Epics, Indian Ethics and 'Theory': Thinking Through Matilal

History and Sociology of South Asia http://hsa.sagepub.
com/
Epics, Indian Ethics and 'Theory': Thinking through Matilal

Sasheej Hegde History and Sociology of South Asia 2009 3: 205 DOI: 10.1177/223080750900300202 The online version of this article can be found at: http://hsa.sagepub.com/content/3/2/205
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
Jamia Millia Islamia
Additional services and information for History and Sociology of South Asia can be found at: Email Alerts: http://hsa.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://hsa.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
>> Version of Record - Dec 1, 2009 What is This?
Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012
Contemporary Perspectives Vol. 3, No. 2, July December 2009, 205234
Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory: Thinking through Matilal

Sasheej Hegde University of Hyderabad
So it keeps on writing deeper and deeper for the whole twelve hours. Kafka The intent behind proposing the thoughts that I do is to prompt what could be called a research programme in the form of a comparative study of disputes over ethics and theory in a transhistorical context.1 What interests me about the subject is not only the fact of salvaging something distinctive about ethics (or even morality) that transcends the purely contextual and the historically specific, but also managing to do justice to the relativism involved in what might be termed peoples adherence to and participation in different ways of life. Indeed, I take it that this bipolar mode of assessment would interest as much the historian and social scientist as the philosopher who follows problematising the work of concepts and orientations implicit to the former. Most of us, social scientists and critically minded historians, have grown so accustomed to categories of domination, resistance and cultural strategies and to studies of discursive systems that one hardly answers to the action which is encapsulated in socio-cultural practice and/ or the system of discourse of which the words associated with action form a part. Studying Indian ethics, I think, necessitates contemplating both the singular, personal and labile quality of the acts implicating it and to consider the social-moral quality of what it is about the act that is felt to be imperative.
1
Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for being tremendously helpful and constructive, as indeed this journals editor Nasir Tyabji for providing the impetus. I have tried to work out a version of this essay which would stimulate dialogue between historians, social scientists and philosophers, and hopefully will lend a new dimension to the journals thrust. Note also that transliterations of terms from their Sanskrit and/or other language forms have been retained; diacritical marks have been avoided.
206
Sasheej Hegde
This would demand engaging with patterns of cultural life in the present as with modes of inheritance from the past, an exercise as much in the anthropology of ethics (the study, really, of the many ways in which people work on themselves and others as moral persons) as with the philosophical high-ground of ethical theory and moral practice although, I must reiterate, it is the latter ground that our paper will predominantly traverse in the course of grappling with the efficacy of a distinctive moral tradition. Indeed, it seems to me quite striking that historical and social scientific scholarship, both in India and elsewhere, has not seriously sought to develop a dialogue with moral philosophy. All too often, as James Laidlaw has pointed out, conceptions of the social have tended to so completely identify the collective with the good that an independent understanding of ethics appears neither necessary nor possible.2 I hope, though, that my paper will not be interpreted as laying claim to a specific unitary thesis about the nature of ethics and morality. In fact, it is Indian ethics as a kind of philosophical-anthropological theme/endeavour that I am interested both to conceptualise and to complicate, with the expectation that this would yield new insights into social and political life, as indeed the history and sociology of South Asia. As our title indicates, I propose to work incisively and perhaps far too obsessively through a particular rendition of Indian ethics that issue from the work of the Indian scholar Bimal Krishna Matilal, specifically the notes that he put together on moral dilemmas in the Indian epics the Mahabharata, in particular. I am as much interested to retrieve the ambit of this project as to come to terms with it; in particular, to see in what ways Indian ethics so reconstructed can be seen to provide adequate moral guidance to action [Section I]. To be sure, one might ask why any depiction of ethics or, better still, any particular account of ethics should be subjected to this constraint, and I will explore this question in the middle segment of the paper [Section II]. My last section invokes a wider ambit of discussion in getting a measure of the specificity of Indian ethics, while also avoiding, consciously, an excessive historical self-consciousness about the problem of the order which asks of a representation, any modality, whether it is Indian, whether it is not actually Western or Hindu, and, unto this frame, whether it is not always
2
See James Laidlaw, For an Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2002, pp. 311132.
Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory
207
or already Brahminical or Sanskritic [Section III]. There are many reasons for this avoidance, not least my ignorance, a sense of incredulity about matters formulated as either traditional or modern. The effort has also been to fend away a line of criticism that would interpret any (or all) concern about traditionality and traditionalisation as both archaic and abstruse or as lending themselves to a variety of nativist exceptionalism. An even more decisive impetus marking out the contours of my engagement is the contemporaneity configuring the question of Indian ethics as represented by Matilal, but as I seek to formulate it this contemporaneity would have to be placed within a normative and conceptual grid so as to resonate in within the contours of both Indian and Western academia.
The Way In
The imperative of providing a necessary corrective to the standard picture of Indias philosophical traditions (where metaphysics, theology and spirituality dominate, and ethics, politics and sociology are relegated to the background) cannot be gainsaid. Matilals work on the Indian epics (the Mahabharata, in particular) is appropriable in this light, although it is strictly not reducible to it; in that, the work has shown as much (if not a sustained) concern with the logical and metaphysical foundations of Indian philosophy. The perspective from which the work has issued embodies a concern as much with the deliberations in the Indian thought about knowledge and truth, the metaphysical and the social, as with the intuitions and basic concepts that guide the design of the philosophical traditions themselves (both in the context of India and the West). The analytic strategy exemplified by Matilals work is one of what could be called a reconstructive appropriation: an effort, that is, to reconstruct and analyse a substratum of ideas and concepts latent in the culture of a society and its normative footholds.3 The scene and the object of this appropriation is what Matilal summarily states as moral dilemmas. As he observes (and I shall be quoting
3
Note, all paginations that follow in the text and the notes below, unless otherwise specified, are from Matilals papers in the collection edited by Jonardon Ganeri, The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal, Vol. 2, Ethics and Epics, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. The reconstructive nature of Matilals undertaking makes it imperative that I replicate his gesture(s). Consequently, in the various sections of my paper at least, I shall desist from paraphrasing him and will be quoting him at length. Something more than just narrative instantiation is involved here, though.
208
Sasheej Hegde
at length hereon in order to give the reader a flavour of the moment and manner of the appropriation, as well as to place in perspective both the significance and the nature of the moral guidance being attributed to Indian ethics): It takes some courage to talk about moral dilemmas with regard to the great epic, the Mahabharata. Indological scholars have often argued that Hindu orthodoxy would seldom agree that there are dilemmas in the teaching of the Mahabharata. For is it not the case that Lord Krsna is always in the Mahabharata to resolve the dilemmas for Arjuna? Is it not the case that Vidura is there to give the right kind of advice whenever the old, blind king Dhrtarastra is in any dilemma, whether or not the blind king, being blind in more sense than one, pays any heed to the well-meaning and everrighteous brother? Does not the deity Dharma, natural father of Yudhisthira, have to appear in many different forms in order to instruct and teach Yudhisthira the right path whenever dilemmas have presented themselves? It would be improbable to argue, on such a view, that there could have arisen any genuine dilemmas in the dharma-ethical system that has been delineated in the Mahabharata (pp. 1920). It is important to point out that not just legal and social codes but also moral principles or moral codes were designated by the pervasive term dharma; and, what is more, Matilal is only too aware of the ambiguities attached to its usage its [that is, dharmas] often-emphasised subtlety and ever-elusive nature, as he puts it (p. 20). The epics, for him, apart from being the source of everything else also represent a distinctive aspect of what is termed moral philosophical thinking of the Indian tradition (p. 22). Without doubt, Matilal is interested to explore the dilemmas within the structure of the dharma-ethics as propounded in the epic, and even views some of these moral dilemmas as illustrations of perennial problems in moral philosophy (p. 21). He presents as a clear case of moral dilemma in the epic the situation faced by Arjuna in an episode in the Karnaparvan, when he (that is, Arjuna) is faced with a choice between two irreconcilable obligations (what Matilal formulates as) promise-keeping and avoidance of fratricide (p. 25). The circumstances of this dilemma are worth
209
recapitulating, with Matilal reconstructing the incidents leading up to it as follows: on the very day of final encounter between Karna and Arjuna, Yudhisthira fled the battlefield after being painfully humiliated by Krsna in an armed engagement. When Arjuna came to the camp to pay him a visit and asked what really had happened, Yudhisthira flared up in anger and told Arjuna that all his boastfulness about being the finest archer in the world was a lot of nonsense, because the war was dragging on. He reminded Arjuna that he had claimed to be capable of conquering everybody and thus end the war within a few days. In a rage, he not only insulted Arjuna but also slighted the Gandiva bow, the most precious possession of this valiant warrior. The bow was a gift to Arjuna from Agni, the fire-god. He held it so dear to his heart that he had promised to kill anyone who would ever speak ill of it. Hence Yudhisthiras words put Arjuna in a very difficult situation: either he would have to kill his venerated elder brother or break his promise (p. 25). Now, what is important for our purposes at this stage of the discussion is less the dilemma itself and more the moral philosophical overlay that Matilal lends to it. As he writes: When his [Arjuna] Ksatriya duty (dharma) made him choose the first alternative [that is, promise-keeping and therefore the killing of his elder brother] Krsna (his alter ego) appeared. On being asked Arjuna explained: he was obliged to commit fratricide in order to fulfil his obligation to keep his promise. Arjuna had full knowledge of the gravity of the crime he was about to commit but like a mistimed Kantian he had already taken a conflict-free decision to meet the Ksatriya obligation of promise-keeping (ibid.). In other words, to the extent that one of the interpretations of Kantian thought has it that (in the context of Kantian ethics) no agent can be forced to violate his duty, to that extent (in Matilals words) Arjuna might be said to be anticipating the Kantian model (pp. 2526). On Matilals rendition of Kant to the extent that for the latter objective rules should form a whole, a system characterized by consistency, much like a system of true beliefs, the moral conflict which could arise in the minds of moral agents cannot, therefore, be genuine (i)t would be at best a confusion, at worst an illusion (p. 25). Matilal even quotes from Kants Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals to bolster the point: Because duty and obligation are in general concepts that express the objective practical
210
Sasheej Hegde
necessity of certain actions and because two mutually opposing rules cannot be necessary at the same time, then if it is a duty to act according to one of them, it is not only not a duty but contrary to duty to act according to the other (cited on p. 25). Indeed, for Kant, as Matilal points out, a genuine duty cannot be conflated with a ground of that duty, so that in a socalled dilemma, one horn is a genuine duty, and the other is merely a ground of duty: (t)here may be a conflict between grounds but not between duties (ibid.). Significantly enough, Matilal is concerned to press for more, insisting that Krsna is not Kant and that, in starting a discourse with Arjuna, Krsna obviously turned an apparently moral conflict into a genuine moral dilemma (p. 26, emphasis added). He concedes that promise-keeping is a strong obligation in India and the West; also that in both these contexts the two obligations of promise-keeping and benevolence are invariably connected (ibid.). But he adds: There is no cultural relativism here. In Kantian ethics, truth-telling gets the highest priority. Krsna, however, continued to argue that promise-keeping or even truth-telling cannot be an unconditional obligation when it is in conflict with the avoidance of grossly unjust and criminal acts such as patricide or fratricide. Saving an innocent life is also a strong obligation, saving the life of an elder brother would naturally be an equally strong obligation, if not stronger. Hence, in fact, according to Krsna, two equally strong obligation or duties are in conflict here (p. 26). Matilal mentions that Krsna relates a story here to illustrate his point. The story is of a hermit, Kausika, who takes a vow of telling the truth throughout his life. One day, however, he is faced with a dilemma. Some bandits were chasing travellers with the intention of killing them. Kausika was sitting nearby at the crossroad, when the travellers passed by. The latter requested Kausika not to show the bandits which way they had fled. When the bandits arrived, they asked him about the travellers; and Kausika, true to himself, told the truth. The travellers were soon caught and killed. Krsna further mentions that Kausika did not reach heaven after his death (his much-coveted reward) just because of this act of cruelty. In other words, although Kausika had abided by his principle of truth-telling throughout his life, it came to no effect. The attendant gloss on Krsna here
211
is that under situational constraints, there might be stronger grounds for rejecting truth-telling as a duty and accepting the stronger duty of saving an innocent life; also, for Matilal, that (t)his encapsulates a very strong moral insight, although it is not Kantian (ibid., emphasis added). He is categorical that (f)or Krsna, dharma is at least sometimes dictated by the constraints or the contingency of the situation and that this is no defense of opportunism (pp. 2627). It is quite clear for Matilal that there are intricate issues of moral philosophy involved here. He finds extant tendencies within moral theory those that admit the reality of moral dilemmas but which insist that a commitment to consistency would require us to modify the system by reordering the priorities or by discarding certain principles (p. 27, he specifically mentions R. M. Hare in this context) to be simplistic. Besides, while discerning a Sartrean resonance to Krsnas advice to Arjuna in the Mahabharata episode being talked about (that Arjuna, unlike Kausika, must not regret his failure to keep the promise when the concrete situation would otherwise require him to commit fratricide), Matilal maintains that we should avoid such a reading.4 As he observes: The situation is comparable in respect of the recommendation of the unregretted choice to be reached (masucah) but not so, as far as the complete rejection of the search for a consistent ethical system is concerned (p. 28). The point is, I think, important that although dharma is at least sometimes dictated by the constraints or the contingency of the situation, one cannot completely reject the idea of a moral agent. Indeed, it is in this backdrop that Matilal introduces the extremely subtle ways of dharma or duty what he characterises as the subtlety of Dharma-ethics and presses forth the claim that, for this ethics, (t)he
4
The conflict, in the context of Sartre, is that of a young man who must choose between his patriotic duty to join the French resistance and his filial obligation to care for his ageing mother. For Sartre, the conflict is real but (as Matilal renders) uses such hard cases as evidence to draw the conclusion that it is useless for a moral agent to form an ordered system of ethical principles and to try to live by it (ibid., p. 28). The agent, according to Sartre, is condemned to be free condemned in the sense that he did not create himself and free because from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. The agent, therefore, should use his radical freedom, and improvise his choice according to the situation without regret or remorse. As already seen, Matilal finds a resonance of the Sartrean advice in Krsnas advice to Arjuna (ibid.) but, as has just been pointed out in the text, desists from such a reading. Matilal further points out that Krsna also would not say that humans are condemned to be free (ibid.).
212
Sasheej Hegde
goodness of a good human life is not always dependent on the things that the moral agent can control (p. 29). Indeed, informing this summation is another story that Krsna is supposed to have told before the Kausika story. The story is about an innocent hunter called Balaka who used to hunt animals to feed his blind parents. Balaka had a rare skill he could hunt an animal even when it was outside the range of his sight, simply by listening to the noise made by the animal drinking water from a river. One day, he hunted in this manner a ferocious creature called Andha. But as soon as Andha was killed, gods showered flowers from heaven, and the celestial chariot came to fetch Balaka to heaven. Balaka had unknowingly done a great service to the Lords creation, because this Andha had grown up to be a terrible creature that was almost unkillable. Having received a boon from Lord Brahma, Andha went on killing all the creatures. Although Balaka was unaware of this fact, he was somehow able to kill this evil creature, and thereby obtain his just reward. Matilal mentions that this story sounds like the case of moral luck, in the sense that Balaka was a good person in his own modest way, but external contingencies made his moral reward far greater than what he had dreamt of (ibid.). Thus, Matilal posits, There is external contingency or luck coming to the agent from the world which is not under his control. But this contingency cannot be totally eliminated (ibid.). In fact, for him (contra a certain dimension of Kantian ethics) it is difficult to see how truth-telling as a duty can never be subject to external contingency (p. 32). Of course, lending further bite to the remarks just cited is the contention that truth-keeping is not being given up as a moral obligation for a person like Arjuna. On the contrary, (t)he moral agents sentiment as well as his commitment have rather been respected. What was recoverable is salvaged from the conflict (p. 33). Relatedly, Matilal is categorical that Krsnas suggestion to a regretful and remorseful Arjuna (the latter is so, having foregone his obligation for truth-keeping or promise-keeping) that this omission was reparable is not a trivialisation of the dilemma. For him, Krsnas suggestion turns on a seemingly semantic issue which, although light, cannot be ignored: When Arjuna promised to kill the person who would insult his Gandiva bow, he was obviously not thinking of Yudhisthira as his victim. Now, since Yudhisthira was the intended victim who was also his revered elder brother, he could even keep his promise
213
without actually killing him physically. Since insult and harsh words to such an elder brother would be as good as killing him in spirit, Arjuna could now insult Yudhisthira and use harsh words, and thus keep his promise (p. 32). Accordingly, while conceding that those who want to deny the reality of moral dilemmas would deny such moral sentiments on the part of moral agents, Matilal is clear that in the case of genuine dilemma, the agent, while doing x would be invariably overwhelmed with a feeling of remorse for not doing y (p. 33). Consequently, as he puts it: (I)n a moral system, which acknowledges moral dilemmas, such moral sentiments are unavoidable, and neither of the conflicting obligations is permanently given up. The obligation that is overridden is only rendered temporarily ineffectual by the constraints of the particular situation (ibid.). Certainly, speaking off the dilemma/episode that he does, it is to be noted that Matilal also considers the question posed by Arjuna at the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita Should he (that is, Arjuna) fight the bloody battle and kill his kinsmen or should he not? to be a genuine moral dilemma in that the attendant moral sentiments, remorse, regret and so on also obtain here. At any rate, for Matilal, the fact that a variety of ethical questions are couched in the language of dharma implies that the latter designates more than just legal and social codes; it also embodies moral principles or codes that are taken to inform the parameters of human agency and responsibility.
Inducing Moral Guidance

Clearly, Matilal, in gathering together the moral insights from the Indian epics, is concerned to demonstrate not only that the tradition itself was very self-conscious about moral values, moral conflicts and dilemmas, but also could help animate several intricate issues of moral philosophy. Evidently, it is the quality of the moral guidance that is demanded of and by an ethics that Matilal is interested to capture through his discussion of moral dilemmas in the Indian epics (the Mahabharata, in particular). It also translates into a norm for evaluating competing ethical theories, as we shall see. There is, of course, the question of why ethical theories are subject to this constraint of moral guidance, if indeed they are, and the implications
214
Sasheej Hegde
thereof, but allow me to defer this question for the moment. It also needs to be complicated further which, hopefully, the ensuing discussion will do so that the clarification of the space of this question might proceed upfront, even more truthfully and comprehensively. Structuring the discussion as he has, Matilal seems to have made a conscious decision to depart from the canonical status of the founding dilemma underlying the Gita. Now, on a certain register, such a decentering seems necessary and desirable contributing as it does to a widening of the moral space of Indian ethics, and indeed of the moral dilemmas intrinsic to the epics although it has, as its flipside, a relative non-consideration of the host of questions attending to the Gita story. Indeed, with respect to the latter, Amartya Sen has sought to lend further weight to the moral situation and judgments structuring the Gita, critiquing Krishnas deontology (articulating principles of action based on the priority of doing ones duty, and accordingly insisting on Arjunas duty to fight, irrespective of his evaluation of the consequences) and offering a defense of Arjunas consequential perspective.5 Sens point, note, is a pertinent one, seeking to modulate the bipolar partitioning of moral theories in the West as either deontological or utilitarian. While conceding that the deontological case for doing what one sees as ones duty is a strong one, he is asking how one can be indifferent to the utilitarian case of being mindful of the consequences that may follow from our doing what is taken to be our just duty. But, of course, as we have seen in the previous section, Matilals discussion places in perspective a thicker self-description of Krishna, presenting him as both Kantian and non-Kantian. Even more frontally, perhaps, what Matilal is interested to do is to assert the moral weight of the intricate intertwining of Indian epics and ethics as a whole that the latter were based on (to echo Gayatri Spivak) the reading of narrative instantiations of ethical problems.6 To be sure, this approach to and framing of Indian ethics is an interesting and challenging one. What is more, Spivak, citing Matilal, also speaks of the trap that nineteenth century Indologists fell into when, incorrectly
5
See Amartya Sen, Consequential Evaluation and Practical Reason, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 97, 2000. See Gayatri Chakravorthy Spivak, Echo, New Literary History, Vol. 24, 1993, p. 19. This bibliographic reference also holds for the lines cited in the next sentence of the following paragraph.
215
estimating that India had no tradition of moral philosophy in the Western European sense, they had been unable to grasp either the Indic tradition of rational critique or the tradition of practical ethics in India. The point is attractive (while not altogether profound) although the more pertinent question would be whether dharma ethics is largely virtue ethics, even as on occasion precepts or rules may be found. I will be tackling this question more fully in Section III, although it might be worthwhile here to listen to what Matilal has to say. Lending specificity to his moves on the terrain of epics and Indian ethics is the wider negotiation that Matilal is interested to stage on the space of modern moral philosophy. Let me therefore invoke this broader context, before settling back with Matilal. A question that has dominated modern moral philosophy is whether morality can be made sense of independent of belief in a transcendent source of obligation or value. Answering that question has proved to be a contentious matter, for the terms in which it has been posed is open to a variety of interpretations. There are different definitions of morality, different ways of making sense, different kinds of independence and transcendence, and different accounts (as indeed different forms) of obligation and value.7 Equally constitutive of the space of modern moral philosophy has been the pressing problem of providing an accurate account of the relationship between an agents having a normative reason to act (what one ought to do) and an agent being motivated to act (what one actually does). Broadly speaking, there are three rival accounts of this relationship on offer. There are those who argue that an agent has a normative reason to act if and only if so doing would satisfy some desire of the agent; consequently, their task is to show that there is an internal relation between an agents having a normative reason to act and an agents having a desire to act. Alternatively, there are those (generally Kantians) who argue that any agent who has a normative reason to act, and who is practically rational (that is, not suffering from some debilitating form of practical irrationality, such as weakness of will or depression), will act. Accordingly, the task of these Kantian theorists
7
A historically organised albeit simplified introduction to the space of these questions is Duncan Richter, Why Be Good? A Historical Introduction to Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). The essays collected together in Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (ed.), Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) also provide an effective map of modern moral philosophy and the questions that this enterprise has taken on about the complexity and vastness of our moral life, on what has value.
216
Sasheej Hegde
is to show that normative reasons always have overriding authority and that it is always irrational not to act upon them. A third group is concerned to press the point that normative reasons for action are derived from facts about human well-being, and that an agent will be motivated to act provided that he or she has been habituated into having desires, guided by reason, to act for his/her own well-being. Consequently, the burden in this third account is to show how normative reasons can be derived from facts about human well-being and whether it is always in an agents best interest to act morally.8 To be sure, Matilal concedes that professional philosophers of India have seldom discussed what is called moral philosophy in the senses disclosed above; and yet, as he puts it, the tradition did bring a unique set of recognitions to the space of ethics and practical reason. As he strikingly observes: It is true that the dharmasastra texts were there to supplement the Hindu discussion of ethics, classification of virtues and vices, and enumeration of duties related to the social status of the individual. But morality was never discussed as such in these texts. On the other hand, the tradition itself was very self-conscious about moral values, moral conflicts and dilemmas, as well as about the difficulties of what we call practical reason or practical wisdom. This consciousness found its expression in the epic stories and narrative literature which can, therefore, be used for any illuminating discussion of moral philosophy in India (p. 22, emphasis added). Matilal is emphatic that the situations described in the epics are genuine dilemmas, and that traditional wisdom maintained an ambivalent attitude towards the ad hoc resolutions described in the ancient texts (p. 24). He pointedly remarks: Some of them have no satisfactory solution, although, in each case, an ad hoc practical action-guide was devised in the original story while the main problem remained unsolved. Over the ages we notice that various episodes and subplots of these epic stories have been retold with great ingenuity in various regional and vernacular versions of the epics, in folktales, plays, dramas, etc. Each new
8
For a clarification of the ground of these three competing accounts of the connection between ethics and practical reason, see Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut (ed.), Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
217
version may be regarded as a novel attempt to resolve the dilemma inherent in the original version (p. 21). At another point, Matilal mentions that even as the same episodes were retold through the ages in different versions of the epics and the ad hoc resolutions of the dilemmas differently conceived, this probably reflects the changing pattern of the social ethos of the narrators time (p. 24). He also finds the distinction made by Indologists between the narrative and the didactic materials in the epic [the thought being that the didactic material was added to the narrative material and sometimes the narrative to the didactic, so that modern scholarship could separate one from the other (p. 23)] to be an artificial one as far as the text of the Mahabharata is concerned. As he affirms (and I think this is important as a further axis of determination of Indian ethics): The so-called narrative and didactive material are found inextricably fused together in the text, such that often they cannot be differentiated. Sometimes the narrative itself imparts the moral lesson without any deliberate efforts on the part of the narrator. In other words, the medium itself is the message here (ibid.). What we have then, within the parameters set by Matilals discussion, is a reformulation of the guidance constraint held to underly ethical theories and which is also taken to serve as a norm for evaluating ethical theories in the space of moral philosophy proper. Perhaps a word about this constraint is in order, before getting back to our point about how Matilals discussion seems to be reformulating it. Following a recent examination of this constraint, it might be rendered as follows: (o)ther things being at least roughly equal, ethical theories are better to the extent that they provide adequate moral guidance; also, that (a)n ethical theory gives adequate moral guidance if it makes reliable strategies for acting well for doing the right thing for the right reasons in particular situations available to practical thinking.9
9
Pekka Vayrynen, Ethical Theories and Moral Guidance, Utilitas, Vol. 18, 2006, pp. 292, 293. Vayrynen asks, (a)n ethical theory that makes right actions frequently inaccessible to us, or offers us mere hindsight in the face of moral novelty, uncertainty and difficulty, fails adequately to guide action. Is such an ethical theory worse than one that does provide adequate moral guidance?, while going on to state that the aim is to contribute to our understanding of why ethical theories are subject to the Guidance Constraint, if indeed they are, rather than to argue that they are (pp. 291, 292). There is an important clarification effected by Vayrynen, who points out in a footnote that (m)oral theorists who deny that moral principles need be suitable for use in public justification are not thereby enemies of the Guidance Constraint (p. 293, n. 6). As is astutely observed:
218
Sasheej Hegde
Moreover, the analysis in question goes on to stringently state that there are three central facts about adequate guidance and their relevance to ethical theory which any account of why ethical theories are subject to the guidance constraint should explain: (1) An ethical theory fails to provide adequate moral guidance if it evaluates certain actions as right and others as wrong without providing any sufficiently reliable direction for acting in conformity with those evaluations. A theory that is unreliable will all too easily lead us to act wrongly. (2) For an ethical theory to provide adequate guidance, an agents acceptance of it should reliably lead her to perform right actions on the basis of her acceptance of it, and for the reasons why (according to the theory) right actions are right. Even if doing the right thing for non-moral reasons (say, to avoid punishment) were a reliable way to act rightly, it would not be a case of moral guidance. (3) A reliable strategy for acting well must be available for use in agents practical thinking. If an ethical theory only identifies features of right actions that are either inaccessible even to a conscientious agent or accessible only in hindsight, it provides no useful direction for acting well. So modulated, it seems that these are rather strict requirements for any theory to be assessed as giving adequate moral guidance. Indeed, for the notion of moral guidance to retain any purchase, it may require to be modified or, perhaps, reformulated. It is this thought which brings back into focus Matilals discussion and the latters ability to think modern problems through ingenious use of ancient insights.10 Structuring as he does a discussion around the very idea of moral dilemmas (whose genuineness he is unwilling to discount), Matilal is able to weave together an interesting set of considerations on moral guidance with its concomitant novelties, uncertainties and difficulties.
Because we know more than we can articulate, a reliable strategy for acting well may be available to us even if we are unable to articulate the considerations governing our deliberations in a way that public justification requires. If so, violating the publicity condition does not entail violating the Guidance Constraint (ibid.). The other long quote that follows in this paragraph is also from the same source (pp. 293294).
10
For a further take on this aspect of Matilal, see the overtures of Arindam Chakrabarti Introduction: The Absence of a Philosopher in his specially edited number on the theme Epistemology, Meaning and Metaphysics after Matilal featured in Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences , Vol. 3, 1996, pp. 111.
219
It should be quite clear that Indian ethics as a form of ethical theory is seen to provide moral guidance often based on the reading of narrative instantiations of ethical problems. The ethics in question is perspectivist and performative, but not quite only so. As Matilal concludes, in lines which stand out as much for their piety as for their conviction about an aspect of Indian ethics: The nature of our practical wisdom has a sort of malleability, which is comparable to the ever-elusive nature of dharma-ethics to be found in our epic literature. It has been said that dharmasya tattvam nihitam guhayam (the truth of dharma lies in the dark cave). It cannot be completely known by us as universally fixed. But the acknowledgement of possible flexibility does not mean that the fixity and universality of ethical laws will be entirely negotiable. Situational constraints may require some bending, but by allowing genuine moral sentiments like remorse or guilt it makes up for occasional lapses. A moral agent has an enriched practical wisdom when it is informed by his experiences of genuine moral dilemmas. A moral agent needs also a character which is nothing but a disposition to act and react appropriately with moral concerns (p. 33). He grants that the history of moral thought of mankind as a whole lends itself to two different types of moral persons as paradigmatic one is the dutiful fulfiller of universal obligations a la Kant and the other is what he forwards as an imaginative poet a perspectivist [who] understands the contingency of the human situation (p. 34). Accordingly, he holds that, in the Indian context, Yudhisthiras (or Ramas) moral ideals would fall into the former category The nature of dharma idealized by Rama (or Yudhisthira) seems to have been very rigid. It seldom bends (ibid.) whereas Krsna belongs to the latter type, attentive not only to the particularity of the situation but also looking beyond it: Krsna allows for flexibility in dharma. But this flexibility never means the anything goes kind of morality He governs from above but does not dictate (ibid., emphasis added).11
11
I shall return to the italicised portion in a subsequent section. One could state that in taking these two different types of moral persons as paradigmatic, Matilal has simplified the issue. But what follows, is the drift of the thoughts that have anchored the discussion thus far.
220
Sasheej Hegde
It is imperative to grant that Matilals reconstruction is also a staging of the contents of Indian ethics, if not the entirety of that content at least an important slice of it. On this register, to be sure, the test of an ethical theory would be not just the moral guidance it offers, but also the specific quality of that guidance. For one, Matilal is claiming that any system of ethics must give moral guidance even if the guidance entailed need not translate into a resolution of the moral dilemma(s) which underwrite action. This might seem contentious, but I think it is a particularly erudite claim that Matilals discussion of Indian epics and ethics is both working off and intending to consolidate: namely, that any serious discussion of moral dilemmas must cross-cut the system of ethics and yet give adequate moral guidance. Indeed, Matilals specific gloss on Krsna (already alluded to) that under situational constraints, there might be stronger grounds for rejecting truth-telling as a duty and accepting the stronger duty of saving an innocent life and that (t)his encapsulates a very strong moral insight, although it is not Kantian (p. 26) is appropriable in this light.12 Even more notably though, it is also being claimed that the moral guidance is itself part of the ethical theory in contention, so that the former (the moral guidance) is not outside the latter (the ethical theory or claim in perspective) and which the latter must accede to. We need to be clear here. One is not discounting the guidance constraint of/for ethical theories; only transposing the requirement differently from within a modulation effected on (or by) an aspect of Indian ethics. It opens up another space of consideration whether Indian ethics in the form of dharma ethics is largely only virtue ethics, even as on occasion precepts or rules may be found to which I will presently turn. For the moment, the moral realism on which Matilal both premises and carries forward his discussion I personally believe that certain moral dilemmas are genuine, and also that occurrence of such dilemmas does not present any problem for moral realism (p. 24) is a fairly robust one; and it is in keeping with this robustness that he offers a dichotomy between two types of genuine dilemma one type where what ought to be done has remained unsettled for the agent even when he has considered all the relevant information
12
As already seen, in the context of the dilemma discussed by Matilal, that while Arjuna might be said to be anticipating the Kantian model, Krsna is not Kant; and, what is more, that in starting a discourse with Arjuna, Krsna obviously turned an apparently moral conflict into a genuine moral dilemma (p. 26).
221
known to him in the situation and the other type where what ought to be done remains unsettleable even after the exercise of all rational means (ibid.) while going on to maintain that his concern is primarily with the second type of dilemma. It is important to get the measure of this difference: in the first type of dilemma, there is the hope that with the deemed informational constraints being removed, the dilemma may dissolve, whereas, in the second type, the presence or absence of informational constraints has no bearing on the decision. In fact, given the case of dilemma that Matilal discusses in the Mahabharata (and taken as emblematic of the second type), one is not entirely sure whether this is antecedent to or a concomitant of the moral realism that he attributes to Indian ethics. But of course, consistent with the philosophical controversies that abound on the subject of moral realism, it might be insisted that we need to distinguish between a morality (as a theory of right and wrong) and a realism (as a theory of mind-independent existents); between morals (mind-dependent constructs) and rocks (mind-independent objects); and all of these from conditions of truth or falsity.13 In fact, arraigning against the robustness of the situations described by Matilal, it might be claimed that morality is not what is right/wrong, good/bad, and so on; indeed that morals are not like rocks over which you can stumble or sit on (nor are they semantic artifacts, in the sense that the conditions under which statements are true or false will not tell us what to do). In other words, on this register, a morality is a theory about what is good or bad, right or wrong, etc. It specifies a certain set of social norms whose elasticity would have to be further contextually determined. All the same, it is important to notice that these distinctions do not say anything about whether x or y is right or wrong independent of ones (your or my) attitude/disposition (which is really what concerns Matilal and the situations of Indian ethics from which he speaks). If one starts with the fundamental notion that the specification of whether x or y is right or any subset of that specification (any particular social norm) cannot be independent of the conceptualising mind or the situation from which it speaks, this beginning could make a big difference to an ethics (like in the Indian instance of the epics) which posits that part of right and wrong is at least partly made up (constructed?) of human values, habits and
13
I must confess this is a thorny ground of debate, and my thinking on these questions is presently somewhat muddled. Yet, it seems to me an important ground of clarification. Hopefully, I can sort out this ground in due course, if not entirely in this text.
222
Sasheej Hegde
associations.14 Thus, as I mentioned very early on in my introductory overture, studying Indian ethics necessitates contemplating both the singular, personal and labile quality of the acts implicating it and to consider the social-moral quality of what it is about the act that is felt to be imperative. This would need to be complicated, of course, which is what the next section attempts.
Translating Indian Ethics

Morally substantive commitments are both internal to Indian ethics as well as underwrite a certain disposition towards Indian ethics. This is very clear as one works through Matilal, although the weight of his assessment, I am inclined to state, tends to fall more on the latter (the attempt, that is, to formulate a certain disposition towards Indian ethics) than on the former (the outlining of the morally substantive commitments internal to Indian ethics. The challenge, to be sure, is in coming to terms with the morally substantive commitments internal to Indian ethics, and I venture some suggestions in what follows. There is, however, a small knot (a general one at that) which needs to be untied before embarking on aspects of that ground. The matter has to do with whether there is or can be an adequacy condition for ethical theories over and above the guidance constraint that we have talked about earlier. In other words, for an ethical theory to be an ethical theory, it must not only provide adequate moral guidance, it must also be answerable to purely theoretical, morally neutral norms. Of course, in doing so, they may nullify the force of the morally substantive commitments that underwrite an ethical theory, but I will not be exploring this line here Pekka Vayrynen, in the paper cited earlier (n. 9 above), mentions (i)nternal consistency, simplicity, unity and explanatory power [as] plausible candidates for purely theoretical norms for evaluating ethical theories, and adds (problematically, one would think) that in so far as
14
Whether this dissolves the ground of the debate between the three rival accounts of the relations between ethics and practical reason is another question. Considering that this has come to represent a specialised ground in modern moral philosophy, the resolutions offered on the space of Indian ethics might seem pretty trite. I have ventured some further suggestions about the specificity of Indian ethics in a review essay entitled Ethical Specificities: Repositioning Indian Ethics, Sophia, Vol. 47, 2008, pp. 243249.
223
these features are advantages in a theory, they are so regardless of the theorys subject matter.15 Interestingly enough, Vayrynen notes that the capacity of purely theoretical norms to discriminate among competing ethical theories is limited anyway and that consequently the many norms which we deploy widely in evaluating ethical theories are not morally neutral in that they reflect substantive moral ideals that enjoy at least provisional acceptance. While all this seems obvious enough of course, it need not always dawn on one and all - the point to be noted for our purposes here is what follows from this. In Vayrynens words, Purifying our norms for evaluating ethical theories of morally substantive implications would require us to abandon norms that we deploy widely. Indeed, in a further weighty consideration that has some direct bearing on Matilals discussion of moral dilemmas in the Mahabharata, Vayrynen notes: (M)any philosophers argue that an adequate ethical theory may not allow for situations in which an agent ought (all things considered) both to do A and to do B but in which she can only do either A or B but not both. The thought is that genuine moral dilemmas of this kind are impossible because the assumptions that generate their impossibility are impeccable. But a deontic logic that is consistent with the possibility of genuine moral dilemmas can itself be perfectly consistent, and need be no less simple or unified than one that entails the impossibility of moral dilemmas. Reasons to deny or allow the possibility of moral dilemmas apparently have to stem from morally substantive rather than purely theoretical norms (emphasis added).
15
Vayrynen, Ethical Theories and Moral Guidance, p. 306. The rest of the quotes that follow in this paragraph of my main text are from p. 307. For Vayrynen, the worry that holding ethical theories answerable to morally substantive norms is unreasonable because it begs the question against certain ethical theories is less serious than it may seem, especially since (following a suggestion of John Rawls from A Theory of Justice) (t)he merit of proposed adequacy conditions depends upon the soundness of the theory that results and such conditions can be justified only by the reasonableness of the theory of which they are a part (p. 308). It is further noted: Rawlss idea may to some extent frustrate our desire to establish adequacy conditions on ethical theories before particular theories come in, so that we can prevent some from entering. But its application to the Guidance Constraint is instructive (ibid.).
224
Sasheej Hegde
Mark the point that I have italicised, which is consistent with the stance taken by Matilal as well. More strictly, the effort to pull together considerations that are both Kantian and non-Kantian, which emblematises Matilals approach to Indian ethics, so to say, might have a Kantian deontic source after all. I guess, at a certain personal level, we modern scholars are all default Kantians. At any rate, considering where we have arrived, the question to be faced squarely is the one I asked early on in Section II, namely, whether Indian ethics in the form of dharma ethics is largely virtue ethics, even as on occasion precepts or rules may be found. Let us move on, then, to this more substantive terrain of appraisal. In another essay entitled Dharma and Rationality, which is part of the collection from which I am speaking, Matilal notes: By the term dharma in the title of this essay, I understand nothing short of moral virtue, or rather, a theory of moral behaviour, as it is found implicit in Indias traditional wisdom [f]or, in the wider tradition of India, dharma stands for neither religion nor the narrower caste-oriented duties (pp. 5051). While this by itself need not translate into anything much, it is what Matilal weaves into the subject of dharma and its rational critique that is very significant: Dharma is a popular subject of inquiry, often found in all [the] narrative literature. The nature of dharma is often hotly debated and argued about; no other principle has been regarded as sacred. This need not be very surprising, for neither in Buddhism nor in Jainism, or even in Hinduism, was God cited as the authority on dharma. Hence the search for a rational basis of dharma is often compatible with these religious traditions. There were, of course, the Hindu scriptures. But these scriptures proved to be flexible, sometimes to the point that they seemed to have meant whatever their interpreters chose to make them mean. Furthermore, even when the literal text of the scriptures was taken seriously, the interpreters of the Mimamsa school undertook to make a rational examination (mimamsa means rational examination) of the meaning of the Vedic (scriptural) statements (p. 51). For Matilal, then, it is very clear that the dharma tradition is not a matter of blind faith, but developed through an attempt at rational criticism of itself; and, in this sense, it inscribes a principle of rationality or rational inquiry that needs attending to.
225
Interestingly, another piece of evidence that is presented in support of this claim bears a reference to the caste-hierarchy, which (as Matilal acknowledges) is almost as old as Vedic Hinduism. According to him: The Sramana tradition provided a rational critique from outside. But, even within the domain of Vedic Hinduism, there occurred a search for a rational basis. What resulted was an interpretation of the karma doctrine that was intended to provide a rational basis for the apparently irrational practice of caste-hierarchy or social inequality (ibid.). He mentions Max Webers discussion in The Religion of India, which, although characterising caste-dharma as anti-rational (because it denied the natural equality of man), held the karma doctrine of Hinduism to provide the rational basis of the caste-hierarchy (indeed, for Weber, the karma doctrine represented the most consistent theodicy ever produced in history). Matilal, though, does not share Webers enthusiasm for the doctrine; while also disagreeing with Louis Dumonts valorisation of the Hindu caste system as a value and also a rational practice (pp. 5253). He gives further evidence of the linkage between dharma-ethics and the search for a rational basis where a moral decision gets to be made on the basis of a rational argument while going on to show the ambivalence of the later tradition to accept as entirely rational the prevalent resolution of caste-hierarchy in terms of the past karma of the individual (pp. 5354). Even more pointedly, yet, Matilal notes that in the case of the Hindus where the Vedas were given the supreme authority (although subjected to rational investigation [cf. mimamsa]) two further points need to be made: First, the Vedic injunctions cover only a very small part of our normal behaviour at the social and personal level. Hence the necessity arose for guidelines from the conduct of the good as well as from appeal to good conscience to achieve rational resolution of conflict-situations. The second point is that medieval authors of the dharmasastras such as Manu and Yajnavalkya were fully aware of the role of rationality in determining various moral or dharma preferences (p. 58). In fact, even as these authors achieved a certain notoriety for their narrow-mindedness for irrational rationalisation of the same existing unjust social institutions such as inequalities in caste discrimination, and for
226
Sasheej Hegde
resisting the change that was bound to come along with the change of time and environment Matilal concedes that it is undeniable that these same authors also realized that the full extent of dharma-morality can be sustained only if it can be given a rational basis (ibid.). For him, the stream of critical rationality in the tradition was already alive and active, emanating as much from the low castes as from the higher strata of the society, the Brahmin priests, etc. (ibid.). In a principled sense, then, something more than simply or only virtue ethics is involved in this characterisation of dharma-ethics; it implicates a tradition of rational critique and a tradition of practical ethics in India which needs sorting out both in their complex intertwining and transformation and in their own independent spaces of articulation. The problems and possibilities, as I see it, attending to Matilals reconstruction of Indian ethics lie essentially here, in this process of sorting out. Clearly, strong concepts of rationality and the rational are involved here, which would require to be further addressed. Notably, in another context, introducing his book about philosophical theory in classical India, Jonardon Ganeri observes, (w)hat do we mean when we speak of a cultures notion of the rational. Not, of course, that the concept itself is culturally specific, but only that it is embedded, articulated and manifested in culturally specific ways; and goes on to link Matilals study of the concept of reason embedded in changing treatments of moral dilemmas in the epic literature and dharmasastras with a diachronic study of conceptions about what constitutes an adequate resolution to a moral dilemma [and which] illuminates both shifts in the notion of reason itself, and also the mechanics of internal criticism, theory revision and paradigm rejection.16 To be sure, Matilals study does offer glimpses of the latter (some of which can be had in our foregoing pages) although it is not quite presented in the way that Ganeri seems to imply. At any rate, the point is important, and is a key issue in the sorting out that one could be striving after.17
16
See Jonardon Ganeri, Philosophy in Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason, London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 23. I am afraid Amartya Sens immensely readable The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity, London: Allen Lane, 2005, bearing as it does the theme on its sleeve, hardly encounters this terrain. I guess the work, a panegyric to public philosophising, could not have borne the weight of this mode of reflection.
17
227
Suggestions of a different kind emanate from the notion of a thick ethical concept as framed by the philosopher Bernard Williams. By such a notion, Williams means a concept such as coward, lie, brutality, gratitude and so forth (including infidelity or blasphemy, remorse and regret, treachery and promise, and courage) whose applicability is both world-guided and action-guiding.18 If a concept of this kind applies, he observes, this often provides someone with a reason for action. At the same time, their application is guided by the world. A concept of this sort may be rightly or wrongly applied, and people who have acquired it can agree that it applies or fails to apply to some new situation. In other words, to apply a thick ethical concept in a given situation (for instance, to accuse someone of infidelity) is, in part, to evaluate the situation, which characteristically means either condemning or commending certain courses of action; but it is also to make a judgment which is subject to correction if the situation turns out not to be a certain way (for instance, if it turns out that the person who has been accused of infidelity did not in fact go back on any relevant agreement). Now, while the notion seems to lend a certain currency to the situations described and foregrounded by Matilal indeed, the resulting picture of Indian ethics as either invoking or presupposing a body of thick ethical concepts is all the more resonant, and when filtered through the fact that the axis of this retrieval is through the notion of moral dilemmas, the account seems to render Indian ethics itself as at once singular, personal and labile there are also difficulties here, and not just because of the incompleteness of Matilals account and/or the shifting parameters of Williams discussion of thick ethical concepts itself. Let me tackle the sources of the latter disparagement before resuming my discussion of embellishing our understanding of Indian ethics (and accordingly rendering Matilals account more complete than it is). The Nietzschean undertows of Williams investigation need to be kept in mind (and contrasts fairly sharply, I think, with the inspirations underscoring Matilal). It is this influence which oversees Williams, suggestion
18
See Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 12930 and 14042. The lines that follow in the text are from the same work, pp. 14041.
228
Sasheej Hegde
to distinguish ethics, which is a way of answering the Socratic question How one ought to live?, from morality, which is a certain kind of answer to that question one which, though it has come to play a major part in the ethical life of the modern West, is none the less in broader historical and comparative terms a peculiar institution. This is perhaps as it should be, although I think the distinction is overdrawn and makes sense only within a definite discursive context.19 Besides, in terms of the situations reconstructed from the Indian epics and the normative overlays that attach to them whether approached through the lens of Matilal or even beyond in terms of the normativity attaching to the morally substantive commitments internal to Indian ethics per se it seems very difficult to hold on to the ethics/ morality distinction. There is, nonetheless, a specific weight that Williams seems to be lending to his idea that the application of thick ethical concepts is at the same time world-guided and action-guiding which is interesting. The standard account Williams calls it prescriptivist has it that (a)ny such concept can be analyzed into a descriptive and a prescriptive element: it is guided round the world by its descriptive content, but has a prescriptive flag attached to it.20 This standard account is, doubtless, simplistic, and Williams gestures accordingly: Prescriptivism claims that what governs the application of the concept to the world is the descriptive element and that the evaluative interest of the concept plays no part in this. More decisively,
19
For the ethical/moral positioning just alluded, see Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, pp. 174196. The distinctive thing about morality, for Williams, is that judgment is in terms only of obligations a specific set of so-called moral obligations and these can be outweighed only by other such obligations. All ethical considerations tend therefore to be phrased in moralised forms of judicial language rules, rights, duties, commands and blame. Moral thinking accordingly, as Williams renders it, is a matter of weighing obligations and deciding where ones duty lies, and moral judgments rest on whether one chooses, whatever ones desires or inclinations, to act in accordance with this duty. According to him, these distinctive features of the morality system are found in much of our social and political life part of the structuring of modernity, one might add but they do not exhaust how we actually make ethical choices. Williams point is that our lives would be greatly impoverished, and in even greater confusion, if they did. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, p. 141. As he adds: It is the first feature that allows it to be world-guided, while the second makes it action-guiding (ibid.). See also pp. 120131 passim. The indexed quotation that follows in this paragraph is from p. 141. The dimensions of social and political critique that attach to our present has much to learn from the ensuing clarification, if its bite needs to be retained.
20
229
for Williams, in order to trace the contours of the ethical concepts applicability, we have to understand its evaluative point: How we go on from one application of a concept to another is a function of the kind of interest that the concept represents, and we should not assume that we could see how people go on if we did not share the evaluative perspective in which this kind of concept has its point. Noticeably, the situations described and the concepts invoked in Matilals reconstructive appropriation of Indian ethics make these demands on understanding; and it is but a crude representation of the latter to pose it merely as a form of virtue ethics. Matilals specific suggestions on this score seem to suggest otherwise, although his intimations about elusiveness and ambiguity in dharma-ethics seem to implicate precisely that crudity of representation.21 This of course does not complete the picture, since, although the question that we asked whether dharma-ethics is largely virtue ethics has now obtained a negative answer, the question of the kinds of precepts or rules that obtain within the space of Indian ethics also has to be handled. What follows are some suggestions on this score. To be sure, the familiar Kantian idea of the will as practical reason has here in the context of Indian ethics (or, at least, Matilals reconstruction of it) acquired an active mode, willing as a capacity (faculty?) of practical reasoning. But what oversees the movement from reasoning to obligation note, not quite only because that shift is also important to the Kantian notion of will and willing but in the sense of giving a normative reason for why someone ought to do something? What is to prevent a rational agent,
21
See Matilals essay Elusiveness and Ambiguity in Dharma-Ethics in the collection from which we have been speaking (op.cit., pp. 3648). I must hasten to clarify that my remarks here are not to be interpreted as a dismissal of the space of virtue ethics. This remains a veritably inexhaustible terrain of reflection and reconstruction, although one needs to be a little wary of the folk-psychological notions that seem to both feed off and into the project. Indeed, to the extent that the virtues imply specific traits of character, the moral psychological integuments of the virtues can be particularly fascinating; and, to the extent that there could be incompatibilities between the virtues as traits of character (so that the possession of certain virtues conflicts in some measure with the possession of some others), the field of argumentation can be contentious and lively. Some interesting suggestions obtain in John D. Smith, Consistency and Character in the Mahabharata, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol.72, 2009, pp. 101112; as also Leela Prasad, Ethics in Everyday Hindu Life: Narration and Tradition in a South Indian Town (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007).
230
Sasheej Hegde
when putting reason to practical use, from adopting only resolutions that are not principles, resolutions that serve merely as private recipes for organising? This can be given a Kantian answer, which may be found to be limiting, which, in turn, may elicit a further Kantian answer, and the cycle can go on. But my point is different. It has to do with the basic idea (adapted from Williams, of course, and which following Matilal one finds as important within Indian ethics) that anyone who embraces a thick ethical concept thereby has certain reasons for doing something. No doubt, the specific gloss that we put on the words doing something, on having a reason, and on embracing a concept is crucial, but I am here concerned about the normativity of it all indeed, in the contexts that one is straddling, the reason why someone ought to do something, whether in the midst of moral dilemmas or in the thrall of moral certainties. Doubtless, this question can be given a psychological or psychologising answer, and one might even broach the idea by considering the very notion of putting reason to practical use a consideration as vital to Kants moral philosophy as to the idea of Indian ethics approached as a unique or distinct tradition of practical ethics.22 But this is not a very interesting or even challenging route to take. Allow me a quick nod in the direction of Matilal, who as we have already seen is only too aware that not just legal and social codes but also moral principles or moral codes were designated by the pervasive term dharma and that one must never lose sight of the often-emphasized subtlety and ever-elusive nature of dharma (p. 20). It may be necessary to sharpen this formulation as a way of gaining more critical purchase on the question of normativity that we have posited. Needless to say, I shall be venturing only a few thoughts here. Querying the relationship between law and dharma in the Indian context, the French Sanskritist Lingat observes that (the) element which has served
22
For a variant of the latter, see Binu Gupta, Bhagavad Gita as Duty and Virtue Ethics: Some Reflections, Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 34, 2006, pp. 373395; but remains a somewhat misleading ground of appraisal at that. An interesting recent account in the context of Kants moral philosophy is Barbara Herman, one which resists precisely psychologising Kants account of moral action and motivation (Reasoning to Obligation, Inquiry, Vol. 49, 2006, pp. 4461). Nietzsche and Williams point (although their usages are not identical), that the term morality designates ethical systems where self-denying values inform law-like obligations in the way (say) Kant saw it, is not very helpful either. Of course, all this is not to imply that there are no problems with Kants ethics.
231
in the West as a foundation for a specific discipline, namely, the coercive element, which characterizes a legal rule and distinguishes it from other rules which also control human activity does not so obtain in the classical Indian context; and that the latter (in building up the law) have derived it from a more general notion which exceeds the domain of law in many respects without actually comprehending it entirely: duty.23 According to him, the classical legal system of India (unlike the Western juridical system) substitutes the notion of authority for that of legality. Lingat further maintains (an argument which could serve as the basis of a whole disputation in the context of Indology or Sanskrit knowledge systems): The word dharma which could be translated as duty in effect expresses conformity with what Hindus regard as the natural order of things; and this explains its association with law. But the rule of dharma can only become a rule of law by a process beyond the expression of it, a process which enables it to enter society armed with a power of constraint which is not inherent in it (emphasis added). Surely Lingat is not the last word on the subject, and given developments in classical Indian philosophy and theory the ideas that he is laying claim to cannot be taken as sacrosanct. But let us stay with the thoughts formulated here incidentally, there are allusions in Matilal to this scholar especially the idea that we have emphasised above, namely, that the rule of dharma can only become a rule of law by a process beyond the expression of it, a process which enables it to enter society armed with a power of constraint which is not inherent in it. Louis Dumont translates this point as one of, in his words, the dharma rul(ing) from on high, but not hav(ing) to govern, which would be fatal (emphasis added). 24 However, I think Lingats
23
Robert Lingat, The Classical Law of India (New Delhi: Thomson Press, 1973), p. xii. The lines that follow are from pp. 25758; the indexed lines in the same paragraph are from p. xiii of the same work. Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 78. To be sure, Dumont is perforce led to maintain so, in keeping with the demands of his theory, but more importantly, I think, in order to retain that quest at the heart of his theory of hierarchy namely, the need to restore value to ideas, and to reiterate hierarchy as command(ing) attention as a challenge to the main trend of modern ideology (Ibid., 245).
24
232
Sasheej Hegde
suggestion resonates differently, meeting as it does with a point that the jurist scholar J. D. M. Derrett formulates most adroitly (contra Dumont): namely, that of the rajadharma, the teachers of which (all of them Brahmins) regarded kingship as a practical and religious necessity, for they feared nothing more than chaos.25 Derrett further observes: Rajadharma is a very different thing from rajaniti, though treatises on the former incorporate, englobe, a great deal of the latter. Rajaniti is the way a king should comport himself to be successful. Rajadharma is the way a king should comport himself in order to be righteous. No sacrificial performances by a former ruler can wipe out the effects of unrighteous administration persisted in, knowingly, while he ruled. In short (to return to Lingat): the specific evaluative thrust of dharma, as indeed the passage of dharma into society, whereby its rules are transformed into rules of law, is mediated by the institution of kingship (or, in our secular modern democratic times, government), as part and parcel of its rajadharma; and it is by means of this mediation the legitimate force wielded by kingship or government, danda, in short that the rule of dharma enters society armed with a power of constraint which is not inherent in it.26 Should this entail that we formulate dharma, or even rajadharma, as explicated above, as the grand evaluative point of Indian ethics? I suppose not and indeed, notwithstanding some suggestions to the contrary, Matilal would not do so either and to be sure there are problems in resurrecting the values of dharma and constituting them so. The specific issue here is further complicated when, for instance, Derrett, noting the shastric emphasis
25
J. D. M. Derrett, Rajadharma, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 35, 1976, p. 606. Note, the indexed quote that follows in this paragraph is from the same source and so also the pagination. The implication, I suppose, is obvious: that Dumonts locutions on the relationship between priesthood and royalty are drawn from treatises discussing rajaniti (cf. Derrett, Rajadharma p. 605) and that this should be kept distinct from rajadharma. For more on the latter point, see what follows in our text. Concerning the kings powers of command (ksatra), Lingat has this to say: Ksatra confers on the king independence, the right to act to suit himself without depending upon anyone else. The king is independent of subjects, as is the spiritual preceptor of his pupils and the head of the family of the members of his household (op.cit., p. 211).
26
233
on the virtues (on codes of conduct or traits of character considered to be exemplary or desirable) observes that it results in the neglect of law: India [has the belief] that righteousness is an independent science of greater importance than mere day-to-day administration, and that the teachers duty is to exhort, and to set standards of conduct, based overtly upon transcendental considerations, recognizing that decisions will be reached by judges, arbitrators, or others, upon principles of ethics, custom or policy, but hoping that they would, if properly educated in righteousness, tend or endeavour to give a just decision. The sastra contains no rules of law which must be followed by judges on pain of illegality.27 It may be that our discussion has shifted gear; let us therefore regroup. This obviously does not settle entirely our question of normativity even as it lends distinct shades to it in the sense of the basic idea that anyone who embraces a thick ethical concept thereby has certain reasons for doing something. The Indian philosopher Daya Krishna has in another context encapsulated this point differently, when he observes that (t)he Indian political thinker seems sensitive to considerations of dharma even with regard to issues that are primarily political in nature.28 Indeed, as we have stated more than once in our preceding sections, approaching Indian ethics
27
J. D. M. Derrett, Dharmasastra and Juridical Literature, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1973, p. 23. Indeed, the question is more complicated than what Derrett seems to be implying. On any register, the assimilation of law with morality need not always be compelling because the political element of law brings completely different aspects into play. As Habermas has noted in another context: In Kant and in early liberalism, there is a conception of the rule of law which suggests that the legal order itself is exclusively moral in character, or at least is a form of implementation of morality. This assimilation of law and morality is misleading (Jurgen Habermas, Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews, London: Verso, 1992, p. 252). Note also that Habermas is here responding to a question concerning how one ought to understand law and morality in modernity. Daya Krishna, The Problematic and Conceptual Structure of Classical Indian Thought about Man, Society and Polity, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 107. This obviously renders the Indian language of power more equivocal than it seems. The specific normative implications of this are worthwhile exploring, both for conceptualising power and for defacing it. Michel Foucaults conception, one defining the exercise of power as a mode of action upon the actions of other (The Subject and Power, in H. L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, p. 221), although interesting, may not be helpful.
28
234
Sasheej Hegde
necessitates contemplating at once the singular, personal and labile quality of the acts implicating it as well as considering the social-moral quality of what it is about the act that is felt to be imperative. Even as a conception of binding norms (rightness as such, the obligatory force of norms as having the absolute meaning of an unconditional or universal duty) is emphasised, the ethical space as a whole is premised upon significant recognitions within the structure of this normativity. Significantly, these recognitions seem to effectively displace the problematic of rightness as such, and engage the important problem of the connection between the possession of the right norms (or rules or precepts) and the judgment(s) required to apply them. I realise that the specific challenge of studying Indian ethics consists in debating (and conceptualising) the quality and effectiveness of this bindingness and normativity (as indeed the us to which it comes attached), and I hope I have succeeded in communicating aspect of this challenge thinking through Bimal Matilal. I also realise that the specific demands of such a study must place a limit on ones own historical standpoint and its unreflected condition of emergence. But, above all, I am presuming of course that these orders of specification are both necessary and possible and that questions of explanatory graft cannot and indeed do not exhaust the same. As the German theorist Jurgen Habermas has remarked elsewhere, an analytical procedure which demands sensitivity to context need not itself be context-dependent and lead to context-dependent results.29 The what invents the who just as much as it is invented by it.
29
Habermas, Anatomy and Solidarity, p. 267.

Epics, Indian Ethics and 'Theory': Thinking Through Matilal

Încărcat de

Informații document

Descriere originală:

Titlu original

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Epics, Indian Ethics and 'Theory': Thinking Through Matilal

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

History and Sociology of South Asia http://hsa.sagepub.

Epics, Indian Ethics and 'Theory': Thinking through Matilal

Jamia Millia Islamia

>> Version of Record - Dec 1, 2009 What is This?

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Contemporary Perspectives Vol. 3, No. 2, July December 2009, 205234

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory: Thinking through Matilal

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Inducing Moral Guidance

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Translating Indian Ethics

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Epics, Indian Ethics and Theory

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

Habermas, Anatomy and Solidarity, p. 267.

Downloaded from hsa.sagepub.com at University of Sussex Library on August 6, 2012

S-ar putea să vă placă și