Month: June 2020

A Sceptical Order: David Hume’s A Treatise Of Human Nature

Ishaan Jajodia
Hume
Allan Ramsay’s 1766 portrait of David Hume.

Knud Haakonssen’s first rate study of Adam Smith’s larger moral project starts not with Smith, but with his friend and fellow Scotsman, David Hume.1 Of particular interest here are Hume’s idea of justice as the product of ‘unintended consequences’, its consequences for the universal nature of justice, and criticisms of the social contract theories popular in England and France at the time, courtesy Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and others. Hume’s treatise is written for the man on the street, for the common-sense person, deigning most of the views of the philosophes — and of the ancients, too. Despite its scepticism, it is not nihilist; the implications are perhaps even more vindictive of certain general questions of order and hierarchy than one may expect from the likes of a sceptic. Haakonssen describes Hume’s project as a voyage to “explain how a common world is created out of private and subjective elements.”2 While Hume’s conclusions, particularly those in his Dialogues on Natural Religion, leave ample to be desired and much to be feared, on some other counts his search is more agreeable. The questions he poses are far-sighted and probing, and for all purposes his scepticism produces a world where passion guides reason. He famously declares: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” (2.3.3.4).3 Beneath this veneer of provocation and supposed iconoclasm is a more measured stance, one that is essential to the enterprise that is upon us, namely a more nuanced articulation of the views of his most famous ‘successor’, Adam Smith.

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  1. Knud Haakonssen, ‘Hume’s Theory of Justice’, in The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume & Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 4–44. ↩
  2. Haakonssen, ‘Hume’s Theory’, 4. ↩
  3. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, vol. 1, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007). ↩

The Fall(ibility) of Man

Ishaan Jajodia

A New York Times interview with the art historian Erin L. Thompson reflects the poverty of thought that has come to breath upon discourse in particular.1 Various examples of defacement and spoliation from the classical world are offered, but Thompson is unable to find a moral ground upon which the removal of statues is permissible insofar as it is intrinsically right. She disdains the moral ground for the historical one, her defence being no different than saying that just because something happened in the past, it ought to happen again, and consequently because something happened in the past, it was right. If one were to turn to the domain of reductio ad absurdums, it would be no different than arguing for genocide based on the historic fact that it is morally right because it happened before. But this is the level to which Dr. Thompson stoops to, in order to justify the tearing down of statues, and it is this that is of grave concern.

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  1. Jonah Engel Bromwich, ‘What Does It Mean to Tear Down a Statue?’, The New York Times, 11 June 2020, sec. Style, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/style/confederate-statue-columbus-analysis.html. ↩

Aristotle’s Critique of Plato’s Communism

Ishaan Jajodia

At the end of the first chapter of Book II of Politics, Aristotle poses the question: Is it “better to remain in our present condition or to follow the rule of life laid down in The Republic?” Aristotle presents a wide range of arguments to combat the particulars of what he perceives to be the result of Socrates’ advocacy for a city that would be fit only for one individual. In 1261a10, he uses the logic of the distinction he makes between polis, household, and individual to assert that the ideal city for Plato and Socrates would mean the destruction of the city because it would set out to erase all difference between its constituents through a rigid ordering of freedom and the rule of the singular and perhaps even tyrannical philosopher-king.

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The Middle Path: Notes on Books 5–18 of the Gita

Ishaan Jajodia

The rest of the text deals with matters that pertain to more pressing theological concerns on the battlefield. The stated purpose of the text, namely convincing Arjuna to fight against his cousins, in what could ostensibly only be a matter of doubt about the ethicality of a war against one’s own family, is to put to rest and is no longer the focal point, the refrain of the text. The following analysis of the Gita is arranged thematically, starting with Knowledge, proceeding to Lawlessness, and finally considering Duty.

However, before I embark upon this analysis, permit me a few words about the message of moderation. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines moral virtue as the mean between ‘excess’ and ‘defect’ (II.6, 1106b23–27). Here, too, moral virtue is defined along those lines, particularly in 6:17. The discussion takes place in light of an exhortation to know the Self (distinct from the individual self), the ultimate Self, atman; but the way to do this is not to renounce the world. Arjuna is told, “But those who are temperate … will come to the end of sorrow” (6:17). The focus here is on temperance, in “eating and sleeping, work and recreation” (6:17), not on renunciation and monastic life. Moral virtue is possible and attainable in the vita coactiva. The text is an exhortation to know the Self, not to abandon society and its mores, whatever they may be; it is an exhortation to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because one is attached to the results of such deeds. It is not a call to monastic life of the Buddhist sort that removes vitality from society by imposing an austere penance upon it, but rather provides the middle path as the way to follow.

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Notes on Book IV: Wisdom in Action

Ishaan Jajodia

The salient implications of the Gita for the student of political philosophy is brought to fore here, in the form of more practical advice, namely that the ends never justify the means; that means are important and the end of enlightened action, not their results (4:20), and moral action requires sacrifice (4:25–30). Consequently, it is established that the end of the vita activa is “service” (4:23), and freedom is only possible when opinion has been replaced with knowledge and means are the determinants of action, not ends (4:41). These have valuable implications for the students of politics, especially for those with a passing familiarity of the works of the Stoics, who, too, held that the means have considerable significance enjoined to them, and how something is done is of sovereign importance (keeping in mind, of course, that the end of such an act is not in itself wrong or morally devious in some matter).

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Notes on Book 3 of the Bhagavad Gita

Ishaan Jajodia

My notes on the first two books of the Gita intended to establish the existence of a common tradition of thinking about political issues and questions of political philosophy and theology common to the West and the East. Having expressed my views on the subject, I turn my attention to the problem of political philosophy and the statesman himself, adopting a more exegetical approach to the text. Before I continue any further, though, I ought to define the field of enquiry more clearly, and for this I borrow from A.P. d’Entrèves’ definition: political philosophy consists of three aspects, namely, “the problem of authority, of obedience, of political obligation.”1 The Gita, I must add, is remarkable because of its theological profoundness and as a guide for action even for the layman, but the field of inquiry above is much more restricted.

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  1. A.P. d’Entrèves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought (New York: The Humanities Press, 1959), 5. ↩

Notes on Books 1 and 2 of the Bhagavad Gita

Ishaan Jajodia

Book 1: The War Within

The first chapter1 sets up the stage for the conflict. In the first verse (1:1), Dhritarashtra asks his right-hand man, Sanjay, to tell him what is happening on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Sanjay is blessed with the ability to livestream the events of any earthly location into his own head, and thus begins to narrate, to the best of his knowledge, the events of the battlefield. In this case, what the Gita sets up is essential: the symbolic value of examining the narrative set-up lies in the reminder that the Hindu tradition is, in this case, distinct and different from the Abrahamic tradition. The Gita certainly is Krishna’s word, and as such is revelation. But it is also somehow fallible, for the dialogue in which it is set up is relayed by a (fallible) human. Even though Sanjay manages to fade into the background, he does not completely disappear. That Krishna tells this to Arjuna is essential as well, because it is the categorical revelation that can be applied to one’s life if one chooses to do so and requires intellectual and moral effort. As far as revelation goes, it delves into the minutiae of the moment to provide general lessons.

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  1. Eknath Easwaran, trans., The Bhagavad Gita, 2nd ed. (Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press, 2007). All references are cited as follows: Chapter #: Verse #. ↩

Is There An Indian Political Philosophy?

Ishaan Jajodia

It seems to be the fashion nowadays to decry á la Lord Parekh the nonexistence of an Indian Hobbes, or generally speaking, a tradition of political philosophy that is truly and inalienable Indian. Yet, studies of Indian political philosophy in recent years have focused almost exclusively on modern Indian thinkers, particularly those of a certain bent — Ram Mohan Roy, Gandhi, Ambedkar, and Nehru. Ancient India is even more forlorn, marked by a desert whose glory may be occasionally acknowledged and more often commemorated through fantastical and absurd defences of the sort that claim nuclear weaponry finds its origins in texts of vintage, or in the positivism of Kautilya and the works of Manu, whose original meaning is more or less transformed into some species of a reductio ad absurdum to reflect the revolutionary and progressive pieties of the present.

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A Reaffirmation

Ishaan Jajodia

Perhaps, ever so often, it becomes essential to one’s readers, however select their ranks may be, and to oneself, to affirm both the importance and the value of the enterprise I have in mind: the studia humanitatis. It is my thought now that one must not assume  a priori the importance of such studies and their centrality, but that these values and efforts are in constant need of reaffirmation. This is not a major change of stance from my earlier position, namely that the humanities must not be affirmed in relation to present events, but that the humanities must be valued because they lay bare to the dedicated student the human condition itself; this is as close to thought, thinking itself as one can come without staring precariously into the domain of the otherworldly.

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The Moral Obligations of a Voluntary Association

Ishaan Jajodia

There exists a species of voluntary associations that most students think is confined to the boundaries of an educational institution, and is often named through a trite and tedious process of random selection from the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet, but share almost nothing in common with the Lyceum or the Academy. They often seek to justify their existence through an advocacy of fraternal bonds or the like, but deep inside their basements, prove to be dens of licentiousness and hedonism, the sort that is unrestrained and can only lead to a sordid Epicureanism. But this belief –– the belief that such associations are unique –– or that they lack any moral responsiblity for the actions of their members, is at once a grave fallacy that reinforces the Epicurean overtones of the entire enterprise in its present form. Their overtures to conserving their status exist not for the love of their original aims, the telos of the association, but for the pursuit of license, of the sort of brotherly love that seeks to protect those in the wrong, only because it casts doubt, if wrongdoing is ever admitted, on the entire enterprise itself. Such is the nature of a certain form of association, commonly found concentrated on a particular avenue at the College on the Hill. On occasion, members of these associations have been accused, like clockwork, of heinous acts, and then nothing happens, for the association itself does not hold that it is responsible to ensure the application and enforcement of propriety norms of conduct.

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