Shyam Ranganathan

Gārgī Vācaknavī is known for her challenging interrogation of the sage Yājñavalkya, in what was by then a male dominated activity: philosophical debate. Gārgī distinguishes herself for challenging Yājñavalkya, being rebuked and challenging him a second time. Gārgī demonstrates her mastery over the concept at dispute (Growth, Expansion, Development) by being able to revise her approach to the question. Gārgī philosophically demonstrates the very idea she is investigating. Her salvos at Yājñavalkya display the two contrasting modes of philosophical investigation of the early Vedas, characterized by naturalism, and the latter philosophy of the Upaniṣads, characterized as a procedural nonnaturalism. Gārgī engages in this dispute, challenging gender norms of her day. Over a millennia later, Gārgī and Yājñavalkya’s personas are reprised in a post-Vedic dialogue, the Yogayājñavalkya, on the technological application of Yoga philosophy. Here Gārgī is cast as the unassuming interlocutor—in stark contrast to her earlier firebrand, gender-norm-breaking performance in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (BU). As this latter depiction is not historically accurate, we will focus on Gārgī’s contribution to the BU.

Maitreyī has been renown since antiquity for her contributions to philosophy. In this chapter, her views as a proponent of Advaita (Monism) are explained. She was an explicator of a monistic approach to value that argues that the true Self, Ātman, is the basis of the highest values we hold and that knowledge of one’s true identity as Ātman, can be followed by acquiring a first person appreciation of one’s identity as Ātman. That deep axiological understanding, not merely intellectual comprehension, is liberation. Maitreyī (or someone by that name) is reported by the ancient epic Mahābhārata to have remained unmarried, but in one of the earliest of Upaniṣads, the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Maitreyī is described as a philosopher (brahmavādhinī) married to the sage Yājñavalkya. Regardless of her marital status, a dialogue with Yājñavalkya is preserved in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad in which she explicates the function of Ātman, its unity with Brahman (Growth, Expansion, Development), and discusses the nature of love and its role in the self who is seeking liberation. That dialogue is explored and discussed in this chapter.

Providing a decolonial, action-focused account of Yoga philosophy, this practical work from Dr. Shyam Ranganathan, pioneering scholar in the field of Indian moral philosophy, focuses on the South Asian tradition to explore what Yoga was like prior to colonization. It challenges teachers and trainees to reflect on the impact of Western colonialism on Yoga as well as understand Yoga as the original decolonial practice in a way that is accessible. This book is accessible but thought provoking in its approach, but it will also challenge the way you think. Each chapter takes the reader through a journey of sources and traditions, beginning with an investigation into the colonial -Platonic and Aristotelian- approaches to pedagogy in colonized yoga spaces, through contrary, ancient philosophies of South Asia, such as Jainism, Buddhism, Sankhya, and various forms of Vedanta, to sources of Yoga, including the Upanisads, Yoga Sutra, Bhagavad Gita and Hatha Yoga Pradipika. With discussions of the precolonial philosophy of Yoga, its relationship to social justice, and modern postural yoga's relationship with colonial trauma, this is a comprehensive guide for any yoga teacher or trainee to activate and synergize their practice.

As known from the academic literature on Hinduism, the foreign, Persian word, “Hindu” (meaning “Indian”), was used by the British to name everything indigenously South Asian, which was not Islam, as a religion. If we adopt explication as our research methodology, which consists in the application of the criterion of logical validity to organize various propositions of perspectives we encounter in research in terms of a disagreement, we discover: (a) what the British identified as “Hinduism” was not characterizable by a shared set of beliefs or shared outlook, but a disagreement or debate about basic topics of philosophy with a discourse on tenets of moral philosophy anchoring the debate; and (b), the Western tradition’s historical commitment to language as the vehicle of thought not only leads to the conflation of propositions with beliefs, but to interpreting (explaining by way of belief) on the basis of the Eurocentric tradition rooted exclusively in ancient Greek philosophy. Interpretation on the basis of the Western tradition leads to the Western tradition vindicating itself as the non-traditional, non-religious, rational platform—the secular—for explaining everything—the residua are what get called religions on a global scale. This serves the political function of insulating Western colonialism from indigenous moral and political criticism. Given that Western colonialism is the pivotal event, before which South Asians just had philosophy, and after which they had religion (the explanatory residua of Eurocentric interpretation), we can ask about Hindu religious belief. This only pertains to the period after colonialism, when Hindus adopted a Westcentric frame for understanding their tradition as religious because of colonization. Prior to this, the tradition the British identified as “Hindu” had a wide variety of philosophical approaches to justification, which often criticized propositional attitudes, like belief, as irrational.

To talk about ethics and the moral life in India, and whether and when Indians misunderstood each other’s views, we must know something about what Indians thought about ethical and moral issues. However, there is a commonly held view among scholars of Indian thought that Indians, and especially their intellectuals, were not really interested in ethical matters (Matilal 1989, 5; Raju 1967, 27; Devaraja 1962, v-vi; Deutsch 1969, 99). This view is false and strange. Understanding how it is that posterity has managed to misunderstand ethics and the moral life in India so profoundly is not something that we can address without thinking about issues pertaining to scholarship, interpretation and translation. Most importantly, studying a culture demands a philosophical engagement with the categories against which one attempts to understand it. If one believes, as many scholars do, that it is a rigorous study of Sanskrit and other classical Indian languages alone that holds the key to understanding classical India, then there is apparently neither need nor room for such reflection. It is this very same failure to engage philosophically with the category of the ethical and its place in translation that has allowed many modern Indians to misunderstand Indians of yore. (This is a paper I wrote in 2008 for an edited volume by Jyotirmaya Sharma for Penguin India, which unfortunately did not come to fruition. Since then, a lot has changed with respect to Sharma’s relationship to Penguin India, so perhaps this was all just prescient karma. I have circulated it with friends, who want to refer to it, so I thought I would upload it. Please refer to it as an online source: PhilPapers being the placed published. SR)

In contrast to a stereotypical account of Indian philosophy that are entailments of the interpreter’s beliefs (an approach that violates basic standards of reason), an approach to Indian philosophy grounded on the constraints of formal reason reveals not only a wide spread disagreement on dharma (THE RIGHT OR THE GOOD), but also a pervasive commitment to the practical foundation of life’s challenges. The flip side of this practical orientation is the criticism of ordinary experience as erroneous and reducible to the agent’s mental states. If we ignore the background practical orientation in Indian philosophy, this seems not like an error theory, that I call Ironic Idealism, but as a defense of idealism. I consider salient candidates for Indian Idealism (Advaita Vedānta, Yogācāra Buddhism, Kāśmīra Śaivism and the Yogavāsiṣṭha) and note that these positions continue a theme in Indian philosophy of articulating Ironic Idealism. Ironic Idealism depends upon the very Indian distinction between ultimate and provisional truth, and Ironic Idealism criticizes the mundane, provisional sort of "truth" as psychological and mental --- and ultimately false. Interpretation, the common approach to the study of Indian philosophy, is an example of what Ironic Idealism criticizes. This explains why authors incorrectly find Idealism everywhere in Indian thought.

This article, addressed to Yoga Therapists, sorts out the historical roots of our idea of Yoga, elucidates the colonial interference and distortion of Yoga, and shows that trauma and therapy are the primary focus of Yoga. However, unlike most philosophies of therapy, Yoga's solution is primarily moral philosophical---Yoga itself being a basic ethical theory, in addition to Virtue Theory, Consequentialism and Deontology. This article goes some way to elucidating that it is quite ironic (and absurd) that many feel the need to bring being “trauma-informed” into the title of Yoga education. That’s like the vacuous “chai tea” moniker (“chai” being the Hindi word for tea). Decolonizing our understanding of Yoga involves retrieving the original theory as the primary explanation of the topic, which allows us to understand how various activities, called "yoga," can be ways of practicing the moral philosophy of Yoga. The idea that "yoga" means many things and projects relies upon a contra logical methodology of interpretation which violates constraints of basic reasoning. Putting aside interpretation for explication is part of critical thinking but also our own self therapy. (Originally published in Yoga Therapy Today, a publication of the International Association of Yoga Therapists. Shared with permission.)

The Bhagavad Gītā occurs at the start of the sixth book of the Mahābhārata—one of South Asia’s two main epics, formulated at the start of the Common Era (C.E.). It is a dialog on moral philosophy. The lead characters are the warrior Arjuna and his royal cousin, Kṛṣṇa, who offered to be his charioteer and who is also an avatar of the god Viṣṇu. The dialog amounts to a lecture by Kṛṣṇa delivered on their chariot, in response to the fratricidal war that Arjuna is facing. The symbolism employed in the dialog—a lecture delivered on a chariot—ties the Gītā to developments in moral theory in the Upaniṣads. The work begins with Arjuna articulating three objections to fighting an impending battle by way of two teleological theories of ethics, namely Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism, but also Deontology. In response, Kṛṣṇa motivates Arjuna to engage in battle by arguments from procedural ethical theories—specifically his own form of Deontology, which he calls karma yoga, and a radically procedural theory unique to the Indian tradition, Yoga, which he calls bhakti yoga. This is supported by a theoretical and metaethical framework called jñāna yoga. While originally part of a work of literature, the Bhagavad Gītā was influential among medieval Vedānta philosophers. Since the formation of a Hindu identity under British colonialism, the Bhagavad Gītā has increasingly been seen as a separate, stand-alone religious book, which some Hindus treat as their analog to the Christian Bible for ritual, oath-swearing, and religious purposes. The focus of this article is historical and pre-colonial.

A famous Indian argument for jus ad bellum and jus in bello is presented in literary form in the Mahābhārata: it involves events and dynamics between moral conventionalists (who attempt to abide by ethical theories that give priority to the good) and moral parasites (who attempt to use moral convention as a weapon without any desire to conform to these expectations themselves). In this paper I follow the dialectic of this victimization of the conventionally moral by moral parasites to its philosophical culmination in the fateful battle, which the Bhagavad Gītā precedes. Arjuna’s lament is an internalization of the logic of conventional moral expectations that allowed moral parasitism, and Krishna’s push for a purely procedural approach to moral reasoning (bhakti yoga) does away with the good as a primitive of explanation and provides the moral considerations that allow us to see that the jus ad bellum and jus in bello coincide: the just cause is the approximation to the procedural ideal (the Lord), which is also just conduct. Jeff McMahan is correct in claiming that it is wrong for the unjust to attack the just. But it is also not obviously correct that it is the same set of moral considerations in war and peace that mark out the sides, for peace is largely characterizable by conventional morality, which all are forced to abandon in war. Walzer is correct that there are different sets of standards at play at war and peace, and that getting hands dirty in immorality is a price worth paying in war, but Walzer is thereby incorrect for a subtle reason: conventional standards by way of which jus ad bellum and jus in bello appear corrupt are themselves actually corrupt when the need for a just war arises. It is because moral parasites use conventional morality as a means of hostility and not as a means of fair, inclusive social interaction that conventional morality is corrupted and turned into a tool of the unjust. It is hence unjust to employ these standards to judge those whose cause is just, though such a judgement is conventional. Those who fight for a just cause thereby justly get their hands dirty by departing from conventional moral standards. But this is to the disadvantage of parasites who can only function in a climate where the conventionally good are constrained by conventional morality. Just war so understood deprives parasites their weapon of choice.

Evil in the Vedas and the Upanishads undergoes a theoretical transformation as this literature itself moves away from its consequentialist and naturalistic roots to a radical procedural approach to moral questions. The goods of life on the early account were largely natural: evil was a moral primitive that motivated a teleological approach to morality geared towards avoiding natural evil. The gods of nature (such as fire, and rain, intimately involved in metabolism) were propitiated to gain beneficent results, and to avoid hunger and illness. To please the gods of nature involves eating, which is merely the imposition of natural evil on sacrificial victims so that one avoids the evils of disease and hunger oneself. The entire system is one of resentment: the goods of life are defined by way of the bads that they displace. Authors of the latter part of the Vedas, such as the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, show themselves to be concerned about the irreducibility of evil on the naturalistic account, but also more broadly with the irreducible phenomenon of moral luck that comes in tow with a teleological approach to ethics. Whether one is able to ward off evil and enjoy the goods of life is not under one’s control and is within the purview of the forces of nature. This motivates the transition to a procedural account of ethics---yoga---where evil is not a primitive but a side effect of the non-yogic life, characterized by a lack of self-governance. As Death teaches us, evil is not a moral primitive and can be reduced out of the moral equation by taking responsibility for a lack of autonomy, which transforms this external threat of a lack of autonomy into a self lack of autonomy, or self-governance. With this transformation we are delivered into the realm of preservation (Vishnu).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Virtue of NonviolenceShyam RanganathanThe Virtue of Nonviolence. By Nicholas F. Gier. SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. Pp. xv + 222. Hardcover $50.00.The Virtue of Nonviolence is Nicholas F. Gier's second book in the SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought, edited by the eminent Alfred North Whitehead scholar David Ray Griffin. It is a remarkable exercise in comparative philosophy that attempts to come to terms with M. K. ("Mahatma") Gandhi's moral philosophy in light of the Chinese, European, and Indian traditions.According to Griffin, writing at the beginning of the present volume, Constructive Postmodernism, like the deconstructive, relativistic, and eliminative versions, takes a critical stand toward the modernist, Galilean-Cartesian-Baconian-Newtonian worldview and the associated ideal of a unitary (technologically supported) conception of human progress. Constructive Postmodernism departs from the alternative versions in its efforts to "overcome the modern worldview not by eliminating the possibility of worldviews (or 'metanarratives') as such, but by constructing a postmodern worldview through a revision of modern premises and traditional concepts in the light of inescapable presuppositions of our various modes of practice" (p. xiii). In the place of phenomenalism and the primary-secondary quality bifurcation of the modern period, constructive postmodernism embraces both non-sensory perception and organicism (p. xii). As a contributor to this series, Gier thus sets himself the project of explicating Gandhi's ethics as a species of Constructive Postmodernism.Gier opts to elaborate Gandhian, postmodern ethics in terms of early Buddhist thought (p. 3). This provocative option is motivated for Gier by his twin convictions, which he attempts to argue for throughout the book: (1) that a substance conception of self (characteristic of much Hindu and Jain thought) is not capable of explaining the moral cultivation and progress so essential to Gandhi's program (p. 6), and (2) the "Vedāntist philosophy, particularly the Advaita Vedānta with which Gandhi is usually associated, cannot support [an] action-context" ethics that emphasizes the dynamic importance of both theory and the facts on the ground—a program captured by Gandhi's idea of satyagraha (p. 3).Having stated the parameters of his project in his "Introduction," Gier in his first chapter, "Gandhi as a Postmodern Thinker," argues that "[a]lthough some evidence of a deconstructive postmodernism may be discerned, Gandhi is best allied with the constructive school of postmodernism" (p. 27). Of special interest in evaluating this book is Gier's observation that "if Gandhi is a postmodern thinker, Gandhi stands with Rāmānuja and Whitehead and not with Śaṅkara and Derrida," for Gandhi evokes models of organism absent in the thought of the latter two (p. 25)—an observation I shall return to later.In the second chapter Gier examines the Jain and "Hindu" view of ahiṁsā. Gier correctly notes the uncompromising, unpragmatic conception of ahiṁsā operative in Jain thought, which finds its highest realization in renunciation and not worldly [End Page 115] action—a position that Gier rightly contrasts with Gandhi's politically charged conception of ahiṁsā. This allows Gier to claim that the influence of Jainism on Gandhi's thought is "not as great as he or others have claimed" (p. 31). In contrast, Gier summarizes what he takes to be the "Hindu" view of ahiṁsā, based mainly on the Upaniṣads and Manu's Dharmaśāstra, which he supplements with an examination of the Bhagavad Gītā. Gier argues that from the Gītā Gandhi derives the "philosophy of active nonattachment" embodied in the doctrine of karma yoga. In the Hindu view, according to Gier, ahiṁsā is "relativized"—that is, its nature and scope are defined relative to social and ritual contexts and self-interest (e.g., ritual slaughter is an occasion when the general prohibition against killing is suspended in the context of "Hindu" ethics). However, Gandhi's conception of ahiṁsā is not relativized. Since it cannot be subsumed under a Jain conception, Gier suggests that we must look elsewhere—specifically to a Buddhist pragmatic ethics that would justify Gandhi's political conception, which allowed for the compromise of ahiṁsā for...

In addition to the familiar moral theories of Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism and Deontology, India presents us with one unique moral theory: it may be called “Yoga” (discipline, meditation) but also “Bhakti,” which is typically translated as “Devotion” but is also translated as “Love.” In this chapter, I focus on Bhakti, in its formal and informal manifestations in Indian philosophy. In order to understand how it is a distinct and basic option of moral theory, I will identify four basic options of moral theory by being explicit about my methodology in the study of philosophy. This allows us to appreciate how the Indian disagreements on moral theory contribute to a philosophical exploration of love. It will also help us appreciate how Yoga/Bhakti (Love) is a unique, basic theoretical option that treats love as the basic conception of morality. In providing such an account, Yoga/Bhakti elucidates the moral unity of a diverse range of concerns that we talk about with the English term “love,” including strong evaluation of things (“I love that song”), relationships of friendship, familial bonds, and the intimacy of sexual partners.

Human rights, as traditionally understood in the West, are grounded in an anthropocentric theory of personhood. However, as this chapter argues, such a stance is certainly not culturally universal; historically, it is derivable from a cultural orientation that is Greek in origin. Such an orientation conflates thought with language (logos), and identifies humans as uniquely deserving of moral consideration or standing to the exclusion of non-human knowers. The linguistic theory of thought impedes insight and understanding of both Indian and Western contributions to political and moral thought. It is argued that the idea that we have rights by virtue of being human is problematic. In contrast, the chapter argues for an account of personal rights derivable from Patañjali’s philosophy. On a Patañjalian account, the rights necessary for the good of persons transcend species, sex, caste, race, class, age, ability, and sexual orientation.

Syntax has to do with rules that constrain how words can combine to make acceptable sentences. Semantics (Frege and Russell) concerns the meaning of words and sentences, and pragmatics (Austin and Grice) has to do with the context bound use of meaning. We can hence distinguish between three competing principles of translation: S—translation preserves the syntax of an original text (ST) in the translation (TT); M—translation preserves the meaning of an ST in a TT; and P—translation preserves the pragmatics of an ST in a TT. A prominent form of P is functionalism defended by linguists and translation theorists (J.R. Firth, Eugene Nida, Susan Bassnett and many others) and historically was defended by philosophers (Russell, Ogden and Richard) but abandoned by philosophers and criticized by Wittgenstein. If we adopt M, then a TT will always say exactly what the ST says, and hence all subsequent TTs, even alternative ones produced via M, will be consistent with each other. But if we adopt P, in contrast, we have no reason to believe that the TTs will say what the ST does, and moreover they can contradict each other. If such contradictory translations are produced on the basis of the totality of empirical evidence, it results in what Quine called the indeterminacy of translation. Yet, P is not easy to reject. In many cases, translation in accordance with M where the meaning to be preserved is linguistic results in TTs that are failures. In contrast to a language focused approach to semantics, I close by following a lead in the translation theory literature of identifying text-types (genres) as a tool for identifying translatable content in an ST. To individuate text-types I identify them with disciplines, as elucidated by the 2nd century Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra. This allows for the definition of textual meaning as the discipline relative pragmatics of an ST and further for translation to proceed by way of M, while taking the intuitions that motivate P seriously. Translations that preserve textual meaning will not only have the same meaning as each other but will be pragmatically felicitous.

Hinduism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation explores Hinduism and the distinction between the secular and religious on a global scale. According to Ranganathan, a careful philosophical study of Hinduism reveals it as the microcosm of philosophical disagreements with Indian resources, across a variety of topics, including: ethics, logic, the philosophy of thought, epistemology, moral standing, metaphysics, and politics. This analysis offers an original and fresh diagnosis of studying Hinduism, colonialism and a global rise of hyper-nationalism, as well as the frequent acrimony between scholars and practitioners of Hindu traditions. This text is appropriate for use in undergraduate and graduate courses on Hinduism, and Indian philosophy, and can be used as an advanced introduction to the problems of philosophy with South Asian resources.

In the previous module we examined the dialectic that Krishna initiates in the Bhagavad Gītā. Arjuna’s despondency and worry about the war he must fight is captured in his own words by teleological concerns – consequentialism and virtue theoretic considerations. In the face of a challenge, a teleological approach results in the paradox of teleology---namely, the more we are motivated by exceptional and unusual ends, the less likely we are to pursue our ends given a low expected utility. Krishna's solution is to switch to a procedural ethics. To this extent, Krishna identifies three ethical theories. Two were discussed extensively in the earlier chapter on the Gītā. The first is basic deontology, called karma yoga. This states that we should choose to do our duty without appealing to the outcome as a justification. The duties in question are definable by good outcomes, but the outcomes do not constitute the reason for embracing duty. The second, spoken about at length, is bhakti yoga. According to this, the right thing to do is to worship the ideal by our actions. This practice results in us improving our skill and practice such that we come to liberate ourselves from fault and instantiate the ideal itself. The third is the Gītā’s metaethical theory—conceptual account of the right and the good. This is called “jñāna yoga.” This module focuses on the metaethical dimensions of the Gītā.

According to the philosophical tradition, translation is successful when one has substituted words and sentences from one language with those from another by cross-linguistic synonymy. Moreover, according to the orthodox view, the meaning of expressions and sentences of languages are determined by their basic or systematic role in a language. This makes translating normative and evaluative discourse puzzling for two reasons. First, as languages are syntactically and semantically different because of their peculiar cultural and historical influences, and as values and norms differ across cultures, it is unlikely that languages will have synonymous evaluative and normative expressions. If translation is only successful by cross-linguistic synonymy, it would seem that we will not be able to translate the value theoretic claims of persons from radically different cultures. But it is with such persons that dialogue on evaluative matters is imperative, to resolve ethical and axiological differences that could be the root of conflict. Second, as the orthodox account of meaning renders it linguistically relative, it is unlikely that expressions across languages will be cross-linguistically synonymous. Thus, on the Orthodox account of translation, translation is indeterminate (as W.V.O. Quine has argued) or impossible (as Jacques Derrida has argued). In this dissertation I argue for a novel theory of meaning and translation based on innovations in the translation studies literature and my prior work in cross cultural research, which I call Text-Type Semantics or TTS. TTS explains how translation is successful while affirming radical cultural and linguistic diversity. It treats disciplinary concerns as the neutral criteria to calibrate translation. On the basis of TTS I argue that we need what I call the “Quasi-Indexical” account of thick and thin concepts (or QI) to translate normative and evaluative discourse. I argue that QI and TTS succeed where competing accounts in the moral semantics literature (such as Non-Analytic Naturalism and Expressivism) fail. The argument also shows that the relativization of truth (in philosophy and beyond) to languages and cultures is mistaken.

Indian thought is often said to be concerned with ethics (dharma) that leads to freedom (mokṣa). Either this means that we should treat freedom as the end that justifies the ethical life (Consequentialism), or that the ethical life is the procedure that causes freedom (Proceduralism). The history of Vedānta philosophy—philosophy of the latter part of the Vedas—largely endorses the latter option via the “moral transition argument” (MTA): a dialectic that takes us from teleology to proceduralism. It is motivated by a desire to remove luck from moral theory. But this leaves open the Paradox of Development (Brahman), which posits our moral freedom as a condition of protecting it. I explore the MTA, and Śaṅkara’s, Madhva’s, and Rāmānuja’s response to the Paradox of Development.

In this module, I first explore the dialectic that leads to Kant’s substantive moral theory. In the second section, I explicate the roots of Kant’s ethical theory in terms of his attempt to resolve the antinomy of freedom and determinism. Kant’s solution is a Normative Compatibilism that resolves the inconsistency via morality, in general, and self-governance in particular. As noted in our lesson on Yoga, this is a strategy that Yoga endorses, and hence, predates the Kantian approach by over a millennia and a half. Yet, Kant’s approach to Normative Compatibilism is unique to him, and perhaps, more influential. In the third section, I review Kant’s dialectic by which he concludes that The Categorical Imperative is the means by which rational agents resolve this tension by freely determining themselves. In the fourth section, I consider some preliminary objections to Kant’s theory. In the fifth section, I draw some conclusions.

Patañjali’s Yoga Sutra (second century CE) is the basic text of one of the nine canonical schools of Indian philosophy. In it the legendary author lays down the blueprint for success in yoga, now practiced the world over. Patañjali draws upon many ideas of his time, and the result is a unique work of Indian moral philosophy that has been the foundational text for the practice of yoga since. The Yoga Sutra sets out a sophisticated theory of moral psychology and perhaps the oldest theory of psychoanalysis. For Patañjali, present mental maladies are a function of subconscious tendencies formed in reaction to past experiences. He argues that people are not powerless against such forces and that they can radically alter their lives through yoga—a process of moral transformation and perfection, which brings the body and mind of a person in line with their personhood. Accompanying this translation is an extended introduction that explains the challenges of accurately translating Indian philosophical texts, locates the historical antecedents of Patañjali’s text and situates Patanjali’s philosophy within the history of scholastic Indian philosophy. This is explicitly a philosophical translation of the text.

In this lesson, I explore three areas of intersection between ethics and metaphysics: accounts of the self, the reality of value, and basic distinctions in ethical theory. I compare the account of the self as a chariot from the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (Deontology), early Buddhism from Questions of King Milinda (Consequentialism), and Plato's Phaedrus (Virtue Ethics). In each case, the metaphysical model is continuous with the moral theory of the same perspective and adopted to accommodate the moral theory. I also compare debates across traditions on controversies such as: Naturalism vs. Nonnaturalism, ethics vs. action (dharma vs. karma), and the perennial question of Moral Realism. The relationship between metaphysics and ethics is not peculiar to a specific philosophical tradition. It has to do with central questions of moral philosophy. A common point that these issues converge on is the question of moral standing: what kinds of things count, and what are their properties.

Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy (Motilal Banarsidass 2007). Regretfully, it is not an uncommon view in orthodox Indology that Indian philosophers were not interested in ethics. This claim belies the fact that Indian philosophical schools were generally interested in the practical consequences of beliefs and actions. The most popular symptom of this concern is the doctrine of karma, according to which the consequences of actions have an evaluative valence. Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy argues that the orthodox view in Indology concerning Indian ethics is false. The first half the book deals with theoretical issues in studying ethics: defining moral terms, understanding the subject matter of ethics so as to transcend culturally specific substantive commitments and touches upon issues of cross-cultural hermeneutics and translation. The second half consists of a systematic explication of the moral philosophical aspects of nine major Indian philosophical schools. I argue that “dharma” in its various uses in Indian philosophy is always rationally treated as a moral term—even in so called “ontological” employments of the term as seen in Buddhism and Jainism. In understanding “dharma” in this manner, the Indian philosophical tradition is replete with different versions of moral realism that fit tidily with other philosophical commitments of Indian philosophers. Pains are taken to show the breath of moral philosophical disagreement in this tradition. On a comparative note, some Indian moral philosophy resembles realist approaches of the Western tradition (such as the Non-natural realism of Neo-Platonism, or the Naturalism of Utilitarianism). Out of the major Indian philosophical schools, a slim minority are shown to be committed to moral irrealism while some are shown to regard their entire philosophical orientation as firmly planted within moral philosophy (such as Jainism, Buddhism, Purva Mimamsa and Yoga). In response to those who would argue that what Indian philosophers meant by “dharma” is very different from what moral philosophers in the West have meant by “ethical” or “good,” I argue that this is as vacuous as noting that Utilitarians have a different conception of the good from Deontologists. If philosophy is concerned with theoretical debate, as I argue it is, philosophical terms function to articulate such disagreements. The various seemingly desperate uses of “dharma” in the Indian tradition are no longer confusing or disorderly when we understand the theoretico-philosophical function of this term in Indian philosophical disputes. The second edition contains an additional chapter that addresses the colonial and political context of the study of Indian Ethics.

In this module lesson on Patañjali ’s Yoga Sūtra (I am relying upon my translation, listed in the bibliography: Patañjali 2008), I shall explore Yoga’s critical response to Western moral theory. Yoga was not part of the Western tradition and the author or authors of the Yoga Sūtra were not responding to Western moralists Nevertheless, what Patañjali, the legendary author of the Yoga Sūtra, has to say about moral standing and reason serves as a response to standard accounts on those topics, and in turn, it provides grounds for a response to Western moralists. Yoga is contrasted with the ethics of Plato, Kant, Spinoza and Schopenhauer.

Yoga is a nonspeciesist liberalism, founded in a moral non-naturalism, which identifies the essence of personhood as the Lord, defined by unconservative self-governance—an abstraction from each of us that is non-proprietary. According to Yoga, the right is defined as the approximation of the regulative ideal (the Lord) and the good is the perfection of this practice, which delivers us from a life of coercion into a personal world of freedom. It is an alternative to Deontology, Consequentialism, and Virtue Ethics, which provides a unitary account of moral well-being and worldly well-being. The seeming antinomy of freedom and determinism is resolved in the ethical life. I argue that Yoga provides a critical and instructive response to alternative ethical theories and the problem of collective harm.

In this module I explore some the points of convergence between early Buddhist and Jain doctrine. Buddhism is a form of Consequentialism, as noted in our other modules. Jainism rather holds the distinct philosophical thesis: the essence of the self is virtue. Jainism is a version of Virtue Ethics. The implications of this radical Virtue Theory is that action is a confusion, and morality (dharma) is movement away from activity. In the fifth section, we shall wrap up with observations in support of this argument: the primary virtue is not doing, for virtue is not the same as action, but our dispositions towards actions. We should, hence, strive to be virtuous, which amounts to being nonactive.