Identity as Reasoned Choice: A South Asian Perspective on The Reach and Resources of Public and Practical Reason in Shaping Individual Identities

251 Pages·2012·1.4 MB·English

by  Jonardon Ganeri

IDENTITY AS REASONED CHOICE
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IDENTITY AS REASONED CHOICE
A SOUTH ASIAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE REACH
AND RESOURCES OF PUBLIC AND
PRACTICAL REASON IN SHAPING
INDIVIDUAL IDENTITIES
JONARDON GANERI

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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).
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