Hinduism

A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation

Shyam Ranganathan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138909090
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317438755
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Hinduism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation explores Hinduism and the distinction between the secular and religious on a global scale. According to Ranganathan, a careful philosophical study of Hinduism reveals it as the microcosm of philosophical disagreements with Indian resources, across a variety of topics, including: ethics, logic, the philosophy of thought, epistemology, moral standing, metaphysics, and politics. This analysis offers an original and fresh diagnosis of studying Hinduism, colonialism, and a global rise of hyper-nationalism, as well as the frequent acrimony between scholars and practitioners of Hindu traditions.

This text is appropriate for use in undergraduate and graduate courses on Hinduism, and Indian philosophy, and can be used as an advanced introduction to the problems of philosophy with South Asian resources.

1 Introduction

Our topic: Hinduism the religion

This book is a philosophical investigation into Hinduism. This is not the same as a review of Indian philosophies (cf. Dasgupta 1975; Hiriyanna 1995; Mohanty 2000, 1992; Matilal and Ganeri 2002; Ganeri 2001, 2007; Ram-Prasad 2001, 2007; Bartley 2011) that are called Hindu, nor is it an empirical review of Hindu practices and beliefs (Knott 1998; Doniger 2010, 2014; Narayanan 2010, 2004; Hawley and Narayanan 2006). Works on these topics are certainly worth reading—but that is not our topic. In order to embark on these investigations we need some grasp of the category HINDUISM that would allow us to distinguish Hindu philosophies from non-Hindu philosophies, and Hindu practices and beliefs from non-Hindu practices and beliefs. Answering the question of what Hinduism as a category amounts to—an analysis of the concept of HINDUISM—is the proper topic for a philosophical investigation of Hinduism. It might seem that once we have such an analysis, we will be in a position to study philosophies that are Hindu, or practices and beliefs that are Hindu. Yet, HINDUISM, the category is open-ended. An adequate appreciation of its logical properties not only underdetermines what philosophies, practices or beliefs are Hindu, but by extension it will underdetermine what counts as a religion. This is because Hinduism, properly understood, is the microcosm of philosophy itself, with a South Asian twist. The possibilities of Hinduism are the possibilities of philosophy. Everything from realism to antirealism on questions of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, are to be found within the options of Hinduism. Even the question of whether the gods are real or there is an afterlife is a disagreement firmly within the boundaries of Hinduism: one can be an atheist and a Hindu for instance (Bilimoria 1990, 1989).

My goal in this book is to move away from thinking about Hinduism in terms of beliefs that Hindus have. The idea that there are some basic beliefs that characterize Hinduism is implausible as is the idea that there are some basic practices that are definitively or essentially Hindu (Ranganathan 2016). Rather in appreciating that Hinduism is the microcosm of philosophy itself, we should identify representative ideas from the Indian tradition that stand for the project of philosophy itself—ideas that model differing topics and their disagreements within philosophy. These Hindu representations of philosophy will allow us to say something synoptic about Hinduism without committing to implausible claims about what all Hindus believe or what all things Hindu endorse. The philosophical topics I will cover include: (meta) philosophy, moral theory, logic, propositional content, epistemology, moral standing, metaphysics, and politics. These Hindu representations of specific topics within philosophy will also constitute synoptic Hindu responses to major areas of philosophy. These responses are what Hindus converge on while they disagree in the respective areas. If these Hindu ideas really do represent Hinduism as the microcosm of philosophy, and if truth reveals what it represents, these representative ideas are true of philosophy—or perhaps more plainly, philosophically true.

My reasons for approaching Hinduism philosophically are not merely a matter of my interests as a philosopher. I think that this approach is representative of what is objective about Hinduism. In other words, it is an unbiased account of Hinduism that reveals Hinduism as an object of investigation. In identifying Hinduism as the microcosm of philosophy with a South Asian twist we appreciate that to the extent that Hindus have views about how and what things exist, how we can know about them, and how to mediate differences of opinion, they have philosophical views about metaphysics, epistemology, and logic.

To the extent that Hindus have positions on what to choose, how to behave, and what to aim for, they have positions in moral and political philosophy. Practices, rituals and festivals that Hindus endorse and participate in are part of their moral and political theories in practice. Certainly these practices could be described and studied social-scientifically and independently of philosophical reasons that constitute supporting Hindu outlooks, but that would be to divorce the practices of Hindus from their reasons. The only motivation for engaging in a non-philosophical study of Indian ritual and practice is a commitment to an Orientalist narrative that depicts Indians as creatures of tradition and habit with no reasons for their choices (cf. Said 1978; Inden 1990). Certainly we could engage in this kind of scholarship but we would be responsible for divorcing these Hindu practices from their supporting philosophy. If the practices thereby appeared extra-philosophical, that would be a function of our research methodology—we would have no reason to believe that our resulting representations of Hindu practice are accurate.

To the extent that Hindus have views about what all Hindus should endorse, they have second-order philosophical views: metaphilosophical views. But as is commonly observed (cf. Philosophical Investigations I.121), there is not a huge difference between a metaphilosophical view and a philosophical view as any substantive philosophical option is a view about what is true for all options. To the extent that what keeps Hinduism together is philosophical disagreement—a disagreement about what is philosophically true for all philosophical options—then all Hindu positions are metaphilosophical.

In appreciating that it is the philosophical debates of South Asia that keep Hinduism together, we note that there is neither need nor necessity to identify something that all Hindus endorse in order to make sense of Hinduism. This insight sheds a critical light on comprehensive accounts of Hinduism: accounts of Hinduism that identify Hinduism with some foundational philosophical commitment. Often, comprehensive views of Hinduism are expressed under the idea that there is a historical unity in Hinduism—or the opposite, that Hindus are ecumenical in believing that all paths lead to the same god. The number of comprehensive accounts of Hinduism abound.¹ They arise naturally from Hindus disagreeing, metaphilosophically, about what Hindus should endorse: everyone who has a philosophical view about what Hindus should endorse has one such view. The difference between the representative ideas of Hinduism that I will identify and models of Comprehensive Hinduism is that the representative ideas do not entail what Hindus have to endorse in order to be a Hindu. Rather they represent Hinduism as a philosophical disagreement so in some respect they depend upon an open-ended diversity of dissenting views to constitute the objectivity of Hinduism. Most importantly, the dissenting views do not have to be tolerant or instantiate the openness of Hinduism just as in philosophy, dissenting views within a philosophical debate do not have to display the virtues of criticism and reason that characterizes philosophy to be part of the philosophical debate. The virtues of the debate are not necessarily reducible to the contributions to the debate, but the openness of the debate itself. Representative Hinduism accommodates all versions of Hinduism: the good, the bad, and the ugly. It accurately reveals the object: Hinduism. We shall see, it is able to deliver philosophical guidance because it does not deny the reality of diverse contributions to Hinduism.

Comprehensive versions of Hinduism in contrast might either define “Hinduism” in terms of some doctrine or practice (for instance, one might think that to be a Hindu one must be devoted to Hindu gods, or some subset of Hindu gods), or they might stipulate what Hindus should believe to be good Hindus (one might think that to be a good Hindu is to worship a specific god and not all gods). Definitional versions of Comprehensive Hinduism are all implausible as accounts of Hinduism. To make a case for any comprehensive doctrine as definitive of Hinduism involves a tremendous amount of cherry picking and sample bias. Philosophers can have far more sympathy for Stipulative accounts of Comprehensive Hinduism that make a case for what would be advisable for followers of Hinduism to endorse in so far as such positions arise out of philosophical reflection. But they would be mistaken as a synopsis of Hinduism—unless they are based on representational Hinduism. We can and should think about the minimal philosophical commitments that are entailed by philosophical disagreements because these are philosophically true as representations or revelations of philosophical disagreement. They reveal the disagreement as they are consistent with them having been entailed by them. These would be synoptic of Hinduism but of philosophy as well, and worth taking seriously for these reasons.

Myths of the substance of religion

Appreciating what Hinduism is as a religion requires doing away with several myths about:

• religion as a phenomena on the periphery of philosophy,

• the irrelevance of politics and colonialism to what counts as a religion,

• (but also) what the philosophy of religion has to look like when faced with the reality of religion as a global phenomenon.

Eurocentrism

The usual myths about religion as a phenomenon at the boundaries of philosophy goes hand in hand with the usual myth that the philosophy of religion is primarily concerned with details of theism. Philosophy is a critical disagreement between every and all manner of theories and to the extent that theism is depicted as the basic substance of religion, it seems like religion stands outside of the debates of philosophy. One must be a believer to be religious it seems. We get this impression of religion by focusing on religious options on the doorstep of Europe—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. That religion is about theism is put to rest when we consider religion on a global scale, and what we find is that the diversity and range of options across religions is no different than the diversity of options across philosophy. As Victoria Harrison (2006) has noted, in a multicultural world, we have to look to pragmatic considerations to inform our understanding of religion as there is no essence to religion, if we take in all the evidence. Hinduism is paradigmatic of the reality that there is nothing in philosophy that is left over when we look at the reality of religion. The global reality of philosophical diversity is the philosophical reality of Hinduism. Hinduism is the world’s philosophical diversity in miniature with a masala twist. But this puts a fair bit of stress on the idea that religion is a phenomenon on the boundaries of philosophy. It also brings to light the elephant in the room:

• The only people’s whose philosophy is not religious or constitutive of a religion are European peoples and their philosophy.

This observation pertains to a more contemporary world, of the Common Era, where “religion” has no obvious essence. This observation was not true in the ancient world if we read back our idea of religion into the Roman perspective. Our term “religion” comes from the Latin religio and is originally part of the bureaucratic framework of the ancient Romans. They would use “religio” for any duty to the divine (pagan or other) and contrasted with superstitio, which overlaps with our “superstition.” The latter was a term of abuse while the former is not. This distinction mirrors in some way our distinction between a religion and a cult.² But what is noteworthy about European and human history is that anything that might have been a religion of European descent and pedigree was wiped out in practice and absorbed into the cultural history of Europe. Now, if a philosophical idea can be shown to have a European pedigree, it does not get counted as a religion—no matter the content. The philosophy could be theistic or make a case for unobservable facts, perhaps even life after death (such as much of Plato), but it would not be religious if it was argued for by a European and has a European pedigree. But if the same philosophical outlook is found somewhere else in the world it is religion. Even when we focus solely on religions formed on the doorstep of Europe’s imperialism—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—we find that “religion” is a label given only to those traditions as they have an extra-European pedigree. The vast majority of European philosophers from Plato on were theists but their theism is counted as philosophical and not religious so long as there is no explicit effort made to ground these ideas in an extra-European tradition. But if theism comes by way of the Middle East from outside of Europe, it is thereby religious.

Part of this transformation has to do with divorcing the idea of religion from a ‘duty to the divine’ but also secularizing what divinity amounts to (an idea of SECULARISM that I will call “Secularism₂”). We find this transition already afoot in Plato’s Euthyphro, where Socrates criticizes the idea that the holy can be learned by tradition, and rather the holy has to be determined by some independent criterion that would legitimate some traditions as authoritative and others as not. Here we find Plato putting a wedge between holiness as a sociological phenomenon and one that is philosophical. With this wedge we find that European ideas of the holy from European philosophers are routinely treated as secular and philosophical while non-European accounts are religious and sociological even from philosophical sources.

Consider the following philosophical position. You should not worry about your individu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Hinduism
• Investigating Philosophy of Religion
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Hinduism and the Limits of Interpretation
• 3 Bhakti: The Fourth moral Theory
• 4 Logic: The Nectar of Immortality
• 5 Subcontinent Dharma, the Global Alt-Right, and the Philosophy of Thought
• 6 Jñāna: Pramāṇa, Satya and Citta (Not: Justified, True, Belief)
• 7 Moral Standing: Who Counts, Gods, and the Afterlife
• 8 Metaphysics: Two Truths
• 9 The politics of the Milk Ocean: Mokṣa
• 10 Conclusion
• Index