ReligiousLeftLaw.com

all good things (so to speak) come to an end sometime

I am trying to decide if I should spend any more time blogging. I stopped blogging elsewhere when I became the sole blogger and began receiving little if any comments (at Ratio Juris and the Agricultural Law blogs, both part of Jim Chen’s former Jurisdynamics Network), and here at RLL this has happened once more. There are no comments to my posts and I have no idea whatsoever if anyone is reading them. I feel I am pissing into the wind, as they say, and am tired of getting wet. If there are any readers who think I should persevere, please let me know, as I sense this is coming to an end* and thus it will also help to know if others are not surprised. In any case, thanks for your attention to this point. Best wishes, Patrick

* We might view this as an illustration of (or one small lesson in) the Buddhist notion of “impermanence” (P. annica/S. anitya), one of the “three marks of existence” (P. tilakkhaṇa/S. त्रिलक्षण, trilakṣaṇa), that is, one of the three characteristics of all conditioned phenomena in saṃsāra, the other two being “non-self” (anattā/anātman) and “unsatisfactoriness” or “suffering” (dukkha/duḥkha).

Update: I will continue blogging here for the foreseeable future.

On the expression “herd immunity” in public health

Human animals, as a rule or generalization, do not live (or behave as if living) in herds,* in short, they are not herd animals. That being true, the expression “herd immunity” in bio-statistical epidemiology and public health in general is misleading or simply a sloppy or awkward or (for me at least) grating expression that should be replaced (as occasionally it is in fact) by “population immunity” (the term ‘population’ has a specific meaning in public health law with regard to the state or government and its public health duties, including population-based scientific research which I briefly address in a piece on a philosophically sensitive definition of same**). However, at least metaphorically or on rare occasions, it could be the case that “some human groupings may behave more like herds.”

 

* “A herd is a large group of animals. The term is used for mammals, particularly hoofed animals. Herding is a good example of collective animal behavior. Other terms are used for similar types of behavior in other types of animal. For example, a large group of birds is usually called a flock (this may also refer to certain mammals as well) and a large group of carnivores is usually called a pack. In addition, special collective nouns may be used for particular cases: for example a flock of geese, if not in flight, is sometimes called a gaggle. However, in theoretical discussions in behavioural ecology, the term ‘herd’ is used for all these kinds of assemblage. A herd may also refer to one that tends and cares for such groups (i.e., shepherds tend to sheep, and goatherds tend to goats, etc.).

 

When an association of animals (or, by extension, people) is described as a ‘herd,’ that means that the group tends to act together (for example, all moving in the same direction at a given time), but that this does not occur as a result of planning or co-ordination. Rather, each individual is choosing behaviour that corresponds to that of the majority of other members, possibly through imitation or possibly because all are responding to the same external circumstances. A herd can be contrasted with a coordinated group where individuals have distinct roles. Many human groupings, such as an army detachments or sports teams, show such coordination and differentiation of roles, but so do some animal groupings such as those of eusocial insects, which are co-ordinated through pheromones and other forms of animal communication. Conversely, some human groupings may behave more like herds.”

 

** For legal and ethical purposes we need to remind ourselves not only that populations consist of individuals (as persons), but that these individuals are members of various kinds of communities, including those deemed, say, disadvantaged or vulnerable for public health reasons. See, for example, Lawrence O. Gostin, Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint (University of California Press, 2000): 124-127. Furthermore, biomedical epidemiology needs to be supplemented with or integrated into social epidemiology in public health. Thus the biomedical bookkeeping used in the medical clinic, for example, which points to “discrete pathophysiological conditions,” such as cancer, heart disease, and so forth as causes of death must be replaced by public health explanations which examine socio-economic, environmental, and behavioral factors (separately or in combination) which get to the root causes of many diseases and their associated mortality rates. Please see, Lawrence O. Gostin, ed. Public Health Law and Ethics: A Reader (University of California Press, 2002): 47-65.

 

Further Reading

• Anand, Sudhir, Fabienne Peter, and Amartya Sen, eds. Public Health, Ethics, and Equity (Oxford University Press, 2004).
• Berkman, Lisa F., Ichiro Kawachi, and M. Maria Glymour, eds. Social Epidemiology (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2014).
• Krieger, Nancy, ed. Embodying Inequality: Epidemiologic Perspectives (Routledge, 2016 [2005]).
• Venkatapuram, Sridhar. Health Justice: An Argument for the Capabilities Approach (Polity Press, 2011).
• Waitzkin, Howard. Health Care under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health (Monthly Review Press, 2018).

Marxists scholars of Indian (especially Buddhist) Philosophy … and on the possibility of being a Marxist Buddhist or Buddhist Marxist

Among the Marxist interpreters of Indian philosophy we find D.D. (Damodar Dharmananda) Kosambi, Theodore Stcherbatsky, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya,¹ N.P. Anikeev, and Ramkrishna Bhattacharya (I added Bhattacharya after first posting this. He is a self-described Marxist-Leninist and well-known scholar of Cārvāka/Lokāyata. While evidencing a philosophical temperament, he prefers to describe himself as a ‘student of philosophy.’ Much of his work in this area falls under the heading of history of philosophy).* Of these, I think it is fair to say that F. Th. Stcherbatsky (1866 – 1942) stands apart: “Although Stcherbatsky remained less well known in his own country [i.e., Russia], his extraordinary fluency in Sanskrit and Tibetan languages won him the admiration of Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore. According to Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, ‘Stcherbatsky did help us – the Indians – to discover our own past and to restore the right perspective of our own philosophical heritage.’ The Encyclopædia Britannica (2004 edition) acclaimed Stcherbatsky as ‘the foremost Western authority on Buddhist philosophy.’” While true for some of period time, it is no longer the case, a fact that in no way diminishes his legacy and importance.

Incidentally, Edward Conze (1904–1979), once a Marxist and Communist Party member (his first major published work was on the theory of dialectical materialism), adopted Buddhism in his late 30s and went on to become one of a handful of the best “Buddhologists”² of his generation. Unlike the Dalai Lama, he did not find a way to reconcile his Marxist commitments with his Buddhist spirituality. While in graduate school, I was privy to no small amount of gossip from those who earlier knew Conze that spoke to his rather irascible temperament in social gatherings.

 

Intriguingly, the current (His Holiness, the 14th) Dalai Lama has stated, unequivocally:

• “I still think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.”
• “I am Socialist. As far as social economic theory is concerned, I am a Marxist.”
• “I am a Marxist monk, a Buddhist Marxist.”

     

 Among so-called Western Buddhists, such as those inclined to a New Age approach on the one hand, or those who define themselves as “secular Buddhists” on the other, there is virtually no mention (see a notable exception in the list for ‘further reading’ below), let alone discussion of the Dalai Lama’s characterization of his lifeworld/worldview in this manner or of the larger subject of the possibility of a worldview shaped largely by Buddhism and Marxism. It is worth speculating on why this is so. Of course secular Buddhists, namely those who are avowedly agnostic or atheist, humanist, and naturalist in some sense, would appear to be more disposed than either traditional Buddhists or of the New Age variety to find Marxist ideas compelling (there is at least a mention of the possible relevance of Marx by one Mike Slott at the Secular Buddhist Network site in a proposed outline of the ‘core elements of a secular and socially-engaged Buddhism’).   

* I read an excellent interview with (emeritus) Professor Bhattacharya conducted by Richard Marshall at 3:AM Magazine (August 17th, 2018), but I cannot find it, even after a search at the site. As the introduction notes, he has authored 28 books and more than 175 research papers, writing “articles and reviews in both scholarly journals and other periodicals on literature (Indian and European), text-criticism (Bangla and Sanskrit), the history of ideas, the history of science in India, the history of modern India, and philosophy (especially the Cārvāka/Lokāyata system, materialism and rationalism).” Should anyone find the link to the interview, I would be happy to add it. Update: Malcolm Keating of The Indian Philosophy blog has kindly provided us with the URL for the new site, so I embedded a link to the interview above (‘While evidencing ...’).

Notes

1. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya is well known for his pioneering work on early Indian materialist philosophy or philosophies (e.g. Lokāyata/Cārvāka, as well as its presence in other philosophical and scientific literature, such as that of the Sāṃkhyan system). Gerald James Larson has a withering summary of Chattopadhyaya’s interpretation of Sāṃkhya, which he describes as “an oversimplification even on the level of Marxist ideology.” See Larson’s brief critique in his Classical Sāṃkhya: An Interpretation of its History and Meaning (Motilal Banarsidass, 2^{nd ed.}, 1979): 63-66.
2. I could be mistaken, but I think my late teacher and friend, Ninian Smart, first coined the term “Buddhology.” If he did not, he at least tried to make it a respectable alternative to a theologically influenced approach to Buddhist studies. Update—It appears I am mistaken: “the term Buddhology was coined in the early 20th century by the Unitarian minister Joseph Estlin Carpenter to mean the ‘study of Buddhahood, the nature of the Buddha, and doctrines of a Buddha,’ but the terms Buddhology and Buddhist studies are generally synonymous in the contemporary context.” Ninian used the term in this latter sense.

Further Reading

• Buddhism bibliography
• Dhar, Anup, Anjam Chakrabarti, and Serap Kayatekin, “Crossing Materialism and Religion: An Interview on Marxism and Spirituality with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama,” Rethinking Marxism: a journal of economics, culture, and society, Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4 (July-October 2016): 584-598.
• Gibbs, Terry. Why the Dalai Lama is a Socialist: Buddhism and the Compassionate Society (Zed Books, 2017).
• Indic/Indian Philosophies: a basic bibliography
• Marxism bibliography

The Myriad Dimensions of Prosecutorial Misconduct: A Reading Guide

This is an updated version of a previously posted list (with a slightly different title).

“Prosecutors hold tremendous power, more than anyone other than jurors, and often much more than jurors because most cases don’t go to trial. Prosecutors and their investigators have unparalleled access to the evidence, both inculpatory and exculpatory, and while they are required to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense under Brady, Giglio, and Kyles v. Whitley, it is very difficult for the defense to find out whether the prosecution is complying with this obligation. Prosecutors also have tremendous control over witnesses: They can offer incentives—often highly compelling incentives—for suspects to testify. This includes providing sweetheart plea deals to alleged co-conspirators and engineering jail-house encounters between the defendant and known informants. Sometimes they feed snitches non-public information about the crime so that the statements they attribute to the defendant will sound authentic. And, of course, prosecutors can pile on charges so as to make it exceedingly risky for a defendant to go to trial. There are countless ways in which prosecutors can prejudice the fact-finding process and undermine a defendant’s right to a fair trial. [….]

… [T]here are disturbing indications that a non-trivial number of prosecutors—and sometimes entire prosecutorial offices—engage in misconduct that seriously undermines the fairness of criminal trials. The misconduct ranges from misleading the jury, to outright lying in court and tacitly acquiescing or actively participating in the presentation of false evidence by police. Prosecutorial misconduct is a particularly difficult problem to deal with because so much of what prosecutors do is secret. If a prosecutor fails to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense, who is to know? Or if a prosecutor delays disclosure of evidence helpful to the defense until the defendant has accepted an unfavorable plea bargain, no one will be the wiser. Or if prosecutors rely on the testimony of cops they know to be liars, or if they acquiesce in a police scheme to create inculpatory evidence, it will take an extraordinary degree of luck and persistence to discover it—and in most cases it will never be discovered.” — Alex Kozinski*

* “Alex Kozinski (b. July 23, 1950) is a Romanian-born American jurist and lawyer who was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1985 to 2017. He was a prominent and influential judge, and many of his law clerks went on to clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court. Kozinski’s judicial career ended in 2017 when he abruptly retired after over a dozen former female law clerks and legal staffers accused him of sexual harassment and abusive practices.” Kozinski’s improper (unethical if not illegal) behavior does not in any way detract from the truth of his description of the “tremendous power” of prosecutors in the U.S. and concern with the ongoing and apparently intractable problem of prosecutorial misconduct.

[Readers may also be interested in the bibliographies for “criminal law” as well as “punishment and prison” (the latter with a short list on policing) found on my Academia page.]

Some of the literature here falls within the ambit of criminal defense, defense counsel and public defenders in particular. It is included because of my belief that international criminal law’s procedural principle of “equality of arms” now enshrined in international and regional human rights instruments should be adopted by all municipal (or domestic) systems of criminal justice (as integral to criminal law policy and procedure). This literature amply documents and thus testifies to the need for such a procedural principle for criminal law and justice in the U.S.

*    *    *

• Alexander, Michelle (2010) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press.
• Balko, Randy (August 5, 2013) “The Untouchables: America’s Misbehaving Prosecutors and the System that Protects Them,” Huffington Post.
• “Brady’s Mandate,” The New York Times, Nov, 12, 2011.
• Burns, Sarah (2011) The Central Park Five. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Butler, Paul (2009) Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice. New York: The New Press.
• Christianson, Scott (2006) Innocent: Inside Wrongful Conviction Cases. New York: New York University Press.
• Cole, David (1999) No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System. New York: The Free Press.
• “Criminal Law 2.0 – Preface” [to the 44th Annual Review of Criminal Procedure], by Hon. Alex Kozinski, Georgetown Law Journal, Vol. 103 – 5: iii-xliv. Available: http://georgetownlawjournal.org/articles/criminal-law-2-0-preface-to-the-44th-annual-review-of-criminal-procedure/
• Davis, Angela J. (2007) Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Equal Justice Initiative: “Founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and bestselling author of Just Mercy, EJI is a private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced, or abused in state jails and prisons. We challenge the death penalty and excessive punishment and we provide re-entry assistance to formerly incarcerated people. EJI works with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and discouraged by unequal treatment. We are committed to changing the narrative about race in America. EJI produces groundbreaking reports, an award-winning wall calendar, and short films that explore our nation’s history of racial injustice, and we recently launched an ambitious national effort to create new spaces, markers, and memorials that address the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, which shapes many issues today.”
• Freedman, Monroe H. “An Ethical Manifesto for Public Defenders,” 39 Valparaiso University Law Review, 911 (2005). Available: http://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol39/iss4/4
• Freedman, Monroe H. “The Use of Unethical and Unconstitutional Practices and Policies by Prosecutors’ Offices” (February 26, 2012). Washburn Law Journal, 2012; Hofstra University Legal Studies Research Paper No. 12-06. Available: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2017178
• Freedman, Monroe and Abbe Smith (2010) Lawyers’ Ethics. Matthew Bender & Co./LexisNexis.
• Garrett, Brandon L. (2011) Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Garrett, Brandon L. “Why Plea Bargains Are Not Confessions,” 57 William & Mary Law Review, 1415 (2016). Available: https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol57/iss4/10
• Gershman, Bennett L. (2013-14 ed.) Prosecutorial Misconduct. New York: Clark Boardman Callaghan/West Group.
• Green, Bruce A. “Prosecutors and Professional Regulation” (November 15, 2012). Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Vol. 25, p. 873, 2012; Fordham Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2176252. Available: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2176252
• Green, Bruce A. and Yaroshefsky, Ellen. “Prosecutorial Discretion and Post-Conviction Evidence of Innocence,” Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Vol. 6, No. 467 (2009); Fordham Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 1393796; Cardozo Legal Studies Research Paper No. 264. Available: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1393796
• Henning, Peter J. “Prosecutorial Misconduct and Constitutional Remedies,” 77 Wash. U. L. Q. 713 (1999). Available: http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol77/iss3/2
• Houppert, Karen (2013) Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People’s Justice. New York: The New Press.
• Innocence Project: Prosecutorial Oversight: A National Dialogue in the Wake of Connick v. Thompson.
• The Justice Project. “Improving Prosecutorial Accountability: A Policy Review.” (2009) Available online as a PDF doc. via a Google search. This paper has an indispensable list of books and (especially) articles under “suggested reading.”
• Kennedy, Randall (1997) Race, Crime, and the Law. New York: Pantheon Books.
• Lawless, Joseph F. (3rd ed., 2003) Prosecutorial Misconduct. Charlottesville, VA: LexisNexis.
• Lippke, Richard L. (2011) The Ethics of Plea Bargaining. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Lithwick, Dahlia. “You’re All Out”: A defense attorney uncovers a brazen scheme to manipulate evidence, and prosecutors and police finally get caught. Slate, May 28, 2015.
• Mayeux, Sara (2020) Free Justice: A History of the Public Defender in the Twentieth-Century America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
• Medwed, Daniel S. (2012) Prosecution Complex: America’s Race to Convict and Its Impact on the Innocent. New York: New York University Press.
• The Open File: A website about prosecutorial misconduct & accountability
• Perlin, Michael L., “‘Power and Greed and the Corruptible Seed’: Mental Disability, Prosecutorial Misconduct, and the Death Penalty” (November 10, 2014). NYLS Legal Studies Research Paper. Available: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2522444
• Prosecutorial Misconduct: Wikipedia article.
• Rakoff, Jed S. “Why Innocent People Plead Guilty,” The New York Review of Books, November 20, 2014 (Vol. 61, No. 18).
• Raphling, John. “Plead guilty, go home. Plead not guilty, stay in jail,” Los Angeles Times, May 17, 2017.
• Rapping, Jonathan (2020) Gideon’s Promise: A Public Defender Movement to Transform Criminal Justice. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
• Rhode, Deborah L. (2004) Access to Justice. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Ridolfi, Kathleen M. and Possley, Maurice Possley; Northern California Innocence Project, “Preventable Error: A Report on Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997–2009” (2010). Northern California Innocence Project Publications. Book 2, http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/ncippubs/2
• “The Rockford Files”: Season 3, Episode 7: So Help Me God (19 Nov. 1976) “Jim gets called before a grand jury where he promptly gets thrown into jail for contempt.”
• Scheck, Barry, Peter Neufeld and Jim Dwyer (2000) Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted. New York: Doubleday.
• Scheck, Barry, Peter Neufeld, and Jim Dwyer (2001) Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Fix It. New York: Signet.
• Schehr, Robert, “The Emperor’s New Clothes: Intellectual Dishonesty and the Unconstitutionality of Plea-Bargaining” (June 1, 2015). Available: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2636501
• Smith, Abbe and Monroe H. Freedman, eds. (2013) How Can You Represent Those People? New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Stuntz, William J. (2011) The Collapse of American Criminal Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Turner, Jenia I. “Plea Bargaining and International Criminal Justice,” 48 University of the Pacific Law Review, 219 (2017). Available: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uoplawreview/vol48/iss2/11
• “We need reforms to increase confidence in the justice system,” The Times-Picayune, 29, 2012.
• “When Innocent Clients Plead Guilty,” a blog post by yours truly at Ratio Juris.
• Yaroshefsky, Ellen. “New Orleans Prosecutorial Disclosure in Practice after Connick v. Thompson” (November 16, 2012). Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Vol. 25, No. 913 (2012). Available: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2176986

The reading guide is available as a pdf doc. here.

Steve Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977)

By way of a small tribute to Steve (Stephen Bantu) Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977), here is a brief descriptive introduction to and characterization of Biko as a thoughtful and politically aware young medical student at Wentworth (the Natal University nonwhite medical school), where he was elected to the Students’ Representative Council and soon participated in NUSAS (the multiracial National Union of South African Students):

“Undogmatic but highly disciplined in his thinking, possessed with a rare insight into human and political situations, Biko increasingly began to question the value of what he saw as the artificial integration of student politics. As in South African politics generally, Africans were hanging back, resentful but reticent, hiding behind white spokesmen who had shouldered the job of defining black grievances and goals. For liberal whites, verbal protest and symbolic racial mixing were seen as the outer limit of action. Apartheid was defined as the enemy, and nonracialism prescribed as the antidote. Repeated over and over in words and symbols, this liberal approach, and in fact the entire liberal analysis, had to Biko’s way of thinking become not an inspiration to constructive action but a sterile dogma disguising an unconscious attachment to the status quo.”— Gail M. Gerhart, Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology (University of California Press, 1978): 260. Gerhart had the privilege of interviewing Biko in 1972.

*           *           *

Steve Biko, “leader of the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) and pioneer of the Black Consciousness philosophy, died in police custody at the age of thirty. Biko was arrested in the outskirts of Grahamstown on 18 August 1977. During his detention in a Port Elizabeth police cell he had been chained to a grill at night and left to lie in urine-soaked blankets. He had been stripped naked and kept in leg-irons for 48 hours in his cell. A blow in a scuffle with security police led to him suffering brain damage. Realising to a certain extent the seriousness of his condition, the police decided to transfer him to a prison hospital in Pretoria, which was 1133 km away. He died shortly after his arrival there. His death was confirmed by the commissioner of police, General Gert Prinsloo.”

The following is a small portion of an extract from Biko’s giving of evidence in the SASO/BPC [South African Students’ Organisation/Black People’s Convention] trial (1975-76, almost two full years!) of nine student leaders who “were found guilty under the Terrorism Act and sentenced to periods of imprisonment, three for six years and six for five years. The next day they were driven from Pretoria to Cape Town in the back of a police van, and from there taken to Robben Island.” Biko was queried by the defence lawyer, Advocate David Soggot (assistant counsel for Defence), Mr. L. Attwell, assistant counsel for the Prosecution, and the trial judge, Judge Boshoff.

“We try to get blacks in conscientisation to grapple realistically with their problems, to attempt to find solutions to their problems, to develop what one might call an awareness, a physical awareness of their situation, to be able to analyse it, and to provide answers for themselves. The purpose behind it really being to provide some kind of hope; I think the central theme about black society is that it has got elements of a defeated society, people often look like they have given up on the struggle. Like the man who was telling me that he now lives to work, he has given himself to the idea. Now this sense of defeat is basically what we are fighting against; people must develop a hope, people must develop some form of security to be together to look at their problems, and people must in this way build up their humanity. This is the point about conscientisation and Black Consciousness.”— Steve Biko: I Write What I Like—Selected Writings (University of Chicago Press, 2002; first published in London: The Bowerdean Press, 1978): 114.

Suggested Reading:

• Arnold, Millard, ed. Steve Biko: Black Consciousness in South Africa (Random House, 1978).
• Bernstein, Hilda. No. 46 — Steve Biko (International Defence & Aid Fund, April, 1978).
• Gerhart, Gail M. Black Power in South Africa: Evolution of an Ideology (University of California Press, 1978).
• Gevisser, Mark (2007) The Dream Deferred (Jonathan Ball Publishers (Pty) Ltd., 2007).
• Gibson, Nigel. “Black Consciousness, 1977-1987: The Dialectics of Liberation in South Africa,” Durban, South Africa: Centre for Civil Society, Research Report 18.
• Karis, Thomas & Gail Gerhart. From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990, vol. Five: Nadir and Resurgence, 1964-1979 (Indiana University Press, 1997).
• M-Afrika, Andile. Touched by Biko: The Interviews (Unisa Press/University of South Africa, 2018).
• Magaziner, Daniel R. The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968-1977. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press/Johannesburg: Jacana Media, 2010.
• Mangcu, Xolela. Biko: A Biography (I.B. Tauris, 2012).
• Murray, Martin. South Africa: Time of Agony, Time of Destiny (Verso, 1987).
• Mzamane, Mbulelo Vizikhungo, Bavusile Maaba and Nkosinathi Biko. ”The Black Consciousness Movement,” in South African Democracy Education Trust, ed. The Road to Democracy in South Africa, vol. 2, 1970-1980 (Unisa Press [University of South Africa Press] 2007).
• Ndlovu, S. M. The Soweto Uprisings: Counter-Memories of June 1976 (Ravan Press, 1978).
• Pityana, N.B., M. Ramphele, M. Mpumlwana, and L. Wilson, eds. Bounds of Possibility: The Legacy of Steve Biko & Black Consciousness (David Philip/Zed Books, 1991).
• Seekings, Jeremy. The UDF: A History of the United Democratic Front in South Africa, 1983-1991 (Ohio University Press, 2000).
• The Testimony of Steve Biko: Black Consciousness in South Africa. Millard Arnold, ed. (Panther Books/Granada Publishing, 1979) [Random House, 1978, as Steve Biko: Black Consciousness in South Africa].
• Woods, Donald. Biko (Henry Holt and Co., 3^rd, 1991 [1978]).
• Woods, Donald. Asking for Trouble: Autobiography of a Banned Journalist (Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1980.).

See too this bibliography on South African Liberation Struggles.

Three (brief) introductory musings on this or that aspect of Indian/Indic philosophies

   

An intriguing philosophical and—in some measure—spiritual (with regard to praxis) division of labor in the history of Indic worldviews [subscript and supra-script diacritic dots missing in what follows]

Several hundred years into the “common era” on the subcontinent of India, intellectuals, philosophers, yogis, sages, ācāryas, gurus, and pandits “drew broadly from a common pool of ideas, and even when they aligned themselves with specific sects, these were demarcated not so much along lines of outright rejection of other sects [darśanas, schools, systems, traditions] but to a great extent on the specific areas of interest that a particular sect chose to focus on and develop—from the orthodox (āstika or brahmanical) side: Mīmāmsā on epistemology, hermeneutics, and dharma; Nyāya on logic (they appear to have had an early interest in the nature of debate); Vaiśesika and Sānkyha on metaphysics; Vedānta [of which there are three main ‘types:’ Advaita (‘non-dualism’), Viśistādvaita (‘qualified non-dualism’), and Dvaita (‘dualism’)] on interpretation of the Upanisads from the vantage point of awareness or knowledge of Brahman; and Yoga on spiritual praxis” (Edwin F. Bryant). This division of labor was not hard and fast if owing only because each philosophical school was more or less free to develop their respective views on metaphysical and epistemological subjects and the part played by well-known commentators writing (in the form of bhāṣyas) about works from a variety of philosophical schools. In any case, it is more than plausible “that each of the schools contained in its early history the causal seeds needed to grow into a strand of philosophy and also to seek complementation in some other school” (Ashok Aklujkar). All of the philosophical schools, including the heterodox systems (cited below), were sensitive to questions of linguistics and grammar after the “philosophy of the grammarians” (vaiyākaranas) which commenced with Pānini (ca. 5^th century BCE), as well as literary aesthetics or “poetics,” all of which served to “give a linguistic turn to philosophy at an early period in India” (Aklujkar), “early” in comparison, that is, to Western philosophy in which the “linguistic turn” did not occur until the early 20^th century.

With the exception of early Mīmāmsā, these systems (together with Jainism and Buddhism) are all dedicated to the cessation of (samsāric) suffering, achieved through some form of “self”-realization or liberation. To complicate matters, there is also the so-called heterodox (‘nāstika’ or śramanic) systems (or schools, etc.): Jainism, Buddhism, and Lokāyata/Cārvāka, as well as other “Hindu” traditions: Tantra and Śaiva (of which there are several types). One common port of entry for examining the different (and at times complementary) systems is by way of their respective positions on the valid or acceptable means of knowing and knowledge, in other words, which (one or more) of the pramānas they believe provide reliable paths to knowledge and thus truth: (i) pratyaksa (perception), (ii) anumāna (inference), (iii) upamāna (comparison and analogy), (iv) arthāpatti (postulation, derivation from circumstances), (v) anupalabdhi (absence, non-perception, negative/cognitive proof) and (vi) śabda (word, testimony of reliable experts).

*           *           *

“For everyday Hindus, the teachings of the classical knowledge systems [be they āstikadarśana* (‘orthodox’) or those christened nāstika or heterodox owing to their refusal to defer to Vedic authority, hence Jainism, Buddhism, and Lokāyata/Cārvāka] are translated into and transmitted through popular stories [e.g., Purānic corpus or the Jātaka tales].” — Edwin F. Bryant

I was wondering if anything comparable exists with regard to both Christianity and Judaism, in other words, are there identical or similar attempts to translate and transmit complex theological and philosophical ideas through “popular stories” and myths? I well realize there are Christian stories and songs and other forms of literature that loosely reflect the influence of Christian doctrines or Gospel teachings of Jesus, but it does not seem to me that these typically represent deliberate efforts at translation and transmission of, for instance, specific theologies, systematic, practical, systematic and otherwise (there are sub-disciplines within theology as well as different ‘kinds’ of theology: Liberation, Covenant, Process, Feminist and so on). Well-known works by Dante Alighieri (ca. 1265 – 1321), John Milton (1608 – 1674), and William Blake (1757 – 1827) are arguably conspicuous exceptions to the rule here (yet both Milton and especially Blake had fairly idiosyncratic or unconventional theological views), as is the 1678 Christian allegory by John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come. In our time and place one might cite the novels and short stories of Mary Flannery O’Connor (1925 –1964) (the popular works of the British writer and lay theologian, C.S. Lewis are distinguishable from his explicit efforts at Christian apologetics and cannot be said to be an endeavor along the lines we’re seeking).

I’m not denying Christian theology or simply Christianity (or Judaism) has not generally influenced cultures where Christianity has been or is the predominant religion, it just seems that there’s nothing comparable to what has taken place on the Indian subcontinent. I’m inclined to argue that the remaining Abrahamic religion, Islam, is an exception, and thus in this case one can identify attempts (we’ll leave aside the question as to what extent they’ve been successful) to transmit complex theologies, philosophy, and spiritual teachings (as exist, say, in Sufism) into everyday idioms and narratives.

    

Is my hunch or proto-belief ill-informed or mistaken? In short, do “everyday” Christians have familiarity with or common knowledge of a body of literature that communicates fairly complex or intellectually sophisticated theological and philosophical teachings of their tradition (be it Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant) into a vernacular narrative or mythic language? (This would be analogous to the role ‘popular science’ literature plays with regard to actual scientific theories and practices.)

* Namely, Mīmāmsā, Vedānta, Sānkyha, Yoga, Nyāya, and Vaiśesika (there are schools within the schools of some of these systems).

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Friendship (or loving-kindness), compassion, sympathetic (or altruistic) joy, and equanimity as moral and spiritual virtues acquired (in part) through mind-training or meditation in both Yoga and Buddhism

While the Yogasūtra (YS) of Patañjali (ca. 350-450) (also called Pātañjala Yoga, or Pātañjalayogaśāstra, or Pātañjalayogadarśana) has fundamental epistemological and metaphysical—or simply philosophy of mind—differences with Buddhism regarding the nature of the mind as well as consciousness, the two schools, the former orthodox (āstika or brahmanical), the latter heterodox (nāstika or śramanic), share identical spiritual and moral virtues deemed essential to spiritual praxis, including efforts at concentration and meditation. For example, in YS I.33 we read: maitrī-karunā-muditopeksānām sukha-duhkha-punyāpunya-visayānam bhāvanātaś citta-prasādanam / “By cultivating an attitude of friendship toward those who are happy, compassion toward those in distress, joy toward those who are virtuous, and equanimity toward those who are non-virtuous, lucidity arises in the mind.”

As Edwin F. Bryant points out, the “four practices noted in this sūtra—friendship (or loving-kindness or benevolence), maitrī; compassion, karunā; [sometimes ‘altruistic’ or ‘sympathetic’] joy, muditā; and equanimity, upeksā—correspond exactly to the four brahma-vihāras [‘divine abidings’ or ‘highest spiritual state,’ and sometimes termed ‘boundless states’ (apramāna)] outlined in various Buddhist suttas (Skt. sūtras) (rendered, in Pali, as mettā, karunā, muditā, and uppekā).” Equanimity here is comparable to the ancient Greek concepts of apatheia and ataraxia found in Hellenistic philosophies. Buddhist texts acknowledge the fact that these practices were part of the spiritual exercises cultivated by those who did not follow the Buddha’s dharma. I’ll set aside the Yoga commentaries on the rationale for this practice but note that it is not dissimilar from that of the Buddhist. These virtuous emotions and attitudes are topics for meditation in Buddhism, and the student is instructed how to do this, including a process of identifying oneself with all beings and keeping one’s mind (or heart) free from hatred and ill-will. Each object of meditation is used to “counter the specific unwholesome (akuśala*) states of mind,” thus, loving-kindness counteracts hostility (vyāpāda), compassion counters harmfulness (vihimsā), empathetic joy counters dissatisfaction or envy regarding the achievements of others, while equanimity is said to counter both the desire and hostility arising from sensuality (kāmarāgavyāpāda) as well as the desire to win the approval of others (anunaya). It is said that these are conducive to or productive of tranquility (S. śamatha/P. samatha) (for Patañjali, that sort of mental lucidity that is a prerequisite for attaining ‘steadiness’ in the mind) but are not directly related to the cultivation of “insight” (S. vipaśyana/P. vipassana). Bear in mind, however, that tranquility is a necessary condition of “insight.” As with Yoga, in Buddhism the tranquility, mental clarity or lucidity, or mindfulness attained through yoga and meditation is intended to extend into the comings and goings—or doings—of everyday life, thus spilling over “into all aspects of life’s affairs and social interactions.” In other words, this is not the prerogative of the ascetic or monk but a spiritual praxis designed to provide sundry benefits to all of us.

* This term is used to refer to those physical, verbal and mental activities that lead to unsalutary rebirths: “An ‘unwholesome’ or ‘unvirtuous’ action generally refers to any volition (cetanā) or volitional action, along with the consciousness (vijñāna) and mental constructions (samskāras) associated with it, that are informed by the afflictions (kleśas) of greed (lobha), hatred (S. dvesa/P. dosa), or delusion (moha).” This literature includes lists of ten such unwholesome actions which, again, are classified as bodily, verbal, and mental wrong deeds.       

    

An early book on the four “divine abidings” by Harvey B. Aronson, Love and Sympathy in Theravāda Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980) has some invaluable discussion but the translation of terms is a bit inconsistent and occasionally confusing. I think it is useful to think carefully about different conceptions of friendship, different meanings for love, and finally, critical distinctions between our notions of sympathy, compassion, mercy, and empathy.

Further research: a “study guide” for Hinduism, and two bibliographies, (i) on Indian/Indic worldviews, and (ii) on Buddhism.

   

The culturing of fascist bacteria

In this Dec. 8, 2020, file photo, anti-masker demonstrators converge on Central District Health offices in Boise, Idaho, to the protest a meeting deciding on more mandates to combat the spread of COVID-19. Arguments over mask requirements and other restrictions have turned ugly in recent days as the deadly coronavirus surge engulfs small and medium-size cities that once seemed a safe remove from the outbreak. (Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman via AP, File)

From AP: “Tensions rise over masks as virus grips smaller US cities,” December 9, 2020

Mission, KS (AP) — “Arguments over mask requirements and other restrictions have turned ugly in recent days as the deadly coronavirus surge across the U.S. engulfs small and medium-size cities that once seemed safely removed from the outbreak.

In Boise, Idaho, public health officials about to vote on a four-county mask mandate abruptly ended a meeting Tuesday evening because of fears for their safety amid anti-mask protests outside the building and at some of their homes. One health board member tearfully announced she had to rush home to be with her child because of the protesters, who were seen on video banging on buckets, blaring air horns and sirens, and blasting a sound clip of gunfire from the violence-drenched movie ‘Scarface’ outside her front door. ‘I am sad. I am tired. I fear that, in my choosing to hold public office, my family has too often paid the price,’ said the board member, Ada County Commissioner Diana Lachiondo. ‘I increasingly don’t recognize this place. There is an ugliness and cruelty in our national rhetoric that is reaching a fevered pitch here at home, and that should worry us all.’ Boise police said three arrest warrants were issued in connection with the demonstrations at board members’ homes.

In South Dakota, the mayor of Rapid City said City Council members were harassed and threatened over a proposed citywide mask mandate that failed this week even as intensive care units across the state filled with COVID-19 patients. The tensions are flaring amid an epic surge in U.S. deaths, hospitalizations and infections over the past several weeks. The U.S. topped 3,000 deaths Wednesday in what is a single-day record, according to the COVID Tracking Project. That’s surpassed the level seen during last spring’s peak in and around New York City. New cases per day have rocketed to more than 200,000 on average, and the number of patients in the hospital with COVID-19 stood at almost 105,000 on Tuesday, another all-time high.

The grim figures led the usually stoic health director of the nation’s most populated county to become emotional. Barbara Ferrer described ‘a devastating increase in deaths’ in Los Angeles County, with the total hitting 8,075 on Wednesday. ‘Over 8,000 people who were beloved members of their families are not coming back,’ Ferrer said, fighting back tears.

Meanwhile, protesters in Montana’s Gallatin County have gathered for two consecutive weeks outside the Bozeman home of county health officer Matt Kelley to decry regulations, including a statewide mask mandate. They have carried signs reading, ‘We refuse to be your experiment’ and ‘Oxygen is essential.’” [….] The entire article is here.

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Comment: Liberty on the sign in the AP photo means that one is asserting an absolute right of freedom to infect, hence harm, and kill others. The ignorance, including ignorance of one’s ignorance, goes hand-in-hand with self-deception, denial, wishful (and magical) thinking, so much so that it spills over into shameless (individual and collective) indulgence in illusions and delusions. This is madness on a mass scale and in such circles represents the quintessence of the pathology of normalcy, the severing of already tenuous ties to truth and reality. Alas, rational or reasonable dialogue with such people is impossible, as there is no common ground with which to conduct same. The nationalist cult of Trump is by definition corrosive of all norms, rules, and laws that undergird a democratic republic, that sustain the values, principles, and procedures that make for coherent and meaningful forms of participatory, deliberative, and representative democracy. This is a petri dish for culturing fascist bacteria in both intimate and public fora of all kinds.

Addendum: If you don’t trust or believe me owing to some sort of debilitating Leftist bias, consider the following:

“Forget compromise. The GOP isn’t likely to accept Biden — ever”

By Kurt Bardella, Dec. 11, 2020, for the Los Angeles Times [This is written by a former Republican who was an aide to California Republican Reps. Darrell Issa and Brian Bilbray and as well as an aide in the California State Senate and Assembly.]

“Anyone who has been following the current Republican-led effort to undermine democracy and orchestrate a coup has probably asked themselves, ‘When are Republicans going to stand up to Trump and admit that Joe Biden won the election?’ I’m sorry to say, that’s the wrong question, because the answer is never.

Many people have said in recent weeks that it feels like Republicans and Democrats live on completely different planets. I wish it were that simple. In reality, what’s happening is that one side sees a planet where the other sees nothing because they don’t even care to look. Democrats believe in facts, while Republicans have learned to believe in a world they make up for themselves. Whether or not you agree with them, Democrats are largely defined by positions on issues like education, environment, social justice, healthcare, etc. These are policies that can be debated, though reaching consensus within the party’s ranks is always a struggle. Even now, you see the Democrats squabbling over Biden’s Cabinet appointments.

The GOP isn’t built for debate — which is why you don’t see any reporting about the GOP being in disarray. But you can’t call this consensus, which would imply agreement achieved after rigorous discussion. At this point, if Trump were to tell his supporters that the Earth is flat and the elitist scientists have been lying all along, they would play along and raise questions about the scientists’ faulty instruments. This is why, despite zero evidence, the majority of Republicans still believe Trump’s lie that the election was rigged and that he won. A Washington Post survey found that only 26 Republicans, out of 249 in both the House and Senate, would acknowledge Biden’s victory.

At the most basic level, Republicans view the world through the lens of villains and heroes — a posture that gives them an advantage in political warfare. They create the villains and cast themselves as the heroes. For the better part of this decade, Republicans have cast figures like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton as the enemy. They use words like ‘socialists’ and ‘extreme’ to scare their voters into believing that the Democrats are coming to take away life as they know it. They operate with the thinking that any attack will send Democrats into retreat mode. They believe the very thing that makes Democrats Democrats is a weakness they can exploit and weaponize. And in some ways, they are right.

Being inclusive, especially as a Democrat, in this political climate is downright tedious and exhausting. I left the GOP four years ago because I could no longer reconcile the party’s words and actions with my moral compass. As I spent more time having conversations with Democrats, I realized a truth I hadn’t been prepared for: Democrats care about — and will argue over — everything. Republicans, however, have managed to boil down their entire identity into bumper-sticker-ready catchphrases like ‘build the wall,’ ‘drain the swamp’ or the more recent refrain, ‘stop the steal.’ How have they been able to do this?

Because the Republican Party has no diversity of thought. Getting everyone to march to the same beat is easy because no one would dare challenge the conductor of the orchestra. During my time working for Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, the committee, led by California Rep. Darrell Issa, unleashed an investigative tsunami against the Obama presidency. These so-called investigations were nothing more than public relations vehicles to attack Obama administration officials. Whether it was pursuing documents from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner or holding Atty. Gen. Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, I never saw any dissent from the Republicans about the overtly political agenda. If anything, they wanted the committee to be even more aggressive. Members like Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, who have become central figures in Trump world, first rose to prominence on Issa’s oversight committee.

Republicans also don’t have to worry about how their words might hurt or offend someone because they truly do not care. Unlike Democrats, Republicans don’t have to concern themselves with navigating different racial, geographic or socioeconomic boundaries because they don’t like to acknowledge differences. They view the world through the same lens.”

The “kindly illusions” of Yoga and utopian thought and imagination

   

It seems that Īśvara (ईश्वर), the—comparatively speaking—peculiar deity in the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, plays a role in individual moral psychological and spiritual development akin or at least analogous to the manner in which utopian thought and imagination functions on the collective level: the first is believed essential in liberating the individual’s mind so as to experience pristine awareness or consciousness, the “pure” self (technically, asamprajñāta-samādhi), while the latter, correctly understood, has been essential to general emancipation (for this locution’s meaning in history and political philosophy, I defer in particular to the late Rudolf Barho, as well as more generally to Marxist and anarchist theorists), as it is used to specify and justify the principles of an ideal (or comprehensively good) political order (or, the historical quest for the ideal society or polity committed to the equal liberties, welfare, and well-being of all persons in conjunction with human dignity), which includes the widespread flourishing and eudaimonia of the individuals that constitute that polity.

Utopia is to the outer world what meditation on Īśvara in Yoga is to the inner world of the yogī. Much like the nature or function of utopias has been rather contentious in history and political philosophy (e.g., utopias as ‘blueprints’ believed capable of concrete realization find us with ample reason to dismiss the relevance of utopian thought, while utopian constructions as images or ‘symbols’ of ideal communities wherein we make explicit the principles and values which render our conceptions of the polity or community normatively ‘ideal’ remain politically and morally relevant if not urgent), questions as to precisely “who” or “what” Īśvara is in the Yoga system remains a topic of vigorous debate. For example, it is clear that this deity is not like the creator God of theistic religions nor is it identical or similar to (nirguṇa) Brahman in Advaita Vedānta. Īśvara is, however, more or less equivalent to saguṇa Brahman in this school of philosophy, that facet of Brahman, if you will, accessible to those of us mired in māyā and avidyā and thus the proper object of our love and devotion or bhakti, while the mention of grace suggests the personal god of bhakti-yoga or –marga. Saguṇa Brahman is Brahman as understood, imagined or experienced by the yogī or devotee from her necessarily limited, partial, or relative perspectives, in which all perception or knowledge and understanding is qualified by ignorance. From this vantage point (saguṇa) Brahman in is Lord, Īśvara, the perfectly proper object of our devotion and spiritual orientation, accounting for our differing degrees and stages of spiritual experience and awareness. Until one has the intuitive spiritual experience of non-duality, that spiritual awareness in which all distinctions, plurality, and difference are transcended and obliterated, until, that is, nirvikalpa samādhi, one must acknowledge the conventional implications of and consequences that follow karmic entanglement in māyā (illusion) and avidyā (ignorance). The illusion, in other words, is for all practical purposes, real for us. It is said to be an illusion caused by the power (śakti) of Īśvara, the Great Magician who created the world (this ‘creative’ power of the deity is not found in Patañjali’s Yoga). Māyā, in turn, has its own power, for it both conceals reality (āvarana-śakti) and misrepresents or distorts reality (vikṣepa-śakti).

The ultimate aim of Yoga is the mind’s awareness of puruṣa, and thus in some sense Īśvara’s significance is due primarily to the instrumental part it can play, or plays, in such a realization; in which case consider again our analogy with utopias: their role in the progressive realization of societies with ever closer fidelity to our ideals and values, our hopes and dreams, all of which depend on the moral and spiritual lodestar of “the Good.” Consider too that in Yoga the role of Īśvara might be, strictly speaking, thought conditional or contingent, insofar as Patañjali “presents devotion to Īśvara, the Lord, as an optional rather than an obligatory means of attaining samādhi, full meditative absorption in the self or soul (puruṣa).” Devotional meditative reliance on Īśvara for some yoga practitioners is necessary for the “realization of inner consciousness and freedom from all obstacles,” that is, self-realization, thus devotion to Īśvara serves here as a necessary condition to the attainment of samādhi. T.K.V. Desikachar (1938– 2016), the yoga teacher and son of the Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888–1989) (‘often referred to as the father of modern yoga’ and ‘widely regarded as one of the most influential yoga teachers of the 20th century’), once stated that “in the Yoga Sūtra, when we meditate on God, we never meet God. We discover ourselves.” (I should note that the view I articulate here is far from consensual, indeed, it is idiosyncratic as scholars and devotees alike often unconditionally characterize Yoga as theistic, although the philosophical school paired with Yoga, namely Sāṃkhya, is best viewed, I believe, as non-theistic.) In any case, so too with our ideals, we never “meet” them insofar as they are never fully incarnate. And this is owing to the fact that perfectibility does not, as the anarchist philosopher William Godwin reminded us, imply that we will reach a state of perfection, only that we can always make more progress in relation to achieving the “good society,” a society, for instance, committed to the triune and complementary principles and virtues of liberté, égalité, and fraternité which have animated the best in anarchist and socialist thought and praxis. “Man is perfectible,” wrote Godwin, which is distinguishable from a perfectionism that entails “overcom[ing] every obstacle and limitation,” and thus an “end to our improvement.” The perfectibilist proposition, on the other hand, states merely that we are capable of “perpetual improvement.” Desikachar, forthrightly and no doubt arguably, also says that Īśvara “is,” and like our utopian models, “a projection of the mind.”

Once more the comparison with utopia is apropos for, in the words of Santayana, “Ideal society belongs entirely to this realm of kindly illusion, for it is the society of symbols. [….] Symbols are presences, and they are those particularly congenial presences which we have inwardly evoked and cast in a form intelligible and familiar to human thinking. [….] They are therefore precious, not only for their representative or practical value, implying useful adjustments to the environing world, but even more, sometimes, for their immediate or aesthetic power, for their kinship to the spirit they enlighten and exercise.”

At which point we can now conclude by suggesting that Īśvara too “belongs entirely to this realm of kindly illusion,” keeping in mind that a “kindly” illusion is helpful, beneficial, hence good, not the sort of illusion that negates our powers of reason or has lost its moral compass, that misleads or deceives us, thus the kindly illusions of Yoga and utopian thought are generally benign and not pernicious.

References and Further Reading

• Bahro, Rudolf (David Fernbach, trans.) The Alternative in Eastern Europe. London: NLB (New Left Books), 1978.
• Bryant, Edwin F., trans. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali (with commentary and insights from the traditional commentators). New York: North Point Press, 2009.
• Chapple, Christopher and Yogi Anand Viraj, trans. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali (with analysis of the Sanskrit) Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1990.
• Desikachar, T.K.V. and Hellfried Krusche (Ann-Marie Hodges, trans.) Freud and Yoga: Two Philosophies of Mind Compared. New York: North Point Press, 2014.
• Estlund, David. Utopophobia: On the Limits (if any) of Political Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. (I happen to believe our notions of ‘utopia’ should encompass more than what is circumscribed by our ideal theories of justice, these theories being thus a necessary yet not sufficient condition for utopian thought and imagination.)
• Feuerstein, Georg. The Yoga-Sūtra of Patañjali: A New Translation and Commentary. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1989.
• Feuerstein, Georg. The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga. Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1997.
• Galston, William A. Justice and the Human Good. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980. (For yours truly, this book’s importance is largely due to its concise appreciation and formulation of the nature of utopian thought and imagination, which I shared some years ago here.)
• Geoghegan, Vincent. Utopianism and Marxism. London: Methuen & Co., 1987.
• Godwin, William. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Middlesex, England: Penguin Classics, 1985 (1793).
• Jacobsen, Knut A. Prakriti in Sāmkhya-Yoga: Material Principle, Religious Experience, Ethical Implications. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2002.
• Jacobsen, Knut A., ed. Theory and Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson. Leiden: Brill, 2005.
• Jha, Ganganatha. The Yogadarśana (Comprising the Sūtras of Patañjali with the Mīmāmsā of Vyāsa). Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 2^nd ed., 1934.
• Kumar, Krishan. Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1987.
• Larson, Gerald James. Classical Sāmkhya: An Interpretation of Its History and Meaning. Santa Barbara, CA: Ross/Erikson, 1979 ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2^nd ed., 1979).
• Larson, Gerald James and Ram Shankar Bhattacharya, eds. Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Vol. IV, Sāmkhya—A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.
• Larson, Gerald James and Ram Shankar Bhattacharya, eds. Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Vol. XII, Yoga: India’s Philosophy of Meditation. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2008.
• Larson, Gerald James. “Materialism, Dualism, and the Philosophy of Yoga,” International Journal of Hindu Studies (2013) 17, 2: 183-221.
• Mills, Jon. Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality. London: Routledge, 2017.
• Phillips, Stephen H. Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth: A Brief History and Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
• Potter, Karl. “The Karma Theory and Its Interpretation in Some Indian Philosophical Systems,” Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, ed. Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980: 241-267.
• Potter, Karl H., ed. Presuppositions of India’s Philosophies. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991 (first published in 1963).
• Santayana, George. Reason in Society (Vol. 2 of The Life of Reason). New York: Collier Books, 1962.
• Soni, Jayandra. “Patañjali’s Yoga as Therapeia,” in Jonardon Ganeri and Clark Carlisle, eds. Philosophy as Therapeia (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 66). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010: 219-232.