Shyam Ranganathan

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.

Indian thought is often said to be concerned with ethics that leads to freedom. Either this means that we should treat freedom as the end that justifies the ethical life, or that the ethical life is the procedure that causes freedom. The history of Vedānta philosophy—philosophy of the latter part of the Vedas—largely endorses the latter option via the “moral transition argument” : 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, 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.

Why are we saddled with Eurocentric Interpretation, which results in the depiction of Nonwestern thought as religious, and bereft of serious moral theory, while the history of European thought is depicted as the content of secular reason? Interpretation as a mode of explanation is part and parcel with the dominant account of thought originating in Europe as the meaning of language. Interpretation is imperialistic. As it spreads, so too does the European outlook, rendering anything deviant inexplicable and mysterious. Orthodox Indology, with its emphasis on linguistics and philology, is a product of this tradition. In contrast, the idea that language encodes thought as its meaning is controversial in the Chinese and Indian traditions.

In this chapter I respond to objections that we should shift our focus from truth to objectivity, from prejudice to research, and from doctrine to disciplinarity. Disciplines are the same practice from differing perspectives and they allow us to triangulate on objects of interest. This entails that objects are discipline relative, and hence the insertion of social scientific concerns in the study of philosophy, as is common place in Indology, is groundless. Having entertained and shown that disciplines aside from philosophy have nothing to teach us about the history of philosophy, I show that the common view that Indian philosophers were uninterested in ethics is a straightforward outcome of failing to employ the standard practice of philosophers in the study of Indian thought.

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 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 theoris and the problem of collective harm.

I contrast the methodology that prioritizes truth—interpretation—with the prioritization of objectivity—explication. Explication, the cornerstone of philosophy, allows us to identify the basic concept ETHICS and DHARMA as what theories of ethics and dharma disagree about: THE RIGHT OR THE GOOD. This is objective: what we converge on while we disagree. Four basic moral theories that differ on this concept are: Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism, Deontology and Bhakti/Yoga. They are mirror images of each other. If we explicate Indian thought, we find that moral theory differentiates Indian philosophies. Interpretation, which prioritizes truth, is subjective and not basic to philosophy, and gives rise to the idea that Indian thought is religious, and bereft of moral theory.

This chapter explores the role of evil in the development of the Vedas and Upaniṣads. The Vedas and the Upaniṣads, or the Vedas are the repository of veda of the early Indo-European peoples of South Asia. Written and collected over a thousand-year period, from 1500 BCE to 500 BCE, the Vedas says many things about evil. However, the corpus presents a philosophical shift from naturalism to non-naturalism that also mirrors a shift from Consequentialism to Deontology. The problem with naturalism on the Vedic reckoning is that it renders evil an ineliminable primitive that motivates a devotion to naturalistic forces to maximise good results. Vedic non-naturalism, rooted in the idea of self-development, treats evil as an inessential malady of self-governance. On the latter account, evil plays no essential role in self-understanding, and can be eliminated by self-governance.