Hello and welcome to the OHP African and South Asian music series.
Please join us to, I think, is right around the subthemes African and South Asian law speaks volumes and
education of our public policy journalists at least the ones in 10 to 11 May 2021.
Together, we as students, begin to acquire our traditions and studied in your American institutions by investigating and choose in a way,
our traditions present these philosophies and beyond.
We intend to participate. Deficits in representation and resources required to transform our minds and reputation was snatched at ethically.
Today, I join you with fellow co-hosts America Ironheart and our honoured guests, Dr. Anna and Rembert Chen,
Professor of religion at St. Olaf College, Dr. Brett Paris, DPhil, candidate for religious ethics at Oxford.
And Dr. Leah McBride, a professor of philosophy at the College of Wooster.
In this series finale episode, we intersect our journal subthemes.
They by no means end their exploration,
I guess like reasoning and logic to social thought and practise by reflecting on the African and South Asian philosophical traditions,
as well as other American educational practises.
I guess initiate the conversation with short, especially focussed talks on alleviating and fighting oppression.
Then we collectively enquire about the role of philosophy in discerning value,
how centralisation is considered differently across various laboratory philosophies and its relations to forms of oppression.
And now to critically compare liberatory for us, please to consider how important or similar their laboratory orientations are.
Despite underlying theoretical differences, we end with short reflections on what these traditions teach us about agency and education.
We leave asking What does this philosophical conversation imply about all of our responsibilities potentials for acting ethically in the world?
How do you connect this philosophising to your daily life and ongoing experiences?
We are so honoured to now begin the conversation by hearing from each of our guests intern.
So first, we're going to hear from Dr. Parris on yogic Metta Ethics, Morality and the hashtag MeToo.
So over to you. The price. Rob, thanks very much.
Um, so what I wanted to use my introductory spiel for was to raise three main issues that
interest me and that I think are quite important in terms of real world outcomes. And I should start by saying that by yogic,
I mean the various traditions that contributed to the evolution of yoga in India specifically and the Buddhist,
the GI in the various streams of what came to be called Hinduism,
like Patanjali is yoga, which perhaps people have heard of, but also shiv ism and shocked,
shocked ism to the worship of Shiva and the feminine form Shakti, and also version of some and various forms of Vedanta as well.
So Vedanta, you're having it through texts and you're punishing the backward Geeta and the Brahma suitors.
So there's quite a variety of different streams that contributed to the evolution of yoga.
I'm going to concentrate on one a little later, but that's what I mean by yogic.
So the three issues I want to just throw out initially are, firstly, the philosophical underpinnings of the MeToo movement, which is, you know,
the movement of people, particularly women speaking out against sexual assault, naming perpetrators and seeing them brought to justice.
Secondly, is that different possible conceptions of the notion of non duality and how that can affect different ethical positions?
And thirdly, a couple of real world examples of the ethical difficulties that particular conception or views of non duality can produce.
So firstly, what philosophical ingredients are required for me to movement?
And I'm focussing on MeToo, but similar questions arise for any kind of universal human rights or a coherent,
you know, philosophical defence against Marxism, for example. But I'll focus on May two for the moment.
So a foundational assumption of the MeToo movement is that no one should be subject to sexual assault,
particularly rape, and that those who perpetrate such crimes should be held accountable.
Or to put it another way, rape is wrong in inverted commas. Wrong?
And rapists should be held to account. So obviously, there's more to it than that.
But for our purposes, I'll leave it at that.
So we accept that foundational ethical position that people, particularly women and children, should not be subject to rape.
What kinds of philosophical machinery do you need under the hood to make that kind of proposition work?
And I just suggest the following six ingredients.
Firstly, I think you need a belief that the phenomenal world is real or venal enough to be taken seriously.
Secondly, a belief in the individual autonomy, inherent dignity and rights of all people, so I believe that there are other people for other minds.
It's not just a Sophistic idea that you're the only one in the universe and then there aren't other minds.
So you need to believe you and other people with equivalent dignity and rights to yourself.
Thirdly, I think you need a belief in the severability of essences from actions.
So what that means is to describe an action as wrong or evil does not thereby imply the existence of an evil substance or of essentially evil people.
In other words, to describe an action is wrong is not necessarily to buy into a dualism of good and evil substances,
so it's possible to label was an action as wrong without thereby proposing that there's such a thing as a substantial evil substance in the universe.
Fourthly, I think you need a belief in the possibility of moral responsibility.
And so arguably a belief in free will or free enough will for moral responsibility.
Fifth, the belief that certain specific actions are right and others that are wrong beyond
whatever the law happens to say something in particular of things like rape and genocide.
And so that arguably suggests some form of moral realism.
I that there are certain moral facts about the universe and that used to be a deeply unfashionable position in philosophy,
but it's making a comeback nowadays and that so that position of moral realism would be against a view such as legal positivism,
where by definition something is only wrong if it's against the law.
Bearing in mind that genocide was legal under Nazi law, so it's the idea that things can be wrong even if they're not illegal.
And lastly, a belief that there is a truth to be heard and believed, which can be reliably investigated,
so if a woman is making a claim that a particular event happened, that there is a truth to that claim that can be investigated.
So that relates also traditions, implicit philosophy of science, you know, whether it's realist or and it also it's theory of truth.
And so you might have the idea of a correspondence theory of truth. So what the claim?
It's true because it corresponds to a certain set of facts about events that happened.
Now all of these things I'm skating over quickly have entire sub fields of philosophy under them,
and a lot of people would take issue with various aspects. But I'm just laying these out.
There is what I believe are arguably necessary to support the MeToo movement.
So this last one is quite important because it's proposing the idea.
There are facts of the matter which can be reliably discovered, which make the story true.
So it's not just competing stories. So those are a bunch of philosophical assumptions or philosophical machinery, which I think are unnecessary.
The secondary I want to just touch on, is this the idea that there's different conceptions of the notion of non-Jew reality,
not reality, is one of those terms that is notoriously difficult to define.
Not least because it's defined by what it's not without saying what it is.
So it's not duality. It posits that there's ultimately there's not two things.
So the implication is that there's only one thing and.
That can be a form of modernism, which means there's only one thing in the universe and certainly not many things such as pluralism and just
the emphasis or the focus of those kinds of definitions of non duality or around the substance or being.
So its saying is there's not two substances, there's not two kinds of being in the universe, there's only one being.
But this focus on substance, I think, can leave us astray a little because there are other categories.
So you might be a modernist on substance, but a pluralist on other dimensions like consciousness or relations or other kinds of categories.
So one of the Indian traditions, called the Shevchenko, distinguished a number of different kinds of categories and substance,
of course, but also qualities, activities, particularity and a couple of others.
So I won't go into detail. But quite importantly, they distinguished activity or action from substance.
So it's not necessary. So it's not necessarily the case that if you're a modest on substance, you have to be honest on action.
You can have a plurality of actions, you can have even a plurality of consciousness as well.
Aristotle also distinguished a whole bunch of different categories as well,
so there's a number of different philosophical traditions in both east and west that talk about, you know, different kinds of categories.
And I think it's important to bear those kinds of discussions in mind when we're thinking about something like non-Jew reality,
because it it's the kind of term that is often quite a bit of arm waving in the kind of spiritual communities and so on.
Particularly there aren't perhaps that don't have the depth of sophistication of some
of the Indian philosophical traditions that just skate over a lot of these nuances.
So I think one of the important questions for ethics is, you know,
does the tradition collapse everything into substance of a pure mannerism or does it allow for distinctions between different consciousness,
has different wills, different actions and so on that can be attributed to morally responsible beings.
So I just want to if I have a couple more minutes, talk about, well, two or three more minutes,
talk about some real world examples of some of the ethical difficulties that particular conceptions of use of non can produce.
And I want to just focus on non-Jew humanistic chauvinism,
which is one of the traditions that contribute to the evolution of yoga, particularly in its tantric aspects.
So in monastic societies and you have a conception that the ultimate reality and everything in existence
is Shiva Shiva is the only agent is characterised by being consciousness place of such children under.
Liberation in this understanding is a recognition that you are sharing, so you're not becoming shiva,
there's no process, it's just the recognition that your inherent nature is shiva.
It's called the recognition. It's called the party of no. So in reality, there's no separate selves.
Everything is shiva. So it is the other cells are the humans are kind of contracted forms of shiver that shiver nonetheless.
So a person who is liberated while alive,
quartered given Muktar or lacking all action is recognised to be that a shiver who is characterised by absolute freedom.
Spartan three is a technical term. And so not necessarily constrained by worldly conventional understandings of morality and a practise
traditionally involved ritual demonstrations of the rejections of duality like pure and impure.
Right and wrong. So one consequence of the view that you have look as being Schiffer was that their actions,
no matter how reprehensible by human standards were considered to be the actions of Shiva.
So one famous text, um uh.
The author writes that even the heinous crimes performed by the counties were considered by the law as it was done to him.
Another text from the South on the Tamil Saints describes a number of the actions of given notice.
Um, I went read out the names because they're in Tamil and I won't be able to pronounce them correctly,
but say one of these saints, you know, kills his only son to feed a bar of a Scheiber devotee.
Another takes to gambling to feed shive activities and other cuts off the tongues of those who despise the practise.
The worship is another service the feet of his father, who kicked over a pile containing the milk offering for the Lord.
Another gives his wife away and puts to the sword his relatives, who tried to prevent this apparently immoral act.
So there's a whole bunch of stories about the lives of some of these saints you can what is and what is very interesting about them.
I think from a philosophical point of view of these stories is that it's a kind of an
inversion of the role of morality in seeing to it that we're used to in the West.
We're sort of in the Western traditions and by definition, a saint is a moral person.
You know you you don't get to be a saint without being supposedly a moral person.
And it's a bit you remember in your Plato's, you referred to them, not you.
It was is the good loved by the gods because it is good?
Or is it good because it is loved by the gods?
So here we have here is a person, a saint, because they do good things or rather is whatever they do considered good because they are a saint.
So in some of these sub traditions that you find with a very strong view of reality?
Certainly not all about this, some is what I'm saying that you find this kind of inversion where the actions are considered
good in inverted commas or OK because the person doing them is considered liberated.
It's not that what they if they do something horrendous, it kind of invalidates their claim to sainthood,
as it would in the kind of conventional understanding what we might have in the West.
It's the idea that they have because they liberate it, because they are given looked at.
What they do is considered, OK, good.
And I want to just give a very small vignette of how one example of how this has played out in Australia recently,
um, there's a scandal at a Shiv Ashram in Mount Eliza in Melbourne with Swami Shankar Nanda.
An American original name was Russell Krugman. And it was an ABC investigation of this tape, because like the BBC here, as a very good story, well,
very harrowing story that came out in February, but I'll just read you a short quote from that one devotee,
Noemi tells us when all the abuse came to light and there was a hint that it would turn lethal and go to court,
I said to him, What are you going to say if you have to go to court? And he said a lie.
I said, you can't lie in a court of law. And he said, my word is higher than the court of law.
I'm God. And she says he absolutely sees himself as infallible, transcendent above the mortal realm.
She said he sees himself as God. He sees himself as having the qualities of God omniscient, omnipresent.
He really thinks that he's not a mere mortal like the rest of us. And that's how we were encouraged to see him as well.
So. What's? I found interesting, but also kind of harrowing about that, um, just smoking is that, um, his claim on God, it's the mirror ethics.
It's not. It's not really, as far as I can tell, a distortion of non-Jewish private teaching.
Rather, it kind of unmasks. In a kind of quite blunt way,
the conception of ultimate reality that is in that tradition that it is actually there is no good or evil at that ultimate level.
There is no right or wrong at that ultimate level.
And so someone who considers himself that you and Mukta would not necessarily consider themselves subject to earthly morality or norms or even laws,
necessarily, um. There's a bunch of other things I could say, but I suppose one of the big questions I have is, uh, can you get a coherent,
philosophical, um, support for the MeToo movement out of modernism and a very strong view of non duality?
And I I suspect you can um, you platonic.
Spinoza had monastic ethics in the West. But I think perhaps it depends, crucially on the conception of non duality.
And you know, does it include the idea of the good or love in the conception of ultimate reality?
Or is it morally neutral? Is everything just the play of Shiva as it is in non-Jewish societies and.
And is moral realism necessary to support a robust cross-cultural ethics of human rights?
Me too, and a defence against Nazis, and those are the questions I have.
So thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Perez.
Now we'll hear from Dr. Robuchon on challenges of trust and a Hindu response.
Thank you very much, and it's good to be with all of you today and especially to join my colleagues,
Dr. McBride and Dr. Paris stopped by thank you very much for your opening words and raises many interesting questions for me,
since I also work on non-intuitive tradition that up, particularly the shenker tradition, but perhaps later on.
And I think, you know,
one of my one of the principal concerns of my work is to derive a liberation theology that takes the world very seriously from that worldview.
So I think the questions you raise are really very important and significant.
And perhaps, you know,
I'll try to show later on how I do my own work with the way the tradition to derive a concern for human suffering in this world.
But let me just, you know, comment on the.
On the topic, of course, because again, I'm arguing and about dismantling costs from a non-edible perspective.
So in these remarks, these remarks are very basic minor concern.
In this opening statement with tracing the origins of the caste system because there are many theories.
You know, most of them are speculative, inconclusive, whatever might have been its historical origin or or intent, if I may put it in that way.
The reality is that the caste system evolves like like racism.
Into a hierarchical and unequal ordering of society into four groups differentiated in this case on the basis of ritual purity and under occupation.
So at the top of the if we think of a pyramid at the top of the social order order, the teachers, you know,
the Brahmins, priests and custodians of sacred knowledge and ritual on following the the Brahmins order,
the Warriors, the political leaders in Sanskrit, the chartreuse defenders of the community, so-called guarantors of political order and stability.
And then next comes the vices of the merchants and farmers,
generators and distributors of wealth and and their should leaders who are the labourers and servants of the first three groups.
So these first three groups are referred to as the twice born in Sanskrit.
They are the witches since day alone, entitled to the right of initiation into the study of the of the Vedas.
But most tragically of all, is that this system led to the creation of a large group of so-called outcasts or untouchables as precio,
who were considered ritually impure, unequal and denied all privileges and rights belonging to members of the the folk.
So even within the forecast, you had hierarchy, but the untouchables were outside of the system in entirely so similar to raise caste.
As is obvious from what I've already said, it is a hierarchical or graded ordering of human beings based on notions of purity and impurity.
Those in the upper, especially the first three groups, ascribed greater purity and those outside the fulfil order.
I am pure and capable of polluting others by physical contact, and hence we have the wood untouchable.
Or, as I said, in Sanskrit, for those who are not to be touched or to be touched by so that a person's place
in the order is determined by but and thus both caste and race in this sense,
inherited. As the system developed,
it became more and more complex rules and rituals evolved to prohibit and to limit relationships and conduct between pure and simple groups.
These included such rules as those governing commensal or eating restrictions.
Generally, food may be accepted from and shared with members of one's own caste or a higher cost.
Contact was also controlled by and dogging me restrictions,
which limited marriage to partners within the cast and by physical segregation in local communities.
One is born into a cast, as I said, as one is born into a so-called race.
These are all constructed categories. I'm just using the terminology.
Although there is change in contemporary Hindu world with access to education and economic opportunities and agitation by lower costs.
It is also is it still true that but.
Continues to significantly determine opportunities and just define boundaries for human achievement and human potentiality.
And it is a fact that, you know,
economic success doesn't alter one standing in this hierarchy because it's based fundamentally on notions of purity and
impurity and in ways that are similar to the legitimisation of racial hierarchies with appeals to biblical tradition,
like the story of how in the Bible it was used to, you know, stereotype Africans in Hindi.
In the case of the Hindu tradition, appeals were made to Kaaba.
The doctrine of karma was rigidly interpreted, trying to explain all events in the present life,
including one status in the caste system as having causes that may be traced to actions performed in previous life.
So escape from both in the lower caste becomes possible only by reverting to a higher cost in such a system, as you can imagine.
And this connects a little bit of what Dr. Pirates' was saying.
There is no injustice in the social order.
Suffering is justified as a consequence, all suffering is deserved and justified as a consequence of past life actions, a very rigid interpretation.
But that's not all that cast is. The fact is that exploitation of labour and limited access to material resources were greater.
As one went down the cost hierarchy, so purity and impurity distinctions were employed to assign places in the social order,
create boundaries and to exploit the legacy of unequal access to and distribution of material resources continues.
One recent study shows that despite some improvement in income levels amongst all Indians,
poverty is still highly concentrated amongst traditionally disadvantaged outcast groups such as Dalits and and indigenous communities or devices.
So I'm focussing on cost as having two significant shared features.
I think these are also features of of racialized social systems.
The first is the assignment of human beings into unequal categories race or caste,
and secondly is the assignment of material and other benefits on the basis of those categories.
So a meaningful Hindu theology of religion, which is a liberation sign, which is,
you know, one of the central concerns of my own work must address both of these.
So for me, the question is whether the Hindu tradition and in my case, the non developed tradition, which is the tradition I work with,
offers what I would call theological grounds for contesting human hierarchies of inequality and affirming the equal dignity of all beings.
Issues that were raised by Dr Look, the pirates. I do believe that such teachings are available in the Hindu tradition, in fact.
Dr Ambedkar, who was a great opponent, of course, and probably who was the most vocal analyst of caste injustice himself,
felt that there were teachings he didn't feel that the Hindu tradition had the will to to reform itself on the basis of such available teachings.
But I think and also here, I will just briefly mention two of those what I consider to be in accord theological
claims of the tradition that stand in contradiction to this kind of hierarchy.
Hindu traditions, including the one that I am committed to and the one that I studied,
the great tradition they affirm without reservation the equal presence of the infinite,
and in this case we speak of of Brahman as present equally in everything everything is in Brahman.
Bremen's and Bronwyn is everything. Brahman has ultimate value.
It's not limited by, you know, nation, gender, ethnicity, age.
Such teachings are also found in texts like the The Book with Geeta.
I want to argue, as I do in my own work, that such as such a theological claim, as you know,
similar to different but similar to Imago Day in the Christian tradition, for example,
is the can be and ought to be the source of the inherent dignity and equal worth of every human being and can be of
a fundamental antidote to caste or to deny or to any system that denies the personhood and dignity of of of others.
We can't give our support or assent to any social order system based on human inequality and dignity.
And the second issue that I mentioned, which is the social,
the unjust social structures where we have the assignment of different material benefits, there's a direct relationship.
I mean that we can see between regarding some bodies as more worthy than others and unequal access to goods and opportunities.
I think we have an important obligation in this matter since, you know,
interpretations of the Hindu tradition have contributed to this kind of unequal economic and social order.
What I think we need is. An expansive understanding of both suffering and liberation.
In the Hindu tradition, there are no good theological reasons why we must ignore the suffering of human beings,
although I admit that this has happened, but I don't think there are any good theological reasons to ignore the suffering of human beings when they
lack opportunities or when they suffer because of of caste or race to obtain the necessities for dignified.
Living or when suffering is inflict inflicted through oppression and on its material.
Legacy.
So I think those are the two principal challenges, and I I'll stop here and then, you know, we can continue sort of unpacking this food as we discuss.
Thank you. Thank you so much again.
Yeah, that's going to be so much to unpack. So next, we'll hear from Dr McBride on modern European colonialism, imperialism,
fresh domination and oppression as a way to connect South Asian struggles to send its
ripples and move to decolonised expand and to the dominant educational practises.
And kind of these go ahead.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate everything that everyone involved has done, especially I want to thank Alice Hank for inviting me and showing interest in my work.
It's great to be a part of this. First, I wanted to sort of introduce just where I start.
So I'm a naturalist, a fellow blessed, an organic being with limitations, and in my work,
I like to put that up front and recognise the limitations as a human being.
My epistemology and how far I can speculate is limited.
I clearly work from a Western tradition, but I have spent some time studying South Asian philosophies and thought and so.
I look forward to this exchange today, and I also hope to bring some other ideas so.
The two pieces that I really wanted to hit on today are colonialism and oppression.
So first, I want to just talk a bit about colonialism.
So during the 15th century, ship sailed from various Western European ports to establish new colonies to find mountains of gold,
to find a faster route to India, maybe to acquire land and material resources to spread Christianity.
ET cetera, et cetera. There are various reasons these Europeans went around the world trying to set up colonies the Portuguese, the Spanish,
the Dutch, the French and the British were the forerunners, establishing footholds in Africa, Asia and the Americas.
So. One thing I want to establish is that this is a particular type of colonialism that arises out of Europe.
There are other types. And one thing I don't want to say and I don't want to suggest, is that there is only one project.
I think each of these groups and even within these nation states, there were different colonial projects at work.
I have argued that each instantiation view of modern colonialism seems to evoke a teleological system prescribing spiritual and material development.
That is, the colonial projects arising out of Western Europe. Post 14 92 were designed to accomplish an ultimate end a telos of sorts.
That is to serve the imperial and economic interests of colonisers.
So the way I think of it, colonialism was met and designed to do these sorts of things to develop a certain type of person or maybe subject,
and to create wealth and honour prestige for your people.
The Crown. This is met the triangular Atlantic slave trade, the destruction of India's indigenous populations,
the plunder and degradation of environments in the global south. Settler colonialism.
The proliferation of industrialisation. And the prioritisation of high yields and the accumulation of capital.
So at very least, given this European form of colonialism, there has to be a spread of techno industrial capitalism.
I think it's worth noting that we still largely speak these languages that arose from these colonies, right from these particular imperial powers.
It's worth noting that a lot of our canons in education are still steeped in those traditions.
The Europeans are seen as the cannon bearers.
It's worth noting that in the western tradition, European scholars and scholarship still dominate the canon.
This, I would suggest, is a legacy of modern European colonialism and euro American imperialism.
This may help us to make interesting connexions or analogies between South Asian struggles, African descended struggles and indigenous struggles.
Additionally, this helps us to understand, at least in the West, how Euro American hegemonic techno industrial order of things is so pervasive.
Now I want to talk a bit about oppression, so my oppression.
I refer to a system of interrelated barriers and forces that conspire to reduce,
immobilise and mould people who are assigned to a denigrated group and thereby render
subordinate sorry and thereby thereby render that group subordinate to another group,
a dominant group. So notice that this conception of oppression does not merely pick out harmful or offensive terms or words.
It picks out structures and institutions that bind, reduce and subordinate people, particularly those assigned to these denigrated populations.
Additionally, this notion of oppression extends to various types of oppression.
So you could have race-based repression, sex based oppression, gender based oppression, class based, caste based, etc., etc.
So ultimately, I'm hoping that this helps us to think more broadly about the various ways that colonialism and oppression
might draw some connexions or at very least analogies between the various struggles that we might see.
My work largely addresses the various ways oppression manifests.
It works to conjure the notions that allow agents to imagine new ways of being.
The hope is that very least on some occasions, we can break with tradition.
We can set up new value systems, we can construct new, new ways and new notions of who we are.
And that's largely what I mean by interacting revolution of values.
And there. Thank you so much, everyone.
We we have questions, obviously, and there are lots of relations between what you're saying, but maybe actually before we start is are there any?
Relations that our guests would like to identify or ask about from each of them.
Before we get going. From what we have prepared, and if not, we could just get going.
Okay. Hopefully, they'll come up.
So our first question. First topic for pets, we have a few topics to address is the role of philosophy in discerning value.
So based on your writings, it seems that one world class you can play is to use reasoning to investigate received traditions,
philosophy or otherwise in order to clarify how and where oppressive opinions, actions and structures actually rise to passport rose.
Qualities and rules, descriptions and possibilities match the values and principles of reaching worldviews or taint them,
as well as to question whether we want to hold particular values to trace historical custom and compare this with other traditions,
theoretical and practical principles for tenants.
We can see this in Dr. Ambitions analysis of Hinduism embarrassment, pride, suggestion of how communities can overcome an oppressive categorisation,
and then Dr. Paris's demonstration of what sorts of metaphysical stances might such in and around the disbelief and oppression of women.
Could you talk about collectively more about how, through philosophy,
we can elucidate the often overlooked connexions between logical reasoning or metaphysics?
They're not necessarily the same. Some might think they are.
We've talked in other essays in this series about how sometimes the views might be questioned.
The notion of metaphysics will require a biased understanding of metaphysics.
So between logical reasoning, metaphysics, historical and social circumstances and custom and then ethics and values specifically are abstractly
and how this sort of elucidation of Connexions can help us choose amongst values and act accordingly.
They, of course, might give more depth later, but just to start the conversation.
I wonder I wonder if I could offer something initially. One of the.
The things that I've been reflecting a lot on lately, like being immersed in better ethics,
and so a lot of these difficult questions, it's the it's almost a, I suppose,
a metaphor philosophical question, and that is there's almost an assumption right out of the gate that your discussion of value,
it's and so it's all about your intellectual argument.
And if you can't be a form of coherent intellectual argument, why something is the case, then that's not the case here, this kind of thing.
So it's very much a privileging of a particular methodology in a particular way of knowing.
And it's really become quite interested in, you know, the whole sub field.
You know, of cognition, of embodied cognition, and it's saying that we don't know only through our intellect,
you know, there are other ways we know things through our embodied ness and our bodies.
And I am wondering about the application of something like that to ethics.
You know, you there. I think there are visceral reactions we have to certain things we may see, which we know in our bones are wrong.
That is, you know, whatever words you want to use, you're disgusting, repulsive, reprehensible.
Whatever it is, you know that something is not right when you see a certain thing and it's not necessarily an intellectual thing.
It may be embodied cognition that intuit's.
A moral reality about the world or the universe.
So I suppose, yeah, I just want to offer that at the at the beginning that, um, that the I suppose in terms of the role of philosophy,
discerning value, it perhaps the methodology of philosophy that needs to be questioned as well.
I mean, if in fact, you may have on that on perhaps bridging different traditions earlier in our series, you listen to doctors as a whole.
You recently published an article that talks about different ways of knowing
and let conceptual versus propositional content that comes from what you say.
I think one thing we've discussed a lot that's missing from our European tradition that we're taught in our schools is a de-emphasis of practise.
And so that's often like logic, reasoning, action gap.
And obviously, when we're discussing philosophies of liberation and motivations, we're concerned about how we connect those things.
But perhaps like I study Buddhist philosophy, those are more often just interconnected and obviously separate at all.
And so. I'm concerned to question that as well as do we need some doctor, I'm not sure and talks about this,
do we need like a theological grounding to get value systems going through into the world where those things already exist?
Like how do we just send them and then discerning them? How do we then choose when we find different options?
Or how do we live with the different options? And I'd love to hear what you have to say on that.
I would. I would want to, you know, respond to the excellent series of questions that you, you know, you articulated for us.
By, you know, coming back to the question of who speaks for tradition, who wins, who's interpreting,
what are the sources of power in a tradition, how does the read of the tradition, you know, determine what the tradition means.
So let me. Let me, for example, illustrate this with, you know, the Hindu tradition again, especially the non-Jewish tradition.
So the most prominent interpreters of non dual.
Hinduism all the way to tradition as we we speak of it historically and even right on to the present day.
People who, you know, renounce science or in Sanskrit, they are seniors and they have embraced monasticism.
And you know, we often don't think of what.
Entering into monasticism, more seniors in the Hindu tradition means for the identity of the reader.
And let me explain a little bit. So when one entered into this monastic order, the order of seniors, one was.
One would be exempt from all traditional ritual obligations that, you know,
a Hindu would normally perform at dawn and dusk and semi-annually and annually on all of that.
You know, rituals performed on the occasion of birth and that you're you're completely freed from such obligations,
but you also freed from all social obligations, obligations that are associated with work.
You know, marriage is dissolved. You're free from contractual debts, you distribute your your property.
In fact, there is a very close resemblance between the rituals of debt that are performed in someone, you know, departs this body.
And those are those that are performed to enter into the stage of monasticism or to become a Sonja's.
So they would include themselves in the traditional obligations made to the departed ancestors and and so on,
so that the renounce is occupies a kind of a liminal status between life and death.
No, no connexion between family and community taking a new name.
And so that's the reason I am mentioning that is that the identity of the reader as renoncer as radical renouncing in
the sense that I am trying to describe with a with an exclusive interest in reading this text with a very narrow.
Lens of liberation suddenly informs the reading and significant informed reading reading in significant ways,
because this former disassociation from social from the social world and community I think has
and I see has very profound implications for how the text is read and interpreted every now.
And so it's without social ties, it's likely to have little or no interest.
And in fact, they have little or no interest in the ways in which material, social, historical and other factors influence the formation of a text.
This these kinds of questions are not interest them. This is a this is this is outside of the purview of their reading.
They did tend to treat the texts as a historical source of source of knowledge, little interest in the historical formation of the texts.
And then you add to that. The lens of enunciation and the lack of interest in social reality as a reader,
and you add to that now, the fact that the renoncer is also likely to be upper crust.
So the other announcer who has no interest in social reality and who comes from the
upper class because eligibility to read the text was also traditionally interpreted,
it interpreted on the basis of caste. Right.
So within the confines of this social religious system, readership was limited to male members.
So again, you have a patriarchal system, male members of the of the upper caste women should dress and I don't even have to say,
you know, untouchables, but we'll exclude it.
So a male reader with an upper caste lineage who is a renowned so is unlikely to problematic his social hierarchy or injustice.
So even someone like, you know, who comes on the spiritual lineage that I belong to, Schenker.
You know, one of the greatest non-Jewish teachers and I mean a voluminous commentator and open it ships, he argues,
even even even as the announcer argues against, you know, readers who don't come from the Brahmin cost the should read.
For example, he says, has no right to study the Vedas and of course, includes women in that.
So let me, you know, I can go on, but let me make one final point on this,
because if the traditional renounce has no interest in the social formation of the sacred,
text reads it in a historical way and is disconnected from social interests and social reality.
He goes This meal is is similarly indifferent to the social implications of the text,
not only the lack of interest in the social reformation historical formation of the text,
but it's not asking questions about the social implications of the of the text, the relevance of religious teachings for for economy,
law or social gender relationship, its exclusive narrow lens of personal liberation.
I think that's a. You know, who is the reader and what are the power structures within which this text I read is a very significant issue in the
Hindu tradition and goes to a lot of the questions that I think were raised by Dr. Powers earlier earlier on about,
you know, personal autonomy, dignity world is real.
You know, actions some actions, you know, intrinsically right or wrong.
So I just I just want to inject that into the to the discussion about, you know, who speaks for tradition.
This has a lot to do with how that tradition is interpreted and what it means.
Thank you. If I can ask a question sort of just leading on from that, it's got really, really interesting point.
Dr. Mogajane And I guess, yeah, in terms of this question of whether of how we can use philosophy to discern value,
I'm kind of interested in sort of pushing that point that you made. I guess I'm just curious,
kind of like how postmodern it is your sort of hermeneutics when it comes to approaching these texts in like this issue of who's
reading a text you've highlighted as as really important when it comes to the ethical content that we draw from these texts.
But I guess I'm curious as to to where you see the ethical impetus as sort of coming from?
Is it essentially in the text or is it essentially in the reader so like?
Is the point that that Shanker, as or interpreters of the appointee shots who have justify its cost hierarchy?
Are they getting the texts wrong?
Are they getting the one issue to them or is it simply a fact of these one shows themselves don't have an essential meaning.
They don't have essential ethical content, and it's just we need a liberation reading of these texts.
These texts need to be read by certain people from press groups who could offer their own perspective.
So I guess I wonder that I think that might touch on the issue of of of where we're discerning value
and whether it's coming from us as readers or whether it's coming from the sources that we're looking.
Can I add on as well, I think this perhaps relates back to how you already think that you're
encountering the world and that might be worthwhile discussing at the same time,
like if you already think there's some direction given,
say in like revelation about the way that the world is and where value comes from versus if you don't have that
orientation or you don't have a reason to know value discrepancies because it doesn't pose an obstacle to you.
So it just doesn't come up that there is a discrepancy. Do you have anything to say about that and.
In relation to this question, because I think the line of centralisation this is we write this down later,
but I think that runs through all these questions and very different takes on that, and I think they're quite nuanced but really important.
Put the differences that arise or even similarities. Should I respond a little bit or I don't want to dominate or anything, you know, so.
But I can give a quick response to Amir's questions.
I mean, thank you. I again, you know, I'll try to answer from my own location in this in this matter.
I don't think, you know, it's one or the other. You know that the meaning or the essential values are coming from the text or the person.
And I think it's a more complex relationship between text and person.
And I say that because, you know, I am very much aware a mirror that.
I am reading these texts and I am developing a theology of liberation from the pernicious tactics
because also of who I am as a reader and I am not a renouncing and I am a father and my husband.
I'm a I'm, you know, I'm a teacher. I'm very involved in my community and my society.
I want to know how these texts can enrich the meaning of what of what I am doing,
how this text can be a source of values, as you put it, and meaning for my.
My work also, I mean, I bring. My reading of people like Ambedkar has deep critiques of the Hindu tradition.
I bring my reading of black liberation and Latin Latin-American liberation.
Theologians of was opened my eyes, you know,
two ways of thinking about the tradition to my reading of the of the text, but I don't think I would not do.
What I say is a complex conversation with the text because I don't think it was only, you know,
I am bringing an imposing a view on the text because I must also look at if I am to be a faithful Hindu theologian,
I must have some grounding the tradition for articulating what I what I do.
I construct my liberation theology, so it must have an authenticity in this.
In the authoritative sources that I am, I am dealing with.
And I think that I close by just saying that when I read these texts, and especially when I read side by side,
you know, with the classical commentaries of Schrenker, I am seen, you know, clearly how.
Verses that resonate with me. You know, he will quickly gloss over because of his renouncing lens.
You know, I would say, Oh, wow, this is speaking this has social implications.
This has implications for for contesting hierarchy and on those kinds of Sankara doesn't seek to draw that out because that doesn't interest you.
So I think the Texas rich and I'm coming bring in eyes, the eyes of my own personal journey as well to the text,
and in that conversation, I think creative theology develops.
I mean. Yeah, I thank you know, I think that's that's really fascinating and that complicated relationship, I think is is.
Yeah, where I would sort of try and argue for two.
So I yeah, I think that's really interesting. Thank you. So.
So one thing I wanted to bring up this is something I think I heard it and Dr Paris's early remarks about realism and there needs to be truth.
If we start in the Vedic tradition, if we start with a necessary realism, does this come?
Straightforwardly, with the truth of the virus, does it come straight forward with the Upanishads are true.
And so when you have someone like Imbed Carr who says that we need to do away with the authority of the Scriptures?
That seems to be rebelling straight against this, right? I think the Buddhist tradition has been doing this for a long time.
And so I want to hear more about the necessity of realism or what.
How far are we going to take the realism that that we're describing to?
I wonder if I can respond to that, actually with some of Dr. Abidjan's own words, if I if I may rummage on,
I've read a couple of your books about the World View and the Hindu theology of liberation, which I congratulate you on.
I thought both terrific books, but I just relating both to Mitt Romney's question about hermeneutics and Dr McBride's question about realism.
I found the if I could just read a couple of paragraphs from your page hundred eighty four.
I found this a fairly interesting and insightful way of dealing with both scripture and empirical reality in the world.
You say, according to scripture, is not authoritative if it reveals anything that is contradicted by the evidence of other valid sources of knowledge.
And it is clear that the fundamental premises of the hierarchical ordering of human beings is amplified by caste have no empirical justification.
From an old white perspective, it is not good enough to cite scripture verses to justify social systems for each verse.
I think we are obliged following the definition of the scripture as a source of valid knowledge per month to ask at least two sets of questions first.
Does the passage reveal something that cannot be known otherwise? If so, what is it and why cannot be known otherwise in relation to caste?
We must ask what specifically does the scripture reveal that is not otherwise knowable?
Second, does the test contradict anything known to other valid sources?
If it does, it is not an authoritative revelation.
The fundamental assumptions of caste are refuted empirically and so cannot be justified by an appeal to scripture.
In this page, hundred eighty four of the can do theology of liberation.
I thought that passage was very interesting because it it it speaks to the issue of hermeneutics.
It speaks to the issue of how to balance, uh, I, uh, contenders for truth from different sources.
But it also doesn't negate the idea of realism because it seems to positive hermeneutics where it is.
Um, I suppose a progressive groping towards truth, you know, and that if the empirical reality we find um contradicts the scripture,
then so much the worse for the scripture, which I thought was a very interesting approach.
And I thank you for it. Could I ask for a clarification in this conversation as well, because I think that might.
And a lot of the traditions that I discuss this as well.
The difference between saying there's a matter of fact at one point in time another and also saying that realism is necessary or believing in realism,
they might be like a conception of consensus and or someone thinking that there is a
way the world really is that we can state in words or that we can't state in words.
And I think that my son might not be important difference because I think philosophies or theologies of liberation can be derived from both.
And I don't know whether that's important, then that there is a difference or we have a common goal,
but it's important to discern the differences between those and.
And that's something that I was really interested to see if he took out more because I can't tell if there there's a
discrepancy in evaluation and values that could detract from what seems to be a common goal and common values of celebration.
I could just say I see a little bit. I'm trying to make sure I get your point.
Could you could you just go on a little bit more for my, for my sake, I like to.
Understand the question that. Right. So I think the question is is in part that there seem to be I'm kind of proud and we feed my questions together.
Overarching similarities like there's a similar goal is horizons of liberation for all beings,
but they might be quantified or understood in different ways.
So I think that's an important distinction. And also where that goal comes from and the dynamics of the methodology of getting there can also differ.
And this stuff's important and how important is that when we say we have this common goal,
how how common actually is it and how important is it that those values might come from different places?
And is that justified? What do we do with that?
And I think that's an important in that to work if we believe in more realism or ontological realism or not,
or if that can be matters of facts that we agree upon, which are necessarily grounded in ontological realism and.
Also arise, and if I'm thinking about traditions, like I would say, like the much out Mecca,
I might say at some point it's useful to have consensus on matters of facts,
but they can be transformed and even light by your heart, as someone might say about to.
But then, on the other hand, that can seem very similar to theologies, another even just philosophy that believe in realism, an untouchable grounding.
And I was wondering if we could pick apart this differences because it seems like value comes from a different place.
And I'm not sure if it leads us to the same place or a different place in terms of liberation and if that's important or ethics.
I was quite intrigued, you know, where where Dr. Powers started with the MeToo movement and then he listed, I don't know.
It was taking some notes and then I lost my numbering six or seven requirements.
You know, for for a meaningful response how you could justify, you know,
that kind of argument for accountability and to to to argue against sexual assault.
And as far as that common, the question of, you know, the common values that you're mentioning is what was interesting in his list that he gave.
I was as I was listening, I say, you know, this is like this.
This list corresponds very well to what I am. What I seen as a requirement for meaningful Hindu theology of liberation in the sense that.
And I would say, I can't I can't construct a Hindu theology of liberation in the absence of a value for the world.
And this is art and the quality of human existence on theologically and unethical.
It becomes a fundamental requisite to do that.
I can't. I can't construct a Hindu theology of liberation without an understanding of the
meaning of liberation or moksha that we don't understand the meaning of shared values.
Life in this world and not not sees, you know, sees liberation as escape from some sort of escape from this, from this world.
Or it is not possible for me to construct a Hindu theology of liberation without detailing the
ethical implications of of liberation for the transformation of human relationships in this world.
Again, this goes contrary to the certain trends in the tradition because.
You know, where, where human relationships are.
The wrong answer is someone who has several human relationships has no human relationships, a one at one level,
but I can't see how I can do Hindu theology of liberation without speaking about the implications of moksha for human relationships in this,
in this in this world or without again, you know, another with expanding.
You know, you have very few. The traditional understanding of liberation is based on a on a very spiritual eyes understanding of human suffering.
I don't see that that doesn't have vitality,
but I can't do it without expanding an understanding of suffering to include when human beings are lacking or access to health care,
to decent work, to freedom from social injustice.
And and so on. I can't do it without, as he put it, in our affirming the equal woods and dignity of all human of all human beings.
So those are, for me, fundamental common. I don't know, I mean, I would be interested to see what Dr McBride would say about that.
But I found I would I would agree with your listeners,
so many in so many ways as prerequisites for my own work constructing a theology of liberation from the non-Jew.
All the data were I found at least to be very, very interesting.
So, so if I hear Alice Hanks question correctly.
Well, one thing that might occur to ask is, can someone who is a non duplass began to work together for liberation?
With a Buddhist or someone who Yahya or someone from some other school of thought.
Or do we have to be within the same school of thought, the same theology to work together towards liberation?
And I think I hear you saying that you are open to that and your critique of the caste system seems to challenge at least some of the traditions, so.
Alison, you can correct me if I'm misinterpreting. No, you are absolutely right and you're right in hearing me in the way that you heard me,
I want to say yes, yes, yes to in spite of, you know, this in spite of our different places of meaning.
I think my own, you know, my own reading of liberation theology in the Buddhist tradition, in the Christian tradition, especially.
And Elizabeth, I read also about attempts to construct liberation theology in Islam, which foragers Isaac and others.
I think that we start from different places of meaning, but we do.
I think there was some important consensus about about what the values that inform and inspire the work that we want to do together.
And I think that's not a small matter. I think that that's very significant.
Yeah, I'm wondering if maybe this is correct for me from reading your works and maybe from reading some more and then look.
Is that we might be able to separate? And I wonder,
you take from this what we think truth is or the types of truthful looking from the types of values may maybe there's
a similar sociological scientific orientation of values that doesn't have to align with what we think she lies.
And the debate but philosophical, otherwise reasoning debate might be able to,
in that orientation, work together towards that value rather than that truth.
But I'm curious about to the extent that that is possible or problematic or not.
And. And I wonder what insights you'd have to share.
Maybe I can do this to Dr. Fried because it seems like we've been talking about conceptions of personhood,
which I believe is one of the points in interactions ethics that he talks about that allow us to
stand up against or critique oppression and where that comes from and how different they may be,
where there has to be restricted to persons. And also a question of.
Well, I think brings back to the doctor power is that as well, if it has to be rooted in knowledge or something else,
such as compassion and how much that relates to a way of knowing or if it's not even knowing that.
That's two questions at once, and you ask that either, and he takes on the fact.
So the way that that I use personhood and humanity, I think those are the two that I use.
I get those from Leonard Harris. Of course, you should read his work if you haven't.
What I'm leaning on heavily here is this idea that.
Oppressed groups, racialized groups. Typically are denigrated, they are subordinate, subordinated, they are made lesser.
So the values that are attached to them typically are lesser, right?
So three fifths a person you can talk about. The ways that, you know, certain types of bodies are just seen as.
You know, you could just use them and trash them or thrown away.
Personhood is supposed to bring our attention to this idea that the as a person, as a human being, as part of the human community,
and we can just talk about, broadly speaking,
that we should be afforded certain dignities and certain types of value that all human beings are afforded.
What I hear you asking is, so how do we know when someone is a person or not or who or what is to be counted as a person?
These are tough questions,
but I think what I'm really we're working on at least the works I've been writing recently is talking about human populations,
particularly the oppressed who haven't been afforded full dignity,
who haven't been given full access to those things that make a healthy life possible.
So if you could say more about the question or which direction we want to go, I'm willing to talk more.
I can't I can maybe say, what's your point?
So I'm curious about the focus on humanity, because then I think that might change some of the conceptions of values such as like environmental value.
Is that like a corollary to human values or is there something more inherent value and or in our?
Attitudes towards the environment and justice and human needs for sentient beings, for example, as a broader conception,
which you could say person to that so you could say spies on animals that you could say any foreign extension,
so you could say at any price to humans. So that's perhaps where attitudes come in.
And I'm curious about this selections and where they come from again and in all your
world views or traditions that you're speaking for and what the takes are that.
Yeah, so. Again, I have been working on anthropologists, right, so the types of creatures we are.
But I definitely think that and I've seen this in at very least other countries where.
The notion of who a person is has been extended to other mammals,
and I could see how and why we would we would extend these sorts of dignities to other creatures.
The thing beyond this that I would consider is that we can start to talk about our communities and
the relations we have with the various communities and change and alter who and how we relate to.
And the various ways that we treat the environment. So I'm not.
Sort of. Only concerned with human beings.
But if I'm talking about.
Attaining human rights, if I'm worried about racialized populations who still suffer from colonisation, who still suffer from racialisation.
That was the focus when I was working on. I will add that lots of the people that I study and work with are vegetarian or vegan.
And so I understand the argumentation and I understand where this could go.
And so I'm not against taking it that far or taking those directions, but.
I really have been working with this set of problems.
I wonder if anyone else has comments on this, given your traditions or background and what led you to take that action?
So, Alice, what I would add to what Dr. MacGregor said is that.
You know, again, coming to the opening shows a good guitar, clearly, you know, the discussion there was not about,
you know, who is a person, that's not the terminology that was was used, right?
They were not wrestling with that kind of terminology, but what is what is absolutely clear to me,
and it's a point that, you know, the doctor on Beat Cancer and The Punisher also is that.
The teaching that. At the most fundamental level of.
My being or at the most fundamental level of any sentient being, let me use your terminology expanded in that way, Alice,
is this ultimate reality and in a way, you know, you have this famous statement in the channel logo it Ted Thomas, you are that that is what you.
You are not constitutes your the ground of all.
You no sense mental, intellectual, physical activities.
That's what you that's what you are that teaching clearly in.
The Punisher was imparted with the aim of.
Helping, helping the listener to learn how to rejoice in that and that discovery.
It that's what, you know, to own oneself, to own the fullness of one's own being.
Enjoy. Right.
Tough in a sense, you can say, to affirm one's own value as a sentient being by discovering what one truly is overcoming a vigil or or ignorance.
What Dr. Ambedkar said in one of his important essays is that.
That truth is not an individual truth that extends to all beings.
What I what I'm affirming about my own value, if I embrace that, I am Brahman.
The humble mass me, as you say in Sanskrit is also has to go along with that, Tomasi.
And you are that. I am that. But you are that if I am of being of value, that value extends to every other living, living being.
And I think. That that has ethical implications.
I think that that has ethical implications. He was trying to push the Hindu tradition to do to be explicit about about those ethical implications and.
One of the important observations he made about Shankar is, as you know, Shankar had this teaching, but he was not asking himself.
And again, that's why I came to the renowned CEOs around this lens.
He was not asking himself about the social significance.
Because, you know, he was you had those interpretations that's sought to explain the world away and not to give significance to the world.
So he had a wonderful teaching about human dignity.
And, you know, and equal value, but never applied it to the social realm and he felt.
Though there was no will to do it also within the Hindu tradition, because it r teaching was, was was, you know, empowered.
Some. So didn't they had no incentive to dismantle a system that empowered them?
Which, you know, this is why he converted, and I said I was, you know, I was born a Hindu, I had no choice.
But I will not die Hindu. I don't know, six months or so before he died, he converted to Buddhism.
As an act of protest against a tradition that oppressed his, his his community.
I might ask a question if that's if that's okay, I mean, I'm just very I'm really interested in this,
this question of personhood itself when it comes to ethics.
And I just I just wonder. Where you think I guess this question would probably be directed more to Dr. Powers and Dr. Robertson,
but where you think compassion lies in this question of compassion is the role of suffering when it comes to this question.
Because because it seems to me that perhaps as as Dr. Pius was suggesting that the teaching that everything is from,
one might be able to sort of undermine the importance of significance of the sufferings of individual people.
So. Does suffering then have to sort of have you can have Roman as a positive value, but suffering has to be an absolute negative value.
And it seems to me that the Buddhist tradition as a kind of similar ethical way of thinking in that
it denies the reality of individual selves and then argues that suffering is an absolute value.
And so then or ethical actions should be directed towards suffering wherever and whenever it occurs, regardless of in which kind of cells it does.
And so do you. Do you need that same logic? Do you think in in these non-Jewish or Hindu systems that that you work on?
Or could you somehow not have suffering as having as an essential role and still have positive ethical value?
In fact, if I can offer some reflections or thoughts, I think I mean,
the role of suffering is is crucial in this and how that suffering is recognised and dealt with.
And Dr. Robert John touched on something which I think was very important in his initial comments,
and that is the idea of undeserved suffering and whether undeserved suffering.
Even exists in the in the conceptual framework of a tradition, now some traditions here with the very, very strong view of karma.
There is no such thing as undeserved suffering. So the kind of philosophical lens through which these things are viewed is is
really critical in terms of how it interacts with the values that it cultivates.
So that tradition may cultivate compassion very strongly in the individual practitioner.
But the tradition may also be kind of hyper individualistic in the sense that it's all about that person's personal liberation and their side,
and of their practise and their cultivation of liberation.
It may cultivate compassion in a context where it doesn't take the reality of the world seriously.
Perhaps it views the world as illusion. That's some of the European traditions did not all by any means, but some.
Um, and in that context, you may be compassionate towards any being something that happens to wander across your path.
But I don't think you're going to get that kind of. Robust philosophy of science out of a tradition like that or philosophy of social
science that takes seriously structural racism or sexism or climate change,
or, you know, so. So these the way the tradition, its philosophy of the world affects its philosophy of physical and social sciences,
which in turn affects the scope of its ethics, the scope of the extension of those values and the application of those values.
Perhaps it doesn't quite get to your question, but. Maybe could come back if I have not touched on it adequately.
And just building, I'm here and what? What Bret said.
First of all, to acknowledge that the question that you raised because certainly think a lot of varieties of non-eurozone moderator would say,
you know that to speak of compassion is rooted in the dualistic view, you know?
You know, one way it would sort of represent the ultimate the culmination of what it means to be non non idealists or non-journalists awakening as.
And one sees Bronwen alone, one sees nothing else.
So if you see suffering, you're seeing something other than Berman and therefore you're still in the realm of of ignorance.
But that's one on one. While it is, I agree on this and it comes back to see and everything other than pre-eminence as illusory and uncertain.
That's one way of reading the traditional, I assume, the human eye contest, that reading of the of the tradition.
I think that. That, you know, we have to ask ourselves what really constitutes an undue reason,
which is something that, you know, Brett was raising at the beginning,
talking about many, many kinds of man dualism, what really constitutes non-Jews and what what is at the core of non dualism?
And I, I do not at all see.
Compassion as a practise of compassion is somehow incompatible with a non duellist viewpoint,
of course, that will take a lot of explaining, explaining to do.
And again, you know. But spoke also of deliberative person that given Muktar and they are they are, for me, enough texts that.
Also can also speak of the Jeevan Mukta as a person of compassion that I would lift up.
I think again, it's not being unfaithful to the tradition.
I think traditions are rich and diverse and I think but, but that's also an important strand of that, of that of that tradition to see the.
The ultimate expression of wisdom in the non-fuel tradition is not only knowledge of the ISM,
but its expression and in compassion, which, you know, I mean India's intersection with Buddhism corona.
And so on. So I think that. Such things can be reconciled immediately.
A lot of interpretative medical work is necessary, but for me, it's it's important.
I was I to make a very quick qualification, just responding to Doctor Dr. Robert Jones Point Yards.
I certainly would not want to give the impression that in the little vignette I gave of developed
as at the start that that there was any necessary connexion to immorality or anything like that.
And of course, you know there many, many, many great great saints, I suppose.
And what what really seems to matter in terms of the different traditions the various streams is,
is whether there is a, you know, a and necessary connexion between the ethics, compassion and liberation or not.
And in some traditions, there is most certainly and in others there doesn't seem to be.
And that's and that's why it's I think it's quite important,
particularly for young people or students or whether you're pursuing different traditions or gurus to really get to sort of look under the hood,
so to speak, at some of these traditions and what the actual teachings are, because then they're quite different in various.
Yeah. Now, I didn't hear you saying that. Not at all.
I mean, you still spoke of diverse non-ideal tradition and you made it.
I think you made a very important point that you do have all sorts of justifications of certain kinds of immoral.
What I would speak of as immoral behaviour by appearance to certain interpretations of the advantage.
You give an example from Australia, but there have been many other examples where, you know, clearly abusive behaviour,
sexual and otherwise is justified by saying that the GRU is operating at a higher level of of morality that the
student who is exploited does just does not understand how this is all meant for his and especially for her own good.
Far too many. And sometimes it's called your crazy wisdom, you know? Yeah.
Could I use this, I'm aware of time to study transition to our final topic, which has to do is kind of like liberation education.
And I think I'm going to use this notion of compassion is coming up and how it's connected to wisdom and on a personal note relating it to this,
like I had been curious about compassion, innovative to in a project that I did in comparison to Buddhism because it's so obviously connected.
I had many people talking about this and it basically down to a relation to conceptions of personhood in the South.
And I found your endocrine ructions where it's really useful when you talked about how it might be rooted in being able to say like.
I am Brahman, but not the anti Brahman is me like it.
The grounding and the direction of that phrase is important, but I think that does kind of lead us to different, maybe even ideas of compassion.
The conceptions of compassion exist and.
I think this raises the notion of the teacher an interpretation, and this is clearly rooted, though, in logic or metaphysics or reasoning.
I'm curious in Dr McBride's work as well, and such as ethics he talks about, sometimes it's appropriate and sometimes it's not to act compassionately.
And that caught my eye, and I'm not sure if that's a different notion of compassion or not and what you might have to say in this document, right?
And I'm just going to use this as a segue to talk about the role of having this
discussion and narrating a tradition as teachers and other educational development,
which I mentioned might start with you and Dr. FrightFest,
because these are the ones we seem to be talking about just taking like it's fundamental, but then you talk about it just being optional.
So and these guys? Sure. So.
In the form of ethics that I develop insurrectionist ethics, one of the claims is that.
In this type of thought, in this ethical position, those who evinced this view.
Would be open to would be. They would advocate for certain virtues that typically don't fall within the typical conventional conception of virtues.
And so. Insurrection, his virtues might be things like.
Aggressiveness, tenacity, guile, poke, nasty anger.
And so when I raised this sort of issue, many people have bad responses because what they assume then,
is that I am anti the conventional virtues, right?
So love and compassion and being calm and serene and open minded.
These are another set of virtues that people typically adhere to, or at least hold on as these are virtues.
And so one thing I'm doing in insurrections ethics is actually advocating this.
This one said what I'm calling insurrectionist virtues or character traits.
But what?
I think what Alice Heck is picking up on this and I'm not saying you can't compassion are that you can't love people or that you can't be open minded.
But this is where this whole thing comes back together that when you're an oppressed group to force an oppressed
person to only stick to love and compassion and being passion and being passive and quiet and calm and civil,
that keeps an oppressed person or oppressed group in their place.
It it, in many cases will not even allow them to consider pushing back or to resist the oppression.
And so my position is that, yes, I want to hold up these other virtues,
but I also see various ways that compassion could be good for every human being,
particularly even if you're an oppressed person in a position where you have other
folks out there who are also oppressed who might not be in your exact group,
you might need compassion to understand their hardship.
You might need to understand where they're coming from and how you can work together to build coalitions to fight against oppression.
And so I think in many cases, compassion is going to play hand-in-hand with some of these insurrections things,
but not you're not forced to extend it to everyone. Or at least not in the same way.
Thank you. I mean, it seems like what this enables is.
Agency and making a choice about how to act and when and what roles you can play for your goal.
But education and talking about traditionally the resources available, material,
spiritual play a large role in this as we will fight to put on and use interpreting the world gurus.
Darrell, whose teaching philosophy in contemporary academia and other traditions.
I could open this up to general questions or comments or appropriate to the context on
perhaps the necessity of reinterpreting traditions with new applications at some point.
I think Dr, I'm about to touch on that,
but that's why I might be necessary in relation to IS speaking and reinterpreting are basically down to an application to social concerns.
And if anyone wants to talk about that,
that that we welcome also concrete steps that students can take in the classroom to help with those material changes
or they need certain institutions and align with the values that we're talking about that come from these traditions.
Any comments or welcome? I think we can make these kind of final remarks and to or not, whatever you like, basically get.
I wonder if I can just make a very quick comment. Building on Dr. McBride's comments about the relationship between compassion and
fighting oppression and and it also builds on curmudgeons notions of non duality,
is fostering understandings of connexion and so on as well.
I think one way that compassion can be a great aid in dealing with oppression is perhaps enabling.
Understanding of the brokenness of the oppressor and what it brutalisation, they may have been through senior,
they're not so different from us, so it can help prevent the kind of demonisation and othering of the oppressor as well.
And and that can potentially open up skilful pathways of dealing with them in more constructively, perhaps.
Alex, I agree with my colleagues in both of the comments, I think, you know, doctor, my first comment about the way in which, you know,
compassion could be utilised to control oppressed people hypocritically, you know,
lifted up to to prevent them from seeing or protesting against unjust conditions.
I think that's very that's very important. And, you know, I come back with a final remark again.
You know, the record guitar twice. Uses an important.
Expression to describe the attitude of the liberated person towards the world.
And. The expression is sort of a good hitter to.
One who delights or finds joy in the flourishing of all beings sort of abhorred the idea
that I thought means to delight one who delights in the flourishing of all beings.
And as I think, you know, text like does have to be pushed. What does it mean?
You know, what does it mean when we live in oppressive conditions? What are we obligated?
How does that take? What are the obligations of a text like that that summons us to delight in the flourishing of all beings?
What you know earlier, unless you raise a question about practise and knowledge, the dichotomy you know what,
what, what social practises, you know, will such a text demand of us all again?
In the book, What gets, you know, the the the yogi the highest yogi is is described as hot.
All me in some sort of a trance to come. Why you the come is the one who identifies with the others in joy and in sorrow.
The highest, you know, what does it mean to identify with another in suffering?
And later text, you get that very beautiful definition of compassion from in the 16th century.
He was not an unduly, although he was very much learnt about an idealist theology of just one.
CDC defines compassion as burrard-lucas Dukurs Kazuko as suffering when others suffer and
delighting the suffering and the suffering of the other and delight in the joy of the other.
Burrard-lucas Duka Sooka Sooka When an aura is happy, I I am.
I find joy. When another suffers, I suffer. And how do we we tease out the social implications of those kinds of texts.
And I remember Martin Luther King. Paid a very high tribute to Gandhi.
Maybe too much. But he said he said that Gandhi was the first person in history to I'm not quoting him directly.
First person in history to transform the love ethic of Jesus into a method of social resistance.
Now it was he felt that Canada did something with Jesus's love teaching and made in terms of drawing out its social implication,
the social implications of of love and especially making it a method of protest.
I think this goes to, you know, Dr McBride's point.
Love can become a method of protest, and it also goes to, I think finally with the Dr. Paracelsss Point,
which I like very much, that, you know, when we bring to our understanding of injustice,
the the the thing that ultimately all of this thing, all of this is rooted in the fundamental ignorance of modern nature of of of of of reality,
nature of self and not only oneself, but itself of all.
When we look at the fundamental cause of suffering in a video, then we can also find we can also resist the oppressor,
but do so with love and compassion because we understand that there is a better way of being a better way of flourishing for all beings,
oppressor and oppressed. So I think that would be my my last point on this.
If we had done, I just, you know, I'm grateful for this opportunity. I'm happy to meet.
If I were Bretton Bradley and and Amir and young and others, thank you very much for convening and inviting me to participate in this discussion.
Thank you so much. Dogshit variety of any final remarks as well.
I do. So.
I guess when we come to education, one of the things that's helped me immensely and changed the way I see the world are being exposed to things,
ideas, authors that I hadn't prior. And so we need to find ways to read these authors in these texts.
There are authors out there that will shake us up, that are rebellious, that are outside of our framework.
We need new concepts, new descriptions. There are options out there.
I'm almost certain of this, there are options out there that we won't see until we leave our intervening background assumptions.
And so I think one of the things we have to do is to spread the word we need to read more widely.
We need to continuously be critical of our own background.
Assumptions are on a PC demand. And I would I would finish with with something from Dr. King.
It's worth noting that Martin Luther King Jr. calls for a genuine revolution of values.
He writes, Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world.
Declare an eternal opposition to poverty, racism and militarism.
Well, thank you. I think there's lots to think about, and I could ask a lot more questions.
Again, it says anything else and wants to say to you, welcome.
But if not, I'd like to ask you all so much, I think such an important topic and you all kind of like examples.
I think of the practise of philosophy and what it can teach us about the very topics we've been discussing.
So thank you for your work. Well, generally, we'll share more resources that this was the final episode.
So hopefully of these people on a good reflection point about how to think about how
to proceed with their own engagement with listening to this episode and beyond.
And they're in the air with even things like. I'm nothing more than just yet.
Thank you so much for having this discussion and taking this time, and there's a lot of things that have been raised and more avenues to pursue.
But I think the things that have been said are useful and kind of affirming as well of the possibilities of liberation from different viewpoints,
which I think is really important. So thank you so much and it's nice to meet you. Thank you.
Maybe we'll meeting in person someday. That would be wonderful.
And thank you all for organising a very wonderful Jemmy Kimmel.
I'm just calling President Craig.
Thank you for making room for the possibility of strengthening or contesting our interpretive frameworks and not a consideration.
Maybe that's the entire BPP de Chelsea podcast teams.
With your crying with you, we find you next, possibly next Wednesday.
Pecks you that.