As I’ve burrowed deeper into the philosophy of yoga and Advaita Vedanta, I’ve realized my own ignorance about the native philosophies of the West. I studied Art History in school, and the only true philosophy course I ever took (by which I mean, from the University Philosophy Departments) was Aesthetics, and I dropped it after a mere two classes because it seemed entirely ridiculous. When I think of Western Philosophy, I think of rather obscure and obtuse (if important) thinkers like Kant, whose Critique of Pure Reason I recently tried to smash my head against. Thankfully, I was left with only a minor concussion; nausea, feelings of disorientation, and a head-ache. I also think of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates, those much lauded luminaries of ancient Greece who have had the most lasting impact on the West. Most of my admittedly limited knowledge of these guys comes from second-hand sources: an excellent survey of ancient Greek thought and religion at NYU (from the Classics Dept. rather than Philosophy Dept.), whatever I absorbed of Renaissance Neoplatonism from my Italian Art courses, the rather mutated influence of these ideas on esoteric systems such as Kabbalah & 19th Century Occultism, as well as random tid-bits produced from eclectic reading. In other words, I’ve never read The Republic, or anything else by these guys other than excerpts and other people's interpretation.
While this ignorance of the big names of ancient philosophy is something I’d like to remedy, I must confess that based on what I do know of them, I’m not in much of a hurry to do so. Much of their metaphysics have turned out to be far off the mark, at least to me. As I understand it (and correct me if I’m wrong), Platonism sets great store by attribute and category, and claims that attributes are inherent in objects, something which I very definitely reject (an upcoming post will go deeper into why). For instance, redness is an attribute of a red object, existing inside it, rather than the intersection of the senses, the object, and light. Moreover, Platonists were essentially atomists, ie, they believed that all complex things could be broken down into discrete simple substances (containing specific attributes). This idea clearly does not jive with our modern conception of matter (by which I mean quantum mechanics,the wave theory of matter, etc), but we can’t fault them too much for that. What I can fault them for is their lack of empiricism. Experience and common sense were not very important for folks like Plato. Instead, what is important is the world of Perfect Ideas. At the risk of ridicule, I quote from Wikipedia:
“According to Socrates, physical objects and physical events are "shadows" of their ideal or perfect forms, and exist only to the extent that they instantiate the perfect versions of themselves. Just as shadows are temporary, inconsequential epiphenomena produced by physical objects, physical objects are themselves fleeting phenomena caused by more substantial causes, the ideals of which they are mere instances. For example, Socrates thinks that perfect justice exists (although it is not clear where) and his own trial would be a cheap copy of it.”
We have here the idea that something like “perfect justice” exists, out there somewhere, in an ideal state, independent of actual, empirical justice. The measure of an instance of Justice is how much of the Idea of Perfect Justice is manifested in the singular instance. Of course, good luck getting two philosophers to agree on exactly what such perfect justice might entail. The same goes for the Idea of Redness, Beauty, etc.
To me, attributes, ideas, etc, are products of the mind - a saṁskara, or mental impression, as the yogic philosophy would have it. These attributes which appear to be in an object, are actually in the mind. We merely project these ideas onto objects, just as a man might project his own difficulty with his father onto any authority figure in his life without consciously realizing it. An object itself is nothing to us, excepting the impression it makes on our mind. Unless we become aware of it, we don’t notice how the immediate impression is reacted upon by memory, creating an emotional or judgemental response. As the yoga philosophy would put it, our perception of the world is colored by our own saṁskaras, our dormant mental impressions. One great benefit of meditation is catching this coloring of the mind in the act, and clearing it out. In Buddhism, especially mahāyāna Buddhism, this is the concept of Emptiness, or śūnyatā. This doctrine holds that nothing possesses an essential, unchangable nature or identity. In Buddhism, this includes us humans (a point that Vedantins and I disagree with), as well as all external objects (a point which I do agree with). By this idea, Justice is native only to the human mind, its manifestations differ as minds differ, rather than due to an imperfection inherent in the world of experience. In other words, there is no absolute Justice by which we can measure all justice, merely a relative justice.
By now you might have observed that I don’t hold with Platonism much at all. Normally, I’d just say, “Ok, this is just another idea that seems outdated and wrong to my limited understanding. Lets move onto something else and just leave this be.” Unfortunately for me however, these Platonic ideas are incredibly pervasive, largely thanks to their popularity throughout the Christian Era. When you conceive of a single God whose nature is absolute changeless truth, it becomes easy to see why the Church dug these guys. Socrates’ ideal of Perfect Justice is easy to associate with the idea of Divine Justice, which is perfect in Heaven, but imperfect on this flawed Earth. The early Church fathers, as well as the much maligned Gnostics couldn’t get enough of Plato, despite his sad pagan origins. So we have the perpetuation of these ideas right into the Enlightenment. It wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that the ideas of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are the principal foundations of modern Western Philosophy.
When I realized this, it made me rather sad. The philosophies of yoga, Vedanta, and even Buddhism are greatly appealing to me, but to be honest, the culture surrounding them is not. I’m very much of the West, and I like being of the West. The thought that the philosophy of my native culture was based on principals with which I cannot agree pained me. Would I have to reject all of Western Philosophy because of the taint of Platonism?
Thankfully, the answer is no. Antiquity and the Roman Empire, much like the world today, was full of rival philosophies, cults, and gurus of all stripes. While Socrates was pretty much universally respected (even if his teachings weren’t), there were other philosophers whose schools were just as, or even more popular. Among these were the Stoics, founded by Zeno of Citium, whose works have been lost. Most of what we know of Stoicism comes from later writers such as Seneca, the Philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. I’ve been reading the latter recently, and have found a refreshing change from what I’ve come to expect from Western Philosophy. Like the philosophy of yoga, it is primarily practical, rather than mere speculation and metaphysics.
In my next post, I’ll write more about the oft misunderstood Stoics, with an emphasis on the surprising intersection of its teachings with the philosophy of the Yoga Sutras, and the intriguing ways in which they differ. I’d also mention another, more recent philosopher who, while seeming a bit hamstrung by his background in Neoplatonism, also manages to transcend it. This is Benedict de Spinoza, and when I’m done with my study of his Ethics, I hope to write a bit about his ideas here.
For an interesting related discussion about the apparent differences between Western and Eastern philosophy, I refer you to an outstanding article that coincidentally was in today’s New York Times. Their new philosophy column, “The Stone,” has aside from this article been rather disappointing to me thus far, mostly because it smells a bit too much like the worst aspects of modern academic (rather than practical) philosophy. This article (aside from the author’s lame defense of “no, modern Western philosophy is practical too! Really! You just misunderstand it!) is a rare exception.
Until next time, Namaste.
Very cool stuff. Keep this coming. Seriously.
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