Classical Indian Philosophy: Self, Knowledge, and Liberation

What the course covers

For roughly fourteen centuries philosophers in India argued about three questions that turned out to be one question. What is a person, at bottom? What makes a belief count as knowing rather than as luck? And what would it be to be released from the condition we are in? The answers range from a self identical with the ground of everything to no self at all, and each school defends its answer against every rival by argument rather than by authority. This module follows that quarrel from the Upaniṣads to Gaṅgeśa, and ends with it unsettled, which is where it actually is.

How to read a disagreement

1. A quarrel that lasted fourteen centuries. Two claims about you, and neither is a creed.
2. The opponent speaks first. Why these texts open by arguing against themselves.
3. Three questions, and who is asking. One knot, two families of school, and a label to distrust.
4. Fourteen centuries, in order. When each name in this course was writing.

The self the Upaniṣads found

5. The turn inward. The texts that stopped asking how and started asking what.
6. What is left when you take everything away. A self reached by subtraction, and the worry that comes with it.
7. The ground of everything. One word for whatever the world rests on.
8. That thou art. The identity claim, and how much of an argument it is.
9. Action, rebirth, release. The problem every later school inherits.

The self the Buddha denied

10. A diagnosis, not a complaint. What the first noble truth actually claims.
11. Everything is impermanent. Five heaps, and a claim that the list is complete.
12. The argument from impermanence. A syllogism, and which premise the opponent denies.
13. The argument from control. A second, independent line, and a decent objection to it.
14. The chariot. Take it apart and find where the chariot went.
15. Nothing stands alone. Rebirth with nobody making the journey.

What counts as knowing

16. How do you know? A way of getting it right, which is not a justification.
17. Seeing. The one source nobody denies, and what accepting it costs.
18. The hill and the smoke. The example that recurs for the rest of the course.
19. Taking someone’s word for it. A knowledge source in its own right, or inference in disguise?
20. How many, and why the number is a claim. One, two, four or six, and each count commits you.

The world as it seems

21. The realist programme. A school founded on how to argue honestly.
22. A self you can argue for. Three arguments, and a self that is not consciousness.
23. Two stages of seeing. Bare seeing, then seeing as, and why Nyāya needs both.
24. Inference in five steps. Run the reason through three conditions and watch it fail.
25. Pervasion, and how inference fails. The hardest question, and a taxonomy of going wrong.
26. Categories, and the reality of absence. A list of everything there is, with a hole in it.

The text with no author

27. What the Veda is for. A philosophy built on sentences that cannot be true.
28. Nobody wrote it. An authorless text, and why that is the stronger claim.
29. Knowledge that certifies itself. A regress, and the doctrine built to stop it.
30. Two Mīmāṃsās. A shell that looks like silver, and two ways to explain it.

Taking the world apart

31. Taking the world apart. A list of what survives analysis, and a list of what does not.
32. Appearance only. Two arguments that the outside is not doing the work.
33. Two sources, and no more. Cut the list to two, because there are only two kinds of object.
34. The word means what it excludes. Cow means not-non-cow, and a famous objection.
35. Three conditions for a reason. Correlation is not enough, so Dharmakīrti demands a connection.
36. What the reduction costs. If nothing lasts a second, who is it that gets free?

Emptiness

37. The Perfection of Wisdom. The floor the last part stood on is taken away.
38. Nothing has a nature of its own. Emptiness is about dependence, and not about absence.
39. Four ways to fail. Where could a thing come from? There are only four answers.
40. Two truths. The worst available mistake, and it is a tempting one.
41. I have no thesis. If your words are empty, what are they doing to my argument?
42. Does it refute itself? An argument that only ever uses your premises, and what that costs.

Sāṃkhya and Jainism

43. Two things, and only two. Consciousness that does nothing, nature that does everything.
44. Three strands, and an effect already in its cause. You cannot get oil from sand, and Sāṃkhya says why.
45. Isolation. Nothing is gained, and one thing is finally seen.
46. The elephant. Every report was accurate, and every report was partial.
47. Seven ways to say it. A qualifier on every claim, and a suspicion about it.

The sceptics, and the answer

48. Only what you can see. One knowledge source, and the wreckage that follows.
49. Nothing survives the test. He uses each school’s own definition against it, and stops nowhere.
50. Every definition fails. Refutation with nothing of one’s own, and a reason for it.
51. Reason in equilibrium. Two centuries of demolition, answered by definitions that hold.
52. What the sceptics were for. A tradition that treated its attackers as equipment.

Liberation and how to live

53. One without a second. The identity claim of part two, turned into a system.
54. The rope and the snake. Three levels, so an error can be real enough to trip over.
55. Knowing is the release. Whatever you achieve will end, so liberation cannot be achieved.
56. Nobody’s suffering. If pain has no owner, whose claim on you is it?
57. Not harming. One word, three traditions, and three different amounts of it.
58. Where the module leaves you. Three questions, four answers each, and no agreement anywhere.
59. The whole argument. Fifty-eight lessons, as one argument.

One lesson in full

The rope and the snake. Three levels, so an error can be real enough to trip over.

A question to try

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