IDENTITY AS REASONED CHOICE 99778811444411119966557766__PPrreelliimmss__FFiinnaall__ttxxtt__pprriinntt..iinndddd ii 1122//1155//22001111 66::4400::4488 PPMM 99778811444411119966557766__PPrreelliimmss__FFiinnaall__ttxxtt__pprriinntt..iinndddd iiii 1122//1155//22001111 66::4400::4499 PPMM IDENTITY AS REASONED CHOICE A SOUTH ASIAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE REACH AND RESOURCES OF PUBLIC AND PRACTICAL REASON IN SHAPING INDIVIDUAL IDENTITIES JONARDON GANERI 99778811444411119966557766__PPrreelliimmss__FFiinnaall__ttxxtt__pprriinntt..iinndddd iiiiii 1122//1155//22001111 66::4400::4499 PPMM 2012 Continuum International Publishing Group 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 Th e Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX www.continuumbooks.com © Jonardon Ganeri, 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers. E ISBN: 978-1-4411-1607-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ganeri, Jonardon. Identity as reasoned choice : a South Asian perspective on the reach and resources of public and practical reason in shaping individual identities / Jonardon Ganeri. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN-13: 978-1-4411-9657-6 (hardback : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4411-9657-9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Philosophy, Indic. 2. Self (Philosophy) – India. 3. Identity (Psychology) – India. I. Title. B5133.S44G36 212 126–dc23 Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in the United States of America 99778811444411119966557766__PPrreelliimmss__FFiinnaall__ttxxtt__pprriinntt..iinndddd iivv 1122//1155//22001111 66::4400::4499 PPMM Contents Preface viii Introduction: Th e Reach and Resources of Reason 1 PART I PUBLIC REASON PROMOTED Chapter 1 An Ideal of Public Reason 19 Public Reason in the Q uestions of Milinda 20 An Ideal of Public Reason in the N yāya-sūtra 25 Chapter 2 Ancient Indian Logic As a Th eory of Case-Based Reasoning 30 A Model of Reasoning in the N yāya-sūtra 30 Th e Th eory Transformed 34 Retrieving the Ancient Case-Based Model 37 Chapter 3 Neutrality: A Th eory from the Time of Aśoka 40 A Buddhist Treatise on Public Reason: Th e Elements of Dialogue 40 Eight Stances in a Dialogue 41 Th e ‘Way Forward’ and the ‘Way Back’ 43 Chapter 4 Local Norms: Th e Priority of the Particular 49 Rules versus Cases 49 Th ree Models of Particulars as Standards 51 Particulars as Paradigms in the N yāya-sūtra 56 Particulars as Prototypes in the Ritual Sūtras 59 v 99778811444411119966557766__PPrreelliimmss__FFiinnaall__ttxxtt__pprriinntt..iinndddd vv 1122//1155//22001111 66::4400::4499 PPMM VI CONTENTS PART II PRACTICAL REASON RESOURCED Chapter 5 Th e Critic Within 69 Multiple Hinduisms 69 A Dissenting Voice 72 Meeting Reason with Reason 74 Evidence, Expertise and Assent 75 Religion and Reason 77 Chapter 6 Adapt and Substitute 79 Th e Hermeneutics of Ritual 79 Ethics in the Hindu Canon 80 Th e Reason of Sages 82 Adaptive Reasoning from Paradigms 83 Chapter 7 Model Humans and Moral Instincts 90 Persons as Paradigms of Exemplary Conduct 90 Ethical Dilemmas: Th e ‘Case’ (K asus ) 93 Th e Heart’s Approval: Moral Instinct 96 PART III DISSENT Chapter 8 I mplied Voices of Dissent 103 Th e Paradox of Inquiry 103 Inquiry as Adjudication 106 Th e Challenge Reformulated in Śa(cid:2)kara 111 Chapter 9 Can One Seek to Answer Any Question? Śrīhar(cid:2)a 118 On Questioning: Th e Pragmatics of Interrogative Dialogue 118 Th e Prior Knowledge Argument 122 Against Aiming 126 Th e Longing for Knowledge 127 PART IV IDENTITY: FOUND OR FASHIONED? Chapter 10 On the Formation of Self 133 Spiritual Exercises and the Aesthetic Analogy 133 Philosophy as Medicine 136 Plutarch and the Buddhists: Returning Oneself to the Present 139 A Life Complete at Every Moment 144 99778811444411119966557766__PPrreelliimmss__FFiinnaall__ttxxtt__pprriinntt..iinndddd vvii 1122//1155//22001111 66::4400::4499 PPMM Contents vii Taming the Self 146 Philosophy and the Ends of Life 147 Chapter 11 Problems of Self and Identity 151 Reincarnation and Personal Identity 151 Higher and Lower Selves 154 Bad Th oughts and Conscience 156 No Self? 158 Being True to Your Individual Self 160 Chapter 12 I dentity and Illusions about the Self 163 Speaking about the Self 163 Polestar and Compass: Two Modes of Practical Reason 165 Th e Ethics of Self-Deception and the Reach of Reason 167 Cognitive Stories 171 Chapter 13 ‘What You Are You Do Not See, What You See Is Your Shadow’ 173 Th e Philosophical Double 173 Th e Double in Mauni’s Fiction 175 Self to Self 179 Inhabiting an Identity 183 PART V IDENTITY AND THE MODERN INTELLECTUAL Chapter 14 Interpreting Intellectual India 189 Questions of Method 189 Objectivity 190 Immersion 195 Chapter 15 An Exemplary Indian Intellectual 201 Bimal Krishna Matilal 201 A Conversation among Equals 205 A Common Ground? 209 Chapter 16 India and the Shaping of Global Intellectual Culture 213 Covert Borrowings 214 Other Routes of Infl uence 220 Concluding Summary 225 Bibliography 228 Index 235 99778811444411119966557766__PPrreelliimmss__FFiinnaall__ttxxtt__pprriinntt..iinndddd vviiii 1122//1155//22001111 66::4400::4499 PPMM Preface It is a fact made evident by the increasingly multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-racial nature of modern societies that each of us has access to multiple sources of identity, and it follows that you can no longer think of your identity as something merely given by birth but must see it rather as something you actively and deliberatively choose. What resources are available to an individual making this sort of choice? My book is an analy- sis of that question. Th e argument of the book is that one’s identity – by which I mean the aspects of oneself (individual, moral, political, intellec- tual, aesthetic or religious; one’s class, gender or vocation; one’s interests, family or ethnicity; and much else besides) that one values and endorses valuing – is a work of reason. Using theory retrieved from India, my claim will be that identities are fashioned from exercises of reason as derivation from exemplary and paradigmatic cases, that it is procedures of adaptation and substitution from what I will call ‘local norms’ which is distinctive of the rational formation of an identity. I have therefore divided the book into fi ve sections. In the fi rst sec- tion, I examine the concept of public reason, that is, the modalities of reasoning in multi-participant environments where the aim is to reach a consensus. I stress that the emergence of consensus does not require that all the participants share common background values, but only that the background resources of each participant supply them with the neces- sary tools to engage in public deliberation. In the second section, I look at a distinctive model of reasoning, one I fi nd to be widespread in much Indian rational discourse. Th is is an adaptive model according to which exemplary cases provide local standards of evaluation, which then spread and generalise their normative potential. In the third part, I stress the importance of dissent within a model of deliberative reasoning, and the problem I try to address is to locate those features of the models of public and practical reasoning, as sketched in the fi rst two sections, which make viii 99778811444411119966557766__PPrreelliimmss__FFiinnaall__ttxxtt__pprriinntt..iinndddd vviiiiii 1122//1155//22001111 66::4400::4499 PPMM Preface ix dissent possible within Indian traditions of discussion. In the fourth sec- tion I look at some ways in which the bearing of reason on identity has been conceived in Indian intellectual history, focusing on conceptions of the self and its moral identity, and I argue that these historical conceptions supply further resources, to be used creatively and adaptively in the fash- ioning of modern identities. In the fi ft h section I consider more generally how a modern intellectual should make use of past cultures of reasoning and identity-formation. M y research methodology has been to draw on classical Indian philo- sophical theory, but not in the way that it is studied by philologists or historians of Indian philosophy. Rather, I study in detail the precise nature of the resources presented to an individual by India’s cultures of reasoning and public debate. It is my belief that the question posed in this book is one which is internal to the Indian theory itself, and governs the nature of its development. My fi rm conviction is that contemporary debates about global governance and cosmopolitan identities can benefi t from resources drawn from Indian discussion of public and practical reason, resources that have been developed in circumstances of intercultural pluralism and with an emphasis on consensual resolution of confl ict. One of my broader aims is to demonstrate that parties with conceptions of the good defi ned by religious affi liation can nevertheless enter into an overlapping consen- sus; that is, that a diversity of religious affi liation need not be an obstacle to participation in democratic secular governance. Here my examination of the resources made available by India’s intellectual past is to be seen as a case study of a general phenomenon, and similar case studies of other intellectual cultures in both Asia and the West, with due attention to t heir specifi cities and nuances, can and should be undertaken. Insofar as my claim is that your identity is grounded in what you choose rationally to endorse, my investigations here pertain to the question ‘What makes some value, attitude or preference your own? ’; that is, to the ques- tion of the ownership of mental states. I argue in Th e Self: Naturalism, Consciousness and the First-Person Stance that an answer to this question is constitutive of a conception of self, and the present work can therefore be seen as drawing out some of the practical consequences of the more abstract and theoretical discussion there. 1 In another book, Th e Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India 1450–1700 ce , I demonstrate 1 Jonardon Ganeri, Th e Self: Naturalism, Consciousness and the First-Person Stance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 99778811444411119966557766__PPrreelliimmss__FFiinnaall__ttxxtt__pprriinntt..iinndddd iixx 1122//1155//22001111 66::4400::4499 PPMM