Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Beyond B orders
C hallenging B oundaries of
P hil osophy, Faith & E ducation
Editors:
G r ace Jac o b & Pau l s o n P u l i ko t t i l
Published 2010 by
Primalogue Publishing Media Private Limited
#32, II Cross, Hutchins Road, Bangalore, 560084, India
Website: www.primalogue.com
Email: enquiry@primalogue.com
ISBN13: 9788190890410
Interpretations and opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily
those of the editors or The Union Biblical Seminary
Dedicated to
former, present and prospective students
of
Plamthodathil S Jacob
Contents
Preface ix
Introduction x
I. Philosophy and Religion 1
1. Reflections on the academic study of religion - Paul B 3
Courtright
2. Humanism and Religion: The Emerging Dialogue - 9
Jesudas M Athyal
3. Colonial Construction of Religious Identities in India: 21
A Critique - Brainerd Prince
4. Ramanuja and Kierkegaad on the Concept of Faith 45
(Bhakti) : A Critique - Gabriel Merigala
5. Bhakti in Maharashtra - Sadanand More 61
6. Tracing the Volitional Contours of the Self in the 67
Hindu Context - Varughese John
Contributors 212
Index 215
Preface
Association for Christian Higher Education and was its president from
1990-1993. Jacob served as the Principal of Ahmednagar College from
1982 until his retirement in 1993.
All along his teaching career, he nurtured a keen interest in
Philosophy. After his MA in Philosophy from the University of Pune in
1964, he proceeded as a Fulbright Scholar to teach Philosophy courses
at Colby College, Waterville, Maine (USA), at the invitation of Professor
John Clark who was also a Fulbright professor from the United States
at Ahmednagar College. John Clark was a great inspiration for Jacobs
teaching and research. He had also worked with Professor Yeager
Hudson another Fulbright professor at Ahmednagar in publishing
a pioneering volume of self-study of the college titled Profile of a
College. While Jacob was on the Fulbright programme, he joined the
Ecumenical Fellows Programme in Advanced Religious Studies at The
Union Theological Seminary, New York in association with Columbia
University New York. During this time, he was privileged to take
courses offered by the famous theologian, Paul Tillich. At Columbia he
also served as an instructor for the Peace Corps Volunteers who were
coming to India. Interestingly, during this programme he associated
with Lillian Carter the mother of President Jimmy Carter, who was a
Peace Corps volunteer and they maintained communication during
her volunteer work in Mumbai (then Bombay).
While he was in New York in the Columbia University programme,
he met V S Naravane, professor of Modern Indian Thought at the
University of Pune, who encouraged him to return to India to pursue
his doctoral research. His thesis titled Christian Influence in Modern
Indian Thought: A study in the Philosophy of Religion was completed
under the supervision of Professor S S Barlingay and was awarded the
Gurudev Ranade Damle prize by the University of Pune for the best
doctoral thesis in Philosophy during 1972-1973. He was a contributory
teacher and a research guide in Philosophy at the University of Pune.
In 1996, he worked with professor Barlingay in organizing the World
Philosophers Meet in Pune. One of the significant contributions he
made to the field is his philosophical analysis of the religious poetry
of Narayan Vaman Tilak, the well known Marathi poet.
Jacob returned to teach in the Department of Philosophy and
Religion at Colby College in 1976. During 1990-1991 he served
as visiting professor at Columbia Theological Seminary (CTS) in
Decatur, Georgia. He recalls with great pleasure his friendship and
xii Beyond Borders
drop the language of religious divide in order that the nation is not
polarized in terms of religious identities.
In a comparative analysis, Gabriel Merigala draws a parallel
between the concept of bhakti and the concept of faith by comparing
the views of the vedantic scholar Ramanuja and the existentialist
philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. He elaborates how bhakti and faith
are distinct concepts in very diverse socio-religious contexts and
yet similar when it comes to describing the directions that a human
self needs to take while liberating itself from the clutches of karmic
bondage or sin. In both philosophical positions the human self has
to overcome alienation by responding to the quiet call or grace
of God.
We have a further elaboration of bhakti and the bhakti movement
in Maharashtra in Sadanand Mores paper. He highlights an essential
feature of the Bhakti movement in Maharashtra-- the shift away from
Sanskrit to the Marathi language as a literary and philosophical
medium in the 13th century used by the Manubhava and Varkari cults.
Bhakti in Maharshtra gained an aesthetic expression of song and dance
particularly in the varkari tradition.
Varughese John argues that the dharmic self within the classical
Hindu religious tradition is predetermined. He goes on to say that
there is a chasm dividing the traditional and modern notion of self in
India whose growth points are the premises of the constitution and
its statements He is optimistic that this gap between the traditional
and the modern can be closed when the volitional self breaks free of
the limitations of the traditional one.
Higher Education
In their essay, Nitya Jacob and Andrea Heisel briefly share their
observations from a collaborative study on faculty-librarian
partnership at Oxford College, Emory University. They elaborate
on how the scientific thought process of investigation in a laboratory
is completed only when students link it to the literary resources
xvi Beyond Borders
Tributes
This section contains the personal reflections of select friends and the
Jacob family: Monty Barker, Mani Jacob, Thomas Barnabas and Satish
Barnabas, Yeager and Louise Hudson, Mary Clark Seelye, Alice Clark,
Reny Ninan, Smriti Jacob
Grace Jacob
and
Paulson Pulikottil
Philosophy and Religion
1
In July 1964, when I first arrived in India to take up a job in Ahmednagar College
as a tutor in English, I was met by a handsome young professor at the train station.
Welcome. My name is Jacob, P S Jacob. I am from Ahmednagar College. Though I
could not have imagined it then, that moment was the beginning of a life-long academic
and personal friendship.
In the years that have transpired, each of us has pursued careers in the academic
world: psychology, philosophy, religion, and administration and we have helped each
other along the way. Jacob helped facilitate my research visits to India; I assisted him
in arranging teaching opportunities in the States. We each wrote books, married, raised
children, and participated in a life-long conversation about India, America, and religion.
We share an ongoing interest in how religion shapes and is shaped by the cultural and
historical contexts in which it finds itself. We each recognize some of the ways religion
gives comfort and reassurance to individuals, families and communities, and some of the
other ways it corrodes human communities and sanctions violence. Like food, water and
air, religion can be nourishing and life giving; it can also be toxic and contaminated.
not know our own place if we only know our own place. At the core of
the liberal arts vision in American higher education is the notion that
students must study things that are close to home: history, literature,
arts; acquire skills in getting access to knowledgesciences, including
information sciences; and they must study things that are far from home.
In the early part of my career in teaching comparative religions most of
my students were of Christian, Jewish or secular backgrounds. With the
demographic transformations that have been taking place over the past
few decades, nearly a quarter of my students are from Hindu, Muslim, or
Buddhist backgrounds. They bring important formation and experiences
to the classroom when the religion being studied is their own.
For many students the practice of looking at a religious tradition
as a matrix of practices, histories, sentiments, and narratives from the
outside, from a perspective that sets aside the normative claims a
religious tradition may make on its adherents, presses them to explore
more deeply what they already know. As several students over the
years have told me, we do these things (eg, puja, arati, etc.) but Ive
never thought about why. There is no single answer to the question
of why. Religious practices, like dietary ones, come from lineages of
family habits and traditions. It is only when one steps out of the familiar
frames of reference that the question of why becomes relevant, even
urgent. The consequence of asking why is not one of abandoning the
traditions, but deepening the nuances they bring.
In relation to the comparative study of religion, the study of a
tradition other than ones own, can also yield surprising result. Here I
can give another anecdote from personal experience, one that connects
again to my scholarly friendship with Jacob.
My own religious formation was in the liberal Protestant tradition.
This tradition places a relatively low level of emphasis on ritual practices,
especially in the home. When I returned to India for the second time,
now to engage in dissertation research, I focused on aspects of Hindu
ritual practices surrounding puja. I paid very close attention to the
settings of pujas as they were performed, especially in homes. I recorded
the pujaris utterances, photographed the domestic shrine space, noted
each gesture, and discussed each ritual episode with experts and family
members. Along the way I consulted scholarly books and articles
that were relevant to what I was observing. Eventually, I assembled a
narrative of what I had observed, quoted extensively from the ritual
Reflections on Academic Study of Religion 7
3 See, Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious
Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
2
A Tribute to a Mentor
During 1984-89, I had the privilege of doing my PhD study under Dr Jacobs
guidance. As a research scholar in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Poona,
I could see the respect Dr Jacob commanded among the largely Maharashtrian Brahmin
circles of the University. The fact that as a student he had been moulded by the legendry
Professor Barlingay added to his stature. Owing to all these factors, in a rare departure
from convention, the University allowed me to work from the Ahmednagar College of
which Dr Jacob was then the Principal. What was remarkable about Dr Jacob as a teacher
was that, within the broad methodological framework of the research, he would allow the
student immense freedom to innovate and experiment with new and radical ideas even when
they differed from his own ideological positions. He is indeed a researchers dream guide.
Philosophy of Religion had been Dr Jacobs passion throughout his life. To his credit
it must be stated, that even while working as the Principal of one of the biggest colleges in
Maharashtra, he set aside several hours each day for scholarly pursuits. He was a sought
after resource person at academic gatherings in the country and abroad. Dr Jacob taught
religion in secular, academic as well as theological colleges. He is an original thinker, eager
to break out of the conventional and stereotypical approach to the study of religion. As his
classical study on Narayan Vaman Tilak revealed, rather than doing a textual or rigidly
academic study, he preferred to study religion in the context of dialogue with living faiths
in which he displayed a rare sensitivity to the cultural background of the context.
God speaks to every man through the life which he gives him again
and again. Therefore, man can only answer God with the whole of life
- with the way in which he lives this given life. The Jewish teaching of
the wholeness of life is the other side of the Jewish teaching of the unity
of God. Because God bestows not only spirit on man, but the whole
of his existence, from its lowest to its highest levels as well, man
can fulfil the obligations of his partnership with God by no spiritual
attitude, by no worship, on no sacred upper storey; the whole of life
is required, everyone of its areas and everyone of its circumstances.3
While such an understanding of humanism falls short of the
secular criterion in treating the human being as an autonomous
and self-sufficient entity, it does place the total human being in a
harmonious relationship with the rest of humanity, nature and the
transcendental reality. Unlike the Sophist and the Socratic Greek theory
of human beings, thus, the Hebrew thought represents a humanism
which is essentially theistic in nature.
The ancient Stoics too had developed a humanism that placed the
human being in harmony with God and nature. Reason was considered
as the highest virtue and a life in accordance with rational laws, the
most ideal. Human existence should be intellectual, and all bodily
pains and pleasures should be despised. A harmony between the
human will and universal reason constitutes virtue. The Stoics thus
developed a humanism based on ethical norms.
The Epicurean philosophy, on the other hand, was essentially
materialistic and individualistic in nature. By freeing atomism of its
original naivety, Epicuros made room for individual freedom in a
law-governed universe, in a world obeying the laws of nature. This
concept of humanism too was rooted in ethical values as the rules of
physical science were considered as subordinate to and dependent on
moral science. However, the metaphysical and ethical aspects of the
Epicurean humanism did not prevent the human being from being
essentially epicurean, for, his philosophy was the art of enjoying
life; it had no concern for death or the power of the gods whom he
called the product of delusion; It was indifferent to the future, because
there was nothing after death, the soul being a congeries of atoms
which dissolved into its constituent.4 In short, despite its spiritual
and moral aspects, Epicurean humanism was rooted in the hedonistic,
materialistic and atheistic streams of the ancient Greek Philosophy.
Coming to the middle ages, the rational and humanist thought
of the Christian era permeated to the religious structures as well. In
3 Quoted in Philosophy for a time of crisis, (ed) Adrienne Koch (New York: E P
Dutton And Company, 1959), 191.
4 Koch, Philosophy, 191.
Humanism and Religion: The emerging Dialogue 13
Europe, the Arabs were the torch bearers of scientific knowledge and
rationalism. This paved the way for the renaissance in the Continent
later. The spirit of free inquiry and humanism had entered the church
structures as well. There was a growing demand for a reform of the
church, moderation of the ecclesiastical authority and liberalising of
the dogmatic orthodoxy. A passionate appeal to the church to return to
its humanist roots however, was interpreted by the church fathers
as heresy and atheism. The way was thus paved for the church to be
reduced to a rigid, hierarchical institution.
The spirit of rational inquiry and humanism however, had
permeated far too deep into the society to be put down by the
ecclesiastical institution. The spectacular progress and achievements
of science since the Renaissance had a profound impact on human
life and mind. The traditional religious belief had instilled in human
beings the feeling that everything worldly is evil and that what is of
real value is the life beyond. Such spiritualization of the universe and
life led effectively to a degradation of the human being. Renaissance,
on the other hand, with a passionate love for nature and appreciation
of the good things in life, blazed the humanist trail by negating all
de-humanising forces. In Lord Actons words, the Renaissance, by a
passionate worship of beauty and the joys of life, placed the aesthetic
against the ascetic. Renaissance was thus a crucial phase in history as
it liberated the human from the clutches of the dehumanising forces
and restored his/her humanity.
Humanism, as it evolved into a well-defined philosophical system
during the Renaissance, had a definite spiritual dimension as well.
The supernaturalism of the traditional religious belief was opposed
to naturalism. Human as well as universal nature, placed against
the supposedly transcendental dimension, was projected as finite
and blemished. According to M N Roy, renascent humanism, on the
other hand, held that, if God had made man after his own image,
the flesh could not be impure; its desires could not be sinful and to
satisfy them could not be immoral.5 What humanism did was not to
negate moral or ethical values but to re-define them in the light of the
emerging rational and scientific spirit. In tackling the moral as well as
aesthetic question, however, renascent humanism did not fall back on
the Greek or Christian philosophical systems of abstract speculation
and spiritualism. Rather, the approach of the renascent humanists
was practical. They did not theorise about the relation between ethics
and aesthetics, they lived a life which indicated a solution of the old
problem. It confronted them in a somewhat different form, as the
conflict between asceticism and aesthetic. The essential characteristic
of the renascent morality was at once humanist because the human
being was taken as the measure of all things and naturalist, because
it was morality that does not shun but enjoys the goodness of nature.
Marxian Humanism
It is generally agreed by the Marxist as well as non-Marxist scholars
that Karl Marx stands essentially in the European humanist tradition
though he made a distinctly original contribution to it. Following Marx,
there was a wave of existential humanist-interpretations of Marxism
which focused on alienation-anthropological questions.
The basis of Marxian humanism is Marxs materialism which is
identified as historical, dialectical and practical.6 Marxian materialism
as an anti-metaphysical and anti-speculative system developed under
the philosophical influence of Hegelian thought. Hegels philosophy,
on its part, came as the culmination of German idealism and speculative
metaphysics. The credit for laying the dialectical framework of
Marxs thought goes to the Hegelian methodology. However, Marx
acknowledged Feuerbach as the philosopher who had brought down
the idealistic speculation of Hegel with his materialism and thus
brought about a decisive defeat of all metaphysics by overcoming the
highest and most sophisticated expression.7
According to Marx, the distinction between classical materialism
and dialectic materialism is essentially humanist in nature. Classical
materialism contemplated nature as an object, studied its laws,
and eventually reduced everything to the operations of these laws.
Consequently, the worth of the human person was reduced to that of
a cog in a machine. Even the thought process of human beings was
considered nothing more than mere physical reflexes of the brain.
Thus classical materialism was in reality mechanical misanthropy.
The philosophy that originated in such an environment was one far
removed from the existential realities of human beings. Even the
Post-Marxian Humanism
While there are many historical and philosophical reasons for a
reassertion of the humanist emphasis in the post-Marxist period, one
important reason is the degeneration of Marxism as the dogmatised
ideology of the Marxian State. There were wide-spread criticisms,
even in Marxist circles, about the excesses committed by Josef Stalin
16 Beyond Borders
in the Soviet Union in the nineteen thirties. While most of the critics
were neo-Marxists or post-Marxists, a radically different approach to
Marxism came from another sector of the Communist establishment
China. The political theory of Mao Tse Tung emerged from the context
of the revolutionary practices in the mainland of China. Mao did not
directly attack Stalin, but his propositions, aiming at a rejection of
dogmatism, deviated from the orthodox Marxist position. Inspired by
the revolutionary practice, it is generally considered that Mao comes
closest to the spirit of the Feuerbachian theses. He started with the
critique of pre-Marxian materialism which examined the problem
of knowledge apart from the social nature of man and apart from
his historical development. Maos political theory can be seen as a
combination of the Feuerbachian and Marxian humanism applied to
the unique situation of China. Along with Marx, Mao too maintained
that the human persons social practice alone is the criterion on the
truth of his/her knowledge of the external world.
The Polish Marxist philosopher Adam Schaff, on the other hand,
critiqued Marxian socialism from the European humanist tradition.
Schaffs attempt was to defend the humanist characteristic of Marxism,
against the criticism of some neo-Marxists that Marxism essentially is
theoretical anti-humanism. Their position was that Marx presented
a scientific breakthrough and that his scientific socialism is a break
from the traditions of bourgeois humanism. The French philosopher
Louis Althusser was among the foremost in developing a critique of
Marxian humanism which focuses on the central role of human beings
as the subjects of history. Althusser held that in order to arrive at a
scientific understanding of society, Marxist theory has to focus not on
the conscious activities of the human subject but on the unconscious
structures which these activities presuppose. He cautioned against
the danger of Marxism slipping into the individualist Feuerbachian
humanism instead of a revolutionary social praxis.
Marxism, by definition, seeks to analyse human alienation in
society and projects the vision of a new social order where the humanity
of the alienated people is restored and thus can be characterised as a
humanist philosophy. Though the entire Marxian theoretical edifice is
built on such a humanist basis, the works of the later (or mature)
Marx are devoted to a scientific analysis of the economic and social
factors responsible for human alienation. Humanist references are
rare here and when made, are coated heavily with economic and
social thoughts. It is the writings of the early (or young) Marx,
Humanism and Religion: The emerging Dialogue 17
8 Louis Althussar, Lenin and Philosophy and other essays (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1971), 105.
18 Beyond Borders
break is with the bourgeois humanist theory which places the pursuit
of the individual person after wealth and status, the centre of history.
Marx discovered the crucial role of the material and technological
conditions of production. He presented the mode of production
rather than, man as the key to a scientific analysis of society. In
such a sense, it has often been pointed out that Marxian humanism is
theoretically anti-humanist in nature.
Bastiaan Wielenga, reviewing Althussers critique of Marxism,
points out that Althusser overlooks that Marx, with his scientific
analysis, is not presenting a new general truth, but that he is involved
in a concrete critique of the capitalist mode of production. What is
important is that it is capitalism which turns the productive process
against the human beings, thus degrading their human hood. Even for
the latter Marx states the confrontation is not between the mechanical
and inanimate objects called capital and labour; the tension
essentially is between dead labour and living labour where
the former dominate over and exploit the latter. It is the throbbing
human labour that stands at the centre, as being reified, alienated
and subordinated to the laws of motion of capital. Thus, under the
capitalist conditions, humans have been turned from being the subjects
to be the objects of history. It is this humanist emphasis in Marx which
Althusser seems to miss in his critique. The Marxian emphasis on the
subjective element of living labour is not presented as an apology
for bourgeois humanist illusions, but in order to critique it from a
socialist perspective.
Prometheus Rediscovered
For Marx, the tyranny of religion is the consequence of the tyranny
of the private property and the division of labour in the natural
change of history. Religion thus represents the secular and religious
forms of human alienation, rooted in this basic form of alienation. The
abolition of this form of human alienation, consequently, becomes the
condition for the abolition of all human alienation. That this process
is completed only under a communist system is the position of the
Marxian humanist theory.
Apart from the role of the oppressive religious structures, the
Marxian theory has fundamental philosophical problems with the
theistic position. Here too, the approach is essentially humanistic as
the purpose of the Marxian rejection of God is to affirm the centrality
Humanism and Religion: The emerging Dialogue 19