Philosophy in Classical India

The proper work of reason

Jonardon Ganeri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780415240352
• eBook ISBN: 9781134551637
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This original work focuses on the rational principles of Indian philosophical theory, rather than the mysticism more usually associated with it. Ganeri explores the philosophical projects of a number of major Indian philosophers and looks into the methods of rational inquiry deployed within these projects. In so doing, he illuminates a network of mutual reference, criticism, influence and response, in which reason is used to call itself into question. This fresh perspective on classical Indian thought unravels new philosophical paradigms, and points towards new applications for the concept of reason.

1 The motive and method of rational inquiry

1.1 EARLY RECOGNITION OF A ‘PRsACTICE OF REASON’

Reason can be used or abused. A cautionary episode in the Mahabharata illustrates the point. Bhisma tells Yudhisthira that there is nothing more worth having than wisdom. Wisdom, he declares, is the greatest good, the refuge of all living things, the ultimate acquisition, and is considered by the virtuous to be heaven itself (12.173.2). But then, in case his point should be misunderstood, he recounts the story of Indra appearing in the form of a jackal (12.173.45–8):

I used to be scholarly [says Indra], a reasoner, a scorner of the Veda. I was pointlessly fond of critical inquiry and the science of argument. I used to make declarations on the basis of logic; in assemblies, speaking with reasons, I harangued the brahmins and was rude during the Vedic recitations. I was an unbeliever, sceptical about everything, and though stupid, I thought myself wise. The status of a jackal that I have obtained is the result, Kasyapa, of my misdeeds.

The terms in which Indra deprecates himself are important ones, for they gradually came to be associated with the practice of philosophy itself in India. Indra was a ‘reasoner’ (haituka), he was addicted to the study of critical inquiry (anviksiki) and to the science of argument (tarka-vidya). That free thinking of this sort was seen as embodying a danger to the stability of orthodox brahminical learning is only too clear. In another epic narrative, the Ramayana, Rama advises his brother Bharata to steer well clear of such people (2.94.32–33):

You must not associate with those ‘worldly’ (lokayata) brahmins, dear brother. Their only skill is in bringing misfortune; they are fools who think themselves wise. In spite of the pre-eminent treatises on right conduct (dharma), these ignorant people derive their ideas from critical inquiry, and make declarations without any point.

These ‘reasoners’ represent a challenge and a threat to the existing tradition. They will assent to the deliverances of reason whether or not it agrees with the scriptures and the authorities on what is considered to be proper conduct. The lawmaker Manu therefore advises that a brahmin who has adopted the science of reasoning, treating with contempt the twin authorities on proper conduct (the scriptures and the texts on right conduct or dharma), should as an ‘unbeliever’ and a ‘scorner of the Vedas’ be driven from the company of the virtuous.¹

It is not that in the great epics reason as such is condemned, but only its capricious use. The ‘reasoners’ are condemned for lacking any goal other than the use of reason itself; they believe in nothing and are sceptical of everything. They use reason to criticise the scriptures, but have no doctrines of their own. Reason, the message seems to be, is misapplied when it is used in a purely negative, destructive way. In other words, the proper use of reason should be to support, and not to undermine, one’s beliefs, goals and values. The objection to the reasoners, as they are represented in the epics, is that for them the use of reason has become an end in itself. It is goalless, capricious, ungrounded.

The idea that the use of reason must be purposeful or goal-directed is taken up in the Treatise on Gains (Arthasastra), a famous book on government, politics and economics which dates from around 300 BC. Its author is Kautilya, supposed to have been the chief minister in the court of Candragupta, a Mauryan ruler who came to power at about the time of Alexander’s death. The period following Alexander’s campaign in India was in fact a time of intimate and extended contact between India and Greece. The ancient Greek chronicler Megasthenes frequently visited the court of Candragupta and in his Indica he presented to the Greeks a vivid account of the Indian society of those times. Fragments of this lost work quoted by later writers reveal Megasthenes to have been greatly impressed by similarities between Greek and Indian ideas, especially about space, time and the soul.² He is also said to have carried messages between Candragupta’s son Bindusara, the father of Asoka, and Antiochus I. Bindusara indeed asked Antiochus to send him Greek wine, raisins, and a Sophist to teach him how to argue. Antiochus replied by sending the wine and raisins, but regretted that it was not considered good form among the Greeks to trade in Sophists!

Kautilya’s purpose in writing the Treatise on Gains was to educate future kings in the necessary skills required for a successful and prosperous rule. He states that there are four branches of learning in which a young prince should be trained: the religious canon composed of the three Vedas; the sciences of material gain, primarily trade and agro-economics; the science of political administration and government; and finally anviksiki, the discipline of critical inquiry, of which samkhya, yoga and lokayata are listed as the principal divisions. Significantly, he rejects explicitly the claim of Manu and others that the study of critical reasoning is tied exclusively to a religious study of the self and its liberation (atmavidya). Critical inquiry is an autonomous discipline (1.2.11):

Investigating by means of reasons, good and evil in the Vedic religion, profit and loss in the field of trade and agriculture, and prudent and imprudent policy in political administration, as well as their relativestrengths and weaknesses, the study of critical inquiry (anviksiki) confers benefit on people, keeps their minds steady in adversity and in prosperity, and produces adeptness of understanding, speech and action.

He reiterates an old couplet (1.2.12):

The study of critical inquiry is always thought of as a lamp for all branches of knowledge, a means in all activities, and a support for all religious and social duty.

Shortly after the rediscovery and publication of the Treatise on Gains in 1909, Hermann Jacobi wrote an article arguing that Kautilya had to all extents distinguished and defined ‘philosophy’ in India.³ Kautilya’s separation of a study of ‘critical inquiry’ (anviksiki) from theological studies was enough, he conjectured, to justify the identification of ‘critical inquiry’ with philosophy. This rather important conjecture has been strongly disputed, on the grounds that critical inquiry as described by Kautilya consists simply in the art of investigating by reasons, and this is something that is practised in all branches of learning. Paul Hacker⁴ makes the point that this ‘critical inquiry’ is not necessarily an independent system of thought, but is sometimes rather a method. In the same vein, it has very plausibly been conjectured⁵ that the early references to samkhya, yoga and lokayata are not to well-defined schools of philosophical speculation, but reflect instead a methodological division. Thus samkhya labels the methods of inquiry that rest on the intellectual enumeration of basic principles, yoga the methods of spiritual practice, and lokayata the methods of worldly or empirical investigation.

We can agree with these conjectures without having to identify philosophy as a discipline with the having or inventing of a system of thought. Philosophy is circumscribed by adherence to a certain methodology and body of problems. Broadly, it is the a priori analysis of the interconnections and distinctions between groups of concepts to do with the nature of value, thought, existence and meaning. It is indeed possible to hear in Kautilya’s remark about ‘investigating . . . good and evil in the Vedic religion, profit and loss in the field of trade and agriculture, and prudent and imprudent policy in political administration’ a suggestion that a reasoned investigation is an inquiry into the nature of the distinction between good and evil, the proper goals of political institutions, and so on. But the intended domain of application for critical inquiry seems to be much wider than that. It encompasses any situation in which one sets about achieving one’s aims in a reasoned way. There is a reasoned way to go about making a profit, a reasoned way to rule a country. The study of what such reasoning consists in is one thing, the philosophical investigation of the nature of profit or rule quite another. So anviksiki in Kautilya’s sense is a study of the generic concept of rationality, as that concept features in questions about how rationally to think, how rationally to act, and how rationally to speak.

Kautilya’s conception of rationality is goal-oriented and instrumental. The interest is in the reasoned way to achieve some goal, whatever that goal may be. The use of reason does not tell us for which goals one should strive, but only how rationally to strive for them. The Arthasastra is, after all, a manual of instruction for princes. The discipline Kautilya calls that of critical inquiry is the one which trains the prince in the way for him to fulfil his projects, having once decided what those projects are to be. The other sciences, of trade and agriculture, of policy-making and government, train him in the skills of choosing one objective rather than another. A person is rational when he uses rational methods to reach his aims. (Kautilya wanted kings to become philosophers, not as Plato that philosophers be made kings.) It is not enough to be rational that the aim be in some sense a ‘worthy’ one, for even worthy goals can be striven for by irrational means.

Bertrand Russell⁶ said that ‘reason’ ‘signifies the choice of the right means to an end that you wish to achieve. It has nothing to do with the choice of ends.’ The epic horror of the reasoner concerned the aimless use of reason, using reason capriciously or solely to subvert the goals of others. Kautilya’s defence makes rationality instrumental and therefore goal-directed. It follows, however, that a tyrant can be just as rational as a ruler who is beneficent, an atheist as rational as a believer. If rationality is instrumental, then to act rationally is not the same as to act well. Followers of reason alone still face the charge of immorality, hereticism and untruth.

1.2 RATIONALITY IN THE NYAYASUTRA

Gautama Aksapada’s Nyayasutra, the redaction of which took place in the first or second century AD, deals with such themes as the procedures for properly conducting debates, the nature of good argument, and the analysis of perception, inference and testimony in so far as they are sources of knowledge. There is a detailed account of the causal structure of the mind and the nature of its operation. Certain metaphysical questions are addressed, notably the reality of wholes, atoms and universals. At the beginning of his commentary on this remarkable work, Vatsyayana Paksilasvamin (c. AD 400) wonders what it is that makes the Nyaya system distinctive. He answers as follows:

Nyaya is the examination of things with the help of methods of knowing (pramana). It is an inference supported by observation and authority. This is called a ‘critical proof’ (anviksa). A ‘critical proof’ is the proof of things desired, supported by observation and authority. The discipline of critical inquiry is the one which pertains to it, and is also called the science of nyaya or the writings on nyaya. But an inference that contradicts observation and authority is only a bogus-nyaya.⁷

Vatsyayana agrees with Kautilya that the study of critical inquiry is one of the four branches of study, but he insists that it has its own procedures or methodology. He claims that if critical inquiry did not have its own procedures then it would ‘merely be a study of the soul’s progress, like an Upanisad’. This is a rather important remark. Reasoned inquiry and scriptural studies are now claimed to have the same eventual goal or purpose; where they differ is in method. That marks a departure from Kautilya’s purely instrumental conception of rationality, in which the use of reason could equally well serve any end. For Vatsyayana wants to claim that there can be rational goals, as well as rational means, and so to distance the Nyaya system from the freethinkers in the epics.

Let us first see that Vatsyayana shares the epic horror of aimless reason. Reason, he says, can be used in one of three ways. One may employ it in a good and proper way (vada), as one does when one’s goal is to ascertain the truth of the matter. One may employ it in a bad or improper way (jalpa), as when one’s goal is to defend one’s position at all costs, using any intellectual tricks one can think of. Finally, one might employ reason in a negative and destructive way (vitanda). Here one has no goal other than to undermine one’s opponent. People who use reason in this way are very like the sceptics and unbelievers of the epics, and Vatsyayana disapproves. He claims indeed that to use reason in this way is virtually self-defeating:

A vaitandika is one who employs destructive criticism. If when questioned about the purpose [of so doing], he says ‘this is my thesis’ or ‘this is my conclusion,’ he surrenders his status as a vaitandika. If he says that he has a purpose, to make known the defects of the opponent, this too is the same. For if he says that there is one who makes things known or one who knows, or that there is a thing by which things are made known or a thing made known, then he surrenders his status as a vaitandika.⁸

Vitanda is the sceptic’s use of reason. Vatsyayana’s point is that someone who presents an argument against a thesis has at least that refutation as their goal, and so commits himself to the machinery of critical examination. But a vaitandika who accepts this gives up his claim to use reason aimlessly, without commitment. So the aimless use of reason is not just pernicious, it is self-defeating!

The salient point here is that reason must have a purpose, and the question is what that purpose should be. Vatsyayana’s answer is clever. He argues that a goal is a rational one if it is the rational means to some further goal....

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• INTRODUCTION
• 1. THE MOTIVE AND METHOD OF RATIONAL INQUIRY
• 2. RATIONALITY, EMPTINESS AND THE OBJECTIVE VIEW
• 3. THE RATIONAL BASIS OF METAPHYSICS
• 4. REDUCTION, EXCLUSION AND RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION
• 5. RATIONALITY, HARMONY AND PERSPECTIVE
• 6. REASON IN EQUILIBRIUM
• NOTES
• TEXTS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY