Self and the Other
1. The
dominant Western philosophical tradition emphasizes the self as the isolated,
separate, autonomous entity, while in dominant Indian tradition the self is a
relational one. Following the Advaita tradition of Indian philosophy, Gandhi
did not see the self-separate from the
Self at the abstract level. He called it true self, real self, or permanent
self or soul. However, in embodiment or body-self complex, he did not consider
the self without its essential positive and negative relations with the other. His philosophy prescribes us about
the self-controlled body, social-relational view of self,
and otherness as ignorance. In this concluding chapter, we will see how
these ideas can be employed or implicated in the concrete reality of our time.
2. Gandhi
provides a radical inversion of the
primacy of one’s own self or ego.
This inversion is grounded in his metaphysics and ethics. For him, ethics is
the first philosophy. He wrote, ‘ With me moral includes
spiritual... In my career as a reformer, I have regarded everything from a
moral standpoint. Whether I am engaged in tackling a political question or a
social or an economic one, the moral side of it always obtrudes itself and it
pervades my whole attitude’ He breaks the construction of traditional religion,
philosophy, and politics. He did not accept those thinking, political, social,
or economic, that claims to be value free or value neutral. Nor he viewed power
relations free from moral considerations. He did not even consider religion as
a made of salvation based solely on faith in some supernatural deity. As known,
to him, politics and religion are grounded in morality. He focuses his
attention on individual moral human relations. For him, ethics and politics are
not separate entities.
3. On
this grounding, Gandhi’s worldview calls for meaningful ethical, political,
social, an economic relations with others while focusing on the primacy of
others. This is not only the rejection of the dominant liberal capitalist view
but also its inversion. This radical
inversion is quite apparent in his
famous talisman that serves the need of others. The talisman focuses not on
one’s own self but instead on the other with the greatest needs. Indirectly, it also suggests
that how one should have a responsibility towards others. Gandhi calls to
uphold authentic human values and engage in authentic social and political
change only when we assume moral responsibility for the welfare of the other. This of course requires
much effort which essentially involves ‘self- restraint’, reducing one’s ego or
‘self to zero’ What does it mean by reducing oneself to ‘zero’? When Gandhi is
talking about reducing the self to zero, he is focusing on the I-me, egoistic,
separate ego or self. in traditional Indian terms, I-me is not the authentic
spiritual self, but the karmic, maayic, illusory self-construction that
establishes unethical and unspiritual relations. In Gandhi’s perspective, it is
only when one overcomes this focus on the primacy of one’s own self/ ego and
instead focuses on the primacy of the needs of the other that one begins to experience the deeper, true, moral, and spiritual Self and
establishes authentic self-other relations.
4. These
ideas should not be considered as an abstract moral philosophy of Gandhi. Nor
it is essentialist, non-contextual, and a historical. He, in fact, did not
formulate his philosophy as offered here. These ideas emerge from his praxis
that we notice in his political career. Gandhi’s thinking and practice focus on
the concrete social and political processes which include self-other relations
in a dynamic way. Through his dynamic self-other relation, he attempts to
constitute human relation and social-political institutions on a totally different
ground. It was his theory of truth and nonviolence that provided him the ground
to reconstitute the human relationships and institutions to enact
social-political changes. In other words, his praxis informs that he was
pragmatic in his approach and concerned with the political effectiveness of
self-other dynamics. Through changing the self-other relation on the ground of nonviolence and truth, he tried to
transform the very nature of exercising
power an power relation within society and politics.
5. In Gandhi’s self-other relation proposal, other does not include the only individual but also social-political, and economic institutions. He did not consider any institution very neutral. The reason, institution may be impersonal in nature but it works through the individual. Further, any institution originates to serve the purpose of human needs. Thus, it cannot be value-neutral. Second, no institution can be superior to the individual and human being. Thus, he argues, the domination of institutions over individuals must be challenged. As the self is related to others with responsibility, for him individual is also responsible for the institutions he develops and through which he manages his life. If the institutions do goal, it must be transformed. As he considers the individual as a moral being, he attempts to evaluate, assess and redesign the socio-political and economic institutions on the line of morality. It is here Gandhi’s radicalism emerges against the twenty-first century impersonal, centralized, value-neutral social-political, and technocratic structure. Moreover, the existing methods to solve the problems of the twenty-first century are not acceptable to Gandhi. He offers his prescriptions.
Self and the Nature
1.
Self and nature
and Gandhi’s take on it- This question is very much pressing today as we are
facing the crisis of climate change, sustainability, depletion of resources,
development model, environmental pollution and ecological imbalances. The
crisis is not only alarming but it has put the very question mark on the
survival of the whole of humanity. The present crisis is fundamentally the
result of our mode of relation with nature.
2. How
do we (self) see nature (other)? And, what do we feel about nature? Our
response to these questions depends upon our worldviews. There are two dominant
worldviews on it – the western worldview developed after 1500, and the oriental
worldview. Before 1500, in all societies and civilizations, the image of nature
was seen as an ‘organism’ and it had a strong effect on the people.
3. In
the west after 1500 AD, the ancient concept
of the earth as nurturing mother was radically transformed by two main
dominant trends of philosophic inaugurated by Francis Bacon (1561-1626), and
Rene Descartes (1596-1650).Their philosophy and ‘methods of inquiry’ replaced
the organic view of nature with the new metaphor of the world as a ‘machine’.
Francis Bacon who called his philosophy ‘new philosophy’ was different from other philosophies because it
aimed at practice rather than theory. It focused on the search of proof, rather than a doctrine. It worked with
something concrete rather than speculation. Knowledge, according to him is not
an opinion, but a work that has to be verified. He further claimed that
knowledge should have utility and power. Bacon advocated the ‘new empirical
method’ of investigation in the field of natural science and it completely
changed the existing view of nature.
Through this, new empirical method, he offered aggressive views on nature.
4. Nature,
in his view, had to be ‘haunted in her wandering’, ‘bound into service’, and
made ‘slave’. Nature was to be ‘put in
constraint’, and the aim of science was to ‘torture natures’ secrets from her’.
This was a major shift from existing views on nature seen as ‘mother’. As Capra
points out, this shift became of overwhelming importance for the further
development of western civilization. Later on, this shift was completed by two
more important figures- Descartes and Newton.
5. Descartes,
regarded as the founder of modern philosophy, offered the method of radical
doubt and reductionism. His view on nature on nature was based on the
fundamental division of two independent and separate realms – that of mind, or
res cogitans, the ‘thinking thing’, and that of matter, or res extensa, the extended things. To
Descartes, the material universe was a machine and nothing but a machine. There
is no purpose, life, or spirit in matter. Nature worked according to mechanical
laws, and everything in the material world could be explained in terms of the
arrangement and movement of parts. Newton, later on, tried to give a picture of
the world as a ‘perfect machine’ by incorporating the empirical inductive
method of Bacon and the rational deductive method of Descartes. This methodological
shift of worldview completely changed the western worldview of nature. Science,
technology, and society developed along this line, and self got completely
separated from nature in contemporary
time.
6. The
oriental tradition and civilization view nature as an ‘organic whole’. The
influence of self-nature relation has constructed an ethos of respect to nature
in more or less in all oriental tradition. The separation has been understood
as a deviation from the path of the divine. Particularly, Indian philosophical
tradition also tells us our Indian ethos of human-nature relation. In Isopanishad,
over 2000 years ago, one notes, ‘This universe is the creation of the
Supreme Power meant for the benefit of
all his creation. Each individual
life-form must, therefore, learns to enjoy its
benefits by forming a part of the system in close relation with other species. Let not anyone species encroach upon
the other’s rights. More or less the direct kink of the human being with nature
is the same in most of the Indian philosophical system except Charvaka. In
Indian practice, still in India and most of the oriental countries, barring
some western educated and elite minded, in twenty-first century we observe that
people worship moon, sun, rivers, mountains, and many animals as social
religious rituals. Although such worship is regarded as superstition by
rational people and they may have some point but it cannot be denied that it
tells us that most of the people respect nature and feel obliged to it.
7. This
is the social-cultural ethos, whether they are rational or irrational,
scientific or unscientific that might be debated, in which people act. There
are two ideas that we may derive from this ethos. First, we (self) are not
separate or apart from nature. And second, we respect nature and feel
responsible to nature for our actions towards it. In a recent study, this
aspect of the relation of self with nature has been highlighted by some
scholars. Although they are not based on Indian experiences but their
suggestions are quite common with more or less with Indian ethos.
8. One
such concept and practice of ‘deep ecology’ proposed by Arne Naess.
Self-realization is the ultimate objective of deep ecology. In keeping with the
spiritual traditions of our culture, the deep ecology norm of self-realization
goes beyond the Western ‘Self’, which as mentioned, is seen as an isolated ego
striving for a narrow sense of individual salvation. Deep ecology ‘self’
requires an identification that goes beyond humanity to include the non-human
world. It emphasizes that we need to see beyond our narrow contemporary
cultural assumptions and values and the conventional wisdom of our time and
place is best achieved by the meditative deep questioning process.
Symbolically, self-realization is a realization of self in Self, where Self
stands for an organic whole.
9. On
the other hand, Schultz, in his recent study, shows deep concern about how we
should connect with nature. He has pointed out three psychological components
in our response to nature –cognitive, affective, and behavioural. He also notes
‘three core structural components by which one deals with nature-
connectedness, caring, and commitment’. Our dealing with nature has also been
viewed by Olivos and Aragones (2011) who coined the term ‘environmental
identity’. They suggest that environmental identity consists of four
dimensions: environmentalism, appreciation of nature, enjoying nature, and
environmental identity (Olivos and Aragones, 2011: 66). Similarly, Clayton also
constructs a notion of ‘environmental self- identity’ and argues that
environmental identity is only one part of it. He observes,’... environmental
identity is one part of the way in which people form their self- concept; a
sense of connection to some parts of the non-human natural environment, based
on history, emotional attachment, and/or similarity, that affects the way in
which we perceive and act towards the world; a belief that the environment is
important to us and an important part of who we are’ (Clayton, 2003: 45-46). In
short, now scholars seem to agree that there is a vital connection between our
worldview and our attitude towards the earth. Understand and observing this
connection in personal and public life may save us from extinction.
Now
see, how Gandhi sees the relation of self with nature and its implications on
us. He did not provide any systematic views on it; however, one may derive it
from his philosophical position. As noted, the ultimate goal of Gandhi was the
attainment of moksha, or self-realization or see the god face to face.
He defined God as truth as soverign law. He noted that ‘law and lawgiver are
same’ and everything in this universe is the reflection of truth. His
philosophical position on truth reveals that the individual or part is not
separate from the whole and everything in this universe is linked like a chain.
He believed in the concept of Advaita (non-duality) and as he wrote. ‘I believe
in Advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and, for that matter, of
all that lives’ In this concept the
world is one, there is no division
between man and nature. He believes ‘if one man gains spirituality, the whole
world falls to that extent’ . He also noted how the individual self can be one
with the universal self. ‘To see the universal and all-pervading spirit of
truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself.
And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of
life’ .
1 His intervention
on environmentalism is getting currency. Although during his time, there was no
such problem like climate change, environmental degradation, depletion of
natural resources or ecological imbalance but his philosophy of relation of
self-nature provides a dominant platform to reconstruct our worldview. Is
notion of simplicity, focus on needs rather than wants, the idea of
non-possession, and understanding oneself as a part of nature and act
accordingly are some of the issues that may help us to think new and intervene
in our new reality of twenty-first century.
Summary of presentation made by Prof. Prem Anand Mishra, Dean, Faculty of Gandhian Studies, Gujarat Vidyapith, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India
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