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The Sword of Kali – 3
Reply to "A Philosophical Critique of Radical Universalism"

On the Sameness and the Distinctiveness of Religions

Since the core issue at hand relates to the sameness and difference of religions, it becomes necessary for us to examine the thesis put forth by Dr. Morales in the light of the fundamental principles of logic (nyaya) by which things may be said to be same and different. The basic fallacy in the argument put forth by Dr. Morales is rooted in the premise that if two things, A and B, are the same then they are identical to each other as represented by the relation A = B. This kind of logic, which is called pure logic, abstracts the signs A and B from the natures of the things that they are applied to. In pure logic, the signs A and B are called variables and, in practice, they are applied to various objects of the world without consideration of the type of objects they are brought to bear upon. The fundamental problem with this method is that, in actuality, the signs A and B, and the relationships that prevail between them, are never independent of the natures of objects in the world, because the natures of the relationships that abide between objects are given in the very natures of objects themselves. Modern logic does not recognize that the word ‘logic’ comes from the Greek word ‘logos’ which means ‘word’, and that it is the intrinsic relationships between word-objects that must determine the operations of logic. When we apply modern logic to mathematics, the logical rules apply accurately because they are made to work within the limited framework of mathematics wherein the objects in question are confined to mathematical objects – or numbers - but when the variables are not numbers they must necessarily be applied in manners that are commensurate with the objects that they seek to bring into relation. Though analytical philosophy (or modern symbolic logic) attempted to do this, it fell short of its professed aim because it was derailed by the sense-reference theory (due to Frege) that created a spurious schism between mind and matter. For a purer and more pristine form of logic, we would need to go to the ancient science of logic as given in the organon of Vedic metaphysics and epistemology.

According to the Vedas, this world is nama-rupa, or name and form. Name is pada or word. Form is artha or object. Therefore nama-rupa, the nature of the world, is pada-artha, or word-objects. The study of padartha is nyaya shastra or logic. Nyaya is one of the subsidiary accessories with which one is to approach the study of the Vedas. Therefore Nyaya is called an upanga or subsidiary arm of the Vedas; the Vedic religion is a rational religion. Unlike modern logic, Nyaya does not admit of something called pure logic that may be abstracted from the things to which they are applied. All rules of logic are inherently united with the objects to which they apply because the rules of logic are the structural schemata of the objects themselves*. In other words, logic is the relational structure of the world. And because the world is nama-rupa or word-object, grammar, the relational structure of words or language, is mirrored in metaphysics, the relational structure of the world. There is thus no difference between the structural schema of the world and the structural schema of language because they are not two disparate things, but two aspects of one structure that are mirrored in each other. (Wittgenstein seems to have had a glimpse of this truth). Relationships such as sameness and distinctiveness must be applied in accordance with the rules of nyaya shastra, especially when the subject matter happens to be religion and metaphysics. This we shall now proceed to do.

As we have pointed out already, Dr. Morales starts with a wrong premise by assuming that the sense of same as attributed to things denies the difference that persists between them. Differences in attributes do not necessarily make the things that have those attributes different. An apple is the same as another apple in respect of being an apple despite the fact that one may be large and the other small, one red and the other a shade of green, or the one sweet and the other tasteless. Now there are many senses in which sameness is asserted of things and it behoves us to discern in what sense sameness is indicated of them amidst the varieties and differences that are naturally perceived of them in the world. The sentence ‘He is that same Devadatta’ asserts the sameness of the person Devadatta as subsuming the differences seen at different times and different places of the same person. When one goes back to a river that one had visited the previous day and says that ‘it is the same river’, one is asserting the sameness of the river notwithstanding that Heraclites thought you couldn’t step into the same river twice. Obviously Heraclites was using the term ‘same’ in a metaphorical sense to convey that the waters of the river are forever in a state of flux and that there is nothing of the river’s constituent that remains the same when you step into it again. But it is nevertheless the same river despite every single constituent having changed because otherwise Heraclites would scarce have been able to recognize any river at all. The sameness of a thing is not given to it by its diverse attributes, but by its universal. The river Ganga remains the same river Ganga because of the Ganganess that is persistent in the ever-changing flux of rushing waters that we see before us. An existing thing may remain same with itself, and yet it may be different to our perception at different places and at different times in accordance with the attributes that it manifests in differing loci of space and time. Again a thing may be different from another and yet the two may be the same in respect of their essential natures. What is it that is different in same things and same in different things? An examination regarding the sameness and difference of things must be done in the light of the natures of samanya and vishesha (universal and particular) and dravya and guna (substance and attribute). Otherwise one is prone to fall into all sorts of confusions.

Sameness is given by samanya, or universal. The fundamental and inviolable truth of a thing is that it is same with itself. This is its samanya (universal). A red thing is red not because of some other thing, but because of its redness. A thing is as it is by virtue of its own nature. Whenever there is a red thing in this world, it is the same redness by virtue of which it is red and because of which we are able to say that it is of the same color. For if the color red in one thing were to be different than the red color in another thing, the two things would not be of the same color, as the color of one being different than the color of the other there would be a difference of color perceived, and by difference sameness cannot arise. Neither can be it said, as contemporary philosophers are wont to say, that the red color in the two things are numerically different, because the difference seen pertains to the duality that is seen and not to the color that is perceived to be the same amidst the duality. Thus when sameness is seen of an attribute in two different things, it is not due to any other reason than that the samanya of the attribute is seen in both.

When we speak of sameness with regard to attributes, we do so in respect of the attributes that are same in different things, but when we speak of the sameness of existing things, we do so not with regard to the sameness of their attributes but with regard to the sameness of the things in which various attributes inhere. The first is the sameness of attribute in different substantial things and the second is the sameness of the substantial thing amidst the varieties of attributes in the instantiations of the substantial thing. While there is not much confusion regarding the sameness and difference of attributes, there is considerable scope for misapprehension with regard to the sameness and difference of substantive things because of the multitude of attributes that inheres in them. It is necessary therefore that the nature of substance and attribute be made more lucid.

We do not see merely attributes in the world, but see attributes as inhering in unities of existence. The unitary existence of the various attributes of a thing is substance (dravya). Attributes describe the way an existing thing (substance) is. Attributes have no existence except in the substance that they predicate, for substance is their existence. There is no existential difference between an attribute and the substance that it inheres in, and therefore there are no two different existentials in a substantial thing. As a result, no binding relation can be posited between substance and attributes. (The view that I am presenting here is strictly not that of Nyaya darshana, but that of Vedanta). Substance, in its capacity as substance, cannot be perceived in itself because what is perceived of it is its attribute. Yet in each perception, the existence, or isness, of the attribute perceived is substance, for the essence of substance is existence.

What we see as an existing thing is substance in which diverse attributes inhere. In other words, a substance comprises innumerable attributes in a single unitary existence. Now, a thing (substance) does not derive its identity from the individual attributes that describe it, nor by the combination of these attributes, but by the samanya that identifies it. That is, an apple does not derive its identity of being an apple by the redness, or the roundness, or the sweet taste, that describes it, nor by a combination of these attributes, but by the samanya that identifies it, namely appleness. It is in the essence of the samanya, appleness, to comprise the manifold of attributes that describe an apple as a unitary thing. Therefore, when we speak of substantial things, the samanya of the thing comprises a multitude of attributes within it without detriment to its unity, i.e., the one apple is both red and round without detriment to the unity of the apple.

Now therefore, the sameness of two substantial things is given by the samanya that identifies them both as being same. Since the samanya of a substantial thing is the unity that comprises the manifold attributes of the thing, two substantial things may be the same essentially even though the attributes in the manifold of each may be different. That is, two apples would be essentially the same (as apples) even though one may have the attribute of being large and the other small, one red and the other a shade of green, or the one sweet and the other tasteless, because the samanya, appleness, that identifies them both as apples informs of their essential sameness.

It is also necessary for us to here consider the natures of samanya and vishesha so that we may not be confounded by the differences of particulars that arise from the sameness of samanya. Now Samanya is never manifest by itself as samanya. It is brought forth to cognition as a particularised instance of its manifestation. The manifestation of universal (samanya) is therefore always a particular (vishesha). A particular is never existentially separate from the samanya. If it were separate, it would be separated from the existence of its sameness, which is absurd. Therefore, a particular is not different from the samanya of which it is a particular. Thus there arises the hierarchy of genera and species as particulars of the universal and from which they are never different. All flowers are flowers due to the flowerness in them, and even though a rose and a lotus are different from each other as particular kinds of flowers, they are both not different from being the flower that they both are.

(It is necessary at this stage to introduce a word of caution for the modern reader. In speaking about padarthas such as substances and attributes, and universals and particulars, we find that we are quite unaccustomed to grasp these things lucidly. There are no answers to these questions in contemporary science and philosophy because contemporary science and philosophy looks for substance in the world when substance cannot be found by looking for it in the world. Substance is the bare isness of things, and it is already grasped in the perception of each thing in the originary moment of its cognition. It is likewise with samanya or universals. A universal is not grasped by thought laboring to grasp it. Thinking particularizes the thing thought about, and a particularized thing is a particular, not a universal. The natures of substances and universals are grasped by the stillness of apperception in the act of perception. That stillness is the disassociation of the witness from the things it witnesses. Nyaya is a cleansing of the intellect so that it may sink back into its source, the Heart, from which it sees the Truth. In the philosophy of Nyaya this is called nihsreyasa).

Now, two things may be said to be the same in respect of their attributes when there is in them a sameness of the attribute even though the things themselves may be essentially different i.e., an apple and a table may be same in respect of their redness even though the things themselves are different (as apple and table). Clearly this is not the sense in which Hinduism says that all religions are the same. There are indeed attributive differences between various religions, and Hinduism does not negate these differences.

When two things are said to be the same essentially (in substance), then it is the sameness of essence that is asserted even though there may be differences in the attributes that inhere in them i.e., two tables are the same essentially even though one may be red and the other white. It is in this sense that Hinduism says that all religions are the same. Now religion, being an existing thing, comprises in it various attributes. Hindu religion is the same as Christian religion in respect of being religion, but is different from it in respect of the attributes that abide in it as distinct from the attributes that abide in Christianity. Hinduism and Christianity are the visheshas (particulars) of the samanya (universal) called religion and they possess the distinctive characteristics of their respective kinds. As religions they are the same because the essence of them both, as religions, is the same. Suffice it to say that when all religions are said to be the same, they are thus said not on account of the attributive differences that distinguish them one from another, but due to that which is same in all of them. This sameness is the essence of religion that abides in them all. What this essence of religion is, we shall now see.

Religion is different from the sciences in one fundamental respect: it places the origin of the world in a Living Principle. In Hindu terms, the origin of the world is the Great Being that is conscious and intelligent (chaitanya) as distinguished from Nature that is unconscious and inert (jada). The origin, sustenance and dissolution of the universe, has its ground in the Great Being that is called Brahman by the Vedas. Now religions may differ in the way they name or describe this Living Principle, or in the relations they posit as abiding between the Living Principle and nature (the world), but they do not differ in the one respect whereby all of them identify the ultimate causes of things to be a Living Principle in contrast to the sciences that look for ultimate causes in the natures of physical things. It is this that is same in all religions. And it is in the way that this Living Principle is revealed in Hinduism that gives to it its overarching universal vision.

Now it may rightly be asked of us why we should have gone to this extent to explicate the nature of sameness and difference when we had already shown that there is no Hindu, whether classical or neo, that actually abides by the notion of Radical Universalism if Radical Universalism means an effacement of the differences perceived between religions. The answer to this question is as follows: Dr. Morales places the idea that all religions are the same as standing in opposition to, and being mutually exclusive from, the idea that each religion is a distinct religion with its own doctrines, world-view, etc. By creating this artificial opposition, and by not distinguishing the nature of difference that may be manifestly present in things that are essentially of the same nature, he proceeds, by means of fallacious reasoning, to deny the validity of not only Radical Universalism, which is not present in Hinduism, but also Hindu Universalism, which is certainly present in Hinduism. Indeed, he goes so far as to say that the ultimate goal of each religion is a separate mountain that is completely different from, as well as isolated from, the mountains of other religions, an idea that is not only foreign to Hindus but is also one that does violence to the expansive heart of a true Hindu. We shall demonstrate in this paper, in further support to the arguments furnished above, that Hinduism does include within it an overarching universalism that sees all religions as speaking of the same Reality, and that the differences in their conceptions pertain only to different aspects of the same Being.

It is clear from the foregoing deliberations on sameness and difference that the underlying sameness of religions does not in any way undermine the distinctive features of each religion. Neither would Hinduism lose its distinctive character as a great religion by virtue of seeing this underlying sameness in all religions.   

– Continued

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