Has India at present any Philosophy’, as such, of Her Own?

Has India at present any ‘Philosophy’,

as such, of Her Own?

(Retired Registrar, The Mysore University)

To ask whether India has any ‘philosophy’ would appear somewhat foolish inasmuch as India has been known, for centuries, as the home of, not one school, but several schools of religious, mystic (yogic), and rational thought. Such Indian thought was held in the highest esteem by great Western thinkers like Schopenhauer, Cousin, Emerson, Thoreau, Deussen, Max Muller and others. Further, the culture of almost every country or race has passed through some one or more phases of religion, theology, scholasticism, mysticism, metaphysical speculation, and rational thought, every one of which has had a ‘philosophy’ in the sense that each of them has attempted some general interpretation of life or existence. In fact, every man or woman has his or her view, or evaluation, of the world which has also been called philosophy. In this oldsense, people of India haveand had plenty of philosophic schools, perhaps more than any other race. But whether India has anything of it in the modern sense, that is, of ‘philosophy’ as understood, at the present time, by the thoughtful men in the West (in other words, whether it has anything of what that word signifies to those who speak in their homes the group of languages to which that word belongs) is seriously doubted.

In a letter received from Europe so recently as the 11th of November, 1939, Swami Siddheswarananda, a most highly cultured graduate of an Indian University, who has been endeavouring to spread in Europe a knowledge of Indian thought, for some years past, writes: "The European mind is constituted in a different way, and our aim should be to understand sympathetically that mind. Only after two years I am able to understand that the words we use, taken from their language to convey our ideas, do not bring to them the same implications that we give them."

To illustrate what the learned Swami says, let me state here that the Sanskrit word ‘Buddhi’ for instance, has been translated into at least nineteen different words in English by various writers. How then is one ignorant of Sanskrit culture to know what ‘Buddhi’ exactly signifies? Similarly what are we in India to understand by the European and American word ‘Philosophy’?

Some Western thinkers hold that there is no‘philosophy’ as such, in its modern sense, indigenous to India, though she may be a rich store-house of all the philosophies she borrowed.

Let me begin with the latest and one of the most authoritative pronouncements. On the 8th of April, 1939, there appeared in the London Times, Literary Supplement, an article headed "Wisdom of the East." There it is said, "While the West may be pre-eminent in thought–in matters of the intellect, of science and philosophy–theEast is pre-eminent in religion. (Italics are mine.)

Turning next to others:

"Many philosophies do not rise beyond the mythological stage. Even the theories of Oriental peoples, the Hindus, the Egyptians, and the Chinese, consist, in the main, of mythological and ethical doctrines and are not thorough-going systems of thought; they are shot through with poetry and faith...."(Frank Thilly’s ‘History of Philosophy’)

"It (the mystic’s realization of the Absolute) is the very antithesis of honest reasoning and a piece of presumptuous dogmatism. It is the theory that underlies Theosophy, Hinduism, and most forms of Mysticism….It is designed to reconcile people to evils instead of to encourage them to combat them. It is the escape mechanism of the despairing, the helpless and the lazy....The theoretical arguments would seem to be more a rationalization of a convenient myth than an honest and irresistible train of reasoning."–[John Lewis' ‘Introduction of Philosophy’ (1937)]

"The system of Vedanta is rightly charged with immorality…..What moral results could possibly be expected from a system so devoid of motives for a life of true purity?" (Jacob’s ‘Hindu Pantheism’)

"You may rid Hinduism of its immense load of nonsense and consider it to be a sort of mystic positivism, yet it is incredible illusion to pretend to find in it anything of use." (Quoted by Poussin)

It is said that what is called Indian Philosophy is at least half a century behind the times. Hence a large number of colleges in India have already abolished this course of study! And many others are abolishing it. The authorities of the Indian Civil Service Examination Board have dropped this subject altogether. The present Secretary of State for India, one who has studied Indian culture on the spot as a Governor of a great Indian Province, denies the existence of philosophy as such in this country. Some well-known and thoughtful scholars, as for instance Professor Edgerton, have declared Indian thought to be ‘primitive’ or ‘magic’ philosophy, or as something meant to make men seek caves and mountain tops, or some mysterious powers. Some have characterised it as a ‘pig-trough philosophy.’ Is it a wonder then that so few of the Indian journals of reputation take any serious notice of the work of the Philosophical Congresses and Conferences or lectures, though there are scores of such journals publishing accounts of the theological and sectarian transactions or mystic achievements, in which the editors are personally interested?

This, however, does not mean that Religion, Theology, Scholasticism, Mysticism and Speculation, whether in India or elsewhere, are devoid of value. These do give to the great majority of mankind the highest satisfaction or peace of mind. They are a natural and indispensable necessity for most men. What we, however, seek here is the meaning and implication of the term ‘philosophy’ as understood, at the present time, by the most thoughtful minds in Europe and America. And the first thing sought by a philosopher is ‘clarification’. "To philosophise is to seek clear notions," as Plato held. For, it used to be, and is still seriously said, that when A talks to B, and B does not understand A and A himself does not understand what he says, then A is talking philosophy. Or, as Aldous Huxley puts it, "philosophical arguments are mostly angry shoutings at one another by two who use the same words but mean different things." A modern language critic, Mr. Chase, writes: "Carpenters, masons and engineers who give no thought to their tools and instruments are not likely to erect very durable structures….Yet few of us look to our tools. We sometimes study synonyms, derivations, rhythm, style, but we rarely explore the nature of words themselves." And Herbert Spencer, the modern philosopher, rightly says that we ought first to get at the significance of words: "By comparing meanings in different connections and observing what they have in common we learn the essential meaning of a word." Let me therefore quote some leading authorities of Western countries.

1. The Century Dictionary (1888) defines philosophy thus: "The organised sum of Science; the science of which all others (sciences) are branches."

2. "All philosophers of any importance now fully recognize their dependence on Science."–J. Moore

3. "Philosophy is the attempt by use of ‘Scientific Methods’ to understand the world in which we live."–G. T. Patrick.

4. "The day is gone by when Metaphysical Systems can be constructed independently of the physical sciences. So intimate is the relation between Science and Philosophy that some knowledge of the special sciences such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Psychology is indispensable to the student of philosophy. Ready-made systems without due regard to the results of observation and experiment are held in less and less respect."–Ditto.

5. "Philosophy is like Science in seeking that which is certain, exact and well organised. They have the same spirit and the same purpose–the honest and laborious search for truth."–Ditto.

6. "No progress in philosophy can be made if we commit ourselves in advance to some fond theory. In daily life when some problem suddenly presents itself we are apt to fall upon our habits or customs in deciding it. Most of us have some readymade ‘system’, some favourite collection of ideas, which we have gotten from tradition or religion or social inheritance or from political party or even church, or perhaps some book which has impressed us deeply or from some new movement in poetry or fiction, or even possibly from an impressive picture on the screen, and solve the troublesome problem off-hand by reference to this system. And it is very probable that in our solution of the question we shall be strongly influenced by our personal feelings, or wishes and desires. Some exceptional complex will decide the question for us. But every problem, whether in philosophy or in science, must be approached in the spirit of genuine scientific interest, whose motive is a keen desire to know, a real scientific curiosity."–Ditto

7. "Philosophy is an unusually persistent effort to think clearly....weighing carefully and testing our conclusions....To do this is to extend the methods of science into the fields of human relations and human problems. Our social, economic, moral, philosophical and religious problems must now receive more of the attention of science, and the tremendous intellectual power exhibited in scientific thought and research must be turned more into these directions."–Adapted from Prof. James.

8. "The method of philosophy is to see life steadily with neither prejudice, nor bias nor half knowledge. Now philosophy becomes the interpretation of life."–G. T. Patrick.

9. "Philosophy is the interpretation of knowledge through the synthesis of all the sciences."–Durant Drake.

10. "Philosophy is the survey of all the Sciences with the special object of their harmony and of their completion. It brings to this task not only the evidence of the separate sciences but also its own appeal to concrete experience."–A. N. Whitehead.

11. "The results of science are both the starting point and the crucial test of the validity of its (philosophy’s) speculations....Philosophy must be scientific in the sense that it cannot but accept the proved results of science….Science aids and even controls philosophy, for, first of all, it starts philosophy on the right road to truth and it calls to this road whenever she strays into the by-paths of error and falsehood and, what is worse, into the blind alleys which lead nowhere."–James H. Ryan.

12. "It (the philosophical problem) is inseparably connected with the work of science and the estimate that is to be put upon its results."–R. B. Perry.

13. "In philosophy we take the propositions we make in science and everyday life, and try to exhibit them in a logical system."–E. P. Ramsay.

14. "Whatever is not compatible with scientific facts must be eliminated in any sincere philosophising. This fact confers upon scientific facts an incalculably important office in philosophy….Only what has been scientifically verifiable supplies the entire content of philosophy."–John Dewey.

15. "Philosophy is not the same as metaphysics. In recent years this humanistic aspect of philosophy, this attempt to interpret life (as it is) and to see things in the large has been emphasised more than the other metaphysical problems such as the nature of Reality, of God, etc."–Patrick.

16. "The object of philosophy is to take over the results of the various sciences, to add to them the results of the various religions and ethical experiences of mankind and then to reflect upon the whole."–C. D. Broad.

17. "Philosophy is entirely dependent on the sciences."–Jared Moore.

18. "The work of the philosophy of Nature and Mind only begins where that of experimental science leaves off."–A. E. Taylor.

19. "Philosophy has never flourished except in alliance with the sciences, and also never flourished when it was prepared to plod humbly after them."–John Laird.

20. "Philosophy has to take account of the general results of the investigations of all the sciences that are concerned with the most fundamental issues and on the basis of these results, it is its special task to endeavour to construct a general theory of the universe, and especially of the place of human life in it....Philosophy is generally understood to mean certain kinds of more or less completely systematized knowledge of the sciences."–J. S. Mackenzie.

21. "Philosophy frankly accepts the conclusions of science as its starting point."–Viscount Samuel.

22. "Modern philosophy must take account of all the far-reaching results of scientific enquiry…Philosophy has, of course, no right to call the tune which it wishes science to play, but its task is to correlate the conclusions of science, with those which may be reached in the course of practical, ethical, aesthetic or religious experience."–J. A. Sullivan.

23. "The various sciences supply the partial pictures of the world, pictures taken from different points of view. It is for Metaphysics (philosophy) to combine these pictures, not as one makes a composite photograph by placing one print on the top of another but rather as one combines twoviews in the stereoscope. It reaches this or should reach this, not in an a priori fashion, but by the taking into account of the raw material which the sciences furnish."–J. A. Thomson. (Here metaphysics is used as the equivalent of philosophy.)

24. "One of the most interesting features of contemporary philosophy is the renewed co-operation between men of science and philosophers."–A. Wolfe.

25. "There is no more fatal enemy (to philosophy) than theories which are not also facts(ascertained)."–Bradley.

26. "That the philosopher can somehow spin his philosophy out of what he finds inside himself, that he has some internal course of information in virtue of which he can decide what the universe must be, without needing the trouble to look at it, is a belief that dies hard."–Ritchie.

27. "Modern science is its (Modern Philosophy’s) starting point and pre-condition....Whatever is not in accord with this thought lies outside the sphere of philosophy."–Paulsen.

28. "Philosophy is nothing more than the scientific knowledge of reality as distinguished from or opposed to the mythico-religious notion (poetic fancy) of the universe."–Ditto.

29. "The thorough study of the sciences is the road to this goal (Philosophy)."–Ditto.

30. "Philosophy cannot be separated from the sciences....We get philosophy by combining all the results of the sciences for the purpose of answering the question as to the nature of reality."–Ditto.

31. "Philosophy is the comprehensive sum-total of all true knowledge. The sciences do not exist outside and by the side of it; they are parts of it."–Ditto.

32. Kant has the merit of having procured a secure place for philosophy among the sciences."–Ditto.

33. If science remains in isolation, that is, if there is no serious philosophy, obscurantism together with specialism will reign supreme."–Ditto.

34. "Two men are usually placed at the head of modern philosophy, as the originators or the first representatives of the two great ‘modern schools of thought, the Englishman Francis Bacon and the Frenchman Rene Descartes….In both schools the conception of the relation of philosophy to the sciences remains the same. Bacon’s aim is to include all scientific knowledge under philosophy."–Ditto.

35. "Science is partially unified knowledge; philosophy is completely unified knowledge."–Ditto.

36. "Natural science everywhere constitutes the principal part of philosophy;nay, for some of its forms the real essence of philosophy."–Ditto.

37. "Philosophy is no science at all, it was said. In fact it is not to be taken seriously at all. It is the sophistical practice of speaking of all things in general with a certain air of sense and reason. Its professors are jugglers who produce all sorts of obscure and profound oracles by the promiscuous use of general concepts, to the amazement of a lot of idlers."–Ditto.

38. "We reject two errors….the error that philosophy can exist without science and the error that science can exist without philosophy."–Ditto.

39. "All roads in science lead to philosophy, only not the road through the air."–Ditto.

40. "A purus putus metaphysicus (a pure metaphysician) is a chimera or an empty babbler. The sciences alone, natural and mental sciences, furnish the material by means of which to judge of existence in general and the world as a whole."–Ditto.

41. "Philosophy is the general science, whose business is to unite the general truths furnished by the particular sciences into a consistent system."–Wundt. (Fechner, Lotze, and Lange hold more or less the same view.)

42. "Fruitless endeavours were made to spin philosophical systems out of a few general concepts–subject and object, nature and mind, being and becoming. We may find remnants of it in the opinion which is occasionally advanced that a special study of philosophy is possible without a study of the sciences....It cannot fail to be barren and empty unless it is supplemented by scientific studies in other fields."–Ditto.

REGARDING LIVING PHILOSOPHY:

43. "It is the very essence of philosophy to examine thoroughly what lies at hand and around us."–Windleband.

44. "If by philosophy we mean not systems of metaphysics or futile discussions about the Absolute, but rather the search for wisdom, the appraisement of values and the careful logical analysis of concepts, it seems to be just what the world needs now."–Patrick.

45. "Philosophy at the University has become a museum specialty, a display of lifeless systems and concepts."–Ginsberg.

46. "Academic philosophy like academic Art is nearly always dead. It consists of either scholarly acquaintance with the philosophy of other people or of argument about traditional problems for the sake of argument full of very acute and learned subtlety of thought... But it has no vital significance. Its (philosophy’s) problems are the living problems of the world in which it is born....The eternal questions (of philosophy) wear a different face in different generations."–MacMurray.

47. "Only that which is scientifically verifiable supplies the entire content of philosophy."–Robinson.

REGARDING UNIVERSAL CHARACTERISTICS:

48. "The aim of philosophy is to see life as a whole." (Plato onwards to Jeans.)

49. "Philosophy like science knows no frontiers and no national boundaries."–Aaron.

50. "Consciously or unconsciously every man frames for himself a theory of the relation of the individual to the universe and on his attitude to that question his whole life and conduct, public and private, depend."–E. Wallace and others.

51. "Philosophy takes all knowledge for its province."–Bacon.

52. "The philosopher....should not be a respector of persons but of things. Truth should be his primary object."–Faraday.

53. To sum up in the words of Thilly: "Modern philosophy breathes the spirit of modern times....It makes human reason thee highest authority….It is naturalistic in that it seeks to explain inner and outer nature without supernatural presuppositions. It is, therefore, scientific, keeping in touch with the new sciences, particularly with the sciences of external nature....Truth is not something to be handed down by authority....but something to be achieved by free and impartial enquiry. And the gaze is turned from the contemplation of supernatural things to the examination of natural things. What characterises this period is an intense interest in natural things, in a lively yearning for civilization and progress."

Hundreds of similar references could be cited to prove that ‘philosophy,’ as now understood by those that speak in their homes the language in which in one form or another the word appears, is impossible without a good knowledge of science. Philosophy without science is "empty babbling." Its "professors are ‘jugglers’ with words, who utter them to the amazement of a lot of others."

Those that do not care for science seek satisfaction in having recourse to "spinning yarns" from within their mind, and that without any bearing on actual life in general.

"Be but contemptuous of reason and science, the highest gifts of man, and you have given yourself over to Satan and must perish."–Goethe.

Now turn we to India. Certainly, there are hundreds, nay, thousands of eminent Pundits, professors, scholars and ‘yogis’ with attainments of the highest order, which are displayed in expounding and defending the doctrines of various religions, theologies, scholasticisms, mystic ecstasies, intuitions and speculations, all of which undoubtedly furnish valuable material for philosophy. It isthe business of philosophy to evaluate these and everything else in life. Many such authorities have produced admirable works on metaphysics also. Nay, they have also shown that India has something to teach others in some of these subjects. But none of these subjects is considered at the present time to be the same as philosophy. ForPhilosophy comprehends all these and much more, such as the sciences, in their up-to-date aspects.

Which Indian authority has attempted to survey "the whole of life, or of knowledge," including its bearing on ‘modern’ natural sciences, politics, ethics, psychology, or social science? Which school of Pundits possesses a sound knowledge of up-to-date physical and natural science so as to base its or their philosophy on it? Which school applies the ‘scientific method’ for verifying its conclusions, while every writer believes or loudly proclaims, "I KNOW, I KNOW," without proving whether what he knows is‘verified’ knowledge or truth? And which school of thought–not religion or speculation–can be said to be ‘living’? In a word, is there, at present, a single school of thought inall India that could be called philosophy in the modern sense of the term? No wonder then it is being thrown out by so many Colleges and Examination Boards as being of little value in life. Let itnot be thought that I presume that no philosophic thinker in India at present is acquainted with Science.

As has been so often remarked by critics, the philosophers in India are expert ‘spinners of yarns’ from within their own mind about the Absolute, God, and Life after Death, without a study of this world. Such philosophy has only driven the millions of India, and that for thousands of years, to seek the shelter callousness, and led them to the worship of the idols of indifference to this world in which all of us live, and to the pleasures of dreaming of life in a variety of other worlds–a fact often pointed out to me during my tours in the West by thoughtful critics there.

This, it will be remembered, is the view, not merely of outside, albeit impartial, critics, but also of one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, of India’s ancient accredited and non- sectarian philosophers.

Now, shall we, in India, who are so proud of our great and living religions, living theologies and very live scholasticisms and speculations, above all our more live intuitions and yogic mysticisms, nay even of some of our old sciences, we whose country had earned a reputation as a land of philosophies in the past but which now is only a museum of dead ‘philosophies,’ shall we not make any effort to rise to the level of philosophy in the modern sense?

Or, shall we subscribe to the latest estimate made in the London Times Literary Supplement, that we know only religion? Or, shall we seek satisfaction in calling any ‘speculation’ philosophy? Shall we continue to hold that mysticism (yoga) is philosophy, saying that it is verifiable in so far as it is actually illumining the hearts of the yogis? Or, shall we give our-selves away to ‘Satan,’ as Goethe says?

Lastly, if philosophy in India had at any time risen to this ‘modern’ scientific level, so as to promote the progress of humanity at large, is it not India’s duty to regain her lost status and be abreast of general human progress, and say to the world that India also does possess ‘philosophy’ as such, nay, a ‘living’ philosophy–a philosophy that knows no racial, national, or geographical boundaries?