The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism

Joshua Farris, Benedikt Paul Göcke, Joshua Farris, Benedikt Paul Göcke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000433340
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The influence of materialist ontology largely dominates philosophical and scientific discussions. However, there is a resurgent interest in alternative ontologies from panpsychism (the view that at the base of reality exists potential minds, minds, or mind-lets) to idealism and dualism (the view that all of reality is material and mental).

The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism is an outstanding reference source and the first major collection of its kind. Historically grounded and constructively motivated, it covers the key topics in philosophy, science, and theology, providing students and scholars with a comprehensive introduction to idealism and immaterialism. Also addressed are post-materialism developments, with explicit attention to variations of idealism and immaterialism (the view that reality depends on a mind or a set of minds).

Comprising 44 chapters written by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors, the Handbook is organised into five clear parts:

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• Idealism and the history of philosophy
• Important figures in idealism
• Systematic assessment of idealism
• Idealism and science
• Idealism, physicalism, panpsychism, and substance dualism

Essential reading for students and researchers in metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind, The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism will also be of interest to those in related discplines where idealist and immaterialist ontology impinge on history, science, and theology.

PART 1
Idealism and the history of philosophy

1
Eastern philosophy and idealism

Gavin Flood

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202851-3

The category ‘Eastern philosophy’ is somewhat problematic, covering as it does the history of philosophy in both China and India (Ram-Prasad, 2005), and it is difficult to make general statements across such expansive histories, but nevertheless debate between what we might call idealism and realism did develop in both regions, and philosophical categories emerged that have equivalents in Western philosophy. That there are such overlapping or analogous categories is itself interesting and may even point to a kind of metaphysical realism. For example, the categories of ‘substance’ and ‘essence’ have equivalents in Indian philosophy (dravya and svabhāva, respectively), and these terms were translated into Chinese through Buddhism (zixing and ti, respectively). Although different kinds of idealism emerged in specific contexts and histories, it is notable that similar philosophical problems were addressed in distinct civilizations. A weak sense of idealism, that the world cannot be accounted for independently of the mind, is quite common in Indian philosophy, being a key idea in yoga traditions, and a strong idealist thesis that the world itself is consciousness, that consciousness is the substance of self and universe, was developed by both Hindu and Buddhist philosophers. Buddhist idealism in turn influenced China, where Chinese forms of idealism emerged. In this chapter, I will examine kinds of idealism that arose in India and China during the early medieval period when philosophies had developed distinct positions in relation to each other: a Hindu kind of idealism within the religion of Śiva, Buddhist idealism, a Chinese version, and an indigenous Chinese philosophy that is analogous to the category.

1. Indian idealism

The historian of Indian philosophy Surendranath Dasgupta wrote a book on Indian idealism, regarding it as a major trajectory from the earliest sources (Dasgupta, 1933), and P. T. Raju similarly regarded the history of idealistic thought as progressive, culminating in ‘the final and absolute identity of the universal and the particular, law and thing, norm and existence, reality and value, and the ideal and the actual’ (Raju, 1963: p. 29). But reading Indian philosophy through the lens of idealism has perhaps been at the expense of realistic or materialist trends, such as Mīmāṃsā, the school of Vedic exegesis, and Vaiśeṣika, a school of existential particularity, but Dasgupta and Raju have nevertheless identified an important theme. The word ‘idealism’ applied to the history of Indian philosophy is both misleading and revealing: misleading in the sense that modes of thinking arose in the sub-continent that are highly distinctive and do not easily map onto a history of Western idealism, but revealing in the sense that the term does indicate an emphasis on consciousness – that any account of the world, any attempt to make sense of the world and human reality within it, must present an account of the mind. A history of Indian metaphysics cannot be given without such an account. But idealism in India points to range of philosophical positions that we first need to identify in general terms. If by ‘philosophy’ we mean developed arguments, that in India generally (but not only) took the form of commentary on revealed scripture, then such philosophy itself came out of pre-philosophical speculation on the nature of reality that we find in revealed scriptures. Broadly speaking, systematic speculation develops from reflection on ritual practices, notably sacrifice practiced in the Vedic age (from c. 1500 BC). This reflection took the form of speculation on the nature of speech as a cosmological force and underlying reality and on the nature of the power underlying the sacrifice or Brahman and reflection on the essence of a human being. The Upaniṣads are characterized by reflection on the fundamental nature of reality, whether it is breath, fire, space, or the self. Dasgupta regarded the philosophy of the Upaniṣads to be an idealistic absolutism and the reality of Brahman as the essence of the universe, which is an emanation of it, as a web emanates from the spider (Dasgupta, 1933: pp. 38–39). Such reflection recorded in the last layer of Vedic scriptures gave rise to the philosophical tradition of Vedānta. Idealism as a sustained philosophical program must be seen therefore emerging from this pre-philosophical speculation.

The necessity of involving consciousness in any account of reality took two major forms, on the one hand a claim that reality is itself identical with consciousness (here understood as trans-individual) and on the other that reality is an emanation or manifestation of consciousness. The former tends to go with a strict non-dualist position that the perception of difference is due to ignorance or illusion, whereas emanationism does not necessarily entail illusion: the world is real but an emanation of an absolute consciousness. There are, then, various positions between an idealism that regards self and world as identical with consciousness, the sudden realization of which has soteriological consequences because existential knowledge of this entails that there is no more rebirth, and realism that sees self and world as material substances independent of mind. Thus, within the Vedānta tradition, a pure non-dualism developed (Advaita Vedānta), along with modified or qualified non-dualistic philosophies (such as Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta), to a non-idealistic philosophy of dualism (Dvaita Vedānta) that posited an unbridgeable ontological distinction between self, God, and world.

There is a long history of the Advaita Vedānta school whose most famous exponent was Śaṅkara. The aim of philosophy was the realization that our experience of difference is based on ignorance (avidyā) and is illusion (māyā), which is a turning around of awareness (vivarta) such that upon seeing the rope as rope, the illusory perception of it as a snake is dispelled or realizing mother of pearl not to be silver. This is what Potter once called a ‘leap philosophy’ (Potter, 1963: pp. 236–256). But another kind of idealism developed in Kashmir in the medieval period associated with the religion of Śiva that came to be known as the recognition or Pratyabhijñā school. It is this idealism that I wish to focus on here because it has been less represented in secondary literature than Advaita Vedānta, because the religion of Śiva dominated the sub-continent from the ninth to thirteenth centuries and because it has contemporary philosophical interest.

2. The philosophy of recognition

The recognition school came to prominence in Kashmir as the articulation of the religion focused on Śiva. Founded by Somānanda (fl. 900–950 AD), it continued with a chain of thinkers in a line of succession to Abhinavagupta (fl. 975–1025 AD) and his disciple Kṣemarāja (fl. 1000–1050 AD). This school responded to contemporary philosophy, rejecting the earlier Advaita form of idealism and also Buddhist idealism. This was an idealism that asserted the reality of the world but claimed that its substance was the pure consciousness of Śiva. While there is still much to be done, even though good scholarship has been completed on this tradition (Lawrence, 1999; Ratié, 2011), we are in a position in which the philosophical arguments can be adequately described and assessed. The final work of Abhinavagupta, his commentary on the verses of his grand-teacher Utpaladeva (Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī) is a sustained exposition of this philosophy. Unusual for Indian philosophy, which often wishes to claim its ancient ancestry, this is declared to be a ‘new way’ (mārgo navaḥ) by Utpaladeva (Ratié, 2011: p. 6).

Abhinavagupta’s philosophy was philosophical idealism within a tradition of thought that itself was the intellectual articulation of wider, more popular kinds of religion based on a revelation of texts called Tantras. These texts are pre-philosophical in the sense of not presenting sustained arguments, but they are clearly philosophical in presenting ideas, and it is from this background of revealed texts, as well as the history of thinking in his tradition, that he derives his philosophy. He is critically responding to Buddhism, which had been prominent in the Kashmir valley, and he inhabits an intellectual culture through the medium of Sanskrit in which scholars debated philosophical questions such as realism versus idealism, theism versus monism, and so on.

Following Utpaladeva, the thesis that Abhinavagupta presents is that person and world in reality comprise the pure consciousness of Śiva. This is an idealism that privileges consciousness while not denying the reality of world. It is not that the world is an illusion, as for Advaita, but that its substance is consciousness. This is not simply a fact about the world for the Pratyabhijñā arrived at through a kind of phenomenological observation but a cognition with soteriological effect. The correct perception of world – seeing self and world as consciousness – is gaining liberation in life ( jīvanmukti). This process is closely related to the unfolding of the argument itself. An initial statement or thesis is challenged by an opposing view (the pūrvapakṣa), which itself is then critiqued in a process resulting in the demonstrated conclusion (siddhānta) (Ratié, 2011: p. 10; Watson, 2006). Abhinavagupta’s text first examines the questions of whether the self exists and whether there is a permanent conscious subject. This question is raised in particular in the context of Buddhist objections to the notion of self (Oetke, 1988; Watson, 2006). In sum, Buddhist philosophers maintained that because of the truth of impermanence, the experience of a permanent self, what we might call the indexical-I, is mistaken. Rather, there is a series of cognitions in a flow (santāna) that gives rise to the illusion of a permanent self, but analysis proves this not to be case. Abhinavagupta engages with this argument, claiming that its fundamental error lies in its not recognizing the prima facie evidence for the self in its power of knowledge or cognition. Thus, the terms ‘I know,’ ‘I knew,’ and ‘I shall know’ must be predicated upon a self-consciousness that is self-luminous. If the self did not ‘shine’ with its own light, the world would be just darkness (IPV 1.1.4). Not only does the self illuminate objects, but through its self-consciousness it illuminates itself (svasaṃvedana) (Ratié, 2011: p. 46). In such a cognition as ‘I know,’ there is awareness of external objects such as a pot, and this awareness is a kind of movement or vibration (spanda) that is, in fact, a kind of action. The cognition that ‘I know’ entails a power of action, which is movement towards objects that appear to be external but are in fact constituted within consciousness. Indeed, the objects of perception, such as a pot, cannot be distinguished from our awareness; they are part of our awareness. Because of the emphasis on the power of action as fundamental to the process of being aware, that cognition entails not only self-reflection (vimarśa) but also movement towards objects of consciousness which in turn come into consciousness through the senses. Ratié has called this an ontology of the act (Ratié, 2011: pp. 683–684).

One of the Buddhist objections to this view is that if the self is unchanging in its essential nature and distinct from residual traces – memories and habits formed in the past whose effects are felt in the present – then memory has to be due to residual traces. If this is so, memory is within residual traces, then the one who remembers as a distinct entity must likewise be a mere supposition (IPV 1.2.6). If memory is constantly changing, then the one who remembers, as constituted within memory, cannot be unchanging. Indeed, the self does not exist because it cannot be perceived (Ratié, 2011: p. 49). This very fact refutes the idea of an unchanging self. If in consequence of the rise of residual traces there is a change in the self, then the self cannot be eternal. Abhinavagupta commenting on Utpaladeva argues alternatively that various cognitions, including memories, that occur at different times must be united within a single subject of remembrance. Experience that is remembered or being undergone in the present occurs (or ‘shines’) only because it rests upon a subject. The self, which is essentially an I-consciousness, must be the subject of experience of apparently external objects and therefore of memory (IPV 1.4.4). There must be a subject of the chain or flow of memories, and this subject is the self and known to be unchanging. The self can become an object of its own cognition in a reflexive awareness, and as a result, the self’s awareness of itself is conscious of its objects, such as memory, as being constituted within it. Cognition ( jñāna) and memory (sm...