“The Ibādat Khāna (House of Worship) was a meeting house built in 1575 CE by the Mughal Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) at Fatehpur Sikri to gather spiritual leaders of different religious grounds so as to conduct a discussion on the teachings of the respective religious leaders. In his eagerness to learn about different religions, Akbar built call of prayer at Fatehpur sikri in 1575 known as the Ibadat Khana. At this place, he invited selected mystics, intellectuals and theologians, and held discussions on religious and spiritual themes. He invited scholars belonging to various religion such as Hinduism, Islam , Zoroastrianism, Christianity and even atheists [also invited: Jains and Jews]. He conducted religious debates with these people. They visited Ibadat Khana and discussed their religious beliefs with Akbar.”
A book I’ve recently finished reading, Forgiveness and Mercy by Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton (Cambridge University Press, 1988), struck me as an exemplary model of what is simultaneously a conversation (and correspondence), a dialogue (although Jean Hampton states the book is not, ‘in any strict sense, a dialogue’), and an argument between two formidable intellectuals: Murphy (1940–2020), a philosopher of law, and Hampton (1954–1996), a political philosopher. What is more, by my lights this work incarnates three philosophical virtues or principles: (i) the principle of humanity, (ii) the principle of charity, and (iii) the principle of “intellectual non-violence.” Permit me to introduce these complementary or mutually reinforcing normative principles (or virtues) for analytic and hermeneutic philosophy.
The first, the “principle of humanity,” is logically prior to our next two principles although it is in part arguable owing to its second clause. It states that “when interpreting another speaker we must assume that his or her beliefs and desires are connected to each other and to reality in some way, and attribute to him or her ‘the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances’” (Richard Grandy). It is perhaps arguable because we may be mistaken as to the identity of the precise propositional attitudes, given that a person can have different propositional attitudes toward the same proposition.
The second principle is fairly well known (at least among philosophers and students of rhetoric) even if often ignored or unevenly practiced. The “principle of charity” in general means (philosophers have formulated slightly different versions of this principle) “interpreting a speaker’s statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.” This implies that we may be able to state the presuppositions, assumptions and premises of an argument in clearer or better terms than those found in the formulation or expression of the philosopher himself, thereby according this new version greater power (with regard to plausibility, soundness or persuasiveness) than the original.
The third and last principle is unquestionably the most arduous, described by the late B.K. Matilal as originating with the Jains, hence a Jain principle that philosophers in this religio-philosophical tradition have “surprisingly and conspicuously” evidenced in their own work, namely, “intellectual non-violence,” by which is meant that “any criticism must be preceded by a proper and total understanding of the doctrine one tries to criticize.” Matilal elaborates:
“… [T]he Jains carried the principle of non-violence from the physical and practical plane to the intellectual plane. Thus, ‘respect for the life of others’ was eventually transformed into an obligatory respect for the views and beliefs of other. The Jainas claim that when two or several parties are seriously and sincerely arguing regarding the truth, it is seldom that one side is absolutely wrong, while the other side is absolutely right. The world is not divided only into black and white, for there are innumerable shades of grey in between. The Jainas contend that one should try to understand the particular point of view of each disputing party if one wishes to grasp completely the truth of the situation. The total truth, the Jainas emphasize, may be derived from the integration of different viewpoints (nayas).”
The specific Jain doctrine referred to here by Matilal is known as anekāntavāda, which will be treated in more detail in a future post (anekāntavāda is one of the three Jain doctrines of relativity used for logic and reasoning, the corollary or corresponding doctrines being syādvāda—the theory of conditioned predication, and nayavāda—the theory of partial standpoints). For our purposes, we will be “bracketing” or setting aside the Jain belief in the notion of an “enlightened being” or kevalin (like Mahāvīra ) who is said to acquire absolute knowledge and truth—omniscience—kevala jñāna, although it might be said that it is owing to such omniscience that we can have intellectual confidence in affirming the notions of epistemic relativism and metaphysical relativism or relative truth (which thus maintains an intrinsic or necessary relation to absolute truth). The omniscient human being (this holds for the Buddha of Buddhism as well) is the individual who can see the entire elephant in the famous Jain (or is it simply Indian, as it appears in the texts of other religious worldviews on the subcontinent) parable of the “blind men and an elephant.” In this story, each blind man touches a different part of an elephant (trunk, leg, ear, etc.), depicting in their mind’s eye this wonderful creature according to their respective limited experience and description of a specific part the animal. Yet each of the men claimed to account for and understand the true appearance of the elephant, although each could of course only partly succeed in their empirical description and conclusion due to their inherently limited vantage points.*
Philosophers may presume that a full understanding of the views and beliefs of others they disagree with and proceed to critique is a given (rightly taken for granted) in their profession, yet the history of philosophy, especially but not only in the West, suggests that this particular Jain principle is not always front and center, as other motivations insinuate themselves, serving, so to speak, as metaphorical blindfolds (e.g., one may feel an overwhelming imperative to publish; one may be eager to demonstrate one’s professional bona fides or even ‘brilliance;’ one may be intellectually insecure or, on the other hand, intellectually self-righteous, and so forth). Indeed, this principle could be said to be a necessary condition of the principle of charity, but it, or anything like it, has rarely been explicitly advocated by philosophers. One notable exception is seen in an argument on behalf of both descriptive and normative pluralism in philosophy made some years ago by Hector-Neri Castañeda. It is a part descriptive and part normative brief on behalf of a deliberate and energetic philosophical pluralism found in his essay, “Philosophy as a Science and as a Worldview,” in Avner Cohen and Marcelo Dascal, eds., The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? (Open Court, 1989). I would like to share this argument at length, for I see Murphy and Hampton as providing us with a tantalizing taste of what is involved in practicing this sort of pluralism.
“The interdisciplinary connections of philosophy, the broader view of ordinary language [in comparison to ‘the monolithic days of lexicalist ordinary language philosophy’], the richer view of experience fomented by existentialism and Wittgenstein, the re-discovery of the immense treasures of the history of philosophy, have all connived to break the conventional barriers among problems—let alone philosophical problems. They have also conferred on the current practitioners of philosophy a hitherto unbeknownst freedom to apply to each problem whatever tools we deem appropriate. Thus, in current philosophizing there is a boundless methodological pluralism.
[….] All topics are available; all its applications are legitimate; all methods are feasible; all interdisciplinary connections are accessible. [….] Moreover, contemporary philosophers have never had so many opportunities for a superior training as they have today. [….]
… [I]n the practice of philosophy there are two major tendencies, each correct—up to the point where the other tendency is not joined but shunned. One is the forest approach, the tendency to see very general structural lines of the world or of experience. The other, the bush approach, is the tendency to dwell upon small aspects of experience. Each approach can be, and has been, exercised in varying degrees. This is not bad. What is bad is the policy of merely exercising the extreme degrees. [….] Fruitful philosophical experiences are combinations of the two approaches: taking a full attentive look at the forests of the structures of experience and seeing their measure and reach in their realizations in the particular trees and bushes of experience: the pervasive general in the particular; the abstract structures within the concrete empirical [for what it’s worth, I think Hilary Putnam exemplified this sort of philosophical praxis]. We want to understand the very large structures of experience, but we must understand them in their concrete settings in human life in its full social niche within the world at large—with occasional considered guesses at what things might be outside the human situation.
Some philosophers do not see the large picture of the theories or approaches within which they attempt to shed light on some small pieces of philosophical topics. This happens not infrequently in some exercises of so-called analytic philosophy: refined little lamps are set to cast the most intense lights on the smallest aspects of human experience. Sometimes the light is lost on the empty spaces surround the miniscule points under consideration. No wonder, then, that even many of those philosophers working within a school, or approach, whose scope and organization they see fully, may yet fail to appreciate the contributions by philosophers in other schools. Some fail to see the richness and complexity of human experience, yet, more importantly, some fail to see that the world is capable of being different in different contexts or perspectives [a point made rather systematically and emphatically in Jain epistemology]. Often the presupposition is straightforward: there is one world and an indivisible unity of man and world, hence, they assume, there is just one theory of the structure of man and world [thus the more intoxicating parts of scientism, crude realism, and metaphysical absolutism, in either a reductionist or idealist direction]. This … gives us the polemical approximation to unity of the philosophical profession.
Here I wish neither to defend nor to attack this assumed view of philosophical truth. I submit instead a first-order philosophical pluralism: to understand human nature we need all the theories, all the models we can invent. I am not proposing a relativistic Protagorean metaphysics. I am recommending, first, a methodological theoretical pluralism [students of comparative philosophy may already be disposed to see things this way, although there is nothing intrinsic to comparative philosophy that entails such theoretical pluralism] [….]
Perhaps human-world reality is not a monolith, but a many-sided perspectival structure. Perhaps the greater understanding will be achieved by being able to see human reality now one way and now another way. Thus, we need ALL philosophical points of views to be developed, and ‘developed’ is meant in earnest: the more it illustrates the harmonious unison of the encompassing Forest Approach and the riches of the Bush Approach. Hence, all philosophers are part of one team collectively representing the totality of philosophical wisdom, and individually working the details a point of view: we are ALL parts of the same human project. Looking at things this way, we realize that we need not polemicize against the most fashionable views hoping to supplant them with our own view. Instead, with a clear conscience, we may urge the defenders of those views to extend them, to consider further data to make them more and more comprehensive, pursuing the goal of maximal elucidation of the structure of experience and the world. At the same time we urge other philosophers to develop equally comprehensive views that are deliberately built as alternatives. The aim is to have ALL the possible most comprehensive master theories of world and experience.
To be sure, we cannot foretell that such a plurality of view as envisaged is ultimately feasible. But neither can we prove that in the end there must be just one total view, bound to overwhelm all others. If many master views are feasible, then the greatest philosophical illumination will consist alternatively to see reality through ALL those master views. It would be still true that the greatest philosophical light comes, so to speak, from the striking of theories against each other, but not in the destruction of one theory in the striking process, but rather in the complementary alternation among them. Each master theory would be like a pair of colored glasses with different patterns of magnification so that the same mosaic of reality can appear differently arranged [this calls to mind my youthful experimentation with psychedelics!]. Here Wittgenstein’s reflections on the duck-rabbit design are relevant. The different theories of the world give us different views, the rabbit, the duck, the deer, the tiger, and so on, all embedded in the design of reality. The analogy is lame on one crucial point: the master theories of the world and experience must be forged piecemeal: with an eye on the Bush Approach, patiently exegesizing the linguistic and phenomenological data, and with another eye on the Forest Approach, building the theoretical planks (axioms, principles, theses, rules) carefully and rigorously.” [….]
Among the consequences of “pluralistic meta-philosophy” noted by Castañeda is a “later stage in the development of philosophy” in which we will be rendered fit to engage in a “comparative study of master theories of the world and experience,” or what he terms “dia-philosophy.” In other words, our master theories of philosophical structures will be sufficiently rich and comprehensive for us to be able to articulate holistic and dia-philosophical critique: “compar[ing] two equally comprehensive theories catering to exactly the same rich collection of data, and, second, assess[ing] the compared theories in terms of their diverse illumination of the data.”
“The natural adversary attitude” will take the form of “criticisms across systems or theories,” but “not as refutations or strong objections, but as contributions of new data as formulations of hurdles for steady development.“
* * *
* Several things should be noted before proceeding further. The fact that the Jains came to believe in “intellectual nonviolence” does not imply philosophical passivity or indifference. The Jains engaged in vigorous debate with other philosophical schools and believed, at the beginning and at the end, in the superiority of Jaina doctrine! Finally, consider the following from Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri:
“No less than the Buddhists, the Jainas were deeply knowledgeable about other systems of Indian philosophy. Their descriptions of these other systems tend to be faithful, which can make them a useful source for otherwise lost ideas. They are also sophisticated doxographers. The eighth-century Haribhadra Sūri composed a very useful book called Compendium of the Six Systems [Ṣaḍ-darśana-samuccaya]. This does not refer to the six Brahmanical schools … but rather Buddhism and Jainism plus four Hindu systems [i.e., Nyāya, Sāṃkhya, Vaiśeṣika, and Mīmāṃsā (perhaps Yoga and Vedānta subsumed respectively within Sāṃkhya and Mīmāṃsā)]. The only thing Haribhadra really regards as beyond the pale is Cārvāka naturalism.”
This attitude and comparative neglect of a naturalist philosophical tradition in India is unfortunate and inconsistent with Jain doctrine, so while the Jains, like a few Buddhist philosophers, are said to be accepting “of all the available points of view“ with regard to the metaphysics of the soul and its liberation, their teaching on anekāntavāda, the non-onesidedness of reality and answers to philosophical questions (or ‘theory of standpoints’) should likewise encompass materialist or naturalist philosophies as these are clearly among the—in principle—unlimited number of available philosophical perspectives on our world. This is more evident in the case of contemporary Western philosophy, while attempts were made in the history of Indic philosophy to ignore, dismiss, or demean the philosophers and philosophies of materialism or naturalism (bearing in mind that these can be distinguished, as well the fact that there is a plurality of both materialist and naturalist worldviews!).
References and Further Reading
- Adamson, Peter and Jonardon Ganeri. Classical Indian Philosophy (A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Vol. 5). New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
- Bartley, Christopher. Indian Philosophy A-Z. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
- Castañeda, Hector-Neri. “Philosophy as a Science and as a Worldview,” in Avner Cohen and Marcelo Dascal, eds., The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989: 35-60.
- Desikachar, T.K.V. and Hellfried Krusche (Anne-Marie Hodges, trans.) Freud and Yoga: Two Philosophies of Mind Compared. New York: North Point Press, 2014.
- Ganeri, Jonardon. Philosophy in Classical India. London: Routledge, 2001.
- Gokhale, Pradeep P. Lokāyata/Cārvāka: A Philosophical Inquiry. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015.
- Goodman, Lenn E. In Defense of Truth: A Pluralistic Approach. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books/Prometheus Books, 2001.
- Grimes, John. A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy: Sanskrit Terms Defined in English. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, revised ed., 1996.
- Iyer, Nandini, “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” in Knut A. Jacobsen, ed., Theory and Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson, 2005: 123.
- Krausz, Michael, ed. Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989.
- Long, Jeffery D. Jainism: An Introduction. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009.
- Lynch, Michael. Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.
- Lynch, Michael P. Truth as One and Many. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
- Matilal, Bimal Krishna. The Central Philosophy of Jainism: Anekāntavāda. Ahmedabad: L.D. Institute of Indology, 1981. [There is a fair amount of typographical errors in this volume.]
- Matilal, Bimal Krishna. Logic, Language and Reality: an introduction to Indian philosophical studies. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985.
- Matilal, Bimal Krishna (Jonardon Ganeri and Heeraman Tiwari, eds.) The Character of Logic in India. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998.
- Matilal, Bimal Krishna (Jonardon Ganeri, ed.) The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal: Ethics and Ethics (Philosophy, Culture and Religion). New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002.
- McClintock, Sara L. Omniscience and the Rhetoric of Reason: Śāntaraksita and Kamalaśila on Rationality, Argumentation, and Religious Authority. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010.
- Putnam, Hilary. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
- Putnam, Hilary (James Conant, ed.). Realism with a Human Face. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
- Putnam, Hilary. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
- Rescher, Nicholas. Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1993.
- Sharma, Arvind. A Jaina Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2001.
- Wong, David B. Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Addendum: Should you be interested in the Murphy and Hampton volume, or if you’ve already read it, perhaps you’d be interested in some other titles I’m reading by way of continuing (at least in my mind) this dialogue and its principal arguments. I’m focusing on this material because of its relation to criminal law theories of retributive punishment as well as how it bears on the topic of (political) pardons (including the possibility of ‘self-pardoning’). Incidentally, the latter, in turn, is also germane to questions and issues in transitional justice. Please see, for starters:
- Anderson, Kevin and Richard Quinney, eds. Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology: Beyond the Punitive Society (University of Illinois Press, 2000).
- Duff, Antony, ed. Philosophy and the Criminal Law: Principle and Critique (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
- Duff, Antony and David Garland, eds. A Reader on Punishment (Oxford University Press, 1994).
- Duff, R.A. and Stuart P. Green, eds. Philosophical Foundations of Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 2011).
- Elster, Jon. Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
- Elster, Jon. Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
- Fingarette, Herbert and Ann Fingarette Hasse. Mental Disabilities and Criminal Responsibility (University of California Press, 1979).
- Gorringe, Timothy. God’s Just Vengeance: crime, violence, and the rhetoric of salvation (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
- Honderich, Ted. Punishment: The Supposed Justifications Revisited (Pluto Press, revised ed., 2006).
- Moore, Michael S. Placing Blame: A Theory of the Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 1997).
- Moore, Michael S. Causation and Responsibility: An Essay in Law, Morals, and Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2009).
- Nussbaum, Martha C. Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice (Oxford University Press, 2016).
- Sarat, Austin and Nasser Hussain, eds. Forgiveness, Mercy, and Clemency (Stanford University Press, 2007).
- Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (Robert A. Kaster and Martha C. Nussbaum, trans.) Anger, Mercy, Revenge (University of Chicago Press, 2010).
- Tadros, Victor. Criminal Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 2005).
- Teitel, Ruti. Transitional Justice (Oxford University Press, 2000).
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