Contemporary Issues in Philosophy, Culture, and Value 1527553000, 9781527553002

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Contemporary Issues in Philosophy, Culture, and Value

Contemporary Issues in Philosophy, Culture, and Value Edited by

Bhaskar Bhattacharyya

Contemporary Issues in Philosophy, Culture, and Value Edited by Bhaskar Bhattacharyya This book first published 2024 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2024 by Bhaskar Bhattacharyya and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-5300-0 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-5300-2

Dedicated to my father, the late Bijan Krishna Bhattacharyya

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword ................................................................................................... ix John Clammer Preface ....................................................................................................... xi Acknowledgements .................................................................................. xii Chapter 1 .................................................................................................... 1 A Philosophical View of Language and Culture P. R. Bhat Chapter 2 .................................................................................................. 25 Philosophy, Culture and Value: Gandhi and Wittgenstein Ramesh Chandra Pradhan Chapter 3 .................................................................................................. 37 Indigenous Knowledge and Modernity Mrinal Miri Chapter 4 .................................................................................................. 46 Economics as Philosophy? Value, Culture and Decisions in the Practical Philosophy of Everyday Life John Clammer Chapter 5 .................................................................................................. 62 Where Relativism Hits Rock Bottom Daniele Moyal-Sharrock Chapter 6 .................................................................................................. 77 Spiritual Culture and its Relevance in Our Life: A Study in Sri Aurobindo Ratikanta Panda Chapter 7 .................................................................................................. 92 Life Worlds and Living Words Ananta Kumar Giri

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Chapter 8 ................................................................................................ 113 Just War: Reflections on the “Value” of Violence V. Prabhu and S. Nengneithem Haokip Chapter 9 ................................................................................................ 121 Understanding Ethics in the Lens of Buddhism and Wittgenstein Rajakishore Nath Chapter 10 .............................................................................................. 135 Wittgenstein’s Concept of Self: An Analytical Exposition through the Philosophy of Language Bhaskar Bhattacharyya Contributors ............................................................................................ 149 Index ....................................................................................................... 153

FOREWORD

The discipline of philosophy in many cases has become a sterile and technical activity far removed from its original links to the pursuit of wisdom and to the wisdom traditions found in many cultures. This volume valuably breaks with this narrow conception of philosophy to relate it comprehensively to much wider questions of culture and philosophy’s own cultural context. These include questions of selfhood, ethics, modernity, the possibility of their being such a thing as a “just war” and economics on the one hand, and the relevance of individuals and traditions that normally fall outside of the purview of academic philosophy, including Buddhism, Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo and the plural knowledges found in indigenous traditions. Of course, in a sense all of us are “indigenous”: it is just that certain philosophical and epistemological forms have become, if not hegemonic, at least dominant. When I was a student of philosophy, alternative traditions such as Indian or Chinese philosophy were entirely ignored, as was even the possibility of their being any kind of philosophy worthy of the name to be found in indigenous traditions. Indeed, the division of knowledge at that time ensured that forms of Asian thought were to be pursued in the school of Oriental Studies, and not in the department of philosophy, and that indigenous traditions were to be studied in the anthropology department, and even then primarily in terms of their social structures and not as the embodiment of forms of knowledge that should be taken seriously in their own right. Fortunately, in many ways the world has moved on, in part because of the problems that we have created for ourselves (climate change, war, terrorism, violence, corruption) in part because of our inadequate thinking about the actual nature of the world, and hence, the renewed search for alternatives in many fields. This all points to the need for “applied philosophy” – the application of philosophical insights to issues in that real world – economic, political, aesthetic, ethical and more – as they arise. Questions of the environment, medical ethics, AI, violence, and many others, now dominate the global landscape. The essays in this timely volume address a range of these issues and imply yet others, including the possibility that there can be plural philosophies arising from the specific cultural, religious and cosmological roots of different societies. While the individual chapters

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address one or another of the possible questions of this nature, the book as a whole should alert us to the need to see philosophy as an intensely practical discipline, and one which speaks to the existing and emerging questions that our civilization faces, and without viable solutions to which, we face an increasingly unsustainable future, not only in the physical sense, but also one in which intellectual horizons have shrunk and in which the possibility of alternative forms of knowledge have been banished. —John Clammer

PREFACE

This edited book volume Contemporary Issues of Philosophy, Culture, and Value, in a nutshell, is a product of the one-day E-International Conference on Philosophy, Culture and Value. The theme of the conference (Philosophy, Culture, and Value) had been chosen with the broad objective of augmenting the critical thinking and understanding among philosophers in general through the deliberations of eminent personalities of India and abroad vis-à-vis the various dimensions of philosophy, culture and value, embracing both the Indian and the Western perspectives. This book presents an analysis of the contemporary issues of philosophy, culture and value. It basically focusses on three dimensions of philosophy, culture, and value. But in reality, the various issues of culture and value are converged into the wider perspective of philosophy. Philosophical reflection is the backbone of the various issues of culture and value, which the book primarily focusses on. The present book volume has not only laid emphasis on the common philosophical discourses but also the emerging issues such as violence, war, economics and COVID-19, although they are not the part of mainstream philosophical discourse. This book in a sense attempts to explore new areas of philosophy by reasserting the centrality of values. This book also entails that there are divergent views on philosophy, culture and value in eastern and western perspectives, yet in the ultimate analysis, it argues that there is commonality on the aspects of harmony, peace and unity which are emphatically asserted by all civilisations, whether eastern or western, through cultural dialogue and value study. In a nutshell, the title of the book presents an optimistic outlook flourishing the philosophising spirit among the readers and it would develop an understanding of a peaceful, tolerant, and a loving society through the various contemporary issues of philosophy, culture and value inviting both eastern and western perspectives. —Bhaskar Bhattacharyya

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Professor Robert Clammer for his kind encouragement, co-operation, and guidance in bringing out the book from a very raw form to making it a reality, without whose continuous inspiration the present work would not have been accomplished. I would further like to express my gratitude to Professor Clammer for not only kindly agreeing to write the foreword of the book but also for contributing a very interesting research paper in this edited book volume. Thus, I extend my deep sense of gratitude and thankfulness to Professor Robert Clammer. I also express my special thanks to Professor Ananta Giri for not only showing me the ray of hope to publish the research papers in a book volume but also for guiding me in case of selecting one of the reputed publishers of the globe, namely, Cambridge Scholars Publishing House, UK. I am also enormously grateful to Professor Ananta Giri for showing me his profound interest to contribute a research paper in the edited book volume. Thus, I express my deep sense of appreciation of support to Professor Ananta Giri. I am also especially thankful to Professor Mrinal Miri for his inspiration and contributing a research paper without any second thought in the volume. I am also extremely thankful and owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor R.C. Pradhan for extending his helping hand in the context of selecting a proper title for the book volume, and I am also being ever grateful to him for writing an insightful research paper in the volume. My special thanks to Professor P.R. Bhat for his support and contributing a research paper in the volume. I wish to acknowledge my deep sense of gratitude and thankfulness to Prof. Daniele Moyal-Sharrock for showing keen interest in writing a thought-provoking and illuminating research paper in this volume. I am pleased to acknowledge my sincere thanks and gratitude to Professor V. Pravu, Professor Rajakishore Nath, and Professor Ratikanta Panda for their valuable suggestions and continuous co-operation and also for contributing interesting papers in the edited volume, without which this volume could not have been complete. I am particularly thankful and grateful to the authorities of Krishna Kanta Handiqui State Open University for extending all kinds of support to conduct E-International Conference on Philosophy, Culture, and Value, the product of which actually is this book volume. Thus, I must sincerely acknowledge the generous help that I received from my university.

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I also extend my heartfelt thanks to my wife Dr. Manjuri Bhattacharyya and my daughter Kamalakshi Bhattacharyya for their constant co-operation, encouragement and substantial help, without whose love and care during the progress of the work, I would never have been able to complete the task. Thus, I am greatly indebted to my family. I sincerely thank Lorna Peirce, one of the recommended proofreaders of CSP, for shouldering the pain of proofreading the manuscript. Finally, I will be ever grateful and thankful to all the members of Cambridge Scholars Publishing for extending their ample help and support, without whom this volume would never have materialised. Thus, I offer my most heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to all of them. —Bhaskar Bhattacharyya

CHAPTER 1 A PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE P. R. BHAT

Abstract The world is viewed from two different points of view: the world as it is and the world as inhabited by living beings. The world where no living beings exist would be fully mechanical, and the world with living beings, like human beings, can have all the richness of language, culture and philosophy. Events are necessarily caused and actions are contingent. Contingent actions are called free. The base of any institution is human freedom. Everything that belongs to language and culture is necessarily institutional. Language was the first institution built by human beings and then came the other institutions. Cultural realities are the human-constructed realities that include every aspect of our culture. Philosophy, too, belongs to our culture and there can be different cultures co-existing like several languages that co-exist. There could be many philosophies co-existing along with different cultures. Philosophical growth enhances the quality and richness of a culture. Key words: culture, freedom, institution, language, linguistic issues, nature, substantive issues.

Introduction The universe is so large that we cannot even comprehend it. We can reasonably know about our solar system. Earth is a part of this solar system and we know relatively more about this earth. Earth consists of matter, plants and living beings. All living beings consume either the products of nature, i.e., grass, plants, fruits, nuts or other living beings. Of late, we are

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realising more and more about our inevitable dependency on the environment, which includes the conditions of our mother earth and of other living species. When we focus more on our species, we realise that mere survival is one thing and surviving well with dignity is another. Many wonder whether we can survive with dignity in this century. Science has advanced enough to give us an idea as to what might happen to our mother earth if we do not care for it sufficiently. We know that there are other planets in our solar system and sometimes we wonder whether there are lives on those planets. Though we are not very sure, our hunch is that there is no better place than earth to live on in this solar system. If we reflect on either the moon or the planet Mars, which are closest to our earth, we know that all laws of nature that are applicable on our mother earth are applicable on them as well. They seem to behave fully based on the laws of nature that are known to us. If we assume that there are no life forms on these two solar entities, then there is no being that has freedom on these. If there is no free being, then there is nothing that alters the natural course of events on these entities. Any change in any of these two entities can be explained purely in scientific terms. The situation on our mother earth is drastically different from these two abovementioned entities of our solar system. The two main things humans on the earth have created using their freedom are language and culture. Language could be fully developed, which we call natural language or mother tongue, and the culture could be viewed as life-supporting, on one end, and total destruction, on the other end. Human history has shown all along that human beings are the biggest threat to humanity on this planet. That has not changed, perhaps it will never be changed. Man has become a more and more serious threat to planet earth. More countries than one can destroy our mother earth six times over, we are told. Naturally, one should wonder why there is any need to destroy the earth a second time, let alone a fifth or sixth time. As we know, the earth is only one. Perhaps no suicide bomber had an atomic bomb of this capacity; that we are still alive is the proof of it. Ethics seems to fail to touch the minds of such hard-core criminals.

Freedom and Determinism Both on the moon and Mars, there are no living beings and, hence, there are no languages and no cultures. This is because there is no human life; hence, no civilisation either. No monitoring of any type. Any change due to a storm or the wind goes unnoticed. Changes in weather, temperature, dust particles,

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mountains and valleys are all uncontrolled. No course of events will be changed at will on these entities. In contrast, when we consider our mother earth, for almost everything, excluding volcanoes and earth-quakes, attempts are made, at least marginally, to direct changes in the course of events. Human efforts are made to control or direct floods, famine, fire and other natural calamities. These are at least thinkable since human beings inhabit this planet in large numbers and they have good intelligence and technology to their aid. The world is determined by the laws of nature. But, within this world, there are living beings that can bring changes to the situation because the laws of nature apply favourably to them. For instance, gravitational law will apply everywhere to any solid or liquid thing. Rains bring water and, due to gravitational law, water will flow from a higher altitude to a lower altitude. But human beings can change the path of the water flow by altering the conditions on the path of the flow of water. This is what we do when we do not want the rainwater to pool on the roads by constructing rainwater drainage. We have not changed the behaviour of water flowing from higher altitude to lower altitude; we have not done anything to gravitational law either; but we have constructed rainwater drainage in such a way that water now flows into this drainage without spilling onto the road. Human beings cannot change the gravitational law but they can position themselves in such a manner that gravitational law does not hurt them and, instead, comes to their aid. They use the same gravitational law to construct boats and to go fishing in the rivers and the deep sea. Human beings have known that the Archimedean principle is nothing but the complicated application of gravitational law. They constructed floating ships from iron. All living beings are governed by the laws of nature. They cannot escape obeying physical, chemical and biological laws. Any unsupported physical object would come straight down and land on the surface of the earth. Further, only carbon and oxygen together produce carbon dioxide. Hydroxide cannot be produced from anything else but hydrogen and oxygen in the proportion of two molecules of hydrogen to one molecule of oxygen. We cannot produce living cells from physical or chemical substances but we will be able to produce full living creatures from a biological cell, which is known as cloning. If we care to speak about every event, then we can find sufficient explanation for the cause of every event. This leads one to universalise the cause and effect relationship, which is known as the universal law of causation. The universal law of causation simply claims that everything that happens in this universe has sufficient causes. Given the

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causes, it is inevitable that effects will follow. This is known as a causal necessity. Philosophers have found the situation paradoxical. On the one hand, human beings have been claiming that they have done profound work and they deserve praise for it and, on the other hand, the universal law of causation, if and when accepted, makes no room for free action. Certainly, physical action is in the world of space and time. The law of causation is applicable in this physical world. There is no chance that human beings can perform their action outside of the causal series. If they are part of the causal series, then they cannot claim that they are free. For instance, we cannot differentiate between my hand going up and me raising my hand. There could be many causes that make my hand go up but, in the case of my act of raising the hand, my intention is most important. The latter is what is counted as voting and not the former. The universal law of causation must apply to all physical objects. If that is the case, our human body, being part of the physical structure of this earth, must be subject to physical laws. What is the difference between an action and an event? Let us consider a typical situation. Assume that there has been heavy rain in our town and water has flooded everywhere. I notice that someone is being drowned in the water. For a moment, I thought I would help the person to reach a safer place since I can swim very well. But when I recognised the person I let the water sweep him away. In this situation, I did nothing and, hence, I can claim my innocence and, hence, I am not held responsible. On the other hand, it was the flowing water that swept the drowning person away. If he is found dead, no one except the heavy rain is responsible for his death. We do not hold natural events as responsible in an ethical evaluation. Determinists will have to agree to this analysis and they cannot hold me responsible even if I claim that I could have saved him. Similarly, no one should be rewarded for their work and no one should be punished for any failure. Hence, treat the human habited world as one like Mars or the moon, where no action is performed by anyone. The above is an absurd consequence given the fact that we do act and are not always carried away by the forces of nature. The universal law of causation is true for all non-living things. Living beings have something called voluntary actions. One needs to distinguish between voluntary action and an event. Non-interfering in the course of a natural event can be voluntary action too. In the above example of my letting the person drown in flood water, this was a voluntary action even if I did not do anything. A voluntary action without intention will not be truly voluntary action. Reflex

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actions could be of this kind. When my hand is withdrawn from a hot-plate, this is an involuntary action. This kind of action is not an intentional action. They are very few and they hardly matter much unless it is a very special situation. The intentions of the person followed by actions are the most relevant to our discussion. As knowledgeable human beings, we may know how certain laws of nature are going to act in favour of, or adversely to, our interests. Our voluntary action in alignment with a law of nature can yield a favourable result. A group of individuals dig a canal deep enough to a brook or river so that water starts flowing in the canal; this water can be used to irrigate the land to grow crops. With proper planning, we dig a canal and succeed in making our lives more comfortable. Action and events are different. The universal law of causation speaks about events. Every event is sufficiently caused. In other words, given the causes, effects would follow. Nothing can happen without sufficient causes. It would be a big mistake to treat actions to be happenings. Events are happenings. But actions are the result of intentions meant to make changes by humans. They make something happen voluntarily, otherwise, it may not happen in the desired way. As noted earlier, if we were to believe that the universal law of causation covers even our domain of action, then there would be no point in even discussing the issue.

Contingency and Freedom We have just noted, above, that there is no exercise of freedom on Mars and the moon. Hence, there is no freedom and, hence, no institution, like language or culture. Suppose we say that even our intentions are sufficiently caused, would then the actions turn out to be events? Sometimes it happens that we think that we have made a choice but, actually, we were not in a situation where we could make a choice. For instance, a drug addict might think that he has full control over himself and can stop using the drug at any time. He might think that he has chosen to steal something and buy the required drug to meet his daily need. But this may not be considered a voluntary action since he has no control over himself because he has already become a slave to the drug. These are not normal instances of voluntary actions. Anyone who is under the influence of serious drugs or a threat to life loses the status of a voluntary being. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to call such an action free action.

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A voluntary being is capable of performing contingent actions. If something has to happen necessarily, then it is an event, as our universal law of causation claims. But a voluntary being does not do such necessary things. Whether a voluntary being wishes, or not, sufficiently, then a caused event is going to happen. The willingness or unwillingness of the being is irrelevant. If the person feels very dry and wants the rain to fall and the clouds to bring the rain, there is no connection of action or event between what one has wished and what has happened. But in the case of the canal being dug to bring the water to irrigate the land, it was the contingent actions of the agents involved that made it happen. Anything that naturally happens is an event, any change that happens due to human intervention is an action. Do we need to examine what contingency is? In the mechanical world of Mars and the moon, there is nothing that is contingent. Every change is a necessary change, introduced by the previous state of affairs and the laws of nature operating on them. Can we reject the laws of nature and yet speak of contingency? The idea of going against the law of nature is futile—that cannot be contingent; we can never do that. However, if we are in a position to alter the situation in such a way that the natural course of events becomes as intended, then these would be contingent voluntary actions. The example of digging a canal to get the water for irrigation is a contingent action. If we had postponed the act of digging the canal, nothing voluntary would have happened. Water would have flown as usual through the brook or the river. We chose to change the course of water flow using gravitational force; we planned to dig the canal and we did it. Our contingent action is the voluntary action that made it possible for us to irrigate our land. We are responsible for our actions—good or bad. We may claim that a contingent action is contingent since it might be performed, or not performed, at our will. Something that we want to act or perform and, at will, that we can perform or not perform is called contingent action. We hold someone responsible if and only if we can claim meaningfully that they could have done other than what they did (Campbell 1951). If this is correct, what is claimed is that what they did was a contingent action that they chose to do and, hence, they are responsible for the action and the specifiable consequences of that action. In all those situations where we can entertain different courses of action, we could claim each one of the alternatives as contingents. The favourite expression that we use to indicate freedom—”you could have done other than what you did”—makes sense here. If one could assert this meaningfully, then that action in question is contingent and, being a contingent act, it is a free act. If it were not a free act, we could not have meaningfully claimed that you could have done

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anything other than what you did. The contingent act is necessarily linked to the notion of freedom. The choice is present in only those cases where one could perform a contingent action. To aid our imagination, one could make the concept clearer by using the possible world expression. Let us say, we are examining the situation as to whether the agent in question is free. We could construct several possible world situations at this juncture. In one situation, the person does not pay attention to whatever happens. In another, he thinks of doing something but feels very lazy and does not do anything. In the third situation, he decided to act following his moral principle, which he accepted long ago. The fourth situation is where he becomes an opportunist and decides to go against his own moral principle and act differently. Each one of them is a possible world since it is stipulated. We have imagined what he could do. Each one of them is different from the other with a minor difference between the previously stated possible world and the present. Eventually, the agent could perform only one action that would become actual; the rest will vanish into the thin air. But, as of now, all these possible worlds are possible, and are equally achievable. At this juncture, one could meaningfully maintain that the agent could act in one of these stipulated ways and each one of them is contingent. Closely examine how we dig the canal. Water always flows from higher altitudes to lower altitudes because of the gravitational force. How can I alter that? We cannot; since we are also governed by the same gravitational law we have no chance of altering the gravitational law. But we can perform some contingent actions after careful planning. We can get some instruments to dig the earth and remove soil and stones and put them elsewhere. Of course, lifting the soil and stones against the gravitational force is possible. If I do not lift the soil in a container tightly, the soil would fall on the surface of the ground again. The same is the case with stones. Even my lifting of soil and stones is done by the biological structure of my hands and legs. We cannot overlook the ergonomic principles and the structure of the muscles that are in operation here. To cut the long story short, we are capable of moving our motor organs willingly to perform certain actions. We are also technologically advanced and capable of acting remotely. Note that, in using our motor organs or a tool, we never go against the laws of nature. We make use of these laws of nature to develop tools to easily perform what we want to do. No technologist works against the laws of nature. The laws of nature are his friends; he will use them meticulously to design his technology.

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Our analysis of the above example shows that freedom and contingency go together. We do not hold someone responsible if the supposed action turns out to be an event. For instance, a lorry driver is blamed for an accident without the facts being sufficiently known. If the driver concerned is given a chance to defend himself he can show how he could not have avoided the accident since the lorry was fully loaded and it was going down a slope at a certain speed within the prescribed limit and when he tried to put the brake and control the speed of the lorry, the break failed. Even the attempt to put the lorry into first gear did not succeed since the lorry was already at a high speed as it was going down a slope. Given this, the whole incident is taken to be an event rather than an action by the driver. That is to say, the causes made the effect inevitable and there was no human intention and agency involved in bringing about the result. We are correct to the extent that we claim that nothing could happen without sufficient cause. But to claim that we are part of this kind of causal chain would be wrong. All our contingent actions are not part of the series of causes and effects in this world. We could become the cause of something like setting fire to the stubble in the paddy fields. If we had not lit the fire, the fire on its own would not have burnt the stubble. In the model of determinism, there is no scope for contingent things to happen since everything is sufficiently caused to happen. Determinists cannot speak of contingent actions at all. Given their interpretation, there are only events and no actions. Everything is caused the way it happens on Mars and on the moon. But, as we see, all living beings, how-so-ever small they may be, capable of self-initiated actions and those actions are contingent. An earthworm, for example, eats mud and excretes it, and that mud makes the land fertile. This process is not always a natural event; it could be the result of vermiculture. Human beings create a comfortable environment where these earthworms grow naturally and human beings succeed in enhancing the fertility of the soil. Earthworms do eat earth for their survival and human beings make use of them to create a better situation for their agriculture.

Language as an Institution We would not know which came first, whether language or other institutions like marriage. It should not matter to us much since we are not giving any historical account of human history. Conceptually, we need to make room for culture and that would easily be possible by giving an account of language. There is no doubt that language played an important role in shaping culture. We, perhaps, realised the strength of the institution of

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language and then implemented a similar structure in other institutions. There are many languages and many dialects associated with them. We are going to concentrate only on natural languages. We speak of language in general terms. What is true of one natural language would be true of another as well. We are interested in understanding language and then seeing its link with culture. We may begin with the question of how language is possible. We are going to attempt to answer this question without getting into what language is.1 Let us simply state: the ability of human beings to make something stand for something else is the basic strength on which language is founded. Proper names are a good example of this. Note that developing a convention is a free human act. However, all words in a language are not proper names. Wittgenstein rightly pointed out that a list of names does not make a language. This is one of the reasons why he gives importance to facts and not just objects in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein 1922). A language is very complex and it consists of several types of words: some are descriptive, some are action words, some are prepositions, some are evaluative, some are critical, and some are appreciative, and so on. But all words have functions and that is why they are there as words of a certain type. A language is a tool developed by human beings to perform certain acts. An institution is built on mutual consent. A group of individuals decide how their convention is going to work. They might explicitly state the constitutive rules of the institution or might repeatedly use them in a particular manner and that becomes the convention. In the case of language, certain practices are introduced that may initially accompany certain gestures. Children tend to learn action words easily. Come, go, sit, stand up, walk, get me the toy, etc., are some action words. They seem to be relatively easy for the child to pick up. Then, the child might use a predicative term like mine. The possessive nature of a child might help it to pick up this word. Maybe then the conventions like good morning, good evening etc. They may also use one-word sentences like hurt, hungry, ants, etc. In this process of acquiring language, the child knows conventionally what is allowed and what is not permitted. The parents already know the language with which they help the child to correct themself and the child becomes a new member of this institution of language speakers.

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Language is understood, here, as natural language, which is the mother tongue of someone.

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Giving an account of language is not easy; at the same time, every aspect of language is known to us. To familiarise ourselves, once again, let us begin the discussion on the simplest units first. Language uses proper names. We may expect one to pick up pronouns to stand for proper names next. These words—he, she, it, they, etc.—function like proper names in proper contexts. There are common names or generic names. These are the names of groups or many members. Trees, stones, hills, rivers, etc., are all general names, sometimes called common nouns. Apart from these, one could also speak of abstract nouns such as societies, democracies, religions and so on. One can describe a thing by using proper names and common nouns. X is a boy where X is the name of the person and boy is the general noun. This would be a singular sentence. “These are boys” would be a plural sentence. One could use two general nouns and have a general sentence. For instance, boys are taller than girls. These are all descriptions and descriptions of things that are there. An institution is something that has members. And it has rules; some of them may be called syntactic rules and some of them may be semantic rules. Syntax deals with the different relationships among the words. The sequencing of words in the form of a sentence is possible by following syntactic rules. The semantic rules are the ones that give meaning to words. “Dogs are eating food” is ok, but one cannot say “stones are eating food” unless it is a poetic situation and metaphor is being used. When we describe something, we speak about something other than the language. And when we request someone to get us something, again, it is about that thing other than the verbal object that is indicated. When we ask someone to do some actions, the performance is indicated through such sentences. When I express my feelings, it is the feelings that are referred to. Language, thus, becomes a communicator. Communication is possible if, and only if, there is already understanding about the words that are used as tools. Underlying rules for these words are known to both parties: the speaker and listener or the writer and reader. For an alien, nothing makes sense if he does not become a member of this language-speaking community. It might take quite some time before he could become proficient in that language. Of the institutions humans have built, it is language that seems to be basic. Anthropologists have never found a civilisation that has no language. That is good enough for us to recognise the importance of language in our human history. Among the institutions that humans have built, language is the lasting, basic institution that persists through human history. Language would change in many ways: new vocabularies would be added, new grammatical forms may be introduced and new phrases and new conventions

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may be introduced and the old ones are modified. When a human being is awake, he would use language explicitly or implicitly. His thoughts are aided by language. His feelings are expressed through language. His needs are communicated through language. If someone had to spend a day without using language, one would be able to conceive of what the notion of hell would be like. It becomes obvious that, if language is a humanly constructed institution, if a civilisation perishes, and if no individuals are speaking and using its language anywhere, their language becomes a dead language. A living language is something that keeps changing due to the different needs of the speakers of that language. A dead language does not change, and may remain only in books. It may be used on very special occasions, such as in rituals, etc., but may not become anyone’s mother tongue.

The Culture Culture, too, is an institution consisting of several institutions within it. A culture would have at least one language and several rituals; for example, Hindu culture with rituals such as birthday celebrations, or the thread ceremony for a boy in Hindu Brahmin culture, marriage ritual, and cremation after death. Every year, the death ceremony is performed in a certain manner. There would be many religion-based ceremonies. The birthdays of lords like Rama, Krishna, and Ganesh are celebrated by Hindus. They have Diwali, Holi, new crop harvesting festivals, and the worshipping of trees, rivers, snakes, etc., are also found. In the modern days, we also find national festivals like Independence Day, Republic Day, the birthday of the father of the nation, etc. Each culture might have different ways of celebrating its cultural events. Sometimes, there might be some elements from the traditions they follow, sometimes the environment plays some role in this. The history of the civilisation, too, may have some part in the celebration of some festivals specific to a geographical area. Some cultures might allow the participation of their domesticated animals; some might even eat the meat of these animals, sacrificed to their God. When celebrations are there, there can be music, dance and dance-drama, singing, and special worship of deities, followed by delicious rich food. Themes may be part of these rituals; sometimes these themes include poetry, drama, literature and, even, films. Culturally familiar themes are often chosen, such as Ram Leela, to enact a certain drama. These celebrations also re-impose the values they stand for.

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Celebrations are organised by members of society. Some preparations are done in individual homes, some require bigger grounds. If Holi has to be played, individuals need to come out of their residences and meet one another to put colour on others. If Diwali has to be celebrated, it is not enough that you light some lamps at home. There would be public celebrations and lighting arrangements would be made. The Ganesh festival, too, would be celebrated, sometimes for eleven days. Navaratri is celebrated for nine days and dancing would be there for all nine days. Sweets are exchanged on Diwali and Holi. Anything that is done repeatedly is very likely to be part of that culture. Saluting the sun in the early morning is part of Hindu culture. This is done by many every day. This culture will not remain part of Hindu culture if one generation stops this practice. Greeting someone when you meet them for the first time in the day also is part of this culture. Taking blessings from elders and teachers is also a part of this culture. Celebrating religious festivals also forms a part of this culture. Wearing a ring given by a spouse could be part of a culture. Wearing headgear can be part of a culture. Any culture is retained only by practice. It is like the virtual memory in a computer. If it does not get stimulated, it does not exist. Similarly, if the cultural activities are not performed, they will not last. Bharata Natyam, Karnataka music, arts and crafts are all linked to Hindu mythologies in India. One could visit grand temples in southern India, which are the centres of cultural activities. Temples like Tirupati support every important religiously oriented activity. People have built different institutions and these would not exist if the rituals were not practised and retained: the culture could, then, only be traced by reading books, discovering artifacts, etc.; it would become a part of history and, at best, one could identify some of these cultural objects in an archaeological museum. Apart from language, anthropologists also did not find any civilisation without the semblance of a religious institution. Tribal religions may not be well developed, but worshipping something or the other is found in all civilisations. Religion is important from the cultural point of view. Religions have mythologies, epics that provide moral stories to a large number of followers of those religions. Several cultural activities are related to such mythological stories. For instance, the dance drama in Karnataka, known as Yakshagana, is fully built on the mythological stories of the Mahabharata. Similarly, committees are made to provide free food to pilgrims, high educational institutions for members of the societies, and medical hospitals for the treatment of the diseased. Architecture, music,

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dance, drama and many literary works do centre on religious institutions. They provide the means of livelihood to many artists and also promote education in these specialised areas. The administrations in these institutions are also equally committed and, hence, the system as a whole would be very efficient and farsighted. Advanced societies have taken many things for granted, even if some inventions have taken centuries to become affordable to the common man: travelling by air, the presence of TVs, washing machines, gas connections for cooking, air conditioning, if necessary, the availability of public transport and some vehicles of their own, 24/7 electric and water supply, no shortage of milk, fast food, and restaurants for weekly eating out. Personalised medical facilities, insurance and a home to live in are also assumed to be normal amenities. One cannot think of a member of an advanced society without a mobile, computer or laptop, and internet access. Internet and the concept of working from home have pushed the luxuries of having a computer and internet access into becoming necessities because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In this advanced society, human beings have been made more dependent on technology. Doing shopping, banking and many other activities digitally, while staying at home, became a necessity. Even once the pandemic situation changes, the work from home concept is going to remain, especially if you are employed by multinational companies. Human beings have become more and more global, and these attitudes also change the lives of such global individuals. Rather than only reading local and national news, we have now become aware of international news. There are no international boundaries on the internet if one is surfing online. The fast life that one leads, equally unreasonable work demands and the pressures of the modern society have made human beings less patient, less healthy, and more ambitious. You are measured by the position you hold and the amount of money you can spend. Anonymity and recognition are both parts of one’s personality. You want to be known to some specific people and you want to vanish into the crowd at other times. City life has become multilingual, multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-national. Given all these mixtures of factors, one does not know how to express one’s identity. There is no guarantee that you will have an identity that will be soothing for you. Sometimes, individuals have to do more than one job to make ends meet and to have some luxury. The standard of living is always more than what you can afford and you need to struggle to meet the expectations of everyone related to you. The net result is, of course, suffering from anxiety, ulcers, blood pressure, sleeplessness, diabetes, etc. In our busy schedules, we all have to find some time for our spouse, children

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and their birthdays, etc., religious festivals, national festivals, community gatherings, and so on. We have come to a stage of civilisation where the value of a human being is far reduced since a machine can serve better, more obediently and more efficiently. Some patients want a machine to operate on them rather than an expert doctor. When human beings can be replaced by machines and, if it becomes cost-effective as well, human dignity gets reduced because we are expecting more than what normal human beings are capable of. The dignity of a human being should be upheld simply because they are human. There is only one species on this planet growing more and more, especially with advanced knowledge and technology, and that is human. There would be no loss to anyone if the world population became just half of what it is now over the years without any tragedy or calamity. At a certain level, nature and culture are contrasted. Nature is opposed to culture in a certain sense. As we have noted, nature follows its laws and, hence, mechanical, inevitable things happen in nature. Culture is opposed to nature in the sense that human freedom is the basis of culture. Anything that is done by human beings is part of their culture. Even the act of restoring nature by human beings is culturally rooted. Some groups, who are environmentalists, would like to see that equal importance is given to nature. They see beauty, good health and a peaceful life in nature. But technology, as a tool of society, could be very destructive to nature. It may bring so much change to nature that it becomes unsustainable. The carbon level in the air might go so high that living beings might find it difficult to survive. Or the level of plastics in the environment may grow so much that growing food grains may become quite difficult. Unless human beings become aware of the results of their actions, saving both culture and nature would be impossible. Man is the master of the world. He can help the environment to help him or he may recklessly destroy it and eventually destroy himself. Both nature and culture need not be opposed to one another. One could make nature a part of our culture without much difficulty. The growing of different food grains, vegetables, fruits and flowers is important for supporting both culture and nature. When human beings were living as nomadic tribes, they were fully in harmony with nature. Only of late have we started neglecting nature because of the advancement of science and technology. Our assumption that technology can solve all our problems has made us reckless and it is time to reassess our stand against nature.

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Language and Philosophy Language is used in a broad sense in philosophy. It covers, on one end, the natural cries of animals to the use of the most developed languages like English, on the other end. Some philosophers include thoughts as a part of language. If we do not have language, we cannot have abstract thoughts. Given the role played by language, we can create very complex thoughts. Take, for instance, the concept of money. Maybe economists were correct when they said that there was only a barter system in the olden days. Then, that system was replaced by something like gold, which was used as a thing that was valued by all and, therefore, every exchange was made in terms of gold. Maybe the concept of the coin was introduced and coins could be of different metals or materials. Wealth exchanges were made, using coins. When civilisation grew, they had the concept of Mahajans, who were the lenders or who behaved like small banks. Once the need arose, individuals thought of the institution of the bank. Once there was the notion of a bank, other things, like interest on capital, lending concepts, etc., were introduced. When the industry developed, there was the need to pool the money of many individuals and the concept of sharing with a face value was introduced. Then, came, perhaps, the exchange of shares in a share market and so on. We are good at symbol manipulations. Symbols are sociocultural realities. Their manipulation creates some other sociocultural realities. Logic, mathematics, etc., are all great inventions of human beings. These languages aid human thinking, which one would not have succeeded in developing without the aid of language. A meta-language can be created over a natural language, and another level of language can be further created if need be. This is what is done on computers. At the bottom-most level, there are only 0 and 1 binary systems. Next is the level of machine language, for example, ascii characters. Over and above these, there are programming languages. Using programming languages, one can achieve what one wants. Sometimes, these programming languages can help us improve our natural language, for example, a grammar check in an essay. All of these functions are nothing but symbol manipulations. They are nothing but virtual realities or culturally created realities. Wittgenstein, in Tractatus, believed that the important function of language is to depict the picture of reality. He held the view that what can be said can be said clearly. He thought that the language that is used in science can be unambiguous and that one could put all meaningful sentences into two categories: true and false. But he encountered many sentences that appear to be descriptions but do not describe anything that can be said to be true or

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false. Some metaphysical statements have the structure of a description, but they do not correspond to any facts. For instance, ideas are real. Or take the statement “God is kind.” No factual statements can be identified that can verify these statements. Wittgenstein distinguished statements that are not significant from those which can be true or false. The purpose was not to confuse one for another, since their structure could be similar. As just mentioned above, metaphysical statements can have the appearance of descriptions, but they do not describe any facts. Similarly, ordinary commands, which involve activities, and some of the religious commands, could be different though they share the same structure. Similarly, some of the uses of terms in epistemology like “know” could mislead. I may claim that I know there is a tree visible from my window. This is certainly an epistemic statement, known through sense experience. But if I claim that I know that I am not dead, the use of the term “know” is misplaced or misused. Knowledge from sense experience is legitimate, but we cannot claim that we are not dead because death is not an event in our lives. To mention Wittgenstein’s example from subsequent writing: what is the colour of the red rose in a dark room (Wittgenstein 2009, § 514, § 515)? This puts us into a difficulty of a certain sort. If we are logicians, we tend to claim that it is tautological to claim that the red rose is red. If we are empiricists, we should say that it is an inappropriate question, since we cannot perceive the colour of a rose in the darkness. If we are realists of a certain brand, we might say that the red rose is red irrespective of whether we can perceive it or not. The red rose remains what it is even if we do not constantly perceive it, unless it is destroyed within a second after I turn my head. We also get confused with the ordinary use of the word “good” with its ethical use. For instance, we claim that a person is a good runner. What that means is simply given certain facts about the person we claim that he could run very fast, i.e., he can cover the distance within the shortest time, which most other individuals cannot do. Thus, he pointed out that the ordinary use of ethical terms is different from the ethical use. Someone who is a good person is different from someone who is a good runner. The former is an ethical judgment and the latter is a descriptive judgment in a context. Wittgenstein claimed that we can reduce the statement X is a good runner to descriptive statements. Coming from a science and engineering background, Wittgenstein thought he had solved many important philosophical problems and that the solvable and the unsolvable ones need not bother us much since they are based on the misuse of language. His remark that a philosophical problem arises when language goes on holiday is striking (Wittgenstein 2009, § 309).

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From the importance of a philosophical point of view, Wittgenstein was very clear that what is said in Tractatus is not very important and what is not said in this text is most important. In other words, he had great respect for metaphysics, ethics, and religion, and so on, but could not deal with them because the very attempt could lead to greater misunderstanding. These subject matters cannot be dealt with in full clarity and they are genuinely difficult because of their complex nature. However, that they are most important is never denied. He thought that whatever cannot be said, one should pass on to silence. He could not practice what he said. He left academic philosophy. He became a gardener and a school teacher. But his philosophical mind continued to make mental notes about the learning of language. He noted down several long passages on learning language rules. He must have observed how children acquire language, concepts, and so on. He tried to put all his notes together in a systematic manner. These notes are now available in the form of a book, Philosophical Investigations, posthumously published. Wittgenstein fully concentrated on different aspects of language in Philosophical Investigations. The most often referred to concepts in this work are family resemblance theory (Wittgenstein 2009, § 67), language games (Wittgenstein 2009, § 23), meaning and use, a form of life and rulefollowing. Wittgenstein was not a system builder. He had insights in bits and pieces and he perhaps never tried to link them all together. Postmodernists find him to be destroying the thesis of system builders. He was a sceptic of high order in the way Kripke has interpreted him in his book. “Rule-following Scepticism” is perhaps the worst kind of scepticism (Kripke 1982). If the argument is valid, no meaning is possible and no communication is visualisable. Wittgenstein is not known as a system builder. He had many insights. Let us draw your attention to the concept of the misuse of language. Many passages are indicative of the difficulty due to language. The aim of philosophy is to let a fly out of the fly bottle (Wittgenstein 2009,§ 309). The fly is trapped and Wittgenstein wanted to show the path out of the fly bottle to the fly. Similarly, his job was therapeutic. He would have liked to cure philosophers of the disease of muddled language. He wanted to show what the correct use is and what the incorrect use is, and make the philosophical problems naturally vanish. Language cannot go on a holiday since, whenever we are awake, we are always using language in thinking, reading, speaking and so on. Metaphorically, the statement seems to indicate that

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when we use language non-rigorously and carelessly, philosophical problems arise. Let us assume, for the time being, his claim that the meaning of a word or sentence lies in its use. The word “use” could be used as singular or plural. Usage is also sometimes referred to as use. In the context of meaning and use, what use means is the usage or the practice of using the word in a certain manner. One deviant use of a word may not give its meaning. Metaphors, for instance, involve deviations from the normal uses. When we claim that someone is an Einstein, we are not meaning that he is Einstein. If that is the case, the statement is simply false. But, by explaining the metaphor, he is highly intelligent like Einstein, it would be an appreciation of the intelligence of the individual concerned. One instance of deviation of use cannot give meaning unless it is in a context where metaphorical meaning can be assigned to it. But if I claim that eating can be predicated on only living beings, then I have given the use of the expression eating. I can refer to cattle and mention that they are eating grass, and the same could be said about horses. We could also claim that a lion is eating meat. Concerning the kingfisher bird, we could say that it is eating fish, and so on. These are all uses of the term “eating.” What is the scope of this slogan: the meaning of a word is its use in a language (Wittgenstein 2009, § 43)? The reason why one should not be asking for meaning seems to be that the question demands an answer that would solicit a response that would necessarily be misleading. When one asks for meaning, one tends to treat meaning to be a referring expression and, in response, whatever one claims, that would be necessarily misleading. Meaning is not an entity; it is a function. Given this, what would get the correct response would be the right manner in which the question is posed. We have noted earlier that failing to understand the nature of a statement leads to philosophical problems, whether it is metaphysics, epistemology or ethics. Given such possibilities, this seems to be another domain where we are trapped by language. A language is a tool, it has some functions, but if the question is framed in such a way that its response should be as if it has ontological existence other than its function, then we have misunderstood the nature of language here. Since language is embedded in the living of human beings, one fails to recognise the subtle way it functions in every activity we perform. Language aids our thinking. Philosophising is a form of abstract thinking that is facilitated by powerful and versatile language. Philosophers have held varied views about philosophy. Some concentrate more on the methodology

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it uses and they assume that whatever the subject matter is, if this methodology is used, the result would be philosophical in nature. For instance, analytic philosophers believed that doing anything using the analytical method rigorously would give us a philosophical perspective. This is a methodology-dominated philosophy. So is the case with what is known as ordinary language philosophy. There are also several other analyses-oriented philosophies, such as conceptual analysis, linguistic analysis, speech-act analysis, and so on. Generally, these philosophers pick up a topic familiar to them from tradition and give it a new treatment using their methodology. One group of philosophers believe that phenomenology is a method. The view is comparable to the views held by analytic philosophers, given their emphasis on methodology. The result of what happens after one applies the method would be, of course, called the philosophy of phenomenology. If two individuals apply this method authentically, without any substantial error, both are expected to arrive at the same result. Thus, Husserl, who popularised this method of doing philosophy, spoke of philosophy as a science. The truth in science is not supposed to be influenced by cultural or individual factors. The same was expected by Husserl when he spoke of science. He called his books on phenomenology “logical investigations.” The method he used was rational and objective and, hence, the result too would be rational and objective. His method also has an important element in what he calls phenomenological reduction. To put it simply, the function of reduction is to get rid of everyday baggage in the form of opinion, attitude etc., and to start the investigation afresh so that everything is started on a clean slate. The above-mentioned phenomenological reduction is also known as epoche, which is supposed to help one to begin the phenomenological exercise without presuppositions. Phenomenology is often called presupposition-less philosophy. The language used in all activities of philosophy shapes the thoughts of phenomenology. This is because knowledge and consciousness cannot be separated. If we know something, we are conscious of it and to be conscious is nothing but to be aware, and that awareness gives us the knowledge about its existence. Therefore, phenomenologists study what appears in our consciousness rather than what exists out there. Philosophical activity, therefore, is necessarily a conscious activity, an activity of the active mind.

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Use and Misuse of Language We are familiar with the following philosophical stands. For Kant, one can speak of the misuse of language. His antinomies could indicate how we might be carried away in a certain manner of arguing (Smith 2003). Contradictory things cannot be true together. He could convincingly prove that time has a beginning and time has no beginning, for instance. Both cannot be true and the option he opted for is that both could be false. He, therefore, did not call time a category; he gave the name intuition. Descartes (Moriarty 2008) spoke of mind and body as two basic forms of substances. For him, physicalists would be misusing the language since they attribute mind to matter by claiming that the mind is the property of matter. Ryle spoke of category mistake (Ryle 1949) since he saw Descartes using two categories: the category of mind and the category of body. For Ryle, there are no two categories and the mind can be explained in terms of dispositions. Wittgenstein was not a system builder and, therefore, the implication of his position on another of his own has not been examined seriously. His use of the theories of meaning and misuse of language do not go together well. Given his thesis, repeated misuse of words should lead to a new use of those words. An example of this sort is the word “idiot.” This word initially meant “the person with the intelligence of a two-year-old child.” Now, it has acquired the meaning of “stupid” person and has acquired a sense of blameworthiness. Another phrase, “deafening silence” has acquired the opposite meaning of deafening, i.e., the opposite of loud. Similar is the case of “an open secret,” where the secret is said to be known to many. These are all the results of new repeated uses, which have become usages. This is natural according to the use theory. If so, then one cannot strictly speak of the misuse of words without invoking some metaphysical categories. Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday. And philosophical problems are due to a misunderstanding of the functioning of language. These claims are not to be taken as core philosophical points. If there are problems due to the wrong use of words, they can be corrected by indicating the mistake. Language and its use is a more fundamental point before the claim of misuse of language. The use comes first and from using the words the meaning becomes clear. Also note that we have words with multiple uses. The term “run” has many entries in a dictionary. This seems to be the case as many words have multiple uses. Why not speak of the multiple uses of words instead of the misuse of words?

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Concluding Remarks The foundation of language, culture and philosophy is human freedom. If human beings were not free, language would not have been possible and if language were not possible, culture would not have been possible and neither would have philosophy since rational and critical thinking without the aid of language is not easily conceivable. Perhaps language was developed first and culture has followed along with it. Philosophising started when important issues about life and death were considered, especially when suicides were observed as unnatural deaths that had occurred. Diseases and pain must have made human beings wonder about the goal of life. Man must have learned to create and enhance happiness, and minimise pain through certain rituals, singing, dancing and celebrating. Reality is at the physical level, but cultural realities are virtual realities. They give meaning and purpose to human life. Some animals and insects sacrifice their lives for the sake of the clan, similarly, human beings also learned to sacrifice for the sake of society and culture. This made it possible to organise the state and nation with soldiers. Human beings have the freedom to alter the course of events by exercising their freedom or swimming along with the natural current. To claim that there is a misuse of language, or that we have crossed the boundaries of language etc., we need to have some acceptable rational argument. Otherwise, it appears that we are giving our opinion rather than any argument. Some individuals might use the expressions “it sounds odd,” “this statement makes no sense,” etc.; these are niceties of language, but that is not enough since language is largely conventional. The difficulty we have is only at the language, or conceptual, level. These problems can be, at best, called conceptual problems or linguistic problems. Even on a not so good morning, we might say “good morning.” We need to go beyond these minor issues of language since philosophy is a serious matter. Wittgenstein and his followers seemed to be trying to destroy grand philosophical attempts. Unfortunately, that is the picture that many have, since Wittgenstein’s style was highly critical and he seemed to be questioning everything. However, this is only superficial since he was clearing the ground to make room for a more serious philosophy. Consider, for instance, his views on ethics. He thought that values should remain what they are. They cannot be changing like fashions. He, therefore, said that ethical values are absolute. If values can change, anything that is morally good can also become morally bad in due course. This is absurd. Similarly, anything that is real should not vanish in the thin air and become unreal.

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And, concerning knowledge about consciousness, one would not know what kind of reality it is. Therefore, it is important to know one’s mental conditions before taking something as true freedom. This seems to be the most important issue in life and philosophy. How to break the ground between subjective solipsism and the common ground of agreement in rules has become an important issue in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. This, he achieved through agreement in rulefollowing. It is through language that we succeed in developing institutions. Language, itself, is an institution, with all its complexities. All metaphysical, ethical issues are not based on a misunderstanding of language. He has demonstrated typical mistakes that we commit, but how to find an answer to the philosophical problems of ethics, epistemology and metaphysics are left to us to explore further. Wittgenstein has solved philosophical issues that are based on language. He could indicate that metaphysical issues are not the problems that scientists should take up for their investigations. Further, when philosophers use the word “know,” there are many senses in which one uses this expression. We need to restrict the use of this word only to what arises from sense perceptions. Otherwise, we confuse ourselves. I know what my intention is, for instance; the word “know” has a different meaning than the term in the sentence “I know the grass is green.” In the former case, doubting has no meaning and in the latter case, for certainty, verification becomes valuable. And, in the domain of ethics, the issue of who is a good man is different from the issue of who is a good runner. “Good” in both these contexts mean different things. The former is not possible to define in terms of the attributes a person possesses, but the latter could be completely captured by the criteria we provide. A good man cannot be defined in terms of the properties that one has until today, since a good man is an unconditional statement. It includes even his future ethical behaviour. Someone is a good man because I found him doing good things for society will not be sufficient grounds for claiming that someone is a good man. A man might take up helping society as a business proposition, by advertising his brand name through different social media by doing some social work for the sake of achieving visibility. Such a person cannot be called a good man, but he could be a good businessman. Theory of truth is another philosophical issue. The term “true” is used in more than one way. For instance, one may claim that this statement is true: sugar is sweet. Here, true is the predicate of the statement “sugar is sweet.” It could also be referring to the facts. X is, indeed, dead. Here, one is not

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talking about the statement, but about person X, and that he is no more is stated. The first is only a verbal issue, or an issue of the language and reality relationship. If there is correspondence, then the statement is true. But, in the second case, the statement is about reality itself where our attention is drawn towards the difference between what is living and what is dead. The theory of universals is yet another substantive issue. How we use general words is a linguistic approach to the problem of universals. Some thinkers have said that Wittgenstein held the family resemblance theory of universals. The problem with this is that no one property is common to all members of a group, but there are some properties shared between some members and another set of properties is shared with other members, and so on, like in a family. If the structure of the nose is similar between father and son, maybe the eyes are similar to those of the mother. The hair is similar to the sister and the sister’s face is similar to the mother, and so on. Looking at all of them, one could claim that they belong to a family. If there is an outsider, one could easily point them out. This is the family resemblance theory. How to use the expression “family” is explained here. However, this cannot be a substantive theory of universals. The name of the family might change over the generations. There is nothing that speaks of the essence here. Given the use theory of meaning, the family resemblance might vanish over the generations. The great grandfather and the great-grandson may not have any identifiable features in common, yet they belong to the same genealogy. One might have to speak of genes to bring back the concept of essence into the family resemblance theory of universals. The notion of universals does not explain certain general terms, like a family. Wittgenstein drew our attention to the fact that there are also general terms that are different from terms like gold. Aristotle’s theory of universals cannot account for general cultural concepts. We have already discussed one substantive issue of human freedom. There are many more to work on. What is truth? Who am I? Is it possible to liberate one while alive? Is death the end of life? What is knowledge? Can we know things which are not perceivable? All these issues, if not converted into linguistic issues, are substantive issues. Philosophy aims to answer these substantive issues. Some cultures can be conducive to doing serious philosophy, and some other cultures could be very pragmatic and might consider giving priority to philosophy as unwise.

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Notes and References Campbell, C. A. 1951, “Is ‘free will’ a pseudo-problem?” Mind Vol. LX (240): 441–65. Kripke, S. A. 1982. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Harvard University Press. Moriarty, M. 2008. Meditations on First Philosophy with Selections from the Objections and Replies. Translations and Introduction by Michael Moriarty. Ryle, G. 1949. The Concept of Mind. New York: Hutchenson’s University Library London, 18–23. Smith, N. K. 2003. A Commentatory to Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.” Palgrave MacMillan, chapter II, 478–519. Wittgenstein, L. 1922. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Kegan Paul. Wittgenstein, L. 2009. Philosophical Investigations. Revised fourth edition, edited by P. M. S. Hacker and J. Schulte. Translated and introduced by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Basil Blackwell.

CHAPTER 2 PHILOSOPHY, CULTURE AND VALUE: GANDHI AND WITTGENSTEIN RAMESH CHANDRA PRADHAN

Abstract In this paper, I will attempt a study of the interconnections between philosophy, culture and value in an effort to situate them in the larger framework of the human life from the points of view of M. K. Gandhi and Ludwig Wittgenstein. These two points of view are juxtaposed in view of the fact that both Gandhi and Wittgenstein took the route of philosophy in understanding culture and value, and their interconnections. It is through philosophy that these thinkers discovered the essence of culture and value as two important components of the life of man. While Gandhi was eminently a political and moral thinker, Wittgenstein was a thinker of diverse interests, from the study of language, mind and the world to the study of culture and value within an overriding framework of analytic philosophy. Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1938) and Wittgenstein’s Culture and Value (1977) are important documents of their respective philosophies of culture and value. In the limited scope of this chapter, I will highlight the important ideas in Gandhi’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophies of man, culture and value in order to bring out the unity in their approaches to the core issues of culture and value. There is an underlying unity in the thoughts of Gandhi and Wittgenstein, even though their differences are not difficult to find. Both thinkers were humanists to the core, though they moved beyond humanism in search of a higher unity of humankind in spiritual life. Keywords: culture, civilisation, value, soul-force, truth, non-violence, spirituality.

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1. Philosophy, Culture and Value: The Integral Vision Philosophy as a reflective activity can never be seen in isolation. It is part of a larger scenario of human life in which culture and value have their inseparable place. Philosophy signals the reflective and spiritual excellence of the human beings, which shows to what extent the human consciousness can rise in its imaginative and intellectual capacity in deciphering the meaning of the universe and the totality of existence. Philosophy is a search for the meaning of the whole existence in its timeless endeavour to survey all existence sub specie aeternitatis. Both time and timelessness are the two sides of the philosophical reflections as philosophy has its roots in time but it rises above temporality to touch the pinnacle of timelessness. Philosophy, as a part of human culture, is rooted in temporality and historicity (Heidegger 1962; Rorty 1979), but its aim is to reach eternity in the form of the values and ideals (Wittgenstein 1977). Culture is a temporal and historical phenomenon (Daya Krishna 1989; 1997), though its values belong to the realm of timelessness (Wittgenstein 1977) where the spirit of mankind has its resting place. The human spirit manifests itself in culture, or cultures, as is historically the case, but its ultimate emancipation lies in the timeless search for values. Values hold the key to the ideal world of the immortal creations of the human spirit in the form of philosophy as the highest spiritual creation (Hegel 1977). Philosophy, being the highest spiritual creation, is the bridge between the historically developed cultures, on the one hand, and, on the other, the ideal world of values in aesthetics, morality and spirituality in their timeless dimensions. It brings culture and values into one integral vision where human beings realise their existential and spiritual meaning of life. That is the state of enlightenment that philosophy aspires to, ceaselessly in all cultures and times.

2. Values, Cultures and Civilisations There are many cultures and civilisations that have appeared in the history of mankind. Human beings have developed many cultures and civilisations, depending on their thought and life patterns. The ancient cultures and civilisations have given way to the modern cultures and civilisations, which have passed into the age of post-modernism. Time is the medium in which different cultures appear and disappear as human beings live and think differently. In spite of the fact that the human species is one, there is bound to be plurality in the formation of cultures and civilisations.

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Culture and civilisation are not identical though they are connected (Krishna 1997). Culture is part of a civilisation since culture constitutes the essential and inseparable part of the latter. Civilisation is a broader category, which is an umbrella-like structure, which covers the entire domain of man’s achievements from science to philosophy to arts and what have you. The entire gamut of intellectual creations constitutes a civilisation, e.g., the Indian civilisation, the Western civilisation and so on. Each civilisation is a particular form of the creative expression of the human spirit. Culture is that part of value-realisation that makes a civilised man or woman a cultured man or woman. Culture, in this sense, is an actual value-realisation that makes that society refined, enlightened, and morally and spiritually elevated. A civilisation is empty if it does not embody a culture. Culture is the actual process of refining the life of the people so that life becomes morally and spiritually meaningful (Krishna 1997). It is in this context that we can situate values in a culture. Though a civilisation may have many ideals, it cannot embody the ideals, except in a cultured life. The values are always plural in nature because mankind has pursued many values in the process of culture making. Some values may be life-affirming, while others may be life-denying. The values of moksha, for example, are perceived to be life-denying in Indian culture, while dharma is life-affirming. In any case, values are life-enriching, even if they are apparently life-denying. Both culture and civilisation are known by the values they pursue. The meaning of life that they define goes to make them the cultures and civilisations they are. Religions and moral systems are necessarily the ways through which the meaning of life is expressed in a culture. In a final analysis, culture is necessarily associated with its religious beliefs and moral commitments (Panikkar 1964).

3. Gandhi’s Philosophy of Culture and Value M. K. Gandhi did not develop a fully fledged philosophy of culture and value but he visualised the relationship between the two in his numerous writings, especially in his early work, Hind Swaraj (1938). He was committed to the philosophy of a new civilisation based on the moral and spiritual values that guided him in his lifelong struggle against human suppression and exploitation, and against the “Satanic Civilisation” built on the so-called values of the modern age (Gandhi 1938, 33). He was the prophet of a new civilisation that was built on the eternal values of freedom and spiritual harmony. Therefore, Gandhi’s philosophy of culture and value

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is synonymous with his ceaseless endeavour to alleviate the suffering of humanity. Gandhi’s philosophy cannot be dissociated from his life and the practice of moral and spiritual values embodied in his actions, be it personal or social, for the emancipation of the suffering humanity. His philosophy grew and fructified in the process of his political and social life where thought and practice, and theory and action mingled (Diwakar 1963). He did not have to study philosophy as a theory; it grew in his consciousness as his outlook on life and the world as he entered into the world of action. His ideas of values and ideals were gifted to him by the civilisation where he was born and by the culture that he imbibed from his immediate surroundings. For him, the Indian civilisation and culture of religious and moral discipline were the sources of his philosophy of culture and value. The Bhagavad Gita is one of the sources of his concept of a morally developed and spiritually enlightened life. Gandhi did not separate civilisation from culture because, for him, they were synonymous as both signified the essence of the true humanity and ideals of a perfect society that could ensure a life of duty and the higher values of moral conduct. He wrote: Civilisation is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions, so doing, we know ourselves. (Gandhi 1938, 53)

This definition of civilisation takes morality as its foundation and the performance of one’s duty towards humanity as its essence. Thus, civilisation and culture become one with morality, which stands for duty and also the “mastery over our mind.” Gandhi held that civilisation and culture are same as “good conduct” (Gandhi 1938, 53). Two strands of morality were uppermost in Gandhi’s philosophy of moral life: namely, (1) duty and (2) mastery over the mind and passions. Both strands point towards a Kantian type of deontic ethics (Kant 2004). For Gandhi, as for Kant, to live an ethical life is to perform one’s duty in an impersonal and dispassionate way. That is say, ethical duties are “categorical imperatives,” which are the commands of moral conscience or the moral reason. Gandhi emphasised the mastery over the mind and the passions as the grounds for the performance of moral duties. This is parallel to what Kant had to say about the immorality of the human passions and emotions (Kant 2004). Be that as it may, Gandhi, however, surpassed Kant in situating

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the ethics of duty at the very heart of his practical life of action and struggle, which Kant never faced in his life. Gandhi made the ethics of duty the very foundation of his struggle against the forces that suppressed humanity. He, as a satyagrah, actively resisted the evil forces, even at the cost of his life. He was guided by the “inner voice” in leading the life of duty. Besides, the ideal of the detached actions (anashakti) of the Gita was the guiding spiritual motto of his life.

4. The Eternal Values of Truth and Non-violence Gandhi’s conception of value centred around his notion of truth and nonviolence, which were the twin values dominating his conception of culture and civilisation. Truth and non-violence are the eternal values, which Gandhi imbibed from the Indian religious and spiritual tradition, e.g., Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism (Diwakar 1963). That such values have been central to Indian spiritual traditions is itself the evidence of the fact that Gandhi had imbibed these cultural traditions in his own conception of a new spiritual civilisation (Gandhi 1938; 1998). Now, we may ask: Why are truth and non-violence so central to the spiritual civilisation that Gandhi spoke of? The reasons are as follows: 1. Truth is a fundamental moral principle, which is central to the spiritual civilisation. 2. Truth is a moral category in the sense that adherence to truth (satyagraha) is a fundamental principle in all codes of conduct, private and public. 3. Truth itself is a metaphysical category as it stands for the Absolute or God. Truth is God as there is no other reality than what is absolutely real. That absolute reality is God. 4. Non-violence is the way of living in truth or God. It is the universal principle of loving all creatures in the universe. 5. Non-violence is the law of love or compassion, which is the fundamental law of the universe. All of these reasons were provided by Gandhi in his defence of the eternity of the values of truth and non-violence (Gandhi 1938; 1998). These values are eternal because they will never change if the universe remains what it is. There can be no change in truth since it is absolute (1927, ix–xii), though our conceptions of truth may change. There can be no change in what is absolutely true and real. Non-violence is eternal for the reason that the law of love works in the universe, though human beings fail most often in

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following it truly. The human failure cannot be taken as the reason for the failure of the law. It is a divine law in the universe. Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha is based on the values of truth and nonviolence because there is no other way of leading a life of truth except through being truthful and non-violent. The philosophy of satyagraha is the boldest philosophy ever conceived by any thinker on earth.

5. Satyagraha as the Spiritual Force Gandhi’s philosophy of Satyagraha is the philosophy of life based on the principle of truth as the guiding law of life. This is also the central philosophy of the culture and civilisation that he wanted to establish as a counter to the civilisation of the modern age of rampant industrialisation and mechanisation of life. Gandhi was worried about the fallout of the modern industrial civilisation, which was based on the principle of the “brute force” of human exploitation (Gandhi 1938). He wanted the principle of the “soul-force” to counter the civilisation based on brute force. Gandhi wrote: The force of love is the same as the force of the soul or truth. We have evidence of its working at every step. The universe would disappear without the existence of that force (Gandhi 1938, 67).

The soul-force, according to Gandhi, is universal and is acting throughout the universe and world-history. Without it, the universe would not have existed. The human history itself would have ceased to exist if the soul-force was not operating in it. That is why, for Gandhi, in the absence of spiritual force, the history of mankind would have been only a history of wars and not of the making of civilisations and cultures. “Therefore, the greatest and the most unimpeachable evidence of the success of this force is to be found in the fact that, in spite of the wars of the world, it still lives on” (Gandhi 1938, 68). This being the case, one cannot but be convinced that the soulforce is superior to the brute force and that the law of love and truth is universally operating in the universe. The law of satyagraha is the law of love and truth, which is the foundation of the new form of life that Gandhi envisaged. Satyagraha is not a mere weapon of passive resistance against evil but a new way of life adhering to truth and love. Gandhi might have given a limited meaning to the concept of satyagraha in the context of passive resistance and civil disobedience but, in fact, it stands for a total view of life that can make changes in world

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history. It has a global vision as it stands on the principle of the soul-force. Gandhi wrote: Satyagraha is soul-force pure and simple, and whenever and to whatever extent there is room for the use of arms or physical force or brute force, there and to that extent is there so much less possibility for soul-force (Gandhi 1998, 19).

The two opposing forces in the history of the world, the soul-force and brute force, were, thus, recognised by Gandhi. However, he showed that it is the soul-force that ultimately triumphs because the spiritual force of satyagraha ultimately wins. The new civilisation that Gandhi envisaged was pre-eminently based on the principles of satyagraha as a new way of life. Given these principles, we can have a world based on truth and non-violence, and a culture totally based on the spiritual force. If truth and love were not the eternal laws of human existence, then nothing could save mankind from the clutches of colossal future wars to be engineered by the massive stockpile of arms and ammunitions.

6. The Critique of the Modern Civilisation: Gandhi and Wittgenstein Gandhi was critical of the modern technological civilisation of the West (1938). His criticism of the technological civilisation was echoed by Wittgenstein (1977), who argued that technology has taken away the creative spirit of mankind and has made human beings slaves to the machines. Wittgenstein’s arguments were on the same wave-length as those of Gandhi’s. Both Gandhi and Wittgenstein were unanimous in viewing modern civilisation as detrimental to the spiritual growth of mankind. Gandhi’s critique of the modern civilisation as spiritually bankrupt was based on his argument that the machines invented by man are not so much for human welfare as for their enslavement to the forces of exploitation and subjugation. Gandhi’s critique of modern civilisation was a radical one owing to his strident criticism of modern machinery and the modern ways of immoral and non-spiritual ways of life (Gandhi 1938). That is why he condemned the modern civilisation and culture as soulless and based on brute force. Wittgenstein’s criticism of modern civilisation was less strident as he himself, as a philosopher, was the product of modernity. He took to task the

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modernist thought as too scientistic and naturalistic. He disapproved of the spirit of the modern civilisation for its addiction to machinery and the mechanistic ways of living (Wittgenstein 1977). Wittgenstein, like Heidegger (1977), believed that the human beings are enslaved by the modern mechanical civilisation. He spoke of the emancipation of the human spirit from the clutches of the materialist civilisation that is born out of the use of technology on a massive scale. For Wittgenstein, the spirit of man is fully manifest in the use of language and in occupying the multiple forms of life (1953). The free flow of the spiritual capacity of man is evident in the multiple linguistic and intellectual structures that man has built. These are the ways by which human freedom has been expressed in art, literature, painting, music and philosophy. On the other hand, the growth of science and scientific knowledge has resulted in the production of the technological structures that stifle the human spirit. That is the reason why science, unlike philosophy, has not contributed to the freedom of the spirit of man. Science, as a naturalistic enterprise, has made the spirit of man a slave to the scientific and the technological products. Both Gandhi and Wittgenstein agreed on the fact that the spiritual possibilities of man are threatened by science and technology in their naturalistic and mechanistic from. For the emancipation of the spirit of man, both argued for a technology-free civilisation that can see man in harmony with nature and the entire universe. The new civilisation may not be antiscientific but it must not be a complete slave to science and technology.

7. Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Culture and Value Wittgenstein is well known for his concept of philosophy as one of analysis rather than of explanation (1961; 1953). According to which, philosophising is a reflective activity in which clarity is more important than a system of explanations. For him, philosophy is not like any science, or sciences taken as a whole. Science explains, while philosophy gives us a clear vision of things, or a “perspicuous representation” thereof (Wittgenstein 1953, section 122). In this sense, for Wittgenstein, philosophy goes far beyond analysing language, the mind and the world, and assimilates everything in its reflective sweep, including culture, civilisation and value. Thus, philosophy, for Wittgenstein, is a total or complete vision of life and the world. Culture and value, which attracted Wittgenstein’s attention no less than man, history, time and the world, represent two strata of the human activity

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or form of life. Culture is a form of life in which values are pursued, ingrained and sedimented. There is no form of life in which language and culture do not play a creative role. Culture is the linguistic sedimentation of the practices of human beings in their moral and religious forms of life. Over generations, cultures come into being, signifying what sort of values human beings pursue. Therefore, cultures and values go together. Culture expresses the values, which constitute the bedrock of the lives of the people. Values may be moral or religious, such as seeking the welfare of all on the social level or seeking the grace of God at the trans-social level. Religions, across the board, represent moral and religious values. Wittgenstein (1977) gave prominence to religious values in their purest form. He was philosophically inclined towards Tolstoy, Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, who represented the true religious values. While defining ethics, Wittgenstein wrote: What is good is also divine. Queer as it sounds, that sums up my ethics. Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural (Wittgenstein 1977, 3e).

That is to say, the ethical value of the Good is divine in its origin and can be traced to supernatural sources. The Good cannot be a human creation in any sense. By being supernatural, the Good expresses the supernatural reality, i.e., the Divine Being. Thus, Wittgenstein took morality, or ethics, to be the part of religion that talks about the Divine Being. Thereby, he seemed to make ethics and religion transcendental in nature as the both indicate the realm of the divinity, which is, itself, mystical or inexpressible (Wittgenstein 1961, 6.421, 6.522). Wittgenstein seemed to be committed to the religious and moral values, which are transcendental in character. For Wittgenstein, culture and civilisation are not two separate entities, since both signify the totality of the values human beings pursue in life. Both are the temporal and historical expressions of the non-temporal and ahistorical values. Values are not temporal because they are not human creations; cultures are human creations and so they appear and disappear. But values do not appear and disappear. They remain eternally true for the human beings. Wittgenstein wrote: I realise then that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value, but simply of certain means of expressing the value… (Wittgenstein 1977, 6e).

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That is to say that the values are expressed in a culture and so, if the culture, as the expression of the values, vanishes, it does not lead to the disappearance of the values that are expressed. Values, being transcendental, do not belong to time and history, of which cultures are a part.

8. Gandhi and Wittgenstein on the Possibility of a Spiritual Culture Both Gandhi and Wittgenstein shared their common concern for the future of humanity, not only because they are aware of the decadence of the modern culture but also because they have an idea of what the human culture ought to be. Both were concerned with the moral and the spiritual sickness of the modern scientific and technological culture (Gandhi 1938; Wittgenstein 1977). This common concern led them to think, though differently, about the moral and spiritual revival of modern man. Gandhi directly confronted the decadent civilisation in his long political life in which he saw the rise of a new humanity. He was optimistic of the future of man in his thinking about the new social and cultural order he wanted to establish. His Hind Swaraj (1938) gave a blueprint of his new vision of humanity in which man would be guided by the soul force and not by brute force. As a votary of truth and non-violence, he could visualise the importance of the cardinal values of a new morally and spiritually refined civilisation. The new civilisation would be guided by the principles of truth and love. Wittgenstein did not face the world directly as a political leader but he did see the world as ravaged by war and devastation. This convinced him of the supremacy of the moral and spiritual force, which is explicit in his writings (Wittgenstein 1977). He did emphasise the importance of the human spirit over matter, morality over brutality, and spirituality over materialism. He never defended the modern materialist civilisation. He, like Gandhi, looked back to the past of human civilisation to get inspiration for the future of humanity. Gandhi (1938) took the Vedic spirituality as the source of the spiritual values of universal human brotherhood and the unity of mankind. Wittgenstein looked to the foundational source of the Western civilisation in its religion and moral ideals. He believed that modern scientific rationalism had been antithetical to the religious spirit of the West. Therefore, he saw reason in the appeal of Tolstoy and Kierkegaard to the cardinal virtues of love and compassion to save mankind from destruction.

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Like Gandhi, Wittgenstein appealed to the spiritual heritage of humankind for the rebuilding of the future human civilisation.

9. Conclusion If Gandhi made a case for Indian spirituality rooted in the Vedic past, Wittgenstein was inclined to revive the spiritual past of the West in its appeal to the religious life of the saints and savants. Gandhi and Wittgenstein agreed on the rise of the new humanity with the regaining of moral and spiritual power to check the decadence of the modern civilisation. Both are the prophets of the new humanity. We owe a lot to them for their bold vision and courageous appeal to the human spirit.

References Krishna, Daya. 1989. The Art of the Conceptual: Explorations in a Conceptual Maze Over Three Decades. New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research. Krishna, Daya. 1997. Prolegomena to Any Future Historiography of Cultures and Civilizations. New Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations. Diwakar, R. R. 1963. Gandhiji’s Life, Thought and Philosophy. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Gandhi, M. K. 1927. An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Translated by Mahadev Desai. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M. K. 1938. Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House. Gandhi, M. K. 1998. The Science of Satyagraha (Gandhi For the Twentyfirst Century), edited by An and T. Hingorani. Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Hegel, G. W. F. 1977. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell. Heidegger, M. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. Kant, I. 2004. Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Thomas Kingmill Abbott. New York: Dover Publications.

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Panikkar, K. M. 1964. Essential Features of Indian Culture. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Rorty, R. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Wittgenstein, L. 1961. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. 1977. Culture and Value. Translated by Peter Winch. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

CHAPTER 3 INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND MODERNITY1 MRINAL MIRI

Abstract To take the idea of indigenous knowledge seriously is also to take the idea of plurality of knowledge seriously. If indigenous knowledge is one kind of knowledge among others, then one plausible way of understanding it would be to regard it as primarily the outcome of deep agreements about things within communities, within cultures—distinct ways of being human: agreements within communities and disagreements between communities. However, the modern idea of restoring traditional indigenous knowledge to “knowledge proper” is premised on its institutionalisation of a radically different kind within a modern uniform bureaucratic framework. This results in the dressing up of such knowledge in a garb, which makes it almost unrecognisable in its originality. Such transformation of indigenous knowledge may indeed serve various utilitarian (including political) purposes. But the transformation is a radical reduction of a kind, which must be recognised as such. Keywords: indigenous, scientific, universal, practice, community, agreement, disagreement, authentication, validation Knowledge is property—for it to exist it must have an owner, a knower. Just as redness cannot exist without something being red, hunger without somebody being hungry, or hardness without something being hard, there cannot be knowledge without there being a knower. A knower can be an individual or a number of individuals, a collective, or a community. In the case, for instance, of scientific knowledge, the knower is the collective: the scientific community. In the case of “indigenous knowledge”—assuming 1

Parts of this paper have been previously published in the Journal of Educational Planning and Administration XXXI (3): 219–24.

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that there is such a thing—the knower presumably is the collective indigenous people. So, if we are talking about indigenous knowledge, we must inevitably also talk about indigenous people. However, “indigenous people” is not a singular community or collective. Globally speaking, “indigenous people” constitutes a large class of human beings with multiple sub-classes. We may call each sub-class an indigenous community, and it is quite likely that each indigenous community’s knowledge is distinct from that of the others. Who, then, are the indigenous people of our country? I shall mention three groups in relation to the issue of knowledge: (i) People who claim their origin in this country, have a written tradition and a wealth of textual material that covers vastly different areas of human life: knowledge, of course; what we now call the arts, including performing arts; health; politics; education; religion; and, very importantly, the non-human world. I am, of course, referring to the tradition that the Aryans—for want of a better word—have left for us. [There may be a controversy about their being indigenous. If there is one, I shall ignore it; and, in any case, the third group of indigenous people I mention below may provide some mitigation to the controversy.] I am also not excluding Dravidians, with their equally rich written traditions. (ii) People who have originated in this country because there is neither anecdotal nor historical evidence of their having their origins anywhere other than within the boundaries of this country. They comprise most of what we call our tribal communities. They do not have written traditions but are the owners of marvellously rich oral traditions. These are complex traditions of thinking, imagining and doing in the context of human life—reflections on man’s temporality, their well-being, their relation with other human beings and the non-human world, the rights and wrongs of things, collective affirmation of life and its beauty, e.g., music, dance and so on. Knowledge, of course, is an essential ingredient of these traditions. (iii) The third group consists, again, of small communities—mostly, in our official vocabulary, tribal communities—who have, at various times in the ancient past, come to this country from distant lands but have established themselves here and have belonged here for scores of centuries. They, like the other groups of tribal communities, have similarly rich oral traditions— traditions of thinking, knowing, imagining, and doing. These traditions must be considered as indigenous as the traditions of the other two groups. But indigenous as opposed to what? One suggestion might be: knowledge originating in people from outside the country. But, of course, there must be indigenous knowledge in countries other than our own. This cannot, therefore, be the contrast we are looking for. The proper contrast would, in

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effect, be knowledge that knows no geographical boundaries, even perhaps, no temporal boundaries: “universal global knowledge; the shining example of which is the modern scientific knowledge originating in the West.” There might be a question about a kind of “knowledge” that “knows no temporal boundaries.” As we all know, and are repeatedly told, scientific knowledge is “open,” i.e., it is open to question, revision and even rejection in the future. There is no final report on a piece of scientific research. This only means that scientific knowledge, despite its claim to unrivalled superiority, is bound by the contingencies of time (change). Only a kind of “knowledge” that will, then, have a claim to transcend the bounds of time will be “knowledge” that is, itself, temporal. The most likely example of such knowledge will, I suppose, be mystical knowledge—knowledge that is beyond spatial and temporal boundaries; and is, therefore, ineffable, because to articulate it is necessarily to temporalise and, therefore, distort it. (Wittgenstein’s famous last words in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus: “Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent!”) Both “indigenous knowledge” and scientific knowledge seem to share the quality of the temporal limitation of knowledge: what is valid at one point in time may be shown to be invalid at another point in time.2 But indigenous knowledge is location-specific while scientific knowledge is universal. There, then, seem to be at least two varieties of knowledge: the indigenous variety and the trans-indigenous modern variety of global knowledge. The question to ask, therefore, is, are there different varieties of knowledge; or, is knowledge really one and universal? It is an important question to ask, because if we are thinking of the possibility of “indigenous” knowledge as knowledge at all, then we must face up to the question of whether we can think of it at all as a distinct mode of knowledge. If this is an impossibility, if knowledge is one and universal, then our task would be limited to showing that what is claimed as indigenous knowledge is either a curious nonepistemic practice among indigenous people or that it, indeed, shows genuine aspirations for knowledge but falls woefully short of it. The indigenous knowledge we talk about is either not knowledge at all, or it is “knowledge” mistakenly so-called. To have a justified claim to “knowledge,” in the correct sense of the term, it must be reducible to the modern universal variety of knowledge. If such reduction proves

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There might still be an element of truth in the claim that scientific knowledge is atemporal; although scientific knowledge at a given time may be revised at a later time, what cannot be revised is the idea of scientific rationality itself; this idea is assumed to be timelessly valid.

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impossible, then “indigenous knowledge” will turn out to be an extremely dubious category. But is knowledge one and universal? This is the claim of Western modernity. The founding philosopher of Western modernity was Immanuel Kant. Kant argued, with wonderful intricacy, that knowledge, as the pursuit of truth, can be of only one kind and the principles on which knowledge is founded are the ones that are implicit in modern scientific inquiry (Newton). Rationality is the instrument or mechanism which enables us to pursue knowledge. The rational procedure must, therefore, also be universally valid. The claim of universality for knowledge and rationality implies that they are independent of the contingencies of geographical boundaries. What is knowledge in one place is knowledge everywhere, whatever other human differences there may be from place to place. These fundamentals of modernity have been very seriously questioned by post-modernity, about which we have all heard. There are, in the post-modern perspective, different kinds of knowledge and, correspondingly, different kinds of rationality, different kinds of logic, and even different kinds of truth. The different kinds of knowledge sustain different kinds of discourses: the scientific discourse, the gender discourse, the feminist discourse, the colonial discourse, the nationalist discourse, the Brahmanical discourse, the Dalit discourse, and so on. It would seem that, from the post-modern perspective, the arena of knowledge is split into self-enclosed areas of discourse—each with its own criteria of truth and falsehood, validity and invalidity. But there is, however, a pervasive, clinging idea, running across the diversity of discourses, that what is crucial in the entire knowledge enterprise is the genesis of knowledge: what psychological and sociohistorical contingencies give rise to knowledge rather than what knowledge is in itself. And the driving force of the genesis of knowledge is power. Something like the core of this idea is to be found in some of the pregnant aphoristic sayings of Nietzsche, the great, somewhat unsung, German philosopher of the nineteenth century (Nietzsche). [Bernard Williams, one of the most distinguished philosophers of our times, and an admirer of Nietzsche, offers a version (Williams)—a naturalistic version—of genetic explanation that does not need to make reference to the idea of power, nor to any genetic properties. Williams calls his version of the Nietzschean mode of explanation—following Nietzsche himself—genealogical explanation. The key genealogical inquiry, considering the appearance or emergence or origin of a cultural constituent, such as knowledge, begins with the postulation of a fictional “state of nature.” The state of nature contains a society or a group of human beings who have certain basic needs, including the need to cooperate. Williams mentions E. J. Craig’s illuminating

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account (1999) of the concept of knowledge as an example of a genealogical explanation of the kind that he accepts. Given the basic need for cooperation, and the powers of observation, recognition, etc., that cooperation requires, human beings “would develop a concept with just about the properties of the familiar concept of knowledge” (Williams 2002, 21). It is important to realise that the availability of this genealogical explanation ensures that the concept of knowledge is not reducible to previously existing properties of human beings in the state of nature, including properties like power. However, the power idea has caught the imagination of our times, despite arguments such as Williams’—inventive and convincing as they are. Here, let me be content with saying that the idea of power can be carried too far and carried to the extreme; there is a very short and effective way to dismiss it. And that is as follows: if all knowledge is a function of power, then what about the knowledge that knowledge is a function of power? Is it also determined by power? If so, we shall have to ask the same question over again, ad infinitum, and, therefore, we shall never know what knowledge is; if not, there is at least some knowledge that is not a function of power. I do think this is correct. But the post-modern use of the idea of power is extraordinarily complex and subtle, and an argument against it will require a matching degree of complexity and subtlety, which it would not be proper to go into here, even if I was capable of doing so. Let me be content with just asserting that knowledge is not a unitary concept; there is a plurality of knowledge. And plurality is not a function of power, in however subtle a manner. My contrary contention is that plurality is primarily the outcome of deep agreements about things within communities, within cultures—distinct ways of being human: agreements within communities and disagreements between communities; different communities have lived, with mutual respect, but have irreconcilable differences and disagreements among them; and this, I contend, is the source of plurality. Let me take a simple example of how agreement is crucial to knowledge. Take our knowledge that something, x, is red. Supposing there was, among us, irreconcilable disagreement about “x is red,” and that no agreement whatsoever was achievable, there would then be no concept of red and nothing answering to the description “red.” Consequently, “x is red” could not possibly be a piece of knowledge. The agreement can be of different levels, and different degrees of depth; it can be a tacit assumption underlying a practice (e.g., giving a lecture—here, there is not one assumption but

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several, e.g., that there are institutions like the NUEPA, that there are specific activities that count as lectures within such institutions, that there are limits to the duration of lectures, that lectures must have an audience and, of course, a person giving the lecture, and so on). What counts as the knowledge that belongs to a community as a whole is deep—not easily assailable—agreement about what counts as true or false, right or wrong, and good or bad; all these values are intrinsically interlinked. I would like to reinforce this point via a consideration of the idea of a “practice”—an idea that has been much in use in recent debates in philosophy (introduced forcefully by Alasdair MacIntyre in his book, After Virtue). 1. A culture is an organic unity of different practices; a practice is not just any human activity. 2. A practice is a form of rule-governed human activity, e.g., agriculture, chess, gardening, music, healing, or education. 3. Essential to a practice is a good or excellence internal to it, and a good external. Take healing: excellence specific to it is achieved only through serious engagement with the practice; other goods achieved, such as wealth and fame, are not specific or internal and can be achieved by any other means; the criteria of internal excellence are embedded in the practice itself. 4. It is in the nature of a practice that the pursuit of a good internal to it requires the exercise of virtues such as honesty, justice, courage and so on. Take the game of football: to cheat in football is to defeat the very purpose of the pursuit of excellence in football (honesty). Also, one must be capable of giving others their due—recognising and acknowledging excellence achieved by others and putting one’s own achievement in perspective (justice). One must be prepared to put one’s limbs at risk (courage). What is true of football is true of other practices as well. 5. A practice is embedded in its history and tradition. Standards of excellence are set frequently by historical reference, e.g., healing, agriculture, education, music, dance, other forms of creative activity, hunting, weaving and so on. 6. I would like to think of a culture as an internally or organically connected network of practices. Human life would be recognisably different if it were not organised in terms of practices in the sense we have indicated. 7. A practice derives its authenticity and validity from its place among the network of practices that constitute the community—from its

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sense of stable belonging among other practices. Also, a practice may crucially derive its strength from particular sensibilities and sensory powers that a community might have developed from its distinct and intimate interaction with nature—tsunami, hunting and something like a sixth sense for herbs. (Think of the timely steps taken by some of the tribes of the Andaman Nicobar Islands to escape the fury of the Tsunami of 2006. Not a single person belonging to the tribes came to any harm, while hundreds among the neighbouring non-tribal population perished in the ravaging floods.) 8. It is the community’s language that weaves the practices together in a network of significations and meanings. Language is the frame of the community’s culture and tradition. It holds them together. The traditional practices of a community constitute its culture. The culture, as it were, encapsulates3 the practices, and what makes the encapsulation possible is the network of agreements at different levels, different degrees of depths, that permeate the life of the community. Also, it is important to realise that some practices are tied relatively loosely to the whole compared with others. Thus, a game (e.g., football, or even cricket), with its rules, can be transported without much loss of meaning into another culture, but not a practice of healing, nor a practice of education, nor a practice relating to the epistemic enterprises of the community. When an indigenous practice that includes indigenous knowledge is taken out of the context of its original home and made to serve much wider needs in a modern context, it may radically change its character. It has to be institutionalised in an unrecognisably different way and turned into a profession with its own set of modern skills: for example, the Ministry of Ayush, with Ayush Healing Centres across the country, “experts” from the community pressed into the service of the profession, large-scale skill development, setting up of health centres and bureaucratic order to sustain the new institution. A method of authentication and validation must be devised to satisfy the modern mind. The product—and this is my serious contention—is neither an indigenous practice nor is it an instance of indigenous knowledge. It may, indeed, make a positive difference to the state’s health care activities, and, through this, its economy, via its commercialisation, aided by contemporary packaging and advertising techniques. It may quite interestingly also serve a political end by being 3

I borrow this word from the British philosopher and historian Collingwood who used it in connection with the historian’s problem of “reenacting” a past action. (Collingwood, Autobiography).

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turned into an instrument for carrying a political message of respect for small traditions. But to claim it as revival and restoration of traditional practice and knowledge would be somewhat self-deceptive. The best that can be said of it is that it is an assimilation4 and, therefore, transformation of an indigenous practice and knowledge. Perhaps, given the powerful economic, political and technological contingencies of modern life, this may be the only viable option left to us for dealing with indigenous practices— moreover, an option that may have a degree of ethical acceptability insofar as it can lead to products with a traditional veneer but in a modern “incarnation,” products that can have multiple beneficial use in today’s daily life—but the more basic and larger questions need still to be debated. I shall content myself with raising just one of these basic questions: if indigenous knowledge is, as we have indicated, an autonomous variety of knowledge embedded in deep specific agreements constituting a community, how is an authentic access to it from outside the bounds of these agreements, from the perspective of another community and culture, possible at all? It may be thought that, if knowledge is a non-unitary and genuinely plural concept, and comes in bounded boxes of agreements, criteria of validity and truth, no authentic access can be possible. I think, the proper response to this is: the genuinely plural does not come in sealed enclosures as the box analogy might suggest. To begin with, there is one humankind in spite of there being profoundly different ways of being human; there are very deep similarities—just as there are differences—in the contingencies that sustain different cultures. Also, quite unsurprisingly, there are basic emotions and feelings that human beings share. Human beings are self-conscious creatures endowed with the capacity to wield language in which these emotions and feelings are necessarily articulated. The articulations and their ramifications as embodied in their practices vary from culture to culture, and it is these that determine the bounds of the meaning of a particular culture. But there is nothing in this to suggest that the articulations of one culture are inaccessible to another. One must, however, always remind oneself that the project of understanding an alien culture, or the culture and its practices of a different time, is strewn with difficulties—not the least among them is the difficulty caused by one’s inability, as it were, to parenthesis one’s own background and one’s own time: a difficulty that pervades most of our efforts to address the reality of the vastly different ways of being human. A comprehensive understanding of and access to indigenous knowledge must coincide with a comprehensive 4 To assimilate something is to see it as similar and, thence, quickly to think of it as the same.

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merger with the practices of which it is an organic part. This will be something like an anthropologist’s effort to fully understand an alien culture, resulting in her going entirely “native.” To go “native” is also necessary to shed one’s own original perspective altogether. But going native is only a notional option—it is almost impossible to exercise in this terribly messy world of our time. The best we can do is to bracket away— self-consciously and to the extent possible—our own perspective and reconstruct, with much sensitivity, the time and the space we are investigating, putting together the intricate and subtle contingencies of the time and the place to yield the original meanings, even if only partly, of the object of our investigation. And this is an immensely difficult and arduous task—a task requiring a capacity for self-transcendence and openness to the other that is only rarely achieved. There are other issues, which I do not wish to go into here; but I have, I think, said enough for us to see the importance of a reflection on the difference between using “indigenous knowledge” for our own purpose—which may be a totally acceptable activity from some ethical and epistemic point of view—and gaining authentic insight into indigenous knowledge as it really is, but perhaps we should “take heart” from the following verse from Pindar, the great ancient Greek poet of the seventh century BC. Take to heart what may be learned from Oedipus: If someone with a sharp axe hacks off the boughs of a great oak tree, and spoils its handsome shape; although its fruit has failed, yet it can give an account of itself if it comes later to winter fire, or if it rests on the pillars of some palace and does a sad task among foreign walls, when there is nothing left in the place it came from. (Williams 2008)

References Craig, Edward. 1999. Knowledge and the State of Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morals, The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil. Williams, Bernard. 2008. Shame and Necessity. California, US: University of California Press, 167. Williams, Bernard. 2002. Truth and Truthfulness. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 4 ECONOMICS AS PHILOSOPHY? VALUE, CULTURE AND DECISIONS IN THE PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY OF EVERYDAY LIFE JOHN CLAMMER

Abstract Economics lies at the heart of everyday life, both at an individual level and in the life of nations. Yet it has rarely been examined by philosophers. But, if we do take a philosophical approach to economics, a number of significant questions arise. These include the key question of value and of how it is determined, the nature of decision making, the nature of gift-giving and reciprocity, and the morality of consumption choices. Furthermore, the philosophical examination of economics necessarily involves questions of ethics, particularly when economics is related to such issues as the environment, poverty and inequality. This paper argues that while economics can be examined in the more conventional context of the philosophy of the social sciences, including questions of assumptions and argumentation, it must also be examined in relation to ethics, politics and its profound role in shaping everyday life. This suggests that philosophy has a real and significant role in intervening in the affairs of the world, and is far from being only an abstract discipline. Key words: economics, value, decisions, ethics, explanation. Economics, and economic decisions however small, stand at the very centre of everyday life and, of course, in the life of nations. Most of the so-called politics is, in fact, economics by another name: concerns over employment, growth, inflation, money supply, trade, incomes and budgets dominate the political discourse. At the local or individual level, much the same is true

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and mundane life tends to be structured around similar decisions and policies. How much am I earning? Should I save a proportion of my (very finite) income for future contingencies or retirement? Do I really need (or can afford) this desired consumer object, holiday, service or luxury item? Can I afford to have children and provide them with a decent lifestyle and future (and especially provide for their future education)? Am I being selfish if I do decide to buy that rather expensive and non-utilitarian thing—the car, the jewellery, the watch, the painting, the book—that I have long coveted rather than save or give the same amount to charity? The list goes on: everyday life is structured by economic decisions, and all of these decisions are concerned with value, in several possible senses. One of these is in the most literal sense: I really like this thing or service, but is it really worth that much or will I pay too much? This of course relates to the theory of price in economics: how is anything to be given a monetary value? A Marxist economist might appeal to the Labour Theory of Value—that the price of an object is a reflection of the labour that went into producing it. Most classical economists and economic anthropologists would object on the grounds that much more goes into valuation than labour time including questions of status, rarity, cultural choices, and aesthetics, among other things. Economists of the art market or of education have had to struggle centrally with these issues of value. A major painting by a “name” artist may be worth millions in the art market, but intrinsically it is just a piece of canvas on which the artist in question has daubed some oil paint. If its “value” is to be measured in terms of the materials employed, it is worth very little, if in terms of the labour that went into its production, possibly even less, even without raising the fascinating question of whether self-generated artistic activity is really “labour” at all in the more traditional sense (Negri 2012). So why is it considered valuable? The answer has to do with factors quite outside the intrinsic value of the product itself: the reputation of the artist (a very subjective matter), the fact that other paintings by the same artist are considered valuable in the art market (a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy— this painting must be valuable because other people are willing to pay a great deal for his or her work), or the fact that art critics and curators have attached value by selecting such work to be hung in major art galleries or to be the subject of monographs by art historians. Of course, the work may be beautiful and an evidence of remarkable technical ability but, then, quite possibly, just looking out of the window will reveal a scene of even greater beauty, raising yet another set of fascinating questions about, on the one hand, the aesthetics of nature and, on the other, the very debated issue of the economic value of nature and of the “ecosystem services” that it supplies to

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us (on the former, see Brady 2003; Budd 2005; and, on the latter, Dasgupta 2021). Education raises similar problems for the economist. While most of us agree that education is of intrinsic worth—it expands our intellectual and emotional horizons, equips us with skills that we could not otherwise acquire, exposes us to the cultural heritages of our own and other cultures, and hopefully hones our ethical and aesthetic sensibilities—is it really worth actually paying for? Will my potential future income really be significantly enhanced by my investing many thousands on spending three, four, five or more years at a university? Is there really any evidence that my expenditure was indeed recouped over my working life? Couldn’t I have just stayed home and read the same books or exploited free online courses and saved all that money and stress (examinations in particular)? While that argument might be harder to make for science subjects, which require laboratory time, or in fields such as medicine or engineering, it might be quite valid in relation to the humanities or social sciences, or even management. If I really want to learn to manage, the best way to do so might well be to go and work in a firm, rather than to read books on business theory. The point that we are homing in on is, of course, that all economic decisions are to do with value, and that questions of value are essentially philosophical in nature. Yet, few philosophers have examined economics. The current essay is an attempt to, at least modestly, sketch out what such a philosophical approach to economics might look like and to note its implications for both other areas of philosophy, and for refining what might be called the “philosophy of everyday life,” demonstrating in the process that philosophy can indeed be useful in the so-called “real world.” The central significance of economics to social life hardly needs further stressing. Clearly central to the decisions and activities of everyday life, including the fundamental issue of work, to which we will return in greater detail, it dominates most public discourse and policy making. But what is often not noted is that it has a major impact on other areas of life of great interest to philosophers, and particularly the fields of ethics and aesthetics. We rarely think of economic decisions as ethical ones, much more likely as purely pragmatic: can I afford it? The major exception is when we consider donating to charity or to an aid organisation. I am aware, or it has been drawn to my attention, that there is a famine somewhere. I have a reasonable income and am not myself in need: should I, then, donate part of that income to famine relief or to an organisation that addresses some other real social issue? If I am approached by a charity worker in the street with her donation box, or by a beggar, do I ignore them, pretend that I did not see them, or become suddenly absorbed in what I want to pretend is a vitally important

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and urgent call on my cell phone? Or do I give, and perhaps give generously? Or, if I do give to charity, is it only within my religion, caste, ethnic group, or nation? Or even perhaps out of self-publicity: I want to be seen as generous and a supporter of noble causes, not because I really care about them, but because my giving will reflect positively on myself and my standing in my community? And as we know from a famous Biblical story, those who give generously, but who have little themselves, attract far more moral approbation than those who give from a large fortune, and suffer not at all from their apparent generosity. Anthropologists, of course, are very familiar with the debates that have circled around the notion of the gift, at least ever since Marcel Mauss drew attention to the phenomenon in his famous essay (1990 [1922]). Most of us have faced decisions over the question of the gift: should I give at all? If so, of what value? What kind of thing? Might my intentions be misconstrued by the recipient? In Europe, it is customary for men who are romantically attracted to a woman to give her red roses on Valentine’s Day (14 February), ideally personally but, if that is not possible, at least to send them. More “minor” romantic relationships might make do with a card. But the issue is, of course, love or attraction. In Japan, however, women give chocolate to men on Valentine’s Day and no romantic implication is necessarily attached to this transaction. When I lived in Japan, my secretary would give me chocolate on Valentine’s Day—a gift known in Japanese as girichoco, or “obligation chocolate”—not, alas, because she loved me, but because I was her boss and she owed her job to me. In return, a month later on 14 March, men who have received chocolate from women must reciprocate with something white, the occasion being known as “White Day” as a result. As Mauss recognised more than a century ago, gifts involve ethical transactions, not just material ones. Indeed, having received a gift, should I reciprocate? When? With what? Was it a bribe, or a genuine expression of appreciation for something I had done for the giver? Should I just send a note of appreciation? Even send the gift back? And, if I accept it, should I open it in the presence of the donor (as is common in Europe), or should I not (as is common in East Asia)? Some have extended the concept of the gift from its more literal meaning of an object or service given, received and reciprocated or acknowledged, to cultural phenomena such as art—objects or performances created and shared, that may have no utilitarian value and which are, as with dance, ephemeral and vanish with their production (Sansui 2020). Some forms of “alternative economics”—attempts to break away from the commodity capitalism that now dominates most of the economic scene - have attempted to apply this idea to a broader conception of a humane economics, one in which exchange is reciprocal and ethical,

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profit as exploitation is banished, growth is no longer the ever vanishing goal of economic activity but, rather, the expansion of human capabilities and creativity, just social relations, and a benign relationship with nature (for example, Gibson-Graham, Cameron and Healy 2013). Economic decisions are, consequently, inevitably ethical ones. This is true at the individual level and also in terms of the global impact of my economic decisions. Do I consume in such a way as to minimise waste and pollution and to utilise the least energy? Are the items that I consume fair trade ones? Is my reasonably priced cup of coffee the end of a chain that leads ultimately back to an impoverished farmer in Ethiopia, Kenya or Brazil? Is my desire for a hamburger encouraging deforestation in the Amazon as the virgin and biologically rich jungle is cleared for beef cattle and the soy beans needed to feed them, the local people displaced as a result and the cattle themselves becoming major contributors to global warming by way of their methane emissions? Do I really need to fly to a meeting that could well be held online? Do I really need a car when public transport is available? Many of the issues that hide behind the label of “development” are actually ethical, as a number of perceptive commentators have noted (Goulet 2006; Gasper 2004). Ethics is, or should be, at the heart of any social philosophy. Economics, like development, is, as a result, a prime candidate for philosophical scrutiny. We also often forget the extent to which our aesthetic decisions are shaped by the “market,” operating as it does through the vast advertising industry, and through a myriad other channels—social media “influencers,” the media itself in the form of film and television, the world of magazines, our being caught up in “trends” and the belief that certain things, styles or lifestyle choices are “cool,” the slavish copying of “celebrity” cultures and what is thought to be the good life, and, of course, the fashion industry, one of the most wasteful and ecologically damaging ones on the planet, devoted in a sense to making perfectly adequate things obsolete as rapidly as possible. Such forces impact our tastes in almost every field, whether the design of everyday objects (furniture, utensils, textiles), clothing or lack of, cars, architecture, our body images themselves (fat, thin, too fat, too thin, suntanned or pale?) and, hence, diets, the visual and performative arts, music, interior decoration, our gardens, our image of the ideal holiday, home or even partner. There are of course extensive debates within philosophical aesthetics about such issues as the nature of beauty (objective and deriving from pre-programmed notions of harmony and balance, or subjective?), taste, the sublime, the whole contested question of “what is art” and so forth. But there is also a clearly sociological and cultural dimension to this too, not only in the sense that aesthetic standards clearly change over time and

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between cultures, but also insofar as aesthetics both derives from and itself shapes social and cultural forms, social movements and cultural habits (Clammer 2014). Of the social forces most influencing aesthetic taste and activity, clearly economics is one of the most important, at the level of the art market (what sells, which styles are “in” and which not? How are artists responding to these market forces?) and at the more subtle level of shaping taste through advertising and marketing, and, very importantly, creating “images” of what is beautiful, cool, appropriate or indicating knowledge, status or cultural capital. Being able to chat about the latest avant-garde film not only indicates that one is in “the know” and advanced in taste, but that cultural capital may well be one of the routes of entry to higher status social circles, as defined of course at that time, in that society, and by the social agents, such as critics, who have the power to define such hierarchies. What links these two zones of ethics and aesthetics are the two emerging philosophical fields of environmental ethics, on the one hand (how should we relate to nature and treat other entities that share our common biosphere, what are our corresponding responsibilities and how should these be reflected in our economic behaviour?), and environmental aesthetics, on the other. The latter requires that we expand the range of aesthetics far beyond human artistic productions, to encompass nature as a whole. Almost all of us are very aware of the immense aesthetic impact of nature—early dawn, sunsets, and the power of mountains and the landscape in general. This, of course, has given rise to distinctively human art forms, such as landscape painting, and to aesthetic concepts, such as that of the sublime, usually inspired by something spectacular in nature, and, again, often reflected back in schools of painting or the work of individual artists such as, in the Western landscape tradition, J. M. W. Turner or Caspar David Friedrich, and elsewhere by painting traditions deeply rooted in landscape, such as the Chinese. But, despite the human desire to create powerful images from nature, environmental aesthetics suggests something beyond this, notably the inherent and intrinsic beauty of nature, whether or not it gets distilled into some human cultural form such as painting or music. This, in turn, has economic implications, notably, the necessity of maintaining that beauty and not allowing the blind forces of growth or “development” to destroy or mar it, since it is actually needful not only for the many living entities that inhabit it, but also for human health and sanity. Even from a purely anthropocentric perspective (which is exactly what environmental aesthetics is not about), nature has profound value. While the “right to beauty” is rarely to be found in conventional lists of human rights, a good case can be made that it should be, as a fundamental cultural right on a par with the other widely accepted human rights (Clammer 2019).

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Economics and the Philosophy of the Social Sciences Many of the philosophical questions that economics poses are common to other areas of the philosophy of the social sciences. These include that of whether, as is claimed by many economists, economics is a science, and is on a par with disciplines such as physics or chemistry that are genuinely regarded as such. To answer this requires attention to such issues shared by the other social sciences, issues such as modes of explanation and causality. The first refers to the ways in which the models of the world—purportedly of “reality”—are constructed. Here, of course, we see enormous variation. An anthropologist might create a model based on ethnographic description, one including stories and myths, narratives, analysis of social structure (kinship relations for example) and even the explanatory models of the natives themselves. One of the most celebrated examples of this is the, now, classic ethnography by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (1937). The Azande attribute misfortune and illness to witchcraft—malignant magic directed towards people by disaffected individuals who have the power to do so. While there are oracles whose job is to trace the origin of such attacks and to deflect the consequences where possible, such methods are not infallible, and the only sure evidence of someone being a witch is posthumous—the discovery of a “witchcraft substance” in the body, only available by way of a postmortem investigation. Since no one can be sure who is a witch, this has a positive effect on social relations: since anyone might be, it is better to be nice to everyone, with the result that a curious kind of social harmony is achieved based purely on a shared belief. The Azande theory of causality is, thus, based on a belief in witchcraft, and, as Evans-Pritchard points out, this also poses an explanatory problem for the anthropologist: does one accept the local theory of causality and give up, as a result, one’s own “scientific” theory (assuming the anthropologist to be a non-native and probably Western trained), or does one reject it as essentially absurd, making a sympathetic “inner” picture of the culture impossible? The result is not only these typically philosophical problems in anthropology, but also the question of how to “read” ethnographies, since the ways in which these problems are addressed are a large part of the writing strategies of the anthropological authors in question (Giri and Clammer 2013). Different anthropologists have attempted to answer these questions in different ways. The celebrated French Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, for example ,claimed to have found deep structures in society, such that every culture is a variation on those structures. The number of elements is finite, but the possible combinations of them vast: hence, the cultural variety

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that we see in the world while never doubting that the members of all those cultures are equally human. Levi-Strauss has sometimes likened this to a deck of cards: there is a finite number, and a limited range of symbols— diamonds, clubs, aces, and so forth—but which can be played in a huge number of ways, either as distinct games with their own rules—Poker, Whist, Bridge and so on—or as strategies within a game; the winner being the one who can most effectively utilise their limited “hand”—the set of cards with which they have been randomly dealt. The issue for Levi-Strauss is not cause, but arrangement. But as one moves closer to forms of mathematical modelling in which much larger samples than the often smallscale communities of the anthropologist are involved, the question of explanation also changes. Here, the outcome of a study is not likely to be something rather resembling a novel (even if based on empirical evidence rather than imagination), but something that does assert causal relationships between variables. Here, sociology is probably the paradigm case, where a large-scale survey might be undertaken in an attempt to trace the relationship, say, between crime and ethnicity, and if a correlation is, indeed, found, to attempt to explain this. Is it culture, deprivation, economic status and poverty, educational attainment, lack of positive role models? Sociologists often face the rather paradoxical situation of their having non-controversial methodologies (well tested statistical models, for example), but very controversial results. The Harvard socio-biologist E.O. Wilson is famous (or notorious) for his argument that a large part of human behaviour is genetically determined and has little to do with socialisation: nature wins out over nurture (Wilson 1975). The furious rebuttals to this position have been largely ideological (that this is not only deterministic, but potentially validates theories of racial or gender inequality) rather than evidence-based. But what kind of evidence would support the one position over the other? And what if Wilson turns out to be right? If he is, and there is quite a lot of evidence to support at least a weak version of his argument, then the issue quickly moves out of science into ethics. If women do turn out to be genetically “weaker” in some respects than men, this does not in any way imply that I must treat them as inferior: just as different and as having other qualities that men may well lack in abundance, and as perhaps actively enjoying those differences. Sociology, when concerned with the large scale, is often to do with, if not causality, at least correlations. But what of economics? Economics has a complex relationship to questions of explanation and causality because, as a discipline, it is involved in at least four levels of relationship with these issues: notably, description, explanation,

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modelling and prediction. The first is not so hard to grasp, but it shares many of the same issues that anthropologists confront when they engage in ethnography, including the actors’ own explanations of what they are doing. A classic example of this was found in the ethnography by the economic anthropologist R. F. Salisbury who worked among the highland people in Papua New Guinea when it was still an Australian protectorate. In order to increase the productivity of a tribal group whose technology was, quite literally, stone age, steel tools were provided by Australian development agencies. When the scheme was evaluated it was discovered, somewhat to the shock of conventional economists, that the locals were producing exactly the same amount in much less time, and devoting the additional free time gained to cultural activities, and particularly to their great passion of dancing. Behind this desire for more leisure was another deeper reason— notably, that the more energetic or efficient farmers would produce more, potentially creating the conditions for social and economic inequality to emerge, which, as economic anthropologists have long discovered, is a common reason given for not increasing productivity and surpluses, even when this is technologically feasible (Salisbury 1962). The question of explanation shares some of these same difficulties. It is assumed in conventional economics that if the money supply increases, inflation will occur. But is this a real explanation or a self-fulfilling one? A good case in point is the stock market, and many a financial guru has tried to work out the “laws” of the market, such that investors who follow their advice will reap large profits. But an examination of these texts shows at least two things: firstly, that the advice is often contradictory, suggesting that the “laws” cannot possibly be that since different “experts” claim to have discovered different (and the only correct) patterns; and secondly, that there are no such laws, only behaviour. That is to say, the whole edifice is actually artificial, and only sustained by belief in its efficacy. When doubt arises, the stock market or certain stocks fall, not because there is anything fundamentally wrong with the investment but solely because of beliefs. A statement by a politician here, a rumour about exchange rate fluctuations there, a shift in the “value” (actually the price) of a commodity somewhere, “causes” the stock market to react. These events actually “cause” nothing: they simply point to the herd behaviour of human beings who have bought into the game. This kind of phenomena has even provoked some scholars to argue that economics is not a science at all, but a “virtual” phenomenon. That is to say, it does not describe but actually creates the categories with which it purports to analyse the world: the whole thing is a game of mirrors (Carrier and Miller 1998).

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If we examine the logical structure of economic concepts, we see how true this is: “efficiency,” “productivity,” “growth,” “profit,” and even “money.” A paradigm instance of this is the notion of GNP (Gross National Product) usually used to measure the size of a given national economy (even though almost all economies are now deeply enmeshed with one another) and to measure its growth. But, as its critics have pointed out, not only does it fail to measure the well-being, happiness, health, educational attainment and other non-monetised aspects of a real economy, but that even the monetised cases it does measure are measured in a very distorted way. In the example that is often given, if I have an accident, whatever suffering it causes for me, the GNP goes up since expenditure on the ambulance, hospital care, drugs and rehabilitation contributes to the economy. This makes the whole notion of “growth” so beloved of economists and politicians very suspect and raises profound questions that are really ethical in nature: can we have prosperity without growth? Some “alternative” economists have indeed argued that we most certainly can, and without inflicting the horrendous damage that growth and development inflict on the natural environment (Jackson 2010; Raworth 2017); or, even more radically, that we can and should embark on “de-growth” to move towards a sustainable and steady-state economy (Latouche 2010). The fundamental analysis of concepts, including those used in everyday discourse, has long been at the basis of philosophical practice, and there is no reason at all why economic ones should escape the same scrutiny. In fact, there are very good reasons why they should, since they impact our lives and well-being in such major ways. Economics, of course, is also concerned with modelling: creating scenarios on which public policy is based and on which firms base the commercial decisions. Models are in fact a form of explanation turned into advice: this is how we think the system works, so act on the basis of it: reduce interest rates or do not; promote the savings rate or do not; buy stocks in Sony rather than Air India; put your savings in Swiss Francs rather than in Rupees; buy a life insurance or annuity, or do not; don’t buy a house but rent—it will be cheaper in the long run; invest in a university education for yourself or children, or just stay home and read the books. Our everyday lives are, to a great extent, structured by such applied economics, and these relate to the final, and perhaps most controversial aspect of economic thinking: its predictive power (or rather claims to such power). Sociology often makes modest predicative claims on the basis of its data: youth crime will certainly rise if something is not done about access to drugs; there is no correlation at all between the existence of the death penalty and the murder rate; increasing gender equality will almost certainly increase the divorce rate. Some of these predictions can be important for public policy—such as the

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relationship between drugs (or gun ownership) and crime, and as a result may well impact on our daily lives—but few have as large an impact as economic decisions, which may well be based on false assumptions or bad models. One such example was the fairly recent demonetisation of most currency notes in India, without any clear evidence of its real impact on such things as corruption being produced, yet causing huge suffering among those such as small traders whose economy is cash-based and who were given neither notice nor relief. Prediction of any kind is a dangerous business and, unless based on the claim to some kind of privileged or occult knowledge, depends on the accuracy of the data that is fed into the model, and the very difficult question of knowledge of both the interaction between all the variables, and of the stability of the future into which the predicative model is projected. Even the most sophisticated of models can fail because of contingencies not foreseen or not thought relevant to the model: the implosion of the former Soviet Union, Covid-19, extreme weather events and their consequences, such as the massive fires that ravaged huge areas of Australia and the US in 2020, simple human failure or, from the point of view of the model builders, perversity.

Philosophy and Everyday Life Philosophers are often accused of being unworldly. But, as we see from our discussion of economics, this certainly need not be so. Far from it, for as our discussion shows economics is profoundly connected to philosophy, and, indeed, a cogent argument can be made that good economics is actually a form of applied ethics. Its connection to the environment is fundamental, and so an innocent and rather technical sounding subject, such as Transport Economics, turns out to be ethically significant: should we encourage the car? Are alternative forms of public transport not only environmentally better, but promoting a kind of social ethics too—the conviviality of travelling in shared spaces. Economics, in fact, touches on central issues of human rights, and perhaps of animal rights or the rights of nature in general. When the subject of development comes up, the ethical questions are equally central, since development is not simply about generating more stuff for more people, but raises vital questions about the morality of the current world system and the infusion of political and economic discourse with ethical considerations. The concept (and practice) of development is saturated with value judgements, and must necessarily engage with issues such as access, equality, environmental protection, rights, and the expansion, or otherwise, of what Amartya Sen called “capabilities”—the expansion of human possibilities and spaces of freedom and self-determination (Sen

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1999). An “applied ethics of development” is implicit in any discussion of economics related to issues such as growth, trade, communications or transport (that is to say, in most areas of economics). To think of economics philosophically is to bring these issues to the forefront and to make them explicit, and to foreground questions of justice and equity not simply as, possibly, by-products of some economic policy, but to make them central to any discussion of economics in any form (Clammer 2019). Surprisingly, economics may even have metaphysical dimensions. When it colonises discourse and consciousness, and largely structures the world in which we live, it takes on many of the characteristics of religion: a totalising world view that may be largely taken for granted and unexamined. The very concept of “economic man” and of rational decision making are metaphysical concepts. A close reading from a philosophical point of view of such classics as Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations reveals this, as early political economists (of whom Marx was a major exemplar) clearly show their attempts to, in a sense, detach economics from philosophy. Adam Smith lived in the milieu of the Scottish “Enlightenment” and was well aware of, and participated in, the intensive philosophical debates that raged in Edinburgh in the eighteenth century, and Marx, of course, defined his own position in relation to his engagement with the philosophy of Hegel. Yet this detachment, as both Marx and Smith knew, could never be complete, for, at the root of economics are deep assumptions about human nature, the principles that structure human behaviour and interaction, and our relationship to matter and material things, and the ways that these are reflected in culture and values. To extract these factors from economics is to reduce what is really one of the most absorbing studies of the human race to abstract technicalities. The sad fact that few of us can any longer read a journal of academic economics without an advanced grasp of mathematics and statistics and a knowledge of esoteric theories is not a sign of the advancement of economics but a sign of its impoverishment.

Work as Paradigm All humans work, in some form or another, whether for subsistence or because it is our primary means of self-expression and identity formation. Marx spoke about work as part of our “species being” (Marx 1964), as an essential part of what makes us human. The problem, as he saw it, was not the existence of labour, but the alienated nature of that labour in capitalist societies. The future of work was not its disappearance, but the achievement of un-alienated forms in which work is not only productive in terms of contributing to the greater social good, but is our primary means of self-

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fulfilment. What the “alternative” economist E. F. Schumacher (famous for his earlier radical critique of economics Small is Beautiful), has called “good work” (Schumacher 1980) is then central to anything approaching the good life. But, as the radical anthropologist and social philosopher David Graeber has noted, vast numbers of people are caught up in and have no escape from what he elegantly calls “bullshit jobs” (Graeber 2018): fundamentally nonproductive—except of rubbish, boring, non-creative and with little or no autonomy (and probably long hours and low pay too). But how is this alienated labour created? By the economy of course. An economic system often appears as something “objective”—a kind of vast machine that runs on with its own autonomy, enriching some, grinding down many, providing little satisfaction to many of its unwilling participants who can see no alternative or way of modifying the way in which the machine runs. People have, in other words, become the servants of the system, rather than the system serving them and their needs. The result, all too often, is alienation, inequality, exclusion and even poverty, the latter often found in societies whose economy has dramatically expanded, yet social inequality has not been reduced—the US and India being two different but prime examples of this phenomenon.

Economics, Philosophy, Culture and Values There are several conclusions that we can draw from this. The first is that economics, as a prime determinant of our everyday lives, is ripe for philosophical analysis. This, as suggested above, takes a number of forms: the logical analysis of economic concepts and arguments; the recognition that economics is fundamentally related to ethics; and the recognition that aesthetics is influenced by and, in turn, influences economics, especially in areas such as consumption. Beyond these, there is the analysis of economics as a kind of metaphysical discourse—a body of assumptions about what it is to be human, how humans interact with one another and with their environment, and how they gain or seek to create identity, status and recognition. Economics is perhaps the most deeply metaphysical of all the social sciences (if sciences they be) and is arguably the major force shaping our world and how we think of our place within it. The second is that issues of culture cannot, in fact, be separated from the, apparently, “technical” discourse of economics. Take any economic concept and you will find that it conceals assumptions of cultural preference and values. Economics is, then, in a sense, anthropology and, indeed, the field of economic anthropology actively brings together the two fields and, in

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doing so, reveals the relativity of the content of economic concepts. We could stop at this point: the philosophical analysis of economic concepts is revealing and adds a major dimension to the philosophy of the social sciences. But there is more: if economics does indeed structure our lives in such fundamental ways, its analysis has major implications for the future, for sustainability and for the achievement of the good life (however precisely defined) for the greatest number. This is where philosophy has an intensely practical role. In discussing the question of sustainability in relation to aesthetics, David Maggs and John Robinson have the following to say: If Modernist dichotomies ever had any legitimate purchase on the world, they are desperately faltering now. The difference between the maps they incline us to draw and the territories they strive to represent are increasingly difficult to ignore. Rather than continuing to secure increasing levels of certainty, command and control over the world, they offer growing uncertainty, indecision and disempowerment instead. Rather than a challenge for Western, Modernist rationality, it seems increasingly clear that the sustainability crisis entails a challenge to such rationality. (Maggs and Robinson 2020, 4)

The question of rationality has long been central to philosophy, and especially to the philosophy of the social sciences, and the philosophical analysis of economics brings it to the forefront once again. This is, in many ways, a question of life or death, or certainly of the future of our civilisation. Perhaps, of course, we need a new one, the old version having failed in so many ways politically, economically and environmentally. As we see now, with the immense challenge of climate change, the problem is not one of knowledge but of values and, in particular, in remaking our economic systems to both co-exist with nature and to produce the equality and harmony that social and political philosophers have so long striven for. Philosophy, then, does not float free of the realities of everyday life, but subjects them to the kinds of scrutiny that enable our deepest assumptions to be clarified and re-examined. Economics embodies so many of these assumptions that it should be at the cutting edge of the philosophical examination of the world in which we live, for, as Marx put it long ago, philosophers have attempted to understand the world, but the point is, of course, to change it.

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References Brady, Emile. 2003. Aesthetics of the Natural Environment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Budd, Malcolm. 2005. The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature: Essays on the Aesthetics of Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Carrier, James G., and Daniel Miller (eds.). 1998. Virtualism: A New Political Economy. Oxford and New York: Berg. Clammer, John. 2014. Vision and Society: Towards a Sociology and Anthropology from Art. New York and Abingdon: Routledge. Clammer, John. 2019. Cultural Rights and Justice: Sustainable Development, the Arts and the Body. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Dasgupta, P. 2021. The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. London: HM Treasury. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gibson-Graham, J. K., J. Cameron and S. Healy. 2013. Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide to Transforming Our Communities. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Giri, Ananta Kumar, and John Clammer (eds.). 2013. Philosophy and Anthropology: Border Crossings and Transformations. London: Anthem Press. Goulet, Denis. 2006. Development Ethics at Work: Explorations. New York and Abingdon: Routledge. Graeber, David. 2018. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. New York: Simon and Schuster. Jackson, Tim. 2010. Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. London and Washington, DC: Earthscan. Latouche, Serge. 2010. Farewell to Growth. Translated by David Macey. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press. Maggs, David, and John Robinson. 2020. Sustainability in an Imaginary World: Art and the Question of Agency. New York and Abingdon: Routledge. Marx, Karl. 1964. Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844. Edited by Dirk J. Strunik. New York: International Publishers. Mauss, Marcel. 1990 [1922]. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Negri, Antonio. 2012. Art and Multitude: Nine Letters on Art, Followed by Metamorphosis: Art and Immaterial Labor. Translated by Ed Emery. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press.

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Raworth, Kate. 2017. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. London: Random House Business Books. Salisbury, R. F. 1962. From Stone to Steel: Economic Consequences of a Technological Change in New Guinea. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press and New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sansui, Roger. 2020. Art, Anthropology and the Gift. New York and Abingdon: Routledge. Schumacher, Ernst F. 1980. Good Work. London: Abacus. Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Wilson, E. O. 1975. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Harvard: Belknap Press.

CHAPTER 5 WHERE RELATIVISM HITS ROCK BOTTOM1 DANIELE MOYAL-SHARROCK

Abstract I discuss Wittgenstein's concept of “form(s) of life,” concluding that Wittgenstein intended both a singular and a plural use of the concept, with, where the human is concerned, a single human form of life characterised by innumerable forms of human life. Whereas cultural differences abound in the various forms of human life, the human form of life is characterised by “very general facts of nature,” including the “common behaviour of mankind,” where relativism has no place. Key words: Wittgenstein, relativism, certainty, form(s) of life.

1. Form of Life and Forms of Life In a special issue entitled “The World to Come” (28 August 2020) New Statesman writers gave their thoughts on how the Covid-19 pandemic will transform our way of life. All of the writers share the conviction that “there are few certainties surrounding the present crisis.” For William Davies, one of these certainties is that “digital platforms—Amazon, Google and Zoom, for example—will continue to thrive. The only question is quite how far their logic will penetrate our lives” (Davies 2020). But, for that same writer, … one of the biggest questions hanging over this crisis is how (or whether) many face-to-face services will be resurrected in the future. Hospitality and entertainment are foremost among these, with restaurants and theatres under 1

Some of the material in this paper was previously published in “Wittgenstein’s Forms of Life, Patterns of Life and Ways of Living” in a special issue of Nordic Wittgenstein Review on Wittgenstein and Forms of life, October 2015, 21–42 (CCBY Open License, with modifications allowed).

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terrible pressure. Higher education also faces uncertainty. A dystopian thought is that all of these could be replaced by online platforms: eating, viewing and learning could continue to take place in the home via screens and deliveries. But the appetite for conviviality and public space will not disappear, even if vendors are devastated in the meantime. (Davies 2020)

For another writer, Elif Shafak, the Covid-19 crisis was not primarily a public health crisis, but a crisis of meanings and definitions, which makes us question: “What is normal? What is happiness?” And makes us realise that we are at “a threshold. The old world is simply no more” (Shafak 2020). Notice that William Davies' dystopian thought that our basic convivial activities, such as eating in restaurants, going to the theatre and going to school, may have to be experienced online is balanced by his conviction that “the appetite for conviviality and public space will not disappear,” In saying this, he is gesturing at a distinction that I would like to make, prompted by Wittgenstein's notion of “form of life,” between facts that are essential to the conceptualisation and existence of our human form of life and the facts that are, thus, not essential; between, that is, the facts that characterise our one human form of life and those that characterise the various forms of human life. The appetite for conviviality and public space is part of our one human form of life—the form of life we all share qua human beings. It is an appetite that belongs to what Wittgenstein calls “the common behaviour of mankind” (PI 1997, 206). If circumstances were such that human beings could no longer be convivial, i.e., live with each other, interact, confer, like, love and even hate one another, we could no longer speak of a human form of life, and what would be left of it would become extinct. That some people are not very convivial—that there are hermits and stylites—does not detract from the fact that conviviality is a sine qua non condition of our human form of life. There are other characteristics of our human form of life that bear no exception, such as the fact that humans are born and die; that they need nourishment, sleep and oxygen to survive; that babies cannot take care of themselves, etc. These basic facts about human beings are part of what Wittgenstein calls the very general facts of nature (such facts that mostly do not strike us because of their generality) (PI 1997, 230), which also include facts about nonhuman beings and other natural phenomena of our human form of life, such as that mountains don't spring up in half an hour (OC 1997, 237) and that “the earth is a body on whose surface we move and that it no more suddenly disappears ... than any other solid body: this table, this house, this tree, etc.” (234). All of these human and nonhuman basic or very general facts of nature characterise the human form of life.

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On the other hand, activities such as eating in restaurants, going to the theatre and going to school are not general features of the human form of life but are features of different forms of human life that some of us share and others do not. There have been, and still are, cultures in which people do not go to restaurants, to theatres or to schools. And, whereas Covid 19 may not only disrupt but even eliminate some of the features of our various forms of life, such repercussions—though profound and far-reaching—do not ipso facto affect “the common behaviour of mankind”: i.e., the most basic ways in which human beings act (e.g., eating, sleeping, socialising, loving, hating, expressing emotion, talking, etc.). We may sleep and eat less well, but we will not stop sleeping and eating altogether—were we to do that, we would no longer be human. This is not to say that the existence of various forms of human life is not essential to the human form of life, but that no particular form of human life—such as eating in restaurants—is essential. This distinction between the human form of life and the different forms of human life is not one that Wittgenstein makes explicitly, but it can be drawn from his work. In his search for what he calls “bedrock” (PI 1997 217; OC 1997, 498), that which “lies at the bottom of the language-game” (OC 1997, 204), we come across three concepts in Wittgenstein's work: form of life, certainty, and action.2 I will say a little about the last two before focusing on form of life; but please bear in mind that the three concepts do not cancel each other out but, instead, inform one another: certainty, as Wittgenstein describes it in On Certainty, is a way of acting, and ways of acting are at the basis of our human form of life.3 Wittgenstein understands basic certainty as something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified; as something animal, as it were (OC 1997, 359). I have called the certainty he describes in On Certainty “hinge certainty”—on the basis of a hinge metaphor he uses in the work. In contrast to how we usually think of certainty, hinge certainty is a basic, nonpropositional, non-epistemic and, yet, indubitable certainty about some things; it manifests itself not in propositions or thoughts but in how we act. I cannot, here, say more about the enactive nature of hinge certainty but I'm 2

Does he also envisage the “language-game” as bedrock when he writes: “Regard the language-game as the primary thing” (PI 1997, 656)? The context of this sentence shows that he means to prevent us from thinking that our linguistic expressions are necessarily prefaced or prompted by states of mind, wishes, intentions, feelings, etc. (PI 1997, 653–55). 3 I make a Wittgenstein-informed case for this in Moyal-Sharrock (2021a).

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happy to come back to it in the discussion. I have classified Wittgenstein's examples of certainty into four kinds: “linguistic,” “personal,” “local,” “universal” certainties4—the important ones for this chapter being local and universal certainties. In On Certainty, Wittgenstein speaks of the bedrock of our thoughts as consisting “partly of sand, which now in one place now in another gets washed away, or deposited” but also “partly of hard rock subject to no alteration” (OC 1997, 99; my emphasis). The hard rock that is subject to no alteration stands for those certainties I call “universal”—the basic certainties that, as he puts it, “underlie all questions and all thinking” (OC 1997, 415; my emphasis). Such certainties as “I have a body,” “the world exists” or “human beings express feelings” are examples of these certainties that characterise our human form of life. So that, were we to meet a tribe of people brought up from early youth to give no expression of feeling of any kind, we could not see these people as human: ‘These men would have nothing human about them.’ Why?—We could not possibly make ourselves understood to them. Not even as we can to a dog. We could not find our feet with them. (Z 1970, 390)

That humans express feeling is part of the “substratum” of human thought (OC 1997, 161); it is one of those “universal certainties” that logically or grammatically underpin anything any normal human being can say or think about their peers.5 Universal certainties are conditioned by universally basic or very general facts of nature. Such facts importantly include “the common behaviour of mankind”; e.g., that we are creatures who inhabit and interact in a world peopled by other creatures; and (excepting pathological cases) acquire and use language, have and express feelings and emotions.6 And 4 Moyal-Sharrock (2007), chapter 7. By “universal,” I mean “across the human world,”

not across “all possible worlds.” Universal certainties are universally grammatical; they “underlie all questions and all thinking” (OC 1997, 415; my emphasis). For a discussion of the grammatical nature of Wittgensteinian certainty, see Moyal-Sharrock (2007), chapter 4. 6 See Carpendale and Lewis: “It might seem that if we endorse the Wittgensteinian idea that children learn about the mental world through learning how to express their feelings, plans, and goals, etc. in language, and learning the criteria for the third person use of various psychological terms, then we must endorse an enculturation position in which mentalistic concepts are imported from the social world to the individual.[...] this is one interpretation of Wittgenstein and it implies a cultural relativism, by which children would just learn the mental concepts used in their particular culture. However, we do not endorse this interpretation for two reasons. First, at the basic level of social understanding (e.g., seeing, looking, intentions, 5

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these facts logically condition the concepts or grammar of all normal human beings. Indeed, Wittgenstein writes that this “common behaviour of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language” (PI 1997, 206)—by which, he means any human language. What we have here, then, is the system of reference that marks the place where relativism hits rock bottom. Other certainties, such as “people go to school and to restaurants,” are what I call “local” certainties: they are bedrock certainties in only some forms of human life. Very general facts of nature that belong to our human form of life are objects of certainty for all humans, whereas the facts that frame the various forms of human life are objects of certainty for only some humans, depending on culture, society, education, interest, etc. It will be a given for all human beings that people need to breathe air, eat, drink, and sleep; that they can walk, feel pain, and use language; that they normally live in communities and do not systematically kill each other. But only for some will it be a given that there is a God, or that sacrifices should be performed, or that the future can be read in the entrails of a chicken.7 But, if certainties are at bedrock, what about form of life, you might ask? That human beings speak and have feelings, etc., are certainties in the human form of life; whereas they might be empirical questions in an alien form of life, and cannot be questions at all in the canine form of life. So, having glimpsed “action” and “certainty,” now, let's take a closer look at Wittgenstein's notion of “form of life.”

2. Competing Interpretations of Wittgenstein's “Form(s) of Life” The form of life is not grounded on something more fundamental; it is the fundament. Conway (1989, 24).

desires and beliefs) children’s understanding is built onto shared practices that we expect would be common across cultures because these are common aspects of human experience (for a parallel argument within the theory view see, Wellman, 1998). This does not rule out that there may be cross-cultural variability, such as in complex emotions.” (2004, 20). 7 As Baker and Hacker rightly point out: “Of course, in advance of a particular question and a specific context it would be quite pointless to draw hard-and-fast distinctions between what counts as the same and what as a different form of life. Such distinctions depend upon the purpose and context of different kinds of investigation” (2009b, 222–23).

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Wittgenstein uses the terms “form” or “forms of life,” Lebensform or Lebensformen, five times in the Investigations, a handful of times elsewhere in the published notes, once in On Certainty,8 and about twenty odd times in his unpublished notes.9 In Philosophical Investigations, he writes: “What has to be accepted, the given, is––so one could say––forms of life” (PI 1997, 226). I found the most compelling understanding of “form of life” many years ago in a book by Gertrude Conway entitled Wittgenstein on Foundations and, more recently, I came across a similar understanding in Stanley Cavell's paper “Declining Decline.”10 Both philosophers detected two senses of “form of life” in Wittgenstein. In Cavell's terminology, a vertical (or biological) sense is whereby the human form of life is distinguished from other forms of life (higher and lower); and a horizontal (or ethnological) sense accounts for sociocultural differences within a form of life. In Conway's terminology, the distinction is the one I've adopted between a human form of life and different forms of human life.11 She sees this as the crucial dichotomy for Wittgenstein; though she acknowledges the distinction he makes between the human form of life and nonhuman forms of life. Whereas all humans share in a fundamental form of life, there exist, within this shared biology, behaviour and environment, within these shared ways of living, possibilities for diversity and variation; for, that is, various forms of human life. There is, as Conway puts it, “a multiplicity within a fundamental unity, a plurality within limits” (1989, 93). So that where the acquisition of language belongs to the human form of life, the acquisition

8

In On Certainty, he writes, “I would like to regard this certainty ... as a form of life” and immediately adds, “(That is very badly expressed and probably badly thought as well)” (OC 1997, 358); and the following remark acts as the corrective: “But that means I want to conceive it as something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified; as it were, as something animal” (OC 1997, 359). 9 See Majetschak (2010), 76. 10 An early version of which was published in 1988: “Declining Decline: Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Culture.” Inquiry 31: 253–64. In this paper, I refer to the later version: Cavell (1996a). 11 “One could say that all humans participate in the human form of life, but that there can be different forms of human life” (1989, 78).

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of cartography, or of algebra, or of parliamentary elections, it attaches only to some of the various forms of human life.12 This mainly bilateral interpretation of “form of life” is not shared by all Wittgenstein scholars. Some take a more unilateral interpretation of form of life as exclusively vertical or horizontal.13 For Newton Garver, a form of life is uniquely something organic or biological,14 and he regards Wittgenstein's employment of the singular and plural as marking only the distinction between the human and non-human forms of life, such as from the canine, bovine, feline, leonine, etc.15 There are also readings of “form of life” as exclusively horizontal: for Baker and Hacker, there is only a plurality of forms of human life, and they are historico-cultural. I argue elsewhere against those views of Wittgenstein's form of life as exclusively vertical or biological. My objection to the Garver, and Baker and Hacker, camps is not so much to their respective descriptions of the form of life they endorse, as to the exclusivity claimed. Stanley Cavell, on the other hand, understands Wittgenstein as perceiving “the human as irreducibly social and natural”: as a “cultural animal” (Cavell 1996, 353).

3. The Cultural Animal The distinguishing feature of the human form of life seems to be that it is the form of life of a cultural animal. That is, according to Cavell, a talking 12

An alternative classification, I suggest, might be generic versus specific notions of form of life: the generic being, e.g., the human, canine, leonine, vegetal, mineral as well as alien forms of life (e.g., OC 1997, 430); and the specific referring to the various forms of life generated by a generic form of life. For example, some of the specific forms of human life generated by the human form of life would be the religious, the nomadic, the academic, etc. 13 This has also been tagged the singularity/plurality debate (see Marques and Venturinha 2010, 16). In fact, the tag is misleading: commentators who, like Newton Garver, defend the interpretation of the human form of life as referring to a single biological human form of life, and not to a plurality of cultural forms of life, still use the plural with reference to various forms of biological life, such as the human, the bovine, etc. 14 Though Garver concedes that Wittgenstein used “form of life” to sometimes refer to culturally variant patterns of living rather than to biological forms and patterns, he does not find this conclusive (1994, 240). 15 Six passages in PI lead Garver to believe that Wittgenstein thought of forms of life in connection with the facts of natural history, and that he meant to distinguish our form of life from the canine, bovine, piscine, reptilian, feline, leonine, etc. (1994, 258, 240).

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animal: “Wittgenstein gives a name for something to call the human form of life; he calls it, more or less, talking” (1996, 332).16 Culture and language go hand in hand, and they are part and parcel of the human form of life: there is no pre-cultural human form of life; culture is internally related to the human animal. The human form of life is fundamentally sociocultural.17 Pascal was right then: “Custom is our nature” (Pensées). John Canfield speaks of “universal customs”: If language is a set of customs in which words play a role, and if language develops out of an earlier set of proto-customs, then it seems plausible to suppose that certain customs are to be found in every human society. The hypothesis is, in particular, that every extant or historically known human culture has language-games of greeting, requesting, responding to requests, refusing, responding to prohibitions, make-believe, intention-utterance, responding to intention-utterance, and possession-claiming. Across the vast differences between the various human cultures, one finds those customs, and others, as a common factor. (2007, 73)

And so, “the common behaviour of mankind” includes sociocultural behaviour. There is a human form of life, and it is characterised by these “universal customs.” We must, however, distinguish between this basic, universal notion of culture and a more sophisticated notion of culture. Basic sociocultural activities, such as playing, helping, fighting, and sociocultural relations, such as parenthood and community, are shared by humans universally; but, as we evolved from proto-linguistic into linguistic forms of communication, different languages embedded in diverse and local cultural norms and values emerged. That, contra Baker and Hacker, Wittgenstein did envisage a “uniquely human form of life characteristic of the species” stands out most prominently in his reference to “the common behaviour of mankind.” The basic, “regular ways of acting” (CE, 397) shared by all human beings are 16

As mentioned earlier, Wittgenstein seems to acknowledge the existence of pre linguistic humans phylogenetically and ontogenetically. But perhaps we can classify these as “proto-humans” and allow that what grossomodo distinguishes the human from other animals by is language, and that culture is not something that emerges after language arrives on the scene. 17 This is what distinguishes it from the nonhuman animal form of life, which can, at most, be social. Cavell wrote: “Spengler’s vision of Culture as a kind of Nature ... seems to me shared, if modified, in the Investigations” (1996a, 337).

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not behaviours that demarcate persons or communities from each other, but behaviours which, if absent, would alter what it means to be a human being. Wittgenstein repeatedly mentions such shared behaviours, for example, […] you say to someone 'This is red (pointing); then you tell him 'Fetch me a red book' – and he will behave in a particular way. This is an immensely important fact about us human beings. And it goes together will all sorts of other facts of equal importance, like the fact that in all the languages we know, the meanings of words don't change with the days of the week. Another such fact is that pointing is used and understood in a particular way – that people react to it in a particular way. (LFM 1976, 182)

And, remember the tribe of people mentioned earlier, brought up from early youth to give no expression of feeling of any kind, “these men would have nothing human about them” (Z 1970, 390). The human form of life, by definition, includes behaviours that all human beings have in common; and this is why it is the universal “system of reference,” which conditions what might be called, though in obvious contrast to Chomsky, the “universal grammar” of mankind—that grammar by means of which any human being can understand a foreign language.18

4. Where Relativism Hits Rock Bottom Language and culture, then, are intrinsic characteristics of the human form of life. And the fact that human beings are necessarily historico-culturally situated makes them necessary participants in various forms of human life. Now, it may be questioned, since there can be no de facto separation of the human form of life from the innumerable cultural forms of life, why bother distinguishing it conceptually? Well, for one thing, the distinction serves to mark differences between the human form of life and nonhuman forms of life19 but, more importantly, it marks the place where relativism comes to an end.

18 See

Moyal-Sharrock (2021b). Oswald Hanfling concurs: although Wittgenstein does not use the phrase “the human form of life,” he asks, what should we make “of the tantalizing remark that ‘if a lion could talk, we could not understand him?’” (PI 1997, 223) Perhaps this is an expression of the difference between the human form of life and those of nonhuman animals. In that case, the "human form of life" would have to be understood in a narrower sense than that just considered [by Hanfling in the chapter at hand]: “the point would be to draw attention to the difference between our form of life and 19

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Whereas difference, pluralism, and disagreement thrive in the various forms of human life, there is no pluralism, only unquestionable unity in our one human form of life. Our universally shared form of life informs Wittgenstein's soft realism by constituting the system of reference, which logically underpins any meaningful account of ourselves and our world. It logically/grammatically rules out a thoroughgoing relativism by ensuring that there are some things about which we, humans, cannot disagree if we are to make sense. To use one of Wittgenstein's examples: we cannot cut off someone's head and expect them to go on living (OC 1997, 274)—not in “real life” anyway. And the fact that we can conceive of it—say, in fictional contexts, or in our magical or religious forms of human life—does not make it a real possibility in our human form of life. I'll conclude this talk with a brief look at the Remarks on Frazer to help illustrate this point. As is clear from the Remarks on Frazer, Wittgenstein is a relativist as far as religion and magic are concerned, but not where science or knowledge are concerned. Though a tribe's “magic” may seem to contradict our universal certainties, Wittgenstein is clear that it does not in fact do so20: The same indigenous person, who stabs the picture of his enemy apparently in order to kill him, really builds his hut out of wood and carves his arrow skilfully and not in effigy. (GB 1993, 125; my italics)

That is, he knows what will really kill his enemy, and what will act as protection in case that fails: a skilfully carved arrow and a hut built out of wood (GB 1993, 125). Contrary to what Frazer alleges, the indigenous people do not have “a completely false (even insane) idea of the course of nature … Only their magic is different” (GB 1993, 141). Having denounced Frazer's interpretation of magic as “essentially false physics” (GB 1993, 129), Wittgenstein wants to underline that magic cohabits with science in the lives of the indigenous people he is referring to (as it does in twentieth-century societies), and without their being confused about the two: The nonsense here is that Frazer represents these people as if they had a completely false (even insane) idea of the course of nature, whereas they only possess a peculiar interpretation of the phenomena. That is, if they were

that of animals, as opposed to what they have in common. But there is no inconsistency here” (2002, 5). 20 “… it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are indeed not doubted” (OC 1997, 342).

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To Wittgenstein's consternation, “Frazer would be capable of believing that an indigenous person21 dies because of an error” (GB 1993, 131). That is to say, Frazer would be capable of believing that, for example, the women in the Trobriand Islands called Yoyova, or flying witches, who are said to have the capacity to fly, really believe they can fly. But, of course, they do not believe this, and that is why they have fire-flies to do it for them.22 Were a Yoyova to actually attempt to fly off a cliff, it wouldn't be the “indigenous person” in her but the deluded person who acted: her attempting to fly off a cliff would not be an error but a pathological act. What Wittgenstein says of the Rain King, in the following passage, also applies to the flying witch: It is, of course, not so that the people believe that the ruler has these powers, and the ruler knows very well that he doesn’t have them, or can only fail to know if he is an imbecile or a fool. But the notion of his power is, of course, adapted in such a way that it can harmonize with experience – the people’s as well as his own. That some hypocrisy thereby plays a role is true only’ Insofar as it generally lies close at hand with most things people do. (GB 1993, 139; my emphasis)

Some hypocrisy but mostly, as he will say, symbolism. In any case, Wittgenstein is clear that there is no confusion between ritual and scientific belief. As regards the Rain-King in Africa to whom the people pray for rain, when the rainy period comes, he writes: “But surely that means that they do not really believe that he can make it rain, otherwise they would do it in the dry periods of the year” (GB 1993, 137)—this is what he means by saying that the notion of the king's power is adapted in such a way that it can harmonise with experience. Their magic notwithstanding, the “indigenous people” share our basic acceptance of the “very general facts of nature” and the “common behaviour of mankind.” When it comes to their basic beliefs and ordinary ways of acting, their magic does not trump their science, but vice-versa: “If the adoption of a child proceeds in such a way that the mother draws it from under her clothes, it is surely insane to believe that an error is present and that she believes she has given birth to the child” (GB 1993, 125). The mother cannot be in error because, magical rituals notwithstanding, she 21

I have, here and elsewhere, used the terms “indigenous person” or “indigenous people” in place of the politically incorrect term originally used by Wittgenstein. 22 Malinowski in Young (1979), 207.

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never believed she was in fact giving birth to the child. The adoption ritual is something she may believe in, not something she believes that. Or better, it is simply something symbolic.23 As Wittgenstein insists, magic is not based on opinion but on symbolism.24 The “indigenous people” have science as well as magic, as do we.25 It is not their magic that we should compare with our science, but their science that we should compare with our science (e.g., how they build their huts and carve their arrows) and, here, there is a better or worse way of doing things that they could learn from us, or us from them.26 There is, then, only one benchmark when it comes to science. Wittgenstein would share Thomas Kuhn's anti-relativistic view of scientific progress—progress not in terms of truth but in evolutionary and pragmatic terms—as increasing fitness over time, where fitness means consonance with the state of the art as defined by the global scientific community. The point is that magic—when it does not slide into madness—never overrides science. What ritual calls for is one thing—it has its role and its impact—but it does not trump the universal bedrock of human thought. Such certainties as “human beings can't fly unaided” or “human beings feel and express pain” (pathologies excepted) are part of the objective, universal foundation of knowledge claims—that to which Wittgenstein refers when, to the question “Could a legislator abolish the concept of pain?” he replies: “The basic concepts are interwoven so closely with what is most fundamental in our way of living that they are therefore unassailable” (LWII 1992, 43). 23 Wittgenstein also sees the purpose of some ritualistic action as expressivist: “Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one’s beloved. That is obviously not based on the belief that it will have some specific effect on the object which the picture represents. It aims at satisfaction and achieves it. Or rather: it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.” (GB 1993, 123) 24 “… the characteristic feature of ritualistic action is not at all a view, an opinion’ (GB 129); ‘magic is always based on the idea of symbolism.” (GB 1993, 125) 25 “I should like to say: nothing shows our kinship to those indigenous people better than the fact that Frazer has on hand a word as familiar to himself and to us as ‘ghost’ or ‘shade’ in order to describe the views of these people. … much too little is made of the fact that we count the words ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ as part of our educated vocabulary. Compared with this, the fact that we do not believe that our soul eats and drinks is a trifling matter.” (GB 1993, 133) 26 “As simple as it sounds: the distinction between magic and science can be expressed by saying that in science there is progress, but in magic there isn’t. Magic has no tendency within itself to develop.” (GB 1993, 141)

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Whereas there can be countless forms of human life, there is only one human form of life, a form of life that collectively characterises all of “mankind.” Wittgenstein makes it clear that he has this understanding of form of life in mind when he writes that “[t]he common behaviour of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language” (PI 1997, 206). By this, he means that it is this universally-shared human behaviour, to which language-games belong, that constitutes the bedrock from which any human being can begin to understand another human being, and from which any human being must begin to make sense. This precludes a thoroughgoing relativism. There is multiplicity, yes, but within a fundamental unity.

References Baker, G. P., and P. M. S. Hacker. 2009a. Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning. Volume I of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations: Part II – Exegesis §1-184. Second extensively revised edition, edited by P. M. S. Hacker. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Baker, G. P., and P. M. S. Hacker. 2009b. Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity. Volume II of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations. Essays and Exegesis of §185-242. Second extensively revised edition, edited by P. M. S. Hacker. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Canfield, J. V. 2007. Becoming Human: The Development of Language, Self, and Self-Consciousness. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Carpendale, J. and C. Lewis. 2004. “Constructing an Understanding of Mind: The Development of Children's Social Understanding within Social Interaction.” Behavioral & Brain Sciences 27: 79–96. Cavell, S. 1969. Must We Mean What We Say: A Book of Essays. New York: CUP. Cavell, S. 1996. “Declining Decline.” In The Cavell Reader, edited by S. Mulhall, 321–52. Oxford: Blackwell. Conway, G. D. 1989. Wittgenstein on Foundations. NJ: Humanities Press. Davies, William. 2020. “A digital dystopia.” In “New Statesman writers on how the Covid-19 pandemic will transform our way of life.” New Statesman 28 (August). Garver, N. 1994. This Complicated Form of Life: Essays on Wittgenstein. Chicago: Open Court. Glock, H.-J. 1996. A Wittgenstein Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell. Hanfling, O. 2002. Wittgenstein and the Human Form of Life. London: Routledge.

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Marques, A., and N. Venturinha. 2010. Form(s) of Life and the Nature of Experience. Peter Lang International Publishing. Majetschak, S. 2010. “Forms and Patterns of Life: A Reassessment of a SoCalled Basic Concept in the Late Philosophy of Wittgenstein.” In Wittgenstein on Forms of Life and the Nature of Experience, edited by A. Marques and N. Venturinha. Bern: Lang, 75–96. Moyal-Sharrock, D. 2021a. “From Deed to Word: gapless and kink-free enactivism.” In Certainty in Action: Wittgenstein on Language, Mind and Epistemology. London: Bloomsbury, 81–97. Moyal-Sharrock, D. 2021b. “Universal Grammar: Wittgenstein versus Chomsky.” In Certainty in Action: Wittgenstein on Language, Mind and Epistemology. London: Bloomsbury, 33–48. Moyal-Sharrock, D. 2007. Understanding Wittgenstein's On Certainty. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Moyal-Sharrock, D. 2003. “Logic in Action: Wittgenstein's Logical Pragmatism and the Impotence of Scepticism.” Philosophical Investigations 26 (2): 125–48. Shafak, Elif. 2020. “The Old World Is Gone.” In “New Statesman writers on how the Covid-19 pandemic will transform our way of life.” New Statesman 28 (August). Young, M. W. (ed.). 1979. The Ethnography of Malinowski: The Trobriand Islands 1915-18. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Works by Ludwig Wittgenstein: GB. 1993. “Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough.” In Philosophical Occasions: 1912-1951, edited by J. C. Klagge and A. Nordman. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 119–55. LFM. 1976. Wittgenstein's Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge 1939, from the notes of R. G. Bosanquet, N. Malcolm, R. Rhees and Y. Smythies, edited by C. Diamond. Hassocks: Harvester Press. LW II. 1992. Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. II, edited by G. H. von Wright and H. Nyman. Translated by C. G. Luckhardt and M. A. E. Aue. Oxford: Blackwell. OC.1997. On Certainty, edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Translated by D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. Amended First Edition. Oxford: Blackwell. PI.1997. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Second Edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Z.1970. Zettel, edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Berkeley: University of California Press.

CHAPTER 6 SPIRITUAL CULTURE AND ITS RELEVANCE IN OUR LIFE: A STUDY IN SRI AUROBINDO RATIKANTA PANDA

Abstract In this paper, an attempt is made to analyse the facets of culture, in general, from an Indian perspective, in particular, with special reference to Sri Aurobindo’s idea that culture is comprehensive—a matter of the way of interaction among individuals of a group expressed in the form of art, literature, value, religion and ideas. It is the procedure or the manner, not the product, that matters in distinguishing a human being from other creatures. It is the identity of man and the society in which he is born and lives. It is the expression of the soul’s journey from the vegetative plane to the blissful plane. In this sense, culture is not static but dynamic, expressed either in the form of civilization or the values of the individual. It is the unity amidst the diversity of manners, customs, and habits. It is self-critical, not dogmatic; and is, thereby, an outcome of the dialogue between the self and others, which provides a systematic expression to things that one considers worth preserving, worshiping, and neglecting. It is all-inclusive and a harmony of all aspects of life—cognitive, conative, and affective but not amenable to rational and causal analysis only. It is a matter both of the body and the mind and the spirit. Emphasis on any one of these, neglecting the other aspects, takes away the very essence of life. It is exhibited in all walks of an individual life, be it social or professional, etc. Thus, culture symbolizes interpersonal relationships among individuals, values they share, and artistic pleasures through which they participate in society. It is integral not incomplete, free not bound—the key to all sorts of development, be it physical, psychological, or spiritual.

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Key words: culture, value, civilisation, spirit, freedom,

I The word “culture” stands for its members’ identity and dignity. It is not the one-sided development of any one aspect of life. Still, it is harmonious, guided by the spirit that elevates both the individual and society so that the individual enjoys freedom for its realization. Technological advancement, along with spiritual development, is the veritable point of social progress leading to a fulfilled life in man’s physical, psychological, intellectual and spiritual aspects. The realisation of the self gets its fruition in every walk of life—be it cognitive, affective, or conative—and allows everybody to excel where they would care to, fulfilling the basic needs of human existence. The evolvement of consciousness—from bestial reality to spiritual reality, in and through mental and intellectual activities—frees one from the bondage of ignorance. Culture is the inward journey of the spirit, a process of the freedom of one’s consciousness from all sorts of pressures, and the creative form or pattern of life that elevates man from the vegetative plane to the supra-conscious state. The manifestation of the spirit from within constitutes the essence of humanity in terms of our various activities. The existence of human life on the earth is marked not only by our evolutionary history in terms of our anthropological development but also by our ever-growing interpersonal relations—the ways of dealing with conflicts and representing our general facets and occasional conflicts. Man’s way of looking at the world at large, and at the further cosmic level, his way of looking at the entire universe, is collectively called culture. Man is the product of a culture of its time and space. Culture moulds and is moulded by its development. It has a healthy and solidifying influence on man. The ancient arts of Indian culture show the predominance of animated life, be it human beings or animals, in the artistic endeavours of its people. In Indian culture, materialistic awards have always been degraded because man comes to the earth alone, goes alone, and carries nothing to his heavenly abode. All these facts suggest that culture is not a genetically endowed inheritance. Instead, it is a socially acquired background learned and transmitted with great care and concern. This learning points to the fact that culture continuously nurtures an individual’s personality. Culture is derived from the Latin word colo, which means cultivating, till, or nourishing. The fundamental principles of any culture, which are their driving forces, define a particular culture’s character and lay down its laws. These laws are exhibited at different levels in a given culture, like social

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laws, customs and traditions, political and legal laws, and the general value system of the society. The ethical system comprising a given society’s social and moral values is completely arbitrary and susceptible to societal changes. Any alteration in culture exhibits the change first and foremost in the society’s value system. Thus, the value system of a society is highly fluid and changes according to changes in the world at large. When defined in terms of its value system, culture affords a focal point to the observer, whereby different cultures of the world can be objectively studied. To be noted, these are not just any criteria whereby culture could be studied; instead, the value system is the most fundamental criterion. Its significance can hardly be denied while comprehensively considering culture. When a foreign observer tries to interpret an indigenous culture without considering its value system, the result is nothing short of misunderstanding. Values are of pertinent importance to human survival. Values, which may be of different hues and shades like religious, ethical, social, political, educational, professional, or even sports, lay down the guidelines whereby a certain behaviour in a particular context is acceptable. Social sensitivity, moral uprightness, and team spirit are some words associated with these contextual shades. Human behaviour that is not acceptable to society is punished. From the foregoing discussion, a rough idea about culture could be made that culture is always a matter of interaction among the individuals of a group. An isolated individual, like Robinson Crusoe, does not have any culture. Culture is an expression of one’s dialogue with the universe at large and a way of looking at things around us. A way of giving a systematic expression to things that one considers worth preserving, worshipping, and worth neglecting. It is a symbolic hierarchy of one’s preferences for different elements of nature and emotional reactions to it. It is exhibited in all walks of individual life, be it social, professional, etc. Thus, culture symbolises interpersonal relationships among individuals, the values they share, and the artistic pleasures in which they participate in society. Culture as a single concept is a misnomer. Culture is not a unitary concept, rather, it is a blanket term comprising an ethical value system, social and legal laws, morality, customs, and traditions, on the one hand, and defining principles that drive it, on the other. This exhibition is done through various media, like folk and myths, arts and literature, religion, rites, and rituals.

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Further, culture is not static and given to the man at the time of birth. It is inherited, not genetically but socially. It is a changing and ever-evolving entity that responds both positively and negatively to the changes around it. Every culture’s present form has evolved out of the ancient cultures that existed at the time of primitive man. This evolution has taken more than a millennium to reach the point where present cultures stand. In some of the other instances, however, this link of the evolutionary chain broke down altogether. Old Mayan and Aztec cultures that flourished in Egypt did not evolve. Present-day Egyptian culture has hardly any similarity with those cultures. The evolution of these cultures was, thus, arrested at one point in time. In this regard, Indian culture has the longest continuity as Indian culture is still the same as in Vedic times. All the other cultures of the world either changed drastically or ceased to evolve at one point in time. Folk tales and songs are the links through which the present form of culture is attached to its pristine form. We know the living of our early ancestors through our folk tales and songs. The religious hymns and paeans show the intensity of their religious values. Thus, culture is the comprehensive whole of all the aspects of human life. The earliest definition of culture comes down to us from E. B. Taylor, who defined culture as that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. (White 1959)

Thus, culture is considered a “complex whole” of different elements like law, morals, etc. These elements of culture may resemble the elements of other cultures. The laymen’s conception of culture, however, is of it being a way of living by the people. In the words of Verhelst, culture is every aspect of life: know-how, technical knowledge, customs of food and dress, religion, mentality, values, language, symbols, socio-political and economic behaviour, indigenous methods of taking decisions and exercising power, methods of production and economic relations, and so on. (Verhelst 1990)

Civilisational aspects of technology and means of production are as much a part of a culture as societal norms or religious values. Thus, it is a “form or pattern” exhibited in all walks of life, from cultural values to civilisational aspects of skill development, and technological advancement (Pande 1999). In such a notion, two striking facets of culture are blended, viz. ethical and technical. The blending is possible only when the two are in strong

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harmony, i.e., when “they exhibit a manifest unity,” but when it turns “heterogeneous,” to quote Pande, “the concept of an all-inclusive form becomes vague and subjective” (1999). Thus, culture is a composite whole of not only the subjective values but the objective goods also. This blending was first achieved by Spengler, for whom culture could not be delineated in its objective traits. Spengler saw culture in an anthropomorphic fashion. Culture, for him, was a super-organism passing through the obvious stages of birth, growth, maturity and death, and this order was highly cyclic, such that after every death, there is a possibility of new birth. Still, this new birth may not have any similarity with the previous birth. Thus, for Spengler, “each culture has its new possibilities of selfexpression which arise, ripen, decay and never return” (1918–1922). Thus, culture and its civilisational aspects blended in his viewpoint of culture, which was in direct contrast to Toynbee, for whom it was the civilisational aspect that was more important in any culture and only that which gave distinction to a culture. Further, for Toynbee, the order of cultural movement was not cyclical but linear, such that, with the dissolution of one culture, nothing remains in the end and subsequent creation is an entirely new creation (Toynbee). In linear conception, cultures are seen as advancing upon one another, such that the present form of culture is more advanced and improved than its previous form and the future form will be better than the present. This conception rests on the idea that future generations fare better than past generations because they have the requisite experience of the past generations, and they need not make the same mistakes again to learn from them. This conception, illustrated in the works of Toynbee, Taylor, and even Hegel, made a progressive hierarchy of world cultures. There is a grading scale in which the oriental cultures ranked lowest and Western culture at the top, due to the technological development and social libertarian values in Western culture. Taylor ranked Western culture, as a whole, the best among all the cultures, whereas Hegel gave that covetous status to German culture. Thus, the linear conception, a chief characteristic of Western thoughts on culture, is, most of the time, concerned with Western civilisation or, at the most, seeing the societal set of norms as its dominant trait, which is also manifested in Eliot and Durkheim. However, culture is not just the collection of values held by a group of people, as a whole, containing the sum of its different parts. The mutual interactions between its different parts make it more than the sum of its parts and lend an organic unity to it. But this unity is something that is not consciously achieved by the culture itself. It resides in it as its essential feature (Eliot 1949). Emile Durkheim seemed to go a step further by

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maintaining society as a harmonious whole of “thought, feeling and action” and culture as a “collective representation” of all these. For him, culture was not just an agglomeration of individual values, but a “collective consciousness” that is inherited from the generations gone by (Oakman and Douglas 2005). This organic wholeness provides culture with compactness and self-sufficiency, which helps it to defend itself and counter outside cultural assaults in a more strengthened way. In the words of Hatch, collective representation, according to Durkheim, express[es] certain properties concerning the way society is organised: if the physical arrangement of the members of society is changed, then the collective representation will change accordingly. Consequently, raw intellect is not the guiding force behind cultural institutions. (Hatch and Elvin)

This means that culture is not invented rationally like gadgets or created consciously like artifacts through intellect; rather, cultural elements are continually borrowed from each other and modified ceaselessly according to the changing scenario. Culture may be learned consciously, but modifications that are affected by its principles are time-consuming and, therefore, subtle. Only over certain years, can one say that such-and-such aspects of this culture have changed. Before the eighteenth century, such changes in cultures were few and far between, owing to physical and social barriers between different cultures. The societies were geographically far apart from each other. The means of transport were outmoded and took more time to reach far-off places. It would take months to cross the Atlantic on a water ship. Because of this physical separateness, inter-society interaction was not possible: until, and unless, societies interacted with each other, cultural values could not be transmitted from one society to another. Apart from physical segregation, social taboos also hampered the interaction between different societies. It was considered, for example, a sacrilege in Indian society for someone to go across the seas at that time. Because of these reasons, cultures borrowed less from other cultures and, therefore, underwent less modification in their principles. But the contemporary scenario has changed completely. Industrial revolutions and globalisation have exploded the frontiers between different societies. People are compelled to work outside their cities and nations. Societies, through mass scale immigration, are coming closer to each other. Diaspora culture is a significant outcome of such twentieth-century immigration. Inter-society interaction has increased so much that this interaction crosses its limit in some instances, and the dominant culture seems trying to devour the

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submissive ones. For example, American culture has cast its overwhelming influence upon Mexican culture. The various ways in which a culture manifests itself are roughly catalogued as arts, literature, religion, social rituals and laws, customs and traditions, etc. All of these are the necessary components of any given culture at any given point in time. One of the other manifestations may be a dominant theme of culture at some time, but it does not undermine the importance of the other parts. Their constant interaction overall achieves, for a culture, a consistent whole, or, to put it in Eliot’s terminology, an “organic whole.” The important thing about these parts is that they add vitality to culture and make it what it is by imparting a distinctive character to it. Culture, then, becomes a “system of collective habits,” wherein each component has an instrumental value. As Malinowsky observed, in this regard, …in every type of civilisation, every custom, material object, idea, and belief fulfils some vital function, has some task to accomplish, represents an indispensable part with a working whole. (Kardiner and Preble 1961)

All the outer manifestations of culture, like art, religion, literature or even its civilisational aspects, spring from its essential spirit. Chattopadhyaya explained such a conception: Culture comprehends all aspects of social life, language and communication, modes of production and distribution, religion and morals and different forms of art, science and technology.

Thus, Chattopadhyaya blended the conceptions of Eliot and Durkheim of social life and morals as the crux of culture; the science and technological or civilisational aspect of Toynbee; and the economic aspect in modes and production of Karl Marx. For Marx, a human being was a product of the economic factors of society: “the mode of productions.” As Karl Marx said, in this regard, the …mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life… it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. (Marx 1859)

Culture, in that sense, was nothing but a societal expression conditioned under the overwhelming impact of the economy of the society. For Marx, culture is not something that was shared and enriched by all its members; rather, it is a construct that is set up by the ruling class of the society and thrust upon its lower classes. Bretens summarised the Marxian view, thus:

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culture gives an individual personal and social identity. An individual’s identity is first and foremost fashioned by the culture he lives in. His social identity, on a large scale, influences his identity. Many of the values that he considers dear to him and thinks of as his invention are being imparted unconsciously by his culture. He thinks and behaves, to an extent, according to the expectation of his social identity. Thus, any individual has two identities—personal and social. His personal identity is very much influenced by his social identity. The martial values of fighting wars, courage, and martyrdom are core values of the Punjabi culture; whereas values like humility and charity are core to the Bengali culture. The individual belonging to those cultures will inherit those values as a part of his social identity. On appropriate occasions, he would be expected to act by the image of his culture that he represents. Gradually, these values will seep into his identity and become a part of it. It does not mean that all individuals would necessarily inherit all the principle values of their culture. Some may successfully make them a part of their identity, whereas some may not. This accounts for personal differences in a given society or culture. The cultural identity, on the larger scale, fashions the national as well as the international identity of a society. Races are known for their typical qualities worldwide because of the unconscious advertising of their social identities. Zoroastrians are known for their peaceful nature all over the world. These lend credibility to the race in terms of certain values, on the one hand, and, on the other, elevate them against other races in terms of those values.

II Sri Aurobindo was one of the most profound thinkers of the twentieth century. He was the most enlightened and, at the same time, reactionary of all the contemporary Indian philosophers. Culture, for Aurobindo, is a living ideal—the very breath of one’s existence is reflected in the spirit of its value system. Western conception of culture has been delimited to seeing culture in its outward expressions like arts and literature, as put by T. S. Eliot, for whom culture is a …way of life of a particular people living together in one place. The culture is visible in their arts, in their social systems, in their habits and customs, and their religion… (Eliot 1949)

The most commonly held notion about culture is seeing it as a “form or pattern,” including not only societal values but also societal forms of employment and technology (Pande 1999). In such a notion, two striking

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facets of culture are blended viz. the ethical and the technological. The blending is possible only when the two are in strong harmony, i.e., when “they exhibit a manifest unity.” However, when it turns “heterogenous,” to quote Pande, “the concept of an all-inclusive form becomes vague and subjective” (Pande 1999). Against a materialist conception, Aurobindo called culture not just a way of life, but the very essence of human life, the life itself. To quote Aurobindo, The culture of a people may be roughly described as the expression of a consciousness of life which formulates itself in the aspects. There is the side of thought, of ideal, of upward will, and the soul’s, there is the side of creative self-expression and appreciative aesthesis, intelligence, and imagination; and there is the side of practical and outward formulation (Aurobindo 1959).

Aurobindo’s view highlights the spiritual aspect of a culture, seeing culture as more than a set of pre-defined norms, or a unity achieved by its parts, as in merely a biological organism. It is, instead, consciousness, personified and enlarged. It is a Shakti. To quote Chattopadhyaya, in this regard, Sri Aurobindo’s concept of culture is essentially spiritual and comprehensive. It includes both the inner psychology and outer sociology of human life and its environment. (Chatopadhyaya 1976)

Thus, he attempted to define culture from its very essence, its very spirit. Criticising this materialistically objective stance, Aurobindo asserted that “the individual is not merely a social unit" and is "not founded solely on his social work and function," but is someone "seeking the truth and law of his being" because he is something in himself, a soul, a being, who has to fulfil his truth and law as well as his natural or his assigned part in the truth and law of the collective existence. (Aurobindo 1977)

The objective approach is beneficial for charting out the events of nature but, in the course of human development, it fails miserably. In the words of Chattopadhyaya, the objective view prescribes a law for human development which lies outside the human being itself. Even if this law is discovered or determined by reason and accepted or enforced by individual will, it is unable to do justice to the endless intricacy, complexity and creativity of human culture. (Chatopadhyaya 1976)

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Thus, each human being is a “self-developing soul” striving for its selfrealisation, but this realisation has to spring not from outside forces, but from the inner strength of the soul (Aurobindo 1977). Likewise, culture, too, is a consciousness in the course of its development, a collective consciousness, albeit, that strives for its true realisation. In this way, the teleological character of a culture was highlighted by Aurobindo. Being teleological, culture is driven and oriented towards its definite end, which is realising its true self as Shakti, or the spirit. Towards such a realisation, all the components of culture—be it moral or artistic decorum—go in harmony. Any one of the aspects becoming dominant may cause the total downfall of the culture. This commercial transformation of life has a direct impact on the value system of society. For want of strong ethical foundations, the values become degenerate, making life itself a shallow existence. The entire focus is on a thing being utilitarian or not, in terms of whether or not it can be sold in the market. Values are useful only if they will yield practical results in the future. Society becomes a haphazard mass of people pursuing money. The culture of such a people is not a value-laden entity worth preserving, but a convenient bin into which all utility-less values can be thrown. For want of a cultural environment, life becomes not precious to be preserved, but an aimless wandering on the earth. Culture demands adherence to its codes; a material society overthrows whatever is imposed. Culture asks for inward development of the soul, and a material society impinges upon reason. It objectifies everything, even values; places it in the market and weighs its utility. Reason can give us only partial or finite truths. It cannot apprehend the totalities, nor go to the roots of the matter. A life governed only with reason, in this sense, would verily be like a machine doing its rounds from morning to evening. Such a life, if it becomes the ideal of the culture, would be deprived of its more exalted facets, the delicate and purer heights. Life is not only governed by causes that could be reached and governed by reason alone. Life has its emotions also, and it strives for the soul’s truths as well, which are supra-rational. Faced with those realms, like that of religion, reason is bewildered to see the totality of their experiences, which are so full of meaning that they don’t require the importance of reason to explain themselves. That is why religious truths don’t go straight to the head, but to the heart. These are more to be felt than explained. That is why it is said that faith is more a matter of the heart than the head. A culture where reason rules has the head but not the heart. By its very spirit and definition, a purely rational culture gets deprived of those exalted virtues and truths beyond the pale of its spirit, which is reason, and, thus, leaves it

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as a mass of mechanical ritual only. Aurobindo vigorously condemns this objectification of values and excessive rationalism. Culture is the art of living for Aurobindo. It is the spiritual development of the soul. It aims to uplift a man’s life to the greatest heights possible and fill it with true happiness. Unlike the Buddhists, Aurobindo, thus, maintains that life is not full of only misery, and its true aim is to achieve happiness on the earth. He maintains, time and again, the worth of happiness in human life: A true happiness in this world is the right terrestrial aim of man, and true happiness lies in the finding and maintenance of a natural harmony of spirit, mind and body. (Aurobindo 1953)

He urges culture to work in this direction, and any culture that succeeds in doing so is true culture. Culture is the expression of consciousness and it manifests itself through various aspects of thought, creative self-expression and outward formulation, which Aurobindo equates with soul, mind and body. In the thought aspect, a culture gives to its people their “ideal” or, in Marxian terms, their ideology, in terms of their philosophy; shapes their “upward will,” by way of laying their religion; and fulfils the “soul’s aspiration,” by driving it towards their religion and fulfilling their ideals. For creative selfexpression, a culture chooses the medium of arts and literature, becoming a platform for people’s imagination to score highly. Society and polity serve as the outward formulation of a culture’s ideal and creative intelligence. Culture provides the environment in which an idea can flourish (Aurobindo 1997). A culture may be characterised by the dominance of any one of the aspects of life—soul, mind or body. A culture may be predominantly material, exemplifying its body aspect, like the modern Western culture, or predominantly intellectual, exemplifying the mind aspect, like the old Greco-Roman culture, or essentially spiritual, exemplifying the soul aspect, like the Indian culture. But this predominance is what heralds doom for a culture. It should have a harmonious balance of all of these three aspects. Like an organism is properly called human only when all its soul, mind and body are functioning well, a set of values are called culture only when all of the aspects are in perfect harmony. A culture should be valued by how far it has successfully achieved harmony in all its aspects of soul, mind and body.

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Aurobindo notes, in this regard, one interesting fact about the predominance of one or the other aspect in a culture. While the predominance of material aspects in Western culture leads to its subsequent degeneration, the dominance of the soul aspects, in India’s case, helped it strengthen its culture’s foothold further. While in other cultures, the mind and body aspects had been dominant, it is only in Indian culture that the soul aspect had the most swaying power, consistently, and it still has it. Greek culture exemplified the mind aspect in its art and literature and in the philosophical traditions of Plato and Aristotle. These traditions failed to provide spiritual colouring to their culture, as they were not only the hallmark but also the initiators of Rationalistic thought. The soul either collapsed to ideas (in Plato) or did not exist at all (in Aristotle). Despite being great traditions that were to overshadow the coming thought for almost two centuries, the two traditions of Plato and Aristotle failed to give the much-needed stability to Greek culture with the result that, with the fall of Rome, Greek culture itself fell to the invading Europeans. But the unique characteristic feature of Indian culture is what Aurobindo has stated: India’s central conception is that of the Eternal, the Spirit encased in matter, involved and immanent in it and evolving on the material plane by a rebirth of the individual up the scale of being till in mental man it enters the world of ideas and the realm of conscious morality, dharma. (Aurobindo 1953)

The Indian mind has always believed in the supremacy of dharma and that truth rightly belongs to the spirit only, which is the ultimate fundamental and a foundation of our existence. It not only cultivates the inner life but also reforms the outer expression of it. Western culture, on the other hand, sadly failed to achieve harmony between its inner and outer body. Because of this separation, their progress, according to Aurobindo, was not true progress; rather, it was a disintegration of their spirit that is manifested in the routine chaos of its people’s lives, marked with disillusionment, disappointment, and distress. Instead of true happiness, the people run after any momentary pleasures worth hunting. The eternal has been replaced by the momentary. Whereas Indian culture strives for the true eternality in terms of metaphysical time, the West tries to disintegrate even time into its various fractions. From microseconds to nanoseconds and from nanoseconds to picoseconds, it has “progressed” and that progress itself is the cause of their misery. Indian Culture, on the other hand, has been successful in keeping its spirit by remaining faithful to its essential principles. This alone is the secret of its survival while other nations were falling to the overwhelming impact of

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the West. Not only did its rock-solid spiritualism give it a strong foundation, but it kept on adding the cement of stability as the bricks of time went on, piling one on top of the other. Everything else draws its existence from that spiritual fountainhead that has given Indian culture a cementing force to bond its diverse elements strongly with each other and defended it from the foreign onslaught, and kept it alive and fresh throughout. This helped in preventing its fall before the invading cultures of Islam and, later. the British. Consciousness is the process of evolvement on the road to perfection and culmination in the Absolute Spirit. Its economic infrastructure does not create just conditions and gadgets of material production only but provides men with a sense of satisfaction that uplifts their souls and exalts their values. It identifies the men’s soul with their work, but not in the way that collective regime does, which is a sheer imposition from the outward laws. In such a collective regime, there is no possibility of individual freedom. The soul is suffocated under an enormous load of societal laws. And freedom, according to Aurobindo, is the most basic condition for man’s realisation. Such a realisation is not possible by growing just outwardly. That realisation has to spring from within inward. Any culture that does not provide an individual with the possibility of inner growth and development is a suffocating mass of desultory values. Whereas culture should aim towards individual freedom and its spiritual development. Aurobindo notes: The whole aim of the great culture is to lift man to something which at first he is not, to lead him to knowledge though he starts from an unfathomable ignorance, to teach him to live by his reason, though actually, he lives much more by his unreason by the law of good and unity, though he is now full of evil and discord, by a law of beauty and harmony, though his actual life is a repulsive muddle of ugliness and jarring barbarism, by some high law of his spirit though at present he is egoistic, material, unspiritual, engrossed by the needs and desires of his physical being. If a civilisation has not any of these aims, it can hardly at all be said to have culture and certainly in no sense a greater and noble culture. (FIC) (Aurobindo 1959)

Such has, according to Aurobindo, always been the conception of Indian culture. It gives super-importance to the spirit, instead of the mind and the body only. Its people realise very early on that spiritual truths are not only of the highest kind but also the most fundamental. The “ideal” provided by philosophy in Indian culture gets reinforced by the “upward will” of its people as expressed in their “religion.” This, according to Aurobindo, is a distinctive trait of the Indian culture. To know the value system in Indian culture, first, it is important to know its religion. Any judgment regarding

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Indian values is to be made in light of its religion, as religion and philosophy are not distinct practices in Indian culture. These are inextricably bound with one another. Philosophy is the soul of religion, whereas religion is the mouthpiece of its soul. Indian philosophy is not merely an airy speculation or exercise of the grey matter. Neither is it concerned only with word-playing as most of the Western philosophy, since the time of Aristotle, has been preoccupied with; rather, it is an intellectual activity of the soul aimed at achieving the higher truths. Indian religion is all action that is preached by Indian philosophy. In this sense, we can say that religion is the praxis, and philosophy is the theory. That is why, when it is said that Indian philosophy (culture) is very spiritual, it does not seem an exaggeration. While the West holds this remark on the spirituality of Indian culture as a disgrace, Aurobindo takes it as an exalted virtue.

References Aurobindo, Sri. 1959. The Foundations of Indian Culture. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 172–73. Aurobindo Sri, The Human Cycle. Quoted in http://humancycle.hrvc.net/sriaurobindo/aurobindo.htm. Aurobindo, Sri. “The Rationalist Critique of Indian Culture-2.” In Sri Aurobindo Collection, vol. 20, 107. Chatopadhyaya, D. P. Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx: Integral Sociology and Dialectical Sociology. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 130. Eliot, T. S. 1949. Notes Towards Definition of Culture. England: Harcourt. Quoted in http://www.applet-magic.com/cultureliot.htm. Hatch, Elvin. “Culture.” In The Social Science Encyclopedia, edited by Adam Kuper and Jessica Kuper. Kardiner and Preble. 1961. They Studied Man. Quoted in http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/malino wski_bronislaw.html. Marx, Karl. 1859. Towards a Critique of Political Economy. As quoted in Bretens, Hans. 2001. Literary Theory: The Basics. London: Routledge, 81. Oakman, Douglas. 2005. “Culture, Society and Embedded Religion in Antiquity.” Bibilical Theology Bulletin (Spring). Available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0LAL/is_1_35/ai_n14785390. Pande, G. C. 1999. The Meaning and Process of Culture. Allahabad: Raka Prakashan, 7.

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Spengler, Oswald. 1918–1922. The Decline of the West. Quoted in http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/spengle.htm. Toynbee, Arnold J. A Study of History. Quoted in http://www.zenker.se/Books/toynbee.shtml. Verhelst, T. 1990. No Life Without Roots. London: Zed Books, 17. White, Leslie. 1959. “The Concept of Culture.” American Anthropologist, New Series 61, (2): 227.

CHAPTER 7 LIFE WORLDS AND LIVING WORDS1 ANANTA KUMAR GIRI

Abstract Life world is a multidimensional concept and reality in philosophy, social sciences and in our practice of living. This essay explores its different meanings and interpretations, from Edmund Husserl to Jurgen Habermas in the European intellectual traditions and Sri Aurobindo, Gandhi, J. N. Mohanty and Margaret Chatterjee in the Indic traditions. It rethinks the Habermasian idea of the colonisation of the life world and argues how we need Gandhian struggles to overcome this. It argues how life world is a field of satyagraha as it exists in the midst of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. It also argues how life world is a field of lokasamgraha—a gathering of people, which is also related to atmasangraha—a gathering of the soul. With and beyond Habermas, it argues that life world is not only a field of reason but also of intuition and striving for the spiritual in the midst of many rational and infra-rational forces at work in self, culture and society. This essay then links the challenges of life worlds to the challenge of living words in our lives—words which give birth to new words and worlds going beyond stasis, stagnation and death of language, culture, self and society. Life world is a field and flow of living worlds, which have both a pragmatic and spiritual dimension. This essay explores the bordercrossing between pragmatism and society and looks at life worlds and living words as fields of spiritual pragmatism. Keywords: Living words, colonisation of lifeworld, satyagraha, spiritual pragmatics, lokasamgraha

1

This builds on my essay, “Life Worlds and Living Words,” published in Social Change, 2019.

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The life-world is a realm of original self-evidences. That which is selfevidently given is, in perception, experienced as “the thing itself,” in immediate presence, or, in memory, remembered as the thing itself; and every other manner of intuition is presentification of the thing itself. Every mediate cognition belonging in this sphere—broadly speaking, every manner of induction—has the sense of an induction of something intuitable, something perceivable as the thing itself or rememberable as having been perceived, etc. All conceivable verification leads back to these modes of self-evidence because the “thing itself” (in the particular mode) lies in these intuitions themselves as that which is actually, intersubjectively experienceable and verifiable and is not a substruction of thoughts. Whereas such a substruction, insofar as it makes claim to truth, can have actual truth only by being related back to such self-evidence. (Husserl 2002, 167) It is only if there is a greater consciousness beyond Mind and that consciousness is accessible to us that we can know and enter into ultimate Reality. Intellectual speculation, logical reasoning as to whether there is or is not such a greater consciousness cannot carry us very far. What we need is a way to get the experience of it, to reach it, enter into it, live in it. [..] In the East, especially in India, the metaphysical thinkers have tried, as in the West, to determine the nature of the highest Truth by the intellect. But, in the first place, they have not given mental thinking the supreme rank as an instrument in the discovery of Truth, but only a secondary status. The first rank has always been given to spiritual intuition and illumination and spiritual experience; an intellectual conclusion that contradicts this Supreme authority is held invalid. Secondly, each philosophy has been armed with a practical way of reaching to the supreme state of consciousness [..] (Aurobindo 1933, 18–19) .. an as yet unchartered territory awaits a philosopher willing to return to the lifeworld with a diagnostic eye and address a host of questions that arise in our situation. The most important ones, I believe, are in the field of ethics, social and political philosophy [..] How much are we responsible for? (Chatterjee 2005a, 16)

Introduction and Invitation Life is an invitation and an adventure for us but its meaningful realisation in our life and seeking is a perpetual challenge. Life is nurtured by both deeds and words, which give birth to us and our worlds. But a great challenge before us is that both our life worlds and living words have become dead—like having lost the will to live and sing. We live under the colonisation of the life world, as Jurgen Habermas (1981) would tell us,

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but Habermas himself still looks at our life worlds primarily in terms of rationality. But the life world is not only a field of reason but also of intuition and striving for the spiritual in the midst of many rational and infra-rational forces at work in self, culture and society. Against this theoretical backdrop and the general background of the crisis of self, culture and the world, I take up the challenge of life worlds again and link it to the challenge of nurturing living words in our lives. I discuss the concept of life world discussed by Edmund Husserl, the inspiring pioneer of phenomenological vocation, and its creative elaboration by two thoughtful philosophers of our times: J. N. Mohanty and Margaret Chatterjee. Then, I discuss how we can gain new insights into phenomenological discussions of the life world by engaging ourselves in dialogues with seekers such as Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo. I, then, argue that we need to link our vision and practice in life worlds with creative efforts in rethinking language and the self as living words that bring forth new words and worlds, and do not just reproduce the existing ones. I argue that both life worlds and living words have a spiritual dimension, which calls for appropriate selfcultivation, inter-subjective relations and adventures of consciousness.

The Calling of the Life World: Edmund Husserl and Beyond Edmund Husserl started using the concept of the life world in the late 1920s. As J. N. Mohanty, a creative philosopher of our world and one of the most original interpreters of Husserl, tells us, “It is generally agreed upon that about the year 1925, more definitely about 1929, there came about a remarkable and profound change in Husserl’s thought which may be indicated, though not adequately characterised, by the fact that he began to make more and more use of the term life-world” (Mohanty 1974, 46). Mohanty further tells us: “An appendix to Ideas 11 (dating from the early 20s) identifies the ‘natural world’ with the Life World (LW). This possibly is one of the earliest passages in which the concept of LW is found to replace the earlier ‘natural world.’ The basic relation of life world is said to be not causality, but motivation: the subject can be motivated only through which it experiences as possessing ‘value’ [..] Things are not mere bodies but are ‘valuable.’ In the LW, the other is directly perceived. The mode of givenness is ‘subjective’” (46). For Husserl, life world is the world of self-evidence and original intuition. Its mode is subjective relative, which he contrasted with that of objective science. In his Crisis of European Sciences, Husserl told us about the crisis

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of natural science, which is only confined to its own view of objectivity. For Husserl, science must go back to the self-evidence of the life world (2002, 163). For Husserl, “the knowledge of the objective-scientific world is ‘grounded’ in the self-evidence of the life-world” (169). The life world is the source of “ever available intuited data” (164). Relating the objective standpoint of science to the subjective-relative of the life world, Husserl told us: [..] While the natural scientist is thus interested in the objective and is involved in his activity, the subjective-relative is on the other hand still functioning for him, not as something irrelevant that must be passed through but as that which ultimately grounds the theoretical-logical ontic validity for all objective verification, i.e., as the source of self-evidence, the source of verification [..] thus that which actually exists in the life world, as something valid, is a promise.

The promise of the life world, for Husserl, among others, is that it gives us a horizon of depth and a home2 as it challenges us to go beyond a mere plane state of life and being. What appears as plane, which natural science takes for granted, is “nevertheless only a plane within an infinitely richer dimension of depth” (2002, 161–62). The life world has other worlds in it and beyond it (Berger 1978). Husserl gives primacy to intuition in his presentation and realisation of life world (Beren et al. 1999). In fact, Mohanty (2001) tells us about the work and dynamics of living intuitions. Life world is also a field of what Sri Aurobindo calls spiritual intuition. Husserl’s call for self-evidence and experience in the life world can be further deepened by having a dialogue with Sri Aurobindo, who challenges us to realise our intuitions through transformative experiences, such as yogic experiences, and to not just be confined to speculative thinking. Sri Aurobindo challenges us to realise the spiritual dimension of our life world, which is suggested in Husserl, and, now, can be further realised by walking and meditating together with Sri Aurobindo. For Husserl, “the life world was always there for mankind before science, then just as it continues its manner of being in the epoch of science” (2002, 164). Engagement with the life world calls for a new vocation, “a complete personal transformation, comparable in the beginning to a religious conversion, which then, however, over and above this, bears

2

In her book on Hannah Arendt, Seyla Benhabib told us how Arendt interpreted “Husserlian phenomenology as an attempt to evoke magically a home again out of the world which has become alien” (Benhabib 2003, 49).

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within itself the significance of the greatest existential transformation which is assigned as a task to mankind as such” (173). The life world is the world of the subjective-relative but it is not closed within itself. It contains plurality and needs to relate to others meaningfully. Margaret Chatterjee, a deep philosopher from India, tells us that “it is within life worlds that diverse traditions are embedded” (Chatterjee 2005a, 2). Chatterjee urges us to realise that “to draw attention to life worlds pulls us back to take stock of where we stand [..]” (3). For Husserl, the “I” is intimately connected with “we.” Furthermore, for Chatterjee, “the preparatory work of laying bare the structure of the life world would lead us to an analysis of what he called universal constitution” (5). “Husserl’s viewpoint is connected with what one would describe as a horizontal regional ontology, rather than [..] a hierarchical one” (4).3 Chatterjee tells us that “[..] Husserl shifts from taking the ego as primordial to a world constitution which he says ‘extends before me and after, before us and after us in a community of generations” (6). Thus, in Husserl, in the life worlds, transcendental subjectivity is related to historicity through what I would like to call a creative trigonometry of generation, generativity and generosity. J. N. Mohanty tells us that though the life world is animated by the work of what Husserl called subjective-relative, it is not relativistic in a closed sense. There is a reality and possibility in the life world to overcome the pull towards closure and work towards creative pluralisation. For Mohanty (2001, 91), “at first it appears as if the life world [..] provided exactly that which we need in order to overcome relativism [..]” Husserl falls back on “idealisation as the process by which a common homogeneous, nonrelative world is constituted.” Mohanty also believes that, “relativity of the life world is to be overcome (by making what is strange, foreign, unfamiliar gradually familiar. The later process requires ‘understanding the other’” (92). Along with idealisation, Mohanty tells us that, here, we need to take part in what he calls “apperceptive attribution” and “analogising apperception”: “The gap between the far and the near is closed by analogising apperception of the far, ‘as if’ it were near (for example, apperception of the earth as a star and of star as earth” (92) (see Manning and Masumi 2014; Appiah 2017).

3

This move towards horizontality in Husserlian life world can be related to the emphasis on horizontal work in Deleuze and Guattari (see Walton 2012, 287).

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The life world has, thus, both singular and plural dimensions and cultivating pluralism in the life world calls for a new logic. Here, both Chatterjee and Mohanty offer multi-valued logic as important for modes of thinking and interaction in our life worlds. Mohanty relates the Husserlian methodology of overlapping contents to both the Gandhian mode of non-violence in behaviour and non-injury in thinking, as well as to the multi-valued logic of Anekantavada (many paths to and perspectives to Truth) in Jainism.4 In her dialogue with life world, Chatterjee challenges us to link this to the vision and practice of dharma (right conduct) and lokasangraha (gathering of people). The life world is a field of reality and realisation of dharma and lokasangraha. Lokasangraha urges us to realise our action in our life 4

As J. N. Mohanty (2000, 24) told us: The ethic of non-injury applied to philosophical thinking requires that one does not reject outright the other point of view without first recognizing the element of truth in it; it is based on the belief that every point of view is partly true, partly false, and partly undecidable. A simple two-valued logic requiring that a proposition must either be true or false is thereby rejected, and what the Jaina philosopher proposes is a multi-valued logic. To this multi-valued logic, I add the Husserlian idea of overlapping contents. The different perspectives on a thing are not mutually exclusive, but share some contents with each other. The different ‘worlds’ have shared contents, contrary to the total relativism. If you represent them by circles, they are intersecting circles, not incommensurable, [and it is this model of] intersecting circles which can get us out of relativism on the one hand and absolutism on the other.

Margaret Chatterjee (2005b), in her study of Gandhi, also told us how, in 1924, Gandhi made a statement “saying he had no objection to being called an anekantavadi or syadvadi, that it is to say, one who accepts manysidedness of truth [..].” For Gandhi: But my syadvada is not the syadvada of the learned, it is peculiarly my own. I cannot engage in a debate with them. It has been my experience that I am always true from my point of view, and I am often wrong from the point of view of the honest critic. And I know that we are both right from our respective point of view. And this knowledge saves me from attributing to my opponents and critics [..] It is this doctrine that has taught me to judge a Mussalman from his standpoint and a Christian from his. Formerly I used to resent the ignorance of my opponents. Today I can love them because I am gifted with the eye to see myself as others see me and vice versa. My anekantavada is the result of the twin doctrines of satya and ahimsa (Gandhi quoted in Chatterjee 2005b: 306).

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world as realising the task of gathering of people and realising unity (see Agarawala 2015; Latour 2013). This gathering is not just social but also self, not just external but also inner, and not only epistemological but also ontological, urging us to realise the manifold links between lokasangraha and atmasangraha—the gathering of people and the gathering of souls. We also need to realise that the life world is also the field of strivings towards purusarthas, such as dharma (right conduct), artha (wealth), kama (desire) and moksha (salvation), and their attendant complexities and contradictions. The life world is also the field of work of rasas in our lives (Sunder Rajan 1992). The life world is also full of a lot of suffering, neglect and violence, which calls for listening to the pangs of crying consciousness. For Chatterjee, “life worlds contain much that needs to be overcome; and history’s meditation includes warfare, colonialism and numerous forms of exploitation” (2005a, 6). Husserl tells us that phenomenological engagement with life world calls for personal transformation and similarly Chatterjee tells us how consciousness, which identifies with the suffering of the life worlds, “cries out for transformation” (16). Here, Chatterjee presents us with the situation in the lifeworld of a Delhi neighbourhood: On this side of the wall children have milk to drink at least once a day. On the other side, one pawa of milk has to stretch for glasses of tea for five adults plus children. A six year old girl told me this. Near the milk shop there are three mithai shops. This is where the bulk of the milk goes. Consciousness cries out for transformation, a consciousness imbued with conscience. Such a consciousness would grow laterally, horizontally, turning the search light of attention on the endless anomalies around us, the endless injustices and lack of any sense of priorities (ibid).

Life Worlds and the Challenge of Crying Consciousness: Colonisation of the Life World and Beyond If Husserl discusses the calling of the life world against the backdrop of the scientific orientation to life and its need to be ever connected with the intuitive self-evidence of the life world, Habermas discusses the significance of the life world against the backdrop of the limits of the system world and its threat of colonisation. For Habermas, our life world today is being increasingly colonised by the system worlds of state and market. This colonisation also raises the problem of crying consciousness. But colonisation is neither our fate nor our destiny and we can always transform this condition of colonisation to one of a post-colonial condition

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of creative autonomy, intersubjectivity and cosmopolitanism. Here, we can take help from Gandhi. In his anti-colonial and post-colonial struggle, Gandhi used both Swaraj and Satyagraha. We can rethink and realise our life worlds as fields and circles of strivings and struggles for Swaraj and Satyagraha. In Swaraj, we strive for creative autonomy as part of an interlinked process of mutual blossoming and in Satyagraha we strive and struggle for truth realisation and realisation of beauty and dignity in the context of structures of domination and annihilation (Giri 2013). For going beyond the colonisation of the life world, we need to struggle for Swaraj—creative autonomy—and Satyagraha —quest for truth and the truthful quest and struggle. Swaraj in the life world, here, is not just achievement of egoistic autonomy but a practice of mutual blossoming involving self, other and the world. Satyagraha in the life world is not just a weapon for postcolonialism and liberation but it also means a search for truth. Satyagraha as quest for truth inquires into the condition of truth and truths—both in the singular and the plural—in the life world. Satyagraha of and in the life world investigates whether it gives a space for expression of the truth of being, society and culture, or if truth is suppressed, hidden and annihilated by institutions and individuals working in the life world and in the inter-linked spheres and institutions of self, culture, society and state. Satyagraha, here, becomes an inquiry into the condition of Sattva— truth—as it exists in life along with Rajas and Tamas—power and forces of darkness. Sattva, Rajas and Tamas constitute three gunas—qualities— that we can also understand as forces in the lives of self, society, world and nature. These gunas—qualities—exist in a relationship of autonomy and interpenetration in our lives and life worlds as mutually co-implicating and implicated threads which, in turn, challenge us to do creative thread works in the midst of threats emerging from their one-sided dominance in our lives (see Basham 1999). Today, our life worlds are being increasingly characterised by the dominance of Rajas and Tamas—power and darkness— as critical thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas challenge us to realise in their own ways. In Foucault, truth in the life world is produced by constellations of power—Rajas—as Foucault is also open to exploring the forces of darkness—Tamas—in our lives, emerging from the work of the Tamasic, which Nietzsche, one of his sources of inspiration, would term as the work of the irrational in our lives. Habermas also challenges us to realise the complex relationship between truth and power—Sattva and Rajas—in self and society; but truth in Habermas is not just a product of the existing constellation of power in society, though,

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despite his dialogue with psychoanalysis, he is less prone to understanding the depth of darkness in individual and social lives that affects the work and realisation of truth. Truth also emerges from the quest for truth in discourse, where participants take part in discourse in an open process of mutual moral argumentation. Truth in Habermasian discourse ethics, as part of the quest for truth in the life world, is much more open to exploring truth as an autonomous reality and horizon of transcendence compared to Foucault. But quest for truth in Habermasian discourse ethics, which may be a variant of what Fred Dallmayr (1996) calls “discursive epistemology,” may not realise the demand quality or the calling quality of truth in our lives and life worlds as manifested in the life, visions, struggles and experiments of seekers such as Gandhi. In their own different ways, both Gandhi and Levinas challenge us to realise the call of truth in our life worlds, which places the demand of responsibility on our feet and shoulders. Truth, as part of Triguna (three qualities of life)—Sattva (Truth), Rajas (power) and Tamas (darkness)—as well as in Gandhian quest for truth and Levinasian’s looking up to the face of the other, challenges us to hear the call of truth with and beyond its determination by the logic of power and forces of darkness in our lives. The quest for truth in Habermas, as well as in John Dewey as the cooperative search for truth, also challenges us to realise the demand and responsibility that truth puts on us to seek and realise in our lives, despite the forces of state, society and market obstructing the manifestation of truth in our life worlds. Levinas’ ethics of the face, where Levinas challenges us to always look up to the face of the Other, also challenges us to understand the demand that the truth of the Other places upon us with and beyond our own egoistic limitations and possibilities. Also similar is the sadhana and tapasya of truth realisation of Sri Aurobindo, where the quest for truth is a process of surrendering ourselves to the call of truth as it exists in the complex fields of self, society and cosmos, and the dynamic interplay of the trigunas—Sattva, Rajas and Tamas—in our lives and life worlds. According to Sri Aurobindo and Gandhi, the quest for truth in our life worlds is not just epistemological, it is also ontological, demanding us to purify our desires and the work of Tamasic in our lives through practices such as yoga and creative education, and an enabling spirituality of mutualisation, which is not visible to the same extent in our fellow seekers, such as Foucault, Habermas and Levinas, as well as Husserl. As already discussed, Husserl challenges us to bracket our presuppositions of power and darkness in our quest for truth; but how do we realise this in our lives? The phenomenological method of reduction seems to be nothing more than a methodological, epistemological and intellectual wish. Here,

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practices such as yoga and pratyahara (withdrawal of mind) can help us and are an integral imperative in our quest for truth (Kalita 2008; Rao 2014). Satyagraha, in the life world and beyond, thus, calls for epistemological and ontological sadhana and is part of what may be called the ontological epistemology of participation, going beyond the dualism of one-sided valorisation of either the epistemological or ontological (Giri 2006; Giri 2016). It, thus, becomes a complex process of critique, creativity and the quest for truth as we hold the hands and look up to the faces of each as other, as well as Husserl, Gandhi, Dewey, Levinas, Foucault, Mohanty, Chatterjee and Habermas, and many fellow cowalking and co-meditating seekers. In our discussion, with the challenge of the life world from Husserl, we need to think further with the Husserlian urging for us to go back to the intuitive self-evidence of our life worlds. But our intuitive self-evidence can also be our self and cultural delusions. Here, just going back to the intuitive self-evidence of the life world is not enough. We need to critically and creatively engage ourselves with self-evidences in our life worlds and, here, both critical discourse and spiritual quest can help us. For example, the discourse ethics of Habermas, where we critically discuss our own presuppositions, the Gandhian practice of Satyagraha and Sri Aurobindo’s pathways of integral yoga can help us in critically looking into ourselves, as well as each other, in a spirit of co-realisations. This can also help participants and observers of the life world to go beyond their relativistic closure and embrace the plural invitation of the other. As Thomas Pantham suggests, these can help us in realising the postrelativistic plane of being and truth (Pantham 1996). These movements, such as the Gandhian Swaraj, challenge us to have practical autonomy, such as in doing our work ourselves and together, and not slavishly depending on the state and market. For example, we can go beyond the colonisation of the life world by the forces of the market by cooking our own food together and bringing a packed lunch, and not solely depending on the market. In our stressed life worlds, often, our bodies and souls are tired and, here, we can give each other a free massage with respect and purity, and sing to each other to create new ripples of joy and springs of inspiration in our lives, rather than just depending on the markets of care, entertainment and comfort. Life worlds are plural and, at present, our life worlds have multiple modes of thinking and social organisations. But Habermas still looks at the life world predominantly in rationalist terms and he calls for rationalisation of the life world. However, we need to be open to the emotional and spiritual

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dimensions of the life world, as suggested in the vision and sadhana of Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo and, even, Husserl. Habermas (2006) has recently been more open to acknowledging the religious dimension of the life world but, here, we need to understand the distinction between the religious and spiritual dimensions of life. While the religious dimension can often be locked in systemic and closed organisations, the spiritual is a perennial movement of critique, creativity and transformation for the realisation of beauty, dignity and dialogues in our lives (see Giri 2018; Heehs 2018). It does not exclude the religious but it does critically interrogate the religious when it becomes a partner of the exclusion and annihilation of life. The spirituality of the life world is both mystical as well as practical, as it touches ethics and aesthetics, science and spirituality and the transcendental and immanent dimensions of our lives.5 We need to realise that our life world, at the same time, contains flows of mystical and practical spirituality, as suggested by Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo, and practical discourse, as suggested by Habermas. Both practical discourse and practical spirituality strive to bring love, labour and meditations together as meditative verbs of co-realisations where action and meditations come together in the midst of limitations and possibilities of various kinds in our life worlds (Giri 2012; 2017). Our life worlds, at present, do not consist only of modernity but also contain streams from tradition, postmodernity and what Dussel (2017) calls transmodernity. Transmodernity in life worlds, histories and societies involves a critical and creative memory work about roots and routes of life, and their cross-fertilisation, and it is not only an uncritical reproduction of the logic of modernity (see Giri 2017). It also strives to create our lives and life world without being subservient to the colonising and allconsuming logic of Euro-American modernity and establishing regenerating links with our traditions. As Dussel suggests, there are now important 5

What J.L. Mehta wrote in his essay, “Life-Worlds, Sacrality and Interpretative Thinking,” resonates with some of the issues discussed here: But I am also a participant in the life-world of the India of today and beyond that in the Western worldwide phenomenon of technology [..] What, in such a situation, is there left for me to do than go questing after the traces of sacrality, go back to the sacred texts of my tradition and try to find a language in which they may be made to speak meaningfully today? The question here is not one of my private, personal religiosity and piety but of articulating in shareable language, religious meanings which may be understood and appropriated within the human life-world today? (Mehta 2004: 245-246).

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political, cultural and spiritual movements in many parts of the world, such as Latin America, China and India, where people are striving to create selves and institutions drawing upon their cultural and civilisational resources, which do not just reproduce the logic of modernity. These are multi-dimensional transmodern moves. So, we need to understand how life worlds are deeply plural, today, as they are constituted of circles of autonomy and interpenetration of traditional, modern, postmodern and transmodern. Today, the predominant rationalistic closure of the life world in certain spheres of life, such as modernity, and in certain thinkers, such as Habermas, needs to be completed by a process of creative pluralisation and meditative verbs of co-realisations consisting of flows of tradition, modern, postmodern and transmodern.

Living Words The dissipation of springs of life in our life world corresponds to the stagnation of our words and these becoming dead instead of alive. The revitalisation of life worlds calls for creativity in living words. This calls for rethinking our vision, conception and practice of language as living and not dead, as creative and not just formulaic and repetitive. In our thinking about language, we usually look at language as a form of life, as a form of practice. With Wittgenstein, we look at language as a form of life but in this we are sometimes more caught up in form rather than in struggles and sadhana with life (see Das 2007). We rarely explore that language, as a field of practice, has a spiritual and transcendental dimension, though Wittgenstein himself was open to this. Language, as a form of practice, is not just playing language games according to given grammars; it also includes rule-breaking and the creation of new languages emerging out of multidimensional struggles, sadhana and movements of life. In our modern world, the predominant form of life is nation-state and this form of life has killed and continues to kill the plural languages of life and people.6 So, language is not only a form of life, it is also a movement, an aspiration, a prayer, a work and a walk for living and transformation. 7

6

Wittgenstein himself left Cambridge to fight on behalf of the Austro-Hungarian empire in First World War. 7 This is suggested in the following poem by the author: Oh friend You said

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We need a new language A new sadhana of words and tapasya of worlds This is not a language of victory Nor is one of self-advertisement and aggrandizement Neither is it a language of doomsday This is a language of walking our ways together Walking our dreams, sadhana and struggle II In our co-habitations of affection Of compassion and confrontation Words become mantras Of a new life, a new responsibility Of wiping tears from our eyes and Again taking each other into our laps Renewing our strength from embrace We create new paths by walking We create new language Our language is the language of walking Stars of mantra leap from our lap. But language as movement, with and for transformation, also faces the reality of the deformation of language, which is also an integral part of the story of language as a form of life, especially in the era of the nation-state and contemporary speedy neo-liberal capitalism. The following, by the author, hints at this challenge: Deformation of Language Devaluation of Life Words turned into its opposite Democracy becomes tyranny Love Hatred How do we recover Retrieve its semantic potential? When language has lost its metaphor What to speak of it as a Mantra? 2 Recovery of language Is it only a semantic act? Or also a work of creativity? Walking and meditating together Memory work and womb work Nurturing our pregnant future

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In realising such a view of word and world, we can walk and meditate with the perspectives of Heidegger on language. For Heidegger, language is not just a form of life but a way-making movement. For Heidegger, “What unfolds essentially in language is saying as pointing. Its showing does not culminate in a system of signs. Rather, all signs arise from a showing in whose realm and for whose purposes they can be signs” (Heidegger 2004, 410). For Heidegger, “the way to language is the [..] way-making movement of propriation and usage” where “propriation propriates human beings for itself, [..] propriation is thus the saying’s waymaking movement toward language” (419, 418). This Heideggerian vision of language as saying, as part of “way-making movement,” is suggested in the tradition of the people’s enlightenment in Europe, namely the folk high school movement, and people’s enlightenment patiently cultivated by Grundtvig and Kristen Kold (see Das 2007). Both of them challenged us to realise language as “living words” —words that could enliven and energise us—(a passion we also see in Martin Buber’s engagement with language), which point us also to realise the dynamics of creative words in our primal traditions of humanity.8 This is also akin to In our palms Stars of Infinity Dancing with Our Bare Feet Both of these poems appear in my book of poems, Weaving New Hats: Our Half Birthdays (see Giri 2019). 8 As Maurice Friedman (1995, 17–18) told us: In his essay, “The Word that is Spoken,” Buber shows the word coming into being and its continuance ands its going back into written potential form and coming out again in speech. [..] When Buber and Franz Rosenzweig spent a life time translating the Hebrew Bible into German they wanted to capture the living speech. “Do you mean a book?” they asked and replied, “No, we mean a voice.” Because it is a voice, one doesn’t just read it as an object. It can speak to one, and that speech is an address. An address is something one must harken to, that one has to respond to—one doesn’t have to obey it but one has to respond. In this context, what H.G. Mees (1985, 12–13) wrote, below, also deserves our careful consideration: The creative words has sound and meaning, that is, spirit and meaning. In the first chapter of Genesis we read repeatedly “God said” and “God saw.” The Hindu conception is Sabdartha which is composed of Sabda, meaning

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Sri Aurobindo’s suggestion to create poems that would work like mantras, with the power to create realities a new. Sri Aurobindo (1933) also builds upon the Tantric tradition and talks about words having the capacity to see—pashyanti vak (seeing word).

Living Words, Pragmatics of Communication and Spiritual Pragmatics In our conception of and engagement with language, we talk about the pragmatics of communication. Language is pragmatic but the pragmatics of language also has a spiritual dimension. Pragmatics of communication also has a poetic dimension. There is a pragmatic dimension to Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Sri Aurobindo but this pragmatics is not an ordinary pragmatics, it has a spiritual and poetic dimension; it is also spiritual pragmatics.9 Beginning with Wittgenstein, as Stanley Cavell suggests, there is a spiritual struggle in Wittgenstein’s concept of the form of life, which includes struggles against forms existing at the expense of life (Das 2007). Wittgenstein also writes, “an entire mythology is stored in our language” (quoted in Das 2011, 240). Veena Das builds upon this Wittgenstenian insight to tell us how the mythological aspect of language can help us cross borders and live in our everyday life with mutuality in the midst of differences of many kinds, such as religious differences. In her study of a neighbourhood in Delhi, in which Hindus and Muslims live, Das writes in the spirit of Wittgenstenian spiritual pragmatics:

sound, and Artha, implying thought-meaning. The Sabdartha of “soundmeaning” manifests as the Nama-rupa of “Name-form.” 9 For Luchte, the pragmatists “focus upon the convergence between Wittgenstein and Heidegger in terms of their pragmatic criteria of meaning as use. This stream explicitly opposes the early mysticism of Wittgenstein, and the later mysticism of Heidegger[..]” (Luchte 2009). But we find “the shared appreciation by Wittgenstein and Heidegger of the mystical, of the wonder in face of existence, expressed in such questions as ‘why is there something, rather than nothing?’” But the mystical and the pragmatic are not opposed to each other. There is also a tradition of practical mysticism. For example, Sri Ramarkrishna embodied practical mysticism (Rolland 2010). Ramakrishna’s practical mysticism embodied both deep silence as well as creative communication. It was also passionately concerned with human suffering, with the challenge of what we have already referred to as crying consciousness. Ramakrishna wept seeing human poverty and suffering and tried to do his best to ameliorate it.

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I suggest that the [..] terms at hand such as bhagwan, and khuda which travel easily in the speech of Hindus and Muslims are deployed in both formal and informal contexts, make it possible to imagine the practices of the other and to get on with the daily commerce of living together. Further the thought that Wittgenstein speaks of a whole mythology of being buried in our language should be understood to include the history of concepts, words, and gestures not only as rooted within a tradition but also in the manner in which they travel and become nomadic. For instance, Iqbal Mian prides himself as one who uses aql, or reasoning, and thus tells me often that it is his obligation as a Muslim to understand other religions. According to one hadith (a saying of the Prophet) he has heard, a Muslim must tell others about the glories of Islam, but he cannot do without understanding what others hold dear in their own religion (Das 2011, 248).

Spiritual pragmatics, involved in border-crossing, points to the dynamics of spiritual pragmatics in our vision and practice of language, which has a resonance in not only Wittgenstein but also in Heidegger10 and Sri Aurobindo (see Giri 2014). In order to cultivate and nurture living words, we need to bring the dimension of spiritual pragmatics to language. Spiritual pragmatics makes the words not only alive but also healing. It creates living words as well as healing words.11 Today, as our life worlds 10

As Joseph J Kockelmans (1972, 61) told us: Heidegger’s linguistic-historical documentation travels upstream, back to the source. It undoes the degeneration in the same way as was done in the struggle with the use of language. Heidegger obviously doesn’t resign himself to the available language tool. In the process of gradually becoming aware of things, he does not let himself be guided by that tool; he does not understand man from his equipment but forges linguistic means in order to make a new insight communicable. [..] What is at stake here, just as in the case of silent self-realization, is the undoing of falleness; what is at stake is thus an aboriginal experience that forces itself on us in dealing with our familiar equipment.

Building upon the works of the poet Stefan George, whose poem, “The Word” (1919) is used by Heidegger, Heidegger tells us that “the poet experiences himself as the custodian of the word” (Kockelmans 1972, 85). We find a similar struggle and sadhana with words and realization of the limits of external language and grammar in the poetic reflections of critic and essayist Haraprasad Dash from Odisha (see Das 2012). 11 In January 2016, I held a workshop with Rev Carolyn Swife Jones of the Church of Practical Spirituality, Torrington, New Jersey, on the theme of “Living Words.” In this, we sought to engage ourselves with words that hurt us and how we can walk and meditate with these words and turn these into something affirmative. For

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are full of so much violence and suffering, we need initiatives in healing, reconciliation and transformations, and here living words in our life worlds can become our healing words, inspiring us to undertake healing works and meditations in our life worlds and beyond.

Life Worlds and Living Words: In Lieu of a Conclusion Life is a perpetual wonder, challenge and a joy as we live it in between our worlds and words. In this essay, we have walked and meditated with the idea of the life world, beginning with Edmund Husserl, and, on the way, have also touched the thoughts and lives of many fellow seekers, from Habermas to Sri Aurobindo. We have explored multidimensional visions and practices of life worlds and have linked these to the dynamics and visions of living words. We have also explored the spiritual dimension in our worlds and words, for example, how spiritual pragmatics in our living words corresponds to the vision and practice of spirituality in our life worlds, which can be called practical spirituality. In our essay, practical spirituality is manifested in the work and meditation of our weeping consciousness—not just merely witnessing, observing or whipping12—for example, the participants in this workshop gave a new elaboration to the word SLUT by composing it as Singing, Laughing, Understanding and Transforming. Inspired by the creativity of the participants of this workshop, I also composed this: Oh Words You are our mother You create new worlds As you break many olds We mother you with love and care Kisses and tears. 12 Our life worlds consist not only of observational spaces where our consciousness is observational and spectatorial but also participatory and weeping. I explore this in the following poem of mine:

Space Being with space Is it only observational? Is consciousness only observational Even in observational spaces? Is it only witnessing Or whipping

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more beauty, dignity and dialogues in our life worlds and beyond in the midst of ugliness, violence and injustice of various kinds, which challenges the fuller realisation of the potential of our lives. Practical spirituality also has a practical metaphysics, which helps us to bring the practical and the metaphysical in our journey with our life worlds and living words. Here, we can possibly walk and meditate with the following poem: Practical Metaphysics Why be afraid of metaphysical? Why such antipathy to universal? Metaphysics is not just an idea It is not simply conceptual Nor is it only an ideal It is experiential It begins with our experience Takes us to further heights and depths Being and being Being of being Being, non-Being and To our nurturing threads Connecting to both the unique and the universal Practical metaphysics Practical universality We become a bodhitree Roots of it points to and comes from the sky Bodhitree and The upwardly rooted Aswatha Meet in our lives We become the two birds Dancing with these trees One witnessing One eating We also become the third Bird and bard Flying and singing A new root of the metaphysical Husserl and Sri Aurobindo Tagore and Coomaraswamy Luc Irigaray and Mata Amrityanadamayee Devi Or is it also weeping? A weeping consciousness Turning into a crying space Of mutualization and transformations

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Luchte, James. 2009. “Under the Aspect of Time: Heidegger, Wittgenstein and the Place of Nothing.” Philosophy Today 53 (1). Mohanty, J. N. 2001. Explorations in Philosophy: Western Philosophy. Vol. 2. Edited by Bina Gupta. Delhi: Oxford University Press. —. 2000. Self and Other: Philosophical Essays. Delhi: Oxford U. Press. —. 1974. “‘Life-World’ and ‘A Priori’ in Husserl’s Later Thought.” In Analetica Husserliana, edited by Anna-Teresa Tymie Mieka, 46–65. D. Riedel Publishing Co. Pantham, Thomas. 1996. “Post relativism in Emancipatory Thought: Gandhi’s Swaraj and Satyagraha.” In The Multiverse of Democracy, edited by D. L. Sheth and Ashish Nandy. New Delhi: Sage. Rao, Ramakrishna. 2014. “Two Faces of Consciousness.” In Cultivating Consciousness: An East-West Journey, edited by K. Ramakrishna Rao, et al., 320–48. Delhi: D. K. Print world. Reid, Herbert and Betsy Taylor. 2010. Recovering the Commons: Democracy, Place and Global Justice. Urbana Champagne: University of Illinois Press. Rolland, Romain. 2010. [1929]. The Life of Ramakrishna. Mayavati: Advaita Ashram. Walton, David. 2012. Doing Cultural Theory. New Delhi: Sage.

CHAPTER 8 JUST WAR: REFLECTIONS ON THE “VALUE” OF VIOLENCE V. PRABHU AND S. NENGNEITHEM HAOKIP

Abstract Throughout our culture, non-violence has been given a high regard and still we value non-violence. Ahimsa Paramo Dharmaha is one of the oft-quoted statements that extols the value of non-violence. And, in our culture, many of our religious faiths, and religious and spiritual leaders talk about the greatness of non-violence. And, in the recent times, we had Mahatma Gandhi, who championed the value of non-violence. Thus, one can see that non-violence was given a high regard and it is carried out even in our present day times as hardly anybody questions the value of non-violence. But one can see that non-violence is positioned against the idea of violence. If nonviolence is valuable, does it mean that violence is not valuable? Generally, violence is not often seen in positive sense and not attributed a positive value. Often, violence is shunned. But one needs to explore this idea to see if violence carries “value.” In this paper, we explore this idea with reference to just war theory. Keywords: violence, just war, absolute pacifism, contingent pacifism, peace, non-violence. Violence is defined as the behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something (Oxford English Dictionary). This suggests that violence may result in physical harm or damage to the person(s) or groups involved. This may be the case for both sides. We are going to discuss, here, the “value” of this violence in the context of war, i.e., just war. As we are focusing on the “value” of violence in the context of war, we are setting aside other contexts of engaging in violence as it may be beyond the scope of this paper. We, thus, confine our discussion to war.

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War is defined as a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country (Oxford English Dictionary). One can see that armed conflict suggests the presence of violence. And, in fact, the number of deaths because of war amounts to lakhs and lakhs of people in the last century alone. If war leads to innumerable deaths and inevitably engages in violence, then what sort of “value” we can attribute to war? And to violence in the context of war? Let us explore this issue from a philosophical standpoint. A philosophical inquiry of war centres on four general questions: What is war? What causes it? What is the relationship between human nature and war? Can war ever be morally justifiable? (Cady 2017). We will focus on the last question. In order to reflect on the above mentioned question, we need to understand an ideological position called pacifism. Pacifism, in general, is a commitment to peace and is generally opposed to violence. In the literature on the issue of pacifism, there are thinkers and philosophers who shun violence at all costs and they are often referred to as “absolute pacifists.” The absolute pacifist believes in moral absolutism. They hold the view that moral principles are absolute and unchanging. As mentioned earlier, a key impetus to absolute pacifism comes from a religious prescription. This religious standpoint is based on the belief that there is merit in suffering violence. And violent acts need not be reciprocated with violent acts. Rather, one can undergo the suffering arising out of violence without retaliation. This line of thought is found in Indian culture based on the commitment to Ahimsa and in the Western culture, particularly from the Christian religious doctrines, which preach non-violent resistance to evil (Fiala 2014). Thus, to an absolute pacifist, non-resistance is salvation and violent resistance is ruin. According to them, it is comparably less dangerous to act justly than unjustly, to submit to injuries than to resist them with violence (Tolstoy 1971). In a similar line of thought, Michael Fox considers war as inconsistent with morality and human wellbeing. He asks: “Should immoral actions be used to stop (perhaps more gravely) immoral actions?” (Fiala 2014). And argues whether two wrongs can make a right. The absolute pacifists may argue that there may be many other alternatives than the only two alternatives: “kill or be killed.” They may consider these two alternatives as an outcome of a false dilemma. Still, if one has to face this dilemma, then the absolute pacifists prefer being killed to killing someone (Fiala 2014; 2018). An absolute pacifist may claim that they would

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prefer to die rather than trying to protect themself. Kahlil Gibran argues: “If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved” (The Voice of the Poet). Thus, absolute pacifists extol the value of non-violence and, at the same time, reject the “value” of violence. They consider that violence can never be entertained. They, thus, support the absolute prohibition of war, which, thereby, implies the absolute prohibition of killing and rejects violence. The absolute pacifists’ position and their ethics can be described from two main viewpoints. That is, their position may be justified from two different moral theories. The first one seems quite obvious, wherein they defend their position from a deontological ethical standpoint. This position suggests that there is a duty, or they have a strong moral principle, to prohibit any form of aggression, violence and waging of war against others. Most of the religious prescriptions, the Kantian positions, take this line of argument. The other theory that can support absolute pacifism can come from consequentialism. The pacifist position from consequentialism may assert that bad consequences may outweigh the “good” consequences when one engages in war or any other aggressive actions and, hence, war needs to be shunned. This position may not consider war or violence, by itself, as bad or evil; rather it may consider war as bad because of the consequences. One can see that this pacifist position is different from deontological position as the principle by which they address the issue is different. From the above discussion, it is clear that absolute pacifists, giving a paramount value to peace and non-violence, do not want to give any “value” to violence. But there are criticisms levelled against absolute pacifism. The critics show the shortcomings with respect to the absolute pacifists’ position. Critics point out that if absolute pacifists are faced with a situation of being killed or to retaliate, they chose to die. So, the critics point out that absolute pacifists tend to consider that one’s life is less morally valuable than one’s death (Fiala 2018). Perhaps, this argument may be countered from the pacifist’s position, saying that they do not value death more as the critics point out. If so, they may opt for suicide rather than living a good life. But they choose a good life over death. In this context, they may counter-argue that they prefer the opponents’ life over their life. But it may lead to further discussion when the opponent is the aggressor and when the victim is not the pacifist themself but, instead, their neighbour. In this situation, it becomes a difficult task for them as they may choose to opt for their death

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over their life to practice nonviolence, but how they can opt for death over life for their neighbour? Moreover, criticisms were also levelled against the pacifists idea of selfsacrifice. If the pacifists sacrifice their lives, then either everybody will die or the people who survive are the aggressors, as the pacifists are ready to give up their lives. So, in a sense, they assist the aggressor. As Burke comments, “evil will always flourish when good men do nothing” (Moseley 2021). Another criticism is that pacifists enjoy peace in their lives because others, like those in the armed forces, defend the lives of their fellow citizens, including the absolute pacifists as well. This can be a dilemma for the pacifists because, on the one hand, they may say non-violence is right but, on the other, they may find their fellow neighbours fighting (engaging in violence) to protect their lives. This dilemma was reflected in the Ethics of War, wherein it states, “I could not stand aside from the experiences of others…I still believed that the position of the pacifist was ultimately right but I was beginning to realise that, at the same time, I could not stand aside from the struggle which was engulfing my contemporaries” (Moseley 2021). Jan Narveson goes a step further and argues that pacifism involves internal contradiction. He argues that pacifists claim to want justice and human rights, but they are not ready to use violence to defend justice and rights that are threatened by aggression (Narveson 1965). Absolute pacifists are also criticised for tending to be unpatriotic as they do not want to defend their country against its enemies. They tend to have “too many friends” as they do not want to take arms against their opponents (Narveson 2017). Pacifists may defend themselves from a consequentialist position, saying that they do not take up the arms because they maintain that the consequences of engaging in war tend to be worse than the consequences of not taking up the arms. But this position depends on many contingent factors that are empirical in nature and, hence, with counter evidence and data, the pacifists’ claims may fall. But pacifists who follow a deontological principle may find it difficult to set aside the criticisms we have discussed above. While the absolute pacifists are facing these criticisms, the critics do not question the absolute pacifists’ idea of valuing non-violence. But they question the absolute pacifists’ total rejection of violence. Against the position of absolute pacifists are the “contingent pacifists,” who, like the other camp, accept the value of peace and non-violence, and also accept

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violence in certain situations, specifically with respect to the issue of just war. Thus, for the contingent pacifists, while peace is a superior value, there are instances where one needs to engage in violence, and just war can be one such instance. Thus, just war can be understood as a justified case of engaging in violence, i.e., war. Here, violence is accepted as a means to achieve peace and justice. Here, we can see that violence, that is war, is given a positive value by the contingent pacifists. But, for them too, violence has a derivative value—that is, it has a value as long as it can help in realising peace and justice. One of the most important occasions where the contingent pacifists accept violence is the case of just war. War engages in violence but is still undertaken to establish one or the other desired end. The task of just war theory is to justify some wars, at least, but also to limit them. (Fiala 2018) Just war theory, thus, tries to create a middle path between total abstinence from violence and reckless use of violence. It accepts violence and engages in war, but aims to do it after due deliberation on the need to engage in violence. Thus, the just war doctrine seeks to provide ethical underpinnings for the initiation and conduct of war (Barash and Webel 2014). Thus, just war theory accepts the “value” of violence. It deals with the justification of why certain wars are to be fought and also how the wars are to be fought. The theoretical aspect is concerned with ethically justifying war and the forms that warfare may or may not take (Moseley 2021). The discussion on just war, thus, consists of the following aspects: jus ad bellum, jus in bello and jus post bellum—referring to the justice before war, justice in war and justice post war, respectively. As we have religious traditions practising and praising the absolute pacifists’ standpoint, similarly, for the contingent pacifists as well, there are religious traditions sanctioning and approving violence justified through just war. In Hinduism, just war thinking is enjoined in the concept of the “Karma yoga” of Gita. Here, Krishna advised Arjuna to cease all personal strivings for a greater goal—even if it means killing his friends and relatives if his duty so demands (Barash and Webel 2014). In the other religious traditions of the West, like Judaism and Christianity, as well, the idea of just war can be found. (Barash and Webel 2014) One of the chief contributors to Christian just-war theory was St. Augustine.

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Augustine was primarily concerned with Christians’ participation in war. How one can accommodate violence from a Christian religious point of view, when it was laying great emphasis on love and non-violence. One way of addressing this was the earlier and medieval just war conception that war was not regarded as conflict between morally equal persons. The war is between just and unjust combatants. For Augustine, the righteous have to engage in war and, at the same time, righteously engage in war. That is, they should have the right reason to engage in war and, added to that, they should adopt the right path while engaging in war. Thus, in the classical just war thinking, killing, thus, assumes a form of punishment for the sins of the aggressor—meaning that the sinful aggressor was really to blame for the violence meted out to him (Ryan 2011). In the Augustinian view, the Christian presumption for going to war, at all times, was supposed to be in favour of peace. As peace is the ultimate aim, it may be achieved through violence, if there is a need for that. Thus, soldiers who entered war to defend right and order did not violate the commandment against killing (Barash and Webel 2014). Thus, contingent pacifists accept violence unlike absolute pacifists. But since they also, like absolute pacifists, value peace and non-violence, the violence that they accept only has an “instrumental value” as long as it helps in achieving the values of justice and peace. More so, the contingent pacifists consider violence as a “value” only when it becomes unavoidable: as a last resort. Their decisions to engage in violence are subject to ethical introspection. Those who believe in the possibility of just war do not say “all is fair in war”; rather, they have ethical criteria that guide their decisions about war (Gordon 2008). Thus, even though they accept violence—war—the engagement with war has to be after due deliberation. The just war requires one to answer the following questions: When is it justified to go to war? What moral restraint is required within just war? (Moseley 2021) Thus, for the contingent pacifists, it is not sufficient to justify why they should engage in violence/war. But they also need to give a consideration to the extent of violence that they may be involved in. St. Augustine tried to answer these questions with the concepts of jus ad bellum and jus in bello: while the former laid down the necessary conditions for justifying engagement in war, the latter were the criteria for conducting war in a just manner (Moseley 2021).

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The just-war theorist also faces huge challenges on various grounds. The first and foremost challenge comes to them through concerns around jus ad bellum—just cause. Moseley points out the principles of justice in war: “having just cause, being a last resort, being declared by a proper authority, possessing right intention, having a reasonable chance of success, and the end being proportional to the means used” (Moseley 2021). One can see that some principles are based on consequences and some are based on intrinsic principle. Out of these many principles, possessing just cause is the “first and arguably the most important condition of jus ad bellum.” (Moseley 2021) But just cause wasn’t always uncontroversial. In fact, Kant rejects some of the traditional just causes of war, though literature on Kant is ambivalent with regard to the issue of whether Kant supported just war or not; but there is a general consensus that Kant didn’t accept the traditional just cause of just war. Other challenges to just war come from the principles of proportionality and discrimination. As historian Niall Ferguson has noted, out of 275 wars fought in the twentieth century, an estimated 115 million died in battle throughout the entire century and, if civilian deaths were to be included in this total, deaths due to war in the century may have approached 250 million (Ryan 2011). If, at the beginning of the twentieth century, most of the casualties were military, by the end of the twentieth century most war casualties were civilians. So, modern warfare simply doesn’t qualify the just war guidelines. As modern war violates the principle of both discrimination and proportionality, the methods of modern war have, therefore, made the idea of just war obsolete (Cady 2014). The contingent pacifists have to address the criticisms levelled against them. As mentioned above, the criticisms are regarding the idea of just cause as well as the idea of proportionality. On the other hand, for the absolutists, these may not be their concern as they outrightly reject war and violence. But they need to respond to their critics, who were discussed in the earlier part of this paper. Thus, there are challenges to both just war theorists and to the absolute pacifists. But these contingent pacifists accept that, although violence can never be an ideal value, nevertheless, they cannot be shunned as totally evil. They believe that violence is a necessity in certain instances. Since contingent pacifists accept violence, they differ from the absolute pacifists. Herein, we try to contend that they need to be more vigilant about ethical issues arising

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out of their position, as against the absolute pacifists. The deontological absolute pacifists need to be concerned with the jus ad bellum—the just cause issues of war—and argue against it. But the contingent pacifists need to bother about jus ad bellum, jus in bello and jus post bellum—the justice before war, justice in war and justice post war, respectively. There is every chance that the motive for their stance may be looked upon as political rather than ethical. That is, decisions taken for their own vested interests rather than for promoting peace. Their decisions may be inconsistent because they may take decisions depending on the context, unlike absolute pacifists, who may be consistent as they argue against war. The just war theorists do need to take cognizance of the changing dimensions of war: as pointed out, there is hardly any possibility of just war. Given these, we contend that the ethical challenges for contingent pacifists are greater and more demanding, compared to those for the absolute pacifists, because they think that there is “value” to violence as it will help to achieve the ultimate values of justice and peace.

References Barash, D. P., and C. P. Webel. 2014. Peace and Conflict Studies. New Delhi: Sage. Cady, D. L. 2014. Pacifism Is not Passivism. Retrieved from Philosophy Now: https://philosophynow.org/issues/105/Pacifism_Is_Not_Passivism. Fiala, A. 2018. Pacifism. 15 September. Retrieved from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pacifism/. Gordon, J. 2008. Is War Inevitable? Retrieved from Philosophy now: https://philosophynow.org/issues/66/Is_War_Inevitable. Moseley, A. 2021. Pacifism. 3 March. Retrieved from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://iep.utm.edu/pacifism/. Narveson, J. 1965. “Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis.” Ethics: 259–71. Narveson, J. 2017. “Pacifism: Does it Make Moral Sense?” In The Routledge Handbook of Pacifism and Nonviolence, edited by A. Fiala. New York: Routledge. Ryan, C. 2011. “Democratic Duty and the Moral Dilemmas of Soldiers.” Ethics: 10–42.

CHAPTER 9 UNDERSTANDING ETHICS IN THE LENS OF BUDDHISM AND WITTGENSTEIN RAJAKISHORE NATH

Abstract In this paper, I would like to explore the nature of ethics from the perspectives of Buddhism and Wittgenstein. It is challenging to compare Buddhism with Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Again, the comparison does not mean that both the traditions oppose each other. Instead, the aim is to give an exposition basis for modern Buddhist philosophy. In Buddhism and Wittgenstein, ethics plays a very vital role. However, according to Wittgenstein, ethics is only transcendental, but the Buddhist notion of ethics is practical and social as well as transcendental. Therefore, I would like to show that Buddhist ethics is deflationary metaphysics and Wittgenstein’s ethics is inflationary metaphysics. Keywords: Buddhism, Wittgenstein, ethics, metaphysical ethics, social ethics, engaged ethics.

I There is a distinction between inflationary ontological ethics and deflationary ontological ethics. Somebody could challenge both inflationary ontological ethics and deflationary ontological ethics. In the case of inflationary ontology, it introduces things that are unknown to ordinary experience. However, in the case of deflationary ontology, there is no problem at all as no new ontological entities are allowed. I want to show that the nature of Wittgenstein’s ethics is inflationary metaphysics because Wittgenstein introduced ethical ideas that are unknown to ordinary experience, whereas Buddhist ethics[1] is deflationary metaphysics. After all, Buddhist ethics

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presents moral ideas that are social, practical, and metaphysical. Before going into details, let us introduce Buddhist ethics.

II The concept of “Dharma” plays a vital role in the Buddha’s teaching of the four noble truths, in which ethics has been at the centre of Buddhist thought. The Buddhist path aims to liberate oneself and others from suffering. Suffering is to be caused by egocentric attachment, egocentric aversion, and ignorance, which are themselves based on a cognitive and existential misunderstanding of phenomena. Buddhist thinkers have employed a multiplicity of approaches to the questions of nature, causes, and the appropriate responses to suffering, some of which resemble some familiarity with the Western moral theories. I could interpret Buddhist ethics as eudemonistic virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deontology, pragmatism, etc. We can see that there is ontology as well as pragmatism in Buddhist ethics. Buddhist moral thinkers set out to solve the fundamental problem of the pervasiveness of suffering. They ground their work in the doctrine of dependent origination, describing the moral significance of intention and consequence, character and action, virtues, vices, commitments, and goals as situated in a particular web of interdependence. Buddhism presents the path to liberation from cognitive and emotional defilements through the practice of the six virtues, or perfections (pƗramitƗs), of the Bodhisattva: generosity (dƗna), discipline (Ğila), patience (ksƗnti), vigor (vÕrya), meditative absorption (dhyƗna), and wisdom (prajnƗ) (Edelglass and Garfield 2009, 372). According to the Buddhists, failure to control the mind makes it susceptible to anger, frustration, craving, envy, and other mental sufferings that are the sources of one’s suffering and make one insensible to the suffering of others. Ethics, therefore, is primarily concerned with liberating the mind from suffering. If somebody practices these virtues, they will attend Bodhisattva. The Buddhist term “Ğila,” “moral virtue,” only pertains to bodily and verbal conduct; mental conduct is dealt with under meditation and wisdom. It is acknowledged that wisdom and moral virtue are mutually supportive, like two hands washing each other. The real nature of the action is identified as the will, or volition (cetanƗ), that is expressed in an action of body, speech, or mind. CetanƗ encompasses the motive from which an action is done, its immediate intention, and the immediate mental impulse that sets it going and sustains it. Again, this idea is very much related to Bodhisattva. It is the path to liberation from emotional and cognitive defilements that is

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motivated by great compassion, the altruistic aspiration to liberate all sentient beings from suffering, and is facilitated by the perfection of wisdom. Again, it is necessary to mention, here, that NiDŽvƗna is the prime goal. It is not the case that an action is morally right in Buddhism insofar as it tends to bring about the attainment of NiDŽvƗna. This can easily be seen by considering that the training necessary for enlightenment is separated into three parts: morality, meditation, and wisdom. Some may argue that the quality of moral goodness is made into an object existing independently of people’s opinions. It has a similar status to private sensations or dharmas. The “object” is discovered by means of the same kind of essentialist thinking, which we saw to operate for “hope” and the rest. All examples of moral goodness have something in common underlying all valid uses of the words “morally good,” and this something can be experienced. Buddhists were aware of the dharmas corresponding to the phrase “moral goodness” (Gudmunsen 1977, 97). Even if NiDŽvƗna is beyond good and evil, it seems Buddhism defines what is good (kusala) in terms of its conduciveness to the production of happiness (sukha) and what is bad (akusala) in terms of its conduciveness to the production of suffering (dukkha) (Mohanty 2000, 113). The Arhat, specifically, is beyond merit and demerit derived from karma. All statements about morality and evaluation are matters of conventional truth. NiDŽvƗna is no better object than SamsƗra. The enlightened person is not objectively better off at all. The perfection of morality indeed is one of the six perfections, a part of the Bodhisattva’s career (Nath 2018, 537–43). However, through the fact that neither self nor being nor morality nor enlightenment has been apprehended, he cleanses the perfection of morality for the sake of enlightenment (Gudmunsen 1977, 98). There are many philosophical thoughts that assume that the moral term refers to objective qualities. I have already mentioned Wittgenstein’s views on this, and the Buddhist is equally keen to reject the idea that there can be an objective or factual difference underlying the difference. The potential Bodhisattva must not make the mistake of looking forward to moral superiority or to possessing a “quality” of goodness, though that is not to say that morality is not important. A Bodhisattva does not settle down in views about morality as his refuge; because perfect purity of morality does not result from taking refuge in views on morality (Gudmunsen 1977, 99). In this sense, there is no difference between SamsƗra and NiDŽvƗna. Therefore, there is not much difference between absolute truth and conventional truth. As we have seen, there is no factual difference between the absolute and the conventional truth, or between NiDŽvƗna and SamsƗra.

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The advantages of the absolute over the conventional truth, or of NiDŽvƗna over SamsƗra, are not advantages of correctness or validity so much as advantages stemming from a better attitude to life. One is transformed, not by grasping, at last, the “ultimate fact about the universe,” but by realising that facts are not “hard.” It is relativistic in the sense that it includes scope for flexibility where appropriate, but not in the spirit of holding that moral norms (as distinct from customs) are merely a function of local cultural circumstances. According to Buddhists, culture should accompany morality. Otherwise, it is not a culture. It is absolutistic in holding that certain things are always immoral (greed and hatred, for instance) and that certain things are always good (such as compassion and non-violence). On the question of objectivity, we have seen, above, that, as an aspect of Dharma, Buddhist ethical teachings are thought to be objectively true and in accordance with the nature of things. If Dharma exists in this sense as an objective moral law, it suggests that, through the use of reason, individuals can ensure that the choices they make are objectively valid—that is to say that they reach the same conclusions as would an enlightened reasoner (Saddhatista 1970). We can add that, in maintaining that the truth about right and wrong is objective and can be known through the proper use of the intellectual faculties, such as insight (prajna), Buddhism would appear to be a cognitive, ethical philosophy. This means it holds that moral truth can be discerned through reason and that moral judgments are not merely subjective or a matter of personal taste, like a preference. I find that Buddhist ethics is naturalistic (naturalist theories of ethics hold that an account can be given of moral conduct at the level of natural science). Buddhism holds that there is a close connection between ethics and psychology (Thera 2014), which is seen in the way moral conduct leads gradually to a transformation in the nature of the individual as, little by little, the virtuous person evolves into a Buddha (Keown 2005, 31–32). This is the main reason that Buddhist philosophical psychology provides a magnificent classification of mental states. Again, this is due to the effects of deep curiosity and sustained attention on mental life as such. Another important factor is the Buddhist phenomenological inquiry: to contribute to the alleviation of suffering. According to Dharmapáda, “All mental and physical phenomena are impermanent” (Thera 2014, 227). Whenever, through wisdom, one perceives this and then one becomes dispassionate towards suffering. This is a road to purity (Saddhatista 1970, 34). The same idea is Abidhamma, which is devoted to psychology, draws distinctions among wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral mental states, and closely

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analyses the functional links among the mental states, for example, as to the three poisons (avarice, anger, and false view), and the different psychological factors. This detailed Buddhist psychology is of great interest in its own right but is ultimately meant to serve Buddhist ethics (Flanagan 2007, 83). Now let us turn to discuss Wittgenstein’s ethics.

III According to Wittgenstein, philosophy cannot yield proofs, as it can only clarify the logical structure of our concepts and, thus, elucidates our moral perspective; yet, conceptual clarification and analysis do not entail an individual person’s own conclusions about right and wrong (Philstrऺm 2005, 41). This shows that there is a crucial difference between Buddhism and Wittgenstein’s idea of moral realism. This is because of the fact that Wittgenstein offered transcendental realism about values. In the form of life, we have many activities, and all the activities have some values or the other, which are invariable and implicitly represent a moral aspect of life that makes life meaningful. In that sense, pragmatic moral realism is very close to Wittgenstein’s realism. As Wittgenstein said, “Now instead of saying ‘Ethics is the inquiry into what is good’ Ethics is the inquiry into what is valuable, or into what is really important, or I could have said Ethics is the inquiry into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right way of living. I believe if you look at all these phrases you will get a rough idea as to what it is that Ethics is concerned with” (1965, 5). Thus, ethics is the inquiry into what is valuable and important in life, i.e., the meaning of life that makes it worth living. Again, Wittgenstein, in another remark, said, “For a large class of cases of the employment of the word ‘meaning’—though not for all— this word can be explained in this way: the meaning of a word is its use in the language” (Wittgenstein 2009, Remark No. 43). While commenting on the above remark, I would like to hold that the meaning of a word is its use in language and is not a theory of meaning (Panda and Nath 2020). However, on the issue of the primacy of practices, Wittgenstein’s ethics is not in the strict sense of pragmatic ethics. Because, for Wittgenstein, “Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express facts; as a teacup will only hold a teacup full of water and if I were to pour out a gallon over it…. I said that so far as facts and propositions are concerned there is only relative value and relatively good, right, etc. ….. And similarly, the absolute good, if it is a describable state of affairs, would

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be one which everybody, independent of his tastes and inclinations, would necessarily bring about or feel guilty for not bringing about” (1965, 7). Wittgenstein, in his “A Lecture on Ethics,” introduced the notion of higher life in his theory of ethics due to the fact that, for him, ethics is concerned with absolute values. The absolute values are transcendent to the realm of relative values. The relative values are the facts about the empirical world. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein had already upheld this view when he stated that “ethics is transcendental” (Wittgenstein 1961, Remark No. 6.421.0). For him, “ethics and aesthetics are one” (1961, Remark No. 6.421.0), which reveals his eudaimonic conception of ethical value. However, Wittgenstein considered ethics as transcendental because he could not see how ethics would be possible in the contingent world of facts. The world is decisively a concatenation of facts, as was made clear by him in the Tractatus. It was, therefore, incumbent on him to search for a space for ethics in a transcendental sphere outside the world of facts (Pradhan 2009, 186). Ethical value, according to Wittgenstein, is contrary to relative, scientific, and cultural values, as we know that relative, scientific, and cultural values are accidental values. These values can be, at best, instrumental values. The instrumental value is subject to practices or customs or culture, and such an instrumental value is so-called because there is intrinsic value, and these inherent qualities have ontological status. [1] While giving examples of relative values, Wittgenstein highlighted several cases: he said that by “this man is a good pianist” we mean that he can play pieces of a certain degree of difficulty with a certain degree of dexterity. And “this man is a good runner” simply means that he runs a certain number of miles in a certain number of minutes, etc (Wittgenstein 1965, 6). Therefore, there is a fact-value distinction, where fact and relative values belong to this world, and ethical values belong to the transcendent world. But Wittgenstein admits that ethical value itself does not lie within the world since it is not of factual origin like other events and facts in the world. That is to say that there is an ontology in ethics without pragmatism. It is because of the fact that value is not a factual description (Pradhan 2009, 187). The grammar of the word “value” relates to that of the word “good,” which implies a certain utility toward a given end, i.e., “a good runner,” “a good pianist,” etc (Freidland 2006, 92). This argument of Wittgenstein’s makes room for transcendental ethics in the sense that the values themselves, which ethics deals with, are not factual and are not accidental like the facts, so they must belong to the higher realm. Thus, Wittgenstein stated that all ethical statements run up against the bounds of the factual, by employing words in

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purely metaphorical ways (Wittgenstein 1965, 11). These statements suggest that ethical statements are about ideal behaviour. [1] Wittgenstein used ontology in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in two categories of being. The first one was that one can talk about, refer to, and name objects, and one can picture, describe, and state facts. And the second is that one cannot picture, describe, or state objects, and one cannot talk about, refer to, or name facts. The ideal behaviour is the apprehension of “good behaviour.” However, Wittgenstein argued that the conception of such action is a figment of someone’s imagination since no absolute description or explanation of the term “good” can be satisfactorily offered. Wittgenstein described this idea: “You cannot lead people to what is good; you can only lead them to someplace or other. The good is outside the space of facts” (1980, 3). Therefore, Wittgenstein believed that morality is not a matter of scientific or human convictions, and he had a metaphysical conception of ethics as he thought that it to be transcendental in character (Pradhan 2009, 187). Moreover, as we have seen above, the ideas of “good, “value,” etc., are the root of ethics and are not definable in any theories of ethics because “good” is not a subject of explanation because it is beyond any method. At the same time, the term “good” is absolute perfection, and this absolute perfection is available only in religion. Thus, “What is good is divine too. Queer as it sounds, that sums up my ethics. Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural” (Wittgenstein 1980, 3). The view above is the main reason that Wittgenstein held that the good life is the Godly life, i.e., the perfect life. This perfect life, according to Wittgenstein, is religious because it is associated with self-perfection. There may be many criticisms of this perspective of ethics, and these criticisms are based on the fact that, for most ethicists, moral concepts or ideas have independent character and, if we accept Wittgenstein’s ethics, there would be nothing called moral autonomy. Moreover, Wittgenstein’s argument is understandable because he wanted to tell us that it is an illusion to think of good as rationally definable and to think that it can be given human content. If it can be rationally justified, then it will cease to be good at all. It would be assimilated into something that humans can make possible. So, it would not be “good” in the absolute sense any more. Hence, Wittgenstein called the “good” divine. There is, in fact, a supernatural sense regarding the good. It is not human and natural but divine and supernatural (Pradhan 2009, 188). This does not mean that good is not there in the world; rather, that good can be realised in the world. In this sense, the good lies within the space of facts

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so far as its realisation is concerned. Therefore, the main contention of Wittgenstein’s view is that good, in reality, is not definable in a sociocultural way; instead, it exists outside of the space of facts. In the above discussion, Wittgenstein showed that ethics is transcendental. If ethics is transcendental, morality is isolated from the space of the causal world. In this sense, Wittgenstein applied inflationary metaphysics to ethics.

IV From the above discussion, I find that it is philosophically viable that Buddhist ethics is deflationary ontological ethics. Because there is no factual difference between absolute truth and conventional truth, or between NiDŽvƗna and SamsƗra. The advantages of absolute over conventional truth, or of NiDŽvƗna over SamsƗra, are not advantages of correctness or validity so much as advantages stemming from a better attitude to life. Again, Dharma denotes both what is and what ought to be. Here, Buddhism seems to commit what ethicists in the West call the “naturalist fallacy” of deducing an “ought” from an “is.” It is said to be a logical fallacy to derive moral conclusions from a purely factual description of the world (Pradhan 2009, 187). According to the Buddhists, the inflectionally ontological ethics of Wittgenstein has no relation to this world because everything in the world is conditional and, hence, ethics is subject to this. As we have seen, Wittgenstein and the Buddhists differed from each other to the highest degree in their perceptions of the question. It is very difficult to establish a bridge between Wittgenstein’s ethics and Buddhist ethics. Buddhists may challenge inflationary metaphysical ethics, but not deflationary metaphysical ethics because in deflationary metaphysical ethics, there is a practical aspect. Furthermore, for Wittgenstein, ethics is not a set of rules or principles or subjective; for him, as we have seen in the above discussion, it is metaphysical. However, Buddhists may challenge the fact that values, which are social facts, could be accepted on the grounds that they are conditional. Buddhists have accepted that values are both social facts and scientific facts because Buddhists accept naturalist theories of ethics, which hold that an account of moral conduct can be given at the level of natural science. All these claims go against Wittgenstein’s ethics because, for him, ethics is neither social facts nor scientific facts. However, someone may argue that values are different from facts because facts are about factual things, whereas ethics deals with normative things. A fact can be either true or false, but the value cannot be. This is the main

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reason why ethics is transcendental, in the sense that it deals with matters that are beyond the realm of facts. Any transcendental problem can have no solution in the empirical world. This is the way ethics could be safeguarded from science (Nath 2019). The factual problems can be solved with the help of empirical or social sciences, but ethics does not belong to these sciences. If values or ethics are separated from ethics, ethics cannot be practical or social, but the Buddhists provide a theory of human excellence. In the Buddhist case, we are provided with divisions among wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral mental states, as well as various lists of afflictions and virtues. The most excellent person is the one who has released himself from various poisons and mental afflictions and who lives among the four-divine unlimited: compassion, loving-kindness, sympathetic joy, and equanimity (Flanagan 2007, 110). This is like Aristotelian ethics. Aristotle, in his “Nicomachean Ethics” (Aristotle 1893), talks about human excellence through “happiness” or “eudaimonia.” Like Buddhists, Aristotle accepts deflationary metaphysical ethics, but not inflationary metaphysical ethics, because moralities exist in the heart of human behaviour. This is because of the fact that Aristotelian ethics and Buddhist ethics do not accept any kind of dualism, whereas, in the case of Platonic ethics, there is a kind of duality between transcendental ethics and empirical ethics like for Wittgenstein. For both Buddhism and Aristotelian ethics, morality is normative in the sense of practice. That is, it consists of the extraction of “good” practices from common practices. That is to say that ethics consists of wisdom based on historical experience about how best to arrange our affairs and how to develop our nobler potential, as this, too, is judged based on historical experience. Moral wisdom and skills consist mainly of “knowhow” that allows for smooth interpersonal relations, as well as for personal growth and fulfilment. Ethical reasoning is a variety of practical reasoning designed to help us to negotiate with practical life, both intrapersonal and interpersonal, as it occurs in the ecological niche we occupy. We do not know a priori how to be, or how to live. We are social animals. One thing this means is that we must be immersed in a culture and space of meaning if we are to make sense of things and find meaning (Flanagan 2007, 111). This is the main reason that “lines of communication are available by which a Western philosophical perspective might constructively encounter the teaching of the Buddha” (Gowans 2003, 6). Now, the question is: Is Buddhist ethics like Putnam’s ethics? It is very “hard” to compare Buddhist ethics and Putnam’s ethics. Putnam, in his book Ethics Without Ontology, has given different interpretations of ethical issues (2005). Putnam stated that there is no “ontology” in ethics. For him, there is

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nothing wrong with ethics. Rather, there is something wrong with metaphysics. Ethics cannot be justified from a non-ethical standpoint. In this way, Putnam challenges both inflationary ontological ethics and deflationary ontological ethics, and he bids goodbye to all varieties of ontologies. This idea of ethics goes against the possibility of Vedanta, Buddhism, Aristotelian metaphysics, Platonic forms, Islam, Kantian category, Levinas’s “being,” and Heidegger’s ontology. He replaced “ethical ontology” with that of pragmatic pluralism: the recognition that we employ different kinds of discourses in our everyday lives, discourses subject to different standards, and possessing different sorts of applications that all contribute to the description of reality (Nath 2019). It is also true that, like Buddhism, Putnam holds that his idea of ethics is very much a practical problem, which is also very much related to the practical aspect of life, which is also social. But it is very difficult to compare Putnam’s ethics with Buddhist ethics because he has derived this idea from John Dewey’s idea of practical ethics. According to Dewey, “all conduct is an interaction between elements of human nature and the environment, natural and social” (1922, 10). Dewey’s claim is that the practical aspect of life depends on the process of freedom and the environment in which human desire and choice count for something. It is because of this fact that Dewey believed that neither traditional philosophical theories of ethics nor traditional ethical norms pose any problem to practical ethics. Even if we accept the traditional ethical norms, these have no representational content (Dewey 1915). Taking a clue from Dewey, Putnam claims that “‘practical problems’ here means simply ‘problems we encounter in practice,’ specific and situated problems, as opposed to abstract, idealised, or theoretical problems” (Putnam 2005, 28). The word “practical,” for Putnam, does not mean “instrumental.” But we have an instrumental way of thinking as part of the solution to practical problems that we encounter in our everyday lives. On the other hand, according to Putnam, we should not equate this idea with a “scientific” solution in the sense in which physics is the paradigm, and also in the sense in which the statistical investigations in the social sciences are paradigmatic. Putnam states that, for Dewey, when the problems are large-scale social problems, social scientific investigations are certainly a necessary part of the investigation (Putnam 2005, 28–29). Putnam argues that ethics is, as a matter of fact, concerned with the problems facing man in the everyday world. He points out that “there are a host of ethical judgments which are not happily formulated using the moral philosopher’s favourite words, ought, must, must not, good, bad, right, wrong, duty, and obligation”

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(Putnam 2005, 73). It is a kind of philosophical blindness to assume that all the ethical issues can be addressed using this “meagre vocabulary.” Again, he says that, if ethical truths are, like the truths of mathematics, simply conceptual truths that do not correspond to any natural or non-natural objects, then the truths of ethics are not necessarily descriptions. There may be some that overlap, but some ethical statements are simply “valuing,” expressions of moral condemnation or of praise, while others are “descriptions” of what are, presumably, conceptual truths (Rovie 2006). Putnam never clearly offers any examples of ethical statements that are descriptions; he offers us examples of valuing, like “terrorism is criminal” and “wife-beating is wrong,” but seems to steer clear of making any ethical statement that appears to be an example of an ethical description (Putnam 2005, 73). There is also an overlap between the class of descriptions and the class of valuing. This is because of the fact that some values are descriptions, and some values are not descriptions. We should not seek a metaphysical foundation for ethics because this may lead to many controversies regarding the nature of ontology. Putnam is right in many of his criticisms of metaphysical ethics, but it is not clear how he can avoid the idea of deflationary ontological ethics as practiced by Buddhism. Buddhist ethics is transcendental as well as practical because morality is not isolated from the space of the causal world. This idea of Buddhism contradicts Wittgenstein’s ethics and Putnam’s ethics because, as we have seen in the above philosophical ideas of Wittgenstein’s ethics, ethics is transcendental, whereas, in the case of Putnam, there is nothing called ontology in ethics, and ethics is only practical. But, according to Buddhism, the nature of ethics is ontological and practical. That is to say, that ontological ethics is practical and social. Here, I would like to say that the particular ethical action exists in universal ethical actions and vice versa. This is the main philosophical reason that the nature of Buddhist ethics is deflationary ontological ethics. Like engaged Buddhism, 1 Buddhist ethics can be claimed as “engaged ethics.” I would like to argue, here, that the Buddhist engaged ethics is not only concerned with an individual’s conduct, but also an individual’s conduct is related to the various kinds of activities, such as the environment, social equality, and justice, etc. We find that there is a close connection with engaged ethics in that of Aristotle too. The Aristotelian’s virtue ethics also talks about engaged ethics because it consists of the moral virtues; these 1

The Buddhist philosophical teachings are engaged in social, political, environmental, etc., activities of human life and that of the world.

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virtuous activities are necessarily associated with human actions, and their rational engagement with the world. Being virtuous is not a kind of habit or tendency, but it is necessarily engaged with human actions. There is a selfreflective character in every action, and there should be dynamic engagement with the world. And, for Wittgenstein, ethics is not a set of rules or principles or subjective or irrational but, as we have seen in the above discussion, is metaphysical. For the Buddhist, values are embodied in social facts; if there are no values in social facts, they are not social. It looks like that these ideas go against Wittgenstein’s ethics because, for him, ethics is neither social facts nor scientific facts. But it is not so because, for Buddhism, without moral conduct, no action is possible, and ethical conduct is the supreme for any actions. And again, Buddhism is not denying the metaphysical aspects of ethics, which Wittgenstein was arguing for. According to Wittgenstein, ethics must be about the absolute value, which is beyond the limits of language and the world. As Wittgenstein said, ethics “runs against the boundaries of language” (1965, 12). The main intention of the Buddhist engaged ethics is that ethics cannot abandon the world.

V There are both connections and disconnections between Buddhist ethics and Wittgenstein’s ethics. The connection is in the sense that there is metaphysics in ethics, which is transcendental. The disconnection is in the sense that ethics should be realised and practised in this world. This is the main reason that Buddhism argues for nirDŽvƗna and samsƗra (Rupp 1971) Thus, “nirDŽvana is purely and solely an ethical state, to be reached in this birth by ethical practices, contemplation, and insight.” (David, Rhys and Stede 1959, 362). It employs the possessions that the Buddhist offers for ascribing a constructive status to the phenomenal world; the samsƗra is potentially niDŽvƗna. The human being is developing toward its ultimate engagement; it is in the process of its transformation from samsƗra into niDŽvƗna. Thus, I would like to conclude that Buddhist ethics is deflationary metaphysics, and Wittgenstein’s ethics is inflationary metaphysics.

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References Aristotle. 1893. The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by F. H. Peters. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, TrĦbner & Co Ltd. Bodhi, Bhikkhu. 2000. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha. Translated by Saূyutta NikƗya. USA: Wisdom Publication. Dewey, John. 1915. “The Logic of Judgments of Practice.” In Middle Works, vol. 8. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, John. 1922. Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology. USA: New York Henry Holt and Company. Edelglass, William, and Jay L. Garfield. 2009. Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flanagan, Owen J. 2007. The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World. England and Mass.: The MIT Press. Freidland, Jullian. 2006. “Wittgenstein and the Metaphysics of Ethical Values.” Ethic@: an International Journal for Moral Philosophy 5 (1): 91–102. Gowans, C. W. 2003. Philosophy of the Buddha. London and New York: Routledge. Gudmunsen, Chris. 1977. Wittgenstein and Buddhism. London: Macmillan Education Ltd. Keown, Damien. 2005. Buddhist Ethics: Buddhist A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mohanty, J. N. 2000. Classical Indian Philosophy. Oxford, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nath, R. 2018. “The Problem of Self in NƗgƗrjuna’s Philosophy: A Contemporary Perspective.” Artificial Intelligence and Society 33 (4): 537–43. DOI: 10.1007/s00146-017-0702-y. Nath, R. 2019. “Can Ethics Be Without Ontology: Wittgenstein and Putnam.” PHILOSOPHIA 47: 1215–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406018-0035-1. Panda, M. M., and R. Nath. 2020. “Wittgenstein on Public Language About Personal Experiences.” Philosophia 48 (5): 1939–60. Doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00192-8. Philstrऺm, Sami. 2005. Pragmatic Moral Realism: A Transcendental Defense. New York: Rodopi B. V. Pradhan, R. C. 2009. Language, Reality and Transcendence: An Essay on the Main Strands of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy. Boca Raton: Brown Walker Press. Putnam, H. 2005. Ethics Without Ontology. USA: Harvard University Press.

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Rupp, George. 1971. “The Relationship between NirvƗna and SamsƗra: An Essay on the Evolution of Buddhist Ethics.” Philosophy East and West 21 (1): 55–67. Rhys Davids, T. W., and William Stede (eds.). 1959. The Pali Text Society’s Pali-English Dictionary. London: Luzac & Co. Saddhatissta, H. 1970. Buddhist Ethics: The Path to NiDŽvƗna. London: Wisdom Publication. Thera, Suriyagoda Sumangala. 2014. The Dharmapada. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.404824. Accessed on 8 September 2019. Wittgenstein L. 1961. Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Translated by B. F. McGuiness and D. F. Pears. London: Routledge. Wittgenstein L. 1980. Culture and Value, edited by G. H. Von Wright and H. Nyman. Translated by P. Winch. Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. 1965. “A Lecture on Ethics.” The Philosophical Review 74 (1): 3–12. Wittgenstein, L. 2009. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Wiley-Black.

CHAPTER 10 WITTGENSTEIN’S CONCEPT OF SELF: AN ANALYTICAL EXPOSITION THROUGH THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE BHASKAR BHATTACHARYYA

Abstract This paper attempts to explore Wittgenstein’s concept of self in two phases. The first phase is confined to his early exposition on the concept of self. And the second phase denounces his earlier thinking on the concept of self. Wittgenstein depicted the picture of “self” in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus in section 5.632: “The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.” And he remarks further in section 5.633: Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.

This chapter tries to critically bring out the concepts of Descartes and Hume on “self.” And, then, seeks to expose the changing perspective of Wittgenstein on the concept of self, which he explicitly mentioned in Philosophical Investigations in section 116: ”When philosophers use a word—’knowledge,’ ‘being,’ ‘object,’ ‘I,’ ‘proposition,’ ‘name’—and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home? What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday usage.” He further clarified, in Philosophical Investigations, section 509: “What is your aim in philosophy?—To shew the fly the way out of the fly bottle.”

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Keywords: self, world, will, metaphysical, transcendental, ethics.

Introduction This chapter explores Wittgenstein’s concept of self not only from his early perspective of his philosophy of language but from a later perspective as well. The early perspective attempts to divulge the metaphysical as well as the transcendental aspect towards the concept of self. While thoroughly discussing the early concept of self, this chapter turns to the anti-metaphysical aspect of self. Wittgenstein’s later perspective on self discredited his early philosophising of self with some critical remarks in Philosophical Investigations. This chapter, in a nutshell, focuses on the two hidden aspects of self: one is metaphysical, which includes the metaphysical as well as the transcendental self, and the other is the anti-metaphysical aspect of self in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language.

The Metaphysical Self Wittgenstein remarked in Tractatus: Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? You will say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visual field. But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye. (Wittgenstein 1961)

He also asserted in Tractatus: Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way. What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that ‘the world is my world’. The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world- not a part of it. (Wittgenstein 1961)

These sayings significantly hold that the concept of “self” captures a prominent place in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Besides, he made it clear that the philosophical concept of self deals with the metaphysical concept of self, which is, indeed, different from the psychological and empirical concept of self. The metaphysical subject, which is called the philosophical self, is not contained in the world, rather the world presupposes it. In his book The Great Mirror, R. C. Pradhan rightly pointed out that

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the notion of self occupies a pre-dominant position in the transcendental position in the transcendental framework of the Tractatus. The self and the world constitute the two major themes of the Tractarian metaphysics. Wittgenstein does not however argue for a causal relationship between the self and the world. His is a defence of the non-causal and transcendental relation between the two. Because of the non-causal relation, the question of freedom of will and other related issues are exactly solved. (Pradhan 2002)

Wittgenstein mentioned: If I wrote a book called the world as I found it, I should have to include a report on my body, and should have to say which parts were subordinate to my will, and which were not, etc., this being a method of isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an important sense, there is no subject; for it alone could not be mentioned in that book. (Wittgenstein 1961)

This remark seems to represent that the world deals with facts and does not make any reference to non-factual non-entity, which may be mentioned as the subject or the self. The world is concerned with factual phenomena and does not go beyond the scope of factuality and this is clear in the assertion of Wittgenstein that “the world is totality of facts, and not of things” (1961). It fails to point out the reference to the “self” or the “subject.” It also implies that the self is not a matter of this world, rather, it is an issue of the transcendental or it can be observed that the “self” is transcendental, which does not mention the concept of mind or the empirical world. Therefore, he mentioned that “there is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas.” (1961) This statement illuminates that the subject does not possess any attribute like thinking, feeling, and willing, because the thinker dissociates from the matter of thinking in the sense that the subject, or the thinker, is considered the transcendental “I”; that is why there is a gap or distance between the thinker and thinking. Here, Wittgenstein disclosed his antiCartesian standpoint, which holds that the thinker remains a thinker without the quality of thinking. Therefore, Wittgenstein raised the question: “Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found?” (1961) From this saying, it can be stated that the thinking self, or the subject, transcends the world in the sense that the “self” is missing in the world and the world is considered an object of thought, but the “I,” or the “self,” is not contained in the world—it being independent of the world. It belongs to the realm of metaphysics and introduces itself as transcendental or metaphysical. Whether there is a metaphysical subject or not? This serious philosophical issue raises two opposite reactions. As the leading figure of the first reaction, Hume viewed that there is no self and the world perceives no self

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except some perceptions. And there is nothing like a subject that is self, which transcends the world and enters into the transcendental realm. This Humean viewpoint defends the view that there is, indeed, no metaphysical self and, therefore, the concept of self as a metaphysical entity is elusive or deceptive or illusory. Against the Humean standpoint, there is another set of opinion, which was formulated by Descartes, who held that there is a self, who is a thinking being. As a forerunner of this standpoint, Descartes formulated Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I exist). By formulating this, Descartes significantly held that the self exists as the substratum of thinking or, in another sense, Descartes brought out the concept of the “self” as a spiritual substance that is as real as an entity and that is related to other nonspiritual entities, although there are differences between the two. The Cartesian concept of self belongs to the world instead of getting out of, or transcending, the world. Wittgenstein answered to the two opposite reactions forwarded by Hume and Descartes, respectively: 1) According to Wittgenstein, the Humean notion of self cannot be accepted in the sense that it reduces the self to a bundle of psychological experiences. That is why, Hume maintained that the self is nothing but a bundle of perceptions, which constitute the mental stuff without the existence of substratum. The essence of substratum, in case of the bundle of experiences, depicts a series of perceptions, which indicate our mental life. As a consistent empiricist, he did not accept the concept of self other than its experiences. It is clear that Hume did not deny the existence of mental states; however, he did not admit the existence of mental substance. Wittgenstein, in this context, agreed with Hume about the non-existence of mental substance. The psychological self never philosophically explains how the experiences are identified to a particular body. Wittgenstein clearly stated his refusal of the Humean concept of self in Tractatus. Hence, he wrote: “Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way. What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that ‘the world is my world.’ The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world- not a part of it” (1961). Wittgenstein, through this remark, brought out the fact that the concept of self is more substantial than Hume’s concept of self because it is in the grounds of the metaphysical as well as the transcendental self. Therefore, Wittgenstein called it the philosophical or the metaphysical self.

Wittgenstein’s Concept of Self 2) The Cartesian concept of self has also been criticised by Wittgenstein. According to him, Descartes identified the concept of self with a soul. His identification of the concept of self with a soul shows that the self is an entity in the world and, therefore, it is a matter of psychology. According to Descartes, the self, or “I,” is a thinking substance and, accordingly, it is a matter of our inner knowledge. It makes the Cartesian self into a psychological self in Wittgenstein’s terminology. Wittgenstein held that, even though Descartes tried to make the self a metaphysical self, it is not so because he tried to attach the self to a human body. Ryle, in this context, held that Descartes committed a category mistake because self and body belong to two different categories; so, self cannot be identified with a human body and, similarly, the body cannot be identified with the self. Thus, the mindbody concept commits a category mistake, according to Ryle. To be free from such a mistake, Wittgenstein explored a new direction in his philosophy by pushing the self outside the domain of the world. Therefore, he viewed that the “self is a metaphysical subject, the limits of the world, not a part of it.” (Wittgenstein 1961) R. C. Pradhan explicitly mentioned that “the metaphysical self is the limit of the world in the sense that it is outside it and makes it ‘my world.’ It is a condition of the world rather than part of it. Had it been a part of the world, the self would have been reduced to a psychological self. It could not have been the metaphysical self” (Pradhan 2002). Wittgenstein’s concept of self plays a very dominant role in Tractatus. He clearly stated that the metaphysical subject is not in the world, rather the world presupposes it. The metaphysical subject is also known as the transcendental subject in the sense that it makes the world my world. According to Wittgenstein, the self is the limit of the world, and in the absence of it, we cannot make the sense of the world. Therefore, it is clear that the “self” is the ground of the experience of the world. Although it is considered the ground of the world, it is not itself a part of it like the Cartesian concept of the “self,” which is indispensably part of the world. As a result, the Cartesian “self” becomes the substratum of thinking and becomes the subject matter of psychology. That is why he wrote: “Is not the thinking subject in the last resort mere superstition? The thinking subject is surely mere illusion. But the willing subject exists.” (Wittgenstein 1961) Descartes, therefore, clarified that the subject is not a real self, in the sense that it comes out of the deconstruction and has to be transcended. Wittgenstein’s presupposition is that there is a self in the metaphysical sense, which is not amenable to psychological investigation: “Psychology deals with the empirical self and not the self of the transcendental sort. The former and not the latter is an illusion because it does not satisfy the philosophical requirements. A psychological self is after all the self of our…experience, that is, our

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Chapter 10 empirical acquaintance. To be very brief, the empirical self fails to grasp the metaphysical understanding of the self; on the other hand, by the latter we mean the understanding of the self that is the higher self. Wittgenstein makes clear that such a self is not only the thinking self but also the object of higher thought. It becomes an object for higher order thought. In a nutshell, the Cartesian self is nothing but an illusion or superstition in the sense that it is a construction of mind and emerged out of imagination. While Hume’s concept of self is purely empiricistic in the context that he reduces the concept of self to a series of sense contents and clears the ground for a non-metaphysical ground of self.” (Pradhan 2002) Wittgenstein did not deny that there is a real self, indeed, but he clarified that the concept of self is not a matter of experience. Rather, it is considered the ground of experience, and not the object of experience. According to Wittgenstein, the self as the ground of experience cannot be the object or content of experience. Hume committed the mistake of reducing the self, or the subject of experience, to a content of experience. While, Descartes’ mistake was that he treated the subject of experience itself as the object of a higher order thought. According to R. C. Pradhan, “Wittgenstein, therefore, removes the self from the level of introspection and places it at the limit of our experience itself.” (2002) The limit self is the truly philosophical self, according to Wittgenstein. (1961)

However, the question comes to our mind, what is the limit of the self? And what does its reality consist in? Wittgenstein’s response is that the metaphysical self is real and it is the transcendental presupposition of the world. If the self is the limit of language and the world, it must be explained in what way it constitutes the limit. Wittgenstein’s answer was that the self is the constituting ground of the world and so it must be left out of the world. If the self belongs to the world, it cannot be, at the same time, the limit of the world. If it were so, it would be conditioned and limited. A conditioned or limited self, according to Wittgenstein, cannot be the real self in the transcendental sense. Therefore, it must be excluded from the world. Wittgenstein’s idea on the metaphysical self does not belong to the world; rather, the world belongs to it. The metaphysical self functions as the transcendental ground of the world. The gap between the self and the world is maintained in order to protect the transcendental image of the self. Thus, significantly, he wrote: Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? You will say that this is exactly the case of the eye and the visual field. But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye. (Wittgenstein 1961)

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This reveals that there is not a direct relationship between the “eye” and the “visual field”; however, the relationship between the two, like the relationship of world and the self, cannot be overlooked. It can be viewed that the existence of the eye is not inferred from the visual field. Similarly, the visual field has its own existence independent of our eye. However, the eye is considered the prerequisite for any activity of seeing. (Pradhan 2002) Wittgenstein wrote: If the will does not exist, neither would there be that centre the world which I call the I, and which is the bearer of ethics. What is good and evil is essentially the I, not the world. The I, the I what is deeply mysterious. (Wittgenstein 1961)

This emphasises the fact that the self, as the source of moral agency, is metaphysically grounded in the sense that the self is the centre of the world; it is the source of the world. The self is transcendentally real in the metaphysical as well as the moral sense. The self is good and evil in the moral sense. Like the Cartesian viewpoint, the self is not causally connected to the world; rather, there is a connection, which is realised only in moral sense. In this context, Wittgenstein’s viewpoint was that “the world is independent of my will.” (1961) This statement asserts that the world and the self are two independent categories. Only at the transcendental level is the self considered the ground of the world without the world being causally derived from the self and vice-versa (Pradhan 2002).

Transcendental “Self” Wittgenstein wrote: The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world—not a part of it. (Wittgenstein 1961)

This comment clearly states that Wittgenstein’s philosophical self is not the empirical self because it entails the psychological concept of self, which is, indeed, nothing but a sum total or bundle of experiences. The empirical, or the psychological, self has sensations or thoughts. It is also stated that there is no reality called “self or soul” apart from these sensations bound up causally with the body. But the Transcendental ‘self’ or ‘I’ is such that it does not stand for a substance. It is not the name of a substance; rather it is an indication that there is the agent or the person who is engaged in the world. The person is held as the

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non-residential ‘self’ that makes possible all actions that flow from the person or agent. It is the first person agency that is involved here because “The world is my world”. Wittgenstein is aware that the first person ‘I’ is the centre of the world, though it by itself is not a substance. Again without this reference point, we cannot begin to think about the world as such. This reference point is transcendental ‘self’ because it can be located neither in my body nor in my mind or soul, nor anywhere in the world. Thus, the ‘I’ has no location, no history, and non-spatio temporal characterisation. That is the meaning of Wittgenstein’s self, being disappearing or withdrawing self. It is more positively the limit self. (Pradhan 2002)

According to Pradhan, the self is a not substance and yet it is real in the sense that it is the transcendental ground of all existence. In this sense, Wittgenstein’s transcendental ‘I’ remains the most attractive concept in the Tractatus. (Pradhan 2002) The Tracterian self is also well reflected in the Philosophical Investigations: “Think of the picture of landscape, an imaginary landscape with a house in it—someone asks—‘whose house is that ?’ The answer by the way, might be—’it belongs to the farmer who is sitting on the bench in front of it.’ But then he cannot, for example, enter his house” (Wittgenstein 1958). Thus, Wittgenstein metaphorically depicted the picture that the self, like the farmer, remains outside of the world. However, “the self and the world are inalienable and yet the self does not belong to the world.” (Pradhan 2002)

But, Wittgenstein, in his later philosophy of language, modified his early thinking on “self,” which is especially found in Tractatus Logico Philosopicus. The anti-metaphysical aspect of “self” in his later philosophy reflects his critical, profound, and intense thinking on the subject.

Anti-metaphysical Aspect of “Self” Wittgenstein, in his later philosophising, shifted his view towards the concept of soul. Significantly, he mentioned that “the human body is the best picture of the human soul.” (Wittgenstein 1980) Amending his previous remark, he generously pointed out that “the human being is the best picture of the human soul.” (Wittgenstein 1980) These sayings clearly mention the distinction of the soul from human body and human being. Besides, it also shows that human body and human being are not identical to the soul; rather, he meaningfully stated that they are the best pictures of the human soul. Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus and Notebooks, emphasised that the subject, i.e., the soul, is transcendental. This viewpoint criticised not only the Cartesian

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essentialism, or the Cogito Ergo Sum, but also the experiences associated with it. Suresh Chandra, in his book Wittgenstein-New Perspective, critically mentioned that “he was interested in two God—heads: the world and my independent I” (Chandra 2002). He realised that “the independent ‘I’” or “transcendental self” was a deep mystery. As a result, he apprehended the fuzziness of language and the world. Thus, he came out of the domain of transcendentalism in the later phase of his philosophy of language. The early concept of “self” of Wittgenstein references not only the philosophy of Plato but also Indian philosophy. The reference to Plato’s soul is that it is imperishable, everlasting, permanent or eternal. In contrast to this, the human body is temporary, perishable, etc. Therefore, according to Plato, after bodily death, the soul enters into a new body, maybe a human body, or any other being. Thus, the soul can enter into any being after the physical body is deceased. Similarly, Indian philosophy also visualises the same viewpoint. Thus, Bhagavad Gita clearly mentions: vƗsƗীsi jƯrƼƗni yathƗ vihƗya navƗni gDŽhƼƗti naro parƗƼi tathƗ ĞarƯrƗƼi vihƗya jƯrƼƗny anyƗni saীyƗti navƗni dehƯ (SrimadbhƗgavad GitƗ, 2:22)

Just as a person changes their worn out clothes or garments and embraces new dresses on their body, likewise, the embodied soul also enters into a new body after the old body becomes deceased. This clearly envisages that the soul is immortal and, in contrast to it, the physical body is perishable and temporary. Likewise, Wittgenstein, too, did not place due importance on the bodily aspect of the human being in his early philosophising. But Aristotle’s viewpoint was different, because he did not underestimate or lessen the importance on the bodily aspect; rather, he stated that the “formless soul is incoherent” and that the description of the soul as eternal or everlasting and the body as temporary or impermanent is not acceptable. He, therefore, mentioned that the soul cannot enter into any form of body, because each and every form of embodied being has an independent or unique form. Thus, the thinking that the soul can enter into any form of body cannot be entertained. Hence, the soul of a human being is different from the soul of a dog, an elephant, a cat, etc. Wittgenstein’s later philosophy gave due importance to the body rather than just to the formless soul. Wittgenstein, emphasising the bodily aspects of

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the human being, seemed to have given enormous emphasis to the bodily criterion in case of the philosophical issue of the re-identification of a person or personal identity. Wittgenstein, in Note books, therefore, significantly mentioned, “The human body, however, my body in particular, is a part of the world among others, among beasts, plants, stones etc.” (1977). It is implied that Wittgenstein shifted his tendency of undermining the concept of the body; rather, he, ignoring the mysterious concept of soul, held that the human body is part of the world. It brings out the picture that human body is different from other physical bodies and has acquired a higher status due to its uniqueness. Thus, Wittgenstein distinctly mentioned that only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious. (Wittgenstein 1958)

This remark expressed vividly that sensations, or experiences, are ascribed to human beings in the sense that human beings can perceive through eyes, can hear through ears, can get the sensation of taste through their tongue, etc. Therefore, human bodies have a place that is unique and distinct to the other beings living in this world. And another very significant reason is that human beings can regulate thinking in the sense that they can judge whether the actions actuated by them are right or wrong, which is missing in other living beings. Thus, he emphatically mentioned that human bodies are unique and cannot be identical to other physical bodies. In this context, Suresh Chandra significantly mentioned, This radical thinking of Wittgenstein had two earlier stages. At the first stage, Wittgenstein refused to give any independent identity to experiences, he reduced them to the world…All experience is world. (Chandra 2002)

This was the result of accepting that “there is no such thing as the subject that thinks or sensations.” (Wittgenstein 1961b) Wittgenstein maintained that there is no experiencing subject. However, he accepted the occurrence of experiences in spite of rejecting their subjects. He believed in what P. F. Strawson described as the “no ownership doctrine” of experiences. Suresh Chandra’s wrote, ‘‘Wittgenstein made ‘living human beings and those who behave like them’ as the proper subjects for the ascription of experiences.” (2002) Regarding the ascription of experiences, Wittgenstein made it clear that the “body” cannot be stated or mentioned as the container of experiences (like

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pain, pleasure, weal or woe); rather, it can be clearly stated that the human being (the sufferer or enjoyer) is the container or possessor of the experiences involved in life. Therefore, Wittgenstein wrote, Is not it absurd to say of a body that it has pain? And why does one feel an absurdity in that? In what sense is it true that my hand does not feel pain, but I in my hand? What sort of issue is: Is it the body that feels pain? How is it to be decided? What makes it plausible to say that it is not the body? Well, something like this: If someone has a pain in his hand, then the hand does not say so (unless it writes it) and one does not comfort the hand, but the sufferer: one looks into his face. (Wittgenstein 1958)

This expressively states that the sufferer is the human being, not the human body. Wittgenstein described it in a metaphorical, or symbolic, sense: “say of a human being and what is like one that it thinks. We also say it of dolls and no doubts of ghosts too” (1958). Here, the question is, how can the experiences be ascribed to doll? Wittgenstein’s response was that “this use of the concept of pain is a secondary one” (1958). Thus, the context of using experiences to the human being is a primary one and the uses of experiences to a doll are presupposed in the secondary sense in which children play with the doll, thinking that the doll can behave like a human being, that it can talk, cry, smile etc. It is the knowledge of presupposition that a doll can behave like a human being. That is why Wittgenstein wrote, “When children play at train their game is connected with their knowledge of trains” (1958). Suresh Chandra mentioned that so far as the ascription of experiences is concerned ‘human beings’ is a higher order concept. A ‘doll’ or a bodiless spirit is a lower concept. (Chandra 2002)

Wittgenstein ascribed the experiences to a living human being instead of focusing on the bodiless spirit or Cartesian ego, which is supposed to inhabit in a body: In cases in which “I” is used as subject we do not use it because we recognize a particular person by his bodily characteristics; and this creates the illusion that we use the word to refer to something bodiless, which, however, has its seat in our body. In fact, this means to be the real ego, the one of which it was said ‘cogito ergo sum. (Wittgenstein 1969)

Wittgenstein, in the primary sense, rejected the usage of the ascription of experiences to a bodiless spirit, or the Cartesian ego or cogito or “Mr. Nobody,” as the subject. Reacting to the Cartesian ego or a bodiless spirit, regarding the ascribing to the experiences (ascription of experiences), he

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stated, “Imagine a language game in which, instead of ‘I found no body in the room.’ Imagine the philosophical problems which would arise out of such a convention. Some philosophers brought up in this language would probably feel that they do not like the similarity of the expressions ‘Mr Nobody,’ and ‘Mr Smith.’” (Wittgenstein 1969) This paragraph makes it clear that the Cartesian dualism is not a dualism in actual sense, because his dualism introduces us to “Mr Somebody” and “Mr Nobody,” or “body” and “bodiless spirit,” or “body” and “nobody,” or “subject” and “not-subject.” Wittgenstein used the ascription of experience to human beings in the primary sense. Hence, it cannot be used in bodiless spirit in the secondary sense. It might be possible only in the secondary sense, in terms of children playing with a toy, presupposing that the toy is like a human being, which behaves like a human being, etc. In this context, the question emerges, what is the status of a human soul? In response, it can be stated that the human soul can distinguish one soul from the material bodies. Furthermore, it functions as the subject for the ascription of experiences. Wittgenstein, therefore, mentioned, “Our attitude to the living is not the same as to the dead” (1958). Here, Wittgenstein made a clear-cut distinction between human being and bodiless spirit through the terms, “what is alive” and “what is dead,” which he particularly used.

Epilogue From the above exploration of the concept of “self,” it can be highlighted that Wittgenstein, in his early phase of philosophising, explored everything under the explanation-oriented philosophy and, consequently, developed a metaphysical, as well as the transcendental, ground of all existence. As the forerunner of analytic philosophy, he particularly developed the artificial or logical analysis of language for concepts like the world, self, and their relationship. Thus, the natural, or ordinary, way of approaching the concepts, particularly for the concept of “self,” was missing or hidden in his early phase of the philosophy of language. That is why he mentioned, in his Tractatus, Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purposes. The tacit conventions on which the

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understanding of everyday language depends are enormously complicated. (Wittgenstein 1961)

Wittgenstein, in his later philosophising, remarkably mentioned, “‘I believe that he is suffering.’—Do I also believe that he is not an automaton? It would go against the grain to use the word in both connections. (or is it like this: I believe that he is suffering, but am certain that he is not an automaton? Non-sense. Suppose I say of a friend, ‘He is not an automaton.’ What information is conveyed by this, and to whom it be information? To a human being who meets him in ordinary circumstances? What information could it give him? (At the very most that that man always behaves like a human being, and not occasionally like a machine.) I believe that he is not an automaton, just like that so fur makes no sense. My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul” (Wittgenstein 1958). Wittgenstein’s shifting tendency on the concept of self in his later philosophy denounced his soul-centric, or metaphysical, approach of his early philosophy. If it is pre-determined that the self is eternal and the body is not permanent, the attention on the concept of the body, which is empirical and on which human life becomes vibrant and lively, will become meaningless or useless. Thus, it can be viewed that the world is not ideal or artificial or logical or mechanical, as thought by the metaphysicians or logical analysts; rather, it can be viewed that we cannot be mechanical or idealistic or artificial in every walk of life, i.e., thinking, feeling, and willing. The so-called logical or monistic or explanatory approach, instead of descriptive or analytic approach, subdues our ordinary or natural way of living. Therefore, Wittgenstein, in his later philosophy, distinctly pointed out: “We are talking about spatio-temporal phantasm, not about non-spatio, non-temporal phantasm” (Wittgenstein 1958). He also emphatically announced, “We must bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use” (Wittgenstein 1958). P. M. S. Hacker, also in the same spirit, added the point that, “with the collapse of Wittgenstein’s early philosophy, he joined the repudiators of metaphysics, rejecting traditional metaphysics, the Kantian project and the ineffable metaphysics of the Tractatus alike. The line he pursued, however, was idiosyncratic, and unparalleled in history of philosophy” (1996).

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References Chandra, Suresh. 2002. Wittgenstein: New Perspectives. New Delhi: ICPR. Hacker, P. M. S. 1996. Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth-Century of Philosophy. Willey-Blackwell. Pradhan, R. C. 2002. The Great Mirror. New Delhi: Kalki Prakash. Wittgenstein, L. 1980. Remarks on Philosophy of Psychology I. Oxford. Wittgenstein, L. 1969. Blue and Brown Books. Oxford. Wittgenstein, L. 1961a. Tractatus Logico Philosophical. Translated by P. F. Pears and B. F. Guinness. London: Rutledge and Kegan Paul. Wittgenstein, L. 1961b. Note Books 1914–1916. Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

CONTRIBUTORS

Prof. Mrinal Miri Prof. Miri, a well-known philosopher, educationist, started his prolific career as a lecturer in philosophy at Stephen’s college under the University of Delhi before moving to NEHU, Shillong. Prof. Miri also served as the Director of Indian Institute of advanced study, Shimla, from 1993 to 1999. He was also chairperson of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, New Delhi. He was nominated as a member of Rajya Sabha on 21 March, 2012. He has been awarded a Padma Bhusan for his contribution in the field of education and literature. Among the important publications to his creditIdentity and Moral Life published by Oxford University Press, 2002, Philosophy of Education, published by Oxford University Press, 2014, and among the edited books, The place of Humanities in our Universities published by Routledge, 2018, are world famous. Prof. P. R. Bhat Dr. Parameshwar Rama Bhat did his graduation and post-graduation in philosophy from Karnatak University, Dharwad. He did his Ph.D. from IIT Kanpur in January1980 and joined IIT Bombay as Lecturer. He became head in 2001 and completed his term in 2004. He retired in 2016 as professor and continued as Emeritus Fellow till June 2019. He taught several philosophy courses to undergraduate and post-graduate students and supervised eleven Ph. D. students. He has authored about fifty research papers and presented seminars nationally and internationally. He has jointly authored two books: Psychoanalysis as a Human Science: Beyond Foundationalism and In Defense of Liberal Pluralism. He served as member of several expert committees in philosophy. He was a member of ICPR council for two terms. Prof. R.C. Pradhan Former Professor and Head of the Dept. of Philosophy, University of Hyderabad. He was a commonwealth Academic Fellow at the University of Oxford and also served the Indian Council of Philosophical Research as a Member Secretary. He has published extensively, some of his publications are: Language and Experience: An Interpretation of the later Philosophy

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of Wittgenstein, The Great Mirror: An Essay on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, and Language, Reality and Transcendence, An Essay on the Main Strands of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy. He is currently a National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Prof. Danièle Moyal-Sharrock Danièle Moyal-Sharrock is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire and President of the British Wittgenstein Society (BWS). Her publications include Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty; The Third Wittgenstein; Perspicuous Presentations; Hinge Epistemology (with A. Coliva). A selection of her essays, Certainty in Action, is forthcoming (Bloomsbury). She is currently working on a book with Constantine Sandis, Lived Gender. Prof. John Clammer John Clammer is Professor of Sociology and Philosophy in the Jindal School of Liberal Arts, O.P. Jindal Global University. A graduate of Oxford University, he has taught at universities in the UK, Australia, South Korea, India, Japan and Germany, and is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Institute of Liberal Arts and Science, Kyoto University, Japan. His work has centered on the philosophy of the social sciences, aesthetics, Japanese philosophy, Wittgenstein, cultural studies and the ethical and other issues associated with development, social change and human and cultural rights. Among his recent works are the books “Vision and Society” (London and New York 2016) and “Cultural Rights and Justice” (New York, London and Singapore 2019). Prof. Rajakishore Nath Rajakishore Nath is presently working as a Professor of philosophy at IIT Bombay. He received MA and PhD from the University of Hyderabad. He also Received young philosopher’s award in 2012, ICPR, Ministry of education, Govt. of India, He has published a book on Philosophy of AI, Universal-Publishers Press, USA. Apart from that he has Published more than 40 papers in national and international journals including JICPR, Philosophia, AI and Society, etc. Right now, he is the associate editor of AI and Society, published by Springer, UK.

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Prof. V Pravu Prabhu Venkataraman is currently working as a Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Instituter of Technology Guwahati. His areas of interests include applied ethics, philosophy of religion and philosophy of education. S. Nengneithem Haokip S. Nengneithem Haokip is a research scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Instituter of Technology Guwahati. She is working on Just war theory. Prof. Ananta Kumar Giri Ananta Kumar Giri is a Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India. He has been a Visiting Professor and Researcher at many universities in India and abroad, including Aalborg University (Denmark), Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris (France), the University of Kentucky (USA), University of Freiburg & Humboldt University (Germany), Jagiellonian University (Poland) and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has an abiding interest in social movements and cultural change, criticism, creativity and contemporary dialectics of philosophy and literature. Professor Giri has written and edited around two dozen books in Odia and English. Some of the important publications are: The Calling of Global Responsibility: New Initiatives in Justice, Dialogues and Planetary Realizations. New Delhi: Routledge (forthcoming). Learning the Art of Wholeness: Integral Education and Beyond. New Delhi: Routledge (forthcoming). Cultivating Integral Development. New Delhi: Routledge (forthcoming). Social Healing. New Delhi: Routlege (forthcoming). Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations. Foreword by John Clammer. London et al.: Anthem Press, 2013. Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons with a foreword by Piet Strydom. Jaipur: Rawat Publications: 2012. Reflections and Mobilizations: Dialogues with Movements and Voluntary Organizations. Foreword by Professor C.T. Kurien. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005; Indian Edition of this as New Horizons of Social Theory: Conversations, Transformations and Beyond. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2006. Conversations and Transformations: Towards a New Ethics of Self and Society. Introduction by Professor Fred R. Dallmayr. Maryland, USA: Lexington Books and Rowman & Littlefield, 2002; Building in the Margins of Shacks: The Vision and Projects of Habitat for Humanity. Foreword by Professor Alain Touraine. Delhi: Orient

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Longman 2002; Values, Ethics and Business: Challenges for Education and Management. Foreword by S.K. Chakraborty. Rawat Publications, 1998; Global Transformations: Postmodernity and Beyond. Foreword by Ronald Robertson. Jaipur and Delhi: Rawat Publications, 1998 Prof. Ratikanta Panda Dr. Ratikanta Panda is associate professor in the dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay. His areas of interest are Philosophy of Language, Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, Ethics, Contemporary Indian Philosophy. Some important publications in National and International Journals are: “Language, Life and the Public Space”, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research (JICPR), vol. 29.1. “Aurobindo’s Critique of Modern Western Culture”, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research (JICPR) “Indian Culture: A Critical Study in Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy”, Journal of the Oriental Institute, Vol. 63, 2014. “Indian Culture: An Analysis in Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy”, Journal of Philosophica, Volume – IV, p. 54-64, 2014. Dr. Bhaskar Bhattacharyya Bhaskar Bhattacharyya is a senior assistant professor of philosophy at the Krishna Kanta Handiqui State Open University, India. He received his MA and PhD from Gauhati University, India, in 1999 and 2008, respectively, and served as a junior research fellow of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research in 2001. His areas of interest are philosophy of language and analytic philosophy, and he has published a number of research papers in these fields. He is also the author of the book Analytic Philosophy of Wittgenstein.

INDEX

A Analysis, 8, 32, 125 Anthropologist, 10, 12, 45, 47, 49, 54 Action, 6 Arti facts, 12, 82 Analytic philosophers, 18 Analytical method, 18 Art, 32, 47, 83 Aryans, 38, Ad infinitum 40 Aesthetics, 47, 48, 51, 102, 126 Approbation, 49 Alienation, 58 Anthropocentric, 51,81 Anthropology, 52 Applied economics, 55 Argument, 56 Applied ethics, 56, 57 Animal rights, 56 Amartya sen, 56 Adam Smitch, 57 Animal, 64 Alteration, 65 Antirelativistic, 73 Affective, 78 Aztee culture, 80 All-inclusive, 81 Action, 82 American culture, 83 Aurobindo, 84, 94 Aristotle, 88, 90, 143 Anekantavada, 97 Ahimsa, 97, 114 Atmasangraha, 98 Artha, 98, Autonomy, 99 Absolute, 114 Absolutism, 114 Arjuna, 117 Augustine, 118, Altruistic, 123 Arhat, 123 Absolute truth, 123 Abidhamma, 124 Absolute value, 126 Accidental, 126 Aristotelian ethics, 129 Anti-metaphysical, 136, 142 Anti-cartesian, 137 Analytic philosophy of language, 146 B Bhagawad Gita, 28, 143 Bharat Natyam, 12 Barter system, 12 Binary system, 15 Body, 20, 87, 88, 89 Buddhism, 29, 122, 123 Brute force, 29 Bedrock, 34, 64,74 Brahmanical, 40 Bernard William, 40 Bad, 42 Bullshit jobs, 58 Bondage, 78 Birth, 81 Bengali culture, 84 Biological, 85 Being, 85 Buddhist, 87 Barbarism, 89 Bhagwan, 107 Bodhitree, 109, Burke, 116 Buddhist ethics, 121 Bodhisattva, 122 Body criterion, 144 Bodyless spirit,145 Bio-logical, 68 C Culture, 2, 8, 26, 27, 41, 42, 43, 57, 66, 69, 78, 87, 88, 94, 124 Cause, 2, 8, 54 Cloning, 3 Causal necessity, 4 Civilisation, 26, 27 Consciousness, 19, 26, 78, 81, 82, 87, 93, 94, 98, 108 Category, 20, 40 Substance, 26, 78, 82, 87, 93, 94, 98, 108 Categories, 15, 20 Contingencies, 5, 47 Change, 6 Covid19, 13, 56, 62, Conceptual analysis, 19 Category mistake, 20 Category of mind, 20 Correspondence, 23 Categorical imperative, 28 Cardinal values, 34 Community, 37, 41, 44 Colonial, 40 Classical 47, Capitalism, 49 Chemistry, 52 Causality, 52, 94, 128, 137 C.L. Strauss, 52 Commercial, 55 Cogent, 56 Convivability, 56, Climate Change, 59 Cartography, 68 Chomsky, 70 Cliff, 72 Common behaviour, 72 Cognitive, 78 Conative, 78

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Index

Criterion, 79 Customs, 79 Cyclic, 81 Collective, 82, American Culture, 82 Mexican Culture, 82 Colonisation, 93, 98 Cosmos, 100 Conflict, 114 Consequentialism, 115 Christianity, 117 Cognitive, 122 Cultural value, 126 Cogito-ergo-sum, 138 Category mistake, 139 Cartesian self, 140 Cartesian essentialism, 143 Cartesian dualism, 146 Cultural animal, 68 Craig, E.J. 40 D Determinism, 4, 8 Democracies, 10 Diwali, 11 Descriptive statement, 16 Descartes, 20, 137 Dharma, 27, 88, 97, 98, 122, 124, 128 Deontic ethics, 28 Divine law, 32 Divine being, 34 Dravidians, 38 Dalit, 40 Decision, 48, 55 Deforestation, 50, Deveopment,50, Deterministic:53, Demonetisation:55, David Gracber:58, David Maggs, 59 Defacto, 70 Dignity, 78 Durkheim, 81 Organic unity, 8 Diaspora Culture, 82 Darkness, 100 Discursive, 100 Dewey, 100, 101 Dualism, 101, 129 Dialogue, 102, 109 Dynamics, 108 Dilemma, 114 Deontological, 115, 117, 122 Duty, 115, 132 Deflationary, 121 Discipline, 122 Dexterity, 126 Descartes, 139 Deconstruction, 139 E Epistemology, 16, 100 Ethics, 23, 48, 50, 53, 58, 115, 122, 129, 131 Essence, 28, 85 Effect, 3 Event, 6 Economic principle, 7 English, 15 Epoch, 19 Eternity, 26, 29 Emancipation, 28 Education, 38, 47, 48, 66 Epistemic, 45 Ethical, 45 Economics, 46, 57, 58 Eco-system, 47 Engineering, 48 Europe, 49, 102 Environmental ethics, 51 Ethnographies, 52 Ethnicity, 53 Efficiency, 55 Economy, 55 Environment, 55, 85 Equity, 57 Economic anthropology, 58 Equality, 59 Emotions, 65 Evolutionary, 73 Educational, 79 Evolution, 80, 114 Egypt, 80 Eliot, 81 Egoistic, 89 Edmund Husserl, 94 Epistemological, 98 Emotional, 101 Enlightenment, 105, 123 Europe, 105 Evil, 114, 116, 119, 141 Empirical, 117, 136 Empirical ethics, 129 Ecological niche, 129 Ethical ecology, 129 Engaged ethics, 131 Empiricist, 138 Eye, 141 Eternal, 143 Explanation oriented philosophy, 146 Everyday language, 146 F Freedom, 2, 27, 56, 78, 89, 129 Facts, 9, 137 Form of life, 17, 32, 63, 64, 125, 103, 125 Free action, 5, 6 Family Resemblance, 17 Feminist, 40 Falsehood, 40 Friedrich, 51 Feelings, 65, 82 Frazer, 71 Folk tale, 80 Foucault, 99 Four-noble truths, 122 Freedom of will, 137 Factuality, 137 Facts: 137 Formless soul, 143

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G God, 16, 22, 33, 42, 66, 105, 123, 141 Gravitational law, 3 Ganesh, 11, Geneology, 23, 40 Gandhi, 27 Good, 34, 42, 123, 125, 141 Global, 39 Genetic, 40, Good life, 59 Grammar, 66, 126 German culture, 81 Globalisation, 82 Greek, 87 Gandhi, 94 Guna, 99 Good life, 115, 127 Gita, 117 Generosity,122 Godly life, 127 H Holi, 11, 12 Hind Swaraj, 27, 99 Hindu culture, 11 Headgear, 12 Husserl, 19 Holiday, 20 Historicity, 26, 96 Hinduism 29, 117 Human welfare, 29 Heidegaar, 32, 105 Historian, 47 Hamburger, 50 Human rights, 51, 56, 117 Happiness, 55, 63, 87, 123, 129 Harmony, 59, 81, 85 Hermits, 63 Hinge, 64 Historical-cultural, 68 Human animal, 68 Hypocrisy, 72 Symbolism, 72 Heterogeneous, 81, 85, Hegel, 81 Hatch, 82 Horizon, 94, 100 Habarmas, 98 Higher life, 126 Hume, 137, Human body, 139 Higher self, 140 Hacker, 147 I Intention, 4 Involuntary action, 5 Intentional action, 5 Institution, 9 Indigenous, 37, 38 Ineffable, 39 Incarnation, 44 Inflation, 46 Impoverishment, 57 Inequality, 58 Intrinsic, 70 Indigenous person, 71 Indigenous people, 72 Identity, 78 Individual, 78 Ignorance, 78, 122 Indigenous Culture, 79 Industrial revolution, 82 Intelligence, 87 Indian culture, 87, 115 Individual freedom, 89 Intellectual, 78, 93 Intellect, 93 Intuition, 94, 95 Idealisation, 96 Intersubjectivity, 99 Immanent, 102 Injustice, 109 Immoral actions, 114 Instrumental value, 117 Introspection, 118, 190 Inflationary, 121 Insight, 124 Illusory, 138 Illusion, 139 Imagination, 140, Indian Philosophy, 143 Immortal, 143 J Jainism, 29, 97 Justice, 57 John Robinson, 59 John Canfield, 69 Jurgen Habermus, 93 Just war, 113, 117, 119 Justice, 117, 131 Judaism, 117 John Dewey, 129 K Kant, 16, 20, 40, 115, 119, 119 Knowledge, 19, 34, 56 Krishna, 11,117 Krippke, 17 Kierkegaard, 34 Knower, 37 Kama, 98, 123 Khuda, 107 Kahil Gibran, 115 Karma yoga, 117 Know how, 129 L Language, 2, 8, 15, 27, 43, 69, 80, 125, 136, 142 Laws of Nature, 2, 5, 7 Logic, 15, 40 Language games, 17, 64, 74 Logical Investigations, 19 Life-

156

Index

affirming, 27 Life-denying, 27 Law of love, 29 Literature, 32, 83 Landscape, 51 Legal, 79 Self-sufficiency, 82, Life-world, 93 Limits, 67 Logical Reasoning, 93 Life, 93 Lokasangraha, 97 Liberation, 99 Lavinas, 100 Living words, 105, 109 Life, 108 Love, 118 Liberate, 122 M Meta language, 15 Moksa, 27, 98 Morality, 28, 56, 79, 114, 123, 129 Mahajan, 15 Mathematics, 15 Machine language, 15 Metaphysical structure, 16 Meaning, 17 Moral conduct, 28 Moral reason, 28 Moral duties, 28 Modernity, 32, 40 Music, 32 Mystical, 39 MacIntyre, 42 Mundane, 47 Monograph, 47 Machine, 48 Management, 48 Marcel Mauss, 49 Market, 50 Metaphysical, 57, 88 93, 109, 122, 128, 131, 132, 136 Marx, 57, 83 Multiplicity, 67, 74 Magic, 71 Mankind, 72 Madness, 73 Mankind, 74 Moral values, 79 Misnomer, 79 Malinowski, 83 Mexican Culture, 83 Martyrdom, 84 Mind, 87, 88, 89, 93 Memory, 93 Mohanty, 94 Margaret Chatterjee, 94 Moral argumentation, 99 Method of Reduction, 100 Modernity, 102 Mythology, 106 Meditation, 108 Michael fox, 114 Moseley, 119 Moral virtue, 122 Meditation, 122, 123 Morality, 123, 124 Meaning, 125 Moral wisdom, 129 Mind, 137, 142 Metaphysical self, 138 Moral agency, 141 Moral source, 141 Mystery, 143 Metaphysical, 145 Monistic, 147 N Natural language, 2 Nava ratri, 12 Non-violence, 29, 97, 116 Nationalist, 40, Nietzsche, 40, 99 Naturalistic, 40, 124 National, 55 Non-propositional, 64 Non-epistemic, 64 Newton Garver, 68 Natural science, 95 Nomadic, 107 Nial Ferguson, 119 Nirvana, 123 Naturalistic fallacy, 128 Normative ethics, 128 Nicomachean ethics, 129 Non-psychological, 136 Non-residential self, 142 No-ownership doctrine, 144 O Ordinary language philosophy, 19 Observation, 41 Organic, 42 Openness, 45 On certainty, 64, 66 Objective, 73 Organic Whole, 83 Organism, 85 Objectivity, 95, 124 Ontological, 98, 126, 132 Peace, 117 Ontological ethics, 121 Ought, 132 Obligation, 132 P Philosophy, 15, 32, 56, 90, 114 Philosophical Investigations, 17, 67 Post modernism, 17, 26, 40 Proper names, 9 Philosophising, 17, 143 Phenomenology, 19, 94, 124 Practice, 42, 103 Plurality, 41, 67, 68, 71 Politics, 46 Policy, 48 Pragmatic, 23, 48, 73, 106 Physics, 52, 71 Poverty,

Contemporary Issues in Philosophy, Culture, and Value

157

53 Politician, 54 Phenomenon, 54, 58 Productivity, 55 Public policy, 55 Public space, 63 Pascal, 69 Phenomena, 71, 124, 137 Pathological, 72 Psychological, 78, 85, 124, 13 Political, 79 Professional, 79 Primitive, 80 Pristine, 80 Plato, 88 Praxis, 90 Pluralism, 97 Purusarthas, 98 Post colonisation, 99 Psychoanalysis, 100 Presupposition, 101 Practical, 109, 122 Physical force, 113 Pacifism, 114 Peace, 114 Punishment, 118 Proportionality, 119 Phenomena, 122 Pragmatism, 126 Perfect life, 127 Platonic ethics, 129 Putnam, 129 Pragmatic pluralism, 132 Practical ethics, 129 Physics, 129 Perception, 138 Philosophical self, 138, 140 Psychology, 139 Profound, 142 Philosophy of language, 143 Plato, 143 Personal identity, 144 144 Pain, 145 Pleasure, 145 R Religion, 10, 38, 83, 89, 90, 127 Responsible, 6 Rituals, 11 Rama, 11 Ram leela, 11, Realists, 16 Rule following, 17 Ryle, 20, 139 Reality, 20, 52, 93, 129 Religious beliefs, 27 Rationality, 40, 59, 94 Right, 42, 125 Rarity, 47 Radical anthropologist, 58 Relativism, 66, 70, 74, 96 Robinson Crusoe, 79, Rationalism, 87 Realism, 87 Rajas, 99 Relative value, 126 S Science, 2,32, 71, 95, 129 Spiritual, 26, 27, 78, 85, 101, 106, 109, 93, 94, 137 Suffering, 28, 56, 98, 108, 122, 123, 124 Space and Time, 4, 78 Sufficient cause, 8 Syntactic rules, 10 Semantic rules, 10 Symbol, 15 Sociocultural, 15, 67, 69 Logic, 15 Spiritual sickness, 34 Silence, 17 Scepticism, 17 Substances, 20, 52, Suicide, 20 Satyagrah, 29, 101 Soul force, 29 Spirit, 32, 78, 85, 86 Spirituality, 34, 108, 109 Self-transcendence, 45 Social Philosophy, 50 Social media, 50 Society, 51, 66 Social structure, 52 Social harmony, 52 Symbolic, 145 Sociology, 53, 85 Socialisation, 53 Social ethics, 56 Self-determination, 56 Schumacher, 57 Social Science, 59 Swaraj, 99 Stylites, 63 Stanley Cavell, 66 Soft-realism, 71, Society, 78, 79, 94, Skill development, 80 Subjective, 71, 85, 94 Singular, 81 Sacrilege, 78 Social identity, 84 Soul, 85, 86, 87, 90, 146 Self-realisation, 86, 107 Suprarational, 86 Spiritualism, 89 Speculation, 93 Self, 94 Self-cultivation, 94 Self-evidence, 94 Subjectivity, 96 Syadvada, 97 Satya, 97 Sattva, 99 Sadhana, 100, 107 Staley Cavel, 106 Self-sacrifice, 116 Sins, 118 Social, 122 Sila, 122 Samsara, 123 Scientific value, 126 State of Facts, 127 Social facts, 128 Scientific facts, 128 Space, 131 Social equality, 131 Soul, 136, 142 Substance, 138, 141, Substratum, 138, 139 Superstition, 139 Sensations, 141, 144 Soul-centric, 147 Strawson, P.F. 144 Shafak, Elif. 63

158

Index

T Time, 26, 4, 40, 78, 131 Truth, 29, 40, 83, 94, 99, 101 Technology, 7, 32, 80 Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, 9 Theory of Universals, 23 Truth, 23, Transcendental, 33, 96, 102, 126, 136, 143 Tolstoy, 34 Traditions, 38, 79 Tribal, 38 Temporal, 39 Turner, 51 Thomas Kuhn, 73 Taylor, 81 Thought, 82 Teleological, 86 Transformation, 98 Tamas, 99 Transcendence, 100 Tapasya, 100 Transmodernity 102 Tradition, 102 Transcendent, 126 Transcendental ethics, 129 Traditional metaphysics, 147 U Universal law of causation, 3 Universal custom, 69 Universal Grammar, 70 Universal, 73 Unassailable, 73 Utilitarian, 86 Utility, 86 Un-spiritual, 89 Ultimate, 93 Utilitarianism, 122 Uniqueness, 144 Unconscious, 144 V Value, 14, 26, 47, 54, 57, 79, 81, 84, 94, 113 Voluntary action, 4 Vermi culture, 8 Vision of life, 32 Vedic, 34, 80, Validity, 40 Value judgments, 56 Verhelsi, 80 Value-laden, 86 Violence, 98, 108, 109, 113 Vigor, 122 Virtue ethics, 122 Vedanta, 129 Visual field, 141 Vertical, 68 W Wittgenstein, 9, 29, 32, 63, 66, 71, 103, 121, 125, 136 Welfare of all, 34 Well-being, 38, 55 Will, 39, 141 Wrong, 42, 125 Witchcraft, 52 William Davies, 62, Witch, 72 Western culture, 81, 88 War, 113 Well-being, 114 Wisdom, 122, 124, 129 World, 136, 141 Wilson, E.W., 53 Y Yakshagana, 12 Yoyova, 72 Yogic experience, 95 Yoga, 101