Philosophy on Wall 3, March

Many feminists have, understandably, challenged or rejected the traditional Kantian approach to morality….Mainstream accounts ignore the lived realities of women….. writes Akshara Ravishankar

PHILOSOPHY ON WALL

THINKING ON PHILOSOPHY III
  

The absence, until fairly recently, of women’s voices, particularly explicitly feminist voices, in mainstream philosophy is a well documented and acknowledged fact. The need for feminist philosophical input has, however, been more widely recognized in the 20^th century. The field of ethics and moral philosophy, for example, has seen a wide range of debates arising from concerns articulated by feminist movements.

       

By the very nature of their concerns, women’s movements have engaged with ethical questions at fairly fundamental levels. Issues such as abortion, institutionalized violence, bodily and sexual autonomy have, at their crux, enabled fundamental questions surrounding moral responsibility and agency to enter into public debate in ways that tend to challenge many strongly held views on these issues, as well as basic assumptions regarding the way moral questions are understood. The impact of morality on women’s everyday lives in ways that are sometimes overt, sometimes subtle, also needs to be examined in a way that allows for women’s experiences to be included in articulating larger questions of morality.

Many feminists have, understandably, challenged or rejected the traditional Kantian approach to morality. To say that morality is or must be rational, universal and essentially individualistic, according to them, is to ignore the social and relational nature of morality. Writers like Carol Gilligan have challenged both Kantian and utilitarian accounts of ethics in favour of a more socially defined, care-based ethics. Mainstream accounts ignore the lived realities of women; in addition, they tend to gloss over the role of social structures and relationships in shaping ideas of morality. The traditional understanding of moral autonomy sees the individual unrealistically – as having a complete understanding of his/her own needs and desires, as an essentially rational being in isolation from other, social forces. An ethics of care, therefore, recognizes the fact that the idea of care and relationships must be central to any understanding of ethics.  

The ethics of care, however, is only one among many feminist responses. Many criticisms have been levelled against it, including the criticism that it reinforces certain stereotypes surrounding what it means to be a woman, and fails to take into account several other perspectives and identities, ignoring the diversity of women’s experiences. Another position on moral agency stresses the need to understand the role of social institutions in enabling various kinds of oppression. It questions the idea of a single ‘female’ identity, instead allowing for the recognition of our various intersecting identities as well as the diverse roles we are required to play in our public and personal lives. It attempts a different view of the self – as comprising various identities, in order to identify the many social forces at work in the moral lives of people of all genders.

It’s clear that one of the important efforts of feminism, both in terms of feminist thought and activism is to broaden moral and political debates to consider otherwise invisibilised forms of oppression, particularly those that take place within structures like marriage and family, which are generally taken for granted. Issues like domestic violence and dowry-related violence against women, for instance, were considered ‘private’ matters for a long time, until women’s movements brought them into the open and demanded recognition of such forms of violence. Similarly, the notion of ‘objectivity’ in looking at specific forms of oppression has also been challenged. In a situation where a woman has been sexually harassed, for example, the violence she faces may not be overt and an attempt to be ‘objective’ may be experienced as further victimization and a denial of the reality of her subjective experience. The same holds true of many other forms of discrimination, such as homophobia and discrimination in the workplace. Women’s movements have always been engaged in taking moral stands on such matters, thus breaking many assumptions surrounding moral and political issues.

As I have mentioned, care ethics, despite its problems, throws up important questions regarding what we do or do not choose to include within our conceptions of the moral, just as other forms of feminism opened up ‘private’ spheres like the family in order to also see them as sites of oppression and resistance. For instance, those people who have actively attempted to create support systems outside traditional notions of family as natal and marital relationships have no choice but to recognize the significance of the ethics of care. These efforts to create alternatives to structures such as family also need to be recognized as intrinsically political and as evolving new understandings of what constitutes moral responsibility. For one, it restates the act of building and sustaining social relationships as essentially political, and not as something that is ‘private’ and therefore less relevant than the building of other, more ‘public’ structures. It also requires a constant negotiation of what it means to be morally responsible to another human being, and a re-formulation of notions like duty and love. It requires formulating norms of relating based, not on generalized theory, but on improvisation and interaction. In order to avoid perpetuating already existing forms of oppression, it requires a constant re-evaluation of those norms and an acute awareness of interpersonal power relationships. Moral theory that is based purely on reason, denying the role of emotion, cannot grasp the variety of ways in which people choose to make moral decisions about their lives. While traditionally male philosophy largely ignored these aspects of social life, we are now faced with the opportunity to use them politically, not simply to further understand and include different forms of relating within the ambit of moral discussion, but to transform them.

While philosophers, including feminist philosophers, cannot settle on an account of morality which satisfies all areas of moral life, there is a need to model any understanding of ethics in a way that does justice to the various aspects of women’s (and men’s) complex lives and diverse experiences, and also allows for the possibility of change, both social and personal.

Akshara Ravishankar

M.A. Philosophy

nowherewoman@gmail.com

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Philosophy on Wall 2, February

PHILOSOPHY ON WALL

THINKING ON PHILOSOPHY II

The Art of Disagreement

                                                                   Shinod .N.K,

                                        PhD Philosophy

                                                                  iggooy@gmail.com

“Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime”

-Imre Lakatose, Science and Pseudo Science.

Philosophy is an art of disagreement, disagreements to the fundamental or foundational beliefs of any system. Philosophizing (for me) is the act of finding ways of disagreement. About what or on what to be disagreed is also carved out during the act of philosophizing. It is not to say that philosophy/philosophizing is mere disagreements with everything. Instead, the point is, philosophy begins as well as grows with disagreements. Rational disagreements naturally lead to questions and questions in turn to endeavors. So, in a sense philosophy is an art of questioning. Since one cannot disagree or question blindly, the disagreements need a peculiar kind of formulation, strictly speaking, a ‘mode of formulation' that can be agreed upon throughout the discourse. I call this agreed mode of formulation as logic. Since logic is all about arguments, philosophy is also an art of argumentation. An argument as a substantiated affirmation or rejection is always a disagreement in some form to something, for mere agreements or disagreements never form an argument.

          Disagreements to the fundamental beliefs usually arise out of dissatisfactions. Since dissatisfactions can arise out of many reasons-from personal to societal- subsequent disagreements and following investigations are also of infinitely many things. Categorization of such inquires will end up with branching of philosophy, like metaphysics (inquiries about existence, God and many), epistemology(inquiries about knowledge per se), ethics(about morality), aesthetics(about nature of beauty, art and taste) and so on. One can always ask what metaphysics per se is disagreeing with. But is there anything as metaphysics per se? All our endeavors are always for or against something. Or they are always about something. In all such acts one has to counter the available established believes. So I think, we don't have something as metaphysics per se rather what we have is metaphysical inquires, a token name for inquiries about fundamental questions regarding reality, existence and many of that sort. One is always free to use the term metaphysic to broaden all these inquiries. So the question “what metaphysic per se is disagreeing with?” seems to be a false question for there is no such thing as metaphysic per se as in the above explained sense. This might answer the similar questions about other branches of philosophy. 

All intellectual pursuits seem to have two ends.  The starting point is the one with a few basic assumptions which are agreed upon within the community of inquirers. For example physicists certainly agree about the existence of matter and they cannot question the existence of matter within physics. This I call a closed end for these are unquestionable affirmations within the system of inquiry. Next is a culminating end which may or may not be closed. For example the Human Genome project was an inquiry which is closed at both ends. Its opening end is closed as that of the basic assumptions of biological sciences. Its culminating end is also closed because the progress of that project was towards a fixed goal (mapping of the human genes, when loosely speaking.) But science in general is closed at its starting point and open at its culminating point. It is open because it is progressing but not towards a fixed goal[1]. What makes philosophy different from science or sort of intellectual pursuits is its openness at both the ends of its inquiry. There is no agreed basic and general assumption to the opening end of any philosophical inquiry. There is nothing beyond contention in the opening end of a philosophical inquiry. The culminating end also seems to be open because, like science, philosophy is also progressing but not to a fixed goal. This is not to say that philosophy is an activity of futile questioning rather to make it clear that nothing is taken for granted in philosophical inquiries. (Here I prefer to say that philosophy should not take anything for granted. Historically philosophy has taken several things at least for some period of time.[2] Even such facts those seems to be most certain, like the existence of a world out there is not taken for granted in philosophy. When compromises are made about what is and what is not to be questioned, investigations become either science or a system in philosophy. When one agrees upon the existence of a physical world out there and going after the physical properties of that word we call it physics. When the compromises are made about the real existence (whatever it may be) [and is of a world of ideas which is not this world, as what Plato had done] then that is metaphysics and is a branch of philosophy.

          As already said there are many reasons for intellectual dissatisfactions which results in inquires. Since no such reason can be neutral (whatever this term neutral means) or impartial, philosophical investigations are also not neutral as it is/was thought to be. Like any other human activity, philosophy is a product of its time and space. It seems that any sort of neutrality in investigations that philosophy can claim is its willingness to check and recheck its own nature and positions at any point of the investigation.

          In a sense philosophy is the product of uncompromising skepticism. (I am using the term skepticism not in the traditional way as that of the rejection of the possibility of knowledge. By skepticism I mean the continuous disagreement with any sort of final principle which might close any of the end points of inquiry.) Skeptical even to one’s own believes and positions. It is an art of arguing to show that nothing within and out there is non-vulnerable.

I am thankful to Sreejith for the time he spent and critical comments he made over the first draft of this write up.

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[1]  Reyden Thomas A C,  and Huene, Paul Hoyningen, 'Kuhn's evolutionary Analogy in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and “ the Road since Structure”,  Philosophy of science,Vol.77, July 2010

[2]  Pointed out by Sreejith K.K, PhD Scholar, Dept of Philosophy, UoH.

           

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Religion:an Unnecessary Evil!

 Xalxo writes….”we do not require tagging anyone as atheists, naturalists or humanists etc. We have enough categories to hate one another.”

“Philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point however, is to change it.”  —Karl Marx.

          Religion has been the most important component of human society. With the event of 9/11, the declared wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, centuries’ old brutal battles between Israel and Palestine, civil wars in Somalia and Sudan, terrorist attacks on various parts of India and the world compel philosophers to rededicate themselves to understanding Religion and society. They cannot be mediocre kings. Above incidents points to the fact that religious sentiments are viruses that cause pandemic more than any infectious diseases. The need of the hour is to reinterpret religion only in order to change our society for better. There have been more people tortured, hated and killed for religious reasons than for any other reasons. Religion can boast off for being charitable, kind and the path that leads to salvation, but these are not the excuses to justify a single life deprived of its freedom to live- and live peacefully.

          Understanding the root of the problem consists naturally in its origin. In order to understand it seeking the origin of Religion in historical time frame is unintelligible and an age long dead criterion. However, there are philosophers and thinkers who have postulated theories such as Naturalism, Animism, Collectivism etc., which suggest the possible birth and growth of religious attitudes. Then there are some established world religions with approximate historical dates to begin with. But neither of those great social reformers desired a religion on their names- “Christ”ianity, “Buddh”ism, “Jain”ism, “Muhammad”ens in Islam etc. According to Emile Durkheim, these religions came into existence due to the needs of social identity. He opines that the religion is a form of collective consciousness that actively (through “community” rituals) keeps society together. Then there are people who continuously assert that religion is a malicious design of the people with vested interest and power. Therefore, Marx draws the conclusion that it is a facilitator in the process of exploitation of the proletariat class. It is an ugly social phenomenon which does the dirty work of keeping the oppressed with their oppression. Hegemonic structure brought forth by Gramsci highlighted Religion as a subservient to the culture of power and politics. Althusser on the other hand suggested that religious interpellation, whatever may be the cause of it, is so strong that people virtually become intellectually blind. And this becomes a fertile ground for fundamentalism and fanatics.

          The availability of Historical data for the origin of a religion is not a certificate for its genuineness. Religion is social and humane; therefore it is a genuine phenomenon. Being an important human factor, its analysis in the context of human nature throws some light on vast complex canvas called religion. The sense of respect, sacredness, and beliefs on supernatural powers coupled with human desire for happiness, prosperity and occasional fears are the reasons that gave birth to a system called religion. Just as sense of justice, feelings of love and hatred did not arise at a particular time in history, so is the case with the sense of sacred and belief system. These can arise any time of a human existence. A child has no idea of the sense of sacred until it knows how to respect others. Therefore, child does not have religious obligations. Happiness, pain, peace, sense of justice and love are universal human qualities. Similarly belief systems, the sense of sacred and religious sentiments are characteristic essential human features. This is the reason why many tribes and people in communication with the rest of the world have their own deities. It is not because of “god commanded so”.

          Thus religion is a human creation. “God” is a human creation. “The divine being is nothing else than the human being, or rather, the human nature purified…all the attributes of divine nature are, therefore, attributes of the human nature.”-Feuerbach. We “consciously and involuntarily create God” in our own image to quench our thirst for the sense of sacred, or to dispel the fears of future. As our knowledge widens we keep on purifying our beliefs and religious practices. Had it not be the case our Patriarchal society would have never propagated ‘androcentricism’ in all world religions. Today, with feminists coming front with the sense of equality, many religions are forced to mend their ways. If Donkeys were to possess and express the sense of sacred and religious feelings, they would have made a ‘god’ which was definitely a donkey, not a human in spite of human being its master!

          The Sense of sacred and religious sentiments, being the human qualities can be easily suppressed, just as one can suppress anger or decides not to love. Therefore, we do not require tagging anyone as atheists, naturalists or humanists etc. We have enough categories to hate one another. They are equally happy, balanced, morally upright and intellectually contented. It is the law that governs the universe and not someone whom people worship. It is a law that action bears fruit, it is a law that seeds need water to grow, it is a law that fire burns, it is a law that earth rotates. Law is not governed by another law; one law supplements the other. It is the law of the universe to govern in unison and not designed by an intelligent being.

          If religion is made, god is made then do we have a problem of ethical issues? I think, not at all. Ethical issues must be seen not as a part of Religion, but as a part of human existence in social atmosphere. We do not need religion to be good and just. Kantian view that the reward and punishment ought not to be the motives must be the criterion for human actions. Human actions are either right or wrong, but never sinful. Wrong actions are those that hurt either to the self or to the society. Any other actions are either good or just neutral. The idea of sin and bondage, one is born in ignorance, born in sin etc are burden laid upon the fragile shoulder of free human existence.

          There is nothing divine in religions. The feeling of divinity, daivic-darshana and the sense of holiness are the overflow of the sense of respect to the other—what Darwinists have called altruism. One can always choose not to express it. Knowing fully what “religions” have done in our society, is it appropriate to keep silence? One cannot be at the side of an evil knowingly. Religion is an Unnecessary Evil in our society. To spread message of love, peace, brotherhood, equality and justice does one need to light candles, burn incense sticks offer flowers and spend hours in a shrine or in front of a wood or stone? Do we need to buy God?

Finally in affinity with John Lennon, in the preface of his book The God Delusion Richard Dawkins writes,  “Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no7/7, no crusades, no witch-hunts, no gunpowder plot, no Indian partition, no Israel/Palestinian wars, no Ser/Croat/ Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as “Christ killers”, no Northern Ireland ‘troubles’, no ‘honor killings’, no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money (God wants you to give till it hurts). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheading of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it”. Imagine a world with no religion! Imagine just in India! no varna no caste, no karma no sati, no Pulmedu, no stampede, schools and hospitals in all mushrooming religious sites, no Hindus, no Muslims, no Christians, no Buddhists, no tags to hate one another, only a beautiful sea of colorful humanity. “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” – Douglas Adams.

Roshan Praveen Xalxo

PhD Philosophy

rpx777@gamil.com

Philosophy on Wall 1, January

What Philosophy Is All About?

 We do not exclusively think like scientists or like religious people.  Philosophy is neither an Art nor a Science. Philosophy is what it does…writes Ajay Mohan

We shall try to make a minimal and naive understanding of Philosophy by providing a short description of Philosophy. Our aim is to provide a holistic impartial discription of it. To provide a holistic description is to synthesize different models of Philosophy. For an impartial description it needs a metaphilosophical enquiry.

The description proceeds in two ways. First is to state the main features of Philosophy. Second is to show the activity of philosophizing. The Former is given as the contents of this article and the latter is the way it is shown. It is because an attempt to understand Philosophy itself is a Philosophical problem.

                                                        

I

We can broadly classify the entire philosophical landscape into two- Western and Eastern. Obviously they have a lot of differences. Finding the common thread in these models is our first task. A fundamental difference between them lies in their inclinations. Western Philosophy (WP) functions more as a part of the intellectual activity of human kind whereas Eastern Philosophy (EP) is more interested in the human life and its perfection. EP presupposes human life as existing in a

world which conditions the existence of

it. EP proceeds to positive and negative theorizing of this conditioning. The positive is more popular and it suggests conditioning of knowledge as the major form of conditioning. The unconditioned human state is the state of having unlimited knowledge in which will enable us to see the real nature of everything. That means there is a state of higher knowledge. This higher knowledge is either the knowledge about God or knowledge of categories or knowledge of Reality.

We have already seen that EP presupposes a world and our situatedness in it. The minimal understanding of the concept of World is as a structure with a set of entities and a set of functions. We also saw that highest knowledge is knowing everything. This 'everything' should be understood as the ontological space in a particular system. It is not a kind scientific of knowing some facts. But it is a holistic kind of knowing which includes the nature of self and world.

WP did not presuppose the conditionality of knowledge. It did not presuppose the situatedness as the basic problem, for them the existence of object and objectivity is the major issue. Not only that, conditionality of knowledge is a skeptical position, a kind of remote possibility.

In WP Ignorance is ignorance of something. It will vanish when the particular knowledge comes in. So if our ontology consists in infinite number of objects, knowing is an endless process. But this problem does not arise because WP presupposes that we are equipped with the ability of reasoning.  In EP ignorance is our empirical state of existence. It can be overcome only when we achieve the highest knowledge. In some systems of EP this knowing is not mere understanding, but realizing fact. The element of hope in WP is Rationality (in a broad sense as an intellectual ability) and the element of hope in EP is the concept of Realization or enlightenment.

EP uses human intelligence for the purpose of achieving higher knowledge. In this process we are supposed to figure out the nature of Reality. WP uses human intelligence for finding the real or fundamental nature of the World. Using the reason to understand the nature of Reality is the general character of Philosophy.

                          II

The broad question of Philosophy which is the question of Reality or Truth is related to several other basic questions. For example: Reality and appearance, the substratum of everything, the problem of creation, etc.

The broad question of Reality has to be understood as the question of Absolute Truth. The sub-question of Reality is the problem of Real and appearance. One of the best ways of understanding the concept of Reality is to look at the usage and origin of the word Reality. In that direction I could say that the word Reality has an extended use in philosophical issues. The basic meaning of 'Reality' can be figured out when we distinguish between illusory experience and non-illusory experience. In a sophisticated philosophical endeavour we extend this meaning and question whether the world as such is real or an illusion.

We can see different questions in Philosophy which aim to figure out a holistic picture of Reality. We often deal with these things because of intellectual curiosity or spiritual desire. But how far they are significant in our ordinary life and thinking? One way of dealing with this question is considering these questions as the fundamentals of our thinking. A soft version of this answer is considering them as back grounds of our thinking. In these cases we can say that philosophy will provide us with a clear understanding of anything and avoid errors in thinking. Philosophy can give the best way of dealing with some problems. It is also possible that there are different thinking patterns, so that there are no basic concepts. In that case Philosophy is a study of the different presuppositions of different thinking patterns. One Philosopher can argue for one pattern by providing arguments for that. What if these questions are neither fundamental nor presuppositions of any pattern? Philosophy will survive even if there are arguments which state that there is no Philosophy at all, because to prove them is also a Philosophical endeavor.

                          III

We have seen that Philosophy is an intellectual activity of dealing with a set of significant questions. This activity of philosophizing is an activity of reasoning. We contemplate over these philosophical issues. This contemplation or reasoning is guided by some Logic. The minimal understanding of Logic is a set of rules for thinking.  The Logic can satisfy reasoning to an extent. It will be in trouble when the presupposition of Logic itself is philosophized. This may lead us to think that we do not want to depend completely on only one kind of Logic; rather we can have different kinds of Logic. We can provide reasons for religious beliefs and scientific belief by providing Logic which states their plausibility. We do not exclusively think like scientists or like religious people.  Philosophy is neither an Art nor Science. Philosophy is what it does.

We do Philosophy neither because we know things nor because we do not know things, but because we are not sure whether we know or do not know. Greatest minds in history have tried to put the anchor at some point. The failure or victory of their struggle is not important. What is important are the insights they have given and the new horizons they have opened. We shall pay respect to their endeavors and hope for new insights.

Ajay Mohan M

M. Phil Research Scholar

majaymohan@gmail.com

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