My conversation with pro prasanjit Biswas.


Prasanjit Biwas - Immanuel Kant's Religion within the bounds of Reason alone thrashed out the idea of duty as an obligation to the law, but such a duty goes along goodwill for the Other. A religious man, therefore, remains duty-bound to respect the Other religion as well. In Hegel religion, itself becomes subjectivistic giving rise to unmediated communities of faith. Between Kant and Hegel, somewhere lies the possibility of radical evil in Man. Can we overcome it in the spirituality of faith?


Randhir Gautam ( me ) -

Kant claims the individual should become autonomous and follow universal precepts like the categorical imperative. To follow the law is obligatory but decisions over inclinations must follow laws that it gives itself. Kant’s key distinction is between heteronormative - following laws given - and autonomy or self-legislation - following laws it gives itself. Kant’s moral philosophy does not jettison the heteronomous but transcends it via autonomy.

Hegel posits then religious life as authentic in his early writings up to the Phenomenology of Spirit, or Mind, when he located absolute knowledge or synthesis as transcendent of religions, perhaps due to his recognition of the multiplicity of religions! After this point, he recognizes the issue of social order and posits the state, along with law as ‘right,’ as the essence of social order. Hegel is recognized as a statist philosopher and his early works are not often discussed; the Phenomenology along with the Encyclopedia explicate his notion of dialectics or change.

Evil is not a topic that either discusses in detail although the Philosophy of Right by Hegel contains specific sections on problems and Perpetual Peace by Kant addresses the main issue of war and the necessity of diplomacy.

The realist perspective on evil takes human nature in a real sense as having a violent essence, as biological and political. Therefore the law of force is necessary and the main question is over the degree of constraint!

The problem with faith or religion is that it has too often led to war, violence, artifice, exclusion, etc., basic evil. The ideals of religion are meaningful, ie love, but it lacks the values of freedom, equality and rights which is why the moral philosophies too often fail to act morally either by no action or zealotry and fanaticism. Morality itself may not have the impact it should have on states of the affair - it is not necessarily a constraint!

Prasanjit Biswas - I am extremely happy to read the detailed response from you. The last paragraph brings out your own position. Saying that moral philosophy is not constrained to operate morally is like saying religion does not operate religiously. Putting it this way prioritizes limits, antinomies and constraints, while both religion and moral philosophy guided by categorical imperative do not require any such constraints. Violations of the moral law, therefore, is a violation of the imperative of moral law, it is not a violation of a counterfactual condition of restriction. To understand this argument, you may kindly read Barry Stroud's essay entitled, Kantian argument, conceptual capacities and invulnerability. As far as Evil is concerned, Kant discussed it prominently in
Gesammelte Schriften in German. You can try to read it. Kant thought a variance is an act of free will that changes the contours of faith into grace.
As far as Hegel is concerned, radical evil is part of Bildung, a delegated framework for aufhebung of any error in religious faith.

Randhir Gautam - There is a distinction between moral judgment and moral action, discussed in the literature. 

You don’t think that religion often does not ‘act’ religiously? In phenomenology, discussions of the other and violence (Sartre, Levinas) address the gap in philosophy over evil, over the absence of the problem of the other, eg explaining the Good Samaritan or the problem of genocide, war, etc.

I’ll look at Stroud again. If you could, can you be more exact in your citation to Kant and Hegel?

Bildung is basically education, socialization, development. Hegel discusses this in his Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807. Religious consciousness is a very late development as I thought I indicated.

Presanjit Biswas- I gave you a kind of problematic in response to your notion of constraints on moral philosophy to say that constraints do not work. What works is the following of principles and their violations. Both situations are free from constraints. This could be exemplified by saying religion does not act 'religiously', which means not acting according to its stated principles. But that does not mean that moral philosophy, in a similar vein, does not act in a moral way. It rather means that moral philosophy is open to violations by certain kinds of action and actors, on whom prior constraints cannot be imposed. I have given some references of Kant earlier. Hegel's Zerrissenheit’ is the source of  Bildung, the formation of second nature with its many expressions and manifestations connected with Sittlichkeit and to be overcome by aufhebung, as I mentioned. Both Phenomenology and Encyclopaedia have such a framework. Further, you may see Hegel's Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts and Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Of course, reading should be subject to interpretation.

Randhir Gautam -  You don’t actually speak and read in German do you? Can you just write the titles in English so I know what you are actually referring to?

Philosophy is not the same as action, ever. Praxis and practice can be described and discussed in philosophy but this is a distinct entity from the action. Likewise for language, which is a form of action, but is distinct from the use of implements, activity. The orders are not the same as the implementation or application.

Moral philosophy and judgments are distinct from moral action and action generally. Two different things!

Sittlichkeit means ethical relations which enters language prescriptively or a posteriori as description, in between is the event!

I am well-read, so if you refer to a philosopher, I have background knowledge. But I don’t speak German. Orwell also complained about writers who punctuated their work with foreign terms, why not just use your own words?


Prasanjit Biswas - Randhir Gautam can I discuss with you in chat? Seemingly, you are philosophically sound, but not a professional philosopher.

P B - So for Kant and Hegel both, they looked at religion necessarily on the basis of their metaphysical conception of how beliefs are formed and how they are concretized. But both these aspects are inseparably connected.

Without original sources, you can' t formulate much in Philosophy, as English sources are not always sufficient.

Randhir Gautam  - Firstly, define philosophy by distinguishing it from the professions and theology and science. Philosophy is not a technical skill! Philosophy involves evaluation and interpretation to advance understanding!

Are you poking fun at English? In philosophy, it is improper to assert without offering a reason!

The ‘metaphysical’ is often used pejoratively as imaginary or thought or as a conceptual framework and thus as arbitrary. So, I would not use the term, concept suffices.

Kant does not state how beliefs are formed, as far as I know. Kant addresses the necessity of a certain way of thinking from a priori conditions to a posteriori perception and then back into the or ‘a’ system of thought!

Hegel does offer an account of how beliefs change on the basis of their adequacy (to account for all known factors and problems) which may have followed from his reading of Kant and its reception. Kant addresses the necessity of each concept in his formal system of Critiques - this follows from Hume’s criticism of induction and causality which Hume claims does not contain necessary conclusions. The conclusion for Kant is that their antinomies (dualisms) which are not resolvable and require faith or assumption. However, for all other phenomena, science is required. Kant is a natural scientist who recognizes the limits, eg free will, god, etc. But, Kant’s moral philosophy and politics are deterministic and universalizing: autonomy, categorical imperative, etc. Kant is also a liberal who recognizes the 3 prongs: individual rights, freedom under the law, and equality, that is, universality.

Hegel’s primary impact is his Philosophy of Right! His Phenomenology of Mind and other similar works are important, but historically and politically, the Philosophy of Right amplifies beyond Kant the freedom of thought, the limitations of spirit as geist or culture and the institutions of the state. Hegel does not abide by the liberal notion of equality as seen from the perspective of the master-slave dialectic or the relation between subjects and to the state! Hegel does recognize rights which is only one part of the meaning of his title!

The relation of belief to realization is highly conditioned for both philosophers who cannot be called instrumentalists or pragmatists! They are not!

RABINDRANATH TAGORE'S  ABIDING LOVE FOR SHIKHISM AND ITS FOUNDER

      Guru Nanak ,the founder of Sikhism was born this day (allowing for the inaccuracy of a lunar calendar ) five and half centuries back. He was a product of a churn called ' bhakti movement'  that swept the subcontinent  challenging the caste hierarchy and bringing a synthesis of Islam and Hinduism.Guru Nanak was an incessant taveller,in search of the truth .Maybe his continuous interaction with different communities freed him from sectarian narrowness and prejudices .He held before a people divided by caste ,class and religion the vision spiritual equality, human brotherhood, always insisting on honest work .No relious reformer of his time spoke so eloquently about the dignity of labour which was intended to be a critique of Brahminism that degraded and dehumanized  the labourers. It is therefore  is no wonder that Sikhs have been a flourishing community wherever they have settled and whichever country they adopted as their own.Rabindranath Tagore,the poet and thinker, was also a product of a reformist movement initiated by Raja Rammohun Roy ,' the first modern modern man of India' .Roy sought to synthesize the Enlightment tradition of the West with the best elements from Hinduism,Islam and Christianity ,A profound Islamic scholar,he  wrote his  rationalist tract Tu'hfat Ul Muwahidin in Persian  and brought out the first Persian  journal of the world.The poet's father Maharshi  Debendranath Tagore ,a great admirer of Rumi ,Hafez and Saadi, found in Sikhism ,the kind of religious community he had in his mind .In 1873 ,he would make a pilgrimage to the Golden Temple in Amritswar with his youngest son Rabi ,a budding poet.

        The poet's biographers Andrew Robinson and Krishna Dutta write ," For about a month they settled at a place not far away from the Golden Temple of the Sikhs The Maharshi was drawn to the temple by the rousing worship by the middle of the sacred lake ,and Rabi went too. Sometimes the Maharshi joined the hymns .No Sikh ever objected .Here was a prime lesson in religious tolerance .....Here in Amritwar at the age of eleven ,Rabi composed his first song .He also began to sing for his father .Evening was their time
                           
                               You are my friend in all difficulty and doubt
                                And companion in the darkest passage of life

     When they returned ,they brought a Sikh boy who received a welcome' which would be not unbecoming  of Maharaja Ranjit Singh." In his early  collection of narrative poems Katha o Kahini he immortalized Banda and his martyrdom in a moving poem- The Brave Prisoner .My communist  father used to recite it to me with great dramatic force  .A rebel himself, he drew  inspiration from Banda's heroic defiance in face of gruesome torture and death.His poem still vibrates in my memory .Tagore was the first Indian to renounce his knighthood in protest against Jalianwalabagh massacre, when our nationalist leaders thought it wiser to remain silent .             Tagore's writings on religious dialogue and tolerance make frequent reference to Guru Nanak and his religion of devotion and work.

          Tagore would later enter into a bitter controversy with Mohandas Gandhi regarding the Dalits' decision to convert to Sikhism . Gandhi who did his best to keep the Dalits within the Brahminical fold in a state of servitude, was pained when Tagore strongly supported conversion to Sikhism as a way of liberation . With his usual clarity, he wrote," If the Sanatani ( orthodox ) Hindus of the upper classes are not prepared to extend the ordinary rights of a civilized existence to the Harijans, they should not also cry against the victims seeking shelter in the Sikh fold ." But Gandhi did . Mahadev Deshai, his secretary wrote ' Bapu ( Gandhi)could not believe that you could have ever given your assent to a proposition like this .' In his response Tagore held his ground and expressed himself  even more boldly :

"  Sikhism has a bold message to the people and it has a noble record. How great it would be its effect if this religion can get out of its geographical provincialism ..and acquire a nationwide perspective one can guess. I do not find anything in Sikh religious practice and creeds which hurts my human dignity " In this dark time when fascist forces are polarizing society along religious lines with sinister conspiracy and systematic violence, we need to remember the words of Guru Nanak and his lasting message of religious tolerance, primacy of truth and universal brotherhood/sisterhood.

B Sur

The Sutta Pitaka is to one of the three pitakas of Buddhism in the Pali language. It contains the basics of Buddhism and the discourse of Lord Buddha.The sutta pitaka is divided into five nikayas ("collections"); hence these texts are also referred to as the Nikayas.
The Sutta Pitaka contains more than 10,000 suttas (discourses) attributed to the Buddha or his close companions.
There are five nikayas (collections) of suttas:
1. Digha Nikaya (dīghanikāya), the "long" discourses.
2. Majjhima Nikaya, the "middle-length" discourses.
3. Samyutta Nikaya (saṃyutta-), the "connected" discourses.
4. Anguttara Nikaya (aṅguttara-), the "numerical" discourses.
5. Khuddaka Nikaya, the "minor collection".
Digha Nikāya
This includes The Greater Discourse on the Foundations of purity and emptiness of minds from negative thoughts, The Fruits of the Contemplative Life, and The Buddha's Last Days. There are 34 long suttas in this nikaya.
Majjhima Nikāya
This includes Shorter Exposition of Kamma, Meditation of Breathing, and observation of  of the Body through inner vision. It is known as Vipashyana. There are 152 medium-length suttas in this nikaya.
Samyutta Nikaya
There are, according to one reckoning, 2,889, but according to the commentary 7,762, shorter suttas in this Nikaya.
Anguttara Nikāya
These teachings are arranged numerically. It includes, according to the commentary's reckoning, 9,565 short suttas grouped by number from ones to eleven.
Khuddaka Nikāya
The Dhammapada is the best known and most widely esteemed text in Buddhism and it is known as Gita of Buddhism. It is from khuda Nikaya of Sutta Pitaka.

What is Philosophy and Philosophizing?

Philosophizing concerns itself with the actual TERRITORY of potentially intelligible experience – in its ENTIRETY – and with the rational mapping of that territory: pioneering and cartography. The modern philosopher attaches equal value and importance to both the outer and inner realms of experience – both of which are regarded as OBJECTIVE in nature. (“Subjectivity” applies to the personal idiosyncrasies of the thinker and constitutes something of a necessary evil that the philosopher is always striving to objectify and see BEYOND.)

Like Columbus, the philosopher avails himself of the maps rendered by other cartographers who came before, but – also like Columbus – he relies chiefly upon his mysterious but indisputably real inner certainty that there is more to be discovered than can be found on any available maps. Also, like Columbus, the philosopher who first lands on previously un-mapped shores is apt to mis-name or mis-treat that TERRA INCOGNITA precisely because its true character and peculiarities are, as yet, unknown. That work is best carried out by the settlers who come later, since they have the benefit of hindsight and a more stable acquaintance with the “New World.” Thus, we see that the pioneering spirit is better equipped, by nature and temperament, to open up new territory for exploration than the settler type, who is better suited to make full and proper use of that newly claimed territory.

A thinker who is bloated with half-formed thoughts and gaseous intuitions is like a woman who is always pregnant but unable, for some reason, to actually DELIVER the unfinished embryo or fetus lodged within her womb. A fitful, skittish thinker who never allows his seed-like thoughts and insights to ripen and attain their proper degree of animate complexity is like a woman who suffers from one miscarriage after another – never able to make it through the full gestation period. The seasoned and discerning creative thinker is like a woman who gives regularly repeated, healthy birth, sometimes even to triplets and quadruplets, and soon has a burgeoning family under her watchful and conscientious eyes and hands.

As early as she can, the philosopher acquaints herself with the full array of colored ships within the kaleidoscope – those generally stable and timeless elements that are ultimately responsible for the infinite variety of particular, individualized configurations generated by the ever-turning kaleidoscope. Without a respectful acquaintance with as many of these “archetypal” elements as she can discern, she will have little recourse but to reduce all the complex configurations to the one or two elements that she does know about. Such elements have names like ‘will to power,’ sexuality (ἔρως), chance (τύχη), play (līlā), entropy, neutrality/equilibrium, etc. The greater the philosopher, the less likely she will be to fall prey to reductiveness. The greater the number of genuine elements acknowledged, the richer and more true to life will be the philosophical depiction of the whole.

We can see an analogy between philosophical activity and monitoring the changing weather in a meteorological scheme or system. The actual changes that are continually underway “in the air and on the ground” correspond to the totality of human activities as they unfold in the field of time, or history. The constants are abstract categories (air temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, jet stream activity, oceanic currents and temperature, etc.) and these correspond to archetypes or the colored chips in the kaleidoscope. The interplay between these factors provides the stable framework or structural constraints within which the DYNAMICS of actual weather systems are made manifest.

The philosopher is concerned, among other things, with tracing the links between the actual phenomenological configurations – the intelligible events and symptoms generated by human experience – and the archetypal elements, or constants that always lie at the root of things (just as the colored chips are at the source of the infinitely variable kaleidoscopic images). In attending to these elusive or hidden links, the philosopher is able to intellectually ground the particulars in the archetypal sources out of which they emerge. The effects of such philosophical activity upon the soul of the thinker are of considerable spiritual import. Such disciplined philosophical activity has a divinely ANCHORING effect upon the mind – aligning the microcosmic philosopher with the macrocosmic scheme within which he lives as a spark or living image. Aside from the generally consoling effects of this mental experience of at-one-ment with a divinely ordered cosmos, there is a poignantly paradoxical sense of being both greatly EXPANDED in (the range and depth of) consciousness and profoundly HUMBLED by the recognition of one’s insignificant place in the sublime, stupendous scheme of things.

Paul

Basic  Concepts in Contemporary Epistemology

Epistemology is the study or theory of knowledge. The nature of knowledge (whether and to what extent we can claim to possess any knowledge, and how we know that we know) has fascinated reflective people since the dawn of written culture -- maybe longer, but we lack any records. Contemporary epistemology is built on a history of research spanning 3,000 years.

The current understanding of knowledge, and how we can answer the many dogged questions about it, is extremely sophisticated, especially in light of artificial intelligence, which prompts the obvious question: “Can an artificial intelligence ‘know things’ or ‘possess knowledge’? If so, what does that tell us about the nature of knowledge?” A full grasp of contemporary epistemology would require a few years of study, but here is a small sample of the basic concepts, used pretty much universally in the field.

Knowledge claim – Any claim or implication to the effect that someone knows something; any assertion that a particular statement or belief is true (or is truly known to be false).

Justification – A reasonable response to the question, “How do you know?” Justifications usually, but do not always, involve some kind of appeal to evidence.

Truth – A property of any statement or belief which satisfies certain conditions called ‘truth conditions.’ The term ‘false’ would apply to any statement or belief which fails to satisfy those conditions. The exact nature of truth conditions, and when they are satisfied, is an issue of long-standing controversy.  For cursory purposes, we can assume that the truth conditions of a statement have been satisfied if and only if the world is as the statement asserts it to be.

Truth-bearer – The kind of thing that can be true or false.  We do not say of a walnut that it is true or false (unless we have reason to believe it is a fake walnut, in which case “truth” is being used in a different sense, as a synonym for “genuine” or “authentic”).  In Analytic Philosophy, those things regarded as truth-bearers are usually considered to be statements, as opposed to beliefs or thoughts or concepts or ideas, because it is easier to examine statements than it is to dissect any kind of mental entity.  A statement is not the same as a sentence, because there are many kinds of sentences which cannot be true or false; for example, commands.  A command like “Close the door!” can be obeyed or disobeyed, but it can be neither true nor false.  Statements could be considered a sub-class of sentences, i.e., those sentences which are capable of being true or false.

Belief (or Doubt) – Any statement or proposition with respect to which one has adopted an attitude, known as a ‘propositional attitude’. A belief is a statement toward which one has adopted a positive, accepting propositional attitude; a doubt is a statement toward which one had adopted a negative, rejecting propositional attitude.

Internalism – The theory that the conditions under which a knowledge claim is justified are conditions which are internally, or subjectively, or intra-experientially, accessible to the knowing subject. I can know (and perhaps only I can know) when my knowledge claims are justified.  Such a justification might involve, for example, my awareness of the amount of research I have done to justify my claim.

Externalism – The theory that the conditions under which a knowledge claim is justified are conditions which are not available to the knowledge-claiming subject without external mediation; for example, information to the effect that an individual’s vision and hearing are, in fact, operating optimally. (I probably did not see a horse in the kitchen if I am suffering from a partial retinal detachment, but I don’t know that I’ve suffered such a detachment; it will require an external expert to discover this fact.)

Virtue theory – A form of internalism (see above) according to which I know whether I’m justified in making a knowledge claim because I am aware of how much effort I have put into discovering, examining, and analyzing any alleged evidence for or against my knowledge claim, but also because I know that my efforts have been legitimate, ethical, and honest to the best of my abilities. I know only too well whether my investigation has been rigorous or lazy; if I have been lazy in my justificatory efforts, my knowledge-claim is not justified, although I alone may be aware that my knowledge claim is unjustified.

Reliablism – A form of externalism according to which I am justified in my knowledge claim if and only if all systems (cognitive, perceptual, communicative and technological) involved in my acquisition of the information that I claim to know are, in fact, in optimal working order. If all systems are “go,” so to speak, when I acquire an item of information, then I am justified in claiming to know that item. But I may not be able to confirm that all systems are in fact “go” without the intervention of an outside expert (for example, an optometrist or audiologist to check my sensory systems – or a lab tech if I happen to be a machine).
James 

Kant and Freud on Time

The experience of objects in space and time is only possible through the representation of the necessary connection of perceptions. The connection requires the applicability of the categories of relation to objects of experience.

Kant is concerned with explaining how it is possible for us to represent the temporality of experience. We cannot perceive time itself, nor is time a concept. Kant says there are 3 ways that we experience time: thru the notions of persistence, succession and simultaneity - we must explain how we are able to experience these three aspects of temporality. Although one moment follows another, time itself persists. And for any two events in time the first must be before, after or at the same time as the second. So the awareness of two events as being in time involves a capacity to distinguish between the events being successive or simultaneous.

Kant argues that the capacity to represent and distinguish between the persistence, succession and simultaneity of time and events in time requires the application of the three categories of relation. The category of substance is required for the representation of persistence, the category of causation is required for the representation of succession and the category of community (or mutual interaction) is required for the representation of simultaneity.

Causation however as an apriori concept only occurs when something goes "wrong" otherwise we have no idea of the actual causal relations. Lacan makes this insight.

Freud has a different understanding which involves the distinction between the Jewish and Christian metaphysical doctrines. Freud posits that symptoms are caused by events in the past - in the individual's past and in humanities past: the oedipal complex for example does not manifest symptoms immediately but only subsequently in the future. This behavior is determined by the past. Freud also invented the notion of the primal horde and the murder of the leader-father (in contrast to other forms of the father) to account for guilt and the construction of laws (totems and taboos). Sartre addressed this problem of determinism but posited that the treatment must be a turning back of the future to the present. Although this insight may not make sense in the individual case, it may be intelligible in terms of political history where the key issue of 'what will happen next' is of widespread concern.

Freud's use of time is however different from the Christian use of time which posits a beyond to the temporal, and thus a different motivational set than the material-temporal view that revolves around the past and the present. The Christian view of time revolves around the present-future and a notion of salvation. Freud addresses the determinism of past events by helping the person to understand the crucial situations of the Oedipus complex and the leader complex whereas Christians are determined by the effect of present behavior on future salvation.

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