Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion

Chad Meister, Paul Copan, Chad Meister, Paul Copan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136696855
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Second edition is an indispensable guide and reference source to the major themes, movements, debates and topics in philosophy of religion. Considerably expanded for the second edition, over seventy entries from a team of renowned international contributors are organized into nine clear parts:

• philosophical issues in world religions
• key figures in philosophy of religion
• religious diversity
• the theistic conception of God
• arguments for the existence of God
• arguments against the existence of God
• philosophical theology
• Christian theism
• recent topics in philosophy of religion.

Covering key world religions including Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, and key figures such as Augustine, Aquinas and Kierkegaard, the Companion explores the central topics in theism such as the ontological, cosmological and teleological arguments for God's existence. Three final parts consider Catholicism, Protestantism, Eastern orthodoxy and current debates including phenomenology, reformed epistemology, religious experience, and religion and science, making the Companion as a whole essential reading for students of philosophy or religion, and suitable for anyone coming to the subject for the first time.

This second edition includes new chapters on Blaise Pascal, Baruch Spinoza, Interreligious Dialogue, Death and the Afterlife, Incorporeality, Religion and Global Ethics, New Religious Movements, Religion and the Environment, and Religion and Film.

Part I
Philosophical Issues in the World Religions

1
Hinduism

Arvind Sharma

Introduction

A striking question emerges in relation to Hinduism in the context of philosophical issues in world religions: that whether Hindu philosophy can bring anything to the table itself becomes a philosophical issue. For it has been denied by some leading western thinkers that Hindu philosophy qualifies as philosophy, and this itself raises a philosophical issue in the context of world religions which may be articulated as follows: ‘Is Hindu mathematics “mathematics,” is Sanskrit grammar, vyākarana, grammar? Here Rorty would concede the point of any such comparison, for in these disciplines all are agreed about the point of inquiry’ (Mohanty 1993: 318). But Rorty would not concede this point in relation to Hindu philosophy because ‘Indian philosophy is so utterly different from Western that we should not call it “philosophy” ’ (ibid.). The implication is that Hindu philosophy never liberated itself from myth and theology the way western philosophy was able to. This is not quite correct because ānvīksikī, as understood in the Arthasīāstra, clearly involves philosophical inquiry in the sense that ‘it is pramānair arthaprakāśanam, examination by means of pramānas of all such objects as are known by perception and scriptures’ (ibid.: 317).

A similar objection is raised by Heidegger, whose position is summed up by J. L. Mehta as follows: ‘Heidegger agrees with Hegel that “philosophy” is in essence Greek-Western, asserting that there is no other, neither Chinese nor Indian, that the phrase “Western-European philosophy” is in truth a tautology’ (in Mohanty 1993: 319). Additionally, ‘Heidegger believed that with the end of modernity, philosophy has come to an end’ (ibid.: 319). It is helpful to remember here that ‘Heidegger, in an attempt to think about the totality of Western thought, characterizes it as metaphysical beginning with Plato and culminating in Nietzsche – a tradition which has led, in Heidegger’s view, to technology as a way of will to power, of objectifying and calculative thinking’ (ibid.) which is denied to Indian thought. However, this overlooks the obvious fact that ‘if Western philosophical thought has operated with the subject– object distinction, so has a large segment of Indian thought’ (ibid.: 320).

This controversy raises two interesting philosophical issues in the study of world religions. The first is to draw attention to the fact that although philosophy as a discipline may be associated with critical rationality, ‘a system of philosophy has not merely to put forward a theory of reality, of man and his relations in the world, of experience and cognition, it has also to ground, validate and legitimize its theory. Philosophers have never agreed as to the norms, the criteria and the sources of such validation’ (Mohanty 1993: 327, emphasis added). This point will become clearer in the latter part of this chapter.

The second is to draw attention to what have been called the ‘relativist’ and ‘essentialist’ positions. In the usage of these terms in the present context, the ‘relativist’ position implies that two philosophical systems may be so radically different as to be incommensurable, while the ‘essentialist’ position implies that all of them might well constitute essentially the same sort of enterprise. J. N. Mohanty argues that both positions are mistaken in the context of the comparison of Indian and western thought. He believes that ‘there are enough similarities between Indian darśanas and the Western philosophies to justify translating darśana as philosophy – enough differences erupting precisely where similarities first showed themselves to justify talk of Indian philosophy’ (1993: 330).

Whether Indian – or for that matter – Hindu philosophy is philosophy or not thus emerges as a key philosophical issue in itself, compelling us to define the term philosophy itself, this illustrates the problem of comparison both in world religions in particular and in phenomena in general. There is now a manifest tendency in certain circles to include the discussion of Hindu thought on philosophical issues concerned with religion and we shall now review the situation in the light of this development (Hick 1990: chs 9 and 11).

Indian philosophy

I conceive my assignment henceforth as follows: to identify the philosophical issues that have arisen in Hinduism and place them in the larger context of the comparative philosophy of religions. One may begin by clarifying that there are ‘Hindu philosophies’ rather than a Hindu philosophy, as it is usually said to consist of the six systems (Zimmer 1951: 605–14). These are the schools of (1) Nyāya, often described as one of logical realism; (2) Vaisesika, characterized by the doctrine of atomic pluralism; (3) Sānkhya, a school which subscribes to the fundamental dualism of matter (prakrti) and spirit (purusa); (4) Yoga, a system which shares many assumptions of the previous school and outlines a system of praxis for achieving its goals; (5) Pūrva-mīmāmṁsā (or Mīmāmṁsā for short) which advocates Vedic ritualism; and (6) Vedānta, the school which ultimately became the most influential. Vedānta consists of several subschools, all of which claim to provide the correct philosophical interpretation of the section of the Vedas known as the Upanisads. The Upanisads, along with a text called the Brahmasūtra and the Bhagavadgītā, constitute the three canonical texts of Vedānta. The six systems are sometimes hyphenated in pairs on account of their strong affinities as Nyāya-Vaisīesika, Sānkhya-Yoga and Mīmāmṁsā-Vedānta.

The three non-orthodox schools: Cārvāka (Indian ma terialism), Buddhism and Jainism, should be mentioned, to complete the picture. These three are considered non-orthodox because they reject Vedic authority, which the others accept in varying degrees. According to S. Radhakrishnan, ‘The acceptance of the authority of the Vedas by the different systems of Hindu thought is an admission that intuitive insight is a greater light in the abstruse problems of philosphy than logical understanding’ (in Mohanty 1993: 322).

Philosophical issues of one kind or another arise in all religions. Some arise in almost all religions (such as the existence of God), while some are peculiar to one tradition (like the doctrine of the Trinity in Christianity). Be that as it may, philosophical issues can be broadly classified into four categories when viewed in the context of world religions:

1. Philosophical issues that a tradition shares with other traditions, for instance, the question of the existence of God. Here the interest lies in any new perspectives the tradition may provide.
2. Philosophical issues that are more or less unique to one tradition, for instance, whether the Qur’ān is ‘created or uncreated.’ Although the issue might be unique to a tradition, this very fact might sometimes make it highly significant in a cross-cultural context, in the sense that ‘only as a result of the non-participant arriving on the scene, and making novel claims and asking unanticipated questions, does the so-called authentic Other engage in acts of self-conscious representation’ (McCutcheon 2006: 734n).
3. Philosophical issues which play a major role in other traditions but play a minor or negligible role in the tradition under consideration. Here interest centers on why or how the tradition has ‘bucked’ the trend.
4. Philosophical issues which play a minor role in the tradition but potentially acquire major significance in a comparative context.

Existence of God

To take category (1): one philosophical issue which Hinduism shares with world religions is that of the existence of God. The issue arises in Hinduism in at least three ways: First, classical Hinduism had to contend with the presence of three atheistic philosophical schools in ancient India: Indian materialism, which denied the independent existence of spirit per se; Buddhism, which accepted the idea of divinities (unlike Indian materialism) but rejected a creator God; and Jainism, which accepted the idea of perfected spiritual beings but not of God (Radhakrishnan 1923: pt. I). In this it was similar to a fourth school of Hindu thought called Sānkhya, which in its classical formulation likewise accepted the presence of perfected spiritual beings but rejected God as one (Chatterjee and Datta 1950: 44).

Second, classical Hinduism believes in a God who promulgates a scripture but according to one school of it, the Vedānta, the text possesses intrinsic validity and does not owe its purchase on us as the word of God (Murty 1959: ch. 2). Another school, the Nyāya, however, maintained that the Hindu scriptures called the Vedas owed their authority to being the word of God (Puligandla 1975: 183–4).

Third, Hindu thought possesses not only an atheistic but also a trans theistic element, in the form of Advaita Vedānta. This system insists on the existence of God at the empirical level, while denying it at the transcendental level. Curiously enough, the Hindu transtheistic schools are as vigorous in their defense of the existence of God as the theistic ones (Smart 1964).

Two philosophical issues which arise in this context will perhaps particularly engage scholars: (1) that it is the sacred scripture whose authority is directly questioned, while that of God is questioned by implication, and (2) the defense offered for scriptural authority in some forms of Hinduism is such as dispenses with God.

Both these points require further explanation. It should be noted regarding the first point that a non-believer is described as a nāstika (or one who says no) in both philosophical and popular Hinduism. In philosophical Hinduism it applies to one who does not believe in the authority of the Vedas, while in popular Hinduism it applies to one who does not believe in the existence of God. This highlights the point that, in philosophical Hinduism, acceptance of scriptural authority counts for more than the acceptance of God.

The reason for this development lies in the conclusion reached in the philosophical schools of Vedānta that the existence of God can only be established on the basis of scriptural authority. Reason, however skillfully deployed, cannot yield a decisive verdict on the issue, as for every argument it is possible to adduce a counterargument. If the proof of the existence of God can only be based on scriptural authority, then naturally it is scriptural authority which must be undermined if belief in God is to be attacked.

The counterattack to the challenge to Vedic authority produced the curious outcome that the Hindu tradition in general upheld Vedic authority without upholding the existence of God. This sundering involved a separation of the ontological, the epistemological, and the deontological dimensions of life on the part of Pūrva-mīmāmṁsā, this school of thought offered the formulation that the Vedas are without a beginning, like the universe, and therefore are in no need of an author, no more than a beginningless universe is in need of a creator. The school adheres to its position so rigidly that it even compromises the standard Hindu vision of the universe as one which, although eternally existent, periodically undergoes phases of emergence and dissolution.

This pulsating view of cosmic time is replaced in Pūrva-mīmāmṁsā with a linear one, according to which the world was forever as it is now and does not undergo cycles. This occultation of the ontological results from the epistemological orientation of the tradition, as it proceeded to defend attacks on Vedic authority by the Buddhists, the Jains and the Indian materialists. The Mīmāmṁsā school argued that the scriptures of the Buddhists and the Jains have been produced by persons, who are liable to error. Therefore their texts too are open to error. By contrast, the Vedas have no authors as such, whose shortcomings could impugn its authority. The Buddhists and the Jains had also attacked Vedic ritual so the Pūrva-mīmāmṁsā school, as upholder of the Vedic ritualism, also defended the performance of ritual laid down in the Vedas. With the Vedas thus being impeccable on account of their impersonal character, the validity of the rituals laid down by them was also no longer open to question. They were to be followed not because God had ordained them but because Vedic scriptures had ordained them.

The philosophical defense of God in the transtheistic school of Advaita Vedānta (Deutsch and Dalvi 2004) is intriguing. This school of Advaita Vedānta believes in the sole spiritual reality of an Absolute, which is beyond God. Even God in this system represents a penultimate and ultimately false reality, speaking metaphysically. To use the idiom of this school, God falls in the domain of māyā, or that which is less than ultimately real. Only nirguna brahman is ultimately real in this system. The creation of the world through the working of māyā is described in such a way in this philosophical school that it is possible to derive the whole universe without necessarily invoking God. It has thus baffled scholars why this system insists on maintaining the (penultimate) reality of God. Here again the answer may lie in the epistemological rather than the ontological sphere. There can be no knowledge without a knower and a known being involved, according to this school. This is obvious in the case of perception in the world. But what of the perception of the world? Unless God is conceived as its knower, the world would not qualify as knowable. So once again epistemology has a direct bearing on the ontology of a system.

Verbal testimony

Taking category (2): a philosophical issue perhaps unique to Hindu philosophy is that of verbal testimony as an independent means of knowledge (Hiriyanna 1949: 44–6). The point needs to be elaborated. Most schools of philosophy tend to accept two main ways of knowing: perception and reason (inference). Students are familiar with the debates between empiricism and rationalism so that their relative merits as means of knowledge could provide a point of contention, but few would deny that these could be counted as the two main ways of knowing (Hick 1990: 68–71). Hindu philosophy differs in this respect in offering no fewer than six ways of knowing, which should at least be listed: (1) pratyaksa (perception); (2) anumāna (inference); (3) upamāna (comparison); (4) s̄abdas (verbal authority); (5) arthāpatti (postulation) and (6) abhāva (non-cognition), although any detailed discussion might run the risk of becoming esoteric (Datta 1932).

Of special interest to us in the present context is s̄abda ss or verbal testimony, which should be clearly distinguished from pratyaksa (perception) and anumāna (inference) as follows. It could be argued that verbal testimony should not constitute a special and independent way of knowing because it can be successfully subsumed under pratyaksa or anumāna. Words are heard; so they could be placed in the category of perception. Moreover, their truth is to be inferred from the reliability of the speaker; so their validity could also be considered as being based on inference. To understand the Hindu position, one must distinguish clearly between words, and the knowledge conveyed by words. Let us suppose that someone comes and te...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Philosophical issues in the world religions
• Part II Key figures in philosophy of religion
• Part III Religious diversity
• Part IV The theistic concept of God
• Part V Arguments for God’s existence
• Part VI Arguments against God’s existence
• Part VII Philosophical theology
• Part VIII Christian theism
• Part IX Recent topics in philosophy of religion
• Index