Eastern Philosophy: The Basics

Victoria S. Harrison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315436517
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Eastern Philosophy: The Basics is an essential introduction to major Indian and Chinese philosophies, both past and present. Exploring familiar metaphysical and ethical questions from the perspectives offered by a range of eastern philosophies, including Confucianism, Daoism, the main Buddhist and Hindu philosophical schools, as well as Jainism, this book covers key figures, issues, methods and concepts.

Questions discussed include:

• What is the 'self'?
• Is human nature inherently good or bad?
• How is the mind related to the world?
• How can you live an authentic life?
• What is the fundamental nature of reality?

With timelines highlighting key figures and their contributions, a list of useful websites, pronunciation guides and further reading suggestions, Eastern Philosophy: The Basics provides an engaging overview of fundamental ideas in eastern philosophy. The second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to take account of the most recent scholarship. It includes study questions for each chapter, an updated bibliography, a new section on the Yijing and expanded discussion of Indian philosophies and their basis in experience. Eastern Philosophy: The Basics is valuable reading for all students of philosophy and religion, especially those seeking to understand eastern thought.

REASON

This chapter introduces key issues concerning knowledge and our reasoning powers that occupied philosophers in classical India. For reasons to be explained later in the chapter, questions about which sources of knowledge were acceptable and which forms of reasoning and procedures of debate reliably led to the truth were regarded as of paramount importance. The main ideas considered here were advanced by philosophers belonging to both ā stika (affirmer) and nā stika (non-affirmer) darś anas: principally, Nyā ya, Cā rvā ka, Jaina and Madhyamaka (‘Middle Way’) Buddhist. Despite their differences, these darś anas were united in the conviction that ignorance is the main problem facing all sentient beings. They also shared the belief that it is a problem requiring a philosophical solution. We begin, then, with the topic of ignorance.

IGNORANCE

In the philosophies of India ignorance (avidyā ) is widely regarded as a principal source of suffering because it gives rise to the attachments that lead to rebirth. In their different ways, and despite important disagreements concerning what exactly it is that we are ignorant of, each darś ana responded to the problem of ignorance. While religious traditions recommended certain ways of behaving—such as fasting and renouncing worldly goods—as a remedy for the attachments that arose from ignorance, philosophers sought to provide theoretical accounts explaining both what we are ignorant of and what we would know if we were not ignorant. Although the religious and philosophical responses to ignorance developed alongside each other and interpenetrated to a significant degree, here our focus is on the latter rather than the former.

Humans were, by and large, thought to be ignorant of the correct answers to two important questions: ‘What is the fundamental nature of reality?’ and ‘What is the true self?’ These questions are intimately connected to each other, and an answer to either one of them will imply an answer to the other. In developing their responses to these questions some darś anas prioritized finding an answer to the first, more encompassing, question while others, for example, the Buddhist darś anas, prioritized the second. Those philosophers emphasizing our supposed ignorance of the nature of reality stimulated the interest in metaphysics that runs through most of the philosophical traditions of India. This interest, which was originally fuelled by soteriological concerns (that is, concerns about ultimate liberation from rebirth), led to the development of the rival philosophical systems previously outlined: Nyā ya/Vaiś eṣ ika, Sā ṃ khya/Yoga, Mī mā ṃ sā , several forms of Vedā nta, several schools of Buddhism and Jainism. These darś anas held that a correct understanding of metaphysical issues was the key to overcoming ignorance and thus of escaping the suffering attendant upon continual rebirth. However, each of them held distinctive views on the nature of the true self, its post-mortem destiny and its relation to the ultimately real. In other words, despite agreement that knowledge will bring freedom from rebirth, there arose rival views about the human condition and what is required for liberation.

The existence of diverse and often conflicting views generated the need to discriminate between good and bad arguments. In the face of widespread disagreement about the answers to urgent questions, many held that it was inadequate merely to assert a position without providing a justification for it. Philosophers were expected to offer a proof that their view, or the view of their darś ana, was the correct one. This expectation gave rise to serious analytical efforts to define good and bad arguments. Good arguments were thought to be ones that led to knowledge and thereby successfully dispelled ignorance; bad arguments were thought to be ones that did not. In this chapter, we examine some of the issues underlying the notion of a good argument. We leave the question of what we might know by means of such arguments until later chapters. In Chapter 2 we focus on what might be learnt about the nature of reality, and in Chapter 3 we turn to knowledge of the self.

ARGUMENT

‘Philosophy’ comes from a Greek word meaning ‘love of wisdom’, and philosophers seek to acquire wisdom by replacing ignorance with knowledge through their practice of philosophy: a practice that, in classical India, was largely constituted by public debate (Ganeri 2001). Philosophical debate cannot proceed effectively unless the participants first agree on some fundamental issues governing the activity of philosophizing. At the most basic level, a shared understanding of the structure of a good argument is vital, as is consensus on the rules of rational debate. Philosophers within the Nyā ya darś ana, whom I will henceforth refer to as Naiyā yikas, attended systematically to these matters. The term ‘Nyā ya’ means ‘the science of reasoning’; and Naiyā yikas were principally interested in philosophical methodology and the theory of knowledge (epistemology). Drawing on the work of earlier Buddhist logicians, they proposed what became the generally accepted framework for philosophical debates within and between all the schools of philosophy in India. Later in this chapter we will look more closely at the format and presuppositions of such debates. Here, we focus on the Naiyā yikas’ conception of the shape a philosophical argument should take.

The Naiyā yikas developed a sophisticated method of rational argument, which they then used to defend their other philosophical commitments. As outlined in the Nyā ya Sū tra (I.I.32–39 [this should be read as: book I, chapter I, sutras 32–39], in A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, Radhakrishnan and Moore 1989: 362f.), arguments constructed according to this method have the following ­five-membered structure:

1The premise to be established is stated.

2The reason for the premise is given.

3An example is provided.

4The application of the example to the premise is explained.

5The conclusion is stated.

We can illustrate how the Naiyā yikas’ method of argument works using their own example of the fire on the hill (the following is adapted from King 1999: 131).

1There is a fire on this hill (premise/statement).

2Because there is smoke (reason).

3Since whatever has smoke has fire, e.g. an oven (example).

4There is smoke on this hill, which is associated with fire (application).

5Therefore, there is a fire on this hill (conclusion).

This form of reasoning from premises to a conclusion is distinctive because of its appeal to an example in premise 3. The significance of this appeal to an example is that it lends weight to the otherwise unsupported general claim that ‘whatever has smoke has fire’. Compare the above argument, with its appeal to an example, with the following shorter argument:

1All smoke comes from fire.

2There is smoke on the hill.

3Therefore, there is a fire on the hill.

This is a purely formal argument insofar as the truth of the premises (1 and 2) guarantees the truth of the conclusion (3). To see this, you need to recognize that the truth of the conclusion is guaranteed by the truth of the premises whether the world contains a smoking hill or not. If the premises are true, then the conclusion follows (this is what it means for an argument to be valid in western philosophical terminology). However, as the argument contains no support for the truth of the general claim made in premise 1, its ability to deliver a genuine truth about the world in the conclusion is not established. Lacking support for premise 1, the argument does not provide us with any reason to agree with its conclusion that ‘there is a fire on the hill’.

The shorter form of argument—developed by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle—has been dominant in the western philosophical tradition. There is an ongoing debate about which type of argument is more effective for knowledge production and whether or not the Nyā ya form is in fact reducible to the Aristotelian form without losing its ability to generate significant conclusions. A key difference between the two forms of argument is that according to Aristotelian logic an argument can succeed (i.e. be valid) whether the premises are true or not, whereas a Nyā ya argument can only succeed if the premises actually are true (and the point of the example is to establish this). (See King 1999: 131f.)

Despite its ability to deliver conclusions which purport to tell us something about the actual world without relying on an unsupported general claim, the Nyā ya five-membered argument is vulnerable to criticism in ways that the Aristotelian three-membered one is not (see the text box ‘Is it about to rain?’).

IS IT ABOUT TO RAIN?

Suppose I want to persuade my walking companion that it is about to rain. I might reason as follows: “Look, it is going to rain. For see that large black cloud. Last time you saw a large black cloud like that one, what happened? Well, it’s the same now. It is definitely going to rain”. In order to be able to generalize the structure of such patterns of reasoning, the Naiyāyikas make an important simplifying assumption. They assume that the underlying pattern is one of property-substitution. The claim is that all such patterns exemplify the same canonical form: Ta because Ra. An object (the pakṣ a or ‘site’ of the inference) is inferred to have a property (the hetu or reason). The first simplification [made by the Naiyāyikas], then, is to think of reasoning as taking us from an object’s having one property to that same object’s having another.

(Jonardon Ganeri 2001: 29)

In addition to the problematic assumption made by the Naiyā yikas that we can infer that an object possesses some property (e.g. fire) because it possesses another (e.g. smoke), a Nyā ya argument will always be open to the objection that the example is unreliable and so is unable to give sufficient support to the general claim. Richard King exposes this feature of Nyā ya argumentation by pointing out that by means of a Nyā ya argument ‘one might be led to believe that dawn has broken because one hears a cockerel crowing. But the cockerel may have been disturbed by a fox, or we may be the victim of an April Fool’s joke’ (King 1999: 133). We will see later that the Cā rvā kas exploited this weakness.

The problems inherent in the Naiyā yikas’ five-membered argument form, while significant, can be overemphasized, especially if we disregard the context within which this form of argument was developed. The role the five-membered argument plays in the Naiyā yikas’ framework of reasoning is not the same as the role played by formal argumentation with early western thought. Maintaining the formal validity of an argument was not the Naiyā yikas’ priority; instead, their principal concern was with the actual content of the argument and its ...