RE: [Y-Indology] 'Eurocentrism' etc.

[Guest guest]

Prof. Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos: I agree with you to a large extent. Europe

(especially ex-UK) and US are quite different in their definition of what

constitutes 'philosophy'. It could be the success of the computer that might

have something to do with the exclusive 'analytical' obsession in

Anglo-American philosophy. But we should not lump them - agreed.

 

Taking this opportunity to also respond to Bob Peck's excellent point, and

partially addressing Lars Martin Fosse request:

 

The rejection is selective and would not explain the radical exclusion of

the Indic. For instance, Philosophy departments teach ethics, but only

western thinkers as though there has not been any Indic ethics - this plays

into the stereotype that the west must teach ethics to others, that there is

no indigenous idea of social service, and hence they are waiting to be saved

by Mother Teresa! Meanwhile, how many students of ethics are ever taught

that some pioneers of European liberalism and ethical thought, J. S. Mill

and his equally famous father, worked their entire lives for the British

East India Company? Liberalism at home was spun by the same men in charge to

legitimize the denial of precisely those rights to the colonies, for which

they got handsome salaries!

 

Much of what is called Plotinus' ideas has greater depth and quantity of

texts from Indian sources than Plotinus' own writings. Much of neo-Platonism

could easily dialog with Indic thought, as also Kant and Schopenhauer. It

would enrich the curriculum.

 

Harold Coward wrote a book (I believe it is called 'Derrida and Indic

Thought', SUNY Press) that compares in separate chapters, Derrida with each

of Abhinavagupta, Gaudapada, Nagarjuna, Bharthrhari, etc.). A great start,

but this can be taken much further. How does postmodernism relate to

classical Indic ideas - great unasked question! Nobel Laureate and father of

Quantum Mechanics said that the Upanishads were the only philosophy through

which he could understand the meaning of Quantum Mechanics - what a great

way to expand the field of philosophy of science.

 

In another book by Coward, [i think the name is] 'Jung and Asian

Philosophy', he shows how Jung taught Patanjali, Tantras, ideas of

kundalini, etc for a few years at Zurich with tremendous respect and awe. He

found the ideas of sanskaras very fascinating. In stage two, Jung developed

his 'collective unconscious' and 'archetype' formulations out of these. Then

in stage three, he declared that yoga was world negating, dangerous to

westerners because they were progressive people - all based on his (mis)

interpretation that the Indic was essentially fatalistic. (This is often the

hasty conclusion to explain India's poverty today, when people do not know

India's economic history from 1000 till 2000: hence the importance to

de-colonialize historiography, as per Inden, and to research economic

history.) Most Jungians' today have this flawed idea of Indic based on these

stereotypes that got stuck, while few of them seem to know that Jung himself

studied yoga, praised it immensely, and relied on it to develop many of his

ideas.

 

That 20 million Americans practice yoga and have not turned world negating

should at least be enough grounds to re-visit the case of Jung Vs. Yoga.

Like Constantine, Jung borrowed and simultaneously demonized the source! Is

that academic arson?

 

William James is really 'in' these days. But few know or want to know the

influences of India upon him through the Transcendentalist Movement in the

1800s. (I heard, but unconfirmed, that James was the host to invite

Vivekananda to Harvard and spent considerable time with him.) Somehow,

biographers like to erase the Indic influences on their western idols - to

keep them shuddha of the taboo?

 

Much of this is the result of conflating Indic with its religions - as

though there was nothing secular in India. Consequently, in the campaign to

'free' people from the evil of religions, the baby gets thrown out with the

bathwater. How about teaching under logic and metaphysics: Gangesha (Stephen

Phillips' life work), Nagarjuna, to name just a few? How about the theories

of language so pre-eminent in India that are entirely absent in today's

philosophy curricula on language?

 

The latest rage is the field of 'consciousness sciences' - much of it

appropriated 2nd to 4th hand from India but never acknowledged!!! That's a

real shame in terms of academic ethics. Take one example of many: After

decades of loyal practice as Madhyamika Buddhist, Varela (and he is French)

has re-labeled meditation as neuro-phenomenology - easier to get grants,

look 'western' to the audience and grant sources, more 'rational' than

something deemed as mystical. Sometimes, I jokingly call this project

'Euro-phenomenology', just remove the 'n'. But this neuro-phenomenology has

really caught on. Each successive book has less acknowledgment and linkage

to the source - interesting dynamics of appropriation. The students of these

appropriators seldom know their teacher's sources and when told they have a

mental block. Why must the Indic get de-Sanskritized: it loses fidelity of

meaning, then gets new aged, then its up for adoption by some agency to

legitimize and re-Christian it.

 

Does the double standard of not having to acknowledge an Indic source

(whereas such mistreatment of a western source would be deemed plagiarism)

have anything to do with the colonial premise that the natives lacked the

concept of property ownership, and hence their land could (and was)

appropriated by the British in the interest of the civilization of the

world? Is there some unstated assumption that what's Indic is not really

theirs, while the west is so obsessed with intellectual property rights?

 

 

Rajiv Malhotra

The Infinity Foundation

53 White Oak Drive

Princeton, NJ 08540

www.infinityfoundation.com