What do ancient advaita Vedānta philosophical debates with Mīmāṁsakas and Buddhists over the relationship between perception and cognition and between universals and particulars have to do with State of Formation and with Republican-Democrat political debates today? I wager that even if you don’t give a lick about Hindu or Buddhist philosophy – or philosophy in general – you will still be interested in the discussion below.

This morning, I read a very interesting article by Hugh Nicholson (“Apologetics and Philosophy in Maṇḍana Miśra’s Brahmasiddhi,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 30: 575-596, 2002). The article closely examines Maṇḍana Miśra’s arguments against several other schools in his 6^th century Indian context on the reality of universals and particulars. The arguments are difficult, technical, and highly specialized and would probably only be of interest or access to a small number of readers of SoF. However, Nicholson also makes a larger, meta-argument that, I think, will be of interest to all of us.

Nicholson argues that when we advance our own philosophical positions, we tend to do so by setting them against the views of others – thereby demonstrating how similar or different our views are from theirs. If our position is very similar or identical to the positions of others, then there would be no reason for someone to read our views, since these views have already been stated by others. Thus, there is an incentive to distinguish our own views from the views of others which Nicholson labels the “political aspect” of discourse. Through his very careful analysis of Maṇḍana Miśra and his opponents, Nicholson shows how this theologian reduces the views of others to caricatures of their actual positions and removes all of the subtlety of their arguments in order to make their positions look untenable.

I think many of us will say: Yes, we see this every day. It is easy to tell if a politician (be they Republican or Democrat) is doing it because their lips will be moving. Fox News has built a network around such caricature-making. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert at least make it funny. So perhaps we might reply to Nicholson that his observation is not terribly profound – this is just what politics of all stripes is like.

However, this is not the entirety of Nicholson’s argument (I don’t want to reduce his view to a caricature!). What I find very interesting is that Nicholson goes farther to show that this practice actually does damage to the polemicist’s own philosophy. Because Maṇḍana Miśra (MM) has absolutized the views of the other, removed the subtleties of the other’s argument, and thereby reduced them to caricature, MM has actually painted himself into a corner that makes it very difficult for him to employ subtle arguments of his own. Were he to add in subtle arguments to show that reality does not lend itself to extreme positions but must be carefully nuanced through the complexities of language and the tenuousness of categorization, then many of these subtle nuances would reveal themselves to work not only in his favor – but also in favor of his philosophical opponents. Nicholson also shows how MM accomplishes this feat. By carefully using synonyms and avoiding the language of his opponents, MM adds subtlety and complexity to his position without using precisely the same language as his opponents.

To be clear, MM’s philosophy is different from his opponents, and different in some very important ways. However, some of these differences are in those all-important subtleties. The political aspect of his polemic has exaggerated the distinctions between his position and those of his opponents by removing subtleties, but it has also made MM’s job much more difficult since it is hard for him to add these subtleties back in without betraying the sharp distinctions he established earlier.

Here is why I think this is important for us to consider today – both on SoF but also in interreligious dialogue and society writ large… When we caricature the other, reducing their positions to un-nuanced and untenable arguments, we also make it far more difficult to articulate our own positions. I do not mean to suggest that Republicans and Democrats do not hold positions that are truly and substantially different from one another, or that Hinduism and Christianity are really the same, or that Maṇḍana Miśra and Kumārila Bhaṭṭa hold identical positions on the relationship between perception and cognition. There are real and crucially important differences between these views. What I am suggesting (following Hugh Nicholson), is that when we reduce the views of the “other” to a caricature, when we remove the subtleties of their arguments, their views, their positions, etc., when we create false dichotomies by absolutizing the view of the other… when we do these things that represent the “political aspect” of philosophical polemics, we actually do harm to our own positions. We make it very difficult to add the subtleties and nuances to our perspectives that are essential for these positions to be tenable.

Nicholson’s more recent work emphasizes the importance of debate and disagreement – we do not all agree with one another, nor should we pretend that we do. But there is a way to engage in such debates that allows the other to maintain the subtleties and nuances of his/her position and thereby allows us to maintain the subtleties/nuances of our own positions. Such agonistic encounters allow us to accept important differences, disagreements, and tensions without reducing the other – and thereby reducing ourselves – to caricature.

That said… Maṇḍana Miśra is right and everyone else is wrong. 🙂

For those of you in the Boston area, Hugh Nicholson will be offering a free public lecture at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. See below for details:

“The Spirit of Contradiction in Buddhism and Christianity: Comparative Reflections on the Shaping of Religious Doctrine”
When:     Wednesday, February 16, 5:15 – 7pm
Where:   Common Room, Center for the Study of World Religions, 42 Francis Avenue
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School
The annual Comparative Theology Lecture at Harvard Divinity School will be presented by Hugh Nicholson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Theology, Loyola University, Chicago.