Indian philosophy

Common concerns

The various Indian philosophies contain such a diversity of views, theories, and systems that it is almost impossible to single out characteristics that are common to all of them. Acceptance of the authority of the Vedas characterizes all the orthodox (astika) systems—but not the unorthodox (nastika) systems, such as Charvaka (radical materialism), Buddhism, and Jainism. Moreover, even when philosophers professed allegiance to the Vedas, their allegiance did little to fetter the freedom of their speculative ventures. On the contrary, the acceptance of the authority of the Vedas was a convenient way for a philosopher’s views to become acceptable to the orthodox, even if a thinker introduced a wholly new idea. Thus, the Vedas could be cited to corroborate a wide diversity of views; they were used by the Vaisheshika thinkers (i.e., those who believe in ultimate particulars, both individual souls and atoms) as much as by the Advaita (monist) Vedanta philosophers.

In most Indian philosophical systems, the acceptance of the ideal of moksha, like allegiance to the authority of the scriptures, was only remotely connected with the systematic doctrines that were being propounded. Many epistemological, logical, and even metaphysical doctrines were debated and decided on purely rational grounds that did not directly bear upon the ideal of moksha. Only the Vedanta (“end of the Vedas”) philosophy and the Samkhya (a system that accepts a real matter and a plurality of the individual souls) philosophy may be said to have a close relationship to the ideal of moksha. The logical systems—Nyaya, Vaisheshika, and Purva-Mimamsa—are only very remotely related. Also, both the philosophies and other scientific treatises, including even the Kamasutra (“Treatise on Pleasure”) and the Arthashastra (“The Science of Material Gain”), recognized the same ideal and professed their efficacy for achieving it.

When Indian philosophers speak of intuitive knowledge, they are concerned with making room for it and demonstrating its possibility, with the help of logic—and there, as far as they are concerned, the task of philosophy ends. Indian philosophers do not seek to justify religious faith; philosophic wisdom itself is accorded the dignity of religious truth. Theory is not subordinated to practice, but theory itself, as theory, is regarded as being supremely worthy and efficacious.

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Three basic concepts form the cornerstone of Indian philosophical thought: the self or soul (atman), works (karma), and liberation (moksha). Leaving the Charvakas aside, all Indian philosophies concern themselves with these three concepts and their interrelations, though this is not to say that they accept the objective validity of these concepts in precisely the same manner. Of these, the concept of karma, signifying moral efficacy of human actions, seems to be the most typically Indian. The concept of atman corresponds in a certain sense to the Western concept of a transcendental or absolute spirit self—important differences notwithstanding. The concept of moksha as the concept of the highest ideal has likewise been one of the concerns of Western thought, especially during the Christian era, though it probably has never been as important as for the Hindu mind. Most Indian philosophies assume that moksha is possible, and the “impossibility of moksha” (anirmoksha) is regarded as a material fallacy likely to vitiate a philosophical theory.

In addition to karma, the lack of two other concerns further differentiates Indian philosophical thought from Western thought in general. Since the time of the Greeks, Western thought has been concerned with mathematics and, in the Christian era, with history. Neither mathematics nor history has ever raised philosophical problems for Indian philosophical thinkers, although Indian mathematics and historical thinking are present and prominent in India. In the lists of pramanas, or ways of knowing accepted by the different schools, there are none that include mathematical knowledge or historical knowledge. Possibly connected with their indifference toward mathematics is the significant fact that Indian philosophers have not developed formal logic. The theory of the syllogism (a valid deductive argument having two premises and a conclusion) is, however, developed, and much sophistication has been achieved in logical theory. Indian logic offers an instructive example of a logic of cognitions (jnanani) rather than of abstract propositions—a logic not sundered and kept isolated from psychology and epistemology, because it is meant to be the logic of actual human striving to know what is true of the world.

Forms of argument and presentation

There is, in relation to Western thought, a striking difference in the manner in which Indian philosophical thinking is presented as well as in the mode in which it historically develops. Out of the presystematic age of the Vedic hymns and the Upanishads and many diverse philosophical ideas current in the pre-Buddhistic era, there emerged with the rise of the age of the sutras (aphoristic summaries of the main points of a system) a neat classification of systems (darshanas), a classification that was never to be contradicted and to which no further systems are added. No new school was founded, no new darshana came into existence. But this conformism, like conformism to the Vedas, did not check the rise of independent thinking, new innovations, or original insights. There is, apparently, an underlying assumption in the Indian tradition that no individual can claim to have seen the truth for the first time and, therefore, that an individual can only explicate, state, and defend in a new form a truth that has been seen, stated, and defended by countless others before him—hence the tradition of expounding one’s thoughts by affiliating oneself to one of the darshanas.

If one is to be counted as a great master (acharya), one has to write a commentary (bhashya) on the sutras of the darshana concerned, or one must comment on one of the bhashyas and write a tika (subcommentary). The usual order is sutra–bhashya–varttika (collection of critical notes)–tika. At any stage a person may introduce a new and original point of view, but at no stage can one claim originality for oneself. Not even authors of sutras could do that, for they were only systematizing the thoughts and insights of countless predecessors. The development of Indian philosophical thought has thus been able to combine, in an almost unique manner, conformity to tradition and adventure in thinking.