Download Week III Philosophy Excerpts- Mr F`s Philosophy Class Hindu

Week III Philosophy Excerpts- Mr F’s Philosophy Class
Hindu philosophy
"Hindu Philosophy," by Shyam Ranganathan, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002, http://www.iep.utm.edu/,
01/03/17.
The compound “Hindu philosophy” is ambiguous. Minimally it stands for a tradition of Indian
philosophical thinking. However, it could be interpreted as designating one comprehensive
philosophical doctrine, shared by all Hindu thinkers. The term “Hindu philosophy” is often used
loosely in this philosophical or doctrinal sense, but this usage is misleading. There is no single,
comprehensive philosophical doctrine shared by all Hindus that distinguishes their view from
contrary philosophical views associated with other Indian religious movements such
as Buddhism or Jainism on issues of epistemology, metaphysics, logic, ethics or cosmology. Hence,
historians of Indian philosophy typically understand the term “Hindu philosophy” as standing for
the collection of philosophical views that share a textual connection to certain core Hindu religious
texts (the Vedas), and they do not identify “Hindu philosophy” with a particular comprehensive
philosophical doctrine.
A common thesis associated with Hinduism is the view that events in a person’s life are determined
by karma. The term literally means “action,” but in this context it denotes the moral, psychological
spiritual and physical causal consequences of morally significant past choices. If it were the case
that a belief in karma is common to all Hindu philosophies, and only Hindu philosophies, then we
would have a clear doctrinal criterion for identifying Hinduism. This approach is unsuccessful
because a belief in karma is common to many of India’s religious traditions—including Buddhism
and Jainism. Moreover, it is not evident that it is embraced by all sources that we consider Hindu.
For instance, the doctrine of karma seems to be absent from much of the Vedas. Karma is not a
sufficient criterion of Hinduism, and it likely is not a necessary condition either.
Hinduism might be identified with a core set of values, commonly known in Hindu literature as
the puruṣārthas , or ends of persons. The puruṣārthas are a set of four values:
dharma, artha, kāma and mokṣa. “Dharma” in the Puruṣārtha scheme and throughout much of
Hindu literature stands for the ethical or moral (in action, or in character, hence it is often
translated as “duty”), “artha” for economic wealth, “kāma” for pleasure, and “mokṣa” for
soteriological liberation from rebirth and imperfection. Hinduism, one might argue, is any religious
view from the Indian subcontinent that recognizes that human beings ought to maximize
the puruṣārthas at the appropriate time and in the appropriate ways. This approach will not do, for
not all views that we consider Hindu recognize the validity of all of these values. While many of the
systematic Hindu philosophical schools seem to be critical of kāma, understood as sensual pleasure,
the early stage of one Hindu philosophical school—Pūrvamīmāṃsā—does not recognize the idea
that there is anything like liberation as a possible end for individuals.
Indian philosophers recognized the validity of all four values, though some, like the Materialists
(Cārvāka) are on record as holding that kāma or sensual pleasure is the only dharma or morality
(Guṇaratna p.276), and that there is no such thing as liberation. Others such as the
early Pūrvamīmāṃsā ignore the idea of personal liberation but emphasizes the importance of
dharma. As all Hindu philosophical schools appear to recognize something that might count as
“dharma” or morality, we might attempt to understand Hinduism in terms of its allegiance to a
particular moral theory. This attempt to define Hinduism in terms of a simple doctrine fails, for
some of what passes for dharma (ethics, morality or duty) in the context of particular schools of
Hindu philosophical thought share much with non-Hindu, but Indian schools of thought.
Because the term “Hinduism” has no roots in the self-conceptualization of people that we in
retrospect label as “Hindus,” we are unlikely to find anything very significant in the way of
philosophical doctrine that is essential to Hinduism. Yet, the term continues to be useful because it
centers on a stance that separates Hindu thinkers from Buddhist, Jain, or Sikh thinkers. The stance
in question is openness to the provisional validity of a core set of Hindu texts.
The Vedas are a large corpus, originally committed to memory and transmitted orally from teacher
to student. The term “veda” means "knowledge" or "wisdom" and embodies what was likely regarded
by its original attendants as the sum-total of the knowledge of their people. On the basis of linguistic
variations in the corpus, contemporary scholars are of the opinion that the Vedas were composed at
various points during approximately a 900 year span that can be no later than 1500 B.C.E. to 600
B.C.E.. The Vedas are composed in an Indo-European language that is loosely referred to as Sanskrit,
but much of it is in an ancient precursor to Sanskrit, more properly called Vedic.
The Vedic corpus is comprised of four works each called “Vedas.” The four Vedas are Ṛg Veda, Sāma
Veda, Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda, respectively. Each of the four Vedas is edited into four distinct
sections: Mantras, Brāhmanas, Āraṇyakas, and Upaniṣads.
The main portion of the Veda (which the term “Veda” most properly refers to) consists of mantras,
or sacred chants and incantations. A section called the Brāhmanas, which contains ritual
instruction, and speculative discussions on the meaning of Vedic rituals, follows this. These first
two portions comprise what is often called the karma khaṇḍa or “action portion” of the Vedas, or
alternatively, the Pūrvamīmāṃsā ("former inquiry"). (The philosophical school
of Pūrvamīmāṃsā takes its name from its focus on the early part of the Vedas.)
The Bhagavad Gītā consists of a discourse given by Kṛṣṇa on the eve of the battle of the fratricidal
war of the Mahābhārata to his cousin Arjuna, who becomes despondent at the thought of engaging
in a war whose main aim is resting control over the throne, at the expense of the destruction of his
family. Kṛṣṇa exhorts Arjuna to do his duty as a Ksatriya and fight the war that he has been charged
with (Bhagavad Gītā 2:31). For “[b]etter is one’s own duty, though ill done, than the duty of another
well done….” (Bhagavad Gītā 18:47; cf. Manu X. 97). In keeping with the general theme of
the smṛti literature, Kṛṣṇa focuses on reconciling the goal of mokṣa with that of dharma. Kṛṣṇa’s
first solution to the problem of the conflict of dharma and mokṣa involves doing one’s duty with a
strong deontological consciousness, which attends to duty for duty’s sake, and not for its rewards.
This deontological attitude not only perfects moral action, on Kṛṣṇa’s account, but it also constitutes
true renunciation, which is a prerequisite to mokṣa. Kṛṣṇa calls the deontological renunciation of
rewards of dutiful action karma yoga, or the discipline (yoga) of action (karma) (Bhagavad
Gītā ch.3). This is not the only type of yoga that Kṛṣṇa prescribes. He also propounds what he
identifies as distinct yogas (Bhagavad Gītā chs. 4-11) that might be grouped under the heading
of jñāna yoga, or the discipline (yoga) of knowledge (jñāna), whereby one develops a detached
attitude towards the fruits of works through knowledge of the excellences and unchanging nature
of the transcendent (sometimes spoken of as “Brahman” in this text), and the ephemeral and
temporary nature of worldly accomplishments. To this end, Kṛṣṇa calls upon the philosophy
of Sāṅkhya and Yoga, as well as the philosophical concepts of the Upaniṣads to explicate the nature
of the changing and the transcendent. Finally, Kṛṣṇa also prescribes what he calls bhakti yoga or the
“discipline (yoga) of devotion (bhakti)” (Bhagavad Gītā chs. 12-18).
“Purāna” means history and is the term applied to a group of texts that share a few features: (a) they
typically provide a detailed history of the origin of the various gods and the Universe, and (b) they
are written in praise of the exploits of a particular deity. Unlike the itihāsas, the Purāṇas are not
restricted to incarnations of deities, but describe the activities of the deities, including their
incarnations. The Purāṇa literature comes down to us from a time that post dates the composition
of the Vedas, though their precise dates of composition are not known (cf. Thapar p.29). There are
many Purāṇas, though the most famous is likely the Bhāgavata Purāṇa.
The term “dharmaśāstra” literally means treaties or science (śāstra) of dharma. The term refers to a
corpus of literature clearly authored by Brahmins with the aim of reinforcing a particular
conception of Varna āśrama dharma: a moral theory that critics will note ensures that Brahmins are
allotted a privileged or crowning position in the caste scheme. The dharmaśāstras contain many
features of other smṛti literature that make them philosophically interesting.
he term "nyāya" traditionally had the meaning "formal reasoning," though in later times it also
came to be used for reasoning in general, and by extension, the legal reasoning of traditional Indian
law courts. Opponents of the Nyāya school of philosophy frequently reduce it to the status of an arm
of Hindu philosophy devoted to questions of logic and rhetoric. While reasoning is very important
to Nyāya, this school also had important things to say on the topic of epistemology, theology and
metaphysics, rendering it a comprehensive and autonomous school of Indian philosophy.
The term “Sāṅkhya” means ‘enumeration’ and it suggests a methodology of philosophical analysis.
On many accounts, Sāṅkhya is the oldest of the systematic schools of Indian philosophy. It is
attributed to the legendary sage Kapila of antiquity, though we have no extant work left to us by
him. His views are recounted in many smṛti texts, such as the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and the Bhagavad
Gītā, but the Sāṅkhya system appears to stretch back to the end of the Vedic period itself. Key
concepts of the Sāṅkhya system appear in the Upaniṣads (Kaṭha Upaniṣad I.3.10–11), suggesting
that it is an indigenous Indian philosophical school that developed congenially in parallel with the
Vedic tradition.
The Yoga tradition shares much with the Sāṅkhya darśana. Like the Sāṅkhya philosophy, traces of
the Yoga tradition can be found in the Upaniṣads. While the systematic expression of the Yoga
philosophy comes to us from Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, it comes relatively late in the history of
philosophy (at the end of the epic period, roughly 3rd century C.E.), the Yoga philosophy is also
expressed in the Bhagavad Gītā. The Yoga philosophy shares with Sāṅkhya its dualistic cosmology.
Like Sāṅkhya, the Yoga philosophy does not attempt to explicitly derive its authority from the
Vedas. However, Yoga departs from Sāṅkhya on an important metaphysical and moral point—the
nature of agency—and from Sāṅkhya in its emphasis on practical means to achieve liberation.
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yama – abstention from evil-doing, which specifically consists of abstention from harming
others (Ahiṃsā), abstention from telling falsehoods (asatya), abstention from acquisitiveness
(asteya), abstention from greed/envy (aparigraha); and sexual restraint (brahmacarya)
niyamas – various observances, which include the cultivation of purity (sauca), contentment
(santos) and austerities (tapas)
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āsana – posture
prāṇāyāma – control of breath
pratyāhāra – withdrawal of the mind from sense objects
dhāranā– concentration
dhyāna – meditation
samādhi – absorption [in the self] (Yoga Sūtra II.29-32)