Slaves of Utility

(Reader in Philosophy, University of Madras)

The concept of use is so much ingrained in us that we almost invariably test everything thereby. Not merely do we equate it with value but we tend to apply it to value too, so that even of what is offered as a value we sometimes ask, "What is the use of it?" The universality thus sought for the concept may do credit to the consistency of its upholders, but not to their clear-headedness. There are obvious limitations to any concept, even to that of use. If one turns round and asks, "What is the use of use?" we shall be forced on either to an infinite regress of uses, or to a circle where particular uses (in the plural) derive from the universal use, while the universal is useful as accounting for the particular; with this, however, we shall have no final satisfaction either with the particulars or the universal. The truth is that our finite concepts are valuable only up to a point, as embodying a truth higher than themselves, A variety of entities are useful, but use itself rises above use; whatever shares in value is valuable, but of value itself the same predication cannot intelligibly be made; perceptions and propositions are true, while it is meaningless to say that truth is true; acts, motives, intentions may be good or otherwise, while goodness just is. And in each of these realms, we find that the higher we go the less applicability there is for the category of end and means. When we seek to understand the world in its diversity we establish relations in what we observe; these are primarily of the nature of mechanical causation. "How did it come about?" we ask, and are satisfied when told that A caused B, or C caused D. But we soon pass beyond this stage and ask, "Why did A cause B?" With causation as impulsion we cease to be satisfied; we want to know the end subserved, the purpose achieved, the utility of a process or an act. The advance (which by some may even be considered a retrogression to primitive anthropomorphism) is so marked and important that we generally forget the possibility of a further advance to a purpose that is also purposeless, to a goal that is an end-in-itself. The double emancipation of reason from magic and from mechanics so intoxicates it with a sense of its own power and achievements that it is blind to the possibilities of further advance.

Such self-satisfaction found expression even in olden days in India. Despite the alleged dominance of scriptural authority, the Indian philosopher has been over-anxious to justify his system by the standards not merely of coherence but also of utility. A famous saying of Vachaspati makes it clear that no one seeks to know either what is plain or what is useless: a pot presented in full light to a defectless eye and an undistracted mind does not call for any further knowing activity; nor does one ever bother to count the teeth of a crow. This classic statement is often quoted even today to bring out what is claimed to be the pre-eminently practical character of Indian philosophy. The statement however cannot pass unchallenged. It deserves examination for at least two reasons. The ideal of Indian philosophy may well pass as the ideal of Indian culture in general; and if the claim of practicality be conceded, one should admit that Indian culture is against all disinterested pursuit of knowledge. Mankind, however, has ceased to be indifferent even to the teeth of the crow. Nor can it be said that the increase of scientific knowledge has only kept pace with an increase in the range of man’s practical interests. One's knowledge of the crow is hardly influenced by one’s interest in it as a friend or foe; even the knowledge of the mosquito came before and not after the inquiry into malaria infection. Utility does exist as a consequence of scientific knowledge, not as its cause. The cause is the attractiveness of knowledge as such.

Observation and experiment start with knowledge as an end-in-itself; incidentally they lead to other ends as well. The research in short waves and the success of short-wave wireless transmission are too recent to be forgotten. What was dismissed as practically useless and therefore a suitable playing-ground for disinterested experimental muddling by amateurs, has turned out to be a new wonder with (literally) far-reaching practical consequences. Those of us who pay homage to the advancement of scientific knowledge cannot accept with equanimity the upholding of a practical ideal as characteristic of our culture.

The other reason for challenging the ideal is that some at least of the systems of Indian philosophy have shown little more than lip-sympathy for it. The above-cited statement of Vachaspati’s occurs in two works, one a work on the Sankhya and the other a work on the Advaita Vedanta. The goal of both systems is knowledge; in the former it is discriminative knowledge of spirit apart from matter; in the latter it is the realisation that spirit is all, that matter is a superimposition of nescience on spirit. The realisation in either case is for spirit. In consonance with the practical starting-point, the realisation should presumably have a practical use. But strangely enough there is no such utility. The distinction between end and means, the striving for the former through the instrumentality of the latter, all these are characteristic of matter; for spirit there is neither purpose nor activity; hence the realisation cannot serve any purpose except possibly for matter, and with this we as spirits are not concerned. "Of a verity, I was neither bound nor am I released; what was bound and released is matter"–such is the nature of the discriminative wisdom. This may at first sight appear not merely useful, but supremely so. It will not stand analysis, however, since use is bound up with activity and purpose, while spirit does not act and has no purpose to achieve, not even its own release, since it is never in reality bound. The same relegation of utility to the sphere of the non-real is found in the Advaita too. Frequently pressed to state how the illusory can be practically efficient (as the phenomenal world undoubtedly is) the Advaitin retorts that such efficiency belongs only to the illusory or the indeterminable. The absolutely unreal cannot be useful any more than a barren woman’s son; nor can the absolutely real be efficient, since it is already perfect; there is nothing which it can become nor anything else which it can subserve; change, purpose, utility, these must necessarily belong to an intermediate realm which is neither real nor unreal. Thus, despite Vachaspati’s pontifical utterance, we find that in neither of the systems expounded is there an attainment of an ultimate or absolute utility. Rather is there an escape from the sphere of utility, and an attempt to be isolated or to abide in one’s own nature. This divergence, between the result and what was premised at the start, should be sufficient to make one pause before accepting the utilitarian statements at their face value.

It is true in a limited sense that not even the dullest exerts himself without a benefit in view; but the opposite should be equally obvious: the mother giving herself without reserve for her child, the patriot sacrificing his life and liberty for his country, the idealist dedicating his all to the pursuit of an ideal–these have at least as much claim to our consideration as the labourer worthy of his hire. And it is nothing short of a gross insult to human nature to treat love and dedication as either abnormal or as proceeding on a calculation of deferred rewards. Where there appear to be different levels of human nature, the higher may be presented in terms of the lower and more familiar; but then the ever-present danger of interpreting it in terms of the lower should be guarded against. The attainment of one’s own self may be made attractive to the extrovert by exhibiting it as the most useful. But so long as the concept of use is not transcended, the search for the self will be a hypothetical, not a categorical imperative; it will ever tend to degenerate into self-seeking. It makes all the difference in the world whether we sublimate the useful into the good or bring down the good to the useful; the former is our duty, the latter our inclination; and inclination generally prevails over duty. This is unfortunate, but the misfortune becomes a calamity only when the triumph of inclination is itself exalted into a duty. Ever-present perfect reality may be envisaged in stocks or stones or in men; while, however, it is good to look on a stone as Brahman, the view that Brahman is a stone will be fraught with evil; the former is the brahma-drishti which it is incumbent on us to cultivate.¹ It behoves us therefore to envisage the non-utilitarian good even in the apparently utilitarian, to see even in the latter an expression of universal dharma instead of reducing dharma to a calculus of ends and means.

It is true that here and there the lore of the Upanishads is presented as if it were the means to a supreme goal; the knower of the self, it has been said, rises above all sorrow. Such statements, however, are only calculated to arouse the interest of the novice who is too sophisticated not to look for rewards and yet is not wise enough to realise that self-knowledge is itself the supreme reward. Advaitins are never tired of pointing out that there is nothing to which Brahman-knowledge is contributory as a means; the destruction of sorrow and samsara is but a phase of this knowledge, not a result thereof. Brahman-knowledge is an end-in-itself, not an instrumental good. The self, whose nature is knowledge, cannot be subordinate to anything else; for there is nothing other than the self. In it the concept of end and means is finally superseded.

The alleged activity of Brahman in the creation of the world provides the proper pattern on which all our activities should be fashioned. Creation, according to all schools of Vedanta, is mere sport; it is a spontaneous, unmotived act. Our acts should be similarly spontaneous and free. They should, in the only proper sense of the term, be ‘creative.’ Creativity does not consist in mere production or re-production; its essence is spontaneity and freedom, freedom from purposive calculation as much as from mechanical impulsion; for, as Bergson has it, teleology is only mechanism working wards.

In such a view, the highest life would be neither utilitarian nor ascetic, but creative, with the creativity of God, not that of a craftsman, basic or otherwise. We are all sons of God, though we are not aware of our heritage. True education as drawing out our own inmost nature, should teach us to be God-like, not ant-like. Fidelity to life should be the educationist’s goal, not the fitting for a livelihood. Earning capacity whether in himself or in his pupil is but an incident of education, a factor which will take care of itself, if the ideal is never lost sight of. It is no answer to point to the vast number of educated unemployed. These have not found themselves, since they were in most cases not trained to seek for the self. The ideal in the past (except by accident and in a few cases) has been artisanship. The few crafts prepared for have become overcrowded and valueless as they were bound to become. The attempt today is not to envisage a new or wider ideal, but only to turn to other crafts alleged to be more basic, on the unfounded assumption that weaving or carpentry is more sacred or inspiring or profitable than teaching or trade. That Tiruvalluvar was a weaver and Jesus the son of a carpenter cannot of themselves avail to surround these professions with a halo.

Tinkering with an educational system is bad enough; but the evil is greater, when the tinkering is paraded as a radical change of vision. The real trouble in our employments is that there is no longer a sense of vocation, a response to a call. Every one tries to be anything, not because of an inner urge, but solely because of the desire for acquisition in a greater or less degree; and it is no remedy so to stereotype education that no call will ever have an opportunity of making itself heard. Expediency apart, the supreme sin of such a course will lie in its depriving youth of spontaneity, and robbing them of their divine heritage. The Time-Spirit may make even this inevitable, as a phase of development. If, however, it is to be but a phase, and that not fraught with too much evil, it will be worth remembering that our culture at least stands for a different ideal. There can never be too much insistence on this, since our contact with the West has produced more than one unlooked-for and undesirable result. We have not yet acquired British Parliamentary Government and perhaps never shall; but the utilitarianism, which dominated Britain when our political consciousness began to awaken, has captured our minds, and that ideology exercises its influence on us, both openly and covertly. As a part of the Western system of education, we took to Western sports with such zest that today even a coolie without food is interested in the scoring of a Bradman; but unfortunately we have not learnt that the essence of sport is sportsmanship, the spirit of playing the game with perfect indifference to results. If any system of government had deliberately engineered such a result, it would truly have deserved the epithet ‘Satanic.’ A large measure of the credit or dis-credit has, however, to go to ourselves. We have, like the soul as conceived by the Saiva Siddhantin, tended to take on the colour of our immediate surroundings. And since colour pertains to the exterior, we have largely succeeded in copying forms without imbibing the spirit. The environment in turn gets debased as a result of our reaction to it; that, again, has consequences on us; and so on. If we are ever to rise, without sinking in this morass, we shall first have to turn within and be true creators, without continuing to be what we now are–slaves of utility.

1 See Brahmasutras, IV, I, 5.