Nietzsche on Greek and Indian philosophy

Nietzsche was struck by the similarities between Greek and Indian philosophy. From the perspective elaborated in On the Genealogy of Morality - in which values are derived from the physiogical, psychological, and social domains - we would expect the similarities of thought to derive from similarities in the conditions of the two cultures. A role is played here by the agonal spirit manifest in the Iliad, Hesiod and Heraclitus as well as in Indian philosophy and in the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Nietzsche found in both cultures viable models of self and state, born from an agonal context, that provided for him modes of being alternative to the Christian slave morality that he despised.

Soul chariots in Indian and Greek thought: polygenesis or diffusion?

This chapter discusses the similarity between the allegories of the soul as chariot in Plato's Phaedrus and the Katha Upanishad. It begins by investigating the methodological assumptions underlying such cross-cultural comparison in the absence of pertinent historical documentation. Then the congruences and discrepancies between the two texts are reviewed. The allegory is integral to Upanishadic thought in a way that is unparalleled in Greek thought, and this supports the conjecture of diffusion in a westward direction. The paramount difference between the two texts is the idle passenger, absent from the Phaedrus but central to the allegory in the Katha Upanishad. This difference is significant as a watershed between Upanishad-based Indian and Plato-influenced Greek philosophy.

Self or being without boundaries: on Śaṅkara and Parmenides

This chapter concerns an idea shared by Parmenides and Sankara, that boundaries between human individuals, and between things, are not real but imposed by humans, and so 'epistemologically weak'. In contrast to Descartes, for whom the being of which he is certain belongs to a thinking substance or soul, they would both argue that being does not belong to any substance: rather, any entity proposed as the subject of being is produced by our superimposition of boundaries on being, which is fundamentally undivided. For them both it is impossible to know anything other than being, and therefore impossible to know boundaries and (consequently) the things separated by boundaries. This metaphysics of undivided being may facilitate experiencing lack of boundaries, yielding 'unshakenness' and invulnerability (Parmenides), compassion and liberation (Sankara).

Ātman and its transition to worldly existence

The central concept of atman was acknowledged to be 'ungraspable and unthinkable'. This problem is related to the contrast between the ontological completeness of atman and the ontological incompleteness of the physical world of the senses and mind. In order to understand the entrance of atman into the world of imperfect existence, there is a need for precise philology, and in particular the meanings of the verbs as ('being') and bhu ('becoming'), and the prefix vi-. The ontological issue is then related to socio-economic structure.

Harmonia and ṛtá

Greek harmonia and Sanskrit rta, both meaning cosmological principles of order, both derive from an Indo-European root meaning to fit or arrange. The similarity of harmonia and rta is explored in various texts: the Rgveda and the fragments of Philolaus, Empedocles, and Heraclitus. Each term refers to a cosmological principle that involves a harmonic regulation of opposites and that has moral applications. At the most abstract level, harmonia and rta each involve the dynamic fitting together of disjointed entities in both the macrocosm (nature) and the self (microcosm).

The justice of the Indians

This chapter starts with the report by Ctesias (early fourth century BCE) that the Indians are a very just people. This prompts various questions, for instance on the sources of his information and their quality, and on whether what he meant by 'just' corresponded to any Indian reality or terminology. This leads into an investigation of Greek writing on India from Homer to the Alexander Romance so as to ascertain what Greeks imagined to be the components of Indian justice, and to a comparison with Indian texts that include the Rgveda, Upanishads, Arthsastra, Dharmasutras, and Laws of Manu. A conclusion is that the Greek texts are more reliable than is sometimes supposed.

Rebirth and ‘ethicisation’ in Greek and South Asian thought

This chapter engages with the theory of Gananath Obeyesekere to the effect that ethicised reincarnation derives from the ethicisation of existing rebirth beliefs. The theory, which applies primarily to South Asian traditions, assumes that a metaphysical conception of rebirth is logically and chronologically prior to any ethical outlook that accompanies it. Catherine Osborne on the other hand argues that it was the ethical outlook of certain Greek philosophers that generated their transmigration theories. But there need be no order of priority between metaphysics and ethics. Talk of a transition from non-ethicised to ethicised conceptions of rebirth should be replaced by considerations of transition from one kind of ethically imbued conception to another.

The interiorisation of ritual in India and Greece

The interiorisation of ritual is a concept used by Indologists, referring to the replacement of the actual performance of ritual by its internal or mental performance, or to the adoption of the terminology and structure of ritual to describe an internal or mental transition. This chapter extends its use to ancient Greece. In India interiorisation arises from the discernible individualisation of sacrifice. In Greece the language and structure of mystic initiation is used by Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Plato to describe the intellectual progress of the individual. In both cultures interiorisation is associated with the advent of monism and the concomitant all-importance of the inner self. It is suggested that an important factor making for this development in both cultures was monetisation.

Plato and yoga

Plato, classical Vedanta, Yoga and early Buddhism all promote - on the basis of homologies between cosmos and inner self - cognitive and affective practices that remove external accretions to the self and the delusion and suffering they bring, thereby seeking to achieve transcendent wisdom and liberation from the cycle of births and deaths. There is evidence in the Platonic dialogues for analogies to South Asian meditative praxis. This raises the question of whether the highest states of knowledge in Plato are conceptual, or whether there is anything in Plato corresponding to the interdependence, in South Asian yoga, of intellectual insight and non-cognitive 'cessative' meditations.

The common origin approach to comparing Indian and Greek philosophy

This chapter focuses on two kinds of similarity between the two cultures that relate to their shared Indo-European origin. One is a series of correspondences between the journeys to the next world in the Odyssey and in the Kausitaki Upanishad. The other arises from a critique of the Indo-European 'trifunctional ideology' found by Dumézil in Greece and India. The total of three and category of socila function are both too restrictive for a worldview. Dumézil's triadic structure should be replaced with a pentadic one, in which the triad acquires at the bottom what is undesirable and at the top something transcendent. A pentadic structure is found in, for axample, the philosophy known as Samkhya and in the Greek set of five elements.