My Introduction to Indian Philosophy course has been my favorite since I first began teaching in 1998. I have religiously taught the class, without fail, every academic year after becoming a faculty member at Case Western Reserve University in 2004. The class was born out of my own congenital epistemic confusion, in which I doubted that objects existed independently of my mind and questioned the validity of epistemic foundations. In the Indian philosophical language game, this means that I question the validity of pramānas (epistemic foundations), whether it is pratyakṣa (perception), śabda (verbal testimony), upamāna (analogy), or anumāna (inference). Throughout my (mind-only) life, I have nurtured this incendiary incertitude with rituals and exercises, intellectual, recreational, and otherwise, intended to juxtapose ordinary with non-ordinary states, “real” with illusory ones, normal with abnormal ones. Flirting as I did with skepticism was enhanced exponentially by a traumatic brain injury that I sustained in 1995 while still a graduate student. Ever since then, I have wondered if (or perhaps wandered as if) I were in a coma, if I were dead, if I were dreaming, and/or if my perceptions were real or were mere hallucinations. It was and has been impossible to know anything with certainty after my head injury, other than the oxymoronic certainty of uncertainty. These thoughts have culminated in a class (and my accompanying book, Classical Indian Philosophy: A Reader, Columbia University Press, 2011), which makes central the debates between metaphysical realists and anti-realists/idealists. In the class, I demand that students first recognize that they have epistemic and ontological presuppositions, and second, they must defend them or, if they are unable to, they must abandon them.
A course on Mahayana Buddhism that I took with Professor Paul J. Griffiths in 1991 at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago served as the model for my Indian philosophy class. Every student, I recall, would read passages from primary sources and attempt to offer bhāṣya (commentary) on them and would raise or ask relevant questions about them. Griffiths corrected, added to, or approved their bhāṣyas to clarify them or to facilitate and provoke saṃvāda (debate and discussion). This pedagogical pattern has been practiced for at least 2500 years among intellectuals in the Indian subcontinent. In such religious and often monastic contexts, reciting the text out loud and commenting upon it was inextricably linked to understanding, knowing, and embodying the teachings of the text. Reading the text in these transformative ways, moreover, was a sādhana (religious attainment) and helped students to achieve the right cognitive habits. Virtuoso religious readers taught novices how to read a text, and, concurrently, how to practice what they had read. The transformative process was thus both a means to an end as well as an end in itself.
My pedagogical goals, in contrast, are not tied to one system over others. Rather my aim is to provoke students to entertain the possibility that epistemic certainty is a mere dream, and that there are no valid pramānas (epistemic foundations).
A few times during the semester we usually meet in the South Asian galleries of the Cleveland Museum of Art and conduct classes there. It is, no doubt, my favorite and my students’ favorite experience. Reading these amazing texts surrounded by magnificent sculptures of the Buddha and so on is concurrently humbling and empowering and gestures towards the contexts in which they were originally taught, learned, and digested. After we have a transforming class in such hallowed halls, I imagine that my students have become Indian philosophers, and are no longer merely students of Indian philosophy!
My overall pedagogical goals are fourfold and hierarchically arranged: first, students must learn about the schools of Indian philosophy and the debates between them; second, they must learn how to make and write succinct arguments against (or in support of) the various positions using the prasanga (reductio ad absurdum) method. To achieve this, I assign ten short papers evaluating each school of philosophy with strict stylistic and organizational requirements. Third, and of paramount importance (and the goal in all my classes at Case Western Reserve University, no matter the subject), is for my student-interlocutors to recognize and problematize their presuppositions, epistemic, ontological, and otherwise. And if they choose to, they should either get rid of those presuppositions that are flawed or indefensible and replace them with ones allegedly less flawed or, preferably, they should accept complete epistemic uncertainty. This is achieved in class by deploying the bhāṣya and samvāda methods and in the last short paper assignment, SP10 which asks students to divulge their epistemic and ontological presuppositions, if they have not been already demolished. They are graded on how well they articulate these presuppositions and whether their system is internally consistent or inconsistent. Foundationalism is penalized and ridiculed. The fourth and final goal, then, is an extension of the third, that is to recognize that all taxonomies are humanly constructed, that they need not uphold or submit to them, and that by recognizing this they will become free.
If I do my job as their teacher and if my students do their jobs (reading, writing, reflecting), then the Indian philosophy class can become a very close-knit intellectual community that we all protect and cherish. The class is deemed a success if at least once during the semester our samvada leaves us collectively speechless, disoriented, or feeling as if we have entered a different and ineffable dimension.
There are some newer translations that I would, if I could, use instead of the ones that I have included. I might shorten some rather lengthy and arduous selections as well. A perfect syllabus can only be reached asymptotically.
I would urge anyone who seeks to teach this class to envision their time with students as a rare one: It is not often in the contemporary academy that one asks students what they believe and does so with care for how they answer and move forward in the world. For many students, the class may be the most vocationally useless one that they ever take, yet the only one in which they can revel in self-indulgent navel-gazing if they make themselves open to the pursuit. And, with the centrality of questioning their presuppositions, the class may also be the only one that fulfills the noble (and dying) mission of the university to foster critical thinking and self-reflection. Your responsibility is enormous as can be your impact.
The Syllabus Showcase of the APA Blog is designed to share insights into the syllabi of philosophy educators. We include syllabi in their original, unedited format that showcase a wide variety of philosophy classes. We would love for you to be a part of this project. Please contact Editor of the Teaching Beat, Dr. Smrutipriya Pattnaik via smrutipriya23@gmail.com, or Series Editor, Cara S. Greene via cara.greene@coloradocollege.edu with potential submissions.
Deepak Sarma
Deepak Sarma is the Inaugural Distinguished Scholar in the Public Humanities, Case Western Reserve University. After earning a BA in religion from Reed College, Sarma attended the Divinity School at the University of Chicago where they received a PhD in the philosophy of religions, and specialized in Indian philosophy. Sarma was a guest curator of Indian Kalighat Paintings, an exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2011. They are a curatorial consultant for the Department of Asian Art of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and a cultural consultant for Netflix, Mattel, American Greetings, and Moonbug (CocoMelon). Sarma writes and researches about "Hinduism," contemporary Hinduism, bioethics, Madhva Vedanta, Cultural Theory, philosophy, post-colonial studies, museology, and the Grateful Dead. Verily, their job is to shed light and not to master.
