27 September 2004: ICPR Evening Session: Anthropology and Concept of Complete Person

Professor Vyas, Distinguished philosophers gathered here this afternoon and friends, as you know our council has undertaken the task of discussion on the important theme of value oriented education. In fact, it is the Ministry of Education which has asked our council to specialise in the philosophy of value oriented education. Therefore, it is one of the themes that we want to develop. In this context, although there is some kind of consensus that there should be value oriented education, many prescriptions are available in our country. There is not much philosophical debate on this issue in our country and I would like our council to engage philosophers of our country in this debate. It is in this context that I found a paper written by Ms. Chitwan Jaipuria, a student of London University, a very important proposition. She refers to the important project of UNESCO, beginning with Learning to Be, a report which was published by UNESCO long ago in 1972 and which defined: to be is to be fully, to be integrally, a complete education for the complete man. This was the formula it gave to the world, meaning thereby that the aims and objectives of UNESCO, namely building the defences of peace in the minds of men, can succeed only if every human being himself is integrated. A divided man cannot be the foundation of a unity of mankind. The latest development of UNESCO's thought is presented by Delor in the latest report called Learning: The Treasure Within. These two important documents have been hailed all over the world. And yet surprisingly, there is no philosophical book written on these two teams as yet. This young friend of ours has made a bold attempt to undertake a preliminary examination of at least the first book learning to be. And I thought since ICPR also encourages young philosophers, I thought we could have a good discussion on the paper that she has written. And I would also like to add that since Professor Vyas has joined our council member secretary, this particular team has received a further impetus because he himself specialises in the problems of ethics and normally ethics is highly studied in the context of Western thought. He has a very special contribution to make because he has made a detailed study of Indian philosophy and he is trying to give a new shape to ethical theory in India, which is very original in character. I think the combination of stars today is very auspicious and I will not lose much time now in introducing further. And I shall request Ms. Chitwan to present her paper.

[Chitwan's Presentation]

Good evening ladies and gentleman, I would like to first thank Professor Kireet Joshi for inviting me here today and giving me this opportunity to present my paper in this august assembly. It's truly a privilege. I wouldn't like to say much, but only that this is just a rudimentary beginning in the philosophy of education for the complete person and I would be enriched by a discussion that would follow on this, and by our comments and considerations on this subject.

I would begin. The main title of this essay has been inspired by the central message of Learning to Be, the famous report of the International Commission on the Development of Education, which was established by UNESCO in 1971. While this report highlights the ideal of education of the complete person, several of the arguments made by it need greater clarity and relevant philosophical justification. Here I would like to draw out in brief the main contentions of this report and to clarify the need for a philosophical examination of the ideal that has been recommended. UNESCO's report Learning to Be, Edgar Faure while presenting the report of the commission in 1972 to Hsin Ma Huang, the then director general of UNESCO, pointed out in his letter that the complete fulfilment of man in all the richness of his personality, the complexity of his forms of expression and his various commitments as individual member of family and of a community citizen and producer, inventor of techniques and a creative dreamer was one of the four assumptions that underlay the work of the commission. That three other assumptions were:

a) there exist today an international community and its unity is reflected in common aspirations and problems and in its drive towards a common destiny,

b) there is a widespread belief in democracy which underlines each person's right to realise his or her own potential and to share in the building of his or her own future and

c) there is a realisation that lifelong education is indispensable, since that alone can promote the development of the kind of complete person that contemporary civilisation demands, considering that stringent constraints tend to tear the inner unity of individuals.

As can be seen all the four assumptions of the report are inter related and stand united together. The report sought to establish these assumptions by a presentation of a considerable wealth of data which are extremely valuable and which may have a persuasive force. Nonetheless, one feels that the data and arguments that are presented need to be further developed. This is particularly necessary in respect of the aim of education of the complete person, since it is not only the overarching message of the report. But it has momentous consequences, considering its own intrinsic merits and considering also the worldwide influence it has exercised and is likely to exercise more potently, particularly in conjunction with the message of UNESCO's 1996 report Learning: The Treasure Within. The main argument of Learning to Be for proposing the aim of education for the complete person can be summarised as follows:

a) There are a number of common orientations of the objectives which are being pursued in different parts of the modern world, b) they indicate that certain of the major ultimate aim is coincide, namely development of scientific humanism, creativity, social commitment and exploration of various possibilities leading to the development of the new type of person for the new world, c) respect for the many sidedness of persons is essential in education and d) therefore, the physical, intellectual, emotional and ethical integration of the individual into a complete person should be pursued as a fundamental aim of education. This argument, when examined critically, will be found in need of a philosophical scrutiny for the purposes of the philosophy of education. We need to enquire into the philosophical foundations of the nature of the person and human potentialities and to develop, if possible, a philosophically defensible concept of the complete person. A further task would be to examine from a philosophical perspective some of the basic issues related to the process of education. The aim of this essay is to make an attempt to work out these tasks in some detail. I would like to say briefly what methodology I have used in this paper. In search of an adequate concept of the complete person, I conceived of three alternative approaches. These were a firstly a) the analysis of some select examples from his day of multi sided and integral personalities from the study of which one could derive those elements which could be considered to be constitutes of their completeness. b) secondly, a study of the psychology of the person and consideration of the ways by which the psychology of the complete person can be determined. c) a study of various philosophies of the person in order to discern what concept, if any, we can derive in respect of the complete person. In a sense, all these alternatives have their advantages, and perhaps in a more comprehensive study, each of them would make valuable contributions, the final result of which would be rich and satisfying. But for the purpose of this dissertation, I restrict my focus to the third method: the philosophical. In this connection It may be argued that the historical and psychological methods have their own limitations, since they give us results which can be philosophically refutable. Indeed, the science of personhood would have been a fruitful avenue of our study. But considering that human beings endowed as they are with free will, cannot easily be objects of scientific study, we cannot therefore expect to derive a reliable account of a person from a study of science. Science may be necessary, but not sufficient for the study of the person. Philosophy, on the other hand, examines more fundamental sets of questions and takes into account all the available data—scientific, historical and psychological— and examines them without preconceptions or fixed positions. Just the focus of my dissertation will be on the philosophical analysis of the nature of the person. This is also due to the necessity of limiting the field of study as well as for the intrinsic value of philosophical enquiry. As mentioned above, however, I should draw up to some extent on psychological literature and on the scientific theories of evolution which have philosophical implications. Following this approach, I shall first make an analysis of selected material from what may be called philosophical anthropology. I realised that it may not be possible to find a common agreement among various philosophers on what is a complete person. However, I shall try to draw out from the relevant material a dominant trend from which we may be able to highlight the essential elements of the complete person.

Next I shall examine critically these essential elements and endeavour to formulate if possible a plausible statement of what can be described as characteristics of the complete person. Finally, all this data needs to have some bearing on education, which will need to be a discussion for another seminar. Some preliminary remarks: UNESCO's recommendation for education for the complete fulfilment of man was supported and reinforced by the subsequent report Learning: The Treasure Within which advocated a multi dimensional education, focusing on what it called the four pillars of education: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. This recommendation has influenced several government organisations and educational institutions all over the world. In some countries, however, there has been independent thinking on the question of what is often termed as holistic education. In England the Education Reform Act of 1988 has directed that the school curriculum should be responsible for the promotion of the spiritual, moral, cultural and physical development of pupils.

Numerous philosophers in the West, such as Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Montessori, Whitehead, Dewey, Froebel, Huber, White and Peters, amongst others have written extensively on education of the whole child. Virtue theorists such as Gilligan and Nodding strive towards the same ideal of wholeness by suggesting that education should not be limited to the development of the cognitive and intellectual aspects alone, but should also focus on the effective elements of the person. Even psychologists such as Maslow and Young have written on the same lines about education while recommending self actualisation or realisation of full potential.

In the east this theme has been continuously prevalent and ancient Indian philosophy has spoken of the four aspects of the complete personhood, knowledge, heroism, harmony and skill which more or less correspond to the four pillars of education described in UNESCO's 1996 report. This ancient concept has been reintroduced in the contemporary Education Philosophy of India, particularly by Dyananda Saraswati, Swami Vivekananda, who spoke of the man making education, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo and the Mother who spoke of integral education among several others. However, this ideal, which has been expressed throws several interconnected words and phrases such as education of the whole child, holistic education, complete education for the complete person. Integral education needs to be clarified through a philosophical analysis and subjected to critical examination, the central questions that need to be answered in relation to the concept of completeness or wholeness that are involved in respect of the person as also in respect of the process of education are: what do we mean by wholeness? And can we ever know which vision of wholeness is the right one?

These questions come into focus since the basic concern of this dissertation is with the contemporary liberal democratic societies, where common schools are expected to impart educational influence in such a manner that pluralism and value diversity are allowed to flourish. An instructive paper authored by Terence McLaughlin Education of the Whole Child attempts to clarify the word wholeness as having comprehensiveness and integration.

As far as comprehensiveness is concerned, it refers to an opposition to narrowness and restricted nous of educational aims and processes. For example, we often find educational aims to be excessively narrow or restricted, limiting themselves to literacy, numeracy or vocational training. The central issue that McLaughlin raises is as to how education can be made an instrument for transmitting holistic education upon students whose personhood it is proposed to be developed in a comprehensive manner. He acknowledges that this question can be answered properly only when we enquire into a further question as to what sort of person education seeks or ought to seek to develop. He points out that the difficulty and answering this question is enhanced by the value of diversity and pluralism present in the liberal democratic society.

There is a lack of general agreement about what constitutes human good of fulfilment in such a society, and this prevents us from determining any final satisfactory conclusion. McLaughlin further points out that wholeness may also mean integration and education that aims at the whole person, is expected to promote integrality of personhood, coherence in development and healing of fragmentations or divisions. One of the ways by which this aim is pursued is to develop an aim of life in the light of which priorities can be properly ordered and the direction of life can be guided, so as to secure the avoidance of conflict.

There is a lot of literature on life planning recently in the West, especially in the UK. One of the prominent philosophers is White. The essential question again is how to determine what coherence means, since different people have different notions of coherence, and coherence has relations with value, premises or assumptions. How are we to evaluate which of the different views of life can provide a sound or central principle for guiding priorities and for arriving at integration. In pluralistic and liberal societies alternative aims of life are advocated, and each of them demands acceptance. As McLaughlin points out, the presence of alternative comprehensive doctrines or thick doctrines of value, alternative aims and styles of life, alternative ethical systems and religious systems as also systems of atheism, scepticism and agnosticism reinforces the difficulty. I may also add that even when we are presented with the suggestions that prescribed tolerance and synthesis, the result in educational practise may turn out to be a process of ethical or metaphysical, if not religious indoctrination. In other words, the central difficulty seems to be related to establishing an acceptable value base for wholeness.

The normal way by which this difficulty is approached is to admit frankly that there is no objective or conclusive way of determining which of the holistic views of life is correct. This is the stance taken by political liberalism. Recourse therefore is made to the standards that are to be found in law, of which are expressed in terms of rights and also to what is called basic social morality, public values, manners and sensibilities, and other democratic principles of freedom, justice and personal autonomy. McLaughlin rightly acknowledges, however, that by taking this stance deeper issues relating to value education are not answered, and therefore it is recommended that even questions of goals and values where there are wide differences in the society should be allowed to be discussed as a part of the exploration for the purposes of deeper analysis. And yet this is evident dissatisfaction among all partners of education. McLaughlin has presented this dissatisfaction by raising the following critical questions.

I quote:

Is the attempt to confine the value basis of the common school to values which are in some sense not significantly controversial, counterintuitive and damaging? Is the influence of the common school as a result, undesirably thin? Thus, the attempt to exercise a principle forbearance of influence lead to a weakening of the power and coherence of the value influence of the school. Must not a greater substantial substantiality, a holistic vision of life and of society be supplied to the common school and to the education itself?

These are difficult and penetrating questions. And even though we may not have adequate answers, the call for a sincere exercise of debate and wide ranging research. There is thus a need for further analysis. At the outset, there seemed to be two alternatives before us. One alternative is to admit that we shall never be able to arrive at such a concept of value or at a value system which can be objectively acceptable to all. This alternative would also reject the possibility that any view can be holistic or any claim in regard to wholism in an objective or absolute sense of any view to be any more than relative or subjective. This alternative would maintain that it is impossible to arrive at any objective knowledge of any standard of value or objective knowledge in the light of which a given view would be judged to be holistic, ultimately valid or adequately justified from a philosophical point of view.

The other alternative, however, would be to question the validity of ground for rejecting the possibility of arriving at a concept that is required to justify philosophically the objectivity of the given standard for the objectivity of a claim of wholeness. If this question is answered a priori, affirmatively or negatively, it could be considered to be a dogmatic refusal to inquire into the possibility of what may be called an all comprehensive vision or holistic concept or a concept in the light of which value can be judged to be objectively sustainable. Hence, in order to avoid this dogmatism, we should at least grant that such a possibility may exist. And we must make an inquiry into the various philosophical conceptions of the nature of the person and try to derive what may be adequately defined as the concept of the complete person or a holistic concept of personhood.

I thus identify the first set of questions that need to be answered as what are the different philosophies of personhood? Can we ever know which one is right? If they differ, is it still possible to derive from them an indication of a comprehensive concept of personhood. The second set of questions that we will need to deal with will be related to teaching methods and contents of education that will be required to be developed in response to the answers that we shall obtain from the previous set of questions.

Let me first indicate the needed inquiry in an effort to answer the first set. In my quest for understanding the concept of the complete person, I shall try to incorporate the demands of both comprehensiveness and integration and present an analysis in terms that would seem to be the more appropriate to my own frame of inquiry. One of the ways by which these two terms, comprehensiveness and integration can be understood is to consider the physical, vital and mental aspects of the person and to add to these aspects the ethical, aesthetic and spiritual aspects and ask how they can all be integrated and lead to or towards that level which can be called their completion in an integrated personhood.

Another way still is to do a similar exercise, considering the cognitive, affective and conative aspects of the person. Another way is to consider the person as an individual and ask what it is that constitutes completeness of the individual and in what respects the completeness demands relations with the collective. Yet another way is to take into account various kinds of quests of mankind and to consider the problem of pursuing and integrating these quests.

For it is acknowledged that within the same person we can recognise the person in search of concretisation, the person in search of abstraction, the person in search of goals, the person who enjoys the process without goals, the person who is in search of freedom, the person willing to believe in determinism and offeight, the person trying to reach out for the unknown, the person afraid of the unknown, the person who is unconscious, the person who is conscious and the person who seeks superconsciousness. McLaughlin while describing wholeness as comprehensiveness, suggests that it is arbitrary to draw divisions such as cognition, affection and conation, or rational, emotional and aesthetic when describing the human person since:

All the human, all the dimensions of a person are logically as well as psychologically related to each other.

In this connection, I would like to say only that the ultimate purpose of suggesting these divisions is not to contend that these aspects of the person are not interrelated, not that they ought to be developed independently of one another. Such divisions are suggested in an informed manner in order to establish a greater understanding of the person. It helps to avoid the danger of education focusing too narrowly on one of the aspects of the person while ignoring the others. That has been the case for a large part of our education history which by and large focus on the cognitive and intellectual aspects. In any case, that human nature is complex and that it needs some kind of unity and integrating of complexity may be regarded as a legitimate starting point of our inquiry.

As I have explained earlier, my inquiry will be philosophical rather than psychological or scientific. And I should like to point out that even though most of the philosophers have not written specifically about the complete person, I proposed to select certain important views from a wide range of philosophical anthropology with seem to me to be relevant to my understanding of the central issue and attempt to highlight the main movements of philosophical thought regarding the same.

I would like to begin with the pre-modern philosophy of the complete person. It seems that one great preoccupation of humanity has been to surpass physical, emotional and mental limitations, and this can be seen in the manifestations of the various quests, particularly scientific, religious, ethical and spiritual. In the West this preoccupation was reflected remarkably in the ideal which the Hellenic experience gave to the European civilisation.

In Socrates and Plato, the ideal laid down for the complete person is the pursuit of an ideal truth, beauty and goodness, and the moulding of the mind, life and body by that ideal for possible perfection and harmony. In the Socratic doctrine of virtue is knowledge, ethical aspects and cognitive aspects are closely related to each other. Knowledge is not conceived to be nearly intellectual in character, but following the simile of the cave in the Republic, we may speak of it as a vision of the light of the sun that symbolised fullness and integrality in which truth, beauty and goodness are synthesised. Knowledge here is truly wisdom that signifies something deeper and higher than mere intellectuality. At a further stage of development, particularly under the influence of Christianity, we find an awakening to the truth of a soul or spirit and an effort at the discovery of a relationship of the individual with God.

In the East the great preoccupation is witnessed in the most ancient available records, the Vedas, which have been the source of major disciplines that flowed from monistic or monotheistic Upanishads and Buddhism. The latter is atheistic but a firm state of nirvana, of transcendental consciousness far above those of the mind, life and body. Ancient Indian philosophy of the person considered the human state of existence as a complex of three lower and two higher poises of originating consciousness, termed as purusha, physical annamaya, vital pranamaya and mental manomaya, presided over by supramental vijnanamaya and blissful anandamaya.

The aim of human life according to this philosophy, is to train the lower three up to such a high pitch that consciousness begins to manifest the transcendental states of witness Sakshi, controller Anumata and master Bharta of the total being. And this results in the ascent into the supramental and blissful. So long as one remains confined to the lower three poises one is considered to be in a state of the bondage of ignorance.

Ignorance is a technical term, which does not mean merely absence of knowledge but a power of cognition that mistranslates the status and meaning of the object of knowledge, external or internal. Ignorance is erroneous perception of multiplicity that conceals the presence of the underlying unity and the narrow perception of the ego that conceals the presence of the underlying universal and transcendental self or Purusha. The result of this error is a projection of multiplicity and ego as the only reality and as the only terms that are to be recognised as meaningful. A further consequence of this projection is the experience of dualities, of pleasure and pain, success and failure, and of superior and inferior.

The gradual awakening, an awareness of ignorance, impels the person to strive towards true knowledge, which when attained in the states of unity, universality and oneness of all, gives liberation or mukti. The aim of the complete person then, is to attain the state of liberation and thereafter, either to be established into it permanently and enjoy immortality after death, or to continue to work in the world for the progressive solidarity of humanity or Loka Sangraha in the state or gestalt of liberation.

This ancient philosophy has been shared in different terms by almost all the schools of Indian thought, even though each school has its own distinctive context and framework. This philosophical conception of the complete person may be challenged on several grounds. Materialistic, vitalistic, empiristic and even idealistic, since it may be argued that the person ultimately can be reduced to dust, or that the human being is only a temporary vital vibrations which has no antecedent or sequel or that person even though they may have been embodied in a physical frame and may also have a vital force or pulsation, or even a mind which can think and which can idealise depositing values, they cannot be conceived as having anything more than a body, life and mind.

With regard to the conception of ignorance, it may be admitted quite readily, but the special sense in which the word is used in Indian thought may seem to be perplexing. And it may seem as though ignorance as a power of projecting multiplicity and ego may seem to be excessive, since multiplicity and ego are real facts, and they cannot easily be regarded as erroneous.

Finally, the idea of liberating oneself from ignorance may also seem to be excessive, since it may be argued that human beings are necessarily limited to the present state of consciousness or a little more expanded state of consciousness which can be developed through various methods of expansion of knowledge and expansion of experience. To maintain that one can liberate oneself completely from the sense in which multiplicity and ego are both transcended into an experience of oneness would seem to be impossible. Even then, it may be urged that while all these criticisms are understandable, there is a special sense in which Indian philosophical concepts of the person can be appreciated by virtue of the fact that to limit the potentiality of the person to his present condition or a more expanded condition may rest on a dogma unless it can be conclusively proved that however much one tries, one can never transcend certain limitations.

In India, tremendous effort has been made to develop methods by which what is called ignorance and what is called bondage maybe sought to be overcome by certain disciplines and practises, and it is on the basis of vote has been obtained through these disciplines and practises that the concept of the person as consisting of five elements—physical, vital, mental, supplemental and blissful—has been developed.

We move on to modern Western philosophy, and the complete person. There is rationalism and empiricism. In the West these have been two prominent traditions of philosophical thought. Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz may be considered as the most prominent figures of the rationalist tradition, even though rationalism can be traced back to Pythagoras, Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle in whom we see the beginnings of Empiricism. Locke,. Berkeley and Hume represent the foundations of Empiricism.

In both these traditions, we find two very different conceptions of the person. In order to highlight the difference, I shall focus on the philosophy of Descartes and Hume in particular. Descartes in his writings attempted the method of total doubt. He tried to show that human beings can come to the knowledge of their own intellectual self through the certainty of the argument cogito, ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am” of the existence of God through finding within themselves the idea of God in terms of perfection and as a mark that assures them of the existence of an objective order of the world and of the objective validity of their rational faculties.

Descartes' ontological argument for the existence of God was crucial to establish his view that the person can know himself and the objective world and the objective existence of God. It can be stated briefly and roughly as follows. People have innate ideas. One innate idea is that of perfection. Perfection includes existence. God is perfection, therefore God must exist. It is on the basis of the certainty of this argument that the person can confidently claim knowledge of the objective existence of the world since as Descartes argued, our views of existence of God guarantees that he would not allow us to be deluded in our perception of the external world or on our belief of the objective existence of the world. Descartes’ basic thesis was that of rationalism according to which reason consists of certain innate ideas amongst others which are capable of revealing with certainty the objective existence of God and the objective reality of the world. Human beings can know themselves, know the world and know God. The important point to note in the philosophy of Descartes is that he does not limit the capacity of the human experience to the physical senses and acknowledges human ability to reason, which consists of exercise of innate ideas and by reference to which the objective existence of God can be inferred as has been explained above.

Coming to Empiricism, we see that both Locke and Berkeley believed in God even though they were empiricists. Hume, however, rejected both God and the existence of the individual self. In sharp contrast to Descartes, Hume argued that the human cognitive capacities have essential limitations in view of the fact that sense experience is the only source of knowledge, this is the position of empiricists’ epistemology, on the basis of which Hume argued that scientific knowledge of the natural world could consist only of conjectures as to laws or regularities, which are to be found in the sequence of natural phenomena. For Hume then there are no causes in the world. The person, according to Hume, is an object of study by natural history and all observations, whether physiology, behaviour or culture contribute to the empirical knowledge of the person. Hume’s analysis may serve as a criticism of Descartes and we may add that the criticism is reinforced by Russell. Russell criticises Descartes on the ground that I think is an illusion created in the mind. There is, in fact, no I, There is only a process of thought. He states his argument as follows:

'I think' is his ultimate premiss. Here the word 'I' is really illegitimate; he ought to state his ultimate premiss in the form 'there are thoughts'. The word 'I' is grammatically convenient, but does not describe a datum. When he goes on to say 'I am a thing which thinks', he is already using uncritically the apparatus of categories handed down by scholasticism. He nowhere proves that thoughts need a thinker, nor is there reason to believe this except in a grammatical sense. (Russell, The History of Western Philosophy, p. 567)

I agree with Russell's criticism that thinking does not prove the existence of the thinker. However, the analysis of the process of thinking and Hume's analysis of experience of the self can be examined more closely if we tried to understand thinking and self at deeper levels. The Indian philosopher Shivajivan Bhattacharya describes Hume's concept of the self as that which is neither a permanent substance nor ontologically continuous. He further states that this ontological discontinuity necessarily implies discontinuity in experience. He acknowledges that since there is a temporal gap between any two perceptions, there cannot be any real experience of personal identity. He points out, however, that Hume attempts to explain the sense that we have a personal identity by conceiving a theory according to which perceptions succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity. According to Bhattacharya, this device of inconceivable rapidity cannot be considered to be successful. For if there are gaps, he argues, these should have been at some point being capable of being experienced. Ontological gaps, if they really exist, should have been known as gaps in at least one of the possible experiences. If such an experience is denied on what empirical ground it can be asked, does Hume speak of discontinuity? On the other hand, Bhattacharya continues to state that if inconceivable rapidity is a part of our empirical experience, there must be a subject which experiences that inconceivable rapidity. It follows as Bhattacharya shows that one has to be a transcendent subject witnessing the succession just as in the still movie, in a movie still pictures are seen or witnessed by the viewer as moving continuously. He concludes that what is important is that the subject has to be a transcendent subject distant from the projected pictures. As he points out, the pictures themselves, if they are conscious, would not be able to see the continuity. Even if the gaps were widened, the pictures themselves would not be aware of them. Only the transcendent subjects can experience the gaps.

It is also significant that the philosophers of the Sankhya, Advaita, Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism postulate the existence of a witness self, the presence of which is considered to be the ontological and experiential continuity of the self. According to these schools of philosophy, the contentless consciousness perceives as a witness various representations succeeding each other in a discontinuous series and that contentless consciousness shines through these temporal gaps even when they are extremely minute. That witness consciousness shines out as a light even as physical light can shine through cracks in a wall. The witness consciousness reveals all internal states, not only of our waking experience but also the state of deep dreamless sleep since in deep sleep one does not know any external objects and one does not have any contents of empirical consciousness. The experience that one was asleep cannot be inferred from anything one may know when one wakes up except the experience that is contained in the statement, I had sound sleep.

It may also be pointed out in this connection that reason, as it is referred to by rationalists and as it is understood by empiricists, are two quite different things. It has been rightly pointed out by Sri Aurobindo that our nature sees things with two eyes always, through the eyes of idea and through the eye of fact, of experience, and what is seen through the idea seems to be so abstract and unreal to the other eye that it does not regard it's imperativeness as binding on its own imperativeness to see and experience facts. The empiricist's view, therefore, has a different approach to the understanding of reason. It is the approach of experience and the approach of demonstrating truths not through conceivability but through experience, through correspondents of the idea with the fact through verifiability through direct demonstration or acquaintance. While the demand of the empirical reason obliges us to look for proof that can be demonstrated in experience, it must be made clear that even though this demand ought to be satisfied, it would be wrong to insist that there is no such thing as reason in us which corresponds to the rationalist’s idea of it, which obliges us to look for proofs through the criteria of clarity, self consistency and comprehensiveness. Empiricists may not accept the imperativeness of the rationalists idea. But at the same time Empiricists cannot insist that their idea of reason is so imperative that it is the only imperative.

Now, a major breakthrough in this regard to the knowledge of the person came with Immanuel Kant. In his book The Critique of Pure Reason, he asked the questions, what is your reason? What can it do? He was critical of both rationalism and empiricism for the method that he employed was that of critical reflection that questions the premises of rationalism and empiricism. He examined the person through self-conscious critical reason, and he came to the conclusion that while the Empirical person is confined to the categories of pure reason and to the intuitions of space and time, one is obliged to postulate the nominal world which cannot be known through our epistemological apparatus he found in the experience of the categorical imperative, which he claimed is free from the empirical role, the gateway that connects the person to the nominal world or the world of ends. Kant went further and through his moral argument, postulated the existence of God, the reality of freedom of will and immortality of the soul. Kant has been acknowledged as the synthesiser of Empiricism and Rationalism and his conclusion that the complete person is one who has the experience of the categorical imperative can be regarded as one of the major landmarks in respect of the knowledge that we possess of the nature of the person. In my view, although Kant has been criticised by subsequent philosophers, these criticisms are based on limited data of experience, of senses, phenomenological analysis of consciousness, and it's intentionality or of the existentialist experience of anxiety and discernment of the operation of free will at that level.

We now move on to 19th and 20th century philosophy and the complete person. After Kant two main trends of philosophical thinking flourished. Idealism based on rationalism and realism of various degrees based on Empiricism. Hegel and Bradley were the main figures in the former school of thought. Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Ayer among others were the main figures of the latter, which has come to be known as the philosophy of logical analysis. Hagel and Bradley look upon the individual as a part of a whole having no freedom and whose role is limited to subserve the ends of higher degrees of reality. Philosophers of the School of Logical Analysis underline the importance of the individual, his or her concreteness and his or her freedom, but they too maintain that the individual has intrinsic limitations which cannot be transcended. They confessed that the human intellect is unable, find conclusive answers to several questions of deep importance to humanity, and they refused to believe that there is some higher way of knowing by which truths that are hidden from science and intellect can be discovered. They claimed that they are able to answer many questions with precision, and they advocate objective methods which introduced no other motive than that of a desire to understand all the questions, such as—what is the number, what is space and time, what is mind and what is matter— may not be answered definitively. It is claimed that the method of logical analysis has been discovered by which, as in science, we can make successive approximations to the truth in which each next stage results from an improvement, not a rejection of what has gone before. In the philosophy of logical analysis, the basic point of emphasis is experienced. It has been argued that knowledge can be derived from experience and that the truth of the falsity of a statement can be judged only by verification in experience.

But the stress on experience, although extremely important as a remedy for excessive stress on rationalism, has one limitation, namely that it restricts experience only to sense experience, or to the experience that can be caught through or expressed in language. For it can be argued that there are different kinds of experiences and many of these experiences are not limited merely to sense experiences or experiences caught in language. There are, for example, aesthetic experiences. There are moral experiences, there are experiences of freedom, and it cannot be said that these experiences are devoid of truth value. It is for this reason that they have developed theories such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche who have opposed the predominant role of reasoner, rationalistic or empirical and have underlined the importance of will. There has been the development of phenomenology, which has underlined the analysis of consciousness and has discovered the importance of intentionality in consciousness. There has also been the development of existentialism which has underlined the importance of experience of free will. And finally we have also in postmodernism a thoroughgoing process of deconstruction such as we find in Derrida under whose influence all received values are being overthrown. At the same time, it cannot be concluded that Derrida’s deconstruction is the final terminus of all thought and experience. Derrida can be appreciated for his thoroughgoing attempt at deconstruction. But if we are keen to pursue the truth or thoroughgoing criticisms of thought and experience we have text examine not merely thought and experience at the level at which ordinary human being lives but examine those levels of thought and experience, which have resulted from continuous surpassing of the ordinary limits of consciousness. This is a stage where we need to expand the horizons of our inquiry, and we should look forward to the next presentation that is promised for tomorrow from Professor Joshi.

Thank You.

(Professor Joshi’s Comments)

I think we had on with presentation, a very informed argument and as is our custom we should invite a discussion on the main contentions of this paper. Of course the paper has many aspects, starting from UNESCO's contention, going through the educational philosophy which is perplexed about how to communicate completeness of the person throughout our educational process, particularly in regard to values that are involved in the concept of a complete person.

And then I think she has examined the concept of complete person, both Indian and Western, and I think it's a refreshing experience to see young scholar presenting both Eastern and Western views although very briefly, but with great success and precision and her readings of some of the major trends of thought, starting from early days of Parmenides and Plato right up to Derrida and then making some critical reflections on various points of rationalism and empiricism in particular and Kant’s doctrine of the categorical imperative seems to synthesise the claims of empiricism and rationalism. And at the end it leaves us with some big question marks which still needs to be pursued further and thus I think there is no dogmatism in the presentation, there is openness and wideness. And I think I would like to congratulate the speaker up to this evening for having presented to us a very thought provoking proposition. And we may now have questions which can be perhaps discussed.

Thank you.

(Beginning at about 1:02:00)

I shall myself like to have verifications from your questions. I don’t know much of what has gone into this paper but this idea of concreteness of experience, the whole problem of empiricism arises from its exclusive emphasis on experience. But I can stand corrected if you throw some light on it because it is true that phenomenologists have criticised that even though they advocate experience, they are only talking abstractions of experience. And then Wittgenstein when he withdrew from a certain position to another new position when he came to the field of language and so on, much of the rigour which was present in the beginnings of empiricism, of logical analysis, they were watered down and you might say that phenomenalism itself is a kind of empiricism, of a kind. But I would like from you an understanding how far both the propositions are valid against each other or invalid against each other. You can take her on time when we come back to it. This is my first question to you.

My second question is connected with Kant. It seems to me that in the entire history of philosophy of the West, Kant is undoubtedly one of the greatest, in many respects he is still unsurpassed according to me. And although it is true that in this paper the emphasis laid upon critique of practical reason in the conclusion of the starting from critique of pure reason don't you think that both the things have to be read together? This is my observation because if you did not do so, we are doing injustice to Kant and Kant has to be studied as a whole ultimately. And although as you said that epistemologically he postulates transcendental self in the epistemological aspect itself. I think the explication of it comes really from the categorical imperative. This is my personal feeling. But you can clarify to me, so I can understand better. It is the categorical imperative, this experience of categorical imperative, I think the discovery of Kant that there is a categorical imperative is not logically rooted anywhere. It is something that is new in the whole tradition of western thought. That there is something like a categorical imperative. Now this affirmation to my mind is a very drastic statement. On the one hand it as if it sweeps away the entire orientation of the West and on the other end it brings Kant very close to Indian philosophy.

I would like to have your own reflections on this subject because to my mind the most important statement in the whole field of philosophy is the statement of categorical imperative. A similar categorical imperative I find only in the Bhagavad Gita which says:

सर्वधर्मान्परित्यज्य मामेकं शरणं व्रज । अहं त्वा सर्वपापेभ्यो मोक्ष्ययिष्यामि मा शुचः ॥ 18.66 Abandon all dharmas and take refuge in Me alone. I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve. Bhagavad Gita 18.66

.. is also categorical imperative. That is why very often Kant and Bhagavad Gita are compared with each other with various kinds of nuances.

My third question is regarding Hume and Shivjivan Bhattacharya, I think Shivjivan Bhattacharya is a Nyayika and Nyayika stands or falls with the individuality of the individual. And that is why Hume, if Hume is established, Nyaya falls and therefore in the philosophy of Bhattacharya, and his analysis of Hume's discontinuity of experience of the self, to my mind is a very penetrating analysis that he has made and he has tried to show that either there is experience of discontinuity or experience of continuity, According to Hume, ontologically there is only discontinuity. It is only psychologically that there is a feeling of continuity. I think Shivjivan Bhattacharya has shown that in either case you can establish discontinuity or continuity only if there is a person apart from what is discontinuous or continuous only in the light of which you can make an affirmation of the kind of which Hume is making. This is what I think is the import of his argument. And I personally feel that Shivjivan Bhattacharya has done a great service at least to all theories which maintain the independence of the self, continuity of the self, transcendence of the self.

My fourth question is your concept of comprehensiveness, you prefer the word expansiveness or healthy perspectivism, right? This is your main thesis. I think in your consciousness there is some kind of hesitation to accept the idea of comprehensiveness. Why? Because you feel the word comprehensive would mean something that is closed. This I question. Why should comprehensiveness mean closeness? In fact from the both linguistic point of view and an ideological point of view there is a need once more to analyse the concept of All, which has not been sufficiently analysed anywhere so far as I know. The word All, does the word all imply closeness? When I say All of course, in empirical language, All is only a numerical addition of so many particulars. But all rationalists believed that All is not a numerical addition. It is something else. It is true that rationalists have not been able to analyse this idea of All. And I don't think we can settle this question now. But I think there is something very fundamental in the rationalist conception of Universal. Universal is not a closure. Similarly, the world comprehensiveness is not a closure. Anyway, I have no answer to this question myself. But we can pursue this question.

I come to the last question. You have wondered why Aristotle does not figure in a paper. And I also would like to share with you this anxiety why Aristotle is missed out. He is one of the greatest in the West. In fact I have discussed this question with her. But she is very strong minded. She did not accept. I will first only answer in my personal feelings. She feels Aristotle is not faithful either to Socrates or to Plato and that Aristotle has diluted both Socrates and Plato, the grandeur of Platonic thought, of truth, beauty and goodness on the one hand, the grandeur of the thought of unity as unity of virtue, virtue as spontaneous and not as habits as in the case of Aristotle. Spontaneity is more important than habit. If I am habitually good, it is not such a great thing, but if I am spontaneously good, which Socrates emphasises, I think this is her preference, and that is why although I argued that there must be the presence of Aristotle, but she was very frank also, she said, I don't know much of Aristotle, so why should I speak much about him?

Anyway these are my questions. And in due course of time, of course, you may like to clarify. But now I can invite some more questions from many others.