|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy
It is wrongly believed by many that Indian philosophy preaches withdrawal from the normally known lived world and therefore, there is no place for ethics and morality in it. The reason for their mistaken belief is that unlike the Western, especially Greek thinkers, Indian thinkers do not regard ethics as a separate subject of study. In India, ethics have always been regarded as an essential part of philosophy and religion. Every school of Indian philosophy, including the materialist Carvakas, nihilist Buddhists and syadvadi Jainas, regards moral life as the only way for leading a spiritual, good and meaningful life. The entire Indian philosophical enterprise i.e. its epistemology, ontology and metaphysics, is geared towards developing an acarasamhita—principles of human conduct. By living according to these principles, one accomplishes not only the preyas—material welfare but also the nihsreyas—the spiritual well-being. The author rightly argues that the notion of dharma is the key concept of Indian ethics. But his understanding of dharma as either coextensive, or as complementary, or as higher or lower than moksa or at odds with it, is very superficial and far from satisfactory. Dharma has a unique semantic status in Indian thought. The book Dharma: The Categorial Imperative explained that though dharma has been treated as synonymous with religion and ideology, it differs from religion in not being exclusive and from ideology in that it has a transcendental dimension. That is what makes dharma a complex term. Though the author understands that this he is not able to add a new argument or give a new explanation of the term dharma, he argues that the addition of the sense of religion in the classical connotation of dharma is because of a change from ‘intentional’ sense in the classical period to the ‘extentional’ sense in the modern times. This argument is far from convincing. He also confuses between the concept of dharma and moksa. Historically, there has been no Indian thinker who has confused the two. The author asserts ad nauseum that dharma is a complex term. If "our eminent authorities on Sanskrit and the history of Indian philosophy," as he says, "are not ... necessarily the authorities on the question of the meaning of ‘dharma’" (p. 142) then who can be trusted to give an authentic account of this term? The book, like an MA dissertation, which it actually is, contains a lot of scattered information about both Indian and Western philosophical concepts, but it is neither harnessed to the main thesis nor presented in a neat or novel way. The Anger Inclination Thesis is peripheral to moral debates even in the Western context; in the Indian context, it is otiose. However, the author has made it his central plank. The book is full of a number of inconsistent assertions. For example, on page 222, the author asserts categorically that the Indian philosophers did not make a distinction between ethics and metaethics but soon thereafter, on page 224, he asserts: "some philosophers in the history of Indian philosophy have also ventured into the field of metaethics". That the book has not been properly copy-edited is revealed by the fact that many statements, phrases and paragraphs are repeated. Many sentences don’t make sense and are long-winding and with little thought. The book has many incomprehensible expressions like "contribution to being friendly or dear to wisdom about moral matters". The meritorious portion of the book (Part V) is its presentation of the discussion of various ethical issues in different schools of Indian philosophy. Nevertheless, here too this book lags behind IC Sharma’s book Ethical Philosophies of India published as far back as 1962.
|
THE
subject matter of ethics is social behaviour of human beings. It
distinguishes between the moral and the immoral, the right and the
wrong, and the good and the evil conduct of human beings living in
society. It is normative in the sense that it lays down principles for
judging what is right and good in human conduct.