Saṃvāda: What is it in Philosophy?

       Saṃvāda is an ancient notion in Indian Philosophy. It is delicate to give the exact translation of the word ‘saṃvāda’, especially to translate it into a different culture and tradition. Yet, the general rendering of saṃvāda in English is ‘dialogue’ or ‘conversation’. This ancient term is found in the Upaniṣads. As a matter of fact, most of the Upaniṣadic texts are in the form of a dialogue; between master and disciple, or between father and son. Furthermore, the term is explicitly used in the Bhagavat Gītā. In essence the whole of the Bhagavat Gītā is in dialogue form. The word “saṃvāda” is found three times in the Gitā. 

      The term saṃvāda is the combination of ‘saṃ’ and ‘vāda’. The former is a pre-verb which means agreement or conjunction. The Latin equivalent for saṃ is ‘cum’ and is also found in English words like con-versation and con-junction. The latter refers to discussion or debate. Hence, the term saṃvāda can be understood as ‘dialogue’, although the term has a deeper meaning. 

        It is a ‘me-other’ or ‘self-other’ encounter. ‘The other’ in saṃvāda is not a mere hearer or listener but a pūrva-pakṣin (an interlocutor in a dialogue). Encountering ‘the other’ highlights new, different, hidden-between-the-lines aspects of oneself. In other words, it leads to an encounter with one’s own ‘inner other’. Thus in saṃvāda by meeting ‘the other’ one meets oneself anew. At another instance, in the same vein, It can be interpreted  as dialogical encounter, open discussion and even biting debate. It is a live dialogue where pūrva-pakṣins and siddhāntins (who hold their view as final and conclusive) both question each other in a dialogue.  The real  Saṃvāda can bring out the manifold aspects of truth. Thus all our endevours of Life and Truth should be based on Samvada.

Books of Daya Krishna

1955 The Nature of Philosophy.
1959 Planning, Power and Welfare. 
1965 Considerations towards a Theory of Social Change. 
1969 Editor. Modern Logic: Its Relevance to Philosophy. Social Philosophy: Past and                            Future.
1973 Editor. Indian Education Today: Prospects and Perspectives.
1977 Editor, with A.M. Ghose and P.K. Srivastava. The Philosophy of Kalidas Bhattacharya.
1978 Editor, with A.M. Ghose. Contemporary Philosophical Problems: Some Classical Indian 
                Perspectives
1979 Political Development: A Critical Perspective. 
1980 Gyāna Mīmāmsā, In Hindi.
1987 Development Debate: Fred W. Riggs and Daya Krishna.
        India’s Intellectual Traditions. 
        Editor. Paschimi Darshan Ka Itihas, Vols. 1 and 2 in Hindi.
1989 The Arts of The Conceptual: Explorations in a Conceptual Maze over Three Decades.
1991 Indian Philosophy: A Counter Perspective. 
        Editor, with K.L. Sharma.  The Philosophy of J.N. Mohanty.
        Editor, with M.P. Rege, R.C. Dwivedi and Mukund Lath. Saṃvāda – A Dialogue Between                   Two Philosophical Traditions.
1996 The Problematic and Conceptual Structure of Classical Indian Thought about Man, Society                 and Polity.
1997 Indian Philosophy: A New Approach.
        Prolegomena to any Future Historiography of Culture and Civilizations.
1999 Editor, with K. Sachidananda Murty. History, Culture and Truth: Essays Presented to                           Professor D.P. Chattopadhyaya.
2000 Editor, with Mukund Lath and Francine E. Krishna. Bhakti: A Contemporary Discussion –                   Philosophical Explanations in the Indian Bhakti Tradition.
        New Perspectives in Indian Philosophy.
2001 Developments in Indian Philosophy from the Eighteenth Century Onwards: Classical and                    Western.
2004 Bhārtīya Dars’ana: Eka Nayī Dṛṣṭi.
        Editor. Discussion and Debate in Indian Philosophy: Vedānta, Mīmāmsā and Nyāya.
      Nyāya Sūtras: A New Commentary on an Old Text.
2012     Towards a Theory of Structural and Transcendental Illusions.
     Civilizations: Nostalgia and Utopia.
Forthcoming Editor. The Jaipur Edition of the Ṛgveda. 

Love of God and Love of Neighbour in Indian Philosophy

Love of God and Love of neighbour are the two aspects of the Greatest Commandments given by Jesus Christ. These commandments are not meant only for his followers but for all human beings as these two aspects love belong to all human beings. In this article, I have tried to look at these two commandments in view of two instances in the life of the Hindu deity, Kṛṣṇa in Indian Philosophy.

Daya Krishna (1924-2007), a contemporary Indian philosopher, in his article Did Gopīs Really Love Kṛṣṇa?enumerates two interesting aspects of love. He mentions two episodes from the life of the Hindu God Kṛṣṇa. The first one is from the epic Śrīmad Bhāgavata where Daya Krishna takes the episode of Krishna with the gopīs (the young women in Vṛndāvana where he spent his youthful days). The gopīs deeply fell in love with Kṛṣṇa. These gopīs are shown as ‘living’ eternally in the memory of those days they had passed with Kṛṣṇa even in his absence. However, Daya Krishna shows that, the same gopīs never made the slightest effort to seek him out and meet him once more or even try to find where he is or how he is. The message of the gopī episode in Śrīmad Bhāgavata is that the ideal of love is the loving state of consciousness which can only be cultivated through a constant remembrance and dwelling in the memory of those moments when a person spent with the loved one. It is clearly said in ŚrīmadBhāgavata: “When her lover is far away, a woman thinks of him more than when he is present before her.” (10.47.35) On the contrary, this gives the impression that in the realm of feelings the imagined world is more real than the real world. The gopīs preferred to live with the mere feeling of love than the so-called real love (in action). In other words, they loved the feeling of loving Kṛṣṇa than loving Kṛṣṇa as a person.

The second episode is from the Bhagavat Gita. The whole Gita is the dialogue between Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna like the conversation between two friends. In this particular episode, Kṛṣṇa shows his viśvarūpa(the real form of Kṛṣṇa that contains the whole of the universe) to Arjuna. There Arjuna begs to be forgiven if he had said anything for fun or in jest or play, not knowing the real nature of Kṛṣṇa. But what is more disturbing for the Arjuna in this situation is that this ‘real’ reality, which is not possible to be seen through mortal eyes, is so frightening that Arjuna implores him to assume his previous form so that he can have normal feelings toward him as he had been with Kṛṣṇa just before the revelation. (XI. 44-46). Thus Arjuna preferred to the ordinary familiar form of Kṛṣṇa than the almighty form which is supposed to be the real form of Kṛṣna since the real form perturbed Arjuna. I would like to compare these two narrations with the Greatest Commandments given by Jesus Christ. Jesus reduces all the Jewish rules and regulations with two commandments namely: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” (Mt. 22: 37-39)

The first episode of Kṛṣṇa with the gopīs can be associated with the second Golden Commandment namely the ‘love for neighbour’. This command urges to love one’s neighbour as one’s ownself. There is no doubt that gopīs loved Kṛṣṇa. The problem with these women that Daya Krishna speaks of is that they only loved the feeling of loving Kṛṣṇa than the person of Kṛṣṇa himself. And so they stopped looking for him when he was absent from Vṛndāvana. On the contrary, the commandment given by Jesus calls for love in action i.e. to love the other as one’s ownself. In fact, Kṛṣṇa in his sermon to Arjuna emphasizes on the love in action with the duty conscience than in meditation. This aspect of love does not stop itself in the world of imagination but in the world of reality. Thus it is the real love for the other.

The second episode of Kṛṣṇa’s encounter with Arjuna can be associated with the first greatest commandment – the love of God. This commandment of love requires one to love God unconditionally; accepting God as the ultimate meaning of life. In other words, looking at everything from God’s perspective and doing His will at all time. On the contrary, in the Gita episode, we find when Kṛṣṇa manifests his godly cosmic form Arjuna could no longer accept his nature and begs him to come back to the normal form. This phenomenon takes place often in the present era. Human beings wish to restrict the form of God according to our own experience, taste, convenience, etc. than to accept the real manifestation of God. Only the wise have understood the real nature of God and they confess that they are ignorant this nature. The only valid means of knowing God, according to them, is the well-known neti-neti method in Indian philosophy i.e. we know only what God is not. Thus loving God without any restriction is equal to accepting God’s manifestation without any restriction. This is similar to giving oneself to God’s will by carrying out his commandments with no expectations which Gita calls as niṣkāma-karma i.e. action without the desire for its fruit.

These few paragraphs give us another way of looking at the greatest commandment of Jesus Christ in view of two narratives from Indian philosophy. The love of God is to prefer God’s will than one’s own in life and the love of neighbour is to love the other person than to love the feeling of loving the other.

Summary of the article - Introducing Levinas to Undergraduate Philosophers by Anthony F. Beavers

One of the important questions that philosophy addressed down the centuries is about the moral ‘ought’ which asks the question why one needs to be good. Emmanuel Levinas found the answer in the level of the individual i.e. in the level of person to person contact. For him the question of moral ‘ought’ becomes before reason and it is necessary to have at least two people when we talk about ethics. He establishes the source of contact in the interpersonal realm as the ethical.

Although it may sound superfluous it has a deep meaning in philosophy as it responds to the rationalistic tradition of philosophy especially of Descartes. The latter thinks of the other as the object of the creation of the mind and denies the existence of the extra-mental reality. Levinas calls this act as the violence of ‘totalization’. It reduces the individuality, difference and autonomy of the Other. This act is unethical for Levinas.

The above mentioned violence is due to the exclusive importance to the rationality while edging sensibility out. Sensibility is a lived experience rather than being understood with concepts. Moreover, it is enjoyed by the subject after being nourished by the objects of sensibility (e.g. bread to eat). This also shows the distinction between the subject and the object of enjoyment. Consequently, in enjoyment, the, self comes up as the subject of its need. Thus Levinas appreciates the subjectivity on the level of sensibility than rationality. In addition, the subject can find the Other easily and more clearly through sensibility than in the realm of consciousness. Here the subject finds that the Other cannot be made part of the subject like any other things as the Other resists consumption.

Levinas acknowledges the power of transcendence of the Other beyond the categories of the thought of the subject. It is accepted by the epiphany of Face that talks to the subject, “I am not yours to be enjoyed: I am absolutely Other.” This is a surprise to the subject since the arrival of the Face depicts the vulnerability of the subject. The solitude of the subject is invaded by the Other.  The surprise makes the subject being caught off guard. It indicates more about the presence of the Other than the perception of the Other. The presence of the Other is beyond the control of the subject as it is demanded of the subject.

There are two important steps involved in this act namely proximity and substitution. Proximity is the immediate contact of the Other with the subject. It is a responsibility laid upon the subject with the new characteristic given to the subject. The new subjectivity shows that social subject is to be for-the-Other. Thus subjectivity is subjection to the Other i.e. the subject is subjected to the Other who intrudes its solitude and interrupts the egoistic enjoyment. It is a command given to the subject to live ethically with the Other. In other words, it makes the subject to stand in the place of the Other.

The standing in the place of the Other leads to the second step of substitution.  It is the state, according to Levinas, where the subject is held hostage by the Other. Substitution is the sign of being an Other-directed human person. This also makes clear that the subject belongs to itself and subject is not ‘another’ but itself (I am not another but me).

Substitution is to acknowledge oneself in the place of the Other not with the conceptual recognition but in the sense of finding oneself in the Other as a hostage for the Other. This process gives more meaning that the above mentioned subjection by the Other becomes subjection for the Other as St. Paul says, “I have become all things to all people that I might by all means save some” (I Corinthians 9:22).  The mere desire to respond is already  responsiveness to the command of the Other.

Although the approach toward the Other as Levinas proposed gives more meaning for interpersonal relationship it was not well appreciated by some ethicists. A person responds to the Other because the person feels a personal need to do so in order to satisfy his/her need and this action has no true moral worth.

Levinas answers that the Other has a transcendence and the subject is already substituted for the Other. The subject is made to stand for the other, before freedom and reason in ethics. Consequently, there is an ethical responsibility with the Face-to-Face relationship. Thus responsibility is essential, primary and fundamental mode of subjectivity in ethical terms and precedes ontological and existential base. The mere node of subjective is knotted in ethics is the responsibility towards the Other. Responsibility is the link between the subject and the Other. This moral ‘ought’ is the acceptance of Other person as person which Levinas wants to emphasize in the history of philosophy. There is no true sociality away from ethics and vice versa. Furthermore, the meaning of Otherness is found in the responsibility given to me and not in the interpretation given by the subject.  Finally, any relation of the subject with the Other person gives the responsibility to the former. This is the source of the moral ‘ought’ in the philosophy of Levinas.

The End of Philosophy - The Only Solution of Postmodernism

 The following is the summary of the article:

Stanislaus Swamikannu. “A Postmodern Response to the Relativism Debate,” Divyadaan: Journal of Philosophy and Education 19, no.1-2 (2008): 193-211.

Self-questioning or self-criticism is considered to be hallmark of philosophy. However, this act itself could cause the recent phenomenon in philosophy called ‘end of philosophy’. On the one hand, philosophers who deem philosophy as natural kind take this phenomenon as a part of philosophical tradition where there is no complete rupture since the tradition remains. On the other hand, philosophers who consider it as a historical product regard it as a crisis and a failure. This article gives few salient notions of the end of philosophy incorporating both the views highlighting the postmodern philosophical approach.

            The end of philosophy can be spoken in terms of skepticism. This idea might have its origin in the ancient Greek philosophy itself. Against the platonic philosophy that was characterized by the desire for totalizing foundationalism, Pyrrhonian skepticism was raised. While platonic philosophy provided a link between contingent human reality and eternal divine realm, pyrrhonian skepticism showed that there is always a room for objections and difficulties in any philosophical position.

 The same procedure was repeated in the modern Western philosophy. The epistemology-centered philosophy was epitomized by Descartes, Kant and Husserl through the quest for indubitable foundation or the privileged starting point of reality. Richard Rorty says that it was the hidden agenda since Plato. According to Rorty, the whole epistemological activity is only the representation of the mind which acts as a mirror. He says that the modern Western philosophers were only trying to polish the mirror with various ideologies. These philosophers searched for a more scientific, rational and deeper position whereas Rorty trivialized the onus of philosopher as only to carry the philosophical enterprise to the future than to find the key to all the problems of philosophy. Taking inspiration from Dewey and James, he gives a pragmatic intent to philosophy that one can quit philosophy at any moment.

Another aspect of the end of philosophy is the paradigm shift from philosophy of consciousness to the philosophy of language; from transcendental subjectivity to grammatical structure which is known as the linguistic turn. It is farewell to the subject-centered philosophy and a departure from the idea of language as mere instrument. Rorty gives a different orientation to linguistic philosophy i.e. solving the philosophical problems by reforming the language or understanding the language we use.

In this major turn of the philosophy of language, there are three turns involved namely analytical philosophy, pragmatic turn and rhetoric turn.  Firstly, the analytical philosophy played a role in solving the problems of the ordinary sentences with the help of formal logic. It was held that by analyzing the structure of the language one can find the structure of the reality as language is regarded as the mirror of reality. But soon this revolution also faced a counter-revolution. There was a division between the Ideal Language philosophy (that became the constructing model for other types) and Ordinary Language philosophy (in common people’s language where there is no philosophical problem). The ideal language philosophy, according to Rorty, can only describe the logical behaviour of the linguistic expression and in practice it was not shown fruitful. Rorty concludes that analytical philosophy is only the beginning of the epistemological problems.

Secondly, the idea of the pragmatic turn was explained by Habermas. He explains the limitation of semanticism that concentrates only on analysis and neglected linguistic context, speech etc. and the structured semiotics where there is an over-emphasis on anonymous structure in language. In contrast to this view, Habermas suggests pragmatic turn in linguistic philosophy that aimed at weakening the logo-centric claim in Western metaphysical tradition. This weakening consists not in autonomous subject but in intersubjective communication towards mutual understanding. It is to bring language from the private sphere (private language) to public sphere (multi-contexts of use). It brings the neglected aspects of the linguistic tradition into the formal analysis.

Thirdly, the importance is given to rhetoric over logic. The philosophy of language in the West was based on logic than rhetoric. It is due to the importance given to the study of logic and mathematics. On the contrary, Derrida proposed rhetoric over logic in philosophy of language. This notion of Derrida makes every text as secondary as it implies no original meaning to it. According to him, formula and context are meaningful only in convention; one cannot exhaust the context and contexts are changeable. Consequently, there is no such distinction like original-imitation, literal-figural, real-metaphoric, true-false, and reality-appearance. Thus relativism is the only way in interpreting a text according to the different strands of the linguistic turn explained in this article. This relativism brings the end of philosophy and the end of metaphysical tradition of the West.

Is Our God Selfish?

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine of mine who is brought up in the catholic tradition but questions the facts of the tradition. She asked me, “Is not our God so selfish?” She gave me three reasons to support her view that God is selfish. Firstly, in the Old Testament, there are many instances, especially the first three of the Ten Commandments. God wants everyone to adore Himself and makes it a command. Secondly, in the New Testament, we see that loving God is projected as the greatest commandment. Thirdly, the greatest commandment has been made to be the meaning of human living. This is well expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Why did God create you? To love Him and serve Him.

All these instances impose that loving God is a mandatory act of life. Thus it is seen that our God is a selfish God who created beings just because He wanted to be loved and served. It seems to be a valid logical argument. It is expressed in the Bible explicitly. Our catechism message is often reminded though the liturgy. So God wants to be in the first place of our love list.

However, a simple fact is forgotten here. It is true that God wants to be in the prime place in our hearts. But if not who can replace God? In other words, what’s wrong if God wants us to have loving and serving Him as our meaning of living? God is the supreme good that a human can attain. He is the Summum Bonnum or Parama Puruṣārtha as it called in the Indian philosophical tradition. God wants everyone to obtain this supreme goodness who is none other than Himself. Hence nothing can be equalized with loving God for God is Love.

Moreover, God expects us to love Him but never enforces us to do so. The greatness of God is that He allows even the atheists and agnostics to express their view in the world. This is the supreme form of goodness we are talking about here. Thus love of God is not a selfish desire but a desire for the good of the human beings.