to the study of the ‘other’ in the Veda, she turns to read Vedic passages as Levinas has read the Talmud. And for this, the chapter begins with a review and ‘word-studies’ of the basics of the Vedic world, – the more well known ārya/dāśa, or noble-slave; ārya/anārya, Aryan/non-Aryan being the obvious starting points. However, following Levinas, Patton goes on to look at Vedic ideas of ‘face’ (mukha and related phrases) and the face that makes a claim upon one’s attention, as well as ‘presence’ and ‘being in the presence’ of someone (‘prati’, and related words). She ends by examining the notions of the moral obligations of the Vedic guest, or stranger (atithi) at the threshold. There is obviously complexity in the idea of the Vedic ‘other’; while the Vedic attitude expresses the kind of ‘annihilation’ of the other that we see in the Aryan/non-Aryan discourse; it nevertheless contains the very basic understanding that strangers can have a kind of infinite moral claim upon the Vedic self, and that this claim can structure certain ethical understandings in the Vedic world.

This act of being present to the guest, or stranger, is also connected with the idea of the ‘gift’ (dāna), of giving; there is the ‘gifting’ by way of sacrifice (yajña) to the gods, to the cosmos, to the ‘act of gift’ itself (the non-transitive gifting: the sacrifice sacrificing itself in sacrifice in the primordial creation of the cosmos and gods also from non-existence). But the conceptual finesse of the idea of the ‘gift’ (dāna), it is argued in Maria Heim’s chapter, had to await the articulations in the Medieval texts of the Dharmaśāstras. A further connection is made between the act of giving, making the ‘gift’ to the spontaneity of virtuous performance which is not media...