An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics [1st ed.] 978-981-13-7502-6;978-981-13-7503-3

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xv
Introduction: Justification of Morality (P. K. Mohapatra)....Pages 1-7
Ethics, Applied Ethics and Indian Theories of Morals (P. K. Mohapatra)....Pages 9-23
Morality and Objectivity (P. K. Mohapatra)....Pages 25-41
Universalisability and Objectivity (P. K. Mohapatra)....Pages 43-48
Ethical Theorizing in Indian Philosophy (P. K. Mohapatra)....Pages 49-63
Dharma as Moral Duty (P. K. Mohapatra)....Pages 65-74
Karma as a Theory of Retributive Morality (P. K. Mohapatra)....Pages 75-82
Niskama Karma: A Critical Assessment (P. K. Mohapatra)....Pages 83-92
Purusarthas: A General Theory of Values (P. K. Mohapatra)....Pages 93-105
Moksa and Morality (P. K. Mohapatra)....Pages 107-114
Back Matter ....Pages 115-121

Citation preview

P. K. Mohapatra

An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics

An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics

P. K. Mohapatra

An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics

P. K. Mohapatra Former Professor of Philosophy, Utkal University Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

ISBN 978-981-13-7502-6    ISBN 978-981-13-7503-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7503-3 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Dedicated to Professor Rajendra Prasad In grateful appreciation of his inspiring contributions of innovative and critical thinking, which have helped in enriching philosophical analysis in contemporary India.

Preface and Acknowledgement

The purpose of ethics is to provide guidance for practical life. Buddha emphatically highlighted this in his life and teachings. Any theory that has no practical bearing on human life was of no value for him. Other Indian thinkers like Sankara (Vedanta Sutra III. ii) even insisted that ethical values must be realized before being counted as values. Indian philosophers have always believed that ethical theories are practically applicable, for these are the principles we ought to follow, and if something (some principle, theory or standard) is impossible to be followed or achieved, then one ought not to try to follow or achieve it; because ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ and therefore, conversely, ‘cannot’ means ‘ought not’. However, the fact remains that, more often than not, many of our celebrated ethical theories seem to be inapplicable or difficult to apply in actual life situations. This apparent contradiction between ethics and its application has an inevitable effect of threatening the use and even the relevance of ethics and moral principles in the lives of people. This is a general problem about ethical theories, and Indian ethical theories are no exceptions to this. But I consider Indian ethical theories to be of special significance to the problem at issue, because they have in them rich potentials for applicability as much as many of them typify inapplicable abstract theories of morals. What is needed is an enquiry into the source(s) of the problem of this apparent inapplicability of ethical theories which exposes a disturbing incompatibility between the very purpose of ethics and its practical significance. While addressing to this, the present work also aims at offering some methodological explanations for effective application of ethical theories in practical life and thus proposing a rational solution to the problem at issue. As a part of this endeavour, the present book undertakes the analysis of some prominent theories of Indian ethics, especially the theory of dharma which is a paradigm Indian moral theory meant for guiding man’s life and conducts and which also illustrates the apparently inapplicable abstract features in its various conventional aspects and interpretations. Some other Indian moral theories, like those of karma, purusarthas and moksa, are also taken up for analysis and interpretation in this light so as to be reconstructed and augmented to overcome some of their standard limitations.

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But prior to that, the project aims at analysing ethical theories in general and evincing their rational features insofar as their spirits and purposes are concerned. To this purpose, analysis and interpretation is done of the supposed objectivity and universalisability required as preconditions of ethical theories: it is enquired if these conditions do indeed require ethical theories to be applied unconditionally, as it generally seems to have been assumed by conventional moralists. A methodological explanation has been essayed for what I call rational morality as I suspect that ethical theories become apparently vulnerable – and this is true of several important Indian theories – because of our proneness for abstraction and absolutism and for, what may be called, generalism. This also seems to be the result of what I call ‘literalism’, the tendency for taking the theories in their literal sense, even at the expense of their very spirit and purpose. This proneness and tendency lead to the theories being misconstrued; they also make their use and applicability being seriously questioned. To substantiate the above hypothesis regarding the sources of the problem, a method of philosophizing is adopted in this work which is both analytic and reconstructive. The analysis of the concept of ethics (and of the family concepts like ethical, moral, and morality, etc.) has inevitably proceeded to enquire into the meaning as well as the purpose of ethics and ethical theories far beyond the barriers of etymology and definitions, for it is demonstrated that taking the ethical theories in their literal sense often conflicts with their applicability. And to cope with this, some amount of rethinking about and reconstruction of the nature and purpose of these theories have become necessary. For example, the requirement of ethical theories being objective and ethical standards being absolute and inviolable has been reinterpreted, because application of general theories and laws to particular cases is always mediated by suitable interpretations, either in a particular case or in general laws or both. This has been demonstrated with the help of moral laws. Interpretations and reconstructions have been done in keeping with the spirit of such principles and the demand of situations; in fact, a reasoned balance between these two has been pleaded as the key to applied ethics and to a rational interpretation and understanding of ethics and morality. Blind literal adherence to ethical theories, it has been argued and demonstrated, would lead to a theory being inapplicable or, if applied, to consequences that may be morally disastrous. The appropriateness of a moral value cannot be thought apart from social realities. Aristotle (Ethics) and Kant (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals) held that it would be problematic if fixed models of virtues and values were held as constant and invariant in a changing world like ours. Strange as it may appear, the imputed properties of a supposed independent world are as much subject to historized career of human society as are the presumptions of moral invariance. And ethics is meant to work within the ambits of society and social reality and aims at promoting values common and conducive to effective and desirable social life. Moral values, for example, like truth telling for example, need to be pursued accordingly. A useful lie under a demanding situation would be morally preferable to a dangerous revelation of truth. Several Indian scriptures have demonstrated this trait of ethics and morality. The present work therefore pleads that, depending on the

Preface and Acknowledgement

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gravity of the situation, a conventional moral theory may need to be toned down, even violated, to prevent an otherwise disastrous consequence. But this has to be done strictly in keeping with the spirit of ethics and ethical principles, which is to promote the good life. A violation in this perspective, pleads this work, would be justified violation in the interest of ethics and morality. There are eminent scriptural supports for such justified violations: apad dharma has been prescribed to cope with dharma sankat, and apriyam satyam has been proscribed to prevent morally disastrous consequences. The present work therefore argues to the effect that it is not always rational to follow the dictates of conventional morality nor is it always irrational to act to the contrary. Bhishma’s advice to Yudhishtira that not all the do’s are ethical and not all dont’s are unethical is virtually the injunction not to insist on the literal sense of our supposedly objective moral maxims. Our analysis and interpretation of these concepts has revealed that moral values are objective but defeasible: they instantiate those important kinds of principles and relations which hold necessarily but are defeasible in overriding situations, where another competing value deserves preference in the interest of morality. These justified exceptions, however, do not point to ethical relativism and would never turn the particular defeated virtue into a vice; for despite such exceptions, the values and virtues in question continue to be objective and normally inviolable. All this help showing that my argument from defeasibility and justified violation, can bridge the gap between ethics and its application. Our proneness for absolutism and generalism, besides creating the problem of application, has had the effect of obscuring correct understanding of some Indian theories of morals and making them appear logically flawed. I have taken the doctrine of karma as an example. This doctrine and its operation bring to focus the pre-eminently moral nature of Indian value system. Its supposed forte is the principle of retributive justice – a principle of allocating to each his/her own desert. But insistence on absolute inexorability of the law of karma makes it binding that a person must experience the result of all his actions – if not in this life then certainly in a later life or later lives. Thereby, the doctrine is made logically bound up with the theory of (belief in) rebirth, which I expose to be illogical by arguing that, in the absence of physical continuity between the dead person and the one allegedly reborn, there would be no guarantee that the two persons are the same and the latter person will reap as he had sowed. It has, however, been argued in this work that one need not reap the consequences of all one’s actions, though it is morally desirable that one ought to; we further argue that the latter does not imply the former. This much of gap between ‘ought’ and ‘is’ is surely admissible, and it is not detrimental to the oughtness of values, for if ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, then the possibility that one can or may reap the results of one’s actions in this life should be enough incentive for one’s being moral. The craving for absolutism, we argue, not only unduly necessitates the belief in the otherwise illogical theory of rebirth and after-life, but it also tells upon retributivism that is so much crucial to the karma doctrine. If, to make the law unfailingly operational (another fallout of absolutism), God is brought in as the all-powerful dispenser of justice, that would affect the all important moral nature of the law of karma, since the person then would cease to be fully responsible for his

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actions as, ex hypothesi, God would be the all-controlling agent and the virtual cause of the doings of men. It is for this reason, we point out, that not only the heterodox schools, like Buddhism and Jainism, but also some orthodox ones, like Samkhya and Mimamsa, have disallowed the role of God in the operation of the law of karma. Like all ethical theories, the law of karma is not absolutely inviolable and its not being so, we argue, would not affect its essentially moral nature as a theory of retributive morality. Drawing support from scriptural sources again, it has been shown that the law of karma is not inviolable and karma phala is avoidable. There are scriptural evidences that strong enough endeavour (purusakara) can overwhelm the impact of karma and subsequent virtuous conducts and reciting the vedas can efface the adverse effects of one’s prarabdha and prevent one’s sanchitas from being fructified. Freed thus from its absolutistic preconceptions, the karma doctrine would more relevantly apply to and provide guidance for human motivations and actions equally effectively, as has been argued herein. Analysis and interpretation of niskama karma has also been done in similar vein. In addition to the proneness for absolutism, there has also been a tendency in classical Indian thinking to mix up ethics with metaphysics and theology, which has had the effect not only of undermining the importance of ethics in Indian philosophy but also of leading to a general misconception among some western writers that there was no ethics and no ethical theory in Indian philosophy; even some recognized Indian scholars (e.g. P.S. Sivaswamy Iyer) are found to have been constrained to concede(?) that scientific study of ethics has received very little attention in India. The present book therefore tries to present – by way of analysis and interpretation – Indian ethical theories as ethical theories with adequate potentials for application to life. This has been substantiated by highlighting the Indian thinkers’ characteristic respect for the down-to-earth aspect of our ethical concerns, which is why Indian ethicists prefer to theorize in contextual, particularistic manner. It had been shown that they indeed theorized about practice, which is so much vital for moral reasoning. The theory for them is an abstraction from practices. This way of ethical theorizing, as has been argued herein, is as good as and on a par with theorizing purportedly to raise general theories of moral values, obligations, etc. that was the only model of western ethical theorizing. This makes the point – contrary to what several western thinkers have opined – that Indian ethicists did in fact theorize, albeit in a significantly different manner. With a view to uncover the typically ethical character of Indian theories of morals, this book has undertaken comprehensive analysis and reconstruction, wherever necessary, of the major theories of morals, e.g. dharma, karma and purusarthas. While artha, kama and dharma are clearly shown to be social and hence moral values, moksa, despite it being pre-eminently a spiritual and metaphysical value, has been shown nevertheless as the highest moral value involving, as it inevitably does, impeccable moral life as an essential prerequisite. Applicability and world-­ orientedness of all these theories have been demonstrated and complemented by analysing and interpreting the general nature of ethics and ethical theories as ­objective but defeasible so as to cope with the demanding situations of ethical decision-making.

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Besides conceptual clarification about the nature and spirit of ethics, the result of this study will, I hope, have healing effects on contemporary social and moral life, riddled as it is with crisis of values and declining moral sensibility. The gap between ethics and its application to actual life situations will not be felt as a real problem, and effective application of moral principles will help in coping with the current concern over declining values in the society. Instead of the usual stereotyped picture of ethics, it will, hopefully, provide scope for an open-ended, objective and, what I would like to call, secular approach to the moral issues and for effective application of ethics to solve moral problems that are encountered in practical and professional life. What is in fact more important, it will present a fresh approach to Indian ethics and help dispel misconceptions among several western writers that there was no ethical theorizing in India and even that there was no ethics in Indian philosophy. In bringing out my thoughts in the above form, I am indebted to many scholars and colleagues across disciplines in the IITs of Mumbai and Kanpur, in the universities of Calcutta and Hyderabad and in ICPR Academic Centre at Lucknow, where I had the opportunity of presenting my ideas in the form of lectures and was immensely benefited from the discussions and feedbacks. I am also indebted to several scholars of repute whose exceptionally original ideas have been the major sources of my contention and critical analysis presented herein. All these have been duly acknowledged in the form of notes and references. Above all, I express my gratitude to the ICPR for considering me fit for offering the National Fellowship under which this study has been prepared. Without this patronage, the present book, An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics, would not be seeing the light of the day; I thank the Chairman and the Member-Secretary for all this. Springer Nature has been graceful enough in taking up the publication of this book. The author humbly records his  sincere gratitudes to them. It has been wonderful interacting with the  whole production  team that consists of impressively decent and helpful ladies. I am thankful and grateful to all of them for their help and guidance. Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India  P. K. Mohapatra

Contents

1 Introduction: Justification of Morality��������������������������������������������������    1 Rationality and Moral Personhood����������������������������������������������������������     2 Spirituality and Moral Personhood����������������������������������������������������������     4 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������     7 2 Ethics, Applied Ethics and Indian Theories of Morals������������������������    9 Absolute Standards Account for Inapplicability��������������������������������������    14 Logical Consistency and Applicability����������������������������������������������������    16 Dharmas, Conflicts and Defeasibility������������������������������������������������������    17 Critique of Swadharma as Swabhavaja����������������������������������������������������    20 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    23 3 Morality and Objectivity������������������������������������������������������������������������   25 Objectivity and Moral Scepticism�����������������������������������������������������������    25 Moral Realism and Objectivity����������������������������������������������������������������    27 Understanding Mackie ����������������������������������������������������������������������������    28 Objectivity and Independence������������������������������������������������������������������    31 Objective Tolerance: The Secondary Quality Model of Value Awareness����������������������������������������������������������    33 Craving for Absolute Objectivity: Sources and Solution������������������������    34 Applicability and Objectivity������������������������������������������������������������������    38 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    40 4 Universalisability and Objectivity����������������������������������������������������������   43 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    48 5 Ethical Theorizing in Indian Philosophy ����������������������������������������������   49 On Indian Philosophy Being Practical����������������������������������������������������    50 Theorizing About Practice ����������������������������������������������������������������������    53 Ethics Presupposes a Real World������������������������������������������������������������    55 ‘No-Ethics’ Charge Refuted��������������������������������������������������������������������    57 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    63

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6 Dharma as Moral Duty����������������������������������������������������������������������������   65 Dharma, Its Varieties and the Internal Contradictions ����������������������������    69 Moral Duty: Kant and the Gita����������������������������������������������������������������    70 Dharma as the Sustainer��������������������������������������������������������������������������    72 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    74 7 Karma as a Theory of Retributive Morality������������������������������������������   75 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    82 8 Niskama Karma: A Critical Assessment������������������������������������������������   83 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    92 9 Purusarthas: A General Theory of Values ��������������������������������������������   93 What It Means������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    93 From Actuality to Normativity����������������������������������������������������������������    95 Synthetic Nature of the Purusarthas��������������������������������������������������������    98 On the Typology of the Purusarthas��������������������������������������������������������   100 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   105 10 Moksa and Morality��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  107 Morality as Precondition of Moksa����������������������������������������������������������   110 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   114 Bibliography ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  115 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  119

About the Author

P. K. Mohapatra  Former Professor of Philosophy at Utkal University, was the National Fellow of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research during October 2013 to September 2015. Earlier, he has been an Emeritus Fellow of the University Grants Commission and also a Senior Fellow of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research. Professor Mohapatra obtained the Degree of Ph.D. from the University of Keele, England, where he worked as a Commonwealth Scholar during 1974 to 1977. He was a Fulbright Visiting Professor in the United States in 1989. During this visit, he lectured in the universities of Western Michigan, Philadelphia (Temple University), Wittenberg and Iowa. Later on, he was Visiting Professor in Brock University, Ontario, Canada, in 1993 and in 1995 and also in Ohio State University, USA, in 1999. Besides a number of publications in reputed journals of philosophy, Professor Mohapatra has authored 5 other books and edited 12 books published under the ‘Utkal Studies in Philosophy’ series of publications, of which he was the General Editor from 1996 to 2002. A specialist in Philosophy of Mind and Practical Ethics, Professor Mohapatra is passionately concerned over promotion of human values in the society.

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Chapter 1

Introduction: Justification of Morality

As a forerunner to a treatise on Indian ethics, two questions that inevitably call for deliberation are why need we be moral? and why and how ethics can be applied in life? The second question which is asked within ethics and presupposes the ethical point of view may be answered by appealing to the nature and spirit of ethics. If ethics is meant to provide guidance for successful practical life, then it must be possible to apply the ethical principles in actual life situations. ‘Ought’ implies ‘can’, which means ‘cannot’ means ‘ought not’. Ethical theories are the ones we ought to follow, and therefore, it must be possible for us to follow them in practical life; for no one can be excepted to follow a rule or principle if it is not possible for anyone to follow it. Application of ethics is therefore inevitable. How ethical theories are to be applied will be dealt with in details in the next chapter, which deals with the nature of ethics and its applications. In the present chapter, I will focus on the more crucial question, the first one mentioned above, the question ‘why should one be moral?’ As distinctively different from the (above-mentioned) second question, this one is a question about ethics, thus belonging to a different level altogether. At this level, we question the need, if at all, for the ethical point of view; we ask for justification of ethics, the rationale of being moral. This question is often considered perplexing; because in a very important sense, it is a question about something that is normally presupposed. One reason why ethics and the ethical point of view is normally presupposed is that men by nature and inclination are moral beings. Man being moral can be said to follow jointly from his nature as a rational being as well as a spiritual being. As a first step towards showing this, I shall try to show that to be moral and to tend to act morally is as much natural for men as it is for them to be rational. (I shall use ‘men’ to mean the same thing as ‘persons’, very much in the sense in which Aristotle defined man as a rational animal). For unless otherwise constrained, every man has the natural propensity to act morally and do things which are considered morally good. This theory of moral personhood is based on the fact that morality supervenes on personhood in as much as the reality of value is supervening on the reality of © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 P. K. Mohapatra, An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7503-3_1

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c­onsciousness. This is because consciousness inevitably has two prominent aspects – rationality and spirituality – which virtually define personhood. Because of rationality, man is capable of reason and reflection, and human consciousness necessarily contains what may be called reciprocal personal stance that is adopted by one person towards others who, in turn, are capable of reciprocating this stance. This is implied when Strawson famously said that to be a person is to treat others, who are not oneself but are like oneself as persons (Strawson 1962): ‘It is a necessary condition of one’s ascribing states of consciousness, experiences, to oneself’, said Strawson, ‘…that one should also ascribe them, or be prepared to ascribe them, to others, who are not oneself’ (Strawson 1962, p. 99). Rationality makes us recognize not only the distinction between oneself and others but also their inevitable interrelations; it accounts for this reciprocal personal stance that necessarily characterizes us, persons. And because of spirituality, the second important aspect of human consciousness, we the persons are capable of reflective self-transcendence, the capacity to go beyond one’s own interests and recognize value in others. Moral personhood is thus a necessary outcome of the two aspects of human consciousness – rationality and spirituality. It is because of this that acting morally, or being moral, is congenial to human nature and the few occasions when one refrains from morality or acts in ways contrary to moral expectations, one finds that alien to one’s nature and inclinations. This is evident from the familiar fact that normal human mind is prone to perform actions that are considered good and virtuous and to get along well with things and systems of thought that are right rather than wrong or condemnable. Human mind has a ‘natural partiality for truth’, says an ancient Buddhist verse, ‘…which, we all believe, will ultimately triumph over error and ignorance’. As a matter of fact, a man is not only a rational being capable of knowing and appreciating moral values, but given his freedom without constraint of any sort, he would identify with what is morally valuable and alienate from what is immoral and morally proscribed.

Rationality and Moral Personhood Now what is involved in man being rational, and how does it bear upon morality and moral personhood? Rationality is so much an essential characterization of man, indeed a defining feature of man, that anyone trying to question this by asking a question like ‘why should I be rational?’ would be asking a very improper question, because in trying to answer this question, he would be giving reasons for his being (or even not being) rational. That means we would be presupposing rationality in attempting to justify our being rational. The resulting justifications would therefore be inevitably circular, and so it would be pointless to ask for justification for man to be rational. What this shows is ‘not that rationality lacks justification but that it needs no justification because it cannot intelligibly be questioned unless it is already presupposed’ (Singer 2011). All this goes to vindicate the definition of man as a rational being. The fact that many people are irrational or sometimes behave

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irrationally is irrelevant to this definition. For what is meant here is that men are capable of rationality, that is, capable of being fully rational, though at times, they may not be acting rationally because of factors alien to their human nature. To be rational, very much like to know, is a capacity concept (Courtesy: Gilbert Ryle), and hence, a rational being need not always exercise the faculty of reasons but can do so on appropriate occasions. The fact that some of us behave irrationally some of the times, or even most of the times, should be unworrying. To such deviant pointers, eminently raised by Bertrand Russell, Antony Flew had replied by saying that ‘… to be rational in the sense of [being] capable of rationality, is not merely not inconsistent with, but is a precondition of, being irrational…’, very much in the same way as ‘only a moral being, a being capable of morality and immorality, can be truly said to be actually immoral’ (Flew 1978). [emphasis added]. We would not say of a systematically trained chimpanzee, or of a powerfully programed robot endowed with what now is fashionably described as artificial intelligence, that it is behaving irrationally, for it is in principle incapable of behaving rationally or irrationally in the strict sense of the terms. Just as only the people with the sense of logic can be properly said to be illogical and be reprimanded or criticized for being so, i.e. for not being logical of which they are capable, so also only rational beings with a sense of discrimination between what is rational and what is not can be said to behave irrationally and be held accountable for that. Actions of beasts, babblers and insane adults, though may happen to be good or bad, useful or harmful, can never be termed as rational or irrational – much less as moral or immoral, since moral responsibility cannot be ascribed to them. Freedom and morality are semantically inalienable, and in the obvious lack of freedom in these cases, attribution of moral responsibility will be gratuitous. Thus, rationality being a necessary presupposition of human consciousness, reasoning is a distinctively human activity. By virtue of rationality, we are capable of judging what is good and what is right and what is bad and what is wrong. Further, our actions that are governed by reason are responses to our desires, and, as Aristotle made us aware, one can respond too much or too little to one’s desires. He therefore gave us the doctrine of the golden mean, as per which the correct response would lie somewhere between the two extremes. This is a meta-­ ethical doctrine which holds that to every virtue, there are (can be) two vices, two extreme responses to one’s desires, and that reason helps in locating the virtue by steering clear between the two. The distinction between the two extreme responses, on the one hand, and the right response, on the other, is the distinction between the desired and the desirable, between what is called the preya and the shreya in Indian ethics. The desirable is what one values, or what one would value, under all normal conditions. In a moral predicament, where one passionately pursues a desire that is not desirable, the rational struggle to get over it would result in attaining an ideal consistency between what one values and what one desires, and that is the mark of moral personhood. In pursuing what one passionately desires, disregarding the fact that it is not desirable, one might appear to be free to pursue what one desires to pursue; but this would expose not only an irrational pursuit but also a puerile view of freedom, since far from being free, one would be really impeded from being the person one wants to be – one would be pursuing a desire that is hostile to what one

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values as a rational being. Thus, rationality of persons is inseparably connected with morality or moral personhood. Rather, morality is a distinctively rational affair in the sense that the moral concern is grounded on reason. This makes persons, who are constitutively rational beings, naturally moral beings, intrinsically endowed with the propensity to act morally unless otherwise constrained. We thus comeback here to what we described as ‘reciprocal personal stance’, which we claim to be constitutive of personhood as a result of the person being a rational agent. Kant is eminently noted for having demonstrated that to act rationally is to act ethically. Moral personhood is thus the direct offshoot of the person’s rationality.

Spirituality and Moral Personhood Let us now consider the impact of spirituality on the making of moral personhood. If it is because of rationality that we adopt the reciprocal personal stance and treat others as persons as we ourselves are, it is the faculty of spirituality that endows us, persons, with the distinctive capacity of reflective self-transcendence, the capacity to rise above our self-interest and egocentricity. Unfailing moral personhood, which requires freedom from egocentricity, depends upon spiritual sustenance. Admittedly, the basic function of reason is to discern oneself from others and to judge egoism as ethically inferior to altruism. But merely judging that the latter is good and valuable is not necessarily, or even invariably, connected with one’s actually being motivated to realize this good. Merely having the valuational system, which no doubt is the first important aspect of moral personhood, is not enough to have one’s motivational system oriented accordingly. One has to identify with the value judgment in order to be so motivated; the identification has to be typically relevant to moral motivation. And such morally relevant sort of identification is possible only when it is characterized by spirituality. For in identifying with a value judgment, the agent is in spiritual accord with the value judgment. Moral motivation is possible through spiritual endeavours. What I want to drive home is the point that reason, unaided by spiritual endeavour, does not eo ipso facilitate morality or lead to moral action. In order to realize unfailing moral personhood, an agent must buttress his evaluation system with a distinctively spiritual urge for self-excelling. His motivational system must add to itself this unique spiritual urge for self-excelling that is not intrinsic to his evaluation system. More importantly, this spiritual urge is not only extrinsic to the agent’s evaluative system; it is extrinsic to rationality itself (see Baruah 2000). For the attainment of unfailing moral personhood, rationality must be complimented by spirituality, both of which are distinct but essential aspects of personal consciousness. If we may put it this way, rationality, insofar as it promotes the evaluation system in us, is a necessary condition of moral personhood, whereas spirituality, insofar as it makes us identify with the value judgment or the moral point of view and orients the motivational system in us after that (judgment of value), is the sufficient condition; for the latter, in the company of the rational faculty, goes on to

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complete the making of unfailing moral personhood. As discussed above, while rationality makes us distinguish between the preya and the shreya, aptly envisioned in Indian ethics, spirituality makes us alienate from the former and identify with the latter. Reflective self-appraisal involves alienating or disvaluing something of our common nature that is ‘person contingent’; such person- contingent features are some specific needs and desires, moods and manners, which form the first-order features of ordinary life. The first-order desires that persons have are largely part of their human nature, which constitute the basic nature of a person. But humans would not be persons if they were to be constituted of and confined to only the basic features with which the moral being in them refuses to identify. For persons are distinguished from other beings by virtue of the fact that they are capable of having higher-order intuitions and attitudes towards their first-order desires from a valuational point of view. This distinctive feature which tells persons from mere human beings is what Harry  Frankfurt calls ‘second-order desires’ (Frankfurt 1987). Second-order desires mark the distinguishing character of persons as reflective self-­ evaluators, and it is in their ability for reflective self-evaluation that the real freedom of persons lies. For freedom consists not in acting upon our basic desires but in being able to translate our higher-order desires into actual motivations for actions. ‘The free agent has the capacity to translate his values into action’, says Gary Watson, ‘his actions flow from his evaluative system’ (Watson 1982). Compulsive behaviours, like that of a kleptomaniac or of someone under coercion or under the spell of hypnosis, are unfree, being responses to desires that claim fulfilment independently of the agent’s evaluative system. By opting for reflective self-appraisal, the moral person exercises his freedom and breaks away from his basic desires and inclinations, which he finds alien to his nature, and identifies with the other desires and inclinations which he values and glorifies. Because of his ability to be free and ability to identify with the value judgment and to motivate himself to live in conformity with it that the person is able to transcend the level of mere human existence. The self-transcendence requires that the person’s motivational system be controlled by his valuational system with which he identifies; his reason has to control his passion. The capacity to exercise spiritual self-transcendence, and freedom that leads to it, is because of the fact that persons are capable of having second-order desires. And it is in virtue of this that persons are normative beings. For the second-order desires are higher-order normative self-attitudes and as such are judgments upon our basic desires on the basis of valued norms. We do have such desires because of the spiritual urge for self-excelling of which we are all potentially capable. The foregoing points to the conclusion that moral personhood is the joint product of man’s rationality and spirituality. As rational beings, we discriminate between what is and what ought to be (if the former happens to be what ought not to be), we distinguish what is desired from what is desirable, and we know that altruism is preferable and worthwhile. As spiritual beings, we identify with the latter and alienate from the former. And because of this spiritual urge, we rise above self-interest and egocentricity and are motivated to act morally from the universal point of view. Both these faculties together make us not only aware of the moral but also motivate us to be moral and to act morally. Thus, moral inclination is innate to us, persons,

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who are naturally endowed with the capacity for rational behaviour and spiritual proclivities. Our intrinsic moral sense enables us to gather the acquired ability for improving moral standards, by living up to which we may march towards moral perfection. As has been said, ‘[m]uch of moral philosophy should be seen as just a continuation …..of this project of improvement that all of us are engaged in well before we have even heard of philosophy’ (Griffin 1996), much in the same way that we all think and speak in accordance with the principles of logic even without being aware of these principles. Thus, for a person, there cannot be any question about his having or not having any moral standard; it is only a matter of having this or that moral standard. We are now in a position to see that the question ‘why should I be moral’ – like ‘why should I be rational?’ – is a logically improper question that cannot be asked without risking some measure of self-inconsistency. Indeed our natural propensity to act morally is strong enough and compelling enough to make this question utterly improper. Besides, apart from the dubious reason (for rejecting this question as an improper one), sometimes adduced, that ethical principles are overridingly important (See Singer 1993), the more important reason is that this question must be rejected on similar grounds on which we reject the question ‘why should I be rational?’. For, as we have seen, this is logically improper because in asking this question, we virtually question something that is logically presupposed. However, it may further be asked, is the question ‘why should I be moral?’ as much an improper question as ‘why should I be rational?’. To be sure, being rational is part of the definition of man or person; but can it be said that being moral is also a defining feature of man? Would this question be also taken as presupposing morality that is purportedly being questioned? I am inclined to say ‘yes’ in view of our above analysis of morality being the joint product of man being rational as well as spiritual in nature. Added to that, we can also say ‘yes’ if the ‘should’ in the question is a moral ‘should’. For in that case, one would be asking for moral reasons for one’s being moral. However, as Singer points out, it is not necessary to interpret this question as a request for ethical justification of ethics. The ‘should’ here, he points out, need not be a moral ‘should’. ‘Why should I act morally?’ can be asking for reasons for one’s actions without specifying what kind of reasons is being asked for. There may be several nonethical reasons one may be asking for, e.g. self-interest, public etiquette or aesthetic consideration. And, sure enough, whether one acts morally for considerations of ethics, self-interest, etiquette, etc. would be an open question. So non-­ question beggingly, it would be a question about the ethical point of view asked from a position outside it (ibid, p. 251). However, given the conception of ethics as in some sense involving a universal point of view, the question ‘why should I act morally?’ would be asking for reasons for transcending self-interest and acting on universalizable judgments from the point of view of an ideal observer, an impartial spectator. We thus come back again to reciprocal personal stance that we claimed to be constitutive of personhood as a result of our being a rational agents. Kant, for this reason, is noted for trying to demonstrate that to act rationally is to act ethically. Thus, added to our rationality, our spirituality as an intrinsic faculty of our moral personhood leaves us with no alternative to being moral. Incidentally, this is also

References

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evident from some compelling facts about human nature like (1) that we all have benevolent and sympathetic inclinations that make us concerned about the welfare of others and (2) that we all have a natural conscience which gives rise to the feeling of guilt when doing something we know is wrong (see Singer, ibid, p. 290). Because of our rationality and spirituality respectively, awareness and acceptance of ethical standards make us live up to these standards. And on Hare’s persuasive account of ethics, one’s acceptance of ethical standards is likely to lead one to arouse similar moral feelings in others. Ethics has the primary function of promoting values that are common and conducive to the members of the society, and ethical judgments do this by commending actions performed in accordance with these values. Further, ethical judgments must be concerned with motives of (right) actions, not just the rightness of actions, pace Kantianism and virtue ethics, because this is a good indication of the tendency of an action to promote good or evil and also because it is here that praise and blame may be effective in altering the tendency of a person’s actions. It is here also that applied ethics gets a firm foothold, for praise and blame can help change a person’s moral evaluation system that is an effective means of changing his behaviour in the direction of the moral. It is in this sense that morality can be taught, and our natural propensity to be moral and act morally can be properly propelled to bring about a desirable moral order. Like learning counting or knowing how to go on, morality can be taught in order that our intrinsic moral sense could be sharpened to effect spontaneous moral conduct and actions. With reasonable justification of ethics and grounds of our being moral fairly demonstrated, we will now move on to the next chapter to focus on the nature of ethics and possibility of its application with special emphasis on Indian theories of morals.

References Baruah, B.  H. (2000). Persons and value: A sketch for a theory of moral personhood. In S.  K. Mohanty (Ed.), Persons, mind and value (p. 36). New Delhi: Decent Books in association with DSA in Philosophy, Utkal University. Flew, A. G. N. (1978). A rational animal (p. 90). Oxford: the Clarendon Press. Frankfurt, H. (1987). Identification and wholeheartedness. In F. Schoeman (Ed.), Responsibility, character and the emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Griffin, J. (1996). Value Judgment (p. 1). Oxford: the Clarendon Press. Singer, P. (1993). Practical ethics  (p. 250). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Singer, P. (2011). Practical ethics (3rd ed., p. 278). New York: Cambridge University Press. Strawson, P. F. (1962). Individuals. London: Methuen. Watson, G. (1982). Free will (p. 7). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 2

Ethics, Applied Ethics and Indian Theories of Morals

Ethical theories have often been hailed as exalted principles of morals meant for guiding human life towards an ideal, desirable world; but more often than not, many such theories are found to be inapplicable or difficult to apply to actual life situations. Let us make an attempt to explore the genesis of this apparent contradiction and offer some methodological hints for effective application of ethics to practical life. In this endeavour, I shall analyse some Indian ethical theories, especially the theory of dharma which is a perfect example of moral theories meant for guiding human conduct. Indian theories I consider to be of special significance since they have in them rich potentials for applicability as much as they (many of them) typify inapplicable abstract principles of morals. To this purpose, let me dwell at some length upon the nature of ethical theories in general and, as we go on, we will see that most of them are vulnerable because of our proneness for abstraction and absolutism as well as for what may be called generalism. This will also be shown to be a result of what I call ‘literalism’, i.e. of our tendency to take these theories in their literal sense at the expense of their proper sprit. The proneness and the tendency, jointly and severally, lead to the theories not only being misunderstood and vulnerable but also to their applicability to practical life being seriously questioned. Indian philosophers have always believed that our ethical theories are realizable (Hiriyanna 1957) – that ‘ought’ means ‘can’. This, incidentally, points to the fact  – contrary to the opinion of some modern writers (McKenzie 1922) [McKenzie, for an example, repeatedly says that ethical values are not to be judged on their consistency. Ch IV, especially p. 242] – that ethics works within the bounds of logic. For if ‘ought’ means ‘can’, then conversely ‘cannot’ means ‘ought not’. That is, if something is impossible (cannot be possibly achieved), then one ought not to try to achieve it. Ethics does not ask for the impossible. Thus it means that ethical theories can be applied in practice, because they are principles we ought to follow. Indian thinkers therefore insist that the ethical ideals are realizable. The matter can be further explained by the fact that the purpose of ethics is to provide guidance for practical life, and, if this is so, it should be possible to live and act in accordance © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 P. K. Mohapatra, An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7503-3_2

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with the principles of ethics. It must be possible to apply ethical theories in the world we live in. As Rajendra Prasad puts it most appropriately (Prasad 1999), ethical theories have a sort of built-in applicability, and moral principles are such that it must not only be logically possible but also empirically possible to live and act in accordance with them. For any such theory to be applicable, Prasad points out, the world must be such that (a) it must not make its application impossible and (b) the people in it, by their very nature, consider it as a valid moral principle and are inclined to act in accordance with it. With these conditions satisfied, any theory that is still not applicable to the world is what I propose to call a bad ethical theory, which will have nothing to contribute to the making of a morally desirable world. I shall argue that such theories will have to be toned down, even violated, in view of the world being as it is and human nature being as it is. This we have to do for a morally good reason; and so this will be a justified violation. We must now proceed to illustrate and examine some cases of ethical theories that are not applicable or difficult to apply and how our foregoing analysis and argument can help solve the problem. Let us take the moral principle of truth-telling for an example. In ancient Indian tradition (perhaps this is true also of ancient traditions everywhere), truth-telling, and conversely not telling lies, was considered the highest kind of virtue – a sadharana dharma – which no other dharma can override. This is what Lord Krishna says in the Mahabharat and so says Bhisma several times in the Shanti Prava thereof. To be sure, truth-telling is a great virtue; but taken in the absolute, literal sense, the theories become inapplicable or lead to undesirable and even morally disastrous consequences, if applied. It is said of an ancient scholar that he decided not to open his lips in discussions of contentious issues, and when asked about the reason for his cryptic silence, he would reply, ‘anrtat bhayam’; he was afraid that he might say something that might turn out to be false! At the other extreme (Prasad’s example), there is the case of the ancient saint, Kaushika, who had vowed to speak only the truth. It so happened that one day, a group of passers­by went hiding under a thicket near where the saint lived, since they were being chased by some vicious bandits. When the bandits came and asked about them, the saint told them the truth, and the bandits looted and killed those innocent men. What is noteworthy is that, according to the epic, the truthful Kaushika had to taste the horror of hell for having spoken that particular piece of truth. It is clear to our minimum moral sense that the theory of truth-telling, taken literally, is a bad ethical theory and needs to be toned down, or even violated, in a demanding situation like the one described. That is the reason why Krishna himself had persuaded Dharmaraja Yuddhistra to tell the lie about the death of Aswathama in order that Drona, the invincible, may lay down his arms, and the battle of Mahabharat could be won by the deserving Pandavas. In fact, as Prasad pointed out, the Mahabharat prescribes such justified violations of the principle of truth-telling in five specific demanding situations (Karna Parva, P.398, 31–33). Now, what is the ethical theory which, being applied here, makes the violations of this great moral principle morally justified? Surely, it is consequentialism – judging the morality of actions on the basic of prizable consequences. The same goes for the other celebrated sadharana dharmas of non-stealing (asteya) and non-killing (ahimsa). Rsi Viswamitra made a justified

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violation of the former when he stole some meat to save the lives of his starving family, while Bhisma gave a similar treatment to the latter when he commended that scriptural owl for breaking hundreds of eggs of a poisonous snake, thereby preventing calamitous loss of human lives from the numerous venomous snakes that would have hatched out of those eggs. Since a great good resulted from this, the so-called adharma committed by the owl was as good as, or perhaps better than, the normally considered dharma of non-killing. Classical Indian theories of dharma, thus, consider such violation of celebrated moral principles not only permissible but also commendable. Violations in the Viswamitra-like situations are justified as apad dharma or duty in emergent, calamitous situations. It is a matter of important moral significance that it is not always irrational not to do what conventional morality requires us to do, nor is it always rational (approved by moral rationality) to act as per the moral commandments in the received sense. Take, for example, the maxim that to forgive is divine. The Mahabharat, which is naturally expected to give assent to this, has implicit instructions to the contrary. Prahlada says this to his grandson, Bali, regarding the moral virtue of forgiving: “…tasmat nityam kshyama tata panditeirapi varjita” (forgiving in all conditions is not allowed, even by the wise people.)

A blanket commandment to forgive, a literal adherence to this commandment, cannot be morally justified. For forgiveness granted indiscriminately to every offender, irrespective of whether or not he sincerely realizes his guilt and repents and hence deserves forgiveness, may be morally counterproductive on occasions and even undesirable, for: Yo mnityam kshamate’ tata, bahun dosan sah bindati/ Bhrtyah paribhavantyena-mudasinastharayah.// (Mahabharat vol. II, p. 1022: 7) (He who always forgives all offenders indiscriminately acquires many defects; his servants, enemies as well as people unrelated to him do not take him seriously and rather disrespect him, and no one behaves with him in humble manner.)

Forgiveness is morally justified only if it is extended on morally justified grounds, i.e. when extended to the offender who really deserves to be forgiven. Forgiveness, like most moral values, is thus a conditional virtue, which admits of justified violation in demanding situations. Classical Indian ethics, some modern writings on it also included, often miss the point because of proneness for  absolutism and generalism. Moral values instantiate those important kinds of things, i.e. principles and relations, which hold necessarily, though, on occasions, they may be defeasible in overriding circumstances, where another competing value demands precedence. The necessity of moral values is a weaker sort of necessity (we will have more to say about it in the next chapter) that is different from the strictly logical form of absolute necessity, which is unexceptionable and hence inapplicable to practical life. For ethics, unlike logic, is a product of the society and social living that aims at promoting values common and conducive to effective and desirable social living. In this sense, it operates at the empirical level of social process, and so moral principles grow out of taking due note of the peculiarities and relevance of particular cases of moraliz-

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ing. The appropriateness of a value to be pursued, therefore, cannot be thought apart from social realities. The normal situational fact is that people live in the society, which runs through various circles of interactions which, in turn, demand ‘various kinds and degrees of cooperation, competition and conflicts’ (Mackie 1977). Moral values like truth-telling, therefore, need to be pursued accordingly. It would neither be reasonable nor prudent to tell the truth to an enemy or a business competitor. A business boss is not being dishonest if she does not speak the ‘whole truth’ in a press conference; nor is an ailing patient being untruthful when she responds with ‘Fine! Thank you’ to a visitor’s courtesy ‘How are you?’, which she would be in responding in similar manner to her attending physician’s question. Withholding truth in such situations would not be a blanket violation of the virtue of truth telling and defeasibility of a virtue under demanding situations does not and cannot turn this virtue to a vice at all. In sufficiently demanding situations, like the one in which Kaushika spoke the truth, a considerate and useful lie would have been a better option – a morally better one – to an undesirable revelation of truth. And this would have been a proper example of justified violation of a (conventional) moral principle – sanctioned, as we noted, by our scriptures and the masters of reputed traditions. This is not, however, to lapse into unfettered relativism, for the violations are justified by a reasoned balance between the spirit of the principle and the demands of the situation, without which ethics cannot be the social affair it is primarily meant to be. Perhaps because of considerations like this, Mackie has warned by pleading: ‘A prudent man will not squander his limited stock of convincing lies, but use it sparingly to the best effect’ (Mackie 1977, p. 18). One may see a tension here between prudence or self-interest and moral reason, which I have taken to be the justification for violating a principle on appropriate occasions. Sidgwick, for example, saw this tension to be irresolvable. But the tension is only apparent; it will lose its apparent strength when it is seen that egoism or the self-interest theory is a moral theory that occupies an important place in any viable moral system. For everyone, in his own interest, should desire that there be a moral system. A parallel can be drawn from the area of business ethics: if the aim of business is the maximization of owner value, an ethical conduct of business (like taking care of customer satisfaction, maintenance of quality, maintaining reasonable profit margin and employees’ welfare, etc.) will achieve this purpose in the long run, though this may result in short-term losses. So it is in its own interest that business should be ethical. Good ethics results in good business, as advocated by Milton Friedman and others. Thus, what is important is a viable moral system based on cooperation and reciprocity, even amidst conflicts and competitions. And even if an existing moral system is found not to be suitable to one’s self-interest, one should try to modify it and not destroy it or run away from it. This brings us back again to the significance of justified violations of moral principles which points, in turn, to the fact that moral values are necessary but defeasible. The conventional theory that moral values are absolute and not violable under any circumstances is formally known as rigorism or the theory of duty for duty’s sake. But despite its profundity and respectability in both western and eastern ethical history, rigorous pursuit of this theory is questionable in principle. To say the

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very least, the theory is not universal. It is true that people are normally lauded with moral credit for doing things from a sense of duty, but this is not the case on all occasions. We may sometimes justifiably praise somebody (morally, i.e.) for not doing what normally was his duty, and we may, also justifiably, even blame him (morally) had he done what was his duty just for the sake of doing his duty without caring for and despite knowing well enough that it would lead to morally disastrous consequences. In addition to our example of Rishi Kaushika and his truth-telling, we may take another example from the area of professional ethics. A doctor, as a normal human being, is normally obliged to convey the correct information about the state of his patient’s health to the patient as well as to his family members. But if the patient is suffering from a terminal disease, like blood cancer or brain cancer and if, in addition, the patient’s father has serious cardiac history, then withholding the correct information about his patient’s health, or even passing on an incorrect information, would be morally praiseworthy. But passing on the correct information, though it is the duty of the doctor as a normal human being, would not merit moral credit, but rather in view of the catastrophe on the family, if it happens to occur, would make him worthy of moral condemnation. Insisting steadfastly on doing his duty and passing on the correct information would make him not only a duty-fanatic but a bad professional too; for professional ethics demands a certain sort of secrecy in the interest of an avoidable moral catastrophe. The compulsions of his professional ethics, which require him to maintain the described secrecy, would defeat and override the competing ethics of truth-telling, though a universal duty it otherwise is. Sometimes, in situations like this, not to do one’s duty may become one’s duty; by not passing on the correct information, he would be doing what it is his duty not to do. This was so aptly expressed by Rajendra Prasad (Prasad 1989). The concept of duty may thus merit modification, and a conventional duty thereby may warrant violation as justified by the demands of the situation without making any considerable departure from the spirit of the theory. Defeasibility and justified violability, in our view, must define the nature and spirit of moral principles. On the point of what I call justified violation and defeasibility of moral principles, a possible but recurring doubt will have to be got out of the way. We have seen that violation of a celebrated moral principle may be called for as morally justified under demanding situations, but we have also been insisting that the demands of the situation must be properly balanced with the spirit of the principle at issue, which must not be sacrificed and made totally subservient to the former. It must be remembered that the aims of ethics, and hence of every moral principle, are to promote values common and conducive to practical life and to provide effective guidance for moral living. And the application of ethical theories must be made accordingly. But applying a principle in its absolute literal sense, we have seen, would in effect be contrary to the spirit of the principle and would lead to morally undesirable consequences (like the loss of innocent lives as a result of truth-telling by Kaushika). That is why, toning down or even violating these principles, say of truth-telling, will be morally justified in the sense that its result would be morally desirable and hence in keeping with the spirit of the principle. Withholding the truth or even telling a lie on the part of Kaushika in the described circumstances would not strictly be considered viola-

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tion of the spirit of the principle of truth-telling which (the spirit) is, after all, meant to promote moral good, and saving the lives of innocent passers-by, even at the cost of telling a (morally desirable) lie, can never be anything other than moral good. In making such (justified) violations, we would not be making any exception to the morality of the principle but only to the scope of its application (Prasad 1989, p. 272). There are, here, two principles in conflict, namely, truth-telling and saving the lives of innocent people. The former is defeated under the circumstances and is overridden by the latter, which is a more comprehensive value with higher authority. In the face of this, revelation of truth is morally undesirable and hence is not morally justified. This does not mean that truth-telling under normal circumstances would cease to be a virtue; this only means that truth-telling, like most moral principles, is a defeasible moral principle, violable under appropriately demanding situations. Later on, I shall argue that the same applies in the case of the conflict between svadharma and sadharana dharma in the tricky situation that Arjuna faced in the battle of Mahabharat and that in the interest of fighting a righteous war, Arjuna’s svadharma had an arguable overriding capacity. Because of this, I would also like to argue, Yudhisthira’s telling the lie about Aswathama’s death had the overriding claim in the interest of winning a righteous war which was morally justified and which could not have been possible without his telling this lie. Tricky situations of conflicts of principles, though few, are not rare and ignorable in the complexities of practical life, and these situations call for sophistication, in the form of exercising critical power, in moralizing. Violation of the absolute form of moral principles in the greater interest of preserving the spirit of the principles is an important element of this sophistication and is thus a significant aspect of applied ethics.

Absolute Standards Account for Inapplicability It may be asked now: if the absolutistic version (should we say, literal version) of these celebrated theories is thus bad ethical theories – because inapplicable or disastrous, if applied – then how and why our great seers had tended to stick to them? It is mainly because they had failed to know the subtle nature of dharma (i.e. duty). To know this, I would say, is to know when to follow a sadharana dharma (duty of all men) and when to make a justified exception to it, to know to what extent and with what stringency one has to follow a moral rule and when to make an exception to it without sacrificing the spirit of the principle and without ignoring the demands of the situation. Kaushika failed in this, and Viswamitra too would have failed had he allowed himself and his family to die of starvation rather than living on stolen meat. Besides this, there is another important factor which makes an ethical principle inapplicable or unattractive. Generally ethical theories are formulated by men of extraordinary nobility and exemplary strength of character, who set the moral standards too high for the common man with normal moral faculties to reach these standards. Thus, if a normative ethical theory keeps its moral norms so high that ‘they become unreachable for the common man, prescribe principles he cannot

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emulate or recommend actions he cannot perform, it is bound to be dissuasive’ (Prasad 1989, p. 270). Indeed, in a very reasonable sense, such theories cannot be called normative ethical theories in as much as their ‘norms’ fly far away from the normal. As Rajendra Prasad makes the point, a normative ethical theory must pertain to what ought to be and what ought to be done as well as what normally is and what normally is done, because the concepts of the normative and normal share the common parentage in the concept of norm. As a result of long communicative use to do different kinds of jobs, they may develop different logical (i.e. functional) characters and obscure their family resemblance, but their parentage can never be obliterated. It is not suggested that the norms of the ethical theories should be easy and soft so that no effort would be necessary to live up to them. All I wish to say, which I have put forth as a condition of applied ethics, is that living up to the ethical norms must be possible not only logically but also empirically in the world we live, move and have our being. A Platonic picture of the moral order as a single system of actually existing perfect prototypes, (as found, e.g. in the divine command theory and in the natural law theory) is useless and unhelpful. For, “it succeeds in creating an indubitable and infallible authority of the prototype only by (stipulatively) defining it so and by making it altogether distinct and separate from our ordinary fallible thinking and acting, but thereby making it useless for improving our actual [moral, PKM] practice” (Baier 1997). Guidance for a good moral living, which a normative ethical theory aims at giving, is needed more by the ordinary man than by a savant or saint. Indeed, as some Indian moral philosophers have made clear, ethics and ethical standards are not applicable in the case of these liberated souls. ‘It is obvious’, says McKenzie, ‘…that in a certain sense ethical categories are not applicable [in these cases, PKM], He who has attained moksa is beyond good and evil’ (McKenzie 1922, p. 77). The Chandogya Upanishad points out that no evil can cling to a knower just as no water can cling to a lotus leaf (iv.14.3). The saints with the purity of their liberated souls can do nothing moral or immoral. The ethical teachings of the Upanishads are relevant and rather necessary for an individual’s preparation for this liberation. It pertains to this lower stage of life of the ordinary man. The saint who is untouched by evil and good can afford the luxury of the most arduous moral standards, which he can follow but no ordinary man can. In the austerity of moral absolutism, where angels revel, mortals are likely to falter. And in the fact of occasional failures lie the key to all that goes to make the significance of human freedom and moral accountability. For only in the possibility of doing something wrong that someone’s conduct can be morally judged; and one who just cannot do anything wrong is outside the scope of the moral scanner. It is because of this that the Buddha pleaded for an ethical code known as madhyamarga or the middle path. He has very rightly said that it is pointless to lay out a road on which only the extremely sturdy can walk. An exalted but inapplicable ethical theory is like a marvellous mansion with cracks on its roof; it will be held in high adoration as long as one is not going to live in it. What is required, therefore, is that the described gulf between the infallible moral standards and the actual moral practice is bridged, so that the Platonic prototypes would be brought down to earth and made applicable to society and the world at large. That

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is why, Kurt Baier pleads for construing the moral order as a social order and morality as essentially applicable to society. A social order, Baier goes on to say, is a certain character or quality possessed by societies, which may possibly be very different from each other but qualify as a moral order by virtue of sharing the same social order (ibid).

Logical Consistency and Applicability A moral theory, like any genuine philosophical theory, must be logically consistent. Just as it is impossible to think illogically, so also a logically indefensible normative theory cannot provide any guidance for a moral life and hence for what I have been referring to as a desirable world. Only by making our moral theories logically consistent (free from ‘cracks in the roof’) can we apply them to human life for the promotion of the good life. The function of moral philosophy, as that of philosophy, must not be merely reportive but analytic and reconstructive, by which our ethical theories can be made logically consistent, wherever necessary, and applied effectively to the world. Hence the justification of ‘justified violations’ of exalted theories of morals. Although, as we have seen, there have been some cases in classical Indian ethics where this sort of exercise has been taken resort to, this has not been so in many of our celebrated theories of morals, especially as envisaged in our epics and the Bhagavad Gita. By way of illustration, I pick out two cases of what I call bad ethical theories, one of which, because of flawed logic, could not be effectively applicable and inevitably led to several moral crises, and the other, because of its exalted absolute standards, led to morally disastrous consequences, when applied. The former is the theory of dharmas (duties) in the Bhagavad Gita, and the latter is the principle of promise keeping of Bhisma in the Mahabharat. Let me briefly deal with the latter first. Bhisma pratijna – the promise keeping of Bhisma  – is a proverbial moral ideal in India’s scriptural tradition. Bhisma was promise bound to protect the throne of Hastinapura and be loyal to the king, and he kept this promise till his last breath. But in the process of his promise keeping, he was forced to do what Dhritarastra desired him to do and even had to fight against his dearest Pandavas, knowing fully well that king Dhritarastra and the heir apparent to the throne, Duryodhana, were on serious immoral path. What is worse, even after the deceitful game of dice, when the virtuous Draupadi was shabbily treated and was going to be disrobed in public by the wicked brother of Duryodhana, Bhisma, the paragon of virtues and dharma, remained a helpless spectator. Even when asked by wailing Draupadi whether it was right and in accordance with dharma on the part of Yudhishthira to put her on stake, after having lost his freedom and hence his agency, in the game of dice, Bhisma pleaded inability to answer her question on the plea that the meaning of dharma was too deep and subtle (Mahabharat vol. II, Dyutaprva) to admit of a clear answer. This may be so with the meaning of dharma; but our moral common sense cannot accept disrobing of a virtuous lady of a great family – for that matter any woman – in public as a dharmic action in any

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sense of the term, much less can it accept the fact that Bhisma, whom Lord Krishna described as the repository of dharma (“dharma mayonidhih”), did not have enough knowledge to answer Draupadi’s question and prevent the pernicious immoral attempt to disrobe her. It was a different matter that Krishna prevented the disrobing of Draupadi, but morality was disrobed that day and nobody tried to prevent that. At any rate, it was Bhisma’s literal adherence to the abstract theory of promise keeping which not only kept him from preventing this particular act of immorality; it also kept him from preventing a great moral disaster, the destruction of the whole royal dynasty! His violating this principle under these demanding circumstances would have told us a different story, most certainly about a morally desirable world.

Dharmas, Conflicts and Defeasibility I now turn to Gita theory of dharma that recognizes two types of dharma – swadharma and sadharana dharma – both of which constitute a very fundamental normative structure of classical Indian ethics. First, let us consider the swadharma or what is also known as varnadharma (one’s duty as a member of a particular varna). It has been maintained in the Bhagavad Gita that, for a balanced and effective functioning of the social system, God created four varnas of men and assigned to them four different types of duties or dharmas. The duties of a person belonging to a particular varna is called varnadharma or his swadharma: for Brahmins, it is worship, teaching and preaching; for kshatriyas, to rule over and protect the country; for the Vaisyas, diligence, tread and commerce; and for the Sudras, to work for the other three castes, presumably to enable them to perform their duties effectively, thereby facilitating effective division of labour. Krishna says in the Gita that he made this assignment of the different varnadharmas on the basis of gunas (nature, qualities) and karmas (natural dispositions to act in certain ways): ‘guna karma vibhagasah chaturvarnam maya srustam’ (Bhagavad-Gita, IV). Besides the four types of swadharma, there are a set of general duties called sadharana dharma, or samanya dharma, i.e. duties obligatory for all men irrespective of whichever varna they belong to. These are the ones like truth-telling, non-killing, non-stealing, etc. Both these types of duties – swadharma and sadharana dharma – are supposed to be obligatory, a kind of categorical imperative, which are best performed in a niskarma way or desireless manner – with no desire or concern for consequences that may follow their actions. Whether any action can at all be performed in this manner is a debatable question, which will be dealt with later in Chap. 8. My present concern is to examine the necessity of these imperatives and their applicability. It has been shown already that the duties like truth-telling, non-killing and non-­ stealing, which come under sadharana dharma, are not applicable if taken as obligatory (for their application in some situations lead to morally disastrous consequences) and should therefore be applied with exceptions under suitably demanding situations. We have now to see the logicality of the varnadharmas or swadharmas being obligatory and categorical as claimed by the authors of this theory.

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But before preceeding to do this, we are stopped by a puzzling problem – a moral crisis – that results from the inevitable conflict between the two moral principles, swadharma and sadharana dharma, both of which are claimed to be obligatory. This is very significant, for it is because Arjuna faced this crisis and declined to fight in the battle of Mahabharat that Lord Krishna had to elaborate the varnadharma theory and tried to apply it persuasionally to convince Arjuna that it was his swadharma as a kshatriya (prince) to fight and defend his country from the wicked influence of his adversaries. Yes, it was his swadharma as a prince to fight, argued Arjuna, but it was also his sadharana dharma, duty as a man, not to kill! How could he fight a war which inevitably involved killing people – that too his own relatives and venerable elders? What exactly was his duty here – swadharma or sadharana dharma? The Gita seems to have no satisfactory answer to this, no logical solution to offer. (Indeed, the Gita has left many questions unanswered, but I have no scope here to address to all the issues.) The only answer we are offered to this crucial moral crisis arising out of the conflict between the two forms of dharmas or duties is that Arjuna should follow his swadharma as a kshatriya and fight in the war, even if he would have to kill people, including many of his own kinsmen. The conflict here was a conflict between (Arjuna’s) swadharma and (his) samanya dharma, and Krishna’s exhortations virtually meant that the former should override the latter. But one suspects that Krishna did not offer any reason for justifying why should this samanya dharma or sadharana dharma, which is normally considered more important as a universal duty of men, be allowed to be superseded by what may be dubbed as a sectarian duty. Instead, he simply went on extolling the varnadharma as absolute and inviolable. Arjuna must perform his swadharma of fighting the war and must not worry about killing his adversaries or causing their death; it was even pleaded that killing he would not be doing, because they (their souls) are immortal or (alternatively) all his sins including the sin of killing would be waived or redeemed if he took shelter in the Lord (Krishna). (Sarba dharman parityajya mamekam saranam bhaja// Aham tvam sarba papebhyah moksayisyami ma sucha//.) Put in other words, Krishna argued to the effect that either Arjuna would not kill them (who are amrutasya putrah), or even if he would, the sin of his (act of) killing, in fact all his sins, would be redeemed in his surrender to the divine. The irony of the Gita theory of dharma is that the whole theory is devoted almost exclusively to emphasize the importance of swadharma, and very little attention is given to sadharana dharma or samanya dharma. Arjuna’s question as to why should he perform this specific duty in preference to his universal duty of non-killing and non-killing of his kinsmen (kula dharma) remained unanswered or inadequately answered, anyway. Instead of offering any logical counters to Arjuna’s arguments, and when his arguments apparently failed to convince1 the latter, Krishna cast a sort of spell (!) on him and revealed  “Hato va prapsyasi swargam, jitva va bkokshyase mahim// Tasmat uttistha Kounteya, yudhaya kritanischayah”//. (If you die in the battle, you will go to heaven, and if you win, you’ll enjoy mastery over the kingdom; therefore arise, Oh Son of Kunti, and be determined to fight) mocks at the theory of Niskama Karma and “Sarva dharman parityajya mamekam saranam braja// Aham tvam sarva papebhyah mokshyayisyami ma sucha” (Bhagavad Gita -?- (Give up all dharmas and stake shelter in me, I shall free you from all sins) smacks of persuasion and indoctrination rather than argumentation). 1

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to him the cosmic form (Visvarupa), and an overwhelmed Arjuna was made to act as per the words of the Lord (karisye vacanam tava). Instead of persuasionally applying an ethical principle to convince Arjuna to do what Krishna thought he (Arjuna) ought to do, Krishna only used a non-moral method of emotional persuasion. Perhaps Krishna would have done better had he argued for the violation of the sadharana dharma of non-killing here in the interest of fighting a righteous war (Arjuna’s swadharma), which would have been a morally justified violation, and Arjuna’s kshyatadharma would have had an arguable overriding capacity. It might be objected that as a matter of principle, a varnadharma can’t (be said to) override a sadharana dharma on the ground that the former is a sectarian duty or a professional duty, while the latter is a universal duty (Prasad 1989, p. 257). It will be said, that is, while a professional duty or a sectarian duty is limited to a specific group of people, a universal duty is binding on all men. It may be said further that one can opt out of a profession and so be not obliged to perform the specific duty prescribed for the professionals in question2, but no one can opt out of one’s universal duty that is imperative for every man, since no one can opt not to be a man if he happens to be one. Prasad’s argument to this effect is fairly cogent but, I suspect, enigmatically simplistic. And this is so for two reasons. My first reason for finding it enigmatic is that Professor Prasad himself has lately been a recognized champion of the theory of ‘justified violation’ of moral principles, and this apparently absolutistic characterization of samanya dharma as not defeasible by swadharma, and the similar absolute distinction between samanya dharma and swadharma does not go well with his (justified) violability theory. And my second reason is Prasad’s implicit admission of possible defeasibility of each of the two forms of dharma by the other. For he resents the failure of the Gita theory of dharma by alleging that it ‘does not provide any clear cut principle to determine when a samanya dharma can supersede a varnadharma or vice versa, though it does admit that on occasions one can supersede, or be superseded by, the other’ (Ibid, p. 292). Quite true, one form of dharma can override and be overridden by the other form of dharma, and this is admitted not only by the Bhagavad Gita but generally by the bulk of our scriptural traditions, especially, as we have seen, by the Mahabharata. For this reason, I maintain that moral principles and ethical theories are universal but defeasible, that they are violable in demanding situations, and this applies to all forms of ethical theories. The compulsions of a paradigmatic righteous war meant for establishing dharma (dharma samsthapanarthaya) evidently warranted a kshatriya’s swadharma the overriding capacity over his samanya dharma of non-killing and also of protecting his kinsmen.

2  If varnadharma is determined by guna and karma, a person can very well change his varna to which he might have happened to belong and become worthy of another varna by virtue of his guna and karma. A critique of swadharma as swabhavaja and hence unchangeable is detailed in what follows.

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Critique of Swadharma as Swabhavaja Now for the logicality of Gita’s theory of swadharma or varnadharma. As said above, swadharmas are supposed to be obligatory by natural necessitation, for the Gita defines a swadharma as born out of the nature of the members of the particular varna. This much at least is the implication of a varnadharma being defined as swabhavaja (Bhagavad-Gita, XVIII, 42–44). The assumption is that the four classes of people belong to four different ‘natural kinds’, as it were, and the gunas (qualities) and karmas (actions), which are the basis of this division of each class (varnavyabastha), are strictly limited to or typical of it and different from those of other varnas. It is advised that one ought to do what is required of him as per his own swadharma and not try to do what is that of somebody else belonging to a different varna, which is paradharma (somebody else’s duty). The Gita even has the injunction that it is better to die while performing one’s own duty (swadharma) – though done badly – than trying to do what is the duty of another person of a different varna (paradharma) – though it is done very well, because the latter is fraught with fear (ibid, XVIII. 47). And he who performs his swadharma incurs no sin, (Sri Aurobindo 1928, p. 479; also Sankara 2013, p. 433) even if the consequence of that action turns out to be harmful in any way, whereas he who takes resort to paradharma is considered to be doing something sinful; such a person should be dissuaded or disallowed from performing paradharma and even be punished, if he does perform this. Ekalavya, the tribal youth, a sudra, was not permitted to learn the art of archery from Drona because that was not his swadharma, and Sambuka, the tribal chief, was killed by Rama for performing tapah (meditation) which was not his swadharma! Now let us see how this important ethical theory, being based on flawed logic, became inapplicable or, rather, could not be effectively applicable and led to undesirable consequences, when applied without qualification. The theory, as I see it, is based on two basic assumptions: (1) the four varnas (classes or castes) are exclusive natural kinds and (2) one’s varnadharma is determined by one’s own nature or swabhava. From these premises, it naturally follows that (3) what is natural to one is obligatory to him and vice versa. We can easily see that this theoretical endeavour leaves us with two options, each of which is unacceptable: either (a) what one is naturally disposed to do is always morally right (so is one’s bounden duty) or (b) it could be sometimes right and sometimes wrong; the theory has no criterion for the distinction between what is right and what is wrong (there is nothing to tell what one ought to do from what one ought not to do). While (a) is an obvious untruth, (b) is self-defeating for the theory. Thus, by reductio ad absurdum, we have good reason to conclude that (1) and (2) are weak assumptions of the theory. We have reason to ask why the natural must be the determinant of what is one’s duty or what is right for one to do? And the varnadharma tradition – Gita, Mahabharat and Manusmriti – has no answer to this, nor do we find any reason (logical) offered. On the contrary, classical Indian tradition puts a fair amount of emphasis on self-control and self-­ purification, which suggests that it does not consider human nature to be morally sacrosanct and unerring. Therefore it remains an open question as to why should naturalness determine one’s duty.

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Besides, it is a matter of common experience that despite our clear knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, what is dharma and what is adharma, quite often, by natural impulse, we refrain from doing the right thing and take resort to wrongdoing. Duryodhana’s oft-quoted confession that, although he knows very well what is dharma and what is adharma, he has neither the inclination to stick to the former, nor the disinclination from doing the latter: Janami dharma na cha me pravrtti/ Janamyadharma na cha me nivrtti// (Vidyaranya 2012) is a clear indication of this fact of nature (human nature), which definitively falsifies the theory of natural necessitation (swabhavajata); one is not only not always necessitated but not even inclined to do what he knows he ought to do. It is odd and perhaps disappointing that the Gita did not have anything to explain, much less remove, this possibility of akratic abstention from one’s duties and akratic indulgence in non-duties or wrong doings. This, however, can be explained, and applied ethics, in its persuasional form, can try to remove or at least lessen the occurrence of immoral actions under akratic conditions. Akratic abstention from duties and indulgence in non-duties is certainly an act of immorality; but this is no cause for despair. A moral philosopher, perhaps with a bit of psychological deconditioning, could use the agent’s awareness, if not explicit guilt, that he has done something contrary to what he knows is moral, to strengthen his moral will. This may not guarantee cent percent success; but it would surely have the effect of minimizing immoralities issuing from weakness of will. Besides, I think the problem here is a problem regarding the connection between what one believes to be moral and what he is motivated to do. Normally, to accept or believe that X is morally desirable is to be motivated to do X or act in accordance with X, if X is a moral principle. Taken in a strict sense and omitting the qualification ‘normally’, it would go in the way of ethical internalism, which sees a necessary connection between beliefs and motives. But the inadequacy of internalism is right on the surface, demonstrated by the not so unusual akratic actions coupled with awareness of their immorality. Beliefs and motives are thus not necessarily related. But this is unworrying. For it is possible to salvage a logical or conceptual relation between them by unravelling a weaker sort of logical relation that is weaker than logical necessity but stronger than mere contingent connection. A kind of phenomenon, say pain, need not occur always in the presence of another, namely, pain behaviour, but it still is logically, i.e. conceptually, dependent on pain behaviour, since as Wittgenstein has so aptly pointed out, if nobody ever behaved as if he/she was in pain or said that he/she was in pain in a sincere tone of voice, then the word ‘pain’ would never have found a place in our language. It is thus logically impossible (in the weaker sense of ‘logically’) for pain to occur always in the absence of pain behaviour. Evan Simpson (1999) makes the point thus: It is possible to rescue a conceptual connection between beliefs and motives by specifying logical relations weaker than logical necessitation. We can say, for example, that one kind of thing logically depends upon another if it is logically impossible for things of the first kind always to occur in the absence of the second, but logically possible that the first should sometimes occur alone. This is a logical relationship, but unlike necessitation it does not make it logically impossible for the first thing to occur without the second also occurring.

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These are instances of that important kind of relation, which are necessary but defeasible. And this more appropriately holds in the case of moral matters (I have said above that in a similar way, moral values are universal, though on occasions, they may be defeated and overridden by other competing values.) I shall therefore go to some extent3 with ethical externalism and keep the qualification ‘normally’ to say that moral beliefs and motives for appropriate actions are normally related by way of this described weaker logical relation. And that is quite enough to say that, few exceptions notwithstanding; to accept X as morally desirable is to be motivated to act accordingly. Because of this, we will be surprised if somebody acts contrary to what he believes to be moral. If this is so, an ethical theory can be judgmentally applied in practical situations, for to judge X to be right is to decide or be motivated to do X or act in accordance with X. The cases of akratic weakness are understandable exceptions but could, in principle, be improved upon as we have shown. It would thus depend on the moral reformer how effectively he can persuasionally apply a moral principle to remove the weakness of the agent’s will and with how much of success. Anyway, because of factors like exclusive natural division of the varnas and a priori assumptions of natural necessitation of them, the swadharma theory could not be effectively applied in a consistent manner. On the contrary, a strictly formal and literal adherence to it led, in some cases, to glaring injustice and immoralities. It was grossly unjust for Drona not to accept Eklavya as his disciple just because he was not a kshatriya, though he would have made a very worthy disciple and proved to be an equally great archer, if not greater, as Arjuna. It was also equally wrong and unjust not to allow Karna  – otherwise a man of a great valour  – the status of a kshatriya prince simply because it was not publicly known that he was a kshatriya by birth as much as any of the pandavas. The watertight division of the varnas and the consequent exclusive swadharma/paradharma distinction were not only logically unsound but also socially and culturally unwarranted. Rajendra Prasad (Prasad 1999) very naturally wonders what a great tragedy it would have been for India as well as for the entire world if prince Gautama were to be prevented by a Lord Krishna from becoming a recluse because that was not his swadharma! A good normative ethical theory is viable if it is consistently applicable in all relevant cases  – not in all cases indiscriminately. The varnadharma theory was certainly based on sound theoretical considerations of guna and karma but ran into serious practical problems by assuming these to be fixed and a priori. As a matter of fact, human nature being what it is, it cannot be assumed to be fixed and static. What is natural for a man is an empirical matter and can be determined only in a ­probabilistic manner on the basis of what he does and how he behaves. The proponents of the varnadharma theory, Lord Krishna in particular, would have done much better by taking these facts into consideration and allowing justified violations of the theory in reasonably demanding situations. This would surely have led to a better world, to a morally desirable world. 3  For I have reasons to believe that both externalism and internalism are inadequate for giving a proper account of the relation between beliefs and motives. See Chap. 3 for more on this.

References

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References Baier, K. (1997). The rational and the moral order. Chicago and Illinois: Open Court. Hiriyanna, M. (1957). Indian conception of values. Mysore: Kavyalaya Publications. Mackie, J. L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing right and wrong. London: Penguine Books. McKenzie, J. S. (1922). Hindu ethics. London: Oxford University Press. Prasad, R. (1989). Karma, causation and retributive morality. New Delhi: ICPR. Prasad, R. (1999). Varnadharma, niskama karma and practical morality. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld, in association with DSA in Philosophy, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. Sankara. (2013). Gita Bhashyam (GB). Gorahkpur: Gita Press. (New Edition). Simpson, E. (1999, April). Between internalism and externalism. The Philosophical Quarterly, 49(195), 203. Sri Aurobindo. (1928). Essays on the Gita. Pondicherry: Aurobindo Ashram. (New Edition). Vidyaranya. (2012). Panchadasi, Eng.tr. Swami Swahananda, Ramakrishna Math, Calcutta. (New Edition).

Chapter 3

Morality and Objectivity

Bulk of the history of ethics has proceeded on the supposition that moral values and moral principles must be objective and absolute, not to be affected by the peculiarities and perspectives of individuals. This has been largely strengthened by the requirement of universalizability of moral principles and ethical theories – a requirement sought to be met by intuitionism and utilitarianism alike, by altruism as well as the self-interest theory. Because of this, moral realism, absolutism, intuitionism and deontology have occupied major concerns in ethics rather than relativism, noncognitivism and even consequentialism. But the supposed objectivity, on its part, has generated more problems for itself and for morality despite its attractiveness and wider appeal. For objectivity in the received sense claims to apply ethical theories unexceptionably without regard for the specificities and peculiarities of individuals and situations. An objective value is thought to be out there (in the objective world) independently of our valuing it or judging it as a value. It appears that we cannot avoid the desire for objective values: that desire is a feature of our humanity; we crave for objectification as a result of that.

Objectivity and Moral Scepticism However, such requirement of objectivity in the case of moral values has often been self-defeating (and this, we shall see  soon later on, points to a major distinction between moral realism and metaphysical realism). For in moral reasoning, i.e. judging things (actions, conducts and even agents) as value (or valuable), individual perspectives can never be gotten rid of, though they could only be maximally minimized. The role of the will in moral valuing can hardly be wished away however hard we try to ‘step back’ from the act of valuing. In the realist’s search for moral knowledge, our desire to have an objective view, no part of which is the product of some peculiarity of ourselves or of our perspective, may thus be a craving for the utopia that can never be realized. The craving for an objective view, backed by © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 P. K. Mohapatra, An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7503-3_3

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principles valid from a point of view with no peculiarities whatsoever, is virtually a view from nowhere, a view with no principles to judge with; and with no principle to judge with, the objective mind could not judge at all (Nagel 1986). The hope for genuine objectivity is at once held out and snatched away! The dilemma glares at us: if a view is objective, it cannot judge something to be value or disvalue, and if it judges, it cannot be an objective view. The search for objectivity for moral values would yield, as it often has, to moral scepticism: it can not only result in scepticism about objective moral values (Mackie 1977) but scepticism about morality itself, if morality and objectivity are thought of as essential invariants. Nagel puts it very succinctly as follows: However often we may try to step outside of ourselves, something will have to stay behind the lens, something in us will determine the resulting picture, and this will give grounds for doubt that we are really getting closer to reality (Nagel 1986, p. 68).

This is as true in the case of the realists’ search for knowledge as it is – or rather more so – in the case of our search for objective moral values. What we see here is a predicament of principle – a predicament we get entangled with in our attempt to face a problem that both demands and resists a solution. Our search for objectivity is a case where we crave for objectivity and know that we cannot attain it. For the problem here is the problem of how to combine – since we cannot preclude it – the perspective of a particular person in the world with an objective view of that same world, the person and his point of view included. It is a problem that everyone with the impulse to transcend his particular points of view will have to face. Besides being a compelling reason for moral scepticism, this craving for objectivity also creates the other problem of applicability of moral principles. Taken in their absolute literal sense, ethical theories are found to be either inapplicable in practical life or, if applied, lead to consequences that are morally undesirable or even disastrous on occasions (Indian ethics has several such illustrations). And taking these theories in this sense is an implicit symptom of the craving for objectivity that has not unjustly, though somewhat mistakenly, occupied major concerns of ethicists and moral philosophers. However, I think that the threat of moral scepticism and inapplicability of moral theories are only illuminating pointers. For morality is something we cannot care less, and the purpose of ethics is to provide guidance for actions in practical life. Hence the craving for objectivity that seems to pose an apparent threat to morality and its applicability stands in need of analysis and understanding. What has gone wrong with it and where and why? In what follows, I shall attempt an answer to this, and, to this purpose, I shall set myself to the task of a critical analysis of the concept of objectivity, especially as it applies to moral values. For this purpose, I am going to argue that objectivity admits of several senses in several contexts, and much of the ongoing debates about objectivity of moral values, I am inclined to think, have been largely due to confusion between, or non-recognition of, these different senses. To forestall my contention, I think it appropriate to put forth the statements of two recent writers on this contentious issue: Jonathan Dancy, before discussing objectivity, begins ‘with a discussion of the sort of objectivity properly attributable to moral values and reasons’ (Dancy

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1993, p. 144.). And David Brink, while outlining what some call ‘global subjectivism’ and some others ‘sophisticated realism’, expressed the view that ‘once we understand the objectivity obtainable in the sciences, we can see that ethics is or can be every bit as objective as the sciences’ (Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989, p. 6.) [emphasis added in both the quotations]. With these statements regarding the ‘sorts of objectivity’ properly ‘obtainable’ in different disciplines, which are self-explanatory, let us begin our enquiry into the question of objectivity and that of objectivity of moral values.

Moral Realism and Objectivity The theory that moral values are objective is what normally goes by the name of ‘moral realism’, and moral realism is usually viewed as a special case of metaphysical realism. And since realism in any discipline typically believes that there are facts and truths of a certain kind which are independent of human thoughts and theorizing about them, moral realism is committed to the belief that there are moral facts and truths that are objective and independent of our judging them as values or disvalues. Realism about the external world (metaphysical realism) takes the claims of common sense physical theories and those of the natural sciences literally and holds that the scientific terms refer to real features of the world and that (advancement in) the sciences provide us with more and more accurate knowledge of the world. Similarly, moral realism takes the moral claims literally, i.e. as claims that describe moral properties of people, of actions and of institutions, and takes these properties to be real and objective properties, which obtain independently of our moralizing or moral theorizing. According to it, not only there are moral facts and true moral claims that purport to state moral facts but also often do state such facts and refer to real properties, as the result of which we can and do sometimes have moral beliefs and moral knowledge. Although this has been the more generally accepted theory of moral values – represented by Price, Prichard, Sidgwick, Moore, Broad and Ross – this has been considerably eclipsed by the twentieth-century emotivism and noncognitivism spearheaded by A.J.  Ayer, R.L.  Stevenson and R.M.  Hare. But J.L. Mackie (Mackie 1977) has lodged by far the most conspicuous recent attack on moral realism and the objectivity theory, and somewhat less expressedly and more circuitously, this has been done also by Thomas Nagel (Nagel 1986). Because I consider Nagel’s scepticism to be less expressed and rather subdued by his tacit recognition that ‘a complete picture of the world requires modification of the form of objectivity’ (Nagel 1986, p. 6),1 I will address to Mackie’s scepticism more elaborately, though allusions to Nagel’s view on objectivity will inevitably occur at a 1  Also in Chap. 8. Note especially his statement that ‘objectivity need not be all-or-nothing’ (p. 148) which virtually tones down his scepticism expressed earlier (p. 68): ‘However often we may try to step outside ourselves, something will have to stay behind the lens, something in us will determine the resulting puicture …’.

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later stage of this chapter, especially in course of presenting my account of a proper analysis of objectivity as applied to moral values.

Understanding Mackie When Mackie began his book with the bold declaration that ‘there are no objective values’ and went on to argue that the theory that values are objective is based on an error, this – very much like the subtitle of his book – struck many as a startlingly unconventional approach to moral values. This is not surprising, because this was an expressed challenge to moral realism with which most of us are familiar and comfortable, and there is thought to be, perhaps because of semantic considerations, among other things, an undeniable close connection between realism and objectivity – though, as we shall see, realism about value is not exactly the same as realism about what there is and about empirical facts. Mackie backed up his contention by arguing that if values were objective, they would surely be parts of the fabric of the world and that, since we don’t find them as such, values would have to be things (entities or qualities or relations) of a queer sort (Mackie 1977, Chap.1 Sect. 9). And presumably since admission of these would be commitment to intuitionism, which ‘has long been out of favour’ and is otherwise ‘implausible’, the objectivity theory must be false and unacceptable. Mackie’s moral scepticism is thus scepticism about the objectivity of moral values, which should be carefully distinguished from, and must not be confused with, or taken as, scepticism about morality and moral values as such. For such confusion would not only lead a critique of Mackie seriously astray but would also expose a poor understanding of moral values, as is apparent in some writings on Mackie’s position. Bernard Williams (Williams 1985), for example, seems to argue that scepticism about objectivity of moral values and scepticism about moral values as such (our everyday moral convictions) ‘hang together’ and, because of this, attributes to Mackie the view that ‘moral considerations have no place in practical reasoning’, if his error theory is right. Williams says so presumably because, since for Mackie, morals are no candidates for knowledge, his moral scepticism must upset our everyday moral convictions. But I think this sort of criticism is both a misrepresentation of Mackie’s contention and an improper understanding of moral values. To take the latter point first, William’s argument will stand here only if moral values are to be taken as objective by definition; but this is certainly a case of improper identification, for ‘Are values objective?’ is neither an improper question nor is Mackie’s opening statement ‘There are no objective values’ a contradiction in terms. Besides – and that brings us to my first point against Williams’s – Mackie expressed scepticism about the objectivity of moral values, and not about moral values as such,2 as should be clear by now from the foregoing. In fact, Mackie in the said book is quite serious about our everyday moral convictions, 2  It is odd that Williams does not see this, for he goes on to say that Mackie’s error theory meant ‘very roughly to be that of taking moral values to be objective’, ibid, p. 204.

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which he considers as having important bearings on practical reason. A similar confusion can also be seen to be endemic in some other responses to Mackie’s error theory. Simon Blackburn, while claiming that Mackie should have avoided moral (because erroneous) views altogether and taken resort to what he calls ‘shmoralising’ instead of moralizing, seems to have equated ‘moral’ with ‘erroneous’ and to have attributed this view to Mackie. But this, I repeat, is to miss the point, for Mackie did not say that all moral reasoning was based on error, but that only the objectivity theory was, the theory that moral values are objective was. Hence the comment that ‘there is something fishy about holding an error theory, yet continuing to moralise’ (Blackburn 1985, p. 4) is unfair to Mackie and uncalled for, to say the least. The least that Mackie would be committed to have said is that to moralize is to objectivize (in the stronger sense of the term, to be spelt out soon in this chapter). The confusion and the resulting misrepresentation of Mackie’s position is yet again apparent in Hare’s otherwise excellent account of Mackie’s position, with which I find myself in considerable agreement, when he is seen to conclude that Mackie’s endeavour is ‘self-defeating’ on the contentious ground that ‘He [Mackie] first said that moral judgments are all false, and then told us how to decide which moral judgments should we accept’ (Hare 1985). But, once again, all that Mackie can be (dis!) credited with is the view that moral judgments, if they claimed to be objective, are false – not that all moral judgments are false. However, my salvation exercise is not to be taken as a clean chit to Mackie in whatever he has said about the objectivity of moral values and his error theory thereabout. For I suspect that despite Mackie’s splendid display of the absurdity of realism and useful analysis of the concept of objectivity as applied to moral values, certain defects of detail cannot be ignored in his way of presenting the issue at stake. To revert to his queerness argument alluded to above, Mackie is seen to have attributed to the objectivist a sort of ontology that, in order to be objective, moral values will have to be real relations, properties, facts and even entities of some kind, existing out there so that these values must exist somewhere somehow to be grasped by the intellectual faculty of intuition, if not knowable through common observation. Such sorts of claims of realism are queer and implausible, and Mackie rightly rejects them. But in rejecting them, inadvertently he has given a fair amount of concession to an opposite ontological position of antirealism, which is grounded on the equally implausible supposition of nonexistence of moral facts (properties, relations, etc.) out there in the world, as if the discovery of some such things in the world would have obliged him to grant objectivity to some moral values at least. This sort of ontological mode of presenting the issue is familiar and primitive. And in this way of philosophizing, which has become quite fashionable of late, we talk of realism and antirealism with perfect ease; but it is often not clear what exactly is meant by them. For one thing, antirealism can be ambiguous between rejection of realism and idealism (or subjectivism), both of which are distinctively different positions. Holding on to the former, one is content to deny the existence of certain facts, properties and relations out there, not to relegate their existence to somewhere in the mind of the observer, which is the latter position and which is not content

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simply with denying their existence in the external world. Correspondingly, ethical antirealism can mean rejection of the realist theories that values are ontologically objective, and it can also mean – suggested ironically by the subtitle of Mackie’s Ethics – the theory that moral values are subjective inventions. In this second sense, it may be a commitment to ethical subjectivism or a sophisticated form of ethical realism, treating values somewhat like Platonic forms. While declaring that there are no objective values, Mackie’s intention may be taken to be putting forth the former position but never to be espousing the latter. In fact, far from straying into subjectivism or Platonic ‘idea-ism’ with respect to values, he takes considerable conceptual strain to defend our everyday moral convictions and took deliberate care to protect them from the shadow of subjectivism and moral scepticism. But while this part of his thesis comes out clearly enough in his Ethics, his arguments, especially the argument from queerness, dressed in ontological makeup, failed to offer a rational defence of moral convictions, to which quite evidently he was deeply committed.3 Rather his ontological mode of arguing and thinking duped him to concede, albeit indirectly, that values could exist somehow somewhere; his argument that they would in that case be entities or relations of a queer sort accessible to intuitionism, which is ‘out of favour’ and implausible, serves only as a subterfuge. Besides the argument from queerness, the other support for Mackie’s moral scepticism is what he calls the argument from relativity – the argument that social groups or different groups in the same community differ about values and moral codes, that values and moral codes change from time to time – which tells against objectivity of values. But the argument that disagreement and/or relativity undermines objectivity is neither unquestionable nor independent of the sense in which objectivity is understood (S. L. Hurley in Honderich 1985, pp. 54–97). Mackie himself points out that disagreement among historians has nothing to affect objectivity of historical facts (Mackie 1977, p. 36). We can also add similar counters against the relativity argument: the fact that boiling point is relative to altitudes and atmospheric pressure has nothing to show that boiling point is not an objective fact. Even the fact that we feel hot if we dig into freshly cooked hot puree and cold when we touch ice does not affect the fact that this is a universal feature with sentient beings. Obviously, disagreements of particular types are anathema to moral objectivity, and Mackie rightly points out some such relevant disagreements. But the question more to the point here is: what kind of objectivity it is that is relevant and applicable to morality and whether disagreement about and relativity of morality (moral codes and commitments) will affect its objectivity? An elaborate enquiry into the concept of objectivity is therefore in order.

 I am almost in entire agreement with Hare’s argument to this effect (Honderich 1985, p.  53), though I sharply differ from his attribution, because of this, to Mackie the view that moral judgments are all false, for besides being a gross misrepresentation of Mackie’s scepticism, such attribution clearly does not follow from his posing the issue in the ontological mode.

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Objectivity and Independence

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Objectivity and Independence Objectivity, as I have already indicated, has the broad sense of being understood in terms of independence. Metaphysically speaking, things and beings of the external world are said to be objective in the sense that they are independent of the mind’s (our) thinking about them or theorizing about them; they would be there anyway, irrespective of our thinking or knowing about them. This is a philosophical position, which can be described as metaphysical realism. Speaking from the ethical point of view, values are objective, or actions and conducts (of individuals and institutions) are objectively right or wrong if they are so, independently of our judging them to be so. They would be so anyway, whether or not particular moral judgments are made or despite – and this is a speciality of moral realism – some of us making judgments to the contrary, perhaps by acting on impulse or inclinations. [We could say on impulse or on inclination that x is wrong, which it is not or which most of us would say is not; but we do not say on impulse or on inclination that something is unreal which it is not or which most of us would say is not.] But while this understanding of objectivity in terms of independence is innocuous and rather trivial, the concept, in its application, has displayed two sorts of implications. For a convenient starting point, let me call these implications literalism and liberalism. In the literal sense, our intellectual history has equated ‘objectivity’ with ‘real’, ‘universal’, ‘absolute’ and ‘unexceptionable’ in its application. Objective reality of x (a thing, a fact, a property or a relation) requires x to be absolutely independent or ‘purged’ of all peculiarities of the perspectives of the observer or the agent. Moral values in this sense are supposed to be entirely agent-neutral, which is taken as true value or truly objective value. But this is a kind of objectivity which, even though appealing and often craved for by philosophers (including moral philosophers), is elusive and utopian. Philosophers have craved for it knowing well enough that they cannot get it. We have seen the likes of this in the Cartesian quest for certainty, in Plato’s quest for the ideal state and in Hegel’s model of the absolute. In moral philosophy the model of literal objectivity has been reflected in the quest for absolute standards of values (or absolute values) and moral behaviour. The search in each case has ended in scepticism, for the obvious reason that the objectivity sought was not gettable. Such searching for, and sticking to, literal objectivity in the realm of values has created serious problems in the application of many of our celebrated moral principles. Yet the quest has rather obstinately continued over the ages. In recent times, Nagel displays a somewhat similar search for objectivity and inevitably espoused scepticism, (Nagel 1986) as that sort of objectivity is nowhere to be found. Nagel’s problem was ‘how to combine the perspective of a particular person inside the world with an objective view of that same world, the person and his view included’ (Nagel 1986, p. 3). As Dancy precisely pointed out, this was seen to be a problem because Nagel saw the subjective/objective viewpoints as in essential tension, which both demands and resists a solution (Dancy 1993). Partly reminiscent of the Kantian discomfort with the thing-in-itself that nevertheless exists and is yet supposed to be unknowable and inaccessible to the

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understanding, Nagel’s problem was how to achieve absolute detachment from the specifics and peculiarities of the knower’s perspectives, nothing – literally nothing – of which should remain to infect and corrupt the objective view of the world. But search for this sort of objectivity very soon lands him up in scepticism evident in his remark that: However often [read hard] we may try to step outside ourselves, something will have to stay behind the lens, something in us will determine the resulting picture, and this will give grounds for doubt that we are really getting closer to reality – Nagel (1986, p. 68)

The idea of ‘stepping back’ from one’s perspectives of knowing in order to have an objective knowledge of the world lays bare an inevitable antilogy which cannot be gotten rid of, and yet we want to get rid of it. Nagel wants to adopt both the subjective and objective viewpoints and strives to surmount the tension between them that is nonetheless insurmountable. A typical spot and puzzle situation that wisdom finds philosophers often entrapped in (Wisdom 1953). The tension, I suspect, is largely because of the picture of an extreme opposition between subjective and objective and taking the latter in an absolute, literal sense. Surface semantics of course suggests this uneasy picture, but actual usage and particularistic analysis would undermine the opposition and ease the tension. Liberated from literalism, objectivity of the view of the world would be seen to be compatible with the subjective perspective of a particular person knowing the world. Taking a liberal view of objectivity, our knowledge of the external world, though inevitably interfered with by our subjective experience and personal perspectives, would nevertheless be objective in the sense that it would be open to intersubjective verification and agreement, and that is where universalizability gets a firm foothold. Our knowledge of the secondary qualities, such as colour and sound, is a very good case in point. Colours (perception of them, i.e.) are conditioned by sentience, to be sure, but that does not make the colour ascriptions subjective, nor would it justify denying the description of ‘objective knowledge’ to them. Hearing the whistling noise of a passing train, though likewise influenced by our auditory conditions, is nevertheless an objectively occurring noise, intrasubjectively recognized as the sound of a passing train. Neither the colour (red, e.g.) nor the sound (of the passing train, e.g.) can be said to be cent per cent genuine to the fullest satisfaction of the sceptic’s demand for absolute objectivity; but that does not make our use of colour and sound words meaningless and our colour and sound statements false, nor does it make the fact of things being (called) red and particular sounds being (called) what they are a mere matter of subjective appearances. It is for this reason that moral values have often been considered analogous to secondary qualities (Mackie 1977 and McDowell 1985). The reason for this secondary quality model of value awareness is that ordinary evaluative thought presents itself as a matter of sensitivity to aspects of the world.

Objective Tolerance: The Secondary Quality Model of Value Awareness

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 bjective Tolerance: The Secondary Quality Model of Value O Awareness I am rather inclined to think that moral values have a strong reason to be treated as objective in the described sense. For values are essentially connected with the agent’s will and yet equally essentially are universalizable in the sense in which we have seen them to be, far from being objective in the absolute, literal sense. Thus, like the secondary properties, moral properties such as wrongness or rightness of actions are objective in the liberal sense or in a secondary sense, if we may so call it.4 Objectivity of wrongness is because of its independence: the action would be wrong independent of our judging it to be so and despite anybody’s judging it not to be so, since its being wrong is a matter of intersubjective agreement. It can further be said that ‘wrong’, like ‘red’, has an objective property or disposition to arouse a response in us; ‘red’ creates a typical colour experience, while ‘wrong’ causes in us a certain response, an attitude of disapproval or condemnation. To put it in a more objective phraseology, a thing being red has the property of looking red while an action being wrong has the property of not-to-be-doneness built into their nature. This property in both cases is not only out there but also is intrinsic in the colour (redness) and the value (wrongness). In this sense values are shown to be both objective and intrinsically related to the will (Dancy 1993, pp. 156–157). Because of the latter, we have to admit, as McDowell does, that values cannot have primary objectivity or what I have been calling absolute or literal sense of objectivity. Primary objectivity, as it has been pictured, has to be defined in terms of absolute independence, a view that is completely free from the peculiarities of the (individual’s) perspective of knowing, judging and theorizing, as Nagel demands of it. But as Nagel himself is forced to see, this would have to be literally a view from nowhere and hence would not be a plausible view at all, (Nagel 1986, p. 68) since ‘something must stay behind the lens’, ‘something in us will determine the resulting picture’. In the face of this difficulty, which is a difficulty of principle, Nagel settles for a less ambitious strategy that he calls ‘objective tolerance’ (Nagel 1986, p. 130ff), which is that we should be content with the views/principles ‘which would not be rejected by the objective mind’ (the mind with no peculiarities of perspectives). Absolute or primary objectivity, on the contrary, will demand full endorsement (not mere nonrejection) by the objective mind. Moral values cannot have this sort of objectivity simply by virtue of the fact that they are intrinsically related to the will, just as an absolutely objective view of the world cannot be possible since any view of the world would have to presuppose its existence and hence knowability.5 Values, therefore, must admit of a weaker sort of objectivity that can be called secondary objec4  Jonathan Dancy (1993) makes the distinction between primary and secondary objectivity that is virtually the same as what I mean by literal and liberal sense of objectivity. 5  If Kant and P.F. Strawson are of any guidance, “understanding maketh nature” albeit out of given materials, but the given materials cannot be incorruptibly given; and the view of the world, paradoxically, cannot be a view of the world but a view of the world – as knowable, i.e. identifiable and reidentifiable.

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tivity in order for them to admit of a plausible understanding or significance and possible application to the world (more of this soon later on). Thus McDowell: ‘Evaluative “attitudes” and states of will are like, say, colour experience in being unintelligible except as modification of a sensibility like ours’. In this way McDowell showed values to be both objective and intrinsically related to the will. We must, therefore, part company with literalism in the matter of objectivity of moral values, which by no means is parting company with objectivity but is only a justified switchover to the secondary sort of objectivity or what I have been calling a liberal view of it. Primary objectivity, which diehard realists crave for, even if there can be no view of it, is unattainable and as such inapplicable to values and indeed to anything in the world; and so the search for it is irrational, to say the very least. Thomas Nagel did see this, which is evident from his recognition of and settling for ‘objective tolerance’; but his apparently obstinate preference for absolute objectivity not only lands him up in scepticism (‘something will stay behind the lens’) endemic in conventional philosophizing, but also forces him to discriminate between agentrelative values (which can have only secondary objectivity) and agent-neutral values which he claims to be true value, of which the former is alleged to be a distortion. Jonathan Dancy exposed this weakness of Nagel fairly tersely (Dancy 1993, p. 153). This is certainly a mistaken idea, since both sorts of values are recognized kinds of objective value, and, though the agent-neutral values are usually considered more objective than the agent-relative ones, the latter, on occasions, can compete with the former and sometimes defeat the former. But with absolute objectivity as his dominant model, Nagel finds it hard to show this, which nonetheless was one of his main objectives in this book. Observing this, Dancy points out that because of this craving for absolute objectivity, “Nagel’s form of moral realism is construed in such away as to diminish its own chance of success” (Danccy 1993, p. 154).

Craving for Absolute Objectivity: Sources and Solution Why, then, is this obstinate obsession with absolute objectivity, particularly when values can never have this sort of objectivity (because of their being essentially related to the will)? Why, indeed, is this recurring category preference when distinct categories or forms of objectivity are a fairly recognized fact? I suspect that this is because of certain confusion or confusions involved in our understanding of the concept of values and the claims of objectivity thereof. Let me refer to this preference for absolute or literal objectivity as ‘the preference’. The first confusion that, I think, is responsible for ‘the preference’ relates to our understanding of the concept of value. It is the confusion between two senses in which we quite familiarly understand the concept. The concept of value has two dimensions, and accordingly it can be understood in two different ways: ‘value’ can mean ‘values people hold’ or it can mean ‘values things have’ (Mohanty 2000). The distinction is also due to the fact that value is a function involving both a subject who values and an object (action or agent) that is valued. In the former sense, value is an activity of the rational mind

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and as such is subjective, and in the latter sense, it is an object out there, having reference to something beyond the valuing subject. Although we are quite aware of this ambiguity involved in the meaning of value, the mind’s proneness to opt for what is objective in preference to anything subjective leads us to confuse the two senses of value or rather assimilate the subjective sense to the objective one and thus to take value as objective, independent of the mind’s function of valuing or making value judgments. The second confusion leading to the preference for absolute objectivity is what I think to be the confusion between two senses of ‘independence’, which, quite obviously, define objectivity. To return to the secondary quality model of value awareness, secondary properties like colour and sound are essentially phenomenal, and so they could not be instantiated without there being minds for them to appear to. In this sense, they are dependent on the mind perceiving them. Likewise, Mackie and McDowell point out values are related to the will without which they could not be experienced or be made aware of. But, we have seen, this does not prevent them from being objective in the secondary sense. This objectivity they (redness and wrongness alike) earn because of their independence, independence from the mind or will knowing or making colour statements or value judgments. An object can be objectively red even if nobody is actually looking at it. It is there anyway, independent of any particular experience. Similarly an action can be objectively wrong even though nobody is actually making any judgment about it; it is there anyway, independent of any particular value judgment. This, as we have seen, is secondary objectivity which the secondary properties and moral values can at best be credited with. But the mind’s proneness to prefer anything independent and objective to anything that is relative and dependent (hence subjective) leads us on to regard values as objective in the absolute, literal sense. The proponents of absolute objectivity appear to overplay the ideas of independence, which these properties (secondary and moral) do in fact enjoy. But here, I suspect, an essential confusion is involved between two senses of independence. The first is the sense – call it the ‘weak sense of independence’ (WSI) – in which redness or wrongness would be there anyway, independent of any particular experience. The second is the sense – call it the ‘strong sense of independence’ (SSI) – in which redness or wrongness would be there anyway, independent of any possible experience. Values and secondary properties are independent and hence objective as per the WSI and can never be so as per the SSI. For the fact that a thing can be red even though nobody is actually looking at it has nothing to show that there could be colours of which there could no possible experience by anybody, and the fact that an action could be right or wrong even though nobody is actually judging it to be so has nothing to show that actions could be right or wrong even though no possible judgement could be made about them. Absolute objectivity could be attributed to values only at the risk of confusing between the two senses of independence thus discerned and assimilating the WSI to the SSI, which are evidently discernible, as shown above. Perhaps because of confusions of the described types – which may be one reason, and there are other reasons also – the preference for absolute objectivity has gained ground. But a rational account of moral values and moral reasons for valuing facts, proper-

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ties and actions would reveal that moral values have a secondary sort of objectivity. By accepting secondary objectivity for values, it is shown that values are both objective and intrinsically related to the will, which means that values being objective is not entirely incompatible with their being related to, and dependent on, the valuing subject in anyway. This is how I take McDowell to have wanted to highlight and emphasize the crucially important fact that our moral values are normative as well as causal6 (causally related to the will, i.e.). But it is because of the fact that values do not ‘pull their own weight in the causal story’ that people are often persuaded to abandon objectivity as redundant to the world, (Dancy 1993, p.  157) which is seen to be the case with Mackie for an example (Ethics, Chap. 1). Abandoning objectivity of values, as Mackie expressedly does, or claiming that objectivity in this case does not matter, as Hare seems to do, purportedly point to the unreality (ontological) of the values and this we have seen to be the denial of objectivity to them in the literal sense. For, Mackie makes it abundantly clear when he says, ‘…my thesis that there are no objective values is specifically the denial that any such categorically imperative element is objectively valid. The objective values which I am denying would be action-directing absolutely, not contingently … upon the agent’s desires and inclinations’ (Mackie 1977, p. 29) and ‘[t]he difficulty of seeing [as Hare complained, PKM] how values could be objective is a fairly strong reason for thinking that they are not so’ (ibid, p. 24). This he says with apparent sympathy for Hare. This difficulty of not ‘seeing’ how values are objective, because they do not exist as part of the fabric of the world, issuing in fact from metaphysical realism confused with moral realism, is justifiably countered by accepting secondary objectivity for moral values. For one thing, values are thus shown to be part of the objective world, to which our valuings are responses, and for another, in being intrinsically related to the will and the valuing mind, they are not required to be absolutely objective and entirely independent of our valuing responses. Viewed from this perspective, far from being unreal or unattainable, objectivity of moral values can be ‘seen’ to be there in our rational account of how or when an action is wrong – how we rationally determine or satisfy ourselves, as we do more often than not, whether an action is wrong. It is quite possible to arrive at a moral conclusion, even though that conclusion is not a statement of fact about what exists in rerum

6  This is where lies an essential difference between values and secondary properties, like colour, despite both being dispositions to cause typical responses in the observer. For, as McDowell points out, value as a disposition elicits merited responses in us. This is also explained by the fact that wrongness or rightness of actions causes an attitude of disapproval and approval and the corresponding response of condemnation or commendation, which is not the case with observation of secondary qualities. So even if the analogy between moral qualities and secondary qualities is quite ‘tempting’, R.M. Hare cautions against pressing the analogy too far, for it would obliterate this important difference between the two. ‘The reaction which, according to this sort of phenomenalist view of morality, ‘produce” the moral quality’, says Hare, ‘are attitudes such as approval and disapproval. But these, unlike the perception of something red, are subject to our reasoned choices’. (Honderich, 1985, p. 47) Emphasis added.

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natura. Ethical rationalism does not essentially require ethical realism. Hare argued (in Honderich 1985, p. 48): People become realists and insist that the quality of wrongness has to be part of the fabric of the world, because they think that unless this is so, there will be no way of rationally deciding such questions. But are they right to think this? They think it only because they are victims of a prejudice that is almost universal among moral philosophers.

The prejudice, Hare points out, is a prejudice about rationality, which is that those procedures are rational – and only those are – which lead to making of statements. Hume, of whom Mackie seems to have been an ardent follower, was clearly a victim of this prejudice; for he insisted that nothing can be an object of reason if it is not statable in terms of truth and falsehood – agreements and disagreements to real relations of ideas or real existence and matters of fact (Hume 1978). Hare, for whom the function of moral judgments (our valuings, i.e.) are essentially prescriptive, thinks that we can rationally decide what to do and what to ask or advise others to do without having to depend solely on the factual elements, which may be nonetheless there in the process of reasoning. However, when Hare said that ethical rationalism does not need ethical realism, it has to be understood with some caution. For I think what he had in mind in saying that ethical realism is not required, or does not matter, in a rational account of morality is moral realism as a specific case of metaphysical realism, which demands absolute objectivity and independence for moral values. This is evident from his eagerness to ‘get away from the supposedly ontological question which allegedly divided the realist and anti-realist’(see Honderich 1985, p. 47) and from his argument, directed against Mackie, that ‘we need not worry about whether moral facts and moral qualities exist’(ibid, p. 48). This is surely the purported existence of moral qualities absolutely independent – ontologically independent – of the valuing mind or will, and Hare was right in denying this sort of realistic claim. (And Mackie too was right in doing so). But this is not to deny the claims of moral realism altogether and surely this is not what Hare wanted to do. For he is seen defending a form of realism regarding moral facts and moral qualities, which is evident from his claim that – Doubtless they are not part of the fabric of the world. But the realists would not disagree. They would rather say “of course the moral properties are not physical properties and moral facts are not physical facts, but all the same they are real properties and facts. Honderich (1985), p. 48. Emphasis added.

In what sense, then, are the moral facts and moral qualities ‘real’? Surely, in a liberal sense or what I have been discussing as the secondary sense, in which they can very well be conceived as objective and real. In this sense, moral realism can be thought delinked from metaphysical realism. David Brink has interesting arguments to show that one can be a metaphysical antirealist but a moral realist and vice versa (Brink 1989). ‘Moral realism’, for him, ‘is roughly the view that there are moral facts and true moral claims whose existence and nature are independent of our beliefs about what is right and wrong’ (Brink 1989, p. 7) – although these facts and qualities are not parts of the world, nor do they exist somewhere else somehow – and he tries to show why moral realism is not amenable to standard metaphysical

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objections (ibid, Chaps. 2–4). Moral facts and moral claims are real and true independent of our beliefs about what is right and what is wrong; to be real they do not have to be parts of the fabric of the world nor that of some supernatural world. Moral realism, thus construed, says Brink, is neutral between subjectivism and objectivism (see ibid, pp. 20–21). This is a significant pointer because, though it is in a way customary to associate moral realism with objectivism and antirealism with subjectivism about values, an acceptable theory of values must be at equal distance from ethical subjectivism and ethical objectivism, both of which are extreme stereotypes. Brink’s preference for moral realism that cuts across these extremes does not conclusively show that moral enquiry is possible only on realist assumptions. But, Brink points out: ‘realism provides a natural explanation, a justification of the way in which we do and can conduct ourselves in moral thought and inquiry’ (ibid, p.  24). At any rate, if the foregoing discussion of objectivity is to hold, one need not espouse antirealism in moral matters simply on the ground that one abandons objectivity in the absolute, literal sense and realism in the metaphysical or ontological sense. Acceptance of ‘objective tolerance’, a secondary form of objectivity, can and does provide justification of moral realism and objectivity of values.

Applicability and Objectivity It is in a way necessary to justify realism and objectivity of moral values in this way since only in this way, i.e. only in taking objectivity of morality in this sense those moral theories can have application to the world. Ethical theories have a built-in applicability to the world, firstly because, like every genuine theory, ethical theories being practically applicable is a theoretical requirement and, secondly because ethics is meant to provide guidance for practical living. I have argued elsewhere (Mohapatra 2008) that the requisite conditions of application being satisfied with regard to the nature of the world and of the people in it, if some ethical theories are not, or seem not to be, applicable to the world, the theories must suffer from some theoretical defect. And this defect we have shown to be an unqualified adherence to absolute objective standards of morality: taken in this absolute, literal sense, many of our celebrated moral principles or ethical theories were seen to be either inapplicable or, if applied, leading to consequences which were morally undesirable or even disastrous. Driven by an insatiable craving for absolute objectivity, our risis and saints have set their moral standards much too high to be possibly met by the common man, who naturally fails to live up to them though, ironically, ethics is meant for and needed more by the common man. If morality is to be taught, it is not the liberated savants or saints but the common man who is to be taught what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. And the teaching of ethics carries with it the applicability of the moral principles that we are expected to live up to. If we are taught the virtues of a principle or a set of principles, whose application to the world is impossible or questionable, the principle(s) in question would hold no

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attraction for us, however lofty and profound they are made out to be; we would hold them in high esteem but shrink within if required ourselves to live in accordance with them. This only points to the unreality, and hence unattractiveness, of absolute objectivity, which stands in the way of applicability of ethical theories. As we have seen, the desire to work towards absolute objectivity is the desire to work entirely ‘from outside’ (Nagel 1986), independent of any peculiar perspective of one’s own, a desire to have a view from nowhere. To be sure, such desire is incoherent, but it is not necessary for, and nor any part of, a rational account of morality. Dancy has argued that such a desire is no part of what he calls ‘Hegelian objectification’, (Dancy 1993, p. 152) which pleads for adequacy of what Nagel has described as ‘objective tolerance’ and what I have been referring to as objectivity in the liberal sense for the purpose of having a rational understanding of moral principles and conducting ourselves in accordance with them. In fact any fruitful exercise in moral theory is an exercise in this Hegelian objectification, and that is why Dancy declares that if our moral reasons can survive the process of this weaker sense of (‘Hegelian’) objectification, they will have all the objectivity they are expected to have (see ibid, p. 135). Thus, to repeat, applicability of moral principles, which is an essential part of the spirit of these principles, requires not literal objectivity but liberal objectivity in respect of these principles. Our moral principles need not be applied unexceptionably; they must be applied by taking both the demands of the situation and the spirit of these principles into proper consideration. For in this lies a rational account of moral principles. Of course, rationality requires consistency in judgment and practical application of a principle in all cases. But while this is innocuous, it is in the danger of leading us to, as it has in most cases of conventional moralizing, imposing an abstract requirement of consistency on our moral principles and, for that matter, on rationality which, in turn, would lead to a sort of generalism, the danger of which we have indicated above. Given this view of consistency, what would be required for our moral practice to be rational are some general principles under which particular moral judgments are subsumable. Such flair for a ‘subsumptive’ concept [courtesy: Jonathan Dancy] of rationality and consistency, which Hare, for example, displays in his otherwise ingenuous account of universalizability, (Hare 1963) and the consequent generalism it leads to, has the tendency to generalize on the basis of limited resemblances (between several cases) and ignore the peculiarities of particular problems and situations which call for variant choices and explanations. The rigidity of this view of rationalism and consistency makes it not only implausible, but it also makes several moral principles inapplicable because of their alleged inconsistency. I have argued that consistency and rationality truly demand that we apply our principles to all relevant cases, not to all cases indiscriminately. For this purpose, a weaker sense of consistency and a weaker sense of objectivity is strong enough. Mackie’s emphasis on the importance of our moral convictions, not to be affected by his denial of objective values, is a tacit acceptance of objectivity of moral values in this weaker sense in preference to the supposed absolute objectivity, which he has expressedly denied. Any possible criticism (we do indeed come across several of them) that Mackie allows a smooth entry to objectivity through the back door that he resisted at the front door is not only too

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simplistic but is symptomatic of a common confusion between the two senses of objectivity discerned above – a common confusion to which Nagel fell prey as well, as we have seen above; for how else does one account for his acceptance of ‘objective tolerance’ as well as his scepticism expressed in his concern that something still will stay behind the lens, that something in us will determine the resulting picture? This is clearly because of his attempt to run the two senses of objectivity simultaneously. Though he accepted the reality of the secondary form of objectivity as well as Hegelian objectification, his dominant model still remained to be that of primary objectivity and absolute objectification with which he seems to have confused the former, as Dancy has pointedly alleged (see Dancy 1993, pp. 151 and 153). What follows from the foregoing as a matter of conclusion is this: if objectivity is semantically tied up with morality, it is a matter of practicality that moral values be objective in a secondary sense, in the described liberal sense and not in the absolute, literal sense. For sticking to the latter would make our moral principles either inapplicable or applicable only at the risk of leading to morally undesirable consequences. Inapplicable moral principles are not only uninteresting and not ethical theories worth the name but are detrimental to the spirit of ethics, whose prime objective is to provide guidance and directions for moral living in practical life; and the last requires that ethical theories must be applicable, and applicable effectively, to deal with problems of practical life. This much is implied by our claim that ethical theories have a built-in applicability. We fall back, therefore, on a liberal and weaker sense of objectivity in respect of moral values and moral principles, which have the merit of explaining better the nature and spirit of our moral principles and their applicability to the world.

References Blackburn, S. (1985). Error and phenomnology of values. In T. Honderich (Ed.), Morality and objectivity: A tribute to J.L. Mackie. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Brink, D. (1989). Moral realism and the foundations of ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dancy. (1993). Moral reasons (p. 144). Oxford: Blackwell. Hare, R.  M. (1985). Ontology in ethics. In Honderich (Ed.), Morality and objectivity (p.  53). London: Routledge/Kegan Paul. Hare, R. M. (1963). Freedom and reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Honderich, T. (Ed.). (1985). Morality and objectivity: A tribute to J. L. Machie. London: Routledge/ Kegan Paul. Hume, D. (1978). In P. Niddich (Ed.), A Treatise of human nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hurley, S. (1985). Objectivity and disagreement. In T. Honderich (Ed.), Morality and objectivity: A tribute to J. L. Mackie. London: Routledge/Kegan Paul Mackie, J. L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing right and wrong. London: Penguin. McDowell, J. (1985). Value and secondary qualities. In Honderich (Ed.), Morality and objectivity: A tribute to J.L. Mackie. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul

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Mohanty, S. K. (2000), Persons, mind and value, ed. himself, New Delhi: Decent Books Mohapatra, P.  K. (2008). Ethics and society: An essay in applied ethics. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Co. Nagel, T. (1986). The view from nowhere. New York: Oxford University. Press. Williams, B. (1985). Ethics and the fabric of the world. In H. Ted (Ed.), Morality and objectivity (pp. 204–205). London: Routledge/Kegan Paul. Wisdom, J. (1953). Philosophy and psychoanalysis. London: Basil Blackwell.

Chapter 4

Universalisability and Objectivity

Ethical realism in the ontological sense has an attractive appeal as it carries with it a strong baggage of objectivity and universality, which is inevitably built into the nature of ethics. For despite varied differences among moral philosophers – from Greek philosophers to Kant, Hutcheson, Hare and right up to Rawls and Habermas – on the nature of ethics and ethical principles, one thing that irresistibly binds them together is the idea that anything ethical must be somehow universal. ‘Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’, said Immanuel Kant. R.M. Hare saw ‘universalisability’ as an essential logical feature of moral judgments, and continental philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre and critical theorists like Jurgen Habermas also agreed that ethics in some sense must be universal. Notwithstanding the fact that particular ethical judgments need not be universally applicable, circumstances often altering the cases, what we cannot deny is that ‘[E]thics goes beyond “I” and “you” to the universal law, the universalisable judgment, the standpoint of the impartial spectator or ideal observer’ (Singer 1993). But this universal aspect in bare formal terms gets inextricably tied up with the idea of absolute objectivity of moral values, which we have seen to be anathema to the spirit of ethics and pose serious problems for its application to actual life situations. Therefore a careful examination of the contentious notion of universalisability and its implications on ethics and its applicability is called for. And this is for two reasons: firstly, on common understanding of morality and moral judgments, a moral judgment needs to be universalizable in order to qualify as one; and in this sense, universalisability is a test criterion. The second reason, which is more to the point, is that the requirement of universalisability has been a major factor responsible for the craving for objectivity (in the absolute sense) of moral values and for the related claim that moral judgments be objectively true and unfailingly valid and applicable. Universalisability as a test criterion of moral judgments is supposed to provide a rationale for universal applicability of value predicates, because of which Kurt Baier, for example, was led to observe that moral principles admit of no exceptions that the moral point of view based on universalisability provides an objectivity and disinterested perspective for resolution of © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 P. K. Mohapatra, An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7503-3_4

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conflicts of interests. ‘Universalisability’, says Baier, ‘involves conforming to rules even when doing so is unpleasant, painful, costly or ruinous to oneself’ (Baier 1958). Now, while the first of the above claims about universalisability is perfectly innocuous and beyond dispute, the second claim calls for careful examination. Does universalisability imply objectivity of the moral values? If so, in what sense? My first approach to this would be that, although it is quite tempting to assume that objectivity is semantically inalienable from the concept of universalisability, this has not passed as an undisputable fact. Mackie, for one, has drawn attention to several subjective elements in universalisability (Mackie 1977,  pp.  97–102). However, I leave the defence of Mackie to himself. My plea for adding to the controversy is my apprehension that, as stated, the doctrine of universalisability cannot be always true and that, if it cannot be true always, it loses the force it claims to have for promoting the case for objectivity of moral judgments and moral values. Let us examine the doctrine as stated by its proponents. R.M. Hare, who is eminently known as the author of the notion of universalisability, held that moral judgments are universalisable in the sense that a person making a moral judgment is committed to making the same judgment in any relevant and similar situation. Expressed in another way, moral judgments are universalisable in the sense that anyone who judges that an action is right or wrong, good or bad and ought or ought not to be done is committed to taking the same view about any other relevant and similar action. The crucial concept, then, is ‘relevantly similar’. A situation is relevantly similar to another if there are a set of properties, x, which it shares with that first situation and x was the person’s reason for making the moral judgment in that other situation originally. And if any situation resembles the first one in respect of this limited set of properties, X, that makes us compelled to make the same judgment here or, otherwise, to withdraw the judgment made in the first case. Universalisation, thus, implies that each moral judgment we make creates a moral principle: if our reasons for approving a certain action was a set of features, x, that creates for us the principle that all actions having x are right. However, although this makes reasonably good sense, the principle can be shown to be false if, in a new situation, some feature, n, within the set of features, x, could prominently stand out as a reason against and defeat the principle of universalisation. This defeating feature, which was nonetheless present in the first case, was not enough to defeat our reasons in favour; but in the new case, it appears in a greater degree to act as a strong enough reason to defeat our earlier reason in favour. To borrow an example from Jonathan Dancy, the action in the first case, let us suppose, was kind and generous but ‘a bit thoughtless’. Apparently this last feature was ignored, and the action was approved for its kindness and generosity (not for its thoughtlessness). The action in the second case is just as kind and generous but ‘grossly thoughtless’, which is enough reason to disapprove the action. The doctrine of universalisability is thus found to be false, despite the presence of all the three said features. Perhaps, the defenders of universalisability would like to change the account of ‘relevant similarity’ and broaden the universalisability base by including the reasons against, in addition to the reasons in favour, as the point of resemblance. This, Dancy points out, may dispose of the original problem but would be vulnerable to new sorts of

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counterexamples. For instance (see Dancy 1993, pp. 80–81), suppose a man knocks down a woman with his car and then takes her to the hospital, pays for the exuberant hospital expenses, looks after her and so on. Because of this we approve of his subsequent/postaccident actions as marks of regret and admission of guilt and accountability. But we would not be committed to approve of another man behaving in exactly similar manner under similar circumstances with the ulterior motive to seduce the woman away from her husband. Are we going to say here that the fact that the first person had no ulterior purpose of seducing the woman was among our reasons for approving his actions? This would only be a naked attempt to shield the first judgment from the threat of counterexamples and, by implication, protect the universalisability principle from being falsified at any cost. One is here reminded of Flew’s snubbing accusation of ‘death by a thousand qualifications’ (Flew 1964) directed against the theologian’s fright for falsification. Are we not trivializing an otherwise fine principle, the principle of universalisability, by going on including additional reasons, even negative reasons (like absence of the ulterior motive for seduction, in the above example), solely for the purpose of protecting it from falling short of objectivity? I shall shortly argue that by not being objective and universal in application, the principle of universalisablity would not cease to be a sound basis of moral judgments, nor does it become subjective or relative for that matter. On the contrary, frequently changing the notion of ‘relevantly similar’ and shifting the universalisability base would tend to be relative and trivially inclusive. And why must we do this? Only to protect the principle behind a moral judgment as universal and unexceptionably objective? But this tendency for generalism and literal adherence to objectivity, besides being some sort of a parody of philosophical circumspection, can be the cause of many bad moral decisions, some of which I have cited elsewhere (my Ethics and Society, Concept, Delhi, 2008, ch1). Such bad decisions are usually the result of ill-judged attempts to fit what we are to say in one particular occasion to what we had said on another occasion; it could be the unjust decision of a person who insists on this on this occasion because of having made a similar decision on another (putatively similar) occasion.1 The resemblant features, which characterize relevantly similar actions or situations, are not something fixed and limited, nor are all of them equally important in every case. As we have seen, one of the features in the set of resembling features (e.g. the feature of thoughtlessness of an action) may stand out as a reason against calling the action right in a particular case. So reasons may function in new ways in new situations, and if this is not taken due note of, bad decisions will inevitably result. An example can explain: pleasure can be taken as a reason for doing an action because it gives pleasure – normally, that is, – and this can be justified as a universalised moral principle as it is in psychological hedonism. But sometimes, though not generally, it can be a reason against doing it. Hunting of animals, even if pleasant to the hunter, can never be considered

1  This is the main point made byJohn McDowell in his ‘Non-cognitivism and Rule Following’ in Holtzman and Leich (eds) Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.

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as an approved action. Ray Hattersley has a better example, which is more explanatory in the case against generalism: I have long supported whoever it was who said that the real objection to fox hunting is the pleasure that the hunters get out of it…If killing foxes is necessary for the safety and survival of other species, I – and several million others – will vote for it to continue. But the slaughter ought not to be fun.(See Dancy 1993, p. 61)

What this points to is the fact that pleasure, though a universalisable reason for action, can’t be reason in all cases; what it further points to is that slaughter of a dreaded species (threatening the existence of some other species), though universalisable, can be a case of immoral action if it is done for fun. The point is that slaughter ought not to be done for fun. A morally sanctioned act of slaughter can cease to be moral if it is done for fun. Thus, what is not so important in making moral judgments is the question ‘which other case does this case best resemble?’ as the question ‘what is the nature of the case before us?’ Dancy again: Of course a comparison with other cases may help us to decide how things are here, just as a long experience of car engines may help us to diagnose the fault this time. But this decision or diagnosis is still essentially particular. It would be surprising if a long and varied moral experience did not serve to sharpen one’s sensitivity for the future. But in neither case is one’s first question what one can say here is consistent with what one has said elsewhere. The crucial question is how things are in the case before us (ibid, p. 63).

A moral judgment, we have said, generates a moral principle. Moral principles can, therefore, be learnt in particular cases. And we may add, generalism, in encouraging the tendency not to look hard enough at the details of the case, can lead to decisions that can be over-simplistic and dubious. Thus the semantic consideration, which has guided many a moralist to club together the concept of universalisability and objectivity, has been very misleading in locating the logic of universalisability. As Mackie argued, ‘a logical or semantic truth is no real constraint on belief nor, analogously, can one be any real constraint upon action or prescription or evaluation or choice of policy’ (Mackie 1977, p. 98). While engaging in practical reasoning, the semantic or semilogical inalienability of universalisability and objectivity (in the sense of universality) may reasonably take a back seat, and a decision to deal effectively with the situation may guide one’s action. Alluding back to the sadharana dharma of truth telling or promise keeping, the logic of ‘ought’ demands speaking the truth and keeping one’s promise by all moral persons. But, as it happened in the Mahabharat, this had led to morally disastrous consequences (Kaushika’s telling the truth to the evil-minded robbers and Bhishma keeping his promise to remain loyal to the throne and even becoming a helpless (?) spectator to Draupadi’s humiliation), not certainly acceptable to moral common sense. (Drona’s obdurate display of gratitude to Dhritarastra is another such example, and examples are not rare in Indian epics). Considering the gravity of the situations, they were logically free to opt out of this sort of moral language game and could have justifiably broken their promise in order to prevent the disastrous consequences that followed. Did not Lord Krishna break his promise not to take up arms in the battle of Mahabharat? The really interesting fact is that such sorts of decision-making would have been not

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only moral (in the true spirit of ethics) but also universalisable: deciding to prevent disaster is a moral law which anyone would will to be a universal law, as Kant had prescribed. The fact rather is that universalisability, far from being meant as an abstract principle and a holistic ground for moral judgments and values, is wedded to taking account of the peculiarities of the particular situations in deciding the morality or otherwise of an action and in discerning values from disvalues. This should be quite evident from the crucial concept of relevantly similar situations and actions involved here. And that enables us to apply a moral principle in all relevant cases – not in all cases indiscriminately. Whether a particular situation is relevantly similar to any other situation for making the relevant moral judgment depends crucially on the nature of the case rather than the apparently oversimplified features overviewed as common to both the situations. You can generalize a principle taking the specific factors into consideration and not making abstractions from them. M. G. Singer aptly opines: The generalization principle must be understood in the sense that what is right for one person must be right for every relevant and similar person in relevantly similar circumstances. (M. G. Singer 1961)

The minimum that is required is that moral judgments are universalisable subject to the proviso that the conditions are similar or remain the same. If so, their interests, purposes and ideals are taken into account – pace Hare and even Kant – because these factors also constitute the relevant conditions making the situations relevantly similar. What should guide the generalization – and this is the force of objectivity and impartiality involved – is what is the nature of the case rather than what is our nature. What determines a value for me is not what I am inclined to do or believe by my nature but what merit lies in the nature of the object valued. And what is the merit of the case is what conforms to our moral sense – intuitionism in ethics is entitled at least this much to tell us. The dictates of our moral intuition normally lead us to notice the merit in the case as distinct from what one is inclined to think about the case. We adopt a maxim for its own sake, not for our purposes. In other words, we act not so much as to serve inclinations as out of respect for some features of the maxim. R. M. Hare is perfectly right in saying that whenever we commend, we have in mind something about the object commended, which is the reason for our commendation (Hare 1952). With these provisos, Hare and even Kant are entitled to their forms of universalisability. Moral judgments are universalisable if it is determined that others who are relevantly similar to me not only could act in the way I am acting but also that they should do so (Hare), or if it is determined that my maxim could stand as a law for all rational beings, then all rational beings could act on the maxim (Kant). What must not be lost sight of is that ethics is empirical, a product of social life, and so moral principles grow out of taking account of social realities, i.e. the peculiarities of particular cases of moralising. Abstract generalism and literal objectivism are often impediments in their understanding and applicability. Universalisability, it must be borne in mind, is not universality; to say that a moral principle or a moral judgment is universalised is not, therefore, to say that it is universal.

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What follows from the foregoing is that a proper understanding of the universalisability requirement of ethics and moral judgments removes the commonplace assimilation of universalisability and universality and affects the consequent appreciation of compatibility of the former with context-specific explication of moral judgments. This in turn rids us of the fixation with absolute objectivity conventionally attached to ethics and moral value/judgments. And this brings home the fact, as shown in the last chapter, that objectivity in moral matters does not have to be that in the absolute literal sense. A rational account of morality would effectively reveal that the secondary quality model, or what can be said to be the secondary sense, of objectivity is appropriate in moral matters. To repeat, moral realism is not another form of metaphysical realism, for it is fairly possible to arrive at a moral conclusion even though that conclusion is not a statement of fact about what exists in rerum natura.

References Baier, K. (1958). The moral point of view. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Dancy, J. (1993). Moral reasons (p. 80). Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Flew, A. G. N. (1964). Theology and Falsification. In A. G. N. Flew & A. McIntyre (Eds.), Body, mind and death. London: Macmillan. Hare, R. M. (1952). Language of morals (p. 130). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mackie, J. L. (1977). Ethics: Inventing right and wrong. London: Penguin Books. Singer, M. G. (1961). Generalization in ethics. New York: Alfred A Knop. Singer, P. (1993). Practical ethics (3rd ed., p. 11). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 5

Ethical Theorizing in Indian Philosophy

A major objective of the present work has been to understand and analyse some prominent ethical theories of India and their possible application in actual life situations. Indian ethical theories are of special significance because they have in them pregnant hints of applicability as much as many of them typify – so at least they seem to be doing – inapplicable abstract theories. Our analysis in the second and third chapters above has considerably weakened the claim to absoluteness of such theories and their purported inviolability, thereby making their practicality and application potentials compellingly plausible. In this endeavour, some amount of hermeneutic exercise is, and was, inevitable, which is an essential aspect of critical thinking that is characteristic of philosophizing. And critical thinking about any theory and/or rules of practice would not be truly critical as long as it tends to legitimize and obey them in their received form and tenor. Therefore Indian philosophers, in the darsanas, have taken resort to anviksiki or discursive intellectual sophistication, as a result of which theory and application maintained close proximity in Indian philosophical systems. To be sure, one way of understanding the relation between theory and practice – a very common understanding of it, we can say – is that practice is the application or use of theories. But conspicuously in the Indian context, philosophy is not merely theory but is essentially application of theories to practical life. Buddhist philosophy, in particular, is eminently known for its emphasis on practical efficiency of theories so much so that the theories per se have assumed very little or even no significance if not found useful in life. The Advaita Vedantins, particularly in their theory of value and ethical life, have made application or applicability of a theory an essential precondition of ethical theorizing. Sankara, for example, is eminently known to have insisted that a value has to be realized before it can be counted or called a value (Sankara 2000, VS,II). (We will have more of this soon later in this chapter).

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 P. K. Mohapatra, An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7503-3_5

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On Indian Philosophy Being Practical This emphasis on the practical nature Indian philosophy has been conspicuous in most of the writings on Indian philosophy. Indeed many, particularly Indian writers on Indology and Indian philosophy, have claimed this practical character as a distinguishing feature of Indian thought in contradistinction from the putatively theoretical nature of western thought. The most common understanding of the supposedly practical nature of Indian philosophy has been in terms of the practical goal of removing suffering and attaining a state of eternal bliss known as moksa. In almost all major systems of Indian philosophy, with perhaps a singular exception of the Carvakas, the state of moksa has been elaborately articulated. In this line of thinking, Indian philosophy has been considered a means to moksa and not a theoretical enquiry into the nature of things for its own sake. However, such characterization of Indian philosophy has had a misleading impact on a sizeable number of western thinkers, who have severally alleged that there was no philosophical theory in India: and some even have gone on to declare that it would be a mistake to speak of Indian philosophy. The accusation has been compounded, I suspect, by eminent Indian philosophers and indologists overemphasizing the spiritual and mythical character of Indian thought. In fact a majority of scholars have taken Indian philosophy to be essentially spiritual as well as mystical. Radhakrishnan, for example, writes: Philosophy in India is essentially spiritual … Spiritual experience is the foundation of India’s rich cultural history. It is mysticism, not in the sense of involving the exercise of any mysterious powers but only as insisting on a discipline of human nature, leading to realization of the spiritual (Radhakrishnan 1923).

Besides Radhakrishnan, several eminent philosophers like K.C. Bhattacharya and later on P.T. Raju held on to such description of Indian thought and argued to the effect that the business of philosophy is meditation, not knowledge (Bhattcharaya 1958, p.  xii). Raju held that Indian philosophy is Atman-centric and that Atman constitutes both the beginning and the end of Indian philosophy (Raju 1982). In such scheme of things, widely reflected in contemporary Indian philosophical corpus, intuition rather than logic or religion assumed importance as the avowed method of philosophy. What followed, inevitably, was a gross misconception that there was no philosophy in India and that the Indian mind had no theoretical attitude on philosophy and ethics, which, it was alleged, were nothing but an exercise in spirituality and religion. W.T. Stace, for one, is noted to have argued to this effect. He not only said that Indian philosophy, being nothing but religion and spirituality, was no philosophy worth its name; he also has argued that there was no ethical theory in India, since this requires accepting the reality of the world which Indian thinkers, eminently the vedantins, denounce as unreal (mithya) or appearance, the product of maya. Edmund Husserl thought that there was no pure theoretical thinking in India on the alleged ground that Indian thinking was mythical-practical. Martin Heidegger tangentially subscribed to this view (that there was no philosophy in India) and held on to the view that philosophy was western in origin. This type of

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attitude comes out tersely in ‘…Hegel, who held that Indians had not been able to raise their intuitions to concepts’ (Mohanty 2001, p. 78). The above accusation against Indian philosophy and Indian ethics is symptomatic of a supposed absolute opposition between Indian and western thought  – an opposition that was consciously setup, even carefully articulated, by overly simplistic exegetic works of several western scholars and westernized indologists. The following shorts of contrasts have been easily assumed: One contrast is made between spiritual India and material west, another between the intuitive nature of Indian thought and the intellectual discursive nature of western thinking, and yet another contrast speaks of the practical intent of the former as opposed to the purely theoretical exercise in the latter. Besides this being an utterly uncomfortable projection of regionalization of philosophy on the basis of geographical barriers, several fresh thinking philosophers of twentieth-century India found this contrast grossly counterintuitive, false and insincere. These philosophers, though few in number, gradually but surely came to make an impact on their young audience in the mid-twentieth century. They made it clear (and made us realize) that this way of contrasting between east and west was utterly unreal and misleading. For they came to be fairly convinced that Indian thinking has had a glorious history of being highly intellectual and discursive and rigorously logical and analytical as much as some definite segments of western philosophy have given rise to great spiritual and speculative systems. J.N.Mohanty, B.K.  Matilal, Rajendra Prasad, Daya Krishna, Ganeswar Misra and K.S. Murty may be counted as some of the leading minds who tried to philosophize in new ways. They not only exposed the putative contrasts as grossly dishonest and overly simplistic; they also tried to present Indian philosophy largely as a rigorous exercise in logical analysis and critical thinking in the sense outlined above. K.S. Murty, for example, boldly questioned the described contrast between spiritual India and material west and the general characterization of Indian thinking as spiritual and speculative (Murty 1962) rather than material and practical. Indeed, he pointed out, it is grossly unfair to think that moksa, renunciation and spirituality reflected India’s tradition and culture in its entirety and as exclusive traits thereof. A more serious study, Murty urged, would reveal that Indian thinking has not been exclusively spiritual. One finds this talk of spiritual India and material west not only amusing but cryptically intriguing. Countries which have produced thinkers like Pascal, Schopenhauer and St. John of the Cross and countries that have been the homeland for Taoism and Zen Buddhism cannot be branded as less spiritual than India. Studies in the history of Byzantine Christianity and Orthodox Russian Church as well as the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Pasternak make it easily evident that even the erstwhile Soviet Russia that was considered by many as atheist and even barbarian has always been championing spirituality and the higher values of life. The fact, I emphasize, is that human nature is basically uniform, irrespective of its regional/geographical limitations that may happen to be; and like empirical experience, mystical and metaphysical experience of human beings do have common futures that cannot be allowed branding them as specifically western or specifically Indian (Mohapatra 2008). As Murty aptly pointed out, this illicitly generalized picture of Indian tradition was due to lack of any authentic and compressive history of

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India (with proper emphasis on politics, economics, astronomy, mathematics and medicine, in which Indians have made distinctive contributions) and the almost exclusive stress laid on the sastras that dealt with moksa and nirvana and various forms of liberation. In addition to this, if not instead of this, if Kautilya, Brahmagupta and Varahamihira, Charaka and Vatsyayana had received as much attention as the authors of the Upanishads, Budha and Shankara from competent European and Indian scholars, the picture of India in both the modern western and eastern minds would have been different’ (Murty 1962). Murty ably substantiated his contention by citing various Vedic and Upanishadic sources. Daya Krishna is known for his illuminating interpretations of the concept of moksa in particular and the Indian way of philosophizing in general (Dayakrisna 2007). Ganeswar Misra’s innovative interpretation of Advaita philosophy as a rigorous exercise in logico-linguistic analysis (Misra Ganeswar 1987) has been and continues to be the subject of heated discussion among scholars of contemporary india.1 Rajendra Prasad has been championing the logical and analytical approach to philosophy and Indian philosophy, in particular; his interpretative analysis of crucial concepts of Indian philosophy has had wide-ranging impact on scholars working on Indian philosophy and practical ethics. Philosophical work must not be merely reportive, Prasad says, but analytic and reconstructive wherever necessary (Prasad 1999). All these Indian thinkers have sought to highlight the predominantly theoretical and discursive character of Indian philosophy and Indian ethics. J.  N. Mohanty firmly believes that large segments of Indian philosophy were strictly theoretical, and he sharply differs from Husserl’s contention that Indian philosophy, being mythical-practical, did not develop any theoretical attitude. Mohanty further alleged that Husserl’s contention, supposedly derived from the practicality of Indian philosophy, was the result of ‘…a misconstrual of that practicality and//or a misconstrual of the relation between theory and practice’ (Mohanty 2001). When properly understood, the Indian idea of practicality and of the theory-practice relation would provide for the possibility of theoretical thinking and for connecting theory to practice in an intimate way (Mohanty, ibid p. 20). However, in this interpretative and hermeneutic account of Indian philosophy, Mohanty steers clear between two extreme views on Indian philosophy – that Indian philosophy is essentially spiritual and that it has been always logical and analytical – since, in his view, both the logical/analytical and the spiritual, both the theoretical and the practical, have existed side by side in Indian philosophical corpus. For while his training in Navya-Nyaya gave him first-hand knowledge of the great intellectual heights of Indian thinking, his deep study of Vedanta impressed upon him the logical and analytical acumen of the Vedantins as well as the profound spiritual thoughts they produced. In point of fact, I consider this as a very honest assessment; for Indian philosophy is a rich

1  Misra’s ‘Spirit, Machine and Man’ (General President’s Address at the Hyderabad session of the Indian Philosophical Congress in 1972 and his ‘Metaphysical Models and Conflicting Cultural Patens’ in Indian Philosophy To-day, ed N.K. Devaraja, (New Delhi, McMillan, India) are instructive pointers to his innovative and often hermeneutic analysis.

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repository of such large variety of methods and theories that any general description of its nature is bound to be an act of oversimplification.

Theorizing About Practice Now, coming back to the issue of proper understanding of Indian philosophy being practical and of the Indian view of the theory-practice relation, there is a uniqueness regarding the Indian way of thinking on this, and it is this: Indian thinking has not only been discursively theoretical, but it has had a conspicuous tendency to theorize about practice (ibid esp. pp. 25–27). About the former, it will suffice to mention the tarka (bada) tradition of India or the dialectical method adopted by rival systems of Indian philosophy for establishing their conjectures by refuting the contention of their opponents – a feature of Indian thinking that is too familiar to need any elaboration here. About the latter, let me put the facts in the way Mohanty has so ingenuously done in his work cited above. After having argued that Indian philosophers were engaged in theory, not in practice per se, and in knowledge, not in intuitions, he went on to point out, ‘the Hindu mind was rather constantly engaged in theorizing about practice’ (ibid, p. 25)2. He substantiates this view thus: the four purusarthas – kama, artha, dharma and moksa– are the practical goals pursed by men as a matter of a fact. With this conception in place, the Indian philosophers went on to theorize about them. As a result, we have scientific treatises on each of these goals – Kamasutra of Vatsayana, Arthasastra of Koutilya, Dharmasastra of Jaimini and Brahma sutra of Badarayana; each treatise provides a certain theoretical justification for pursing these goals. The foregoing has indications that, more often in Indian thinking, theory is meant to take care of practice – that although, for Indian thinkers, theory is irreducible to practice – the former is meant to apply in practice, without which the theories would remain vacuous and blind. We may recall here the famous statement of Acharya Sankara in Vedanta Sutra that a value must be realized before it can be called a value. To further substantiate this feature of Indian theorizing, Mohanty quotes from two important texts (Mohanty 2001, p. 20–21) – Vatsayana’s commentary on the Nayasutras and Gangesa’s great work Tattvachintamani. I can do no better than present the two quotations as have been cited by Professor Mohanty himself: Without the means of valid cognition, there is no knowledge of object; without knowledge of the object, there is no success in practical response. The knower experiencing the object with the help of the means of valid cognition, desires to acquire the object or to shun it. The effort to acquire or shun the object gives rise to action. Success of action consists in relation to the ‘fruit’ (phala). Experiencing the object, the knower, desiring to acquire or shun the

2  His following remark is noteworthy: when in Vedantha, Samkhya and much of Buddhism, it was held that knowledge of reality, by dispelling ignorance, shall remove suffering; it is important to reiterate that it is knowledge that they were talking about. For only knowledge can remove ignorance – no amount practice can (Ibid, p. 24).

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5  Ethical Theorizing in Indian Philosophy object, acquires or shuns it. The object is pleasure (or the cause of pleasure) and pain (or the cause of pain). [Vatsyana, Bhasya on Nyaya-Sutra 1.1.1, cited by Mohanty, ibid.]

and In order that discerning persons may have interest in studying the work, Goutama laid down the sutra: ‘Attainment of the highest good comes from right knowledge…’ [Gangesha, ibid, Pratyaksakhanda.cited by Mohanty, ibid.]

The first quotation implies a causal process recognized by all classical schools of Indian philosophy  – a causal chain which states that knowledge leads to desire, desire to effort, effort to actions and actions to consequences or fruits of actions. The second quotation cites a sutra laid down by Gotama that ‘attainment of right fruits comes from right knowledge’; the sutra, which virtually is a theory about practice, implies that discerning persons would study a work only if it serves some worthwhile purpose. In both cases it is the consequence of your actions which matters, and consequence of actions is a practical matter. And Mohanty asserts that these statements of two leading logicians of India correctly reflect the Indian attitude towards the theory-practice relation. Theory and practice have a symbiotic relation. In a sense it is a conceptual truth that theory must have applications, and an application (i.e. practice) presupposes a theory. In the Indian context, the relation is so much intimate and so inseparable that anviksiki, which most appropriately passes as philosophy in India and which is the most theoretical of all the sciences or studies (trayi, varta and dandaniti), also has its practical use insofar as ‘it does good to mankind’, ‘makes one’s intelligence(buddhi) settled in the midst of pleasure and pain’ and ‘makes one an expert in wisdom, speech and action’ (Kautilya 1915, 1.1, 6–7). Besides providing the other three sciences with their critical grounding, it, like them, has its practical beneficial consequences also (Mohanty 2001, p. 21). But this is not to deny, much less belittle, the theoretical character of these sciences or, for that matter, of Indian philosophy and Indian ethics. Critics must adduce stronger arguments to deny this. A closer examination of the possible arguments denying theoretical character to Indian philosophy and Indian ethics is therefore called for. One of the grounds on which Indian philosophy has been alleged not to be theoretical is that it is essentially spiritual and intuitive and hence not amenable to logic and discursive intellection. I have said above that this is a gross oversimplified account of Indian thinking and that, although this may be true of some systems and some aspects of some systems of Indian philosophical and ethical corpus, this is not true of the whole bulk of Indian thinking. Rigorous logical analysis of the Nyaya and Madhyamika systems stands out as uniquely critical and theoretical aspects of Indian thinking. Advaita Vedanta is as much known for its astute logic as for championing spirituality. Therefore, on the aforesaid ground, theoretic character cannot be denied to Indian philosophy and Indian ethics. Another ground, we have seen above, on which Indian philosophy has been accused of lacking in theory is its alleged mythical-practical nature. Husserl and Heidegger are known to have held such view. Together with Hegel’s, their view was to exclude Indian philosophy from being a part of the history of philosophy, for they believed philosophy to be ‘pure theory’ which Indian philosophy was not, and their

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paradigm of this pure philosophy was Greek philosophy, especially the philosophy of Aristotle. J.N. Mohanty effectively comes to grips with this view by retorting that Greek philosophy, ‘certainly through Socrates and Plato, was not free from myths nor from the mythical –practical characterization’. He also tersely exposed the rather parochial nature of this attitude of several western writers, who glorified the biblical stories as revelations ‘but regarded similar stories elsewhere [India included, PKM] to be mythical’ (Mohanty ibid, p. 78). As Mohanty rightly argued, there can be no paradigm of theoretical thinking, no one way of distinguishing between theory and practice, and therefore philosophy should not be limited to the Aristotelian type of theorizing. As a matter of fact, Indian philosophy was demythologized in course of its history and became liberated from the mythical-practical, and, in the darsanas, it became rigorously and theoretically justified in the practical goal of moksa, instead of dogmatically defending it. In this sense practical it certainly is; but being practical does not make it inevitably mythical, nor does it become divested of theoreticality for that matter. I would rather submit that theory and practice being symbiotically related generates an almost conceptual truth that there can be no theory without a possible application in practice and any practical application presupposed a theory that is applied. Philosophy therefore cannot be thought apart from practice, and Indian philosophy being practical is neither surprising nor a cause of concern in the sense under discussion. Rather, on my showing, being practical is all the more reason for it to consist of theories to justify practice or the practical goals.

Ethics Presupposes a Real World Closer to home, a strong ground for denying there being ethics or ethical theory in Indian philosophy has been the putative claim that Indian philosophers deny reality of the world, which makes any ethics and ethical relation impossible. W.T. Stace was known for being aggressively straightforward in making this allegation. Let us put the matter in perspective: Ethics, we have seen, is meant for guiding man for living his life in the desired way. Doing what is good and desirable and refraining from doing what is evil and undesirable constitute the essence of living the ethical life. That is why, as a philosophical enquiry and normative study, ethics is concerned with values, virtues, obligations and rights. And for all this to have meaning and meaningful application, what is essential is a society which pursued a set of values that are common and conducive to the members of the society. With settled norms and agreed criteria, values are pursued, virtues are practiced, rights are claimed and exercised, and obligations are fulfilled. These ethical interactions presuppose a world and a society that is also a moral community. What it shows is that there has to be the world for ethical relations to obtain and ethical life to be lived. In other words, for the possibility of ethics and ethical theorization, the world has to be accepted as real, for ethical relations are real relations, which can exist among real individuals existing in a real world. What this means is that ethical predicates can only be ascribed to real individuals, who alone can be the subjects of moral

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predicates. It does not make much sense to be just (or unjust) to an individual who is not real and does not exist in the real world, nor does it make any sense to say of an unreal individual that he is just or unjust to anybody. An ethical predicate cannot be ascribed to a non-existent individual just because no predicate can apply to such an individual. Likewise, moral judgments would be meaningful and would have meaningful application only in the case of real individuals. It cannot be said of x, if x is unreal or non-existent, that he/she behaved badly (or well) and that his/her action is morally reprehensible or morally commendable. For only a real individual can be said to be a moral agent, and actions or conducts of real individuals only can be the objects of moral judgments. To be sure, ethical predicates are also ascribed, apparently with equal sense (in fact the sense in which such predicates are ascribed here is only in an analogous sense or rather in a secondary sense), to unreal individuals who do not exist– as it is done in fictions and fables. But in these cases, the fictitious individuals’ actions are said to be commendable or condemnable by empathy, but not in the literal sense. We ascribe such ethical predicates to characters that are admittedly unreal. But what happens in such cases is that the characters, A, B or C, function as individual variables. Moral judgments passed in these cases, e.g. ‘A’s action in doing b to C is morally condemnable’, are virtually universal moral judgments like ‘Anyone’s action in doing anything like b to anyone else C is morally condemnable’ (Prasad 2008, p. 120). This is what literary critics call generalization, which makes a reader feel sympathetic towards C and morally reprehensive towards A. This may be said to be a variant of universalizability, which makes moral judgments true of all similar cases in relevantly similar circumstances. The described universal proposition, generated in fictions and myths, are like propositional functions, which can only be instantiated by a true singular proposition, where the variables, A, B and C, are to be replaced by real individuals and real actions. Only then real ethical predicates will be ascribed, and ethical relations will hold between these real individuals – one really inflicting a bad action on the other. Ethical relations, which putatively hold between unreal or imaginary characters, serve only as illustrations but cannot really hold between them (simply because there are no individuals for the relation to hold between). They really hold between real individual existing in the real world. In other words, ethics (ethical relations, ethical life, etc.) and ethical theorization necessarily presuppose the reality of the world that is a moral community with real individuals, who are moral agents and/or moral subjects (i.e. objects of moral judgments). The logic of ethical predicates makes it inevitable that the world and the individuals (moral agents and moral subjects) must be real for the possibility of ethics and moral life, for anyone doing something moral or immoral. When Stace alleged that there was no ethics in Indian philosophy, what he had in mind was the apparently general idea that Indian philosophers deny reality of the world. This impression gains ground from the abstract monism and absolute idealism of Advaita Vedanta which, because of its powerful sway and impressive argument from illusion, had assumed the status almost of the official philosophy in India. Sankara’s oft-quoted dictum ‘Brahma satyam jagat mithya’ makes the impression somewhat compelling that the world is unreal and that the only thing

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that is really real is the Brahman. If this is taken as the correct description of the Indian contention, then obviously there would be no room for ethics and ethical life in Indian philosophy. There are two points of contention here, which need to be considered carefully. One, that Indian philosophy takes the world as unreal, and two, Advaita Vedanta/ Shannkar took the world to be unreal. Before examining these two claims in some details, it may be mentioned in passing that even if the claims are taken to hold, the charge that there would be no ethics and ethical life would apply not only against Indian but also against Greek philosophy (of which Stace is an avowed admirer); for Plato’s theory of ideas has the inevitable consequence, closely analogous to that of Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta, that the world of existence is not real, not really real; but Stace would not deny ethics being there in Greek philosophy for that matter. Mohanty’s charge of parochialism against western writers, as we discussed, would gain firmer ground in defence of Indian philosophy against selective accusations of lacking in theory – philosophical in general and ethical in particular. Dilating upon the issue in question, one cannot resist alluding to elite systems of western masters espousing varieties of intuitionism and mysticism and still enjoying the status of celebrated theories of philosophy and ethics. The plea for integral experience as the avowed means of knowledge of the Absolute is perhaps the distinctive features of the philosophy of Hegel and Bradley. Locke’s admission of sensations and reflection as sources of knowledge marked the distinctive feature of his empiricism; critics called him an inconsistent empiricist for that matter; but an empiricist he was, and empiricism was the theory he was credited with. Further down the history (of philosophy), we are familiar with William James’s ‘radical empiricism’, which likewise espoused sense experience as well as non-sensuous experience as sources of knowledge. So accusing Indian thinking (philosophy and ethics alike) as lacking in theory on similar grounds is surprising, if not tendentious, to say the least, and dishonest at worst. Human nature is the same everywhere, and so are men’s ideas. Therefore abstract monism is the same everywhere, and intuitionism knows no regional or geographical barriers. My taking this detour was meant to show that and expose the unfair (selective) attack on Indian thinking despite that.

‘No-Ethics’ Charge Refuted Now back from the detour, let us examine the charge that Indian philosophy can have no ethics as it does not accept the world as real. We propose to take on this charge – call it the denial charge – (1) against Indian philosophy in general and (2) against Advaita Vedanta of Sankara in particular. Taking on the first one first, it is not the case that Indian philosophy as a whole denies the reality of the world. This is certainly not true of the Carvaka materialism, which admits nothing beyond the here and now and for whom the empirical world is not only real but is the only real world. There is no problem for the Nyaya-Vaisesika, which espouses an ontology that is a realistic and pluralistic, and as such they accept the world with many reals,

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among which several relations hold that are real too, such as sanyoga(conjunction) and samavaya (inherence). The seven categories, which they admit, are all real – thus making the reality of the world an undeniable fact. The Samkhya, which also admits plurality of reals, also has to believe the world to be real. Among the heterodox schools, Buddhism is conspicuously a school of practical philosophy that emphasizes morality, compassion and good conduct towards everything living in the world. In  taking primacy of the ethical as  its essential contention, Buddhism naturally believes the world to be real in order for ethical life to be lived here and ethical relations to obtain between real individuals. In view at least of the above, it would not be strictly correct to say that Indian philosophers did not believe the world to be real, and accordingly the denial of ethics being there in Indian philosophy definitively loses ground. The denial charge in its second formulation threatens to pose a somewhat more serious problem, largely because of Sankara’s emphasis on ‘Brahma satyam Jagat mithya’. This is all the more a problem because Indian philosophers acknowledge and emphasize the importance of ethics and ethical leaving. This is true not only of the orthodox systems but also of the heterodox systems like Buddhism and Jainism, who stress on the primacy of the ethical in the conduct of life. (This brings into the open another misplaced allegation that ethics in India is mixed up with spirituality and religion and hence has no independence as a distinct discipline.) And because of this, reality of the world is something Indian philosophy has to admit and verily it does, as the sastras in general and Dharmasastras in particular eminently proclaim. In such scenario, Sankara in particular cannot afford to deny the reality of the world – more so because ethics and the ethical life occupy the pride of place in his Advaita Vedanta. As is evident in his famous verses of the Mohamudgaram, his moral injunctions are necessitated by his metaphysics of the Brahman. That the ethical life is essentially inevitable in the philosophy of Sankara is expressedly evident from the fact that the principal Upanishads, from which Sankara draws ­inspiration and materials for his Vedantic infrastructure, categorically plead for ethics and ethical conducts as essential elements in the lives of men. As per Sankar’s own commentary, the Taittiriya Upanishad imparts instructions (from the teacher to his outgoing students), which are primarily ethical and meant to guide the students to successfully lead a desirable life. For example, students are instructed to respect only those actions of the teachers which are right. Likewise, the Katha Upanishad has the injunction that the well-educated (pragyah) should select the sreya, the preferable and desirable, and reject the preya, the pleasurable, though both are verily available to them. The Swetaswatara Upanishad describes even God as the promoter and protector of morality. And the Bruhadaranyaka prescribes a complete code of morality in a single letter ‘da’– dama for the gods, dana for men and daya for of the demons. Rajendra Prasad explains the import of this by saying that this mythical account, when applied to the human world, would mean that man having different types of inclinations ought to cultivate these different virtues in the interest of the ethical life in the world (Prasad 2008, p. 130). Naturally enough, Sankara, who draws the materials and ideals of his ‘creative of commentarial philosophizing’, cannot but treat the world as real in the interest of ethics and ethical lives. For

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the world must be real not only to make ethical life possible but also to make possible the pursuit of Brahmajnana and liberation. To be sure, after attaining Brahmajnana, a mumukhu (a person desiring to get moksa or liberation) becomes jivanmukta and becomes (or comes to realize that he is) one with the Brahman (‘Brahmavid Brahmaiva bhavati’,‘Jiva Brahmaiva na para’). In such a state, the empirical world does not matter for him and this world he knows to be unreal in contradistinction from the noumenal world of Brahman, which is really real. In a sense, therefore, morality would not matter much for the jivanmukta. We shall see in a letter chapter on moksa that, in a way of speaking, moksa and morality are logically incompatible ideas, and hence a mukta purusa (liberated soul) does not have to do anything moral in this world, since the moral/immoral distinction ceases to make sense in his case. The Brahmasutra, which is otherwise known as moksa sastra, is inevitably wedded to this logic, and Sankara cannot avoid commitment to it (Sankara BSB, 2000). Nevertheless Sankara pleads for the jivanmukta to continue to engage in moral actions, not for himself but in the interest of lokasangraha  – in order to set good examples for the vast majority who have not been liberated yet. In his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, Sankara prescribes moral engagement for the sthitaprajna for this reason – for preservation of the social order (Sankara 2013 GB, pp. 94–97), which requires exemplary moral conduct of the liberated person who has come up to this stage by dint of long continuous practice of moral living. What is clear from this is that Sankara was genuinely eager to promote ethics and ethical life and therefore to regard the world – this world in which we live, move and have our being – as real for ethical life to be possible. Rather since, as a matter of fact, people do live ethical life and are or can be persuaded to live in tune with moral value. Sankara would like the world to be real. This he would want to do in order to justify the dignity of ethics and the ethical life. Ethics presupposing reality of the world is a conceptual truth, and this was recognized by Sankara along with other classical Indian thinkers. That is why, while presenting their moral maxims and exhortations to moral virtue, they do not, in their words and actions, even suggest that the world is unreal or real only in any diluted sense. Sankara obviously was aware of this; he was very much aware that ethics presupposes reality of the world and that the world has to be real for anyone to lead an ethical life. However, the logic of his abstract monism appears to resist a straightforward admission of the world as real. Yet at the same time, he would not want to deny the possibility of leading an ethical life, which a mumuksu needs in order to be able to attain moksa and a jivanmukta needs for preservation of the social order and lokasangraha, as we have noted above. In trying to serve two masters, ethics and logic, apparently he felt some intellectual tension in his theorizing. And to get over the tension, he would call this world real, albeit for practical purposes. The vyavaharik satta, which this practical world is credited with, has an ontological status, which is taken to be all that is required for ethics and ethical life to be possible. This world, though not ultimately real, is not unreal like the son of a barren woman or the sky lotus or the hare’s horn. It is not even as unreal as the objects in our dreams. I rather suspect that the analogy of dream that is usually given to explain the unreality of the empirical world as distinct from the really real world (paramarthik satta) is perhaps taken a bit too far.

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For while the dream belongs to the same world as we, the dreamers do, the empirical world that is supposed to vanish or get sublated with the revelation of the paramarthik world (transcendental world), with the dawning of Brahmajnana, is categorially different from the transcendental world. As Russell would have argued, there is only one world – the empirical world – to which both the dreamer and his dreams belong, to which both Shakespeare and his ideas belong (Russell 1919). But the same thing cannot be said of the empirical world and the transcendental world – that they belong to the same level of existence. This important asymmetry between the supposed two worlds should be tellingly instructive. Further according to Sankara, the empirical world is not also as unreal as illusions and hallucinations. For although illusions and hallucination are sublated by subsequent veridical perception, these latter experiences are, after all, qualitatively similar experiences (perceptual experience) as the illusion and hallucination, which they sublate as unreal. What I mean is that a rope wrongly perceived as a snake and a real snake veridically perceived as such both generate in us the same type of sensuous feeling or sense experience. The empirical world, by contrast, is qualitatively different from the transcendental world of ultimate reality, which sublates the empirical world as unreal. The asymmetry here also is noteworthy. This and the foregoing arguments provide ample reasons to suppose that Sankara believed, and intended to believe, this world to be real with all the real ethical predicates applied in this world. By this Sankara wanted to strike a perfect balance between the logic of his monism and absolute idealism on the one hand and his moral philosophy, on the other, with avowed respect for the dignity of ethical life. If the former required the theory of one reality, he asserts the reality of Brahman alone, ascribing reality to this world only for practical purposes. And since the latter, his moral philosophy, required the world to be real (for ethical predicates to apply and ethical relations to obtain), he did assert the world to be real, al beit for practical purposes. This kind of practical reality of the world, though non-­ultimate and provisional, is regarded by Sankara and several modern interpreters as enough and all that is required for ethics and the ethical life to be possible. Indeed, the Advaita conception of this sort of (practical) reality of the world is enough motivation for anyone to live a moral life. However, this may not seem to be so obviously the case. For someone who follows the logic of Advaita monism far enough, this world would be seen to be unreal as soon as he attains the knowledge of Brahman. As in that stage this world does not matter, and insofar as ethics presupposes the reality of the world, ethics would cease to matter, and anything ethical would not be considered as real and worthwhile. Ethics would therefore be ultimately unreal and immaterial. This criticism, honestly speaking, is no cause of worry, even for an ethicist or ethical theorizer. For what is important for an ethical theory is that it offers guidance for the ordinary man, living in the ordinary world, to decide what to do and what not to do and to decide on what is right and what is wrong under appropriate circumstances. As discussed in detail above in Chap. 2, ethical standards are meant to be followed not by savants or saints but by the average individual who lives and operates in this world (See also Mohapatra 2008, Chap. 1). Accordingly, ethical theories must be designed and interpreted so as to be pursued or pursuable by ordinary men.

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A theory that is not possible to be pursued by men in this world would not be worth its formulation. Indian philosophers have always believed that ethical theories are meant to be applied to the practical world of the ordinary man. The supposed world of paramartha or ultimate reality, presumably populated by jivanmuktas or men of extraordinary moral virtues and strength of character, has no need for moral theories. Indeed, for such mukta purusas, there is no need to engage in morality, and the moral/immoral distinction does not matter for them. Even if Sankara did prescribe moral engagement for the jivanmukta person or the sthithprajna, it is not really needed for them but only for the purpose of preserving the social order, which all the more requires this world to be real. Thus insofar as ethics and ethical conduct is concerned, the world of practicality (which this world is) has all the competence to justify it. This understanding of Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta, along with the fact that most other scholars of Indian philosophy accept this world to be real, demonstrates the western criticism as grossly unfair and point to the fact that, the world being accepted not as unreal  – obviously by most Indian systems and reasonably by Advaita Vedanta – ethics and ethical theory cannot be denied to Indian philosophy on that ground. As a matter of fact, commitment to ethics and the ethical life has been a distinctive feature of Indian thinking, so much so that most schools of Indian philosophy have emphasized the primacy of the ethical in their philosophizing. Primarily for the sake of protecting the dignity of ethics, Sankara was willing to grant the status of reality to this world even at the risk of a logical conflict with his metaphysical commitment. Indeed, the vyavaharik world has a clear ontological status in the philosophy of Sankara. As in western philosophy, so also here, ethics constituted an important part of Indian philosophical systems along with epistemology and metaphysics. The theory of purusharthas forms an important aspect of Indian ethics, dharma and moksa being the indispensable elements thereof. And bulk of Indian philosophy has been engaged in formulating theories about them. India’s theory (or theories) of liberation is a product of its metaphysical theory: this is true of almost every school of Indian philosophy. Hence almost all the schools, with the singular exception of the Carvaka materialism, have a general theory of liberation, and in all these cases, ethics is an offshoot of metaphysics. Western writers have found a fair amount of interest in the classical Indian metaphysical theories and theories of liberations that go with them. But although they find the presence of general theory of reality and also that of liberation in its speculative metaphysics, they often fail to notice any theory in its ethics and moral philosophy and hasten to conclude that there was no theory in Indian ethics or there was no ethics in Indian philosophy. In a sense, this accusation is right: there is no comprehensive ethical theorizing in Indian philosophy. But what the critics have missed is that there is plenty of contextual or what Rajendra Prasad calls piecemeal theorizing in Indian philosophy (Prasad 2008, pp. 157–58), which result in generalizations expressed in the form of moral rules. Classical Indian thinking was alive to be fact that no set of moral maxims can be large enough to cover all possible moral problems, nor can all the demands of life, which necessitated moral thinking, be tackled by any set of moral maxims formulated once and for all. And because of

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this, Indian thinkers have preferred to theorize in piecemeal manner. For ethical problems arise in some concrete, specific situations and solutions must be attempted by taking note of the demands of the situations, together with broad guidelines of the relevant moral maxim(s). The solutions, which require theorizing and analysis, may call for rethinking and reinterpreting the ready-to-cook solutions offered by the classical corpus. This is important, because Indian ethical theories are built in, as it were, with practical applicability, and every application of moral principle involves some amount of decision-making. When the decision is made and solution reached, it is in principle universalizable and hence state, or is statable, in the form of a moral rule. As Prasad says, ‘piecemeal theorizing is always topical and contextual and therefore more down to earth than abstract, highly general theories’. The western writers deny ethics and ethical theories being there in Indian philosophy because they have in mind only one model of theorizing that result in formulation of general theories of moral values, which are supposed to apply universally to all cases. Likewise, as I have shown in Chap. 2 above, the other crucial ethical theory, the theory of dharma as moral duty, is best treated in piecemeal theorization through contextual analysis, instead of being taken in its received sense as an absolute, general theory supposed to apply in all cases. Values or dharmas need to be pursued in a spirit of selflessness, not in a dogmatic spirit but with a critical mind. Therefore one does not need to accept the rules of morality in their received sense as given in the dharmasastras, nor does one need to follow all the rules laid down in them. Critical thinking about the given rules of practice demands rethinking, reinterpretation and reconstruction, if need be. As Mohanty has said, ‘one must be able to critique those rules and their presuppositions and, if need be, to reject some and amend others. Only you cannot reject them wholesale, as you cannot abandon wholesale… a leaking ship in mid-ocean; you can only repair it plank by plank’ (Mohanty 2001, p. 27). And he adds, ‘[t]his the Indian thinkers did in various ways – some times by adding or deleting, sometimes by amending given rules by adding new conditions and limits but most remarkably by reinterpreting old texts’ (ibid.). I shall now proceed to focus on prominent areas of Indian ethics where concepts can (and do) lead to problems by way of inadequate and distorted understanding and also solutions are obtainable by clearing misunderstandings away. My effort to lay this bare will rest on exposition and assessment of these problems by several prominent modern writers and authorities on Indian ethical values. In this endeavour, occasional but inevitable allusions will be made to religious and social values, not merely because religion and morality are inextricably intermixed in India but mainly because, as I want to show, following the ethical way makes religion – even religious rituals and sacrifices – worthwhile; social values, I wish to argue, are similarly grounded on ethics and morality, and social order is not possible without it being a moral order. This primacy of the ethical has been and will continue to constitute a crucial contention of the present work.

References

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References Bhattcharaya, K.  C. (1958). Studies in philosophy (Gopinath Bhattcharaya, Ed., Vol. II, p. xii). Calcutta: Progressive Publishers. Dayakrisna. (2007). The myth of the ethics of the ourusarthas. In P. Bilimoria et al. (Eds.), Indian ethics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press and also his Indian philosophy: A counter-perceptive (1991). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kautilya. (1915). Arthasastra. Published by R. Shyama Sastry of Karnataka in 1915. Misra, G. (1987). Advaita concept of philosophy: Its method, scope and limits. Bhubaneswar: Biswaranjan Misra. Mohanty, J. N. (2001). Explorations in philosophy; Indian philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mohapatra, P.  K. (2008). Society, culture and value. Bhubaneswar: Utkal University, Centre of Advanced Study in Philosophy. Murty, K. S. (1962). The Indian spirit. Waltair: Andhra University. Prasad, R. (1999). Varnadharma, Niskama Karma and practical morality. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld. Prasad, R. (2008). A conceptual-analytic study of classical Indian philosophy of morals. New Delhi: Concept in Association with the Centre for Studies in the Civilizations. Radhakrishnan, S. (1923). Indian philosophy (Vol. I, pp.  34–41). London: George Allen and Unwin. Raju, P. T. (1982). The Western and the Indian philosophical traditions, Indian philosophy: Past and future (p. 88). New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Russell, B. (1919). Introduction to mathematical philosophy. London: George Allen and Unwin, chapter on “Descriptions”. Sankara. (2000). Vedanta Sutras II (New Ed.). Calcutta: Adwaita Ashram. Sankara. (2013). Gita Bhashyam, (GB). Gorakhpur: Gita Press. (New Edition).

Chapter 6

Dharma as Moral Duty

By far the most discussed of the concepts in Indian thought and the one that has raised maximum of controversies is the concept of dharma. Indeed, next to the concept of reality, dharma is the most important concept in Indian thought (Radhakrishnan 1923). The meaning of dharma and its implications are so complex and so variegated and so much inclusive that in the depth of this single word lies the spirit of an entire civilization that is typically Indian. Not only there are numerous senses in which this word has been used by Indian thinkers, philosophers, moralists and theologians; the word is frequently used and apparently supposed to be understood by the common Indian. But despite this, and I suspect because of this, the word eludes any clear, definite and exact translation (from its Sanskrit form) into any Indian and non-Indian language. A word whose meaning spans from the ‘apauruseya’ rta to the faith of the races called religion, from the inexorable cosmic order to relative duties of caste groups and professionals, from nature of objects (vastu dharma) to regulative principles of social and moral conduct and from universal duties to sectarian obligations, is bound to be elusive. This is explained by the fact that rta, the earliest applied term for dharma used in the Vedas (see Vohra et  al. 2005, Chap. 6),1 is used to express three different senses, namely, (1) the universal law governing the organization of the whole (brahmanda) and the functioning of its parts (pindas), (2) moral and ethical duties of a social group and (3) the laws governing the do’s and dont’s in the realm of religious norms and practices. In fact, I am a little amused, if not appalled, by the claim made in one of our greatest scriptures, the Mahabharata, that the meaning of dharma goes on changing with change of time and clime – that what is dharma in the Satya Yuga is not the same in Dwapara and what is dharma in Dwapara is not the same dharma in the same sense) in Kaliyuga: Anye’ krtayuge’ dharmastretayam dvapare’ pare’/ Anye’ kaliyuge’ dharma yathasakti krta iva.// 1  Rgveda I.24, 7.8.10, 7, 87.1.2. Cited approvingly by Pushraj Jain in Chapter 6 of Dharma: The Categorical Imperative (eds) Ashok Vohra, M.K.  Miri and Arvind Sharama, (D.K.  Printworld, New Delhi, 2005), p. 104.

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Besides the dangerous implication of this otherwise grand concept being lost in straightforward relativism, the supposed different senses it is used to express in every different yuga would leave us with no rational ground for judging in retrospect what was dharma and what was adharma in an earlier time, nor would there be any point in worrying about dharmasya glani, for there would be no criterion for judging that this has in fact happened at any particular span of time. If it is meant that the principles of dharma of earlier times are being violated, it would be a hopeless non-starter. If, alternatively, it is meant that someone/some people/most people is/are following dharma as it is supposed to be followed in one particular era or period of time, it would be elusive, since no point of time could be determined when the concept of dharma is supposed to change – no guarantee would be there at any point of time that the concept has not undergone change anyway. Unless a conspicuous and discernible unchanging element is there in the notion of dharma or the dharmic principle, there would be no need for the Lord to manifest himself to protect the virtuous and establish dharma (establish which dharma?). Yet we are told that the Lord manifests himself for this purpose in every yuga – ‘dharma samsthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge’. Jain’s plea that the Lord manifests himself to reinterpret the principle of dharma fails to do the trick, if ‘reinterpret’ is meant to mean ‘giving a new meaning’, for the Lord himself being eternal is supposed to protect a somewhat similar principle which is allegedly flouted. In the interest of consistency, our avatara doctrine should and does work upon this conception of dharma. And the principle of dharma, at least in the Hindu scheme of thinking, is closely in keeping with this, which is evidenced by the concept of sanatana dharma. If, on the other hand, Jain means ‘to interpret the same thing (dharma)’ in a different way, then dharma continues to be the same, which goes against the cited claim (of change of meaning) of the Mahabharat. And this would be contrary to Jain’s own position, as he sweepingly generalizes from the change of the sense of dharma over the different yugas to its change ‘in accordance with [change of, PKM] place and time’. And he also goes on to say: With the passage of time [note that what is claimed here is not passage of the yugas, PKM] and change of conditions – material or otherwise–, the prevalent dharmas go into oblivion and new dharmas take their place. There is no sanctity attached to the old or ancient in the Indian tradition”. (ibid, p.105.)

But Indian tradition being what it is, the last stated claim, in this quotation is debatable, to say the least. Jain is right in pointing out that a principle does not merit acceptability by merely being ancient or old – ‘puranamityeva na sadhu sarvam’ – but, on the other hand, not all that is new should be considered good and acceptable: ‘na chapi kavyam navamityavadyam’. A reasoned balance must be struck between extreme claims. How true that Jain is forced to say that the wise accept only that to be good which has intrinsic merit (p. 105, few lines later). And ‘intrinsic merit’ is something that must be supposed to be essential and unchanging. I shall have more to say on what I mean by a ‘reasoned balance’ at an appropriate stage later on. Back now to the sense of dharma, which I wish to discuss and assess in this section. Of the countless number of senses that the concept of dharma has assumed in Indian philosophical literature, I shall be concerned with its sense as ethical and

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moral duties and also with that sense of it which is either equivalent to, or reducible in terms of, the ethical sense; because primacy of the ethical is what I consider – and I think most people would – to be important in value considerations and appreciation of values. For, firstly, that is what makes any value worthwhile and, secondly, that not only marks an important distinction between religion and morality, both of which are intricately intermixed in Indian tradition, but also provides a rational justification for religion which, I suppose, most Indians would like it to have; the mix up of religion and morality in India has been more out of a design than as a mere historical coincidence, because as already indicated and will be shown in due course, most Indian scriptural sources like Rgveda and Atharva Veda can be seen to favour an ethical base for religion. Primarily for this purpose, I cite below some of the most prominent senses of dharma as discerned by P. V. Kane (Kane 1930). Kane points out that, of the numerous senses in which the concept of dharma has been used in Indian ethical works, at least six prominent senses stand out as familiar and important  – considering their sources traceable in the Vedas and some principal Upanishads. The six different senses are as follows: 1. In the sense of ‘upholder or supporter or sustainer’ in the Rgveda (I.187.1 and X.92.2) 2. In the sense of ‘religious ordinances and rites’ in the Rgveda (I.22.18, V.26.6, VIII.43.24 and IX.64.1), also in the sense of the Primeval or first ordinances, ‘prathama dharma’ (Rgveda, II,17.1) and in the sense of ancient ordinances ‘sanatana dharma’ (Rgveda, II.3.1) 3. In the sense of ‘fixed principles or rules of conduct’, (Rgveda, IV.53.3, V.63.7, VI.70.1 and VIII.89.5) 4. In the sense of ‘merit acquired by the performance of religious rites’ (Atharva Veda, XI.9.17) 5. In a rather abstract sense of ‘the whole body of religious (and moral?) duties’ (Aitrareya Brahamana, VII.17) 6. In the sense of asrama dharmas in the Chandogya Upanishad [Especially 2.23], which envisages dharma as being moral duties of the three (or four?) different stages of a person’s life: ‘one is (constituted by) sacrifice, study and charity (recommended for the house holder); the second is (constituted by) austerities (recommended for the hermits [i.e. for both a vanaprasthin and sanyasin? PKM]; and the third is to stay with the guru and his family with the objective to attain to the world of meritorious men’(Vohra et al. 2005). In keeping with the objective of this chapter, with emphasis on the primacy of the ethical, I take dharma in senses 3 and 6 primarily as my object of study and scrutiny. Sense 2 will fall outside the study, unless understood as morally based. Otherwise it would be either an ethically neutral, because non-normative, sense of dharma or even a case of immoral dharma as evidenced by the religious practices of sacrifices and other rites not performed by ethical means. Gods of religion, e.g. Indra, as mentioned in Atharva Veda (III.31.2), can at times do evil deeds, and we are advised to ‘cease to cite these famous digressions’ and to ‘…do thyself what is suitable and proper’. (Mahabharat, 12, 292,17). Sense 4 is reducible to sense 3 because of its

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emphasis on ‘merit acquired by performance of religious rites’. The first sense outlined above must be assessed for a special treatment. In this sense dharma means a regulative principle that upholds, supports and sustains the cosmic process; in this sense dharma includes both the laws of nature and the principles that regulate human thoughts, actions and conduct. Dharma is the force behind the movement of planets, stars and the galaxies; it is the unseen cause, for example, for the conduct of a barber not to cut the throat of a customer while shaving (Courtesy: V. Kutumba Sastry, see Vohra et al. 2005). In the latter sense, it is a moral principle, or it is our moral duty to obey the principle of dharma, i.e. the regulative principles behind our conducts. But in contrast to this, it may not be our moral duty to obey the laws of nature or let nature take its own course, because it may sometimes become morally necessary to interfere with the laws of nature in the interest of general well-being. We cannot, for example, allow the spate of the river or ocean to take its own course and wash away human life and habitation. It is certainly morally justified to prevent the course of a Tsunami earthquake or of a super cyclone, if and to whatever extent it is possible. I am not, however, suggesting that preventing the course of nature is always or generally right; for I do agree with some scriptural prohibitions against acting contrary to the law of nature [e.g. the Sea God’s injunction to Lord Rama not to cause the sea water dry up but to build a setu for crossing the ocean, since drying up the seas would cause fatal harm to the aquatic life and world.], but all I want to say is that in the case of the principles regulating conduct, it is not always or generally right to act in accordance with them. ‘Whatever is a means to the well-being of humanity and of the world at large is dharma’, – so says Sabara (Jaimini 1889, p. 20), and this is endorsed in the Bhavisya Purana: Dharmah sreyah samuddistam sreyobhyudayasadham,2 (cited by V. K. Sastry in Vohra et al.). Thus dharma as an ideal must be considered, and I wish to so consider it, in its ethical sense of a moral (or basically moral, if it is stated as a non-ethical, e.g. social or even religious) duty. This explains, and draws support from, Kane’s conclusion that dharma ultimately passes on to its ‘most prominent significance’ as ‘the privileges, duties and obligations of a man, his standard of conduct as a member of the Aryan community, as member of one of the castes, as a person in a particular stage of life’(Kane 1930, p. 4) (Emphasis added). The foregoing would make it clear that in its most dominant sense, dharma stands for morality and moral duty. For behind all its vagueness and multivocality, it has a normative core, and of all manifestations of its normativity, morality covets the central significance. This is further evidenced by the fact that dharma as a purusartha consists in living a long committed moral life so as to lead one to the highest purusartha, i.e., moksa. This will be dealt with at length in Chap. 10. For the present it would be pertinent to mention and discuss further on that moral life, which the dharma purusartha consists in, and which is in keeping with morality as appropriate to one’s being a human being as well as to his role in society.

2   ‘Dharmah sreyah samuddistam sreyobhyudayasadhanam’, as quoted in the Vachaspatam. (Courtesy V.Kutumba Sastry in Dharma: The Categorical Imperative).

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Dharma, Its Varieties and the Internal Contradictions As regards the former, one’s duty is called samanya dharma, and as regard the latter, it is called visesa dharma which, in classical Indian corpus, admits of varieties of formulations, e.g. varnadharma, or swadharma, varnashrama dharma, kula dharma, etc. What we have in this picture of dharma is the picture of a concrete ethical life of the people, the picture of what Professor J.N. Mohanty calls a ‘concrete Hegelian Sittlechkeit’(Mohanty 2007, p. 67). However, because of the multivocality of the concept of dharma and its inherent vagueness, this fine picture of dharma – both as representing our ethical life and as model of moral duties – is muddled with internal contradictions. This has been exposed and explicated in Chap. 2 above as a glaring conflict between Arjuna’s swadharma of fighting in a just war and his samanya dharma of sticking to ahimsa or non-killing. Mohanty points to the same conflict characterizing the destiny of Indian dharma as revealing a ‘crack’ in its conception – ‘a crack which has appeared within the texture of the traditional dharma, between its two parts  – kula dharma and varnadharma’ (Mohanty 2007), between the law of the family and the social law. And as we have shown in the case of the conflict between swadharma and samanyadharma (Chap. 2 above), the ‘crack’ could not be patched by Sri Krishna’s opting for only one side of the conflict, i.e. persistently persuading Arjuna to perform his swadharma only without apparently giving any reason whatsoever for why his samanya dharma should be ignored. Whereas we attributed the conflict to absolutism and literalism with regard to ethical theories, Mohanty attributes it to what can be described as status-quoism regarding the concept of dharma, or rather a particular form of it, i.e. varnadharma. Mohanty explicates the cause of the conflict thus: The ambiguity and unsatisfactory character of Krishna’s teaching is precisely due to an attempt, on the one hand, to save the varnadharma as against Arjuna’s skepticism and, on the other, to suggest a way beyond dharma towards quite another goal….i.e. moksa. (ibid, p.68. emphasis mine)

Apparently, in trying to salvage varnadharma from being defeated by the demands of kuladharma (or, as we argued, of samanya dharma) or the varna vyavastha from being disintegrated, Sri Krishna adduced the ‘argument’ that by doing his swadharma of fighting in the dharmayuddha of Mahabharat, Arjuna would attain moksa. This is veiled persuasion rather than argumentation, which ostensibly exposes the ‘crack’ more glaringly rather than patching it up. There has even been the suggestion that one has to go beyond dharma and that would lead him to spiritual liberation or moksa. Note Lord Krishna’s persuasive pronouncement in the Bhagavat Gita: Sarvadharman parityajya mamekam sranam braja/ Aham twam srava papebhyah moksayishyami ma sucha//

Should we say in this case that fright from logic takes refuge in metaphysical/spiritual appeal? The real solution, Mohanty suggests, is to draw attention to the fact that no Sittlichkeit can be such a perfectly harmonious totality and that time and history cannot be able to change it or improve upon it. He forcefully argues that ‘[a]

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Sittlichkeit is all the stronger if it admits of such change from within and if it contains within itself the seeds of self-criticism’, (ibid, p.68) and credits the Hindu Sittlichkeit with satisfying both these requirements of continuous transformation from within and continuous process of theoretical self-criticism (ibid). This, it must be noted, is quite in keeping with Mohanty’s contention on ethical theorizing in India which, he argued, has to be hermeneutic – interpretative. (See Chap. 5 above). In Chap. 2, we argued to similar effect by making the methodological pronouncement and reconstructive analysis with regard to the very nature of ethical theories: That they are objective but defeasible on the basis of a balanced consideration of the demands of the situation and the spirit of the ethical principles. In particular, we argued that under the demanding conditions of the righteous war of Mahabharat Arjuna’s swadharma had an arguable over riding potentiality over his samanya dharma, and this applies mutatis mutandis to his varnadharma vis-à-vis his kula dharma. Philosophy of the Gita, we have argued, could be reinterpreted and reconstructively modified on these lines (Chap. 2 above). As examples of the said changes and reinterpretations, Mohanty cites three significant ones to the credit of the Hindu ethical development (ibid): (i) reinterpretation of the concept of yajna from its ritualistic sense to its ethical sense in the Bhagavat Gita,(ii) Gandhi’s reinterpretation of varna from its contentious sense of caste to the sense of specialized economic and production groups and (iii) the Hindu reinterpretation of dharma as means to moksa. To this may be added my reinterpretation of objectivity (as applied in the case of moral principles) as defeasible objectivity rather than absolute objectivity in the literal sense (Chap. 2 above). In changes and reforms through internal criticisms and necessary reconstruction of the basic principles (and texts) lies the strength of the theories and their explicability or explanatory value. This is particularly true of moral theories which, inevitably involving the role of the will, cannot admit of any absolutistic explanation or objectivstic explanation in the status quo-specific sense.

Moral Duty: Kant and the Gita It has been conspicuously customary in contemporary writings on Indian moral philosophy, especially on dharma as moral duty, to bring into comparison the view of the Bhagavat Gita and that of Immanuel Kant. Gita’s well-known theory of non-­ attachment (anasakti) is often compared with Kant’s equally well-known theory of the categorical imperative or duty for duty's sake. Kant is eminently known to have put emphasis on the form of morality, on the spirit with which actions are to be performed rather than on the content. Assuming that duties are what they are as known to men with developed moral intuitions – hence he had no new list of duties to offer –, Kant only wanted to say that true morality consists in doing one’s duties for their own sake. Likewise it seems that the Gita contends dharma to be already known. What Krishna adds is that dharma must be practiced in the true spirit of non-attachment (See Bhagabad-Gita, II 47). Very much like Kant, Sri Krishna in

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the Bhagavat Gita does not preach a new ethical code; ‘ …he reinterprets some older concepts, highlights some, places emphasis on the spirit of detachment with which one ought to do his duty if he aims at moksa’ (Mohanty ibid, p. 70; emphasis added). One can however sense a little difference here; for whereas duty performance is a clear categorical imperative for Kant, the Gita in some sense makes it out as a somewhat hypothetical imperative insofar as moksa prapti or rather mumuksa is made a condition for non-attached performance of duty, as indicated by the ‘if’ clause added in the above quoted injunction. The difference further surfaces in the fact that Kant used the principle of universalizability as the criterion for testing if a course of action is moral or not. But the limitations of universalizability as a test criterion is fairly well known, some of which we have shown in Chap. 4 above. Perhaps because of this, nothing like that was attempted by Krishna who prescribed mumuksa as an incentive, as it were, for doing one’s duty with non-attachment. In other words, this can be said to be the mark of one’s actions being moral according to the Gita. Mohanty explains this difference thus: If Kant’s attempt may be construed as showing, in case he succeeds, that content is determined by form, the Gita seems to contend that form is simply prefixed to the already available content. The dharma already laid down that a ksatriya …ought to fight a battle if the cause is righteous. Krishna seems only to add: if he also aims at moksa, he ought to do all that with non-attachment. (Ibid, p.70)

But this has nothing to show that the content of duty follows from the form, as Kant would have liked to contend. In order that a Kant-like deduction of the content of duty from the form thereof can be shown as possible, it needs to be demonstrated that not all actions can be performed with non-attachment but that only some actions can be so performed. Taking the clue from Acharya Vinoba Bhave, apparently from his Gita Pravachan (Gita Press, Gorakh Pur) and from his close association with Vinoba, Mohanty thinks that the Gita intended something like this. The puzzling contrast in the Gita between karma, akarma and vikarma, which had confused many commentators, has been ingenuously interpreted by Vinoba thus: Karmas, he says, are all those actions which can be performed with attachment or with non-attachment; vikarmas are those actions that are performed with attachment only – actions that are dubbed as sakama karmas in the classical corpus; the third kind of actions described as akarmas are those actions that can be performed with non-attachment, with no concern whatsoever for the consequences of the actions performed  – niskama karmas, as they are famously known. Mohanty sees certain ‘intuitive plausibility’ for drawing such distinction between types of actions (ibid, p.70). These niskama karmas, which are given a spiritually elevated status in Indian theories of morals, are literally a-karmas in the sense that these are, strictly speaking, not ‘actions’ performed by the agent, because in that supposedly elevated stage, the works may be done in the interest of lokasangraha, but the ‘doer’ of these actions is not an agent in the true sense of the term; for the consequences of such actions – moral or immoral – does not affect the doer, who at this stage is a jivanmukta – a perfectly liberated person free from the clutches of the consequences of whatever he does; indeed he is free

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from the liability to be reborn so as to reap the consequences of his actions. More of this will be discussed (explained and analysed) at length in Chap. 10.

Dharma as the Sustainer One sense of supposing dharma to be moral duty is its putative role as the sustainer or preserver of the world. This sense of dharma is more often made out from its etymological root. As is well known, the word is derived from the Sanskrit root dhr which means that which holds or sustains. Professor Rajendra Prasad details at least three such senses: (i) dhriyate lokena eti dharmah, which means dharma is that by which the society or the world is sustained, or dharma is that which sustains the world; (ii) dharati lokam yah sa dharmah, which means dharma is that which holds the world/society together and which prevents it from being disintegrated; and (iii) dhriyati janairiti dharmah, meaning that dharma is that which is practiced or inculcated by human beings. One implication of this sort of interpretation (etymological interpretation) would be what may be called status-quoism, if dharma is given a sacrosanct status in this sense, as is more often done in classical corpus. For if dharma is to preserve the world’s order and prevent it from being disintegrated, then it would seem to follow that the task of dharma is to preserve status quo. Thus, following etymology wherever it leads to, would have the result of blocking the possibility of change and social reform, and this danger would be multiplied if this sense of dharma is taken as sacrosanct, and this would amount to regard all social changes and reforms virtually undesirable. Krishna, for example, seems to have espoused such a stance in the Bhagavat Gita with regard to dharma which, for him, importantly meant varnadharma:3 his persistent advice to Arjuna only to perform his swadharma was tantamount to the argument that if the society is a system of four social classes or castes, divinely designed or designed by God Himself [‘chatuvarnam maya srustam’], and dharma (in this case varnadharma) was supposed to sustain it, then this system must not be altered or even modified, and any action that questioned its sanctity would be considered to be against the principle of dharma. This sort of status-quoism, rooted in etymology, has penalized many reformers and free thinkers for flouting the status quo and misleading or corrupting the young mind in particular and popular psyche in general. Socrates’ conviction and Jesus’ crucification are glaring cases in point. Buddhism was hounded out of Hindu India for similar reasons. Examples abound in history which point to the dangers of status-­quoism that I consider an upshot of literalism, which we have seen to be detrimental to moral progress and social development. Blind adherence to literalism and objectivism in the literal sense, we have shown in Chap. 3, would be asking for 3  Which made us compelled to allege that the Gita theory of dharma has been virtually an account of varnadhrma – a remark that was necessitated by Krishna’s persistent advice to Arjuna for performing his varnadharma, without apparently adducing any reason as to why his samanya dharma was to be ignored or suspended.

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the unaskable; an objective view of the world, said Thomas Nagel, literally free from personal perspectives whatsoever, would be virtually a view from nowhere. And this is particularly true of morality and moral principles which, to repeat, inevitably involve the individual will. Besides this, morality, the sense in which dharma has been pre-eminently understood, is meant to contribute to the well-being of all, which constitutes the very spirit of all ethical codes and concepts. Maharisi Kanada, in the Vaisesika Sutra, makes the categorical statement that dharma or moral living leads to the attainment of well-being (abhyudaya) and the highest objective (nihsreyasah): ‘yatoabhyudayanihsreyasa sidhhih sa dharma’ (Vaisesika Sutra, p. 11). And the concept of well-being is something that keeps changing with time and history, and this being so, morality and moral progress cannot be a stagnant matter. In keeping with time and history the conception of dharma therefore has to undergo reinterpretation on the basis of criticism from within the moral framework. Numerous scriptural support in favour of reinterpretation and necessary reconstruction of moral concepts and moral standards are available, some of which have been cited in Chap. 2. They all reveal the normative fact that reinterpretation and reconstruction become necassary in the interest of the spirit of moral principles and ethical theories, which have to be guarded against possible misuse/misunderstandings by taking these principle/theories in their literal sense. Two more anecdotes from the Mahabharat, cited by Rajendra Prasad (Prasad 2008, p. 277), that are meant to reveal this, are pertinently noteworthy. One is the story of tiger named Balaka, who killed a blind animal while it was drinking water from a pond, and who, instead of being punished for this apparently (if taken literally) immoral act, was given an honourable place in heaven. This was because, the story goes, the blind animal in question had, with clandestine intentions, acquired a boon through austere religious practices that enabled it to kill all living beings. Balaka thus protected the well-­ being of all by eliminating this potential cause of destruction. This reminds us of Bhishma commending the scriptural owl who destroyed hundreds of eggs of a dangerously poisonous snake, for by this ‘immoral act’ of killing, this owl prevented a much larger calamity of hundreds of lives being lost through snakebite had the poisonous snakelings been allowed to hatch out of those eggs. The stories are meant to highlight the fact that apparently wrong actions may deserve to be judged as right. The other story, which exemplifies an apparently right action being judged as morally wrong, is the story of Risi Kaushika telling the truth about the hiding passers-­by to the chasing criminals (dacoits), which resulted in killing of these innocent men in the hands of those criminals. According to the Mahabharat, while Balaka the tiger went to heaven despite killing a helpless blind animal, the truthful Risi Kaushika had to be in hell for some time for having spoken a (dangerous) truth. Thus in these stories, reward to the tiger and punishment to the Risi were awarded in the interest of the spirit of ethics, i.e. well-being of all (abhyudaya). For a life of dharma is devoted to the good of all. Had their actions been taken in their literal or etymological sense, moral judgments would have gone in favour of some morally undesirable consequences. That is the main reason why Wittgenstein pleaded for the view that meaning of words must be understood by observing their use in language (Philosophical Investigations, Part II.). Reinterpretations, self-criticism and

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reconstruction, therefore, not only are necessary for proper understanding of moral principles; they constitute the strength of these principles. In this sense only, dharma can justify its ‘sustainer’ role, not in the sense of preserving the status quo. Having exposed the vulnerability of the classical Indian theories of dharma to be mainly due to their authors’ proneness to abstraction, absolutism and literalism, we shall now proceed to examine the other important value concept, kama, which will be seen to suffer from more or less similar limitations. It will be seen, in like manner as we saw in the case of dharma, that the karma doctrine also needs to be reinterpreted and modified and seen in clearer light when freed from its absolutistic preconceptions. In its received sense, it will be shown; the doctrine suffers from serious logical flaws by being burdened with illogical presuppositions.

References Bilimoria, P., et al. (Eds.). (2007). Indian ethics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Jain, P. (2005). Dharma: The categorical imperative (A. Vohra et al., Ed.). New Delhi: D.K.Printworld, Ch.6. Jaimini. (1889). In S. Bhashya (Ed.), Mimamsa sutra of Jaimini. Calcutta: Nyayaratna, Asiatic Society. Kane, P.  V. (1930). History of Dharmasastra (pp.  1–4). Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Kanada. (1976). Vaisesika Sutra. Poona: Ananda Ashram Press. Mohanty, J. N. (2007). Dharma, imperatives and tradition. In P. Bilimoria et al. (Eds.), Indian ethics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Radhakrishnan, S. (1923). Indian Philosophy (p. 52). London: George Allen and Urwin. Sastry, V. K. (2005). Semantics of dharma. In V. Ashok, et al. (Eds.), Dharma: The categorical imperative. New Delhi: D. K. Print world. Vohra, A., Miri, M., & Sharma, A. (Eds.). (2005). Dharma: The Categorical Imperative. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld.

Chapter 7

Karma as a Theory of Retributive Morality

The concept of karma and the karma doctrine constitute another fundamental ­structure of Indian ethics. The belief in karma and the operation of the doctrine bring to focus the pre-eminently moral aspect of our value systems. The karma doctrine can be said to be a principle of justice – a principle of allocating to each his own. But the allocation or apportionment of deserts and entitlements is done automatically on the basis of a causal principle – not necessarily by any dispenser of justice. This is the quintessential claim of the doctrine of karma, on which both the orthodox and the heterodox systems of Indian philosophy would agree. The admittance of a divine dispenser of deserts, we shall see, would take away the moral element from the doctrine, to say the least. This doctrine is essentially an individualistic and usually backward-looking ideal for securing appropriate consequences which everyone is entitled to by virtue of his (past) actions. Actions of individuals have the causal efficiency of producing consequences, which the respective individuals have to enjoy or suffer from. This is because the individual, who is endowed with the power of freedom of the will, does all his actions by choice, so it is supposed, and is therefore responsible for the consequences they produce. But although the responsibilities are taken up or accounted for with regard to one’s past actions, the scope of accountability is not limited to one’s past only but extends to one’s future on the basis of his present actions, for present actions also produce consequences for which the agent is responsible. Thus, the scope of the karma doctrine is not only retrospective but also prospective. ‘As you sow, so you reap’ is equally applicable to the consequences of our past actions as well as to those of our present actions that fructify in the future. But I think the usually backward-looking characterization of the law of karma is due to the fact that, when the consequences of actions are reaped (enjoyed or suffered from) by the individual, the actions have already become things of the past. Be that as it may, there is an important asymmetry with regard to the consequences of past and present actions, which introduces an overwhelmingly moral element into the doctrine of karma; and it is this: whereas we do not have any choice regarding the consequences of our past actions except to go through their experiences, pleasant or painful, we do © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 P. K. Mohapatra, An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7503-3_7

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have choice and control over the consequences of our present actions. If what we are (in this life with all its pleasures and sufferings) is determined by what we have been (in the previous life), what we will be (in future life) lies entirely within our control, so that the belief in the doctrine of karma is an effective incentive for right conduct. Thus, far from being fatalistic and deterministic, as several western scholars would make it out to be, the karma doctrine, in this respect, leaves ample scope for moral progress and development. The idea of rewards for good conduct and punishment for the bad ones is an important means (incentive) to moral growth – this is also an important factor leading man to a firm commitment to the obligations of a truly moral life. The fact that man is the architect of his future through his present actions that are fully under his control, it must be noted, applies to present actions in all his past lives as well as in his present life – assuming transmigration and samsara as a necessary part of this belief system. From this it follows that man is not only responsible for the consequences of his actions, but he deserves them in all fairness. For whatever we knowingly do – irrespective of which life we may be talking about – is sure to bring us the results we merit. The idea of retribution thus becomes an integral element in the karma doctrine, which signifies not only that whatever happens to us in life are determined by their antecedent causes but also that whatever happens to us are the just rewards and punishment for our actions.1 The karma doctrine, thus, is not a blind mechanical law but an essentially moral or ethical law. Instead of making man a helpless sufferer (or enjoyer) of the pains and pleasures of life, he is shown to organize his life in accordance with ethical principles. For man is not only a rational being with power to know moral values from disvalues but is also a moral agent, a valuing being, who is capable of ordering his own way of living (Hiriyanna 1975). However, despite highlighting the essential moral feature of the doctrine of karma, the described asymmetry between the consequences of past and present actions (actions of one’s past life and those of one’s present) still retains an important feature. For once the actions are performed, there is no escape from the consequences thereof. Like the ‘wheel that follows the foot of the ox’ and the calf that seeks its mother in a herd of cows (Mahabharat, XII. 179, 13 and 17), the consequences of one’s past karmas follow him inevitably, either in the same life or in a later life. Man’s life, in respect of his past karmas, is governed by strict necessity. The karma doctrine thus implies necessity, determinism and predestination. But it also implies freedom in respect of ethical progress and commitment to moral life as described above. This is a perfectly coherent explanation  – this implication of necessity as well as freedom involved in the doctrine – which only a blind literal mind would find to be inconsistent or contradictory. Further, as Hiriyanna rightly points out, the seemingly opposite implications relate to different aspects of karma – necessity relates to the results of the karma, and freedom relates to matters of moral progress. Indeed, the doctrine claims, every action that we perform leads to double 1  It is to be noted that the word karma is wider in significance than the word dharma, in so far as karmas can be dharmas as well as adharma – dharmic actions as well as adharmic ones – which are both deeds or actions; the former merit rewards and the latter punishments in the karmic scheme of things.

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results  – a phala in the form of pleasure or pain and a samskara or tendency to repeat the same (type of) deeds in future. Whereas we are necessarily bound by the former, the latter we are free to regulate, and on the success with which we regulate these tendencies or dispositions depends the moral progress we make. This freedom to regulate one’s samskaras in particular and to perform actions in general constitutes a very important aspect of the karma doctrine. Freedom of the agent in respect of what he does would not allow control or constraint by anything external, though it is compatible with, or rather characterized by, an internal constraint, i.e. self-determination. The law of karma is thus a postulate of practical reason, which at all stages (in all lives of the individual) is governed by self-­ determination and is in no need to acknowledge the existence or role of any external agency, not even of God. For if the law of karma is a specific form of the casual law operating in the domain of morality – i.e. in the domain of human actions and conducts and the consequences thereof – then to admit this all-controlling agent would impede the operation of this law and militate against its all-important moral feature. It is for this reason that not only the heterodox schools like Jainism and Buddhism but also some orthodox ones like Samkhya and Mimamsa would want to disallow the existence and the role of God in the operation of the karma doctrine (It is immortality of the self, not the existence of God, which the higher vlues of life point to, according to these schools). The divine influence would go against the unimpeded operation of the law by telling upon its rigor and objectivity, which would be affected by waiting upon the divine dispensation. And it would divest the law of its all-important moral nature by making God the virtual cause of the doings of men, thereby depriving them of the moral freedom in choosing their actions and hence deserving the consequences thereof. The idea of a divine dispenser of the rewards and punishments for men’s actions, mooted by some schools like the Nyaya and forms of theistic Vedanta, purportedly to safeguard the ethicality of this doctrine,2 pays only a leap service to God by making him act in consonance with the karmas of men, for the authors of this idea – the said theistic schools – conceive of him as “a common cause in the operation of the law of karma” and explain the divergence of its incidence (differing awards of rewards and punishments) on different individual agents entirely in terms of their respective moral deserts (See Vedanta Sutra II. i. 34–36), thereby limiting his power of omnipotence. If, to counter the latter, God is projected as the ulterior cause of men’s deeds, he would be responsible for the inequity of the awards and so would be responsible for the presence of evil and injustice in the world, as evidenced by the said inequity. If, to counter this, it is further argued that the law of karma is the will of God and as such cannot be considered as limiting his power, he would be construed as willing the sufferings and punishments awarded to men and that would affect his goodness. Thus, the divine

2  For it was argued that since the results of our past deeds are unconscious (achetana) factors – not known as such because of lack of memory of these actions and of that life, the allotment of the awards to a just and all-knowing God would account for the awards as just and deserved. (See Hiriyanna, Indian Conception of Values.

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dispenser of justice would not only take away the ethicality of the karma doctrine but would also be a very truncated God indeed. Unattached thus from the notion of divine control (on which, understandably, there is no agreement among Indian schools of thought), the karma doctrine, in its secular version and generally agreed formulation, is an inexorable moral law of deserts and entitlements, governed by self-determination and causal necessity. What I call the secular version of the law of karma would still make three distinct but supposedly interdependent claims which, I wish to show, are not logically interdependent after all. Rajendra Prasad summarized these claims of the law thus: Ignoring some details, which may be important for some schools or sects of classical Indian philosophy, the law of karma … can be stated as a conjunction of three claims: (a) every action produces some pleasure or pain, (b) which and only which its doer necessarily experiences in the present or next life because (c) he deserves, or ought, to experience them and them alone (Prasad 1989, pp. 220–221).

Let us examine the three claims and their implications. But while examining them, we must not lose sight of the fact that the three claims must be supposed to be interdependent, the presupposition of which only would make the law of karma what it is. For otherwise (a) would have nothing to do with (b) and (c), and the same would be true of (b) and (c) as well. But, contrary to this supposition, even if we admit that one’s actions produce some effects, it does not follow that one must experience them all, nor that one deserves them all. My writing this chapter may enrage a staunch believer, because the chapter reflects a view that does not quite conform to his view. But neither do I have to experience his anger, for he may not express it or direct it against me, nor do I deserve his anger, if he does. Secondly, even if my actions produce an effect e (claim – a), and I deserve it (claim – c), it does not follow that (claim – b) I experience it in any of my supposed lives. Thus (b) would have nothing to do with (a) and (c). Conversely (which makes the same point), it may also be the case that I experience something, e.g. I may be the victim of someone else’s anger (claim – b), which, for sure, I do not deserve and which is not a consequence of any of my actions (claim  – a). For example, take this familiar story from the Ramayana: Ahalya became the victim of her husband’s anger and was turned into a stone; but she neither deserved this nor was this a consequence of her action (i.e. the alleged adultery which she did not commit within her knowledge).3 However, if I do deserve something (claim – c), it would mean that what I deserve is the result of one of my actions (claim – a), and in all fairness, I must (ought to) experience it (claim – b). But, as Prasad rightly observed, the fact that I ought to experience x does not imply, or is not the same thing as saying, that I do experience it (Prasad, ibid, p. 222). Thus (c) strictly has nothing to do with (b). It is therefore not a logical interdependence that binds the three claims together. Their interdependence is a postulate and a presupposition of the law of karma, which is admittedly neither logically provable nor empirically demonstrable. However, the law is proffered as a sort of 3  It may also be questioned whether what she did would at all be a case of adultery, for all the while she took the imposter, Indra in disguise, as her husband, Risi Goutama, who and who alone was in her mind.

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transcendental argument that claims to make intelligible some very important facts of life, which would otherwise remain unexplained. The gap between virtue and success in life, often expressed as the problem of the evil, the inequalities of life’s benefits and burdens and, most importantly, the sufferings of people which cannot be traced to any of their actions in [this] life are all these important facts which are supposed to find a rational explanation in the law of karma. For if the deserved consequences of one’s actions are to be experienced (suffered from or enjoyed) by oneself, the karma doctrine with its necessary corollary, the belief in samsasra, seeks to provide this explanation. In fact, the belief in rebirth and the cycle of births and deaths constitute an essential requirement for the karma doctrine in order to make it internally coherent. And it is also to be noted that this belief is virtually another transcendental argument without which the doctrine cannot be explained, since one single life is often inadequate to explain and establish the deserts and entitlements accrued from actions. But this is another presupposition, equally unprovable and equally non-demonstrable (more of this, soon later on), and if one does not accept this belief, one will have a strong reason to reject the law of karma and not just modify, al beit drastically, the character of the law, as Prasad rather shakily suggested (Prasad 1989, p. 224). To suggest that one would “hesitate” to accept (b), and therefore the law of karma, if one does not find the belief in rebirth acceptable (as Professor Prasad does, ibid), is itself a hesitant suggestion, since to reject the belief in rebirth is to reject (b) and the law of karma – if the latter is taken as absolute and inviolable. I have argued later on that this does not have to be so with the law of karma and that the law’s being not inviolable does not affect its essential moral nature as a principle of retributive morality. But prior to this work of analytic reconstruction, we will have to continue exposing a few more problems endemic in the law in its received form. An important problem with the claims of the doctrine, especially as spelt out by (claim  – c), is that it assumes that all actions are moral actions and that all our actions entitle their doers to experience the sufferings and enjoyments of the results. This is contrary to our normal understanding of the concept of human actions, which recognizes the reality of moral actions as well as of non-moral actions; the former only lead to deserts and entitlements, whereas the latter do not, or cannot, generate any entitlement for the doer. But the karma doctrine seems to have taken no care to take note of this important distinction between types of human actions – important from the point of view of moral entitlement – and the classical Indian tradition, depending heavily on this doctrine rather as an article of faith, has never felt the need to make this distinction, which nevertheless is of crucial logical and philosophical importance. Nor do writers and commentators on karma seem to have felt this need; for in keeping with the tradition they inherited, they simply take it for granted that every action of ours generates some moral entitlement. This, I suspect, is the symptom of the tendency for abstraction and generalism that, I said, has been largely responsible for many a misconceptions regarding our tradition. Even if we accept that all our actions generate entitlements, there is, in addition, the problematic possibility that some results of one’s actions not only affect oneself but also

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some other people. As an anecdote in the Ramayana goes (Balakanda, 9.18), Jarata (the virtuous whore) had seduced Sage Rushyasringa into the trouble-stricken kingdom of Raja Lomapada, and the result was the much awaited rain that saved millions’ lives from the clutches of the killer draught; but it would be much too far-fetched to claim, as some do,4 that the millions who benefited from her (Jarata’s) action deserved the benefit by virtue of their past actions. My using of a high-power motor causes scarcity of water supply in my neighbours’ houses, but this is a consequence of my action which not I but my neighbours suffer from and which certainly they do not deserve. Thus, claim (c) is shown to be fairly violable, and with it the karma doctrine is deprived of its supposed important requirement of unimpeded operation. In fact, my sufferings may be the result of my actions as well as of someone else’s actions or of a natural calamity like a super cyclone or a Tsunami earthquake. Though the latter types of events are sometimes attributed to a general decline in moral virtues, it would hardly pass for a theory of deserts when the victims of such calamities may include the virtuous and the vicious alike. However, such blatant exceptions to the law of karma are generally ignored, and some particular ‘positive’ instances are singled out and cited, viz. the miraculous survival of a child or an old man in the midst of the killer events, to “prove” that some of their past virtuous actions saved their lives; and myths are raised in support of this. The gravest setback the law of karma has to suffer, in my view, are the severe limitations of the belief in rebirth and transmigration, which virtually is the sine qua non of the law’s operation. All one’s sufferings are the deserved results of one’s past actions, so the law claims, but not all these sufferings are explainable as results of one’s past actions performed in one’s present life. So, in order to prove that it is the agent’s desert, a present suffering is traced backwards to one’s actions done in a supposed past life (or lives). But the success of this supposition (argument!) depends on proving that the person who is said to have done a bad action in a supposed previous life is the person who is suffering in this life. This tacit assumption of personal identity is severely suspect in the obvious absence of bodily continuity, which alone can tell the difference of ‘the same person’ from ‘a similar person’. The usual invocation of memory as the explanation of personal identity in such cases is hopelessly inadequate since memory, in order to qualify as a criterion of personal identity, is dependent on physical continuity and cannot be a sufficient condition of personal identity. In the absence of physical continuity, the distinction between genuine memory and mere memory claims would remain unexplained, and the problem of possible massive reduplication would remain unsolved. I have adduced elaborate arguments to this effect elsewhere (Mohapatra 2000, esp. ch. 4, sec 2. Also see Mohapatra 1978) and shall not, therefore, pursue them here. The foregoing has 4  For example, A.  K. Mohanty, Karma (Department of Special Assistance in Philosophy, Utkal University, 2004) p.  38. Mohanty argues that one’s prarabdhas create the necessary situations congenial for their fruition. On this view, described by some as karmic monism, Jarata’s action should be the kind of congenial situations leading to fruition of past actions of all the beneficiaries indiscriminately! To be sure, the last factor lays bare the weakness of karmic monism stretched to a point of near absurdity.

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enough arguments (pointing to the dubiousness of personal identity and hence of actions done by a person in this life being individuated as the person’s own actions done in a supposed previous life) to expose the weakness of the rebirth theory, which, in turn, weakens the karma doctrine considerably. For, to say the least, unless the actions of a supposed past life are (shown to be or individuated as) my actions, my sufferings and pains in this life cannot be explained as deserved punishments for me. The law of karma is claimed to be a retributive theory of morality in as much as it insists that whatever sufferings or enjoyments one undergoes are the deserved effects of his actions. But its retributivism gets into serious trouble in its being tied up with the theory of rebirth (see also Prasad 1989, p. 233). Yet the law of karma, as received from tradition and interpreted by some/most modern writers, relies heavily on this contentious postulate of “one’s own actions” supposed to have been performed in a past life giving rise to the rewards or punishments in the present life. Hiriyanna, for example, seems to have been obliged to explain the good and the evil consequences of one’s present conducts by tracing them to his ‘own actions’ supposedly done in a previous life. He says (Hiriyanna 1975): We can as well conceive of man’s continued existence in a series of lives (samsara) and then the difficulty of accounting for what befalls him in any life disappears, because we can trace it to the deeds done by himself in each earlier birth. If we look at life from this perspective, past karma which explains the present conduct of a person and the good or evil that follows from it are eventually traceable to nothing but his own actions.5

The belief in rebirth has another problem that relates to, or rather poses a threat to, the morality of the karma doctrine as a theory of desert. The deserts and entitlements of a person in the present life are traced to his actions in a supposed past life, which are admittedly never remembered by the doer, except in the dubious cases of the jatasmaras, the so-called memory of the latter being indistinguishable in principle from retrocognitive clairvoyance and mere memory claims. If we do not remember anything of our past life, it may not disprove the reality of that life and the continuity of the person through the (supposed) past life and the present, as Hiriyanna argued in defence of transmigration.6 But what is missed in this argument is the crucially important point about the justice of punishing a person for what he does not, nay cannot, be able to, remember to have done even if he did it in ‘his’ (supposed) past life. Consciousness of guilt is an important moral and legal consideration in awarding punishment to a person, and absence of it is often considered an attenuating condition justifying exoneration or at least lessening of the punishment.7  Hiriyanna (Indian Conception of Values, p. 174. (Emphasis added).  See ibid, p.  180. The attempt to disprove past life on the basis of non-remembrance of it, he argues, would be to confound a thing with the consciousness of it. I would however argue, against him and the received view of karma, that the mere supposition that it exists and even the additional supposition that it helps in explaining the discrepancy between virtue and success in life (as is usually argued by many modern writers, including Hiriyanna) does not and cannot prove that it exists. 7  For example, John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk.II. Ch.27, sec.19: ‘… to punish Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no more right than to punish one twin for what the brother twin did’. 5 6

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The law of karma, which is expressly ethical, is thus weakened in that respect on account of its necessary corollary, the belief in rebirth and transmigration. Thus, contrary to the contention of some modern writers that the inexorable of law of karma is our assurance for the truth of transmigration (Hiriyanna ibid, p. 176), the latter becomes a major ground of weakness of the former. However, I suspect that the Indian mind’s proneness for universality and absoluteness makes it conceive of the law of karma as inexorable and absolutely infallible and forces itself to back it up with the belief in rebirth as a necessary condition for its unimpeded operation. Since many, perhaps most, of our undergoings cannot be explained as the results of our actions in this life, a past life (lives) is (are) brought in to do the explaining. But the supposition of this is a debilitating working hypothesis as much as the supposition of God in explaining esse ist percipii in Berkeley’s philosophy, i.e. in explaining the existence of the unperceived reals. (When nobody perceives a table, which nevertheless continues to exist, and we have good reasons to suppose that it does, God is said to do the perceiving). How wonderful it would be – and how much logical – if this otherwise fine theory and law could be explained independently of such weak assumptions! But despite its vulnerability and questionable logic, the belief in transmigration forms so much an essential element of the law of karma that it, along with the belief in moksa and karma, forms a logical trilogy in the sense that any one of the three beliefs can be explained only in association with the other two.

References Hiriyanna, M. (1975). Indian conception of values (p. 176). Mysore: Kavyalay Publishers. Prasad, R. (1989). Karma, causation and retributive morality (pp. 220–221). New Delhi: ICPR. Mohapatra. (2000). Personal identity (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Decent Books. Mohapatra. (1978). Survival and memory: A critical note. Indian Philosophical Quarterly, July 1978.

Chapter 8

Niskama Karma: A Critical Assessment

While rebirth is a candid member of this logical family (the logical trilogy referred to in the last chapter), moksa belongs to this family in a rather indirect way. What I mean is explained not only by the fact that the former is a positive requirement for the law of karma to be intelligible and operative, whereas the latter becomes possible only with the ceasing of the law’s operation, but also by the fact that the actions relating to each are of different types and nature. Actions that lead to rebirth are intentional actions done with the desire for their likely results. In fact, in Indian philosophical writings ‘karma’ means actions of this type, which cause bondage to the cycle of births and deaths (samsara), and rebirth is necessitated for the agent to experience the balance of unexperienced consequences of karma in one single life. These bondage-causing actions, because done with attachment for the consequences (sakama karma), thus, form the essential ingredients of the karma doctrine. Moksa or liberation from the bondage of samsara is possible only if the actions stop producing consequences, and those actions will stop producing consequences, which are done with no attachment for consequences. There being no consequences for the agent to experience here or hereafter, such actions are supposed to lead to moksa. These desireless actions, usually called niskama karmas, render the law of karma virtually inoperative and should, therefore, be beyond or outside the purview of this law. However, while this part of the traditional account of moksa as related to karma as well as of niskama karma leading to moksa makes pretty good sense, neither the classical view nor any modern writings on it come up with any good reasons as to why such actions cannot have consequences and whether there at all can be actions that are desireless and consequence-less. (We shall soon come to argue that ‘desireless action’ is a conceptual impossibility). These two questions are crucially important in appreciating the concept of niskama karma vis-à-vis the concept of karma itself. In the brief discussion that follows, this view of niskama karma will be assessed and shown to be misconceived on more than one count. The first question that needs attention is: why the so-called niskama karmas cannot have consequences. One reason, supposedly proffered by tradition and modern writings thereof, is that consequences are produced by actions when they are desired or © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 P. K. Mohapatra, An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7503-3_8

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intended by the doer of the action; consequences are thus characteristic of intentional actions. Niskama karmas, being actions in which consequences are not desired, cannot produce any. My immediate response to this argument is that while the intention involved in our actions is the seat anchor of the law of karma, the supposed distinction between sakama karma and niskama karma – the former being intentional and the latter unintentional in respect of their consequences – displays an internal incoherence in the basics of the law. For, ex hypothesi, the law of karma assumes an essential causal efficiency in every action of man, and the idea of niskama karma is contrary to this assumption of karma  causing consequences the agent has to deservingly suffer from or enjoy. If it is argued further that niskama karma is meant to strip karma of its causal potency so as to make it liberating and samsara-mukta, that would be unnecessarily presumptuous. It would be presumptuous since what needs to be established is that resultless actions lead to liberation and freedom from the cycle of births and deaths. And it would be unnecessary because, in order to be liberating and leading to no rebirth, it is not necessary that actions should be resultless, but only that they be such that the doers of these actions be unattached to the consequences thereof, which nonetheless would follow their performances. Instead of supposing, like the Samkhya did, as McKenzie observed (McKenzie 1922), that all actions are evil for they produce rebirth-causing consequences, niskama karma can be very well understood as actions done with no attachment for the consequences thereof. In fact the Bhagavad Gita shows a better way in pleading for detachment in actions and not for detachment for actions. Karma sanyasa is sanyasa or indifference for the consequences of actions, whatever they may turn out to be. If ‘niskama karma’ is to be desireless action, it should be meant (as) no desire for any consequence of the action – not desireless action simpliciter or action done without any desire whatsoever. In fact – and that brings us to the second question I wish to address to – there can, strictly speaking, be no action that is absolutely desireless. For it is as much a conceptual truth (causal, if not logical) that actions have consequences as it is that actions are done with a motive or intention to get something or to make something happen. In saying this, I do not have in mind the cases of actions inadvertently performed, which produce consequences not intended by the doer. But what I am saying is true not only of the intentional actions that form the basic presupposition of the law of karma but also of the so-called niskama karmas that are supposed to liberate from the clutches of this law. In fact this is true more in the case of the latter, since men are asked to perform such actions with a view to achieving liberation or moksa; and it would be an incoherent claim, a self-inconsistent one, if someone is said to be engaged in a niskama karma to attain moksa and yet not desiring the moksa thus to be obtained. We may be stopped here and asked to consider (other) cases of niskama karma, which do not have moksa as their obvious objective, but which (are meant to) produce consequences for which the doer has no desire or attachment whatsoever. This in fact has been the model of niskama karma in India’s classical literature, which has been largely responsible for the description of niskama karma as desireless action. But this description, which is based on confusion between attachment for an action and attachment for a consequence thereof, has

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nothing to warrant characterization of such actions as desireless. For, quite to the contrary, such actions are desired by, and recommended for, the doer because they are not bondage-causing and rebirth-requiring. Further, such actions are desired because they lead to liberation, which is their indirectly desired objective. Thus the least that follows from this is that niskama karmas are desireless; and since actions admit of two broad categories (from the present point of view), viz. sakarma karma and niskama karma, no action can be said to be desireless. The concepts of moksa and mumuksa provide corroboration for the above conclusion. For moksa, which is a state of pure bliss and highest form of happiness according to some schools of Indian philosophy, requires a mumuksu to have desire for moksa. No one can be said to be happy or unhappy if he had no desire for anything whatsoever (Prasad 1989, p. 240). A seeker of moksa may not have this desire or that, but he cannot be a seeker of moksa if he had no desire at all, just as no one (nothing!) can be a person without being conscious – though he may not be in this particular state of consequences or that (Mohapatra 1999). So, to repeat my contention endemic in the forgoing, no action can be absolutely desireless any more than anyone can be devoid of desires whatsoever. The concept of jivanmukta, wherever admitted in the Indian schools of thought, also points to the same conclusion. For if a jivanmukta is to go on working for the general well-being (nihshreyasa), he must desire for the latter in working toward this objective. If this is so, why has there been so much of emphasis on niskama karma, especially in the sense in which it means desireless action? The reason, once again, is the proneness of the Indian mind for absolutism and generalism. Because of this, or largely because of this, classical Indian tradition seems to have regarded any desire involved in an action as bondage-causing and hence as evil. It is desirelessness, rather than performance of duty, that is considered as the necessary condition for liberation. But, as Rajendra Prasad points out, to be completely desireless one has to have no desire even to get liberation by performing one’s duty. ‘Therefore, the gospel “Do your duty solely because it is your duty” is equivalent to “perform your duty with complete non-attachment (or desirelessness) for any of its consequences”, and the main emphasis is not on the performance of duty but on non-attachment for its consequences’ (Prasad 1989, p. 252). And the irony is that the concept of niskama karma, which is often considered as the Indian counterpart of the Kantian concept of categorical imperative or the principle of duty for duty’s sake, is reduced to making the performance of duty somewhat subordinate to non-attachment. The fact, I claim, is that to be desireless is not an absolute requirement of a moral action, nor should the Indian ideal of niskama karma be taken to really imply that (as, e.g. I have shown the Bhagavad Gita not obviously implying that). It would also not be properly logical to define niskama karma as involving absolutely no attachment or desire for the consequences of actions; and this is for two reasons: firstly, if the law of karma postulates that a person must undergo what he deserves, it would not be immoral, or morally wrong, to desire for what he deserves on merit; and if this sounds perfectly alright for desiring a deserved happiness, this should also be so in respect of a deserved suffering. Secondly, it is a conceptual truth that a person becomes happy when a desired consequence of his action is materialized and he becomes unhappy

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if it is not. And we have shown above that without having any desire involved in his actions, no one can be happy or unhappy. So, though it would be certainly immoral to feel happy at the fulfilment of one’s selfish desires, it would be morally right to feel happy at the fulfilment of one’s desire that is altruistically directed for the wellbeing of others. A jivanmukta’s desire for nihshreyasa and his feeling happy at its fulfilment is perfectly natural and morally justified. The desire of Bhima Bhoi, a nineteenth-century santh poet of Orissa, that let his life be made to rot in the hell if that could redeem the suffering people of the world: ‘Praninka arata duhkha apramita dekhu dekhu ke’va sahu // Mo’ jivana pachhe narke padi thau jagata uddhara pau’ (Bhima Bhoi 1989, verse 27.7) is a fitting case in point, and an action done with such purely altruistic desire should both be moral and have freeing power. To substantiate the point I want to make, there is also the famous wish of King Ranti Deva to live among the corporeal beings and endure their pains in order that they may be freed from their suffering (Bhagavata, IX 21.12). The Buddha’s wish to ‘bear the burden of everybody’s suffering, if only he could thereby bring relief to the world’ (Hiriyanna 1957, p. 252) is a further point in support. It would be logically odd and self-inconsistent to want the jivanmukta to continue working for moral upliftment of mankind and also to expect him to be desireless in his action. Working for x logically presupposes wanting to work for x. It is for this (logical) reason that some of our classical thinkers did not require a mumuksu to be absolutely desireless in his action of seeking moksa or working towards it; ‘…they rather required him to have this desire for moksa’ (Prasad 1989, p. 240). Doesn’t mumuksa mean that? It follows, therefore, that no karma can be desireless, and niskama karma is not and need not be. For desires as such are not evil and undesirable, though some sorts of them are – those, i.e. which are extremely selfish and egocentric. Largely for this reason, moralists the world over plead for keeping one’s desires for consequences reasonably under control and for making them non-selfish and altruistic as far as possible. But the Indian mind’s proneness for absolutism and generalism requires us not only to thus moderate our desires or tone down their selfish nature but also to have no desires whatever (See Prasad ibid, p. 257). And this I have shown to be not only impracticable but also impossible; this has also been shown to be needless from the moral point of view.  Besides, one major reason for interpreting niskama karma as desireless action and pleading for it seems to have been the general assumption of the karma doctrine that all desires are evil and all desireful actions are bondage-causing. The main implication of this is the further supposition that all desireless actions are morally right and all desireful actions are wrong. But, besides being a symptom of our proneness to and preference for absolutism and generalism, this assumption is counterintuitive. For experience and moral common sense bear it out that not all desireless actions are morally commendable, nor are all desireful actions morally condemnable. If someone feels unconcerned and non-attached,1 as many of us in 1  Non-attachment and desirelessness are usually used as synonymous, and I am so using these words, particularly in the context of niskama karma. Rajendra Prasad has convincing reasons for treating them as such. See ibid, chaper 13, Sections 2 and 3.

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fact do, for the miserable state of the victims of a natural calamity, like the Tsunami earthquake, his non-attachment is immoral, or at least not morally commendable. Bhisma’s cryptic unconcern in refraining from interfering in the attempted disrobing of Draupadi can hardly pass for a commendable action to the minimum of our moral common sense. On the contrary, Gandhi’s desire and positive concern for fighting against the injustice of apartheid and racial discrimination in South Africa does and will remain a paradigm case of ethical actions, commendable by any standard of morality anywhere. Thus, obviously not every sort of attached actions are ethically evil, nor are every kind of non-attached actions ethically good. Which ones of the former are evil and which of the latter are good would depend upon the nature of the object of attachment (or non-attachment). If the object desired in one’s attached action is morally good, his action, though attached, is ethical and morally commendable, for example, a student’s desire to donate his year’s scholarship for helping the victims of a super cyclone; if, on the other hand, the object of one’s attachment is vicious, one’s action too will be vicious, not because it is an attached action but because his attachment in this action is for something vicious, for example, putting into action one’s desire to supersede a more deserving colleague and competitor. Desires and detachments for the consequences of one’s actions are not, in themselves, bad or good. What is the nature of the consequences that one looks forward to does and should determine the goodness or badness of one’s actions. Insofar as the theory of niskama karma puts a blanket ban on desires or attachment for consequences of actions, it displays an inadequate understanding of the described intuitive truth about actions. In virtually legislating that we should not have attachment for any of the consequences of our actions, the theory prescribes an absolutistic requirement for itself and thereby puts a severe constraint on its success. Rajendra Prasad presents a fittingly logical counter to this absolutistic glorification of desirelessness by arguing that ‘It is a moral truth that one has a moral right to get what he deserves, and, therefore, the desire to have it is a morally right kind of desire’ (Prasad 1989, p. 245). I consider this as a logical counter (though Professoor Prasad does not seem to take it as such) because the truth alluded to is a conceptual truth, issuing from the logic of morality and of deserving. Another source of the plea for desirelessness or non-attachment for the consequences of one’s actions can be said to spring from the oft-quoted II.47 of the BhagavadGita, which says: Karmanyevadhikaraste’ ma phalesu kadachana/ Ma karmaphalaheturbhur ma te’ sango/stuakarmani//

Man is advised not to have any attachment or desire for the consequences of his actions because the consequences are not within his power or control, but only the actions are. One has neither any control over the results of one’s actions nor, for that reason, should he consider himself the cause of what his actions result in. Therefore, it has been argued, one should not desire to get what one is not empowered to get. But though this may at best be considered a prudential reason for desirelessness (as Professor Prasad points out, (ibid.), it cannot be taken to imply that one should not desire for the results of any of his actions; since not only (a) it is not borne out by

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facts/experience, as Prasad noted, that one can never control any of the results of any of his actions, but also (b) it is also not a matter of logic, as Prasad does not note, that one should not desire to get what one cannot get. While (a) is evidenced by the familiar fact that we do have control over the consequences of many of our actions, as Arjuna certainly did over the effectiveness of using his arrows (Prasad’s example), (b) is evident from the fact that to desire for what one cannot get is neither logically impossible (conceptually odd) nor morally condemnable. The Vedic wish ‘Pashyema sharadah shatam, jivema sharadah shatam …’ (Yajurveda, 36.24.) is neither incoherent nor immoral. Besides, we may ask, should we be allowed to desire for a consequence x of our action y, if we did have control over it? The answer should be “yes” if the prudential reason for non-attachment (cited above) is valid, i.e. one should only desire for what is within one’s control. But this would amount to desiring rebirth to enjoy x, which, according to the law of karma, should be obligatory on the part of the desirer. This idea of being obligated to experience what one desires to get by his actions is fraught with failings that affect the law of karma itself. Firstly, it is because of this that the law cannot stand independently of the belief in rebirth, which we have seen to be suspect on several counts. In addition, there is the further problem relating to retributivism: the law of karma, we have seen, is claimed to be a retributive law, presupposing a theory of retributive morality. This means that whatever (reward or punishment) one deserves is because of the supposed fact that he had done the action that led to what he is said to deserve. But this important moral feature of the law is severely affected by its being tied up with the belief in rebirth. For, consequent upon my argument above, in the obvious discontinuity of the body, neither the identity of the doer of the action with the recipient of the consequences thereof can be established nor can the individuation of the action across lives or births (Prasad 1989, pp. 233–34). At least for this reason, contrary to what some interpreters of the law of karma have claimed, its role as a ‘rational explanation’ of the inequities of life cannot be ‘clear’ (Hiriyanna 1932, p. 79). Besides, the idea of being obligated to experience the desired results may create a serious moral problem thus: actions cause bondage, it is claimed, because their being done with the intention or desire to get something makes it obligatory for the doer to experience the result. This is why sacred texts are read out to a dying man with the belief that the man may wish something holy and virtuous so that he may be reborn as a virtuous man or get salvation by effacing his prarabdhas because of his virtuous action of sincerely expressing a holy wish (More of this, soon later). But what if a vicious person expressed a desire to be rewarded instead of being punished for his evil actions? The law of karma, by simple logic, should force him (grant him!) to gain another life just to experience (enjoy!) what he thus desires. But this would be against the spirit of retribution and morality, which, in effect, is against the spirit of the law of karma itself. Once again, the described idea of obligation is an absolutistic requirement that the law of karma puts upon itself and gets into trouble, as shown above. To suppose the law to operate unfailingly and to expect the agent to reap the consequence of his actions unexceptionably, even if that required him to undergo several births, is such

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a theoretical demand that can never imply that the agent does enjoy (or suffer from) what he deserves or all that he deserves. Absolutistic requirement on moral theories, we have seen, has been self-­defeating for these theories. For because of literal adherence to absolute standards, ethical theories have been shown to be either inapplicable or to lead to morally undesirable consequences, if applied. Such offshoot of absolutism has virtually worked against the spirit and purpose of ethical theories, which is to provide guidance for effective practical living. It is for this reason that our scriptures have recommended what we have called justified violations of these principles in keeping with the demands of the situations and spirit of the principles concerned. Ethical principles or moral laws, universalisable though they are, must not be taken as literally absolute and objective, but depending upon the demands of the situation, must be seen to be defeasible or overridable. For example, it has been argued above, Arjuna’s samanya dharma of non-killing had an arguable defeasibility in relation to his swadharma of fighting a righteous war. The former dharma being overridable by the latter under special circumstances would not make it a lower value simpliciter, nor does this make the latter unconditionally higher. I have argued elsewhere (Mohapatra 2008, Chap. 3) that moral principles have a special kind of objectivity – very much like Nagel’s notion of ‘objective tolerance’(Nagel 1986, esp. p. 130) and Dancy’s secondary quality model of objectivity (Dancy 1993 p. 156) – which is compatible with their being defeasible in the described sense. Colours and sounds are dependent on the perceiver’s senses in an important sense, and objects of knowledge are conditioned to a reasonable extent by the viewer’s perspectives. But that does not make the reds and ringtones cease to be objective colours and sounds, nor does that make the world a figment of my imagination purely ‘in my mind’. Moral realism, though considered by some as a special form of metaphysical realism, (Brink 1989 Chap. 2 Sect. 2) is not to be confused with the latter. It is a special form of realism, which holds moral principles to be objective but defeasible, for that is what objectivity means in moral matters. In view of the above, the law of karma in its prevalent form should be in for a special review. The prevalent view, as we noted, is that the necessity of karma is absolute and experiencing the fruits of past actions cannot be avoided. But if it is a causal law, as it is claimed to be, it cannot be absolute and infallible in its operation. And if it is a moral law, the above analysis makes its absoluteness all the more questionable. It would follow therefore that, in its prevailing form, the law of karma is neither a causal law nor a moral law. Yet the law as received and accepted by most modern interpreters is claimed to be both. And so it is, I would like to hold, in its basic intents and implications. It is only its supposed absolutistic requirement that is at the root of the impasse. However, this supposed absoluteness of the law of karma is not only empirically non-demonstrable but also logically indefensible. The former is so obvious that even the authors of the law themselves do not claim it to be empirically demonstrable. The latter can be shown by putting some pressure on the notion of deserving. To be sure, it is absolutely undeniable that we deserve the fruits of our actions, which is because of  our freedom to act and the consequent responsibility for the result of our actions; but from this near triviality, it does not

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follow (as we have seen) that one experiences all that one deserves, nor does it follow that we deserve every thing that befall us; as we have noted, certain things that happen to us may be the result of someone else’s action or of a natural event (or calamity). It is perhaps for this reason that an important alternative trend is available in the very tradition of ours, which does not work upon the inviolability/absoluteness description of (the law of) karma. Past karma, on this trend, is only one of the causes explaining the events in one’s life. It is explicitly maintained in the law book of Yajnavalkya that self-effort or purusakara is required in addition to past karma or adrsta. Neither the latter nor the former is sufficient to explain what happens to man. Both are co-operative elements in the occurrence (or even non-occurrence, as we shall see soon) of the fruition of actions, and past karma alone is ‘powerless’ in bringing about any result. Hiriyanna cites from Boudhayana: Yatha hyekena chakrena rathasya na gatirbhavet/Evam purusakarena vina daivam na sidhyati // (Hiriyanna 1957, p. 185n.). Hiriyanna also refers to the Mahabharat (XII.139.83.) and Goutama Dharma Sutra (XI.18 com.) in support of the described trend. E.W.Hopkins approvingly cited both these references to highlight this trend (Hopkins 1924). Further the absolutistic claim that experiencing the consequence – especially a desired consequence – of an action is inescapable is also not supported by logic; for it is envisaged in our tradition that a strong enough endeavour can overwhelm the impact of karma. It is also a part of our value tradition that a subsequent virtuous action can efface the adverse effect(s) of one’s prarabdha and prevent one’s sanchita karmas from being fructified. The law book of Baudhayana says that a man’s subsequent virtuous living can efface the sins of his youth and he will not be punished hereafter for such sins of his youth. Manu also speaks of sins being effaced and result of sinful actions prevented by confession, repentance, austerity and reciting the Vedas. (Manu Smriti, II.228). This can also be done by right knowledge, so too the tradition claims, and all this paves the way to moksa. Destiny, said Hiriyanna, is a modifiable influence; by his present efforts and endeavour, man can help it or hinder it (ibid, p. 185).2 Karma, therefore, is not inviolable and karmaphala is avoidable. This other face of the Indian tradition is instructive and illuminating though, more often than not, it is missed and overlooked because of our proneness for absolutism. But what is to the point, this interpretation makes the important moral point that, whether it is the past karma or present efforts or the co-operation of the two, barring the influence of others’ actions and of other events, our own actions largely determine what we undergo in life. Freed of its usually supposed absolutistic model of operativeness, it can serve as an effective incentive to moral living in this life, even for those who do not believe in rebirth. 2  Hiriyanna said this for a different purpose, i.e. to avoid fatalism. But I am not concerned so much to show that as to show the violability of the law of karma. It is violable (i.e. preventable) by efforts and endeavours. Bhartrhari stressed on this by saying, ‘…put forth your best efforts to secure what you want. The blame will not be yours if you fail’ (Cited by Hiriyanna, ibid, p. 186.). The last is only to reiterate that efforts, very much like karma, are only a cooperative element in effecting a result, which depends on much else besides these.

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In fact one does not have to believe in rebirth and transmigration, if that is required only to explain the law of karma being unfailingly operative, for that is what it has just been shown not to be. Besides, even though the fear of punishment in a supposed future life may normally restrain a man from being immoral or acting immorally, non-belief in a future life would not seriously affect the essential morality of the law of karma; for the possibility that any of one’s actions may come to fruition in this life should be enough incentive to make one morally disposed – to refrain from bad actions and to be inclined for the good ones. And I suspect the idea of their being fructified in later life is a likely cause for taking it easy. Indeed, the prospect of rewards and punishments in this life is a stronger incentive for our being moral. For man is usually brave before God but coward before mankind; he is more concerned with what is to happen to him in this life than what is supposed to happen in a life beyond; the latter he may well await in the ease of speculation and perhaps half-belief, if not disbelief and skepticism. The karma doctrine can be seen to serve the purpose it is intended to independently of such belief. For its basic forte, i.e. retributive morality, is indifferent to the question of whether there is life beyond or not. And it is (or should be, if my argument above holds) indifferent to the question of whether or not one does actually get what one deserves; all that matters is that one should get what one deserves. And this has been seen not to imply one’s actually getting what, or all that, one deserves. The stipulation of a life beyond or of another life for actually getting what one deserves is thus not a strict necessity. An important distinction, and a very good point that matters, but which is usually missed by writers on karma, is the distinction between a life beyond and a later life in this world, both of which are indiscriminately invoked for realization of recompense. While the Vedas, because they sanctified sacrifices, believed the recompense to be realized in a life beyond (heaven or hell), the Upanishads transferred the idea of recompense to this empirical world from a transce-empirical world. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad clearly states that the soul at death passes immediately into another body, whose character is determined by its former deeds and thoughts (III.ii.13 and IV.iv.2). Badarayana also gives assent to this (Vedanta Sutra, III.i.8–10) by making the contrast between moral merits, which account for birth in this world, and sacrificial merits, which account for the period of stay elsewhere. Since the law of karma is a moral law and as such is concerned with moral merits (and demerits) and since the sacrificial rites are not necessarily moral and are often treated as sinful and moral evil, the karma doctrine’s link with a life beyond is definitively incongruous. And our analysis of ‘deserving’ not implying actual recompense – not, at any rate, of all that one deserves – should make its link with rebirth logically weakened anyway. Vivekananda said this of the universal appeal of the Ramayana: (Cited by Ashok Vohra in Speaking Tree, Time of India dt.18.4.2005) It is not even necessary that one like Rama should have ever lived. The sublimity of the law propounded by Ramayana … does not depend upon the truth [of the existence, PKM ] of any personality like Rama … and one can even hold that such a personage never lived.

Just as the existence of Rama is, in this sense, ahistorical, the belief in rebirth and transmigration is at best an optional extra in the context of the law of karma. For this

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belief  – to reiterate one of our earlier arguments  – seriously affects the logic of retributive morality, which is the central feature of the law of karma. The conclusion to which we are drawn is that, as in the case of dharma, so too in the case of karma, the gravest misunderstandings of our value system have been largely due to our proneness for absolutism and abstraction; for taken in their absolute, literal sense, we have seen the theories of dharma to be inapplicable or leading to morally undesirable consequences, when applied, and the karma doctrine too gets lost in contradictions by being tied up, per force, with the dubious theory of rebirth and transmigration. The ‘other face’ of the Indian tradition – of which defeasibility and justified violability of moral principles constitute prominent rational elements – offers ample scope for rational understanding of our value system by striking a reasoned balance between the spirit of the moral principles and their literal claims of objectivity and absoluteness. A proper understanding of our values can be possible if alternative value paradigms are rationally compared and exclusive stress on any of these carefully shunned.

References Bhoi, B. (1989). Stuti Chintamani (Odia). Cuttack: Dharmagrantha Store. Brink, D. (1989). Moral realism and the foundations of ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dancy, J. (1993). Moral reason. Oxford/Cambridge: Blackwell. Hiriyanna, M. (1957). Indian conception of value. Mysore: Kavyalaya. Hiriyanna, M. (1932). Outlines of Indian philosophy. London: George Allen and Unuwin. Hopkins, E. W. (1924). Ethics of India (p. 116). New Haven: Yale University Press. McKenzie, J. S. (1922). Hindu ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mohapatra, P. K. (1999). Personal identity (2nd ed., pp. 154–155). New Delhi: Decent Books. Mohapatra, P. K. (2008). Ethics and society: An essay in applied ethics. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company. Nagel, T. (1986). The view from nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prasad, R. (1989). Karma, causation and retributive morality. New Delhi: ICPR.

Chapter 9

Purusarthas: A General Theory of Values

Like the concepts of dharma and karma, the concept of purusartha constitutes a central component of Indian philosophy of values. This is evident from the common enough fact that despite wide differences on points of metaphysical and epistemological commitments and contentions, all systems of Indian philosophy – including even the Carvak materialism – espouse a theory of purusarthas.

What It Means Purusartha is the Sanskrit word for an object of human desire. This word is of crucial importance in explicating the life of man,1 which, the classical Indian thinkers rightly realized, is characteristically purposive. This means that in all his voluntary actions, man tries to fulfil some purpose, to achieve some goal, by obtaining, or trying to obtain, something he desires to have. Thus in whatever man does, he normally wants to fulfil a desire. This understanding of the word is quite in keeping with the etymological meaning of ‘purusartha’ as an object of a man’s desire (purusasya artha). In common usage it can mean any sort of desire, or a desire to have anything or get anything done. Thus understood, purusartha is a descriptive psychological concept, meaning what a person desires to have. This is the sense in which the concept was applied by some classical thinkers of India. We have one such account of purusartha in the Dharmottara’s Nyayabindu Tika, and this kind of descriptive analysis has been largely the result of inductively observing human behaviour concerning what men actually desire to have and also not to have. But what men desire to have cannot be different from what they value or consider worth having. This is a conceptual truth, because it is not possible that someone desires to have something  By ‘man’ I mean a human being, in the sense in which Aristotle defined man as a rational animal. No gender bias need be read into it. I also use ‘man’ and ‘person’ interchangeably throughout this work. 1

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and yet does not value having it and does not consider having it worthwhile. Thus an evaluating attitude invariably enters into the act of desiring. This is perfectly naturally a human affair in as much as it is a conceptual truth about the concept of desire. What I say can be explained by two factors: firstly, man is a valuing being, not merely a desiring being, and secondly what different people value (or desire to have) often conflictwith each other. The first factor brings in a normative element into the concept of man’s desiring to have something, thus revealing the nature of purusartha as an evaluative concept, and not just a descriptive psychological concept. And accordingly the Indian ethos counts the theory of purusarthas as an axiological theory – not just a psychological, descriptive theory. The second factor responsible for introducing the evaluative attitude to our act of desiring, I suggest, plays a more decisive and compelling role in presenting the purusartha theory as a theory of value insofar as it emphasizes the need for making the distinction between what we value (or desire to have) and what we ought to value (ought to desire to have). In other words, the need to distinguish the desirable from the desired and the valuable from the merely valued was the natural upshot of the urge to solve the problem of conflict between what different people are inclined to value or do in fact value. What I desire to have, and value having, often clashes with what another person desires to have, and values having. Conflicts of interests and clash of cultures, differing religious bigotries and misconstrued sense of nationalism and/or cultural pride, etc. are issues on a larger plane. Personal interests, preferences and priorities are issues on personal levels. But all these conflicts are impediments to stability and progress in society. Examples abound in the epic tradition and historical records – not only in India but also in the wider world scenario. What this called for was objective and universalisable norms and rules of practice to tell us what one ought to do and what is desirable, even if that may happen to be unpleasant, painful and turns out not to be beneficial under existing conditions. Indian thinkers devised the salutary distinction between the concepts of shreya and preya and pronounced injunctions to follow the former and abjure the latter; this distinction and accompanying injunctions have remained the forte of the Indian value theories. This distinction also forms an essential component in the theory of purusarthas, because the concept of a purusartha, being an axiological concept, has built into it an element of evaluativeness that makes a purusartha a desire that ought to be pursued, rather than a desire that is actually pursued. It can hardly be an overstatement to point out that what one actually desires is not necessarily what is desirable – objectively or even for oneself. Victims of akratia, who work against their best judgments, virtually desire the undesirable. Even many among the so-called normal people sometimes succumb to severe weakness of will and desire to have something, or to have something done, which would not count as the right thing to do. These are the cases when awareness of the distinction between shreya and preya determines the purusartha, which is what we ought to seek. Thus it has happened in the evolution of India’s value tradition that normativity and evalutiveness have entered into the definition of purusartha, although, as noted above, purusartha was initially stated to be the object or objects of what men actually desire. However, this semantic fact that purusartha means an object of human desire does not make this term purely descriptive.

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The logic of the concept of desire, which involves its pragmatic as well as semantic implications, points much beyond its descriptive content alone.2 Following this logic, we have pointed out that to desire to have something (or have something done) is to value it, and to value something is to be committed to having it or getting it done, regardless of how it’s being done affects one’s own or anybody else’s interests. In this normative sense, for anything to be a purusartha is for it to be something desirable or valuable. So, as per the classical Indian theory, purusartha in the normative sense is the bona fide purusartha, the desirable or the valuable, in contradistinction from something that is actually desired and actually valued. The latter, though it may be called ‘purusartha’ because of the literal meaning of the term, is not a bona fide purusartha, since (a) my desiring and valuing to have x does not eo ipso make x valuable (Dhritarastra’s desire to make his son Duryodhana the king of Hatinapura in preference to Yudhistira and Drona’s asking for Eklavya’s right hand thumb as ‘guru dakshina’ are cases in point) and (b) a purusartha, as envisioned by classical theorists, is an axiological concept, not a psychological, descriptive concept.

From Actuality to Normativity Thus the distinction between what is valued and what is valuable is as much categorical as the one between actuality and normativity and so analogous to the fact/ value and the is/ought distinction. To identify the binaries would of course be erroneous, even fallacious – Professor Prasad observes: to identify the valued with the valuable, the actually desired, with the normatively desirable, would amount to committing a naturalistic fallacy (Prasad 2008). But the opposition between them must not be taken as absolute and exclusive, like the relation of opposition between contradictories. For contradiction is as much a subclass of opposition as are the relations of contrariety and sub-contrariety. So only an abstract literal mind would consider the fact/value or the is/ought opposition as absolute, with no point of meeting between them whatsoever. I suspect such literal mindset has been at the root of the conventional fact/value dichotomy. But a proper linguistic analysis would reveal that a factual phenomenon has a considerable effect in shaping its evaluative character. For example, if a person P1 is elder and wiser than a person P2, then P2, ought to obey P1 and respect his views and wishes. That is why Rama’s choosing not to sit on the throne but go to the forest for 14 years as per words given by his father, King Dasarath, remains an exemplar in India’s ethical tradition. Similarly, if someone has made a promise then he ought to keep or stick to his promise. Bhisma’s promise-keeping is still a proverbial value paradigm – notwithstanding the debates and controversies (detailed in Chap. 2 above) surrounding this during and after the 2  Rajendra Prasad puts pressure on the logic of the concept of purusartha in order to bring out its prescriptive and evaluative nature as it has been applied in Indian value theories [Prasad (2008), pp. 206–207].

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epic period of the Mahabharat. Taking an example from a strictly nonethical value, a society or a country comprising of diverse ethnic groups and religious following ought to be governed by secular rules. Common usage, which is guided not only by rules of semantics and formal logic but also by the pragmatics of language, shows the flexibility, rather than rigidity, of the fact/value distinction and would rather reveal that inter-relation. This is characteristically true in the case of the valued/ valuable, desired/desirable distinction. Unlike the modern ethicists, the classical Indian thinkers, perhaps more faithful to common usage, looked for what is desirable among the things that are actually desired by people. To be sure, they did not commit the obvious error of identifying the desired with the desirable. But in their search for the shreya or the desirable in their theory of purusarthas, they took careful note of what people actually desire – artha and kama as essential instruments for satisfying their material and psychic needs – trying to identify what they can desire, which eventually led to what they ought to desire. This can be explained as follows: as we have noted above (in Chap. 2), ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, and conversely ‘cannot’ means ‘ought not’. So nobody ought to try to achieve, or is expected to achieve, anything that cannot be possibly achieved; ethics, we said, does not ask for the impossible. Thus, anything that is desirable, i.e. ought to be desired, can be desired; it must be possible for people to desire it, to have it or to get it done, and anything that can be desired may actually be desired by somebody, since actuality presupposes possibility; nothing that is impossible can ever happen in actuality. Indian ethicists have therefore stressed on the fact that what is desired is a subset of what can be desired. As Rajendra Prasad puts it, ‘they seem to be very conscious of the deontic truth that what is valuable and what is desirable in a normative sense must be a subclass of things which can be desired: they realize that there is no point in saying to someone that he ought to desire to have a thing which he cannot desire to have’. The Indian ethicists therefore ‘look for the things which human beings ought to value among the things they can value, and they look for what they can value in things they actually value’ (Prasad 2008, p. 223). In this way of reasoning classical Indian thinkers started by observing what men actually desired to have, through them ascertaining what they can desire to have and then from this to determine what they ought to desire to have. The desirable, thus, is not unrelated to the desired but is rather a conceptual outcome of the linguistic analysis of what is actually desired. The process of arriving at this outcome is a complex inductive-evaluative process. It is not surprising therefore that ancient ethicists like Dharmottara observed purusarthas to be what men actually desired to have as their goal in life. But since purusartha is an axiological concept in the Indian value tradition, they did not stop at this psychological fact and proceeded to determine, by making evaluative analysis, the desirable goals of human life in contradistinction from what is actually desired by men. What is actually desired and valued is clearly distinct from what is normatively desirable and valuable. The definition of purusarthas as objects of human desire is thus ambiguous between ‘object of what is actually desired’ and ‘object of what is normatively desirable’. In their search for purusarthas as bona fide goals of human desire, the Indian ethicists settled down for the normatively desirable or normatively valuable. It will not be out of place, for this reason, to call the object of

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what is actually desired a purusartha by courtesy, for it is at best a de facto purusartha, falling short of the requirement of a bona fide purusartha that is normatively valuable. We have noted above that to desire to do something or have something is to value doing or having it. An evaluative attitude, therefore, is a natural component of the concept of desire, because of which ‘desire’ is preeminently an evaluative or normative concept. Accordingly, the concept of the purusartha, as the avowed goal of human life, is something that is normatively desirable. Normativity enters into the concept of purusarthas, said Rajendra Prasad (ibid, p. 207), partly through the content of the things which are considered to be purusarthas in Indian ethics and partly through the nature of interrelations among the chief purusarthas,3 namely, artha, kama, dharma and moksa. Apparently what is meant is this: the content of each purusartha makes it an object of desire in the first place. The nature of artha is such that human beings not only need it, and so desire to have it, in order to fulfil the basic material conditions of life; it is also required to effectively pursue the other purusarthas such as kama, dharma and moksa. It is it’s instrumentality to the attainment of these other purusarthas that makes men desire to acquire wealth (artha). But acquisition of wealth, in itself, is not enough to make this a bona fide purusartha. For this purpose artha has to be acquired in such ways as to be conducive to the attainment of the other purusarthas. This is where normativity gets the pride of place in the theory of purusarthas, and this is where the interrelations between the different purusarthas come into focus. A didactic verse in the Odia Bhagabata of Jagannatha Dasa explains it all: Dhana arjane’ dharma kari/ Dharme’ prapata Narahari// (earn the wealth you need in accordance with the norms of the dharma or morality; acquire enough dharma or moral strength by spending what you earn in moral ways; and only through that you get moksa or God realization.)

There is more support for this in the original Bhagabata Purana. (11.23, 17–19). Krishna says here that one who pursues artha with no respect for morality suffers from 15 evils: He becomes disposed to commit theft, use violence, tell lies, feel conceited, have inordinate desires, feel angry, proud, egoistic, have divisive intellect (bheda buddhi), feel animosity, distrust, unhealthy competition, cheating, gambling and addiction to intoxication. Manu says this with clear emphasis: he who destroys or disrespects dharma is himself destroyed by dharma, and he who follows and preserves dharma is protected by dharma itself. ‘Dharma eva hoto hanti, dharmo raksati rahsitah/Tasmat dharmo na hantavyo ma no dhramo hatoevadhit //’(Manu Smruti, 8.15). Artha acquired by immoral means will make it a not-purusartha, a disvalue simpliciter, and not a negative purusarthas, as some like Professor Prasad have called it. The latter issue we will come to grips with soon later on. I shall keep 3  My reason for calling these four chief purusarthas is that, though human desires are many and countable, all of them can very well come under one goal or the other of these four types of purusarthas.

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this not-purusarthas distinct from what Prasad calls non-purusarthas (ibid, p. 210– 211) which, I agree, is neither a value nor a disvalue. Be that as it may, artha must be earned or acquired in dharma-approved ways in order to safeguard against its potentiality for abuse and spent in like manner in order to qualify as a bona fide purusartha. Normativity of the artha purusarthas is thus a joint upshot of three conditions, namely, (a) it’s being the totality of material conditions of human life (and that is what constitutes the content of artha as a purusartha), (b) it’s being instrumental in the pursuit of the other purusarthas, and (c) it’s conformity to the rules of dharma (courtesy: Prasad, ibid, p. 207). The kama purusartha is also explainable in similar manner. Kama in the widest sense means desire, but in the theory of purusarthas it means satisfaction of desires, enjoyment, pleasure or agreeable feeling resulting from satisfaction of desire. In the restricted sense appropriate to the theory, it represents man’s appetitive life, and in this sense kama is needed to cater to the psychic or emotional pursuits of the individuals. Thus, though kama may denote any of man’s desires, it cannot denote the desire for moksa, which the theory envisions as a categorically different kind of purusartha as distinct from the other three purusarthas. Now, kama being what it is, man’s need for kama is as important as the need for artha – both are sought to be pursued by men in the interest of their happy life. But like artha, kama or the appetitive pursuit of man must be properly regulated by dharma in order for it to be a desirable pursuit. As in the case of artha, so in this case, pursuit of kama must be dharma-regulated in order for it to count as a normatively valuable purusartha. Kama directed in immoral ways would be a positive disvalue and hence would not count as a purusartha. And kama regulated by the norms of dharma would lead to the attainment of moksa, the highest of all purusarthas. Now the focus is back again on the interaction among all the chief purusarthas and on the importance of normativity for all of them.

Synthetic Nature of the Purusarthas The foregoing highlights the fact that the four purusarthas must be sought in an integrated manner for a complete realization of the good and meaningful life. Such complete life is possible by taking into account the content of each of the purusarthas as well as by emphasizing and respecting their interrelations by realizing that each purusartha, only in association with the others, can effectively lead to the good and meaningful life. This, we have seen, helps raising the human consciousness from the psychic level of the purusarthas to the level of their normative excellence. This synthetic character of the theory of purusarthas implies that ‘the four purusarthas are not alternative goals or values but a set, all members of which have to be cultivated…’ (Prasad 2008, p. 226). The theory demands that to be able to lead a good meaningful life, a person must seek, not one or some of the purusarthas but all of them as related to each other organically, and respect their interconnections; the pursuit of all the four values is imperative, each with equal importance. Dharmaregulated pursuit of artha and kama not only makes life a good moral life, this kind

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of pursuit of the two enables a person to attain moksa, thereby making his life a normatively ideal kind of life. In this we have the picture of a completely fulfilled life, besides it being a fully moral life. Classical Indian ethicists pleaded for this synthetic view in respect of the trivarga theory that was historically the original theory of purusarthas; chaturvarga with the addition of moksa as the fourth purusartha came to be formulated at a later stage of history. As Professor Prasad pointed out (ibid, p. 226), Manu considered all three – artha, kama and dharma – to be of equal importance and thought it wrong to regard the one or the other or even any two of them worth pursuing (Manu Smruti, 2.224). A life committed to pursuing all the three purusarthas with respect for the axiological relations among them is ideally a good life – better than a life dedicated to the pursuit of dharma alone, ignoring artha or kama or both. Prasad appropriately calls this “a very robust and realistic” conception of life. The addition of moksa as the fourth purusartha would make no change to this good moral life but would add to the completeness of life and make it the best possible one. But only a synthetic theory of purusarthas, with equal emphasis on each of the four, can make it the best possible life. Incidentally this synthetic approach seems to have been a characteristic feature of Indian ethics. In the case of the social system of varnashrama vyavastha, in whose background the theory of purusarthas has been designed and propounded, the four ashramas are construed as organically interrelated. This means that all the four stages of life are accorded equal importance; each must be undergone, stage by stage, before the third and fourth stages of vanaprastha and sannyasa can be taken up; no particular stage or stages of life can be skipped, and going through all the earlier stages will qualify a mumuksu for taking to the fourth stage, i.e. sannyasa. Thus, to repeat, all the four stages of life are mandatory, and all the stages must be undergone in order that the individual’s life can be perfect with his attainment of self-knowledge and liberation. And this fact emphasizes the essential interconnectedness of the four stages of a man’s life and gives a strong indication that the earlier stages, or rather the earlier stage comprising the two earlier stages, which concern prominently the social and moral life of man, have a lot to contribute in determining the character of Indian ethics, much in the same way in which the first three purusarthas of the chaturvarga theory, which are preeminently social and moral in nature, are the inevitable means to the attainment of the fourth, namely, moksa. This is important and will be analysed in more detail soon later on in view particularly of the tendency among some modern writers to see a divide between moral and non-­ moral values. Let me move on to reflect on this supposed divide, which may be a further comment on the generally synthetic nature of the Indian ethical theorizing. In Chap. 5, we discussed about the ‘piece meal’ analysis of ethical issues in classical Indian philosophy, and it was observed that, though focusing on specific issues, every such piece meal analysis takes into consideration many other related issues so that in one compact account we find a cohesive ‘blue print’ of an ethical theory which, far from being isolationistic, offers an organismic account of the normative, conceptual, practical, socio-moral, metaphysical and even spiritual aspects of the theory. (For details, see Prasad 2008, Chap. 6 Sect. 5.) The approach is organismic – which

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I consider a close cousin of the synthetic approach – because it touches upon a number of related issues like the interrelated components of an organism. This characteristic feature of Indian ethical theorizing is reflected in the theory of purusarthas as much as in that of the varnashrama dharma, which forms the background inception of the purusartha theory.

On the Typology of the Purusarthas It has been observed above that the concept of purusartha as object of human desire is ambiguous between ‘what men actually desire’ and ‘what they ought to desire’. Accordingly the word has been used to mean both what men do aim at having (or desire to have) and what they ought to aim at (or desire to have). On observing human behaviour over a reasonable span of time, the ancient masters found three types of objects men generally desire to have in order to satisfy the material and psychic needs of their life. Artha, kama and dharma were initially found to be the three goals which, if attained, were considered sufficient for meeting the demands of human life and making the good life possible. For all these three, taken together, enable men to conduct well in the society and enjoy effective social life with desirable interpersonal relations. Our analysis of the concept of desiring and valuing has also revealed how the human faculty of valuing naturally proceeded from what men actually desire (or value to have) to what they ought to desire (or value to have). That takes care of the problem of conflicting desires and values people may happen to have as a matter of fact. The concept of purusartha thus assumed its normative character denoting the desirable and the valuable. This, which must be noted, is not to be understood as a temporal process but as a ratiocinative development of human intellect. This is what sublimates or waters down the fact/value divide and the valued grows into the valuable – the desired into the desirable – and comes to define purusartha as value in the sense of the valuable. The predominance of dharma here is clearly visible. In order for purusartha to be the axiological concept it is and signify the ideal goal of human life as it does, artha and kama are required to be regulated by dharma, the principle of morality, in order for life to be good and meaningful. Observance of dharma or the moral principles is necessary for the making of a stable and harmonious society; and only in such a society men can have the material conditions of leaving well (artha) and enjoy the happiness resulting from getting their desires gratified (kama). The trivaga theory of values is thus self-complete insofar as it suffices in shaping or regulating the good life envisioned in India’s glorious value tradition. The trivaga scheme ensures the good life because dharma contributes to the making and preparation of good society; artha and kama, regulated by dharma, make such society a reality. The three values, by their very nature and interrelations, ensured the best of social and moral life. In this sense the three values are basically social values, which are sought to be attained in the interest of the good life. But having the social and moral life made to perfection, though desirable and worth seeking, is thought not enough to exhaust all that men aspire to have.

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Even after all the social accomplishments and moral perfection, he has some intense personal aspirations, which need fulfilment even after attainment of the three values. Fulfilment of these aspirations becomes possible with the individual attaining moksa, and with this his life becomes complete and consummated and becomes enriched with what may be called full flourish. Therefore, the concept of moksa, which most Indian systems emphasized as the highest value in their theories of liberation, was later added as the fourth purusartha to the trivarga theory that was replaced by the chaturvarga typology. However, the addition of this fourth value to the theory of purusarthas has generated a fresh conceptual problem in as much as it has been hailed as adding to its completeness by leading to spiritual perfection. The problem, according to some modern writers, relates to the nature and status of the values recognized in the trivarga and the fourth value as envisaged in the chaturvarga theory. It has been said that artha, kama and dharma are pursued and pursuable only in a society in social interaction with others. Artha and kama, in this sense, presuppose a cohesive society, and in order for the society to be cohesive and harmonious, observance of dharma is a necessary condition. Therefore, all the three purusarthas are social values. Of the three, dharma is of greater importance in the trivarga scheme of values. For by regulating the seeking of artha and kama in morally desirable ways, dharma not only contributes to the making of a good moral society, it also sustains and preserves it (dhriyate iti dharmah). It is in this sense we said that the trivarga theory of purusarthas is self-complete in making the good life possible. The fourth purusartha, i.e. moksa, by contrast, is a personal value, which is in no need of a society, and as such it cannot be a social value. Pursing the first three values requires a society, and successful attainment of the values, in realizing a good society, makes its members grow together and enjoy the good life together. By contrast, both the pursuance of moksa and its attainment concern one person only – the mumuksu and the mukta purusa he becomes on attainment of moksa. Man’s living a moral life, his successful quest for artha and kama, fulfils his aspirations as an individual in the society, but his attainment of moksa fulfils the aspirations he has as the person he is. It may be just possible that all the people in a society happen to seek liberation. But what each seeks is his/her own liberation, and whenever liberation happens to someone, if it can be said that way, it is that person only who attains moksa and becomes mukta – jivanmukta or videhamukta; no one else becomes liberated along with him – not necessarily, to say the least. Besides, attainment of moksa (moksa prapti) does not happen to anyone in a flash or fiat; it comes after living a long rigorous moral life, which belies quantitative measurement and depends on the quality of the life a person (a mumuksu) is able to live. Therefore, the process of striving for liberation is bound to be different in the case of different persons, and accordingly the product – attainment of liberation – is bound to take different spatiotemporal routes. Coincidences may possibly occur, but the coincident events would not be numerically the same. Thirdly, there is the inevitable impact of karma, which largely determines the attainment, the process and the possibility of attainment of moksa by an agent. Undergoing one’s prarabdhas and maturity of one’s sanchitas into the level of the prarabdha do, and have to, vary from agent to agent. Subsequent good

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works, repentance and/or reciting the vedas has also been said to wipe out, or at least lessen, the impact of past karmas and hasten the process of attainment of moksa.(For a detailed discussion and argumentation of this point, see the earlier chapter on Karma.) In fact the karma doctrine would be rather strict on this; its maxim ‘as you sow so you reap’ truistically forbids one person reaping the consequences of somebody else’s actions. And moksa, being the consequence of one’s own actions, has to be strictly a personal achievement. These things, if believed and taken into account, confirm the contention that liberation can be attained by a person himself at one time; even if more than one person may possibly happen to attain liberation at one point of time, each one of them, at that point of time, would attain his/her moksa and not of someone else. This is virtually a conceptual truth, which applies even to the concept of sarvamukti that is believed and pleaded for by several schools of  Indian ethics. For sarvamukti in all its senses must mean mukti for the individual concerned – not for all people together, never even for some people together. This too would be true when sarvamukti may mean that one man gets liberation only if others also get it. This kind of altruistic wish indeed was expressed by bodhisattvas and saint poets like Bhartruhari and Bhima Bhoi of Odisha. Raja Ranti Deva also expressed the wish to live among the suffering people and share their sorrows and sufferings. Bhima Bhoi, as has been noted earlier, prayed that he would rather prefer to go to hell if that would help the world attain liberation. A bodhisattva would rather postpone his own nirvana till others are made fit for this. In all such cases, the wish is morally commendable, but even if the wishes per impossible happen to bear fruit, the persons getting liberated would attain liberation for themselves individually, i.e. each would get his own liberation and no one for anyone else. Sarvamukti in this sense would be like saying that I smile only when everyone else smiles; but that cannot mean that I smile someone else’s smile. This is as much a truism as that no one can have someone else’s pain, as Wittgenstein had so convincingly said and shown. It does make sense, though, to say that I feel pain when (I see) others are in pain; but the pain I feel is the pain I feel, not the pain somebody else feels. Thus liberation or moksa is a personal value and is sought by the person for himself. It is for this reason that a jivanmukta is supposed to have no moral and social obligations to fulfil. We will have more of this in the next chapter. The present discussion brings to light fairly enough what can be said to be a categorial distinction between artha, kama and dharma of the trivarga theory and moksa that the chaturvarga theory adds to the list of purusarthas. The former set of values, being basically social, are sharply contrasted with the latter one that is shown to be strictly a personal value, hence not at all social, and therefore not a moral value, since that requires a society of people to be there. Professor Prasad argues with tenacious logic that because of this reason the chaturvarga theory is logically incongruent (see Mohapatra 1994, Chap. 1) in its attempt to combine the socio-moral values of artha, kama and dharma with the strictly personal value, moksa, which are categorially different values and hence cannot be coherently combined. He even goes on to argue that the addition of moksa to the originally projected three values  – artha, kama and dharma  – was not an absolute necessity, and moksa, in his view, can be easily

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accommodated in the trivarga theory by being included in kama which, he argues, is both a social value and a personal value. The personal value that moksa is, being thus includable in kama, would make the trivarga theory logically congruous and more self-complete and the chaturvarga would thus be made redundant (this is argued more elaborately in his later work Prasad 2008). The trivarga theory is self-­ complete as a theory of purusarthas insofar as the three values, artha, kama and dharma, together suffice to make a good moral life possible. The addition of moksa as the supposed highest value meant putatively to present a more satisfactory categorization of the purusarthas rather misses the point.4 For a good moral life can be lived even by someone not believing in any doctrine of moksa or any metaphysical theory that goes with it. And it is certainly very odd to claim that someone who is not a mukta purusa cannot be a moral person. There is a further point of contrast between the two forms of typologies. The addition of moksa cannot be said to make the trivarga theory more complete and more satisfactory. This is because moksa is a metaphysical value insofar as it is an outcome of the metaphysical position or presupposition of a particular school of thought, and the nature and characterization of moksa will inevitably be different in different systems of philosophy  – even the idea may be rejected altogether by a school of thought not believing in transcendental metaphysics. The Carvakas would not have moksa as a part of their philosophical theory, whereas other major schools display different accounts of their belief in moksa. For example, Vedant and Buddhism believe in both jivanmukti and videhamukti; Naya-Vaisesika believes moksa to be possible only after physical death. By contrast, we have all the three purusarthas of the trivarga theory remaining unchanged in any system carrying with them their social ethics of varnasrama dharma. Indeed, the purported non-­ ethicality of moksa can be said to make all the difference. The supposed indifference of the jivanmukta to the socio-moral obligations not only conflicts with the dignity of morality, but it does violence to primacy of the ethical, which even the heterodox systems of Indian philosophy duly recognize. The metaphysical characterization of moksa may have an added disadvantage. Construed as the outcome of metaphysics (metaphysical presupposition of the concerned school of thought), moksa would be construed as an ontological state – a state of reality already there, the state of identity of the jiva with the Brahman as speculated in Advaita Vedanta and the principal upanishads. But if this state of identity is a preexisting fact, then there is nothing to be attained, and moksa, for this reason, cannot be a purusartha or an object of desire. If, to counter this, it is argued that moksa needs to be attained by the jiva who is ignorant of the said identity but must be freed from this ignorance with the dawn of knowledge (knowledge is liberation, sa vidya ya vimukteaye’ – so says the upanisad), then we are back with the conclusion that moksa still remains a personal goal man ought to aim at attaining. It is a personalistic value because it is the person, the individual jiva, ignorant of its 4  In fact moksa being categorically distinct from artha, kama and dharma, the idea of comparison between it and the other three is pointless; i.e. claiming moksa to be a higher value than any or all of the three would amount to something like a category mistake.

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identity with the Brahman, who is said to be attaining moksa. This being so, the incongruence of the chaturvarga typology, or rather its self-incongruence, is right on the surface. In a somewhat riductio ad absurdum spirit, Rajendra Prasad exposes the untenability of the chaturverga theory, which I consider worth mentioning at this stage of our analysis. The exponents of the chaturverga theory, with their tendentious plea for moksa, adduce the fact of mumuksa in man whose objective is moksa. If this is a fact, then moksa as the object of this desire would technically qualify as a purusartha, and the chaturvarga theory with all four component concepts would stand out as a systematic theory of purusarthas. But this would only be an apparent gain, says Professor Prasad (see  Mohapatra 1994, Chap. 1), since mumuksa is considered by tradition as a fundamentally different desire, because of which it has not been included in kama. Mumuksa thus being not a desire in the ordinary sense, moksa, the object of this desire, cannot be a purusartha in the ordinary sense in which artha, kama and dharma are. The chaturvarga theory will have to face a dilemma: if mumuksa is not an ordinary desire, then moksa cannot be called a purusartha; if, on the other hand, it is like any ordinary desire, then mumuksa would be no different as a desire from kama and hence would cease to be the desire for the highest value, the parama purusartha. In other words, moksa would not be the parama purusartha its exponents have been claiming it to be. Therefore, this argument from mumuksa neither can make a case for moksa to be the highest value nor can it make the chaturvarga theory a really systematic theory of purusarthas. The addition of moksa to the trivarga theory (for developing the chaturvarga theory of purusarthas), therefore, seems to have failed to fulfil its intended purpose. The conclusion to which we are drawn from the foregoing is that the chaturvarga typology championing moksa, an essentially personal value, as the highest value, becomes self-inconsistent in its intended objective to put this value together with original three  – artha, kama and dharma  – which are basically social and moral values. The implications of this conclusion naturally call for a relook at the common enough claim that purusarthas are ethical or moral values. Two conflicting factors or reasons call for this. The first is that the discussion of the purusartha theory is an important component of any discussion of Indian theory of morals. Added to this is the fact that dharma or morality is given the prime importance in the theory of purusarthas, both in being the regulating condition of artha and kama and in being the precondition for attainment of moksa that is considered in tradition as the highest value. The second factor calling for reexamining the above claim – and coming into conflict with the first – is the fact, indicated above, that moksa is a personal value and as such is a non-moral value, the last being augmented by the prescription that a jivanmukta, though may continue with moral interactions in the interest of lokasangraha, should be indifferent to morality, unattached to and unaffected by the morality or immorality of whatever he does. This second analysis, primarily because of modern interpretations, brings out the fact that though the four purusarthas  – artha, kama, dharma and moksa – are values in the sense we have discussed them to be, not every one of them is obviously a moral value. In view of the fact that ­ethics and morality presuppose a society of people and social interactions among

References

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them, we have pleaded  dharma to be inevitably a moral value. Indeed it is the ­principle of morality itself. But the other three values –artha, kama and moksa – each taken by itself cannot be said to be a moral value. Perhaps artha and kama regulated by dharma will count as moral values. But the case of moksa is decisively different; it being essentially a personal value pursued by an individual for his own sake, it cannot be said to be a moral value. It may be the highest spiritual value, but that does not make it a moral value, particularly because of the fact that attainment of moksa does not require a society and social interactions. Thus none of the values, artha, kama and moksa, can be said to be a moral value. So the theory of purusartha, properly speaking, is a theory of general values, comprising of both moral and non-­moral values. Rajendra Prasad, for this reason, considers it ‘logically safe’ to call this a general theory of values [Prasad (2008), p. 209]. Now the question arises, if moksa is a non-moral value, then how is it related to morality? This question we proceed to discuss in the next chapter.

References Prasad. (2008). A conceptual – Analytic study of classical Indian theories of morals. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company in association with the Centre for Studies in Civilizations. Mohapatra, P. K. (Ed.). (1994). Studies on the Purusarthas. Bhubaneswar: Utkal University, DSA in Philosophy.

Chapter 10

Moksa and Morality

The foregoing analysis of the concept of moksa has revealed two independent facts, which apparently conflict with each other. The first is that moksa is a non-moral value or a non-moral goal insofar as its attainment is explained by saying that a person attaining moksa earns merit and virtue only for himself (and not for anyone else) and is apparently indifferent to what happens to others, that if he continues living as a jivanmukta, he is unaffected by the (generally considered) morality or immorality of his actions towards others. That is why some strands of India’s classical thinking make it out as a personalistic value and not as a moral value, since the latter inevitably requires a society comprising others for acting and interacting with others morally or otherwise. The other factor that emerged in the process concerning moksa is the equally inevitable claim that morality is a precondition of one’s attaining moksa or liberation; this is explained by saying that one has to live a long dedicated moral life in order to be able to attain moksa. Thus on the one hand, moksa seems to have nothing to do with morality, and, on the other hand, moksa seems to need morality for being realized or attained. The former scenario is augmented by the fact that morality or being moral is logically independent of moksa or mumuksa; an individual may lead a perfectly moral life even if he does not consciously seek moksa and even if he does not believe in moksa nor has he ever bothered to know what it is. Following the dictates of dharma is what matters for moral living, and major trends of Indian thinking treat dharma as an intrinsic value regulating the pursuit of other purusarthas such as artha and kama for making the good life possible. Primacy of the ethical, therefore, essentially characterizes the Indian value perspective. Side by side, we have the latter scenario reflected in the general trend in Indian thinking that dharma or morality is the means to moksa and that dharma regulates artha and kama, not only for living the good life but also to enable the individual to attain moksa, with which the individual concerned fully satisfies all his personal aspirations. (We have noted in the last chapter that  living a morally good life is not all that a person aspires for, and that his aspirations are fully consummated with the attainment of the spiritual goal of moksa). Such conflicting characterizations of the moksa-morality relation are largely because of the extraordinary © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 P. K. Mohapatra, An Applied Perspective on Indian Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7503-3_10

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depth of the concept of the moksa, for which it has been variously characterized in classical works and in some modern interpretations of them. In what follows, we attempt a closer examination of these interpretations in order to obtain a reasonable understanding of the relation between moksa and morality. Classical Indian theory of moral values is constituted by the theory of dharma. Though dharma is listed as the third component of the general theory of values, it virtually occupies the pride of place in this theory, most certainly in the trivarga theory of purusarthas, for while artha and kama in this theory are conceived as instrumental values, dharma, with its autonomous status, is an intrinsic value in this scheme of things, which regulates the seeking of these two values for making the good life possible for the individuals concerned. And far from being the third ranker, dharma signals the primacy of the ethical over all other values, even over moksa as one strand of Indian thinking would virtually reveal. We come to that a little later in the course of our analysis and interpretation. However, in apparent contrast, a fairly general trend of Indian thinking considers dharma as an instrumental value insofar as it is construed as a means to moksa, which is rated as the highest of all values – the parama purusartha. In this sense moksa is higher even than the highest moral value. And in this line of thinking, which comprises a sizable number of schools of classical India, morality is only a means to moksa, and it is the pursuit of moksa that provides justification for leading a moral life. Dharma, therefore, is construed as owing to moksa – whatever value it is or is supposed to have. Although, as pointed out above, leading an impeccable moral life leads to attainment of moksa, morality would cease to matter once moksa is attained. Like a ladder, morality is a stepping aid to the attainment of liberation which, when attained, makes the ladder redundant or unnecessary, which can be dispensed with after being used to attain moksa, because moksa happens once in the life of an individual and there is no question of a liberated person being deliberated and, thereafter, to be reliberated. So with attainment of moksa, the liability to be born again is terminated. Also terminated is any need for trying to seek moksa again, and with it ends any need for moral life that may lead to liberation. Compare here Wittgenstein’s analogy of the ladder in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that can be thrown away after being used to climb up through it and over it. In this picture of moksa, a mukta purusa is in no need of morality  – obviously not, if he ceases to be with attainment of liberation (videhamukti), with no liability to be reborn. And if he continues living as a jivanmukta, and lives and acts with complete indifference to morality, it does not matter to him whether what he does is morally right or wrong. This is clearly reflected in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad in its treatment of susupti, which is a close analogue to the state of moksa. In this state, the individual is supposed to be beyond all human relations and therefore is not bound by any social and moral interactions (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, IV.iii.22). In this state he is no longer a member of the moral community. The personalistic nature of moksa becomes so much explicit that it makes one wonder about where to draw the line between a-morality and immorality in the life of a jivanmukta. It is thus no surprise that such kind of ‘mukti’, away from the community and society, may become utterly unattractive for many, giving force to the Vaishnavaite whin: Barang Brindavane’ ramya shrugalo’pi brunomya-

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ham/Na cha Vaishesiki mukti prarthayami kadachanam//. Worse still, a jivanmukta may do the worst kind of immoral things without incurring any moral demerits, says Vidyaranya, or without deserving any moral condemnation (Panchadasi, VII.253). Conversely, by implication, his doing something ostensibly commendable would not earn him any moral merit either. One obvious fall out of this account of moksa and the mukta purusa is a clear threat to the sanctity of morality. For to hold the axiological view that nothing remains to be done by a jivanmukta or a Brahmajnani is to concede that morality loses all importance for him when moksa is attained by him or, which is to say the same thing, when knowledge dawns on him about the identity of jiva with the Brahman. By construing the liberated person as ‘transcending the zone of morality’, the view in question makes moral predicates inapplicable to him ex hypothesi, and this would have the odd implication that even his doing the vilest kind of immoral thing would not merit any moral condemnation – an implication clearly visible in Vidyaranya’s rather startling view that ‘killing parents, stealing, causing abortion and such other sins do not affect the liberated person’s illumination’(ibid, XIV.17). But treating morality in this way, al beit in the case of the ‘illuminated’ liberated persons, is certainly counterintuitive, to say the least. It certainly goes against our normal understanding of morality and moral life. Vidyaranya’s concept of jivanmukta, as much as the classical Indian concept of moksa as transcending morality and making it dispensable, does obvious violence to normal understanding and common usage in respect of morality. A more serious fall out of the concept of moksa as the highest value and morality as a means to it concerns the application of certain crucial moral concepts like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, or ‘moral rightness’ and ‘moral wrongness’. To be more specific, treating morality as a means to moksa cannot work, (see  Prasad 2008, Chap.  14  Sect.  8 for more on this), because this would make conduciveness to moksa prapti the criterion of moral rightness, but this criterion would be practically unusable, since it would make it impossible for an ordinary man to decide which action is right and which one is wrong1; and this is why if moksa is the highest value, then the criterion for moral rightness (of an action or conduct) must be its conduciveness to attainment of moksa. Now moksa as per Indian classical thinking may be liberation after death (videhamukti) or liberation while alive (jivanmukti). In the former case, it would be impossible to know if an action done by someone now will be conducive to liberating or will have any effect at all after his death. This will make matters more complicated because of the problem of identity of the action and its supposed effect in the absence of clear evidence of personal identity after one’s physical death. (This has been argued at length in Chap. 8 on Karma above.) A further complication would issue from termination ex hypothesi of rebirth on a­ ttainment 1  Ethical concepts, we have argued earlier, are used and required to be used by ordinary men, otherwise the concept and the related theory would suffer from a theoretical defect. For this reason Rajendra Prasad says: “…if an ethical theory offers a criterion of moral rightness the application of which is undecidable…for a normal person, then there is something wrong with the theory, Prasad (2008), p. 389.

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of moksa, in which case the ‘effect’ of the action will be unknown in principle. Thus the question of the action being conducive to moksa prapti would not arise at all. And on the basis of the described criterion, the notion of moral rightness would become dysfunctional. The case of jivanmukti would fare no better on this count. For it is a necessary feature of a person liberated alive that the liability for him to be reborn is terminated on his attaining liberation. Further, for similar reasons as adduced above in the case of videhamukti, it would be impossible for anyone to know of any action that it is conducive to liberation, hence, conducive to termination of the liability for him to be reborn. Besides, some classical texts would contend and argue that everybody cannot know who is a jivanmukta and that only a jivanmukta can know how to identify another jivanmukta, just as only a snake would know how to identify the trails of another snake, as mentioned in the Yogavasistha, nirvana prakarana, Uttarakhanda, 102.25 (cited in Prasad 2008, p. 391). If that is the case, an ordinary person cannot know who is a jivanmukta and so cannot know what jivanmukti is. This would mean that he cannot know which actions are conducive to jivanmukti, and accordingly he cannot know which actions are morally right. Thus, as in the case of videhamukti so in the case of jivanmukti, the notion of moral rightness of actions would remain undecidable and hence inapplicable in practice. Therefore, in both the forms of liberation envisioned in classical Indian ethical theories, it is neither confirmable nor disconfirmable that any of one’s actions is conducive to attainment of moksa or conducive to termination of one’s liability to be reborn. The other alternative way to know what effect one’s action would produce after one’s death may be to depend on some theological or scriptural sources attributed to some allegedly gifted seers; but that would mean ‘leaving the zone of morality, the zone of free thinking and rational choice on what is right and what is wrong to do; and this would make one fall victim to what Prasad calls “theoretical and scriptural authoritarianism”, which is “no laurel to the theory of moral rightness… or to the general ethical theory which yields it” (Prasad 2008, p. 390). So conduciveness to moksa prapti cannot be a workable criterion of moral rightness, and, by implication, moksa cannot be the measure of rightness and wrongness of our actions. And insofar as the latter issues from treating morality as means to moksa, a reconsideration of the status of morality vis-à-vis moksa is called for.

Morality as Precondition of Moksa This in fact has incited a dominant trend of thinking among some classical Indian schools, which may be taken as a giant step forward from the above discussed view of the moksa-morality connection. Be it a natural evolution of the ratiocinative Indian mind or a result of the dialectic development of thought, the theory that morality is a means to moksa was sublimated by the view that the former is a precondition of the latter. The view gained ground that the relation between morality and moksa, though may be construed as one of means and end, is a ‘normatively

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internal relation’. This is explained by saying that the means, i.e. morality, instead of being dispensable like a used ladder, is indispensable to the end, i.e. to moksa insofar as its value determines the value of the end in a significant way. This happens when the means is a value-carrying object, as so obviously dharma is. In such scenario the means (dharma) and the end (moksa) form an organic whole, in which the means verily contributes to the distinctive feature of the whole. Though this does not happen in all cases of means-end relation as a matter of general principle, sometimes, as in the case of the dharma-moksa relation, the value of the means determines the value of the end. In thus affecting the value of moksa, dharma or morality is shown to be internally related to moksa. In this explanation it is held that, instead of moksa transcending or going beyond morality, the latter gets integrated into the value of moksa. Moksa consummates dharma by incorporating the latter into itself. When the means is thus internally related to the end by being integrated into the value of the end, it becomes a precondition of the value of the end. Dharma or morality thus becomes the determinant of the highest value or the parama purusartha. This view is further augmented by the fact that morality or moral life is essentially used for attainment of moksa and in the process it enters into the very state of moksa, with the result that the liberated person (jivanmukta) continues to lead a moral life as a matter of habit or second nature, as it were. In such a scenario, morality cannot be dispensed with, and it cannot be construed as being of an instrumental value merely; the fact of its being integrated into the value of moksa makes it an intrinsic value. There is nothing unusual in saying this. A thing having intrinsic value may also happen to be of instrumental value. For example, honesty can be said to have both intrinsic value and instrumental value: it is a value in itself, and it can be of instrumental value as well in being conducive to success in business. Ethical business, as is well known in business ethics, is conducive to maximization of owner value in the long run. [For more detailed analysis and argumentation, see Sternburg, E (1994) Just Business, Warner Books, U.K, Chap. 3, p.  88, and elsewhere and Mohapatra, P.K. (2008) Ethics and Society:An Essay in Applied Ethics, New Delhi, Concept, chapter 5]. Likewise morality too may be said to have both intrinsic value and instrumental value; for an individual’s being moral is good in itself as well as is conducive to making him socially respectable and, for that matter, is conducive to fulfilling the desire for moksa. Something like this Sankara had in mind when he said in  his  Brahmasutra Bhasya that morality is a prerequisite of Brahmajnana, which is the Vedantic equivalent of moksa prapti. What is required here are nitya-­ anitya-­vastu-viveka, niskama here and hereafter, control of the mind and the senses and thirst for liberation. To fulfil these prerequisites is to lead an impeccable moral life, which the jivanmukta carries on into the state of his liberation while alive. Professor Prasad pointed out (Prasad 2008, p. 397) that this sort of explanation of the moksa-morality relation is evident in major texts of Indian ethics like the Bhagavad Gita, Yogavasistha and Vidyaranya’s Jivanmukti Viveka. It is maintained in these texts that a jivanmukta naturally does what is morally right and abstains from doing what is morally wrong and forbidden. This a jivanmukta or sthitsprajna does, notwithstanding the fact that he is not supposed to feel obligated to do all this. Because of his having lived a long, committed moral life during his preliberation

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period, he just cannot do anything wrong. As Yogavasistha states with emphasis, ‘he knows the eternal truth and never does anything wrong’ (Yogavasistha, nirvana prakarana, Uttarardha, 102. 6–12). It is noteworthy that the above account of the moksa-morality relation reflects three significant features of ethical theorizing in India. As we have explained in Chap. 5, one of the features of the Indian ethical theorizing is its organismic character, which means that no particular theory is considered in isolation but is construed as related to several other relevant theories or to several other aspects of the theory. The means-end relation between morality and moksa has been viewed in this manner so that the means and the end are shown to be organically related as mutually interdependent values: one cannot be construed independently of the other. The other feature, related to the organismic character of the means-end complex, is what was discussed as the piecemeal analysis of ethical issues, though almost every piecemeal analysis is essentially organismic. The piecemeal analysis, as we have noted in Chap. 5, is always contextual and particularistic, rather than abstract and highly general theorizing. Such approach to the moksa-morality relation is evident from the fact that instead of taking a generalistic view of this relation, emphasis is laid on the context-specific nature of the means as related to the end. Accordingly, a more down-to-earth account has been offered of the means-end relation by laying bare the normative truth that not only the end sometimes justifies the means but the means too justifies the end sometimes. This happens inevitably when the means is a value-carrying object like dharma, and that is the reason why morality determines the value of moksa in a very significant sense. The ‘precondition’ explanation of morality as related to moksa thus emerges as a more viable alternative to the ‘means to moksa’ explanation. The third feature of ethical theories, which may be said to follow prominently from the piecemeal theorizing, is that ethical theories are not to be taken as abstract and generalized principles and accordingly they are not to be taken as absolute and inevitable. This is in keeping with our view, expressed in this work, that ethical theories are objective but defeasible. Keeping the application and applicability of ethics in mind, the ‘means to moksa’ interpretation has yielded place to the ‘precondition of moksa’ explanation of morality, thereby paving the way for characterizing moksa not only as the highest value but also as the highest moral value. One of the sources of the view that moksa is a non-moral value has been a fairly general view that morality is only a means to moksa which, when attained, transcends or goes beyond the means. But this would mean that after the end is achieved, the liberated person would be in no need of morality, since he would be in no need of liberation again (since liberation happens once in a life time only) for which morality may be required as the means. This, we have seen, would make morality dispensable after moksa prapti, and this would be rather counter intuitive, besides going against the principle of primacy of the ethical that has been a distinct feature of Indian ethics and its applicability. A value, we have noted earlier in Chap. 2, must be realized in order for it to count as a value. To think of morality as dispensable is counter intuitive, because ends achieved through moral means have always been rated better than ends achieved through immoral means. Indian ethics has been

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instructive in this respect. For an example, despite Rama’s reputation as maryada purusottama, despite his being an ideal son and the most adorable king, the manner in which he killed Bali and the reason for which he beheaded Sambuka raise serious questions about the morality of his actions. And, coming to the Mahabharat, despite Bhisma being regarded as the most virtuous person, an ideal repository of dharma, his dubious adherence to his promise and fighting against the Pandavas who he knew were on the side of dharma and, worst of it, remaining a mute spectator at the perniciously immoral humiliation of Draupadi and felonious attempt to disrobe her, raise serious questions about the morality of Bishma’s actions, if not of his intention. And there is a clear difference, on this count, between Rama’s win over Ravana and the Pandavas’ victory over the Kauravas, because of the several twists and turns in the manner of their reaching this end. Morality of the means has a clear edge always. And when morality itself is the means, the attainment of moksa or the highest value is the inevitable consequence. But to construe the mukta purusa or liberated person being indifferent to morality, not to speak of his doing immoral kinds of things, is certainly counterintuitive. Because morality with its acknowledged autonomous status is more commonly assumed to be of intrinsic value and constitutes the dominant form of purusartha, regulating the other forms of values such as artha and kama, and as such even plays a determinant role in not only one’s attainment of moksa but also in determining its value as the parama purusartha. Therefore, to conceive of the liberated person being indifferent to morality fails to appeal to common intuition. The latest account of the moksa-morality relation, as we noted, purports to do the reclamation exercise by pleading for the view that moksa, when achieved, does not go beyond morality but consummates morality by incorporating it within itself. It becomes moral perfection and something more. Moksa thus remains essentially a moral value, the highest moral value. The jivanmukta or the perfectly liberated person becomes a jivanmukta through long impeccable moral leaving, and the propensity to do what is right and refrain from doing what is not continues to characterize his nature even after he becomes a jivanmukta. If living an impeccable moral life in one’s preliberation stage is a necessary condition for attainment of moksa, then living this kind of life becomes a constituent element of his nature, which must continue to be his nature after his attaining jivanmukti. Scriptural claims abound to testify this; we have cited three principal sources above. The Bhagavad Gita of course conceived of the sthitaprajna as a non-doer of all his (sic!) actions at the post liberation state, but being the knower of the eternal truth, he cannot do anything wrong, as the Yogavasistha so emphatically contends. Another source of the view that moksa is a non-moral value is the Vedantic theory that Brahmajnana (the Vedantic equivalent of jivanmukti) is an ontological state of return of the self to its original state of identity with the Brahman. And in this state moksa is contentually different from morality. In such a state, moksa would of course be a non-moral or an a-moral value. But this is also construed as a state of freedom from ignorance that causes suffering. Professor Prasad points out aptly that moksa is also considered to be a state of freedom from suffering, and, since suffering is a moral evil, freedom from it must be morally good. Moksa therefore must be a moral value (Prasad 2008, p. 398).

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To reiterate the reason adduced above, by rigorously living the moral life in his preliberation state, the liberated person would naturally do what is morally right and refrain from doing what is morally wrong and forbidden; his natural propensity to act morally would continue even after he attains liberation. In view of this, Indian thinkers realized that morality cannot be undervalued in order to highlight the value of moksa; the status of ethics cannot be undervalued in order to emphasize the supposed high status of Brahmavidya. Nothing which ignores or devalues morality can maintain its own value intact. This would be the case with moksa if morality is considered as a mere means to moksa; for morality of the means highlights the value of the end. So, both in attaining moksa and after its attainment, a jivanmukta cannot be indifferent to morality and to anything that is considered morally worthwhile.

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Index

A Absolutism, viii–x, 9, 11, 15, 25, 69, 74, 85, 86, 89, 90, 92 Adharma, 11, 21, 66 Adrsta, 90 Akratic abstention from duty, 21 indulgence in non-duties, 21 Apad dharma, ix, 11 Applicability, vii, viii, x, 9, 10, 16, 17, 26, 38–40, 43, 47, 49, 62, 112 Applied ethics, viii, 7, 9, 111 Arjuna, 14, 18, 22, 69, 70, 72, 88, 89 Artha, x, 53, 93, 96–98, 100–104, 107, 108, 113 B Badarayana, 53, 91 Baier, K., 16, 43 Beliefs and motives, 21, 22 Bhagavad Gita, 16, 18, 19 Buddha, vii, 15, 86 Business ethics, 12, 111

Deserving, 10, 77, 84, 87, 89, 91, 109 Destiny, 69, 90 Dharma as moral duty, 62, 65–74 Divine command theory, 15 Drona, 10, 20, 22, 46, 95 Duryodhana, 16, 21, 95 E Ethical primacy of, 58, 61, 62, 67, 103, 107, 108, 112 Ethical theorizing in Indian philosophy, xi, 49–62 Ethics purpose of, vii, viii, 9, 26 spirit of, ix, 1, 40, 43, 47, 73 F Flew, A., 3, 45 Forgiveness as a conditional value, 11 Freedom, 2–5, 15, 16, 75–77, 84, 89, 113 Friedman, M., 12

C Categorical imperative, 17, 68, 70, 71, 85 Chandogya Upanishad, 15, 67 Chaturvarga, 99, 101–104 Common usage, 93, 96, 109

G Generalism, viii, 9, 11, 39, 45–47, 79, 85, 86 God as divine dispenser of deserts, 75

D Dancy, J., 26, 31, 33, 34, 36, 39, 40, 44, 46, 89 Defeasibility, ix, 12, 13, 17, 19, 89, 92

H Hare, R.M., 27, 36, 37, 39, 43, 44, 47 Hiriyanna, M., 76, 77, 81, 90

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Index

120 I Inapplicability absolute standards account for, 14, 15 Intrinsic moral sense, 6, 7 value, 107, 108, 111, 113 J Jivanmukti, 103, 109–111, 113 Justified violation, ix, 10–14, 16, 19, 22, 89 K Kama, x, 53, 74, 96–105, 107, 108, 113 Kane, P.V., 67, 68 Kant, I., viii, 4, 6, 33, 43, 47, 70–72 Karma vs akarma, vikarma, 71 as incentive for right conduct/morality, 76 law of, ix, x, 75, 77–85, 88–91 sannyasa, 99 Karmic monism, 80 Krishna, 10, 17, 18, 22, 46, 69–72 Kshatriya, 17, 18, 20, 22 Kuladharma, 69 L Law of karma, 75, 77–85, 88–91 Liberalism, 31 Literalism, viii, 9, 31, 32, 34, 69, 72, 74 Locke, J., 57, 81 Logical trilogy, 82, 83 Lokasangraha, 59, 71, 104 M Mackie, J.L., 12, 27–30, 35–37, 39, 44, 46 Mahabharat, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, 20, 46, 66, 67, 69, 70, 73, 90, 96, 113 Man as naturally moral, 4 McKenzie, J., 9, 15, 84 Mohanty, J.N., 51–53, 55, 62, 69–71, 80 Moksa, vii, 15, 50, 68, 83, 97, 107 Moral accountability, 15 action, 4, 59, 79, 85 agent, 56, 76 crisis, 18 personhood, 1–7 progress, 72, 73, 76 Morality as a precondition of moksa, 110–114

Moral principles/theories intuition, 47, 70 justified violation of, 12, 19 as objective but defeasible, ix, x, 89 Platonic picture of, 15 Moral realism vrs metaphysical realism, 25, 89 Moral scepticism, 25–28, 30 Moral values objectivity of, 26–29, 34, 36, 38, 39, 43, 44 secondary objectivity of, 36 N Nagel, T., 26, 27, 31–34, 39, 40, 73, 89 Niskama karma, x, 18, 71, 83–92 O Objective tolerance, 33–40, 89 Objectivity in moral matters, 38, 48, 89 secondary quality model of, 32–38, 48, 89 P Paradharma, 20, 22 Personal identity, 80, 81, 109 Platonic prototypes, 15 Prarabdha, x, 88, 90, 101 Primacy of the ethical, 58, 61, 62, 67, 103, 107, 108, 112 Primary objectivity, 33, 34, 40 R Radhakrishnan, S., 50 Rationality, 2–6, 11, 37, 39 Rational morality, viii, 2–4, 39, 48 Rebirth, ix, 79–85, 88, 90–92, 109 Reciprocal personal stance, 2, 4, 6 Reciprocity, 12 Retributive morality, x, 75–82, 88, 91, 92 Retributivism, 81, 88 Rgveda, 67 S Samanya dharma, 17–19, 69, 70, 72, 89 Samkhya, 53, 58, 77, 84 Samsara, 76, 81, 83, 84 Sarvamukti, x, 102 Self-interest theory, 12, 25 Self-transcendence, 2, 4, 5 Simpson, E., 21

Index Singer, P., 6, 7 Spiritualism, x, 1, 2, 4–7, 50–52, 54, 58, 69, 71, 99, 101 Sreya, 58, 68 Sri Aurobindo, 20 Swadharma as obligatory, 17, 20 as swabhavaja, 19, 20 T Theistic Vedanta, 77 Theorising in Indian ethics/philosophy, x, xi, 49–62 Transcendental argument, 79 Transmigration, 76, 80–82, 91, 92 Trivarga, 99, 101–104, 108 Truth-telling, viii, 10, 12, 13, 17, 46 Typology of purusarthas, 100–105 U Universalizability and objectivity, 43–48 vis-a-vis universality, 48

121 V Value instrumental, 108, 111 intrinsic, 36, 107, 108, 111, 113 judgement, 4, 9, 26, 35 Varnadharma, 17–19, 69, 70, 72 Vedanta Sutra, vii, 53, 77, 91 Videhamukti, 103, 108–110 Virtue ethics, 7, 55 W Will as essential in morality, 16, 26 weakness of, 21, 22, 94 Willims, B., 28 Wittgenstein, L., 21, 45, 73, 102, 108 Y Yajnavalkya, 90 Yudhisthira, 14, 16