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India's philosophies—whose presuppositions?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Tuvia Gelblum
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Extract

In his new work Presuppositions of India's philosophies, addressed as a textbook to the Western reader, Professor Karl H. Potter submits an interpretation of the key Indian concept of mokṣa, in which he draws an analogy with Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy of Will to Power. The latter is invoked as typifying ‘a strand of thought which glorifies spontaneity and growth, which looks ahead to man's eventual success in overcoming the bonds which make him temporarily less divine, and which sees no exercise of power of which man is not in principle capable’(p. 2).

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 1965 , pp. 308 - 318
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1965

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References

1 Potter, Karl H.: Presuppositions of India's philosophies. (Prentice-Hall Philosophy Series.) XI, 276 pp. Eaglewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963.Google Scholar

2 Sāṅkhyakārikā of Iśvarakṛṣṇa, kārikā 68; Yogasūtra of Patañjali, 4.34.

3 cf. Edgerton, F., The Bhagavadgita, Cambridge, Mass., 1946, II,Google Scholar 27 seq.; Eliade, M., Yoga, immortality and freedom, London, 1958, 88 seq.Google Scholar

4 Brahmasūtrabhāṣ;ya 1.1.4: dhydnaṃ cintanaṃ yady api mānasaṃ tathāpi puruṣeṇa kartum akartum anyathā vā kartuṃ śakyam puruṣatantratvāt / jnānaṃ tu pramāṇajanyam / pramāṇaṃ ca yathābhūtavastuviṣayam / ato jnānaṃ kartum akartum anyathā vā kartum aśakyaṃ kevalaṃ vastutantram eva tat / na codanātantram / nāpi puruṣatantram //; quoted, translated, and discussed in Staal's, J. F. ‘Negation and the law of contradiction in Indian thought’, BSOAS, XXV, 1, 1962, 63Google Scholar. See also Staal, J. F., Advaita and Neoplatonism, Madras, 1961, 101–2.Google Scholar

5 SeeOldenberg, H., Vorwissenschaftliche Wissenschaft, Göttingen, 1919, 110.Google Scholar

6 See J. F. Staal, Advaita and Neoplatonism, 101; ef. pp. 80–1.

7 Sūtra 16 seq.

8 Tattvavaiśāradī of Vācaspati-miśra on Yogasūtra 3.45. Cf. Bhagavadgītā (henceforth shortened as BhG) 2.43–4, where aiśvarya ‘power, control’ is together with bhoga ‘enjoyment of pleasures’ denounced as a goal (gati).

9 Referred to by Zimmer, H., Philosophies of India, London, 1952Google Scholar, 185 seq. Cf. Āpastamba-Dharmasūtra 2.26.14, where a distinction is implied between two types of ascetics—one described as dharma-para ‘intent on dharma’ or benevolent, and the other as abhicāra-para ‘intent on black magic’ or malevolent (referred to by Hiriyanna, M., Outlines of Indian philosophy, London, 1932, p. 110, n.). Compare also the idea that if used in cursing, i.e. for destructive purposes, the potency derived from ascetic practices and constituting religious merit is lost (Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa, Uttara-kāṇḍa, 17.33); the reinterpretation of the concept of tapas in terms of moral qualities (e.g. BhG 17.14–16); and the classification and evaluation of types of tapas according to the motivation behind itGoogle Scholar (Ibid., 17.17–19).

10 cf. Eliade, op. cit., 88, and 294 seq. Reference may be made here to the misleading exposition by Helmuth von Glasenapp in his Der Hinduismus, München, Kurt Wolf Verlag, 1922, 289: ‘Der Yoga (wörtlich “Anspannung, Trainierung”) wird in den Yoga-Sūtras definiert als “die Hemmung der Funktionen der Denksubstanz”, d.h. als die methodische Isolierung des Geistes von den störenden Wirkungen des körperlichen Denkorgans und den Einflüssen der Aussenwelt zum Zweck der Gewinnung übernatürlicher Kräfte und der Erreichung der Erlösung’. This statement is particularly unfortunate on account of its context—a chapter on the philosophical systems.

11 For an illuminating analysis of these two schemes in terms of the dialectical cleavage between the aspiration of the Indian monks, on the one hand, and that of the laity, on the other hand, see Louis Dumont, ‘World renunciation in Indian religions’, Contributions to Indian Sociology No. 4, 1960, 3–62; Dumont, ‘The conception of kingship in ancient India’, Ibid., No. 6, 1962, 48–77.

12 See, e.g., Brhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.3.22; Kaṭha Upaniṣad 2.14; BhG 2.50. For a poetic overstatement, if not an extreme non-characteristic development of this idea, calling to mind the Aghoris and Avadhutas of contemporary India, see Kauṣītaki-brāhmaṇa Upaniṣad 1.4; cf. BhG 4.36.

13 See, e.g., BhG 4.35; 5.18; 6.29, 30,32.

14 cf. Rāmānujabhāṣya on BhG 2.50.

15 See BhG 7.15; 16.22; cf. Edgerton, op. cit., 25.

16 See BhG 2.31–3, 47, 71; 3.35; 16.23; 18.23, 45.

17 See BhG 18.41, 60.

18 See BhG 3.20–5.

19 BhG 5.25.

20 See BhG 2.31; 8.43, 45 seq.

21 Potter, op. cit., 3–4, asserts: ‘When, in the Bhagavadgītā, Arjuna complains to Krishna that if he fights his kinsmen he will destroy the foundations of moral society, Krishna answers that it is more important for Arjuna to be himself than to be a cog in the social machine …’.

22 BhG 18.61; cf. 11.33; 16.18; 18.41–4,60.

23 See Russell, Bertrand, History of Western philosophy, London, 1946, 799–800.Google Scholar

24 Edgerton, op. cit., II, 24. See, e.g., BhG 13.7–11. Also see SūreśVara's, NaiṣJcarmyasiddhi 4.69 (Bombay, 1925, p. 202): utpannātma-prabodhasya tv adveṣṭṛtvādayo guṇaḥ / ayatnato bhavanty asya na tu sādhanarūpiṇab ‘He who has awakened to the knowledge of the Self does in fact possess attributes (or virtues) such as non-malevolence: but for him they require no effort and do not operate as means to an end’ [scil. since he has already attained it]. Cf. Śankara on BhG 2.55.Google Scholar

25 See Nietzsche, Friedrich, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Gesammelte Werke, v), München, Musarion Verlag, 1925, 121–2.Google Scholar

26 cf. Jha, Ganganatha, Pūrva-Mīmdṃsā in its sources, Benares, 1942, 36–7; Hiriyanna, op. cit., 299, 328–33.Google Scholar

27 The former alternative is also suggested by Hiriyanna, op. cit., 18. The latter alternative seems to be suggested by Zimmer, op. cit., 34–5, 41.

28 Despite Hiriyanna, op. cit., 18: ‘… Indian philosophy aims beyond Logic. This peculiarity of the view-point is to be ascribed to the fact that philosophy in India did not take its rise in wonder or curiosity as it seems to have done in the West; rather it originated under the pressure of a practical need arising from the presence of moral and physical evil in life’.

29 This theory calls to mind a somewhat similar graded classification of mental attitudes or orientations—in terms of the Sāṅkhya threefold scheme of guṅas, expounded in BhG 18.20–35.

30 Even the Kāmasūtra of Vātsyāyana formally subscribes to this orthodox order, with the prescription that the one which precedes in the sequence should have priority. See loc. cit. 1.1.1; 1.2.14; despite 1.2.14. Cf. P. V. Kane, History of dharmaśāstra, Poona, II, Pt. 1, 1941, 8.

31 A similar misrepresentation of the orthodox order occurs in Zimmer, op. cit., 35 seq.

32 See, e.g., BhG 16.24; 18.23.

33 Kaṭha Upaniṣad 2.1 seq.

34 Vedāntaparibhāṣā, ch. viii.

35 Brahmasūtra 3.4.1: puruṣārtho 'taḥ śabdād iti bādarāyaṇaḥ ‘From this (the knowledge of brahman, results) the purpose of man on account of scriptural authority, thus (says) Bādarāyaṇa’.

36 BhG 7.11: balaṃ balavatāṃ cāhaṃ kāmarāgavivarjitam / dharmāvirvddho bhūteṣu kāmo 'smi ….

37 Referred to in W. T. de Bary and others (comp.), op. cit., 243.

38 cf. BhG 18.34: yayā tu dharmakāmārthān dhṛtyā dhārayate 'rjuna / prasaṅgena phalākāṅkṣī dhṛtiḥ… ‘That constancy, O Arjuna, whereby one holds with attachment and desire for fruit to dharma, kāma, and artha …’.

39 For references from the Mahābhārata on the view that desire ‘dances and laughs (even) for the man who delights in liberation’ and until renunciation is itself renounced he is still the slave of desire, see Zaehner, R. C., Hinduism, London, 1962, 151, 159–60.Google Scholar

40 For references see Kane, P. V., op. cit., II, Pt. 1, 1941, 8 seq.; Zaehner, op. cit., 150 seq.; de Bary and others, op. cit., 213 seq.Google Scholar

41 Kāmasūtra 1.2.15.

42 Kāmasūtra 1.2.9.

43 cf. Ananda Coomaraswamy, ‘Cosmopolitan view of Nietzsche’, in his The dance of Shiva: fourteen Indian essays ([C1948], reprinted 1952 by Asia Publishing House, Bombay; also reprinted 1957 by Noonday Press, New York). This essay—which Potter fails to mention propagates what it terms ‘… the beautiful doctrine of the Superman—so like the Chinese concept of the Superior Man and the Indian Mdha Purusha, Bodhisattva and Jivan-mukta … whose virtue stands “beyond good and evil”…‘. Describing Nietzsche as ‘a true prophet’ and his teaching as ‘a pure nishkama dharma’, it proclaims with a completeness of misunderstanding: ‘The Will to Power asserts that our life is not to be swayed by motives of pleasure or pain, the “pairs of opposites”, but is to be directed towards its goal, and that goal is the freedom and spontaneity of the jivan-mukta. And this is beyond good and evil. This is also set out in the Bhagavad Gita: the hero must be superior to pity … “ … higher still than love to men is love to things and phantoms”…’ (American reprint, 144).