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Advaita and Neoplatonism (1961)

Advaita and Neoplatonism

(1961)–Frits Staal–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

A Critical Study in Comparative Philosophy


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7. Two levels and double truth

Though Plotinus does not make a distinction between a pāramārthika and a vyāvahārika realm there are some indications which point in a similar direction.

 

Firstly, Plotinus is well aware of the fact that bis monism makes it very difficult to speak a language which is essentially dualistic. He says: ‘if we have to use these expressions, though they are not correct, we have to realize that, correctly speaking, we cannot admit any duahty, not even a logical one...but we have to compromise in, our expressions’, and: ‘One has to excuse us when we, speaking about the One, use necessarily, in order to express our thought, words, which we don't want to use when speaking correctly (akribeíai). To each of them one has to add an ‘as if’ (hoîion)290

 

Secondly, Plotinus often looks upon the popular Greek Gods as symbols for the hypostases of his system. He regards their representation in religion as exoteric and himself gives an esoteric interpretation. For example, Zeus stands for the soul, Cronos for the nous and Ouranos for the One. Such esoteric interpretations were apparently common in the syncretism of Alexandria, where even the Iliad and Odyssea underwent a consistently spiri-

tual interpretation (Odysseus' journeys represent the wanderings of the human soul in its search for the divine). The same happened in later Hinduism to the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana. The best example of allegorical interpretation occurs in the treatise ‘On love’ or ‘On Eros’,291 where Cronos is the nous, Aphrodite the soul and Eros the vision which the soul possesses when it turns towards the nous.292

 

Thirdly, Plotinus expresses his views concerning myths in general, in the last chapter of the same treatise. According to him, myths narrate in time and as a story the timeless truth about timeless entities. ‘The myths, when they are really myths, have to separate in time that about which they speak and make distinctions between many things which are in fact simultaneous and only distinguishable in rank and in potentiality. Moreover, even for him (i.e., Plato), myths deal with unoriginated entities in narrations and stories about origination, and they separate all that ought to be together. But when we once know the manner in which myths teach, we are entitled to combine data which are actually dispersed’.293 Bréhier rightly remarks that these views concerning myths must have originated among Platonists who attempted to reconcile the eternity of the world with the description of its origination and creation in the Timaeūs (cf. the niṣprapañca and saprapañca views in the Upaniṣads). But all truth about timeless entities is endowed with a temporal character or seen through a temporal veil when expressed in language, as language is a temporal phenomenon. Therefore Plotinus himself speaks often about the hypostases as originating from each other, whereas they are in fact timeless and only logically and ontologically connected.294

 

Both Indians and Greeks professed the perpetuity of the World, Plotinus says for instance: ‘To ask why the world has been created... .is the same as to ask why the Demiurge has produced. This is based however upon the assumption that there were a beginning (arkhḗ) of that which has always been there (toû aeí).’295

Several of the Arab philosophers, like Ibn Rushd (Averroes), accepted this, combining it with monotheistic creation by characterizing the latter as a myth which symbolically and figuratively expounds in time the timeless truth of non-origination. Ibn Rushd tried to prove the perpetuity of the world by reasoning as follows: God is eternal; therefore a first instant does not exist; therefore time is eternal; therefore motion (which is, as in Aristotle, the cause of time) is eternal; therefore the sum total of all motions, i.e., the world, is eternal. Or elsewhere, shortly: God is eternal; the world is God's work; therefore the world is eternal.

 

Many Muslims (like al-Ghazzālī) and Christians rejected this. The difference in opinion has been very clearly expressed by the contemporary Protestant theologian Karl Barth. Whereas myths, says he, refer to eternal truth or truths (this in accordance with Plotinus' view) creation as described in the Bible speaks about an ‘absolute beginning’,296 so that one cannot speak about a myth of creation. ‘There is no myth of creation, as creation as such can never be described in a myth. In the Babylonian myth of creation it is for instance evident that we are dealing with a myth of becoming and declining, which can principally not be related to Genesis 1 and 2.297 ...The interesting point of the biblical record of creation is exactly that it is closely related to the history of Israel.... This history begins according to the Old Testament with the creation by God of heaven and earth’.298

 

In Roman Catholicism philosophers have been less uncompromising. Thomas Aquinas understood that neither the eternity of the world, nor its contrary, could be proved (as respectively Ibn

Rushd and Bonaventura had attempted to do). We must, therefore, according to him, resort to revelation (just as Śankara would do in the suprasensible realm), which teaches us in fact that the would has a beginning. This we must therefore believe though we are unable to prove it or know it properly.299 Other medieval philosophers went much further and rejected altogether the unicity of creation. In the third century Plotinus' contemporary Origenes taught that everything comes back and that time is a kúklos, a ‘cycle’. Even the incarnation of Christ is a regularly recurrent phenomenon, thereby becoming an avatāra. Thousand years later, in the thirteenth century, Sigher of Brabant expounds the same view. Everything comes back, ‘the same laws, the same opinions, the same religions’. But taken aback by his own speculation Sigher hastens to add: ‘We say this according to the opinion of the philosopher, without affirming that it is true’.300

 

At this point we have again arrived at our starting point. The last words seem to imply that there are two truths, a philosophical truth and a truth of ‘faith’. Sigher of Brabant hesitates to accept the first. But his hesitation is heretical, because it seems to incline to the notorious doctrine of ‘double truth’. This doctrine is ultimately based upon the philosophical difficulty of how to reconcile God's creation of the world with the world's everlastingness. A similar difficulty - i.e., how to interpret creationistic and theistic passages in śruti in the context of Advaita - led Śankara to the doctrines of parabrahman and aparabrahman, and of paramārtha and vyavahāra.

 

The Western reaction to the Advaitic doctrine of two levels, must be understood in relation to this so-called doctrine of double truth, which was criticised and condemned throughout the middle ages. The doctrine might have originated under the influence of early attempts to interpret diffcult passages of the Quran in a figuratie sense. It reached its greatest height in the twelfth century. in Ibn Rushd. The latter did not really hold a doctrine of two truths, but divided humanity in three classes: firstly, the greater part of human beings, the masses, which possess blind faith; next the ‘elite’, which follows reason in a strictly philo-

ssophical way. A third category of being follows theology, which is an unjustified and abnormal eristic occupation301 for which Ibn Rushd has nothing but contempt. That he did not look upon himself as exclusively belonging to the philosophical class follows from the fact that he wished to remain a good Muslim. He therefore was in a position to hold the following opinion concerning the unity of the active intellect (a traditional Aristotelian problem): ‘On account of reason I conclude with necessity, that the intellect is one in number; but notwithstanding that I firmly hold the opposite on account of faith’.302 Gilson remarks that here reason leads to necessity, but that it is nowhere said that it leads to truth. What the Arab philosopher really thought remains ‘hidden in the secret of his conscience’.303

 

After Averroes a school of Averroists arose in Padua whose views were much more unreasonable. According to them there can be two opposite truths concerning one and the same dogmatical problem, one on account of faith and one on account of reason. These two truths are contradictory, but nevertheless valid for every human being.304 This Averroism was destined to become very unpopular. It explains why the doctrine of ‘double truth’ did not only become one of the main heresies for the medieval church, but also an inadmissible mistake to all later philosophical thought. This is evident if it is remembered how strong the tradition of the Aristotelian doctrines of the excluded third and contradiction were and to what extent logical as well as existential choice was stressed in the West.305

 

These different doctrines of Averroist origin can be ultimately traced back to Neoplatonism or Platonism (or even Parmenides: see below) and are essentially the same as the Advaitic doctrine of two levels. The difference, namely that Śankara ultimately considered only the one, parāmāthika truth, can be explained

by the fact that the Roman Catholic church could never tolerate the denunciation of its central doctrine of creation, whereas the less intolerant and less perfectly organized Hindu community could permit one trend of thought in śruti being subordinated in one of the Vedāntic systems. To the uncompromising Western mind Śaṅkara is almost only intelligible if the vyāvahārika aparavidyā truths are essentially rejected and not compromisingly allowed as possessing a kind of ‘relative’ truth. The opposition is less unbearable for the Indian mind, for we see authors speaking about the vyāvahārika realm as if it were a reality. For the Western mind, it is at first inconceivable that a true Advaitin is a bhākta as well - a relatively common situation in India. This might be explained by the unusually synthetical character of the Indian mind.

 

Islam and Christianity rejected the doctrine of Ibn Rushd also for another reason. The truth of the monotheistic religions is intended for everybody, without exception. No esotericism of an elite, posssesing its own higher or ultimate truth, has ever been taken seriously in the monotheistic atmosphere. This is clear from Christ's own teaching and holds for Muhammad as well (despite later mystics who attributed an early Christian or Muslim306 origin to esoteric doctrines.). For the same reason the ancient Greek democracy of the Pólis, the ‘city-state’, could become the leading political ideology of the Christian West. But against this democratie and ‘popular’ view of ultimate truth there have always been aristocratic protests from people who wanted to keep truth to themselves and who felt on that account superior to others.307

 

While Islam and Christianity opposed esotericism, the same does neither hold for the latest period of Greek civilization, nor for India. In Plotinus' days esoterical movements were fashionable since confidence in the old religious truths had disappeared and the latter came to be looked upon as popular. The same holds to some extent at present. In India the caste-system is consistent with the idea that spiritual truths are confined to an elite, who

must preserve the tradition (as a necessary in a circular view of time). This privileged class, consists of Brahmans who are entitled to study the Vedas. This situation, explained (away) by the doctrine of karman, was often openly denounced, e.g., in the Bhāgavata: ‘One becomes a Brāhmana by his deeds and not by his family or birth; even a Caṇḍāla is a Brāhmaṇa, if he is of pure character.’308 In Advaita everyone can take saṁnyāsa and realise Brakman.

 

This is connected with the fact that Advaita started as a sect and took its followers from different castes. While the caste system is tolerant with regard to doctrines which caste members wish to adopt, it is exclusive as regards the people who can be admitted. This situation is reversed in the sects. A sect is open to all castes but intolerant with regard to doctrines.309 In Advaita exclusiveness of caste is replaced by an exclusiveness of doctrine expressed in the view that only the liberated soul attains paravidyā while the others do not go beyond aparavidyā. The truth is confined to an elite. In the Gītā, a similar view is expressed.310 In later Advaita considerations of caste re-appear and the system becomes the traditional philosophy of a subcaste of South Indian Brahmans, the Aiyars.311 This does not prevent others from adopting the philosophy of Advaita. The Śaṅkarā. cārya of the Śrṅgeri Maṭha is at the same time the head of orthodox Aiyar Brahmans and a saṁnyāsin who gives spiritual counsel and teaches all who are interested in Advaita.

 

By incorporating the vyāvahārika realm Śaṅkara aceepted the relative validity of the caste system. We do not have much information about the attitude to caste in early Advaita, but Śaṅkara states in the great commentary,312 that śūdras are not allowed to

study the Vedas. The legend of Śiva appearing before him disguised as a Caṇḍāla must be of later origin.313

 

The above considerations suggest relationships, not causes, and do not lead to historical-materialistic explanations. One cannot explain a doctrine of higher and lower truth as the ideology of an intellectual or spiritual minority which wants to gain power and supremacy. There are purely metaphysical reasons for this doctrine so that it is likely that the social situation is a reflection of another reality. This can be made plausible by lastly considering one Greek pbilosopher, in whose doctrine the two-level theory stands out very clearly and who is as such the precursor of all similar theories in the West: i.e., Parmenides.314

 

Parmenides' famous poem consisted of two parts: the first dealing with truth, the second with dóxa, ‘appearance’, ‘opinion’. The significance of this second part has been variously interpreted, but increasingly in a manner by which it becomes comparable to the Advaita vyāvahārika level. Diels originally held it to contain an enumeration of cosmologies alien to Parmenides' own views. Von Wilamowitz and Kranz considered it a probable hypothesis about the origin of the world.315 Reinhardt however316 has convincingly refuted these two theories and has shown that the second part of Parmenides' poem explains the origin of the illusory world of appearance (dóxa) and the origin of the erroneous opinions (dóxai) of the mortals about it at the same time and unseparated. Verdenius has in particular shown that the world of dóxa is a world of lower level, to which a lower and only relative knowledge corresponds.

 

This is in all probability the oldest form in which the two level theory was known in Europe.


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