Gandhi and Philosophy

On Theological Anti-Politics

Shaj Mohan, Divya Dwivedi

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781350169128
• eBook ISBN:
  9781474221726
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

Gandhi and Philosophy presents a breakthrough in philosophy by foregrounding modern and scientific elements in Gandhi's thought, animating the dazzling materialist concepts in his writings and opening philosophy to the new frontier of nihilism.

This scintillating work breaks with the history of Gandhi scholarship, removing him from the postcolonial and Hindu-nationalist axis and disclosing him to be the enemy that the philosopher dreads and needs. Naming the congealing systematicity of Gandhi's thoughts with the Kantian term hypophysics, Mohan and Dwivedi develop his ideas through a process of reason that awakens the possibilities of concepts beyond the territorial determination of philosophical traditions. The creation of the new method of criticalisation - the augmentation of critique - brings Gandhi's system to its exterior and release. It shows the points of intersection and infiltration between Gandhian concepts and such issues as will, truth, violence, law, anarchy, value, politics and metaphysics and compels us to imagine Gandhi's thought anew.

1

Hypophysics

God is Himself the Law and the Law-giver. He does not transgress the Law laid down by Himself nor does He allow others to transgress it.

M. K. Gandhi (CWMG 94, p. 94)

Truth in death, death in life, life in blood, blood in wine, wine in water; from the sensuous translucence of water to the pure opacity of truth runs the quest of the Passive Resister. The corporeal elusiveness of life is to be aligned with the divine certainty of death – it is the pilgrimage to the portmanteau value-thing, a movement ‘consecrated to the realization of Truth’.¹

The Passive Resister is the seer who sees a thing in-its-nature, at the purest of its value. The purest of a thing’s value is when it is true; truth is good and good in turn is true. Hence, the quest for being consummated in Truth is also the assignation that beloves the Good. The ‘Maker’ – Gandhi often used this term for his God who, as we know, is Truth – made each thing in its nature and distinguished man from the brute which ‘by nature knows no self-restraint’.² In each thing He left his tincture. Hence, knowing a thing in-its-nature is knowing the Maker himself, ‘where there is Truth, there is also knowledge which is true’.³

The pilgrimage to Truth, where value and nature are not apart, where each is found in-its-nature, is possible only when we learn to see how we are deceived in our evaluations. Only a great mind can be free from getting hooked by the floating values. Gandhi writes, ‘A mind that is once hooked to the Star of stars becomes incorruptible’.⁴ While practising evaluation in this sense, an arrayed set of values that are extrinsic to things are imposed upon them; the array of independent values on the one hand and on the other the array of things to which these may be hooked; to get hooked is how we know the value of a thing. It is a sign that ‘man has gone further away from his Maker’.⁵ Delicious is a value which is free of those things to which it might be hooked, hence in the practical determination of the value of a thing we say that someone is hooked to sweetened cheese as he finds it delicious. Sexy may appear to be the practical determination for an automobile – the very sexy car. That is, separation of value may not just derive from things but from acts, such as sex. Gandhi apprehended his own age as one in which everything freed up from everything else at a breakneck pace where values were no longer intrinsic to things and things were no longer apprehensible in their value. So we can see value and nature departing in two different directions, or senses: the value of a thing as given by the maker which demands no evaluation, as opposed to the value of a thing obtained by the attribution of a value extrinsic to it, that is, evaluation. In the first sense, we can see that the nature of a thing is its value, that is, the value of a thing is said to be not even coeval with it. Were we to state that existence is coextensive with value, this would imply the assumption of a separation of existence and value in thought; it is the appearance of such a separation that Gandhi finds as the falsity called ‘civilization’, and its cure calls for a system which would will the truth in which existence and value are one. Such a system, we call hypophysics, following Kant.

Value is intrinsic to a thing. How are we to understand this? It is difficult to say that ‘value is the intrinsic worth of the thing’ since we will be using another word ‘worth’ which is similar in meaning to value. It would lead us to a tautology: ‘the worth of a thing lies in its value’. This hint of a tautology is indicative of the difficulty concerning the conception of value. The etymology of value initiates us into certain everyday uses of the term and not quite the philosophical opening that often etymologies fortuitously provide. Instead, we can look at its usages to gain an understanding. We speak about the value of someone – ‘Anish is valuable for informatics’. But this implies that Anish need not be valuable for rally driving. We speak about the value of a thing in some other thing – ‘the value of garlic is in curing meat’. Here we exclude the value that garlic might have in catalysing petrol. This brings us to the first distinction that value has from things. Value is a distinct relation that a thing has with respect to some other thing or things whereby the valuable thing modifies the other desirably. The desire in this instance is without evaluation. That is, arsenic is not desirable for mankind except that it came to be such for some men when it was applied to Napoleon. It can be defined more precisely now. The value of a thing is the apprehension of the power it has in itself to introduce a distinct modification in some other thing.⁶ Value in this sense remains hidden in all the things around us since there are many modifications of things that are unknown to us. Or, in the Hegelian language, the desire for the evaluation of such things is not open to us since the development of the grasping spirit/mind is not ripe for them. So, we evaluate things on the basis of a certain codified desire. Hence we find that almonds have value since they enhance the quality of the skin and airplanes have value since they enhance the speed of travel. However, it is the case that almonds have the value of a projectile, just as airplanes. The enclosure of values is determined by the code of evaluations. The code of evaluations is not to be found identical with the theological containment of desire alone since we desire according to the plan of thought of Being. The theological containment of desire is the essence of all political forms of control of evaluation; God is the transcendent limit or the prohibited threshold of desires and the extension of this God from the heavens to matters of food is the game of political theology.

We found that a certain value is not isolated to a particular or specific thing. A metal ball, an almond, and airplane are all capable of being projectiles. A sledge hammer and a shock wave are both capable of smashing things. The value that almond has with respect to dietary requirements can be found in other culinary items and it can also be isolated pharmaceutically. We do not say that the incandescent bulb alone is valuable, but that light is valuable to see and to read. From these we can come to the next determination of value. Value is the formal determination of a specific power that is constitutable under diverse conditions to derive diverse effectivities. Even though a thing is said to have values that are intrinsic to it the said values need not be in a relation of strict inherence with respec t to the thing. The formal autonomy of value enables the scaling of value in many ways. For example a value can be scalar such as the length of a pole or the width of a track; or it can be intensive as in the specific density of a metal or the damage that a poison can do. We often employ a scale corresponding to the value of a thing such that it is measurable with respect to its effectivity. We do this by grading poisons and chilly. We do this by assigning numerical values for the power of automobile engines. But the most universal scale for the value of a thing is money as can be found in the statement ‘value for money’ which we use even in circumstances where no monetary transaction is involved such as a man slipping on a banana skin and raising a laugh. Value is scalable according to the code of evaluation that shares a community. For hypophysics, value is nature. Now we can begin to understand what this statement – nature is value – means; value corresponds to the determination of being as nature and evaluation concerns the scale of deviation from nature. ‘Hypo’ does not imply a physics which is inferior to physics and metaphysics. Hypophysics names the underlying science of nature according to Gandhi, from out of which physics as a discipline is derived. Indeed, physics would be a deviation from hypophysics.

The science of nature as value

Kant understood physics as the science of nature in so far as nature is the realm of pure law while metaphysics was that which exceeds physics and grounds it. He rejected as inappropriate ground of practical philosophy a range of moral theories based on some knowledge of human nature, on God, on happiness, perfection or fear, on nature – that is natural causes of action or effects like pleasure and pain – or on the occult:

But such a completely isolated metaphysics of morals, mixed with no anthropology, theology, physics, or hyperphysics and still less with occult qualities (which could be called hypophysical), is not only an indispensable substratum of all theoretical and surely determined cognition of duties; it is also a desideratum of utmost importance to the actual fulfilment of their precepts.⁷

Kant spares few words in defining ‘hypophysical’ other than this passing remark on disqualified grounds of action, which he based on the transcendental freedom of a rational being, particularly man. However, the list’s last item, which the parenthesis in fact categorizes, could well have been, following the logic of this series of sciences that are not pure, hypophysics. Only one example of such a science, the occult attributes moral powers to nature in so far as nature here is amenable to the volition of the sorcerer in addition to its regular efficacy (and that of the gods as the case may be). Edward Tiryakian explains the underlying relation to nature that informs the diverse activities that can be called ‘occult’ by defining them as

intentional practices, techniques, or procedures which a) draw upon hidden or concealed forces in nature or the cosmos that cannot be measured or recognized by the instruments of modern science, and b) which have as their desired or intended consequences empirical results, such as either obtaining knowledge of the empirical course of events or altering them from what they would have been without this intervention.⁸

Nature here is not mechanical nor merely comprising regularities which would explain sudden calamities in terms of determinate causality, but incorporates divine forces whose action in distans makes equally possible their occult manipulation in bound dolls and hidden defixiones, portents, Zaubermedizine and bewitchment, but also in divine aid, purification rituals in civic cults, reliquaries and pilgrimage. In ancient Greece, for instance, where divine influence was intrinsic to nature, and ‘nature and magic could produce results that were indistinguishable’,⁹ the contemporaneous criticism of the ethic of the occult by Hippocratic authors and Plato points to a hypophysical nature as the basis of both thaumaturgy and moral philosophy, just as many centuries later Theosophy would be devastated by one of its own disciples, René Gué non, in favour of esoterism.¹⁰ From Presocratic cosmologies to the Stoa, nature in several respects – of origin, emanation, unity, divinity, inscrutability, preservation, destruction – is a repository of values. Aristotle informs us that ‘some think that the soul pervades the whole universe, whence perhaps came Thales’ view that everything is full of gods’.¹¹ Anaxagoras holds that nous is god, and Xenophanes, according to Galen, that god inheres in everything. Plato’s Timaeus speaks of the craftsman god who is supremely good and ‘wanted everything to be good … and so he took over all that was visible … and brought it from a state of disorder to order’.¹² Marcus Aurelius exhorts a reasoned orientation with nature since ‘all things are interwoven with one another; a sacred bond unites them. … The world-order is a unity made up of a multiplicity: God is one, pervading all things; all being is one, all law is one … and all truth is one.’¹³ There are many ways of positing natural law as moral law, and in this Gandhian hypophysics is not without precursors. The Stoics found a double orientation in nature which makes each thing according to its law but not as an automaton, especially not men who are rational beings, and ‘entrusts’ it, in the words of Diogenes Laë rtius, to itself to act in accordance with nature by preserving what was given to them by ‘untaught nature’: nature is not just one principle and order but also end, and the alienation and decline of allotriosis is addressed by the ethical imperative of oikeiō sis or to act in accordance with nature on one’s own behalf through self-awareness or suneidesis.¹⁴ But to fulfil the goal which one’s own nature is is easier for the animal than for man, who becomes a fold within the animal and opens the space for technē .¹⁵ The stoic sage would resemble the passive resister.

Gandhi held the sufferings visited by nature to be moral judgements and punishments. It is the moral that is God made, and the immoral is the man-made. The quest for truth is the quest for the Maker who made nature: ‘I gather that God is Life, Truth, Light. He is Love. He is the Supreme Good.’¹⁶ Earlier we found that values, which are indeed laws of conduct, are understood as extraneous to nature; nature on the one hand and the laws which conduct nature on the other. However, ‘within the framework of nature’s moral authority, even the disorder wrought by earthquakes and floods becomes part of a scheme of vengeance for human malfeasance’.¹⁷ Myriad are the conceptions of nature in the history of ideas, as are the derivations of ‘ought’ from ‘is’. The naturalistic fallacy, so nominated by G. E. Moore though already suggested by Hume, is modern and comprises diverse manners of hooking nature and value once a wedge is driven between them, Daston reminds us.¹⁸ Long after the sermons in stones and the fable of bees, ever new fables are discovered in sociobiology and entomology. Now bonobos and beavers pale before prokaryotes and deep sea algae which maintain the moral splendour of the superorganism Earth. The former would be models of natural sociality, the latter are like vital organs. From the initial Gaia Hypothesis through Gaia theory to ecological ethics, nature becomes progressively re-enchanted. James Lovelock could proffer that the Gaia function by which biota stabilize their environment as fit for life makes it ‘warm and comfortable for those who obey the rules, but is ruthless in her destruction of those who transgress’.¹⁹ Fritjof Capra called Gaia a planetary living being and Rupert Sheldrake hailed Mother Nature ‘reasserting herself … the acknowledgement that our planet is a living organism, Gaia, Mother Earth, strikes a positive cord in millions of people; it reconnects us with both our personal, intuitive experience of nature and with the traditional understanding of nature as alive’.²⁰ Lovelock saw Gaia’s importance in the moral vacuum bequeathed by science ‘because it gave us something to which we were accountable. … Because of that ethical significance, Gaia starts to become more than just science. It begins to veer into that area previously occupied by religion.’²¹ Gandhian hypophysics, however, obtains a precision which distinguishes it from both the precursors and successors, including some inheritors, of the synonymization of nature and value. Were it merely to console our nostalgia or longing for the unity of being (which we never experienced but of which, for Hö lderlin, we have an intellectual intuition premised on the only thing we have, namely the separative form of thought as judgement)²² we would miss the reality and attainability (for man) of the unity of divine nature in Gandhi, and hence his specific theological system.

Theology, value, and the law

The law is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Foreword by Jean-Luc Nancy
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Hypophysics
• 2 Scalology: Speed
• 3 The Faculties I: Body
• 4 The Faculties II: Mind and Soul
• 5 Dynamics: Active and Passive
• 6 The Law of the Maker
• 7 Truth and Will
• 8 Violence and Resistance
• 9 Critical Nation
• 10 Conclusion: Anastasis
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright