The comments are in the context of Namit Arora's post on Three Quarks Daily.
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It is interesting that Namit is planning to talk about how the
epic was received by Nagarjuna and other people from pre-modern times.
This is (part of) the usual methodology used by students of Hinduism,
but I am not convinced that this approach (of looking at pre-modern
commentaries) will yield significant, new conclusions given that these
people knew far less than we do now. I am quite convinced that these
"traditional scholars" lived such a long time ago that their opinions do
not have much bearing on current theories surrounding Hinduism, and so
it seems that this methodology has significant shortcomings.
A particularly useful (and, in my opinion, a far more fruitful)
approach to studying texts such as the Bhagavad Gita (and Hinduism, in
general) is to use recent studies in neuroscience to see how the human
brain has evolved ideas of morality, and to see how epics (and other
religious texts) have contributed since premodern times in creating and
imprinting various (perhaps different) notions of morality in us. This
is (part of) the methodology I have used for the Socratic Hinduism
framework that I have talked about before.
Why is it useful to look at neuroscience to study how the human
brain is wired for morality? Because it seems that some of the notions
of morality we subscribe to seem to be pretty strongly wired in us.
Milton Friedman once gave an example of how libertarianism works. He
said that libertarians don't want to coerce other people into accepting
some particular opinion as correct. However, he recognized that there
were a few exception even for libertarians. The example he used, IIRC,
was of a man who was going to jump off a bridge. Would a libertarian try
to save him if he could? Probably. Now if the man proceeded to give
reasons why he was committing suicide, would the libertarian then allow
him to jump (because the libertarian, true to principle, would agree to
disagree)? Probably not. No matter how strongly a person may believe in
certain ideas not just politically but even personally, there are
certain types of behavior that he may never be able to let go of.
Another example of the resistance of people to killing others is
evidenced in the trolley problem
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem). Both these examples
would indicate that the human brain has certain notions of morality that
it cannot easily let go of. (Note that none of this (scientific)
discussion is considered in the least bit to be a heresy in Hinduism,
and indeed, I consider the Socratic Hinduism a perfectly valid approach
to view Hinduism for both Hindus and non-Hindus.)
This methodological approach makes the Socratic Hinduism framework
quite powerful. It makes it both academic and scholarly, thereby
countering one of the major academic criticisms of "traditional" studies
of Hinduism (such as by Wendy Doniger). In fact, we do not need to
discuss our own beliefs regarding whether or not the events described in
the Mahabharatha actually occurred. That is left as a matter of
scholarly inquiry for historians. Instead, the idea is that the texts
may be used as part of a Socratic discussion wherein by guided
questioning, one delves deeper into some of the issues of ethics and
moral philosophy that the epic presents. Indeed, the historical role of
these religious texts has been to raise these question of ethics and
moral philosophy and help people appreciate the complexity of some of
these issues. That has always been the role of these texts, and that is
what it continues to be under Socratic Hinduism.
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