This series invites seasoned philosophers to share critical reflections on emergent and institutionalised shapes of and encounters within philosophy. The series collects experience-based explorations of philosophy’s personal, institutional, and disciplinary evolution that will also help young academics and students navigate philosophy today.
In the following, I draw attention to the importance and beneficial relevance of Sanskrit philosophy for philosophy today and outline my efforts to bring it more attention around the world in order to make way for further engagement. I discovered Sanskrit philosophy somewhat accidentally while studying in India. I also learned Greek philosophy, modern logic, and analytic philosophy from eminent experts while studying in the U.S., and came to deeply appreciate the great developments in these areas. All this formed the background of my publications on Greek and Indian logic, epistemological topics such as truth and induction, metaphysical topics such as universals and negative entities, and so on, among other topics, as well as the courses I taught. However, Sanskrit philosophy is embedded in and forms the core of all of these. I provide below a brief sample of how Sanskrit philosophy can engage fruitfully with a common theme of contemporary philosophy.
In the early 1960s, as a teenager, I enrolled at the Presidency College (now Presidency University) in Kolkata as a Philosophy Honors (comparable to a philosophy major) student for a three-year B.A. degree, and I had the good fortune to have renowned professors Paresh Bhattacharya, Naresh Chakrabarti, Deviprasad Sen, and Katyayanidas Bhattacharya as my teachers. One day as I was strolling through the college campus, I overheard two elderly men engaged in a philosophical debate in a way significantly different to our proceedings in Presidency College, the region’s most famous and oldest college. English was the medium of instruction in the classroom, and classes were devoted mostly to modern western philosophers. The two elderly men were conversing in Bengali (my mother tongue), citing names of Indian philosophers unfamiliar to me. I was able to follow the trend of their conversation with some difficulty. My curiosity aroused, I found out that they were instructors of the Nyāya school of classical Hindu philosophy in a traditional school called Tol where they taught in Sanskrit. I enrolled in the nearby Tol while I continued my Philosophy Honors studies at Presidency College. After completing that B.A. degree, I enrolled in the two-year Master of Arts program in philosophy (with the Nyāya-Vaisesika as the special paper) at the Calcutta University and continued my Nyāya studies at the Tol. This was a challenge. I attended my M.A. classes every weekday between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. and the Tol classes ended at 4 pm. However, two eminent Nyāya pundits of India-wide reputation who were instructors at Tol, Pt. Madhusudana Nyayacharya and Pt. Visvabandhu Tarkatrtha, kindly agreed to stay on every weekday for an extra hour to teach me Nyaya texts from 4 to 5 p.m.
In 1967, as I completed my M.A. in philosophy, I was pleasantly surprised to be appointed as a full-time lecturer in philosophy at Burdwan University near Kolkata, before being appointed to a full-time lecturer in philosophy at Calcutta University (the oldest and a top university in India, with one of the largest philosophy departments in the world). Early on I taught general classes covering different schools of Indian philosophy, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, and Sanskrit Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika philosophical texts. Then in 1971, I received a Fulbright doctoral scholarship for higher studies in the U.S. I chose to attend SUNY Buffalo, despite being accepted to Harvard and Columbia as well, because their philosophy department had forty-two full-time philosophers, five of them specializing in different areas of eastern philosophy, and the department was also the home of the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. I was fortunate to learn from two reputed logicians, William Parry and John Kearns, a distinguished classicist, L. Westerink, and the eminent visiting specialist in Greek philosophy, W. K. C. Guthrie. I completed my Ph.D. in 1975 and resumed teaching at Calcutta University, alongside studying Sanskrit philosophical texts under the guidance of the previously mentioned pandits, Pt. Narmada Tarkatirtha, Pt. Panchanana Sastri, Pt. Narayana Goswami, Professor Gopinatha Bhattacharya, and Professor Ashoke Gangopadhyay. At that point in my career, I added symbolic logic and general classes on Greek philosophy to my teaching repertoire.
In 1977–78, I was a Visiting Professor at the Australian National University by recommendations of foremost philosophers David Armstrong and J. J. C. Smart, delivering lectures on theories of universals and meaning. In 1982–83, I received a Fulbright post-doctoral fellowship for advanced research on Greek logic. In 1986 I was invited to be a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and taught courses on Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. In 1987–88 I was a member of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton by a recommendation of Morton White, and in 1988–89 I was a senior research fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh by recommendations of Nicholas Resher and Gerald Massey. Both at Princeton and at Pittsburgh, the focus of my research was Greek logic via original Greek-language sources including the commentaries on Aristotle. Until retiring in 2013, I continued to teach a variety of upper-level courses on ethics, logic, Greek philosophy, Indian philosophy, and analytic philosophy at different colleges and universities in the U.S. I published several books and numerous articles and papers on topics of Greek and Indian logic, analytic philosophy, philosophy of mind, Indian and comparative philosophy, and ethics. I continued to publish on these topics as well as to visit and deliver lectures at universities around the world, including the University of Oxford, the University of Pennsylvania, the Shangdong University, the Fo Guang University, the Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the University of Vasaa.
Since my somewhat fortuitous initiation into classical Sanskrit philosophical texts in the early 1960s, I have maintained a steadfast and keen interest in studying them. Very quickly I found out that these philosophical works are written in a highly condensed style that makes them very difficult for beginners to understand (unless helped by experts providing the necessary supplementary background). These older philosophical works deal with philosophical issues in exemplary depth, clarity, and rigor, making them beneficially relevant to contemporary philosophy. One salient example below both demonstrates this and opens our philosophical minds.
For example, while studying at Presidency College, I learned that David Hume is credited with introducing to the field the classical problem of induction. But I found out from my classes at the Sanskrit College that Udayana and Gangesa (both great Nyāya philosophers of the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, respectively) discussed the problem of induction with amazing brilliance and originality long before Hume.
Hume argued that all inductions are invariably circular because they all presuppose the principle of uniformity of nature that is itself an induction. Many solutions to this problem have been suggested by recent philosophers. Thus, some have claimed that since inductions using accepted procedures have been true or largely true, it follows that induction is justified (see my Definition and Induction (DI), University of Hawaii Press, 1995, chapter 9). But such an inductive justification of induction is circular, for the very question raised by Hume and (the legendary ancient Indian philosopher Carvaka) is whether regularity in the past can be the proper reason for regularity in the future. Again, Bertrand Russell has listed “five postulates of all scientific or non-demonstrative reasoning” such as that structurally similar events ranged around a center frequently have a common causal origin, that analogies are usually reliable, and so on. But vague words such as ‘frequently’ should be rendered precise by specifying how frequently. However, if they are made more precise, various sets of presuppositions would follow that would lead to varying estimates of probabilities. Further, there appears to be no good reason why these postulates must be accepted by a skeptic like Carvaka or Hume as true (see DI, chapter 9).
Needless to say: many other solutions to this problem have been offered by recent philosophers (for a brief discussion of some other recent solutions and difficulties see DI, chapter 9.) I present a Nyāya solution in the hope of throwing some light on this controversy.
According to Gangesa, the skeptical challenge to provide a non-circular reason to go beyond observed cases and make a claim about unobserved cases (involved in such empirical inductions as that all smoky things are fiery) can be met by a subjunctive or counterfactual reasoning (tarka) as follows. (A) If smoke were preceded neither by an aggregate of things including fire nor by an aggregate of things excluding fire, smoke would not have been observed to come into being. (B) But smoke is observed to come into being (as when one lights a cigarette). Hence (by an implicit application of the so-called De Morgan law known early in Nyāya logic) (C) Smoke is preceded either by an aggregate of things including fire or by an aggregate of things excluding fire. Now we have two different empirical claims, viz. (1) that smoke is preceded by an aggregate of things including fire and (2) that smoke is preceded by an aggregate of things excluding fire. As between (1) and (2), (D) (1) is rejected (consistently with the empiricist standpoint) for lacking observational support and (2) is accepted (consistently with the empiricist standpoint) for having observational support.
It may be noted that both Carvaka and Hume are empiricists and accept particular observations, e.g., smoke coming out of a burning cigarette, as knowledge. Although the above argument uses standard logical laws like the De Morgan law as well as the standard of internal consistency of a philosophical position, it does not employ empirical induction in any step. The argument is addressed to skeptics who accept perception as knowledge and reject induction as knowledge, and is a powerful rejoinder to such skeptical challenge. It may also be noted that ‘smoke’ and ‘fire’ are intended to be quasi-variables and may be replaced by any putative observable pervaded (that the extension of which is not greater than that of the intended pervader) and any putative observable pervader (that the extension of which is not smaller than that of the intended pervaded), respectively. Accordingly, this argument is relevant for empirical inductions in general. Due to limited space, I have stated the Nyāya viewpoint without necessary qualifications and ramifications. For a proper understanding and fair evaluation of the Nyāya view one should consult my DI, chapters 9 and 11 and my Classical Indian Philosophy of induction (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010, chapters 1 and 2).
One may of course court universal and absolute skepticism and reject perception too as knowledge. For the Nyaya refutation of universal and absolute skepticism see the Nyayasutra of Gotama with Bhasyam of Vatsyayana, 1.1.1; 1.2.23; 2.1.1–2.1.19 and my ‘Nyāya’s Response to Skepticis, in the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism vol. 12, December 2021, 72-89.
I have tried to show briefly that there is a key epistemological issue that classical Indian philosophers debated long before their western counterparts that is historically important. I have also tried to show again very briefly that some Indian philosophers have debated the issue in a way that is relevant for contemporary philosophy.
I now move on to claim provisionally that there is a critically important epistemological issue debated in great depth and rigor in classical Indian philosophies for centuries that has not been debated in great depth and rigor in ancient, medieval, modern, or contemporary western philosophy. For this, I mention the debate (there may be other philosophical debates raging for centuries in classical Indian philosophies and not in western philosophies) over whether cognitive states are self-revealing or not. The Advaita Vedanta, a very influential and large school of Hindu philosophy, maintains that cognitive states are self-revealing. An argument for the Advaita position is the following: Since nothing is revealed without cognition, if a cognitive state were not self-revealing, it would have to be revealed by another cognitive state; and then, the latter too would have to be revealed by yet another cognitive state. And a vicious infinite regress would follow. If we stop the regress at some point and regard a cognitive state as self-revealing, why not get rid of the regress altogether and regard the first cognitive state itself (and by analogy other cognitive states also) as self-revealing?
The Advaita position is rejected by the Nyāya, another very influential and large school of Hindu philosophy. From the Nyāya point of view, the presumed vicious infinite regress is uncalled for. A cognitive state reveals its object, e.g. cognition of a pot reveals a pot. It does not necessarily follow that cognition of a pot must also reveal itself to reveal a pot. If, say, cognition of cognition of a pot is not necessary for cognition of a pot, the regress of subsequent cognitive states is avoided. A cognitive state, of course, may be the object of a later cognitive state, such as an introspection, and be revealed then. If one were to claim that, say, cognition of cognition of a pot is necessary for cognition of a pot, that must be argued for and not assumed.
The underlying issues here are complex and have been debated in hundreds of Sanskrit philosophical works for centuries; I do not have the space to discuss it fully. One may consult my Classical Indian Philosophy of Mind (State University of New York Press, 1999, chapter 13) and my “Consciousness and Self-consciousness: A Retrospect and Review” in History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, 2006, 352–379. If there is a big and important philosophical debate in classical Indian philosophy for which there is no analogous counterpart in western philosophy, that would add a whole new dimension to the importance and relevance of classical Indian philosophy for philosophy today.
All through my teaching career I have devoted substantial space to Indian philosophy and western philosophy in my courses’ syllabi. I have found that students were more excited and motivated to work harder when exposed to diverse worldviews from different cultures and parts of the world. In my research and publications, I frequently discuss selected major Indian and western viewpoints bearing on the chosen topic. I am encouraged to see that there is now some movement in the direction of greater inclusion of ‘non-western’ philosophy, especially Indian philosophy, in philosophy programs in many universities and colleges in the west. Due to my personal limitation, I have not made references to ‘far eastern’ philosophy, African philosophy, and Islamic philosophy. I hope these philosophical traditions will also receive greater attention from professional philosophers, and that the world of philosophy will be more inclusive and open-minded. I have sought to prompt this open-mindedness with one demonstration here amid many demonstrations throughout my career.
Kisor Chakrabarti
Kisor K. Chakrabarti is is a former Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Religion of the Davis and Elkins College (where he served as the Vice-President of Academic Affairs, the Provost and the Dean of the Faculty), the Bethany College (where he served also as the Director of Global Studies), the Ferrum College and has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Maine, Orono and the University of Calcutta. He has held research fellowships at the University of Oxford, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, the Indian Institute for Advanced Study, Shimla, the University of Pittsburgh and the Australian National University, has received numerous honors and and is a three times recipient of Fulbright grants. He is fluent in Sanskrit, studied for decades original Sanskrit works of classical Indian philosophical schools under the guidance of eminent pundits and is a leading authority on Indian and comparative philosophy. He has also published substantially on Greek philosophy based on original Greek sources and has taught Greek philosophy and contemporary philosophy for several decades. He has authored one hundred and eight research papers and articles mainly on topics of comparative logic, epistemology, metaphysics and ethics and seven books including The Logic of Gotama (University of Hawaii Press, 1978), Definition and Induction (University of Hawaii Press, 1995), Classical Indian Philosophy of Mind (State University of New York Press, 1999) and Classical Indian Philosophy of Induction (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010).
