Introduction to Philosophy 2: Overview of Western Intellectual History

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Om Nithyanandeshwara Samaarambhaam Nithyanandeshwari Madhyamaam Satsvaruham Nithyanandeshwari Madhyamaam Om Nithyanandeshwari Madhyamaam So, we are discussing the topic of Introduction to Philosophy, Indian and Western. So, last time I discussed about the six systems of philosophy that were there in India, and how they were a procreation that ultimately culminated in Vedanta. And in Vedanta, I just mentioned how Vachinte Bhedave gives us the conclusive understanding.
So, today I will talk about Western philosophy. Firstly, as a very brief and broad historical outline, and then we will talk about some of the philosophical categories that are there in Western philosophy. Because, if we in the future have to do any outreach in this way, prominent books are written from Western philosophical categories point of view.
So, we will need to know them carefully. So, in general, Western philosophy originates in Greece. The Greeks had a civilisation that lasted till almost the 4th or 5th century BC.
After that, the Romans took over. Now, many of the Greeks were more Brahminical in nature. Of course, there were always all the four Varanas, but there were many prominent Brahminical intellectual leaders among them.
So, Pythagoras was the older ones among them. Pythagoras is much older and Plato and Socrates are relatively younger. Socrates was prominent among the later philosophers.
So, roughly the dates and estimates vary, but Socrates was around the 4th century, 4th, 5th century BC. And if you look at their teachings, they are very similar to the teachings of the Vedic literature, especially about the concept of the soul and its reincarnation. Krishna Prabhupada also talked about how Socrates was fearless, even when he was about to be poisoned.
And that fearlessness was because of his understanding that he is not the body, he is the soul. As in any civilisation, there is never total unity among thought in all people. Even in Greece, there were philosophers who were atheists or materialists.
So, Epicurus was one such materialist philosopher. And the thought that has come from him is called as Epicurean thought. Epicureanism is a word that is used for excessive gross materialism.
After the Romans took over the political administration of Europe, then to some extent the philosophy spread down. But there was a platonic school which continued on till almost 7th century AD. And even later according to some, till it was closed down by the Christian emperor.
Now, in the Greek history, they are largely thought of as polytheistic. That there were many gods. But there is also the understanding that there is one supreme god.
The Romans were even more polytheistic than Greece. And there is some similarity between their cosmology. And the Romans had one supreme deity, which is called as Zeus.
Which is similar to something like Vishnu in our Vedic philosophy. So, we understand that the Vedic culture that was there in India, that gradually spread, that had spread all over the world. But with the settlement of Caligar, it got sort of disconnected, fragmented from its roots.
And gradually small small changes which became large eventually appeared. So, in general, even in India we will see that different religions, Krishna may be called as Kanna in the Braj area. And there are small small cultural variations that come up.
And over centuries these cultural variations can become large. So, there are as we know, many in the Vedic school, as in the western school, two ideas about foundational reality. They are called as monism and dualism.
So, generally we use monism as equivalent to Mayavad. But monism technically, Mono means one. So, monism refers to that there is only one substance that pervades all of reality.
And dualism is there are two substances that pervade reality. So, technically speaking, monism is of two types. There is materialistic monism and there is spiritualist monism.
So, Mayavad is spiritualist monism. In the sense that Mayavad says there is only one thing that exists and that thing is Brahman, which is spiritual. So, modern evolutionary science is also monistic.
It is materialistic monism. It says the only thing that exists is magic. And there have been thoughts of dualism in western history as well as Indian history.
So, Madhavacharya’s Vaithavad is dualistic. Similarly, there is another way of looking at this is, there are two fields of thought. I will just connect them afterwards.
There is idealism and we can call it materialism. So, idealism, we generally tend to use the word as that which is ideal. But philosophically, idealism is a different meaning.
It means the ideas were what existed first. So, everything began with ideas, concepts, subtle consciousness. And from that, everything else came.
And materialism is the idea that matter is what exists. So, the earlier categorisation of monism and dualism is more in terms of what exists. Idealism and materialism is more in terms of what is the original existence.
So, now materialism may accept today that consciousness exists. And of course, idealism also accepts that matter exists. According to monism, the other element doesn’t exist only.
So, according to some hardcore scientists, consciousness is just an illusion. It doesn’t exist. So, these are monists.
Those who say that consciousness is a product of matter, they are materialists. They say that consciousness has a reality now. But it is the outgrowth of matter.
So, with respect to what exists, the two categories are monism and dualism. With respect to how it will originate, from where it begins, there is idealism and materialism. So, the Vedic philosophy is not exactly idealism.
Because we understand that ideas are processes or products in the mind. And we don’t consider the mind to be the ultimate reality. We consider beyond the mind to be the spiritual reality.
So, there are some subtle differences which we will discuss later. But these were the schools of thought that were prevailing in the Greek philosophy. Monism, dualism, idealism and materialism.
Now, when Europe was taken over by Christianity, first at a popular level by rapid spreading. Then later at a political level, when the Roman Empire accepted Christianity as the official Roman religion. Then the Christians started not only politically taking power but also integrating their gospel message with the philosophical insights that were there available in Greece.
So, if we look at the Bible, there is not much philosophy there. And this is not criticism of the Bible, this is just objective fact. Because the Bible was spoken to people, many of them who were nomads and not so literate.
And it is mostly conversations which are parables, stories with some models and incidents. So, there is no profound philosophical discussion there. Jayadvait Maharaj wanted to once write a commentary on the Bible from a rational perspective.
So, he said that actually the only philosophical section in the Bible which is worth commenting from a philosophical perspective is a section called the Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes describes the realisations of a village landlord or a king, who had everything and he thinks it is all worthwhile, it is all worthless. And there is no happiness in it all.
At that time there are some philosophical musings, musings in thinking, philosophy and speculation. So, there was no serious philosophy directly there in the Bible. And there are mostly stories of the mercy of Jesus and the miracles of Jesus.
And of course, the sheer inspiration that the apostles felt from Jesus’ sacrifice, that was also what attracted people to follow them. But over a period of time… We have stories of that, but there are lessons also. Okay, so we have Krishnamukha’s lessons.
We have Krishnamukha’s lessons also. But if you see, Krishnamukha itself doesn’t contain much philosophy. But apart from the 10th Canto, we have 3rd Canto, 11th Canto, which has a lot of philosophy.
So, the concept of offering elaborate philosophical prayers is not there in the Abrahamic religions in general. The prayers may be mostly at a karmakanda level, that please give me this, please give me that. There may be some expressions of devotional surrender also.
For example, in Bhakti Mahaprabhu’s songs, there is philosophy underlying it. But they are primarily expressions of devotion. The same principle applies to the devotional prayers that are there in the Bible.
Then there were individuals like Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine was initially appalled by the miraculous and mythical accounts that were given in Christianity. And initially he was a pagan.
But then he initially had made very simplistic and altruistic accounts of Christianity by which he was put out. Later on, after a long spiritual search, he came across a more intellectually satisfying presentation of Christianity. And he was attracted by that and he became a Christian.
And he felt that Christianity, in order to interact with and flourish among the more intellectually sophisticated people of Greece, as it was all over the world, needs to have a more intellectual foundation. So, then he looked at the biblical theology that was there. And then looked at the philosophical musings of Plato and Socrates.
And then he felt that, in one sense, what Plato and Socrates had said was not contradictory to the Bible. It was supplementary to the Bible. Contradictory means that which opposes.
Supplementary means that which adds. So, he integrated that into what is called as biblical or Catholic theology. Theology is a systematic study of God, his nature, his interactions with human beings, his qualities.
So, that means the Bible itself provides only rudimentary strands of theology. For them to be made coherent, it obviously had to draw from the pre-existent insights of the Greek philosophers. So, he drew from these insights and what resulted was, over a period of centuries, became Catholic theology.
In this, there was a problem because Socrates and Plato were obviously not Christians. So, could Christians derive from them? So, because Socrates and Plato were so respected in Greece, and even the Christians who studied their writings, although initially they were dismissed as pagan, but when they actually studied, they found that they were quite sophisticated and coherent. So, then they developed the theology that there were pre-Christ Christians.
Interesting concept. That means God had arranged for Socrates and Plato to come before Jesus and they had prepared intellectually the setting for the redeeming message of the gospel. So, in many Catholic churches, Plato and Socrates are depicted with Christian symbols on their faces and bodies as if they are Christians.
So, this is how they accepted something outside the tradition. So, that was the first synthesis that happened between the Greek thought and Christian biblical theology. Then after that, as Christianity spread all over the world, especially in the sense of Europe, Europe all over the world, then its hold on all of Europe became unparalleled.
And to some extent, it also, the Catholic church suppressed any opposition, suppressed quite ruthlessly. So, there was the whole concept of burning heretics. Heretics means those who oppose, present any opposing philosophy or any concept that is opposite.
So, they were called heretics and they were burnt at the stake. Like later on in the 14th century, Bruno, Giordano Bruno was a philosopher who was a Christian as well as a philosophic logician. And he proposed the idea that souls reincarnate.
He gave several propositions, all of which were discovered, declared to be blasphemous and heretical by the Catholic church. And he was burnt at the cross. So, this happened.
In general, the history of the world shows that wherever there is power, power corrupts. And absolute power, as I said, corrupts absolutely. Now, the Catholic church also felt that everything that is not given in the Bible or not in harmony with the Bible is pagan, non-civilised.
So, wherever they went, they also burnt and destroyed libraries and other things. So, these are all considered false sources of knowledge. Now, in the 7th century, Islam evolved.
And if we look at the history of a religion, often at the founding, the religion seems to be very simple and prosaic. Prosaic means very ordinary. But over the centuries, when intellectuals get attracted to that religion, then they use their intellectual power to bring intellectual sophistication, not just to the presentation of that religion, but often to the content of that religion.
So, Islam also had, to some extent, intellectuals who developed some science. Now, there is historical debate that what is called as Arabic numerals are not Arabic, they are actually Indian numerals. There is some debate, but Islamic science also makes, Islam also makes some contribution to the development of thought.
Now, we are talking of the word development in terms of the academic understanding. From the basic point of view, what happens in Kali Yuga is a regression to Arabic studies. It’s not a development.
But because of a variety of factors, in the 14th, 15th century onwards, the whole of the Catholic Church mutated. Before that, in the 10th century, the Catholic Church got divided into two. One of the Catholic Church and the other was the Russian Orthodox Church.
Mentioned that last time. So, the Russian Orthodox Church broke away. Now, again, there are significant theological issues which were there.
But as the Christian theology developed, some people say that Paul was one of the most influential among the apostates. But Paul was not a, Paul never met Jesus directly. And Paul was a Roman officer who persecuted many of the Christians initiated in the Roman room.
So, later on, he said to have a transformative experience because of which he became Christian. Now, some people say that actually Paul never really understood Christian in Jesus teachings. And what he eventually propagated was deviant from Jesus teachings.
Others say that Paul was the most resourceful of all the prophets. And it was he who propagated Christianity. But if we see the teachings of the prophets before Paul, we find that most of them are talking on the importance of living.
That if we want to devote ourselves to God, what we have to do is live our lives dedicated to God. Paul also talked about that. But for Paul, the central idea was that it is not our living that will make a change in our lives.
It is only the grace of Jesus that will make a change in our lives. So, as we know, Christianity evolved originally in the Arabian area. And from there, Paul was sent to Rome.
And Paul was hugely successful in the various people he met. So, there are in the New Testament, there are letters that Paul sends to different people. And they are considered as very important parts of the Bible.
But Paul essentially shifted the focus from one’s individual lifestyle to the point that Jesus, by dying, has saved us. He has freed us from his sins. So, because of this, over a period of time, two strands of Paul developed in Christianity.
One was the idea that we have to strive for our deliverance. Jesus gave instructions and we have to strive to live according to them. We have to strive to become pure.
The other was that we are inherently impure. And the only hope for us is Jesus’ redeeming grace. Both accepted Jesus as great.
But the role was different in both. And then there were some people who thought that Jesus, Jesus called himself the son of God. And that is the kind of statement that are mostly there in the Bible.
In fact, Siddharth Prabhu has made a compilation entitled, you mean that’s in the Bible? Yes, Siddharth Prabhu has the title of that compilation. So, he gives a lot of quotes from the Bible which talk about how the soul is eternal. Which talk about how Jesus actually is different from God.
And which talk about which eternalism to a large extent. So, many of the texts of Christian consciousness are there in the Bible. But often they are not highlighted by the Catholic Church or even by many of the teachers of the Bible.
So, as of now mainstream Christianity tends to downplay the role of human endeavour. And it highlights the role of Jesus’ grace. So, in that sense it is somewhat similar to Bhakti.
But even in Bhakti there is the concept of Sadhana. Although we have Krupa, there is Sadhana. So, in Christianity over the centuries there has not been much of a Sadhana that has been left in mainstream Christianity.
There were throughout the history individuals who were very devoted and saintly. And they brought about rejuvenation in Christianity. There was Saint Benedict.
So, then there were Benedictine monks. There were Saint Francis. So, Franciscan monks.
And they were called Franciscan priors. So, like that there were saints who individually were charismatic. Many of them were renounced.
They were monks. And they led pure hearted lives. But mainstream Christianity was reduced to accepting Jesus as the saviour and going to church once a week.
And offering some donations to the church. So, there were intellectual Christians throughout. But they were few relatively.
As is natural. And Brahmanas are few. And especially the philosophy itself is not very attractive intellectually.
Then the number of Brahmanas that came to the philosophy became lesser. But still there were. Now from the 14th, 15th century onwards a number of developments took place.
Which led to substantial changes. So, there were many issues that were unresolved when Jesus departed from the world. And for many centuries it was unresolved.
So, for example, what exactly was Jesus’ relationship with God? Some people felt that Jesus, some Christians felt that Jesus himself was God. Some people felt that Jesus was the son of God. And if he is the son of God, then what exactly is the relationship with God? So, two main schools of thought came up.
One was called as Unitarian. That means they said that Jesus and God are one entity. And Trinitarian was Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit.
There are three entities. So, Srila Prabhupada refers to this in one of his early letters. And he says actually this Unitarian and Trinitarian, it can be resolved by Achaitya Viharavida.
Jiva also has Achaitya Viharavida relationship with Krishna. So, of course, when Srila Prabhupada gives his explanation. Srila Prabhupada universalises the principle.
Whereas, Christianity considers as applicable only to Jesus specifically. So, in the 14th-15th century, there is much that I can speak about in the 1st-15th century. But that will become a history of Western intellectual search as an apocryphal philosophy.
So, in the 14th-15th century, three movements came progressively. They all started and they spread rapidly. First was religious.
Second was cultural. One was religious, one was cultural. And third was intellectual.
Of course, when we divide things, religion also influence culture. And intellect also influence religion. But in broad ways.
So, the religious change was reformation. Another Christian reformation movement which was started by Martin Luther. This Martin Luther is different from the 20th century Martin Luther King.
Martin Luther King was an African-American civil rights activist. Whereas, Martin Luther was a Christian priest, 15th century. 15th-16th century, whatever.
So, then he felt that the Catholic Church had become corrupted. So, if we now hear that focussing on philosophy primarily. So, we will see in that sense.
So, we see here there is a human being. Then there is the priestly order, the spiritual master or the spiritual teachers. There is the word of God and there is God.
So, like this. Human beings. Then there is the spiritual teachers.
There is the word of God. And then there is God itself. So, Tamal Krishna Maharaj has written a very beautiful essay.
Analysing how once we rebel against one authority. Then gradually the rebelling against second authority also. Third authority comes up.
So, the priests had become corrupted. So, many of them were very materialistic. Right from the Pope down to the bishops and the common Christian priests.
So, Martin Luther and other reformers like him accepted the point that Jesus was pure and Jesus Bible was pure. But he felt the church has become corrupted. So, his idea was that there is no need for priests between the Christian and the word of God.
So, prior to the establishment of the printing press by Gutenberg. In the middle of the renaissance period. Bible was available very limited.
And the Bible was read primarily by the priests. And the priests in that sense had monopolised the word of God. But in the printing press the Bible became widely available.
So, Martin Luther felt that there is no need for priests to help us understand the Bible. We can understand the word of God directly ourselves. The Catholic Reformation was not so much a rebellion against God or even against the word of God.
But against the men of God. So, even today there are signs on the placards on back of cars in America which say, Oh God, please save me from your followers. So, institutionalised religion and aggressive proselytising.
Proselytising means converting others to one’s own religion. Is frowned upon, strongly disapproved in modern and postmodern society. And this has its roots in that time.
That when the representatives of God or those who are supposed to represent God don’t behave properly. Then people rebel against them. So, the Reformation led to the rejection of God from the rejection of God’s representatives.
The priests from the hierarchy. So, there is God’s word and there is God. So, even now in many Catholic, in many Protestant churches.
So, what came up for Martin Luther was the Protestants. So, in many Protestant churches, when they go for their Sunday mass gathering, there is no official speaker. Whoever feels the inspiration starts speaking.
Which is a little strange. But then certain, there is a group of churches called Quakers. So, the idea is that when the spirit of God enters and before God you should quake in fear.
That’s how the word quake, quake, they are called as Quakers. So, now there are thousands of Protestant denominations. And this division was natural because if every person has a right to understand the Bible, then every person will understand the Bible in their own way.
And if there is no priest in between, then there is no authority. Then what happens is, the number of interpretations become innumerable. So, some Protestants have gone further from there.
And they say that instead of having the interpretation of the Bible, let us keep only a literalist understanding of the Bible. That means there is no interpretation. Every word in the Bible is just to be taken literally.
Because when we have interpretations, this means this, this means this, it becomes relative. If there is no authority, then what to do? So, now of course, there are many stories in the Bible that cannot be taken literally. As I said, the idea that the earth is 6,000 years old is not literally defensive.
So, Protestantism was basically the rebellion of man against the representatives of God. But as Protestantism, so there was renaissance, there was reformation. So, renaissance was cultural, reformation was religious.
And then they have the word what they call as enlightenment. So, the word is enlightenment, but it’s more of like not spiritual enlightenment, but anti-spiritual enlightenment. Their idea that before the advent of science, people used to believe in all sorts of pre-scientific, unscientific nonsense.
And when man became enlightened, then he stopped believing in all these superstitious, mythological ideas. So, the renaissance led to many things. The renaissance led to the development of culture.
So, Leonardo da Vinci was a Michelangelo. All of them were part of, they were Christians because practically everybody at that time was Christian. But there was a flowering of art and literature and music at that time.
So, before that, the idea was primarily that progress was only in one direction, vertical. That means the way the life is in the material world, that is how it will be. And this idea that the way we are, that is the way we are meant to be.
And if we follow the Bible, if we follow the priest, then we will make progress vertically. So, the horizontal realm was meant to be more or less in the state of stasis. That there was not much prospect of progress in the material realm.
Only progress was in the spiritual realm. But at the time of renaissance, people started observing there is nature and it’s beautiful. We can understand it, we can relish its beauty.
And there is nature, we can analyse it. We can understand it, we can control it. So, initially, scientists starting from Copernicus, Galileo to Newton, as they started understanding more and more of nature and how it works, this was to some extent supported by the Catholic Church.
Although the Catholic Church had Copernicus in prison for proposing that the earth, that the sun doesn’t move around the earth, the earth moves around the sun. Now, this was not explicitly stated in the Bible. It was sort of indicated but not explicitly also.
That idea of the geocentric universe came from a Greek thinker named Ptolemy. So, as I said, St. Augustine integrated Christian thought with Greek thought. So, in fact, he had adopted Ptolemy’s model.
But at that time, over a period of time, it was found that Copernicus’s model gives a much better explanation for accounting for planetary motion than does Ptolemy’s model. That was the Church’s model. So, although at that time, the Catholic Church opposed Copernicus, but it opposed Galileo also.
Galileo, the person who was in prison, Copernicus was sort of censored. But over a period of time, Galileo discovered a telescope by which he actually observed and confirmed what Copernicus had said. But there were many Christians who even appreciated the progress of science.
So, their idea was, as science started developing, their idea was that science was the material equivalent of Jesus’ redeeming grace. That means, just as Jesus’ grace would elevate them vertically, science would elevate them materially. So, that idea, Francis Bacon was one of the main proponents of this idea.
And in that sense, science was to some extent encouraged. Again, not by all of the Church, but by much of the Church. By some of the Church, rather.
Now, intellectually speaking, many intellectuals were alienated by the authoritarianism and the corruption that was there in the Church. And as things progressed, when they found that they can understand each other more and more. So, with respect to God and God’s connection with the world, there are many schools of thought, but they can be classified into three broad categories.
That God’s existence and God’s relationship with the world. These three thoughts are called as Theism, Deism and Atheism. So, Theism is the idea that God is the creator and the controller.
Theism is the idea that God created the world, and He is even now in charge of the world. Then Deism is the idea that God is the creator of the world, but He is not the controller of the world. So, this was the idea that developed as science progressed.
Because as science progressed in discovering the laws by which nature operates, then the idea started developing that these laws themselves are independent absolutes. I mean, normally we don’t see the law of gravity violated. So, the law of gravity acts universally.
So, of course, there is no proof that it acts all over the universe because we have not gone all over the universe. But at least within our observation, we observe that the law of gravity applies. So, generally in our Discover Yourself course or in our Bhagavad Gita course, when we talk about the existence of God, we talk about God as the, we say that design requires designer and law requires lawmaker.
We use both of them interchangeably. However, these two are distinct arguments and the second argument weakens the first argument. Design requires designer is one argument and law requires lawmaker is the second argument.
But law requires lawmaker weakens the argument that design requires designer. Why? Because, simple example, if I take clay and design it into an artistic clay pot, that’s a design. So, design requires a designer.
But then, if I can find out a law by which a clay pot can be made, that means, take this much clay, put this much water, get the wheel to move at this much speed and have an entry like this, have an exit like this, and the pot comes out under a simplistic experimental mechanism. But if I can make a law, then there is no designer involved. There is no designer required for the design of the pot.
I can go backward and say that law requires a lawmaker. But yes, the law requires a lawmaker, but the design does not require a designer. The design requires only a law.
So, the design of the pot is a product of the law. So, God has gone one step backwards. Rather than being the direct designer of the world, God becomes the designer or the maker of the laws that shape the world.
So, that means, the idea became like God was a clockmaker. Now, clock works very smoothly according to the way his hands move and functions. But the clockmaker has no control over the clock.
The clockmaker created the clock, but he has given it to us. And the laws were made by him. But if I can understand the clock, how it works, I can change its timing.
I can even change its mechanism of working. I can make the same clock move faster. I can make the same clock move slower.
That way, what happens is, the connection between the clock and its designer is practically not there on an active basis. So, deism is the school of thought that came up when science was found to be having a high exploratory value in terms of explaining and predicting natural phenomena. So, before the advent of science, the idea was, why are planets moving in a particular way in the sky? It’s because God makes them move.
But then they found that God is not what is making them move. It is laws that are making them move. Laws are enough to explain.
So, of course, Newton was not atheistic. Newton, in fact, spent a lot of his later life devoting himself to research into the nature of God and trying to show how the Bible was scientifically true. And Newton was also a lifelong celibate.
So, towards his death, when he was asked, what was his greatest achievement, he said that, my being a celibate was my greatest achievement, not any of his scientific accomplishments. Of course, some sceptical people say that Newton was a very disagreeable and quarrelsome person. And that was one reason why he never married.
But apart from that, the point was that, he spent a lot of time as a Christian monk devoted to researching and trying to establish the Bible scientifically. But now modern thinkers, trying to level this at the dark and sad side of the scientist, Newton. Newton, the scientist was very good, but he had also these quirky ideas that the Bible was literalistically true or whatever.
So, anyway, the Alexander Pope was a famous author and he said that, at that time, Newton was considered to be a great gift of God to the world. So, in the Bible, there is an idea that, God said, let there be light. And there was light.
Let there be the sun. And there was sun. Let there be the earth.
And there was the earth. So, like that, God willed and things happened. This is an explanation of So, then he added that, and God said, let there be science.
And there was Newton. So, the point I am making here is that, Newton himself said that, Oh God, I think thy thoughts after thee. I think thy thoughts after thee.
That means, God, the laws that you have made to design the world, I try to understand those laws. So, at least in his time, the idea that God is the lawmaker was very clear. But, the idea that God is the lawmaker, removed God from the role of direct intervention in the world.
Direct intervention in the world. So, the world, for a practical basis, is functioning not based on laws, not based on God’s will, but on laws. The laws are still in God’s will.
So, as deism went forward, and this is the enlightenment that progressed, enlightenment as they call it, then, overall, at that time, there was an understanding of how the world was functioning. But still, the question of how the world originated was unanswered. And for that, God was required.
So, in the 13th, 14th century, just before the whole, these three movements took off, the formation, there was a famous theologian called Thomas Aquinas. Now, Thomas Aquinas tried to integrate Christian thought with the thought of Aristotle. So, Aristotle was a disciple of Plato.
But he went a lot against Plato. So, in, in philosophy, there are two approaches. There is inductive approach, and there is deductive approach.
So, in Indian philosophy, has mostly been deductive. Deductive means, you go from the particulars, that means, there are universal, and there are particulars. For example, Indian, is a universal describer of anybody who lives in India.
But then, every Indian has his own personality. So, in philosophy, the question that comes up is, if I say, that I saw a cow, I saw a cow today morning, while coming for this class. Then now, when I say something, I saw a cow.
I have a specific cow in mind. But you don’t know that specific cow. Or probably, unless I mention some proper noun to describe that cow, you will get the idea of some other cow.
So, how it happens is, I have a specific cow in my mind, as a mental conception. When I speak the word cow, something gets communicated to you. And then, you get an image of a particular cow.
It may not be particular, in the sense that, you may not think of one specific cow. But still, you understand what the word cow means. So now, Socrates had the idea that underlying the particulars are the universals.
And the universals are the actual reality. And then God is the universal underlying all universals. So, for example, from the point of Indian philosophy, there is Go.
So then, if you have to have a… There are so many cows. But underlying the cows is a universal called Gotva. A cow-ness.
A cow-ness that underlies and unifies all cows. So if you want to know, what is the essence of a cow? I may say that a cow is white in colour. But there are cows of different colours.
I may say a cow gives milk. But there can be cows which don’t give milk, the powerful species. So what is the actual essence of a cow? So now, if we go literally speaking, we go down, down, down, is it the biological shape? But there can be cows of widely different biological shapes.
So he had the idea that underlying the particulars are some universals. And then, he categorised, maybe there are a limited number of universals. And underlying all these universals, the universal of all universals, that is God.
Now, this was Socrates’ idea and later propagated it. Aristotle came along and Aristotle said, forget all these universals. Who knows whether universals exist or not? So, his idea was that, so in that sense, Plato’s ideas were more like a official idea.
We should say that, go beyond the specifics to the underlying reality. Go to the universal. That’s right.
Go beyond the form to that which lies below the forms. Like that. Try to see what is universal.
Whereas, Aristotle said, if you want to go into that, how many universals are there? How can you know? And ultimately, what you call as universal is just a conception. You don’t know whether it is universal or not. What exists is the particular.
So, he said, let’s focus on the particulars. So, Aristotle’s thought, in that sense, focused, he was also philosophical, but his thought focused more on the material reality, or on the material side of reality, the sensory side of reality. And, Thomas Aquinas, he integrated Christian thought with Aristotle’s thought.
There were historical reasons why he became interested in Aristotle’s thought, and exactly what happened. But the important point is that he started integrating. So, he started saying that, actually, instead of thinking of God who is beyond this world somewhere, focus on this world, and try to study this world, and appreciate this world, and see how this world is a manifestation of God’s wisdom and God’s artistry.
So, in itself, this seems harmless. Which is fine. But the thing is, by emphasising the material world, the spiritual realm, by emphasising the particulars, the universals become devalued.
And as the universals become devalued, the universals over a period of time seem redundant. And then they become non-existent. So, first we devalue them.
Devalue means they are not so important. Then we say that they are unnecessary. And then we say they are non-existent.
This world is also non-existent. So, Thomas Aquinas’ blending of Christianity with Aristotle’s ideas, led to the, set the scene, to some extent, for materialism to take off. Now, Aquinas is accepted as a very great theologian.
And in his own ways, he was intelligent. But the point was, he emphasised materialism too much. And it was he who came up with the idea that there are three kinds of souls.
So, if the particulars are what are important, so he said that, okay, that if there is growth, so, there has to be some kind of life in it. So, he said, plants also have souls. But plants have only vegetative souls.
And they come into existence and they die. And then, animals have sentient souls. Sentient is second category.
That animals feel emotions. He couldn’t deny the fact that animals feel emotions. So, he said that capacity for emotions comes from another kind of soul, which are sentient souls.
And he says, humans alone have rational souls. So, humans not only grow, not only they feel emotions, but they also are capable of rational thinking. So, he considered the unique faculty of human beings to be rationality.
And according to many Christians today, the idea is that only rational souls are eternal. All other souls are temporal. So, he emphasised rationality.
And he said, let us study the world also rationally. And he was among the first grown Christians to systematically use the design argument. Because the idea is, why should we study nature? Because nature gives us a demonstration of the brilliance of the wisdom of God.
But overall, what happened was, from Aquinas’ time onwards, the universal and the spiritual started becoming little de-emphasised. He set the stage for that. That even if you want to understand God’s glory, rather than focussing on the world of God and practising spirituality with realisation about God, he said, observe and study nature.
So, then the idea came up gradually. It was there earlier also, but it spread more where there are two books of God. One is scripture and other is nature.
The scripture uses the word of God and nature uses the actions of God. So, why we are going into all this is to understand how an over-reliance on materials of acquiring knowledge can backfire. So, basically, what happened was that if you remember, I was telling earlier that the reformation meant, remove the priests and study the word of God themselves directly.
But parallel to that, what was happening as the scientific enlightenment movement was moving forward, they said, study nature and understand nature, how it works. Originally, it was studied to understand how it manifests the glory of God. And that was how Judas studied it, that was how Aquinas envisioned it.
But subsequent scientists felt that there is no need for God to be involved. Nature operates according to laws. And when Darwin came up with this theory of evolution, he seemed to have an explanation of not only how the clock functions, but also how the clock came into existence.
So, then there was no need for God, even as the creator. So, then what happened? Till then, till before Darwin, the laws of nature were not independent realities. They were realities but dependent on the will of God.
But after Darwin, God became redundant. Now, Darwin was not an atheist, but he was agnostic. But Darwin became, from Darwin’s time onwards, God became entirely unnecessary.
So, Laplace was most of the scientists in western history were believers in God. Laplace was probably the most famous among them, was an atheist, was only one among the famous scientists who was an atheist. So, he gave an elaborate explanation about the motion of stars based on physics.
So, at that end, he presented it to the French king. At that time, the king asked him, but what about God? So, he replied, I have no need for that hypothesis. I have no need for that hypothesis.
So, the idea was that, nature can be explained in and of itself. There is no need for God to explain nature. And when this came out, so eventually, this led to the idea of naturalism.
Now, naturalism in some ways is similar to materialism. And now, the mainstream current ideology that is there in modern science is called as naturalism. So, naturalism comes in two varieties.
This is the last classification I will give, otherwise it is too much overwhelming. Naturalism, they say, is methodological and metaphysical. So, methodological naturalism means that there may be something apart from nature existing.
There may be God existing, but as a matter of methodology, science will not consider any non-natural parameters. And this has some reasoning in it. For example, when the Black Plague was there in Europe, so the Christian priests were invoking God and chanting prayers, but nothing was happening.
So, they said that eventually, when we understood the whole science principle of how germs function and how germs can be countered by other means, then it was cured. People got cured. So, the idea is that if we say that natural phenomena have non-natural causes, then we become powerless to investigate that.
If a disease is caused by some demon or some ghost haunting a person, then we can’t do anything to control or cure it. But if we begin by the assumption that the disease and every natural phenomena has a natural cause only, then we can find out what that natural cause is and we can find out how it can be cured. So, methodological naturalism says that God may or may not exist, but when we study science, there is no need to bring God into picture.
For every phenomena, we should always try to find a natural explanation. Now, this also, if you see what Laplace said, I have no need for that hypothesis. He is not saying that God doesn’t exist.
That was his personal belief to a large extent. So, what he is saying is methodological naturalism. However, methodological naturalism soon leads to metaphysical naturalism.
Metaphysical means if something is unnecessary, why do you have to propose that it exists? Then God becomes just a subjective belief which is required for the comfort of some weak individuals. That becomes the idea. Metaphysical naturalism is the idea that God doesn’t exist at all.
God doesn’t exist at all. So, when this idea came out, this idea was very insidious and this has led to the widespread propagation of naturalism and the widespread beating back of religion. So, now going back to the earlier point.
So, first the reformation question, so there is a hierarchy between God, his words, his scripture, his priest and human beings. The reformation questioned the existence of the need for priest. They said we will directly study the word of God.
But then after the scientific enlightenment came out, scientific enlightenment said okay, if we can study the word of God, the idea was that we will examine the priest according to the word of God. So, if you are telling what the word of God is saying, then you are right, otherwise you are wrong. Then what happened? When they started, when the enlightenment came out, we will examine the word of God.
First of all, we can directly study the word of God. Except the absolute truth, we can study the word of God. Later on, we can examine the word of God.
If I examine the word of God, we find some of it is wrong, then we can reject it. So, if the word of God says that, it doesn’t say, but if it says that say the sun revolves around the earth, it is wrong, we reject it. And then this went forward and the word of God comes from God, but then we examined our logic and then we can examine whether God exists or not also.
And we can reject God also. So, the idea became that the more we rely on our intelligence for evaluating things, the more we will come to sceptical conclusions. This is how you know, Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher, who eventually came out and bluntly said God is dead.
So, of course, Friedrich Nietzsche was fed up with the Christian conception of God. Because it was non-philosophical and we don’t go into it right now, but the Christian conception of God was also very malevolent, very violent. So, God orders the killing of all those who have not surrendered to him.
Or anyway, God tells that even his family members, his people should not mix or intermarry with other people and if any person intermarries, then it is creating corruption and those people should be killed. So, the idea was to some extent, how much these two is a different issue. Whether it was God who said this or it was those prophets who were also politicians to some extent.
They claimed those visions from God to further their political agenda or whatever. The point is, at the Christian conception of God, especially the Old Testament conception of God, is quite an irritable and harsh person. So, that emotionally alienated people and because Christianity did not have much philosophy, especially as compared to what science was providing, systematic, experimental, explanation of reality.
So, it was intellectually also alienating. And that’s how God, either God saw methodological naturalism exiles God and metaphysical naturalism kills God. That’s how it is.
But God has no mainstream role in the intellectual world today. So, this is how we have come to the society that is there. So, in the next class we will discuss from the Vedic perspective, how we see this whole idea of metaphysical, methodological naturalism and what they imply and how much of the Vedic philosophy, as we have got it from our Acharyas, avoids the weaknesses that were there in Christian theology and also provides some additional things which were not there in, neither there in Christian theology, nor are there in materialistic science.
Thank you very much. I will quickly summarise. I started by discussing about Vedic philosophy and I discussed monism, dualism, then idealism and materialism and then also, later on I discussed about what is more important, whether particular is more important or universal is more important.
Then we discussed about how Christianity integrated first Aristotelian, first Platonic thought with itself through St. Augustine and in the 14th century Aristotelian thought with itself through Aquinas. So, from Aquinas’ time onwards, the particulars were more emphasised in universal, that is the material was more emphasised in the spiritual and that led to, so he proposed the design argument, that led to the study of science, study of nature. So, historically, first nature was studied to understand the glory of God.
Then, as the laws were discovered, then the laws were seen as the glory of God. So, initially, the design in nature was seen as the glory of God. Then, the design became a product of laws.
So, the laws were seen as the glory of God. But later on, it was found that the laws could be existing independent of God. So, then God became non-existent.
So, that was how it happened. So, God’s role became from designer to lawmaker to non-existent. And we discussed it from another way.
So, that’s how theism, deism and atheism. And another way we discussed is that the reformation questioned the priest and said that we can study the word of God without the priest. And the enlightenment questioned the word of God.
He said that we can examine the word of God based on logic and decide whether it’s true or not. Subsequently, the evolutionary synthesis that came out after Darwin said that we can question even the existence of God. So, overall, the fatal flaw for Christianity was the over-reliance or the over-emphasis on the material as a means to prove the existence of the spiritual, as a means to understand God.
So, when the material is emphasised and the spiritual is de-emphasised, gradually the spiritual becomes unnecessary. And in the Vedic tradition, the spiritual is more emphasised and that’s why there is the possibility and the scope for God’s existence to be demonstrated through spiritual means. So, we will discuss more about this in our next class.
Are there any questions? One question. You were talking more about Vedic philosophy. How is philosophy actually connected to practise? When we speak in exalted philosophy about the practise, how? What was that connection? How is it related to some other religions? Okay.
How is the philosophy related to practise? This is one of the fundamental problems of Western intellectual thought. That, in Christian theology, there was no systematic sadhana, no systematic practise. And that’s why they said that, in fact, some of them even de-emphasised and devalued practise, ridiculed practise by saying that, it is an over-reliance on human endeavour to know God.
Their idea was that, when God wants, He will give His grace, and with the grace, His human inspiration will come. But, because of the lack of systematic practise, the realisation, there were great saints, no doubt, but overall, for elevating the consciousness of the average practitioner, not much was there. And the same continued even when Western intellectual philosophy evolved from the 15th-16th century onwards.
That, different philosophers came and gave their philosophies, but there was no practical means to realise what is God. And that was because the spiritual realm was not talked about much. So, the Indian wisdom tradition has always been consciousness-conscious.
Consciousness-conscious. That means, okay, what is my consciousness and how can I elevate my consciousness? So, Western theology has been largely, at least in the recent 500s, it has been matter-conscious. Matter as a demonstration of God’s design, God’s beauty, like that.
But because of a lack of sadhana, by which one could actually raise oneself from the material to the spiritual realm, that is one of the main reasons why the spiritual realm was de-emphasised. And gradually, philosophy also became side-detected. So, before Aquinas, generally it is told that Vedas are otherworldly and heavenly.
But Vedas are otherworldly and they did not emphasise much on the aspects of this world. So, before Aquinas, was it that Christianity also was heavenly? So, Vedas are said to be otherworldly. So, before Aquinas was Christianity, also otherworldly.
So, Vedas are not exactly otherworldly. Vedas are also this world. Dharma comes of this world.
Moksha only, that is of the other world, or it is in the transition between this and the other world. But Vedas also contain a lot of material information. We say that Krishna consciousness, which is conclusion making, which is otherworldly.
But even in this, we have a gyancha-vidyancha as the Vedas say. This world we also live harmoniously. Yes.
Christianity was otherworldly in its aspiration. Yes. The eyes were fixed on the next world.
So, this world was a trial and a place of suffering and we just had to tolerate it and by Jesus’ grieving grace we will attain eternal life in the next world. But although it was otherworldly in its aspiration, there was not much practise for it to actually develop that otherworldly attraction of consciousness. It was more of faith.
So, to a large extent, Christianity begins with faith and ends with faith. Which in one sense is good. Faith is important.
But there is no process to, systematic process to intensify the faith and to transform one’s heart. That’s why it’s more of, the otherworldliness was more theoretical and never really practical. But it was theoretically actually there.
Later on, theoretically also it became gradually minimised. Yes. Correct.
Yeah. Then, teaching for Vedic India says that much of the Vedas are otherworldly. And that is one of the criticisms of western scholars.
Yes, here they are not using the word Vedas in a restrictive sense of Rig Veda, Samhita, Yajurveda. They are using more of the Upanishads which say down with the name, down with the form, go beyond all this. So yes, for Moksha one has to go beyond this.
Yeah. But along with that, as I said, there are two important points. First, there was a balance between this world and the next world.
At least in Bhakti there is a balance. In Dhyana, there is a rejection of the world. I was telling about how in Karma, which is predominant what is existing now, in Karma we romanticise the world.
In Dhyana, we demonise the world. This world is evil, this world is bad, this world is filled with temptations. We romanticise the world in Karma means we think, oh, this is a wonderful place, I can enjoy a while.
But in Bhakti, in the romanticise, not demonise, we utilise the world. So that is the difference. So there is firstly sadhana by which one can go to the other world.
And also, there is utilisation of this world. So in that sense, it is not rejection. Thank you very much.