Justin E. H. Smith

A. W. Schlegel, On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians

From August Wilhelm Schlegel, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, Heidelberg, 1808. [Click on 'continue reading' below to read the original German. Expanded translation and explanatory notes to follow]

Pantheism is the system of pure reason, and to this extent it already brings about the transition from Oriental to European philosophy. It flatters the self-obscurity of man, as well as his indolence. As soon as this great discovery is made --this all-encompassing, all-denying, and yet so simple system of knowledge and rational wisdom--, that all is one, then no more seeking and inquiring is needed; everything that others know or believe by other paths is simply error, fallacy, and weakness of the understanding, just as all change and all life is empty appearance.

Of course, if power and depth of feeling are still present, and the doctrine is truly put forth in full seriousness, then it takes on another, wholly different and fruitful character: there then appear those men, not uncommon in India, and so hard to comprehend by cold observers, the martyrs of the yogis and the sannyāsis, who destroy their own spirits of their own free will, setting up the goal of self-annihilation as their highest good. For colder or more weakened natures, however, this leads on the contrary to the conviction that all evil is only fallacy, and that everything, to the extent that it is One, is also entirely equal, a conviction that brings with it a false appearance of exhiliration and contentment.

Perhaps however it was only in China, where pantheism arose long before the religion of the Buddha was introduced, that something of the sort was adopted. In other lands we find much in the generally very mixed doctrine that comes from the worship of Śiva; hitherto the more horribly distorted image of a terrible and destructive divinity has been noticed among the Buddhist Tatars. In Tibet, Turner found celebrations of Kali, the adoration of Kārthikeya and Gaṇeśa: the entire entourage of Śiva...

If pantheism is not merely thought and disposition, as with many yogis and sannyāsis, but rather comes forth as a more or less scientific system, then it is never anything more than... a game of combination, which advances according to a mere mechanism of reason, from a positive and a negative [principle], which is fundamentally better represented by a number symbolism such as [Chinese numerology] than words are able to do. Now since this is found in this most ancient form of pantheism [i.e., that of China], it is very possible that this itself arose out of dualism, through later reinterpretation and elaboration. As soon as the doctrine of the two principles was no longer religion, but rather system, the thought of the two basic powers could be united in something higher...

That the spirit of the Sāṃkhya teachings is thoroughly pantheistic can at least not be doubted from the Bhagavad Gītā... In the Bhagavad Gītā, as presumably in all of the works attributed to Vyāsa, it is the doctrine of Vedānta, of which he was the founder, that prevails. Thus it is this that we know best of all Indian philosophies.

That it is nothing other than a pure, perfect pantheism can easily be seen by anyone from the translation [contained in this volume]. In the philosophical determinateness of the original text many passages are even stronger. Yet it was, as the name 'Vedānta' [i.e., 'appendix to the Vedas'] shows, simply a reinterpretation of the old Indian system that had been worshipped in the Vedas.

The old text will thus leave the old conception standing, yet with the new sense inserted, to the extent possible, and everything referring back to that great One --the highest, Brahmā, or the object of knowledge-- which here is defined as indifference between being and non-being, between sat and asat. Yet there are also many passages that go fairly clearly against the Vedas. From the immoderate praise that the author everywhere gives to the Sāṃkhya philosophy, there seems to emerge a true agreement in the manners of thinking [between the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gītā]. 

Some authors, meanwhile, maintain that Sāṃkhya is the physics, as Mīmāṃsā is the moral teaching, and Nyāya the dialectics, while others in contrast describe them each as different philosophies and systems, in which connection Nyāya deserves particular attention, which along with Mīmāṃsā is alone mentioned in Manu's Book of Laws,and along with it is classified among the Upangas. The moral spirit of Mīmāṃsā, and the speculative consistency of Sāṃkhya, agree with the place that we have ascribed to them in the ordering of the systems. Soon a more certain determination will be able to be made, as we come to learn of more original Indian texts. For now it is already a great deal that we know the oldest Indian beliefs, which underlie the entire corpus, fairly comprehensively from Manu's Book of Laws, and we know sufficiently the doctrine of Vedānta, which finishes off the entire system as the most recent branch of Indian literature, and determines the fundamental character of the Bhagavad Gītā.

In general we can divide the entirety of Indian literature, for the sake of easy overview, preliminarily into four epochs: the oldest epoch includes the Vedas and what follows immediately after these, such as Manu's Book of Laws. That the Veda's were here and there falsified through particular additions is strongly confirmed by the fact that so long ago there were already dictionaries to aid in the comprehension of the Vedas. To the Rig Veda and the Yajurveda, which are written in prose, is ascribed variously a cosmogonical, a magical, and a liturgical content; to that of the Sāmaveda, which is written is verse, is ascribed a moral content, though presumably with many mythical and historical admixtures...

Another great epoch is constituted from all of those works that are attributed to Vyāsa: the eighteen Purāṇas, the Mahābhārata, and the Vedānta philosophy. Although there are more works here than a single person could ever possibly touch, all of themare characterized by the same doctrines and beliefs, and give no sign of differences of style, though theirs is already so different from that of Manu's Book of Laws.  

Philosophical Anthropology and the Problem of Human Diversity in the New Science of Nature, 1500-1800

(Bibliography to my research grant application for funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Resarch Council of Canada, 2009-12)

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Machines of Nature and Corporeal Substances in Leibniz

Justin E. H. Smith and Ohad Nachtomy, Editors

(Under consideration at Springer)

Table of Contents

Justin E. H. Smith and Ohad Nachtomy
Introduction

1. Glenn Hartz (Ohio State University)
“Leibniz’s Animals: Where Mechanism Meets Metaphysics”

2. François Duchesneau (Université de Montréal)
“Leibnizian Hypotheses concerning the Functioning of Machines of Nature”

3. Pauline Phemister (University of Edinburgh)
The Dominating in the Machine”

4. Ohad Nachtomy (Bar-Ilan University)
“Leibniz on Artificial and Natural Machines; or, What it means to
'remain a machine to the least of its parts'”

5. Enrico Pasini (Università di Torino)
“Leibniz on the Organic and the Living”

6. Raphaële Andrault (ENS-LSH, Lyon)
“The Machine Anatomized: A Comparative Approach to Steno, Malpighi, and
Leibniz”

7. Andreas Blank (Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel)
“Sennert, Boyle, and Leibniz on Composite Substances and Subordinate Forms”

8. Michel Fichant (Université de Paris-IV, Sorbonne)
“Monadology 62-77: Outline of a Research Programme”

9. Antonio Nunziante (Università di Padova)
“Continuity or Discontinuity? Some Remarks on Leibniz's Concepts of
‘substantia vivens’ and ‘Organism’”

10. Jeanne Roland (Université de Paris-X, Nanterre)
“The Organism, or the Machine of Nature: Some Remarks on the Status of Organism in the Substantial Composition.”

11. Anne-Lise Rey (Université de Lille)
“Action, Perception, and Organisation”

12. Justin Smith (Concordia University)
“A Role for Physiology in the Development of Leibniz’s Mature Metaphysics?”

Biologische Arten und das Problem der Ursprünge des Menschen in der frühneuzeitlichen Naturphilosophie

Die Embryologie und die Ontologie erscheinen uns heute als sehr entfernte Verwandte. Jedoch kann die ontologische Frage, was ein Tier ist, wie sie am Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts gestellt wurde, nur im Kontext der frühneuzeitlichen Metaphysik der Fortpflanzung verstanden werden. Mit anderen Worten, was es bedeutet von einer bestimmten Art sterblicher, körperlicher Substanzen (d.h., ein Automat für die Cartesianer) zu sein, hat in fundamentaler Weise damit zu tun, wie diese sterbliche, körperliche Substanz entsteht. So war insbesondere die geschlechtliche Fortpflanzung kein kontingentes Detail in der Historie eines Tieres, sondern in der Tat dasjenige, was es zu einem Tier machte und dasjenige, was es diesem Tier ermöglichte seine spezifische Position in der Ordnung der Natur einzunehmen. Es wurde angenommen, dass ein Tier zu sein, bedeutet, einer bestimmten Art anzugehören, was wiederum bedeutet, von Eltern derselben Arten abzustammen. Dies unterscheidet Tiere von anderen natürlichen Arten wie z.B. den Elementen und, wie wir sehen werden, Pflanzen. Obwohl das traditionelle Verständnis davon, wie genau die Abstammung von Vorfahren von statten geht im 17. Jahrhundert in einer tiefen Krise steckte, blieb es dennoch für die Naturphilosophen ein Kernanliegen, die ontologische Differenz zwischen Tieren und anderen natürlichen Arten sowie zwischen Menschen und Tieren zu erklären, ungeachtet dessen, ob sie Mechanisten, Vitalisten oder Synkretisten waren. Das Buch, das ich zur Zeit schreibe, ist eine Studie der Art und Weise, auf die neue Entwicklungen in der Embryologie diese Erklärungen beeinflussten.

Early Modern Philosophy in Global Context

The Conceptualization of the Non-Christian World in
Western Philosophy, 1630-1700 

(This is, at present, only an idea for a future edited volume.  If it generates any interest, I may transform it into a call for submissions.)

In the 16th century, the new and rapidly growing knowledge in Europe of distant and radically different cultures challenged earlier ideas about human nature and universal morality.  But this challenge was a welcome one within the context of late-Renaissance skepticism.  Montaigne points out that the fact that some cultures eat their parents as a sign of devotion can’t but lay waste to our belief in universally binding moral laws.  All the better for Montaigne.   

By the early 17th century, though, a new emphasis on timeless universal truths in philosophy brought about a corresponding demise in interest in comparative ethnography.  Whether or not Stephen Toulmin is correct in describing the early 17th-century as a ‘counter-Renaissance’, in which humble curiosity about particulars --including particular cultural practices-- is replaced by an ambitious quest for an absolute and universal certainty that would not mesh well with any interest in cultural diversity, the absence of references to non-European cultures in figures such as Descartes is at least noteworthy.  The world outside Europe, Descartes may well have thought, could only provide complicating and messy evidence against the universality of his claims, and, more damagingly, against the a priori method of producing claims about what sort of entity a human being is.   

But the rest of the world would remain at least an implicit preoccupation for all 17th-century thinkers, and by the final decades of the century it would reappear as an explicit concern for many.  Leibniz was notoriously fascinated by the intellectual attainments of Chinese civilization.  The Cambridge Platonists and many of their English contemporaries were preoccupied with Islam, particularly in its Ottoman form.  While they were generally sympathetic to it, Spinoza was equally, openly hostile to the Turks.  Scientific societies such as the Royal Society in England --whose members were all, by 17th-century standards, philosophers-- were intensely interested in collecting data on the flora and fauna, climates and cultures, of faraway places.  And Locke, returning to the same sort of ethnographic evidence to which Montaigne had appealed a century before, makes the case for the absence of universal human essence on the grounds that cultural norms are radically different throughout the world.  “There is scarce that Principle of Morality to be named,” he writes in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, “or Rule of Vertue to be thought on which is not, somewhere or other, slighted and condemned by the general Fashion of whole Societies of Men, governed by practical Opinions, and Rules of living quite opposed to others.”  And he goes on to mention inhabitants of the Caribbean who geld their children in order to fatten them up before eating them.