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60029 results in Classical studies (general)

Page 251 of 3002

  • 13 - The interiorisation of ritual in India and Greece

    • By Richard Seaford, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Exeter.
  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 204-219

  • Summary

    To the intriguing similarities that have been observed between Greek and Indian thought around the middle of the first millennium I will here add another: the interiorisation of ritual (specifically, the cosmic rite of passage), a process connected to the advent both of monism and of the all-importance of the inner self. The interiorisation of ritual is an idea that has been used by Indologists but not, so far as I know, by Hellenists. This is not to deny that there are differences between the two cultures in the way that the ritual is interiorised, and in the nature of the sources. But this chapter focuses on the basic similarity, and indicates a way of explaining why interiorisation occurred. I should add that, of the three kinds of explanation (listed in the Introduction) for the early similarities between Greek and Indian ‘philosophical’ thought, I favour – for the period before Alexander crossed the Indus – autonomous parallel development. Pre-Socratic and Upaniṣadic thought both exhibit coherent internal development, influenced in my view by the monetisation that made Greece and India (and China) different in this period from other societies. This is an argument that I will pursue in detail in a monograph. But the importance of monetisation will emerge even from within the relatively narrow confines of this chapter.

    The interiorisation of Vedic sacrifice

    Early Vedic sacrifice is based on a large series of imagined equivalences (or correspondences, or identifications) through which, especially in the Brāhmaṇas, what is within one's control (especially ritual control) corresponds with what is outside it. Ritual correspondence is defined by Clemens Cavallin as ‘a relation between two or more entities, which connects them in a way that makes it possible to influence one of them through the ritual manipulation of the other (or to explain e.g. the use of one entity in terms of the other)’. Such equivalences allowed sacrifice to be used as a means of encapsulating – so as to acquire or control – a wide range of phenomena.

    However, this system of correspondences was not static. For the period of the Brāhmaṇas and early Upaniṣads the system of correspondences was transformed into monism, in a way that involved the individualisation and interiorisation of the sacrifice. I will describe how several scholars come to this view from different perspectives, so that my argument does not depend on the reliability of any one of them.

  • 8 - Does the concept of theōria fit the beginning of Indian thought?

    • By Alexis Pinchard, ‘professeur agrégé’ of philosophy at the Lycée Militaire d'Aix-en-Provence (France) and associate member of the CNRS, UMR 7528 ‘Iranian and Indian Worlds’.
  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 118-133

  • Summary

    Is early Indian thought more interested in salvation than in truth?

    In ‘Philosophy and the Crisis of the European Man’, while aiming at characterising the intellectual attitude of the primeval European thinkers in contradistinction with other wise men of the same time in India and China, Edmund Husserl attributes the concept of ‘philosophy’, understood as the quest for the firm basement of any future science, only to the Greek Pre-Socratics. Of course both Indian and Greek thinkers consider the universe as a whole and they try to explain it from a single principle inasmuch as it constitutes a whole. They both care about what is universal, and might have expressed true assertions about it. But, according to Husserl, the purpose of such global explanations is different on each side, and therefore Indian thinkers still belong to the so-called ‘mythical-religious’ mentality whereas only Greece reaches the pure philosophy that implies the autonomy of rational thought. With the word ‘autonomy’ Husserl does not only mean that the individual mind thinks by itself, without considering tradition or sacred revelation, but also and mainly that rational thought has rational goals. In Husserl's view rationality did exist in the mythical-religious mentality of India and China, but not in a sovereign way. Only the early Greek thinkers would be concerned with the research for truth for the sake of truth. This love of truth would be independent from the benefits that the possession of truth may bring to the lover, for example immortality. Thus, thanks to the Greek starting point, the discovery of truth can appear as the main task of all mankind, progressing generation by generation, step by step in infinitum. Europe would be responsible for this spiritual inheritance of a continuous progress in pure knowledge. By contrast Indian thinkers would be mainly interested in personal salvation. In India knowledge could be useful, and even necessary to escape death and every evil, but it is not the highest goal by itself and in itself. It is just a means to release the soul from the bounds of body, disease, fear and death.

  • 9 - Self or being without boundaries: on Śaṅkara and Parmenides

    • By Chiara Robbiano, Assistant professor of Philosophy at University College Utrecht.
  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 134-148

  • Summary

    There can be no difference anywhere that doesn't make a difference elsewhere … The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one.

    William James, ‘What Pragmatism Means’

    This chapter focuses on a similar argument made by Parmenides and Śaṅkara involving the claim that boundaries between everyday entities are superimposed and not real. I hereby continue my exploration of the similarity of the arguments of the two philosophers, who, so far, have been compared only either as adherents of monism, or in order to show historical dependence, mostly of Greek thought on the Veda. I will show how Parmenides and Śaṅkara argue that any boundary that we believe to be real and capable of separating the many individuals and things can be proven to be superimposed by humans on being rather than being real.

    As a foil, I will mention an alternative metaphysical framework – which has been adopted for instance by Descartes, and which might be regarded as part of the default everyday Western metaphysical framework – according to which reality is fundamentally fragmented in separate things and individuals.

    Parmenides and Śaṅkara acknowledge the existence of a fundamental reality: undivided being or Self. The other side of the coin of an undivided being is the lack of reality of the boundaries superimposed on being. The question is: what makes them regard anything that differentiates one thing from the next as a superimposition, which is less real than undivided being? I will show that the argument involves the ‘epistemological weakness’ of what is superimposed on undivided being. This argument points at the impossibility of ‘knowing’ – in a special sense that is radically different from having opinions – anything other than being, which involves the impossibility of knowing any boundary. The step from the impossibility of knowing anything other than being to the lack of reality of any second being might sound like a fallacy, since it takes an unwarranted step from epistemology to ontology.

  • 2 - The concept of ṛtá in the Ṛgveda

    • By Joanna Jurewicz, professor in the Oriental Studies Department of Warsaw University.
  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 28-39

  • Summary

    In this chapter I will discuss the problem of the beginning of abstract thinking as it is attested in the Ṛgveda. It is an ancient Indian text from the fifteenth to the thirteenth centuries BCE, composed in Sanskrit. Its final redaction was done probably in the seventh century BCE. The Ṛgveda (similarly to other early Indian texts) was composed and transmitted orally for centuries. Its earliest known manuscript is dated to the eleventh century CE.

    In his paper ‘The Linguistic Task of the Presocratics’ Havelock (1983) reconstructs the beginnings of abstract concepts in Pre-Socratic philosophy. He shows how the concepts of dimension and space, body and matter, void, change, motion, etc., were created. He claims that the beginning of abstract thought is connected with the beginning of literacy. He shows how the Pre-Socratics used their earlier oral tradition, how they extended the meanings of words and broke the rules of traditional syntax in order to produce more abstract meanings.

    My analysis will show that the way chosen by the Pre-Socratic philosophers is not the only possible way of creating abstract concepts. Moreover, my claim is that abstract thought is not necessarily connected with literacy because, as I have just mentioned, the early Indian texts were composed and transmitted orally.

    The most general definition of the abstract concept is that it is a concept that does not refer to any concrete experience. We do not find many such concepts in the Ṛgveda. The main instances are sát (being/truth), ásat (non-being/untruth) and ṛtá, which is translated as ‘truth, order, cosmos’. (For ṛtá see also Chaturvedi in this volume.) While sát and ásat appear rarely and mostly in abstract contexts, ṛtá often appears in contexts which evoke concrete concepts connected with everyday life experience. For example, we can read about its horn, milk, udder, womb, etc. The expressions ‘horn of truth’ or ‘udder of cosmos’ sound strange, but the concept denoted by the word ṛtá must be such as to justify them. What is also intriguing is that the word ṛtá is the past participle of the verb ṛ-, ‘to go’, and literally means ‘something that has gone’.

  • 11 - ‘Master the chariot, master your Self’: comparing chariot metaphors as hermeneutics for mind, self and liberation in ancient Greek and Indian Sources

    • By Jens Schlieter, studied Philosophy, Tibetology / Buddhist Studies and Comparative Religion in Bonn and Vienna.
  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 168-185

  • Summary

    In ancient Greece and India, the real use of chariots encompassed sports, cults, journeys and combat. These uses of the supposedly most complex mobile technology of early Greek and Indian culture suggest a potentially similar complex metaphorical or ‘symbolic’ use of the chariot. It can be assumed that steering fast chariots was a demanding and fascinating task: an intensive experience of speed and mid-distance travel, but also a dangerous device, as numerous reported instances of chariot accidents in ancient sources show. Thus, it should not astonish that chariots (and chariot rides) were taken as a source domain, forming a dynamic ‘anthropo-therio-technological metaphor’ for the interpretation of abstract target domains such as gods, or the philosophical reflection of body, soul and liberation. In fact, in both (and other Eurasian) traditions chariots were depicted as vehicles of gods such as the sun, i.e. as a symbol of cosmic stability; they were, moreover, used as symbols of royal power and social prestige, e.g. of kings and warriors (in the Iliad, Vedic hymns, and poetic literature); and, finally, chariots served as metaphors for the ‘person’, the ‘mind’ and the ‘way to liberation’.

    The parallel application of chariot imagery for the ‘Self’ and its salvific progress in both Greek and Indian contexts is indeed most astounding – yet it must be remarked that a certain Indian influence on pre-Alexandrian Greece is, although highly unlikely, theoretically possible, since the absolute (and even relative) chronology of the Upaniṣads is still a matter of academic dispute. Applying conceptual metaphor theory as a hermeneutic tool, I will try to outline subtle but important differences between the Greek and Indian chariot metaphors for ‘mind’, the ‘Self’ and ‘liberation’ – for instance in respect to a ‘chariot passenger’ able to descend from the ‘chariot’ at a final destination, or with regard to the ‘horses’ as either ‘parts of the soul’ or (neutral) ‘senses’, to be mastered by the charioteer. A cognitive analysis of chariot metaphors, may, in other words, be a valuable tool for highlighting those (sometimes hidden) philosophical pre conceptions prevalent in abstract domains such as the ‘mind’, the connection of ‘body and mind’, the relationship between the ‘rational’ and the ‘emotional’ part of the ‘mind’, the relation between a ‘steering mind’ and the ‘Self’, etc.

  • 15 - On affirmation, rejection and accommodation of the world in Greek and Indian religion

    • By Matylda Obryk, visiting professor of Classics at the Northeast Normal University in Changchun, China.
  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 235-250

  • Summary

    Since its coinage by Jaspers, scholars have been looking for an explanation for the changes that Indian and Greek cultures (and many others) seem to have gone through in the so-called Axial Age. This is the time in which the so-called Greek Enlightenment and the Upaniṣadic turn in Indian philosophy took place (roughly a period of several centuries from the eighth to the second century BCE). I will apply to this development a typology coined by Roy Wallis, a sociologist working on new religious movements in the 1980s. Wallis analyses par excellence new religious movements from a static perspective. However, his typology might be understood even more broadly and provide a frame within which even the dynamics of the development of cultures may find a plausible explanation. We will also see that light on the similarities between Axial Age developments may be shed by an Indian concept of human development concerning the attitudes of humans towards their environment in a widest possible sense. We should also note from the beginning that in the most ancient cultures there is no way to draw a sharp distinction between the secular and religious spheres of life, and therefore issues of both religious and philosophical character will be discussed in parallel here.

    Wallis divides religious movements into three categories according to their attitudes towards the values and settings of the surrounding world. Wallis's first category is the world-affirming type wherein the world is being embraced and accepted as it appears in order to achieve goals that are immanently connected with the life within this world as such – happiness, prosperity and so on. The second type would then encompass the world-rejecting movements. They reject the values and mind-sets that derive from the world, and very often strongly renounce and negate all that comes from the world of senses. And finally the third type is the world-accommodating type wherein the world is understood and moulded in such a way that it has to be neither rejected nor fully embraced but just seen from a new perspective or engaged in a new attitude.

  • 5 - Cosmology, psyche and ātman in the Timaeus, the Ṛgveda and the Upaniṣads

    • By Hyun Höchsmann, studied philosophy, art history and literature at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich and the University of London.
  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 71-86

  • Summary

    I see that I am about to receive a complete and splendid banquet of discourse. (Plato Timaeus 27b)

    ‘A feast of reason’ – cosmology in the Timaeus

    Anticipating ‘a complete and splendid banquet of discourse’, Socrates prompts Timaeus to begin his narration about ‘the knowledge of the nature of the universe’ after calling upon the gods, ‘as custom requires’ (27b). To launch the ‘discourse about the universe’ with the epic convention of the invocation of the gods places Timaeus’ description of the origin and the nature of the cosmos in the realm of poetic invention – the realm of muthos.

    Timaeus explains that we cannot know the cause of the creation of the cosmos with certainty and that his transmission is only a probable story (eikōs muthos, 29c–d). Why is the origin of the cosmos difficult to ascertain and the pattern on which it is built unknowable? For Plato it is not because, as Heraclitus remarked, ‘nature loves to hide itself’ (B123). If Plato contended that he had some privileged way of knowing the origin of the cosmos, he would be enlisted in the ranks of a mystic.3 But the cosmos Plato envisages is a formidable construct of reason. In How Philosophers Saved Myths Luc Brisson elucidates Plato's presentation of Timaeus’ discourse as both eikōs muthos and eikōs logos as follows: ‘And this is because the dialogue is a discourse on the constitution of the sensible world, that is the “image” or “copy” of the intelligible world.’ As Brisson notes, Plato contrasts (29b3–c3) the true discourse and a credible discourse in terms of their corresponding subjects, the model (paradeigma) and its copy (eikon). Timaeus’ discourse is a description of the physical world of becoming which cannot be known with certainty.

    The starting point of Plato's cosmology (27d–28a) is the distinction between being (‘that which is always real and has no becoming’) comprehensible by rational understanding and becoming (‘that which is becoming and is never real’) perceived by the senses.

  • 7 - Technologies of self-immortalisation in ancient Greece and early India

    • By Paolo Visigalli, He received a PhD in South Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge.
  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 104-117

  • Summary

    Nowadays, the mention of ‘technologies’ and ‘immortality’ in the same breath brings to mind futuristic biochemical methods to stop bodily decay, restore youth, and transfer a mind's contents and processes to an artificial, unalterable substratum. And yet of course a wide variety of past cultures have also been concerned with attaining some sort of immortality. This essay explores the idea, present in both ancient Greece and early India, that immortality can be achieved through some structured methods, what I call ‘technologies of self-immortalisation’. At the outset, three key terms require qualification: ‘immortality’, ‘self’ and ‘technologies’.

    What, then, is immortality? Despite the variety of beliefs about immortality, we may envision two main models: as a never-ending bodily existence, and as the indefinite continuation of one's ‘self’ in an afterlife. The former model, for example, is the one advanced by Daoist and Western alchemists. In their mountain dwellings and hidden laboratories, they sought to make their body eternal through a regimented lifestyle, sexual techniques, the manipulation of substances and the ingestion of elixirs. The latter model, common to many religious traditions, is the one relevant to this essay.

    The notion of ‘self’ is a complex one. This term, it would appear, sits together with a number of other concepts, most notably the ‘soul’. And, as emphasised by philosophers, classical scholars and anthropologists, it is inherently linked with a set of yet other themes, such as ‘self-awareness’, ‘introspection’, ‘personhood’ and ‘identity’. For the purposes of this chapter, I look below not at unanalysed assumptions about the self, however this latter may be understood, but at consciously formulated ideas about how to produce an immortal self through the application of certain methods.

    I call such methods ‘technologies’, borrowing the term from Michel Foucault's influential ‘Technologies of the Self’. In that essay, Foucault defines ‘technology’ as a set of practices, literary genres, and attention to certain ways of thinking, all of which contribute to producing a particular kind of self-understanding.

  • 4 - Ātman and its transition to worldly existence

    • By Greg Bailey, formerly reader in Sanskrit, is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Program in Asian Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne.
  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 55-70

  • Summary

    What can we say about a concept like the ātman when its principal feature is its apparent indefinability and impersonal nature? Initially we could do worse than utilise Jurewicz's definition of the term, based mainly on Ṛgvedic sources: ‘This word is used to denote the essence of an entity, the whole body (which ensures personal identity and existence), its most important parts, which are the head (which ensures personal identity and existence – here and in the afterworlds) and the breath (which ensures the existence of a living being)’. But moving on to the Upaniṣads, the final texts in the Vedic corpus, we find a systematisation and an impersonalism in the conceptual development of the ātman idea. We are confronted in the Upaniṣads with what individual teachers say about it, rather than what it is, because what it is defies easy description in words and this has to be taken as the axiomatic commencement point for any study of it.

    In looking at the possible origin of the idea of such an essence, we could draw upon Proferes, who has recently argued for ideas of universal sovereignty, associated with the sacred fire of the household, clan and tribe, where the rājā's fire combines the parts with the whole. It becomes a political metaphor that could be used to develop a metaphysical idea of unity within diversity. For Proferes,

    The identity of the king with his dominion and, ultimately, with the cosmos can be shown to have directly informed the early Upaniṣadic discourse on the nature of the absolute and the means to achieving spiritual freedom. The evidence is found in the substantial number of Upaniṣadic passages in which metaphors of sovereignty are employed in immediate connection with the identification of the macrocosm and microcosm.

    He gives a series of examples from the two earliest Upaniṣads, in order to argue that it is the sense of ‘unlimitedness’ associated with Vedic ideals of freedom that becomes disconnected from theories of kingship and translated into a metaphysical idea of freedom from all limitations.

Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
  • Edited by Richard Seaford
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016
  • This volume brings together Hellenists and Indologists representing a variety of perspectives on the similarities and differences between the two cultures. It offers a collaborative contribution to the burgeoning interest in the Axial Age and will be of interest to anyone intrigued by the big questions inspired by the ancient world.

  • Introduction

  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 1-11

  • Summary

    How are early Greek and early Indian thought similar? And how do we explain the similarities? These questions can contribute to the current debate about the so-called Axial Age, in which – it is claimed – various civilisations were in the first millenium bce transformed, intellectually and ethically, in ways by which we are still defined.

    There is general agreement neither on the dating of the Axial Age nor on which civilisations count as manifestations of it. The focus of this volume is mainly (but not exclusively) on the period from about 800 BCE to Alexander's crossing of the Indus in 326 BCE. In this period we can say that philosophy is to be found in both Greece and India, provided that ‘philosophy’ is defined not by rationality, which is in a sense ubiquitous, but rather by understanding the universe as a systematic whole that lacks any fundamental role for the personal agency of deity. Of course in neither culture was this a majority view. It is certainly not the only possible definition of philosophy, and we might even prefer to call it proto-scientific rather than philosophical. But it defines a phenomenon of considerable intellectual and historical significance, and distinguishes Greece and India (and China) from the other societies that are often regarded as manifesting the Axial transformation: Israel and Iran.

    The belief just described as defining ‘philosophy’ is one of many shared by Greece and India in this period. Allen finds a basic pentadic structure in various contexts in both Greek and Indian texts. The development of abstraction, as a prerequisite for philosophy, is traced as early as the Ṛgveda by Jurewicz in the instance of ṛtá – ‘cosmos, order, truth’ – a concept that is then compared with Greek harmonia by Chaturvedi. Other shared ‘philosophical’ beliefs are monism (the belief that everything is in fact a single entity, for which see Seaford, Robbiano, Obryk), and the idea that understanding the (sometimes explicitly incorporeal) inner self or soul (psuchē, ātman) is central to understanding the universe and vital for human well-being.

  • 12 - New riders, old chariots: poetics and comparative philosophy

  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 186-203

  • Summary

    Scholars have claimed that similarities between the Greek poem of Parmenides and the Indic Upaniṣads demand an explanation from either historical contact between Greece and other cultures, or a commonly inherited Indo-European philosophy. Several striking similarities between Parmenides and the Upaniṣads supposedly reveal borrowing or a genetic relationship: first, monism, the idea of metaphysical unity; second, the rejection of empirical knowledge; third, the potential for allegory; and fourth, the chariot imagery. This last similarity will be the focus of this chapter, which will argue that Parmenides’ poem engages with the chariot race during Patroclus’ funeral games in book 23 of the Iliad. Then, it will argue that the Kaṭha Upaniṣad's chariot imagery draws on the use of chariots in the Ṛgveda. Therefore, these supposedly anomalous chariots function perfectly well within their respective Greek and Indic intellectual traditions.

    We contend that there is no need to posit Indo-European philosophy to explain the striking, but ultimately incidental parallels between these two texts. In short, an Indo-European explanation of the chariot in this case would only be applicable to Homeric poetry and the Ṛgveda. This itself is unlikely, because the earliest evidence of the chariot in Greece (sixteenth century BCE) long post-dates any speaker of late Indo-European.

    There is perhaps even less of a reason to posit historical borrowing or ‘diffusion’ to account for the similarities in the chariot imagery. There is no historically reliable evidence for an extended conversation between a Greek speaker and Indic speaker before the time of Alexander. Nor is there any historically reliable evidence that any Pre-Socratic philosopher had any contact with Iranian, let alone Indic priests. Unless new primary source evidence from antiquity is discovered, there is no way to argue either point with probability. Contextualisation is source criticism: one must examine what a document is, how it relates to other evidence, and how it has come to us.

    In the case of Parmenides, this chariot imagery, and indeed most of Parmenides’ language, has been analysed in terms of earlier hexameter poetry. However, there is an unrecognised density of intertexts between Parmenides’ poem and a limited episode in the Iliad, the chariot race in Patroclus’ funeral games.

  • 17 - Nietzsche on Greek and Indian philosophy

    • By Emma Syea, currently completing her doctoral studies in Philosophy at King's College London.
  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 265-278

  • Summary

    This chapter aims to use Nietzsche as a prism for examining the parallels between ancient India and ancient Greece. As Mervyn Sprung maintains, ideas of Greece and India are viewed by Nietzsche very much through a ‘powerful Nietzschean lens’ in that he mines these cultures for concepts, attitudes and Weltanschauungen which will provide him with alternatives to the life-denying Christian morality he so deplored. I would like to suggest, however, that the interpretations Nietzsche offers are by no means redundant. The parallels between ancient Indian and ancient Greek philosophy have frequently been noted by commentators, and various theories have been put forward to account for them. One prevalent theory is the idea of parallel autonomous intellectual development in these countries. I would like to suggest here that the genealogical approach Nietzsche advances in On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) complements this notion of parallel autonomous intellectual development in Greece and India. The genealogical method asserts that the value systems which emerge in societies are driven by and supported by certain physiological, psychological and sociological trends. There is no sole origin for values; instead we see a conjunction of diverse lines of development and a multiplicity of origins. In this way it seems very possible that we would see parallels between Greek and Indian thought if certain conditions obtained in both cultures.

    In particular this chapter will examine the idea of value systems arising in India and Greece in part due to the emergence of city-states, and the ever present threat of war. Such conditions cultivated a spirit of agon (ἀγών, often translated as conflict, strife, competition), at both a personal and societal level, leading to a certain set of values. The idea of conflict and agon preoccupied Nietzsche across his oeuvre. I would like to suggest that such themes are manifest not only in Greek thought – we need only think of Homer's Iliad, Hesiod's two Erises and Heraclitean strife – but also in Indian texts such as the Mahābhārata and the Ramayana, both of which Nietzsche was acquainted with from as early on as his school days.

  • 10 - Soul chariots in Indian and Greek thought: polygenesis or diffusion?

    • By Paolo Magnone, teaches Sanskrit Language and Literature at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart as well as Oriental Religions at the Higher Institute for Religious Sciences (both in Milan).
  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 149-167

  • Summary

    Not only the classicist, but even the layman with a casual interest in Greek philosophy is familiar with the allegory which Plato employs in the Phaedrus to describe the nature of the soul in terms, as he says, that are ‘within human power’:

    Let [the soul] be likened to the composite inborn power of a pair of winged horses and of a charioteer … (246a)

    Both classical scholars and cultivated laymen alike, on the other hand, have seldom been aware of a strikingly similar allegory occurring in one of the most celebrated works of the final period of Vedic literature, the Kaṭha Upaniṣad:

    Know that the Self is the rider in a chariot, and the body is the chariot; and know that the intelligence is the charioteer, and the mind is the bridle. They say that the senses are the horses, and the sense objects are their lanes … (KaU 1.3.3)

    For their part, indologists have taken due notice of the puzzling similarity from early on, albeit with differing assessments. Already a century ago, in connection with the Kaṭha passage, Keith observed that ‘the contrast with the Platonic metaphor of the Phaidros is as obvious as the parallel’, further on passing his judgement that in spite of the interesting parallelism ‘the details of the two [metaphors] are perfectly distinct, for Plato uses the conception to illustrate the struggle between the rational and the irrational elements in the soul, and his distinction of θύμος and ἐπιθυμία has no real parallel in the Upaniṣads’. On the other hand, Belvalkar and Ranade evidently did not share his caution, as they enthusiastically aver that ‘the extraordinary resemblance of the two descriptions down to the smallest details staggers us, and we must confess we do not know how to account for it’. Almost in between there is Radhakrishnan's opinion that ‘in spite of difference in details, the Kaṭha and Plato agree in looking upon intelligence as the ruling power of the soul … and aiming at the integration of the different elements of human nature’.

  • 6 - Plato and yoga

    • By John Bussanich, Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico.
  • Edited by Richard Seaford, University of Exeter
  • Book:
    Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought
    Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 December 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016, pp 87-103

  • Summary

    Plato and South Asian yogic traditions espouse various soteriological goals – divinisation, nirvāṇa, the identity of ātman and brahman, and yogic aloneness (kaivalya) – but their prescribed methods for attaining them present striking similarities. In addition to right living and right beliefs, meditation and contemplation are valorised as essential means for the deconstruction of the empirical person. While the importance ascribed to such practices is widely recognised in South Asia, the prominent intellectualism of the Platonic dialogues and of Plato scholars has obscured the existential centrality of the practice of inwardness and tranquillity for philosophers who aspire to ‘become as like god as possible’ (Theaet. 176b1–2). The goal of this chapter is to highlight this dimension of the Platonic way of life by demonstrating affinities with South Asian meditative praxis.

    Platonists and Indian yogins embrace a way of life that integrates cognitive and affective aspects of human nature on a path that eliminates ignorance and suffering through the purification and simplification of consciousness. In Pierre Hadot's formulation, Greek thinkers practised the art of living as

    a concrete attitude and determinate life-style, which engages the whole of existence. The philosophical act is not situated merely on the cognitive level, but on that of the self and of being. It is a progress which causes us to be more fully, and makes us better. It is a conversion which turns our entire life upside down, changing the life of the person who goes through it. It raises the individual from an inauthentic condition of life, darkened by unconsciousness and harassed by worry, to an authentic state of life, in which he attains self-consciousness, an exact vision of the world, inner peace and freedom.

    I shall begin with the general principles that underlie Indian yogic practices.

  • • The highest knowledge cannot be conveyed via the written word, but rather must be transmitted orally, or even in silence, from teacher to pupil in conjunction with the practice of meditation.

  • • Psychology is equivalent to cosmology: the hierarchy of states of consciousness parallels precisely the basic structure of the cosmos.

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