Problematizing God’s interventions in History:
Historicism - East and West
[Introduction will be completed in due course – Sunthar]
The discussants in this ‘multilogue’ (samvâda) are an anti-historicist Hindu (Rajiv
Malhotra), Protestant (Frank
Burch Brown), a (self-styled) ‘nihilist’ (Joseph
Martin), a pro-historicist Indian (Venkatesh Rao) and a chameleon who draws his inspiration
from
Abhinavagupta (Sunthar Visuvalingam).
This thread (links provided
to the original unedited posts at the Abhinava forum) began with my attempt to
clarify some pre-publication feedback that Rajiv had incorporated in his
article “Problematizing God’s Interventions in History,” posted on
History:
Eastern religions:
Western civilization:
End of Time:
Related threads at svAbhinava:
Trinity in Christianity and Hinduism: Sacrifice, Love (Bhakti) and Acculturation
The Virgin and the Unicorn: is there a Christian Tantrism?
Christian taste, Hindu taste, Ecumenical taste: Enjoying the Rasa of Babette's Feast!
Future of Hindu-Christian relations: a Dialogue about dialogue!
This compilation will
be eventually complemented by others including those listed above; in the
meantime please check out the (incomplete)
Index to threads below on the “Historicism – East and West” dialogue:
My
distinction between Jewish and Christian messianic zeal in transforming the
external world [Sunthar V.]
.... Re:
My distinction between Jewish and Christian messianic zeal in transforming the
external world [Joseph Martin]
[indictraditions]
My new Sulekha essay: Problematizing God's Interventions in History [Rajiv Malhotra]
.... FW: My new Sulekha essay: Problematizing God's
interventions in History (by Rajiv Malhotra) [Sunthar V.]
Jewish messianism, pagan sacrifice(s) and Greek reason:
some reflections on 'universalism' and the Christian Trinity
[Sunthar Visuvalingam]
Re: My new Sulekha essay: Problematizing God's
interventions in History (by Rajiv Malhotra) [Joseph Martin]
(Rajiv's) Problematizing God's interventions in History -
Joseph Martin's responses to Venkatesh & Sunthar [Sunthar Visuvalingam]
Was Jesus political? Social? Mystical? [Frank Burch Brown]
RE: Is
the 'Kingdom' of Jesus in heaven or on earth? Ontological Ethics and Christian bhakti [Rajiv Malhotra]
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam [Abhinava msg #695]
Date:
What Indians consider to be spirituality is not integral or
even primary to the Abrahamic religions’ self-definition. As Visuvalingam
explains:
“Both Judaism and Islam, for example, are preoccupied with
social order and cohesion (hence the primacy of Law), which is the main reason
why the spiritual quest has been relatively ‘marginalized’ or at least wrapped
away into esoteric currents of Kabala and (Sunni) Sufism or subordinated to
theological doctrine, as in the figure of the Shia Imam.”
He goes on to state that “the
messianic impulse, embodied especially by Christianity, is focused on
transforming the (external) world (as much as, if not more than, the inner
man), even and especially when it breaks free of the (Jewish) Law. The
same socio-political tension also exists between Sufis and the Islamic
historical Grand Narratives.”
Although the institutions that held power over society could
be characterized in this manner, I feel that one must not ignore the morality,
imitation of Christ-love, and inner salvation through works that were also
taught by these traditions.
Hello Rajiv,
I've reinstated in [brown]
my original text retaining the parentheses that were intended to nuance my
remark on the messianic impulse in Christianity. There is a
commonplace and valid opposition between Christ's '
So, in a sense, Christianity is Jewish 'messianism
with a vengeance' precisely because it has taken over the initial project of
homogenizing the world whereas Rabbinic Judaism lost its proselytizing zeal and
is concerned primarily with the uplifting of the Jewish community. Now that the
'Christ-within' has already transcended (if not actually broken) the
traditional Law, the open-ended tentacular universal
reach of 'Christian' millenarism, in all it
various forms and into the modern progressist (and
even secular) sensibility, makes it all the more formidable a social force.
It's important that this nuance be retained in my
text, for the 'corrective' subsequent paragraph actually only reinforces
my thesis...
regards,
Sunthar
From: [
Date:
Hello Sunthar;
I think the differences (discussed above) between Christianity and
Judaism (and also Islam) stem from the fact that the founding texts
of Christianity (New Testament) have no politics. Christians are told
to render unto Caesar what is his and unto God what is His. And,
as
far as politics is concerned, little or nothing else. The books of
Moses and Mohammed are full of laws about diet and marriage and so
forth - the New Testament, to say the least, is not. Thus Judaism and
Islam are religions that give a great deal of primacy to law.
For instance, all three monotheisms revered Aristotle in the
Middle Ages but only Christianity took his politics
seriously. Islam
and the Jews were, when it came to politics, reading Plato. His fable
of the philosopher-king, in the Republic, and as enacted in the Laws,
was very congenial to the philosophers in those two traditions. Why?
Both Moses and Mohammed found (made) a political/cultural structure
in which their followers can live and, on occasion, thrive in this
world.
All this is, of course, very similar to Plato's esoteric
politics in which philosophers make laws, and through laws - they
make everything else, under which the people live. The transformation
of the external world that you(?) and others find in
Christianity is,
or so I imagine, a relatively recent development. The New Testament
points away from this world to the next world. I don't see any
(special) drive to improve the world in the early Christians. This
begins, I think, only after the year 1000 comes and goes without
Christ's return. This turn to the improvement of this world was,
I think, merely the first step on the (long) road to the modern
(western) atheism.
For a 1000 years Christians had held on tenaciously to
the
messianic hope - and nothing but that hope. Disenchantment always
begins with the smallest doubts.
Joe
PS I would only add that the homogenizing of the world that we both
see is more (or so it seems to me) a consequence of
Subject: [indictraditions] My new Sulekha essay: Problematizing God's Interventions in History
From:
Sent:
My new Sulekha essay, "Problematizing God's
Interventions in History," is now posted at:
http://www.sulekha.com/column.asp?cid=303135
Please note that there is an important flow diagram in it, which you must preferably print to be able to have alongside. In fact, given the length of the piece, it would be best to print the entire essay and then read. Please allow one to two hours to read properly, and read it till the end before making judgments.
I would appreciate your comments, and hope this starts a good discussion on-line, on the way scholars see different religions.
Regards,
FOUNDATION: http://www.infinityfoundation.com
MANDALA: http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/
Subject: FW: My new
Sulekha essay: Problematizing God's interventions in History (by
From: "Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date:
I like the dichotomy of ahistorical and historical modes of spiritual knowledge. It brings out some interesting features and limitations of any efforts to connect spiritual ideas with history. I want to make two points, first, that science itself is rife with "contingent" explanations as you call them and second, that your critique of historicism is something of a (possibly unintended?) straw man argument. I want to argue that historicism can be a very valuable element of any conceptualization of inner 'spiritual inquiry' of your adhyatma vidya [spiritual knowledge] sort, and to ask that you rethink your attempt to throw it out!
The first point is easy enough to make: natural evolution, a cornerstone of science, is largely a contingent story. It is not clear why large mammals and sentience evolved instead of a large variety of algae. At a broader level, it is not clear why values universal physical constants like Planck's constant are tuned just right to enable life. One extant "explanation" is in the Anthropic principle (the "if things weren't so, we wouldn't be here to question why they weren't" type) with its standard critiques. The other kind of explanation is a weird ghost-in-the-machine complexity theory argument that says complexity must evolve as some sort of 4th law of thermodynamics. The approach has potential, but is at the moment pure hand waving. The jury is out on these matters, but the bottom-line is, science is not based on "universal" explanations: much of the explanatory structure of current science is contingent, not universal or inevitable.
Second point, historicism. You devote a quick section to Hegel, rapidly attribute colonial excesses to his influence and move on. Hegel is a notoriously dense and unclear writer, and admits radically different deconstructions/reconstructions depending who is doing it. Hegel is the father of modern historicist philosophies in the western traditions and to dismiss him so quickly is to deny him justice. I am not questioning your "problematizing" of secularized-Abrahamic historicist views of God. I am bothered by the fact that you demonize the entire idea of "historicism" by conflating it with a particular kind, the Jehovah-Justifying kind. Your critique would probably serve as a good one against, say, Hobbes and John Locke and the rest of the secularized-Christian Anglo-Saxon historicism. It does injustice to the much more sophisticated Hegelian German tradition.
Especially problematic is the impression you convey that Hegel fits naturally and uncontroversially into a secularized Abrahamic tradition. Hardly appropriate for someone whose views served as launch pad to both Nietzsche and Marx, with their anti-God (and anti-each other)historicisms.
Attacking anything other than the best construction of someone
as influential as Hegel is a straw man argument. Schopenhauer thought Hegel was
a fraud. Alexander Kojeve thought he was a genius.
The best defense of Hegel-via-Kojeve is the modern
classic, The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama.
At some point I described the book as an uncomfortable synthesis of Hegel-Kojeve and Nietzsche. It is a very compelling thesis and
has very little to do with Abrahamic religious agendas for their grand
narratives. The seed of Nietzsche's "God is dead" is in Hegelian
thought. Three points in particular, emerge from
1. The 'historicisms' of Hegel and Nietzsche are mainly concerned with the evolution of a final 'End of History society' and a 'Last man' who lives in it. Marx is dismissed by FF, just as by you. The historical evolution of society (and the concurrent one of man in it) has nothing to do with divine interventions. It is based on a 'Master-Slave' dynamic (Hegel) and Nietzsche's much-misunderstood "will-to-power." The importance of this is that BOTH views are perfectly consistent with the idea of lifting of the veil of avidya [ignorance] that you pose as the USP of the ahistorical tradition.
2. This powerful historicism can be viewed as a synthesis of your two elements, the naive Abrahamic historicism (really a convenient device to legitimize particular Godly interventions and the consequent Grand Narrative) and the broader idea of 'evolution' inside a human mind and in its context (society). Nietzsche's man-to-superman evolution (and Hegel's 'self-actualizing' slave) can be cleanly viewed as first-rate archetypes of the ideal mystic or spiritual practitioner.
3. The fact that the Hegelian family of historicisms is based on a universal driving mechanism ('self-actualization' of the slave, or the 'will to power') rather than arbitrary silliness (like all the 'rational pursuit of desire' contractarian rubbish that follows from Hobbes through to John Rawls) makes it an explanatory structure of the same power as Darwinian evolution. It suffers the same mysterious 'contingency' features, but it also has the same kind of promising complexity-theory kind of broader emerging explanation.
To make the idea more concrete, if you were attacking evolution, you'd be attacking a silly view that wants to claim 'man is the final outcome of a series of higher animals' (perhaps as argument for why man should rule nature). This is attacking a view of evolution that emphasizes the irrelevant ('man emerged') rather than the important ('complexity emerges through an ever-branching process'). Do historicism the favor of attacking the good version. You may find you don't want to attack it.
In short, your dichotomy is already being transcended by emerging scholarship (FF is circa 1991). It still serves a purpose though. All I ask is that you don't throw the baby of historicism out with the bathwater of particular god-miracle-legitimizing Abrahamic historicisms.
If you seriously want to look for a strong western adhyatma vidya, look for it in Hegel and his successors, not in the Bible.
If you seriously want to develop a good brand/USP for Indic 'inner science' please DON'T conflate it with 'ahistoricism': the addition of sophisticated historicism to an ahistorical inner tradition can produce a much more powerful idea, as I sketched. The bottom-line of that idea, in its grandest version, is very useful to your project: "The universe awakens, shedding the veil of avidya through evolution in whole and part."
If that is not a satisfying follow-up of everyone's favorite Indic beginning, the Nâsadîya Sukta, then I don't know what is.
Dichotomies are unfortunately both necessary and always false. This particular one is no longer necessary, so why not abandon it and look for synthesis? Why hobble the genius of Indic inner traditions with the unnecessary burden of 'ahistoricism' as a necessary feature?
Sorry to have been long-winded. I have been reading all your
columns with interest, and at some point I might marshal my responses more
cogently into a response. I don't disagree with your views entirely, just
partially. I think your pursuit of twin agendas of marketing a more robust and
sophisticated Indic cultural product and, simultaneously, seeking insight into
deep questions, often compromise each other. I find more value in your latter
agenda, but clearly most people find your marketing efforts more valuable.
Venkatesh Rao (Sulekha comment #8); Rajiv Malhotra's response at #10
As you can judge by the above critique of the
final version of Rajiv's paper (earlier drafts were discussed somewhat on this
Abhinava list...), the quality and level of the discussions seem to have greatly
improved from the comments I used to read on Rajiv's earliest columns and
articles at Sulekha. I have yet to read all the 139 comments already posted
there over the last couple of days, but I'll share some preliminary thoughts:
·
Is the conflict between the 3
Abrahamic religions that of three 'historicisms' or that of 3 versions of a
single 'history' (hence over
·
Should this conflict be defused by
denying their "grand narrative(s)" or rather through an 'archeology'
of their common spiritual core?
·
Has the secular liberal
'historicism' of F. Fukuyama really broken free of the proselytizing religious
impulse or is it rather a deadlier strain?
·
Can we do justice to current
knowledge of pre-Vedic-Buddhist-Hindu-Hindutva 'tradition' without resorting to
historicist modes of analysis?
It would be good to hear your thoughts on these questions
here and/or at Sulekha!
Sunthar
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date:
In this classification, I interpret Jesus' original teachings
as type B (ahistorical and esoteric), whereas Christianity later became type A (exoteric institutionalized power). The Grand Narratives
in Jesus' name have often not been faithful to his message. The category of
“Abrahamic religions,” as used in this essay, denotes the institutions and
their history-centric Grand Narratives. Prior to
The Savior image [is] the go-between God and the sinful race
of humans. We know this image also as the scapegoat, and the Substitute King:
someone chosen for the occasion to be the victim of the moment for the salvation
of the rest of the community. He gains immortal divinity, saves other humans,
brings his Father into the scene, his followers name a Church after him and
these same followers establish a narrative, a theology, and ethics based on
principles of behavior… The room left for individuals to improve their
spiritual knowledge in this scheme of Savior/sinner, is not great, we are after
all sinners, born in sin, and our individual salvation is only a gift, provided
we follow the rules of ethics, and not the result of any superior knowledge of
God or deviation from this scheme. Judaism, Islam and Christianity are the
followers and founders of the model. God and the rules of ethics come from the
outside and their mission in life is to bring all humans to surrender to this
model, either through conversion or force. The individual, in this model, is an
individual only in name, for after all, individual perfection consists in total
surrender to the model, in letting the model become embodied in the subjects in
such a way that the model, rather than the individuals, acts through each
complying individual… Wherever there is violence the Savior model is at work.
Athens has so far outrun the rest of mankind in thought and
speech that her disciples are the masters of the rest, and it is due to her
that the word "Greek" is not so much a term of birth as it is of
mentality, and is applied to a common culture rather than a common descent -
Definition of a Hellene by Isocrates (436-338
B.C.) in his Panagyricus
Concluding citation at "Hebrew is Greek: The Work of Joseph Yahuda"
[an anti-Bernal Jew converted to
'Greek' Christianity]
If you seriously want to develop a good brand/USP for Indic
'inner science' please DON'T conflate it with 'ahistoricism':
the addition of sophisticated historicism to an ahistorical inner tradition can
produce a much more powerful idea, as I sketched. The bottom-line of that idea,
in its grandest version, is very useful to your project: "The universe
awakens, shedding the veil of avidyâ through
evolution in whole and part." [...]
Dichotomies are unfortunately both necessary and always false. This particular
one is no longer necessary, so why not abandon it and look for synthesis? Why
hobble the genius of Indic inner traditions with the unnecessary burden of 'ahistoricism' as a necessary feature?
Venkatesh Rao (Sulekha comment #8)
I agree. You are probably close to Aurobindo’s historicism – a
very fascinating one indeed. His system is one of the best syntheses I know, of
historicism and adhyatma-vidya. Note, it resembles both Kashmir Shaivism and Ramanuja’s
Vedanta. This is Indic tradition at its best! [...]
The question they don’t like to answer is: If you believe in adhyatma-vidya, then why not help others by helping them
become better within their own cultural identities and spiritual paths; why the
obsession to convert if there is no unique history? So lets
see where these discussions take us. In any case, at the very least, even the
critics have remarked that it is stimulating and provokes new ways of seeing
inter-faith dynamics.
Rajiv Malhotra's response at #10
In fact, the primary focus of the Abrahamic religions has not
been esotericism, self-realization, diversification of approaches, whereas even
the most ordinary Indian at least acknowledges the latter claims... [Sunthar]
goes on to state that the messianic impulse, embodied especially by
Christianity, is focused on transforming the (external) world (as much as, if
not more than, the inner man), even and especially when it breaks free of the
(Jewish) Law.
Hello Joe,
Your argument would hold, only if we reduce the
Christian tension between the inner transformation of the
individual and the futuristic utopian community - hence the willfully sustained
ambiguities, already in the Gospels, of the '
* Was early Christianity apolitical? Of course,
there was no way that the persecuted Church could wield overt political power
until it had captured the imperium by winning over
(the sword of)
* Messianism, universalism and the Christian Trinity
- When I invited Miklos Janos
Véto, a French professor of philosophy, to speak at the
Benares Hindu University on the "Christian Notion of the
Trinity," I had to keep all the Indian Catholic priests sitting in the
front rows at the Dept. of Philosophy amused with a long introduction (his
plane was late...) justifying the lecture on the grounds that, as a Hungarian
Jew converted to Christ, he was in a far better position to vindicate the
Three-in-One doctrine than any of them. However, the only thing I learned from
his talk was that it was a mystery beyond human comprehension well worthy of
the Lord. More recently in
* Jewish universalism versus Athenian differentialism - Judged
only by the intellectual thrust of their writings, the Greeks would be (almost)
as universal as Indian philosophers like Zankarâcârya,
for whom the absolute Brahman pervades all beings (presumably also Buddhists,
Jews, European goyim and other barbarians),
even dogs and inanimate matter. Replaced in their anthropological context,
these slave-owning Athenian (like their successor American?) democrats were
(almost) as 'parochial' as those orthodox brahmins who
insisted that untouchables who (even unwittingly over-) heard the Vedas should
have their ears blocked with (molten) lead. Is this why Abhinava, even while
admitting the validity of Vedic tradition for its brahmin
adherents, places these Vaidikas (almost) at the
bottom of his spiritual hierarchy and well below the ranks of the much-admired
Buddhists? Athenian differentialism seems to have
exercised as much (if not more...) - and (not always...) subconscious - appeal
to exclusivist claims to cultural (even racial) superiority by German (and now
American?) 'Indo-Europeanists' (and philosophers?). (Heidegger's?) 'Greeks' (in togas?) have been appropriated
by the French 'New Right' whose research-organ bore the acronym GRECE (and who
were roundly denounced by their claimed 'patron-saint' Georges Dumézil when we
first visited him in