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----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank F Conlon" <conlon@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2013 12:14 PM
Subject: H-ASIA: REVIEW Herling on Biderman, _Crossing Horizons: World,
Self, and Language in Indian and Western Thought_
> H-ASIA
> January 21, 2013
>
> Book Review (orig pub. H-German) by Bradley L. Herling on Shlomo
> Biderman, _Crossing Horizons: World, Self, and Language in Indian
> and Western Thought_
>
> (x-post H-Review)
> ***********************************************************************
> From: H-Net Staff <revhelp@mail.h-net.msu.edu>
>
> Shlomo Biderman. _Crossing Horizons: World, Self, and Language in
> Indian and Western Thought_. Translated by Ornan Rotem. New York
> Columbia University Press, 2008. x + 356 pp. Notes, bibliographical
> notes. $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-14024-9; (cloth), ISBN
> 978-0-231-51159-9.
>
> Reviewed by Bradley L. Herling
> Marymount Manhatten College
> Published on H-German (January, 2013)
> Commissioned by Benita Blessing
>
>
> Intersections: Western Thought, Indian Philosophy
>
> In his 1870 lecture series devoted to "the science of religion,"
> Max Müller issued a powerful and now well-traveled dictum, "He
> who knows one, knows none." Müller was highlighting the importance
> of comparison as a basic intellectual operation, but he also wanted
> to make a broader point: we fail to comprehend our own cultural,
> religious, or philosophical perspective if we have not adequately
> compared it with others. In _Crossing Horizons: World, Self, and
> Language in Indian and Western Thought_, Shlomo Biderman acts on
> this sentiment with intriguing results. Biderman's book explores
> the complexity of Indian thought, and, at the same time, it
> reveals the value of cross-cultural comparison in unearthing the
> conceptual foundations of Western philosophy.
>
> Biderman's theoretical approach is a down-to-earth version of
> hermeneutics, with its insistence that truth arises out of
> dialogical engagement, leading, it is hoped, to a fusion of
> interpretive horizons. Cross-cultural interchange often dislodges
> prejudices, and for those few who continue to ignore or look down
> upon India's philosophical tradition, _Crossing Horizons_ is a loud
> shot across the bow. But Biderman also argues that interpretive
> dialogue is about firming up genuine differences and distinctions,
> which is vital to the understanding of both self and other. And
> so, writing as a philosopher rooted in the Western tradition, he
> affirms that investigation of Indian thought-forms "will enable
> us not only to understand Indian civilization but also, and mainly,
> to understand our own" (p. 8).
>
> In chapter 1, Biderman launches his thesis: until the modern age,
> the Western tradition has been guided by "the presupposition of
> transcendence" (p. 18); in contrast, this presupposition has been
> absent in Indian thought. Biderman substantiates his argument by
> turning to the Greeks. In Plato's "Theory of Forms," for example,
> we find a privileging of "the outward over the inward, exteriority
> over interiority, the universal over the particular, the
> transcendent over the immanent, and structure over content" (p. 18).
> Meanwhile, ancient Judaism insisted on "God's exteriority, His
> outwardness, His being different, the total 'Other'" (p. 24).
> According to Biderman's analysis, these assumptions had a dramatic
> impact on the ground rules of later Western speculation.
>
> In contrast, India presents us with an "absence of the presupposition
> of transcendence from the conceptual framework of religious and
> metaphysical discourse" (p. 54). The Vedic seers stood well beyond
> the realm of the gods, and in the late Vedic period, Upaniṣadic
> sages looked inward and identified ultimate reality with the self.
> Later generations of gods were very much of this world, complying
> with the ritual acts of humans and imprinting particular sites in
> the landscape with their presence. All of these moves, Biderman
> claims, were untenable within the Western mainstream. In fact,
> in India we find an "inverse transcendence," wherein humanity
> takes priority over the God/gods, a position reserved in the West
> for "theism's staunchest critics" (pp. 71-72).
>
> The second chapter of _Crossing Horizons_ is devoted to language.
> Biderman argues that "the presupposition of transcendence"
> disrupted any early Western attempt to discern truth by means of
> introspection. Of course, ancient Greeks, Jews, and Christians
> often celebrated the inward turn, but only, Biderman insists,
> to find a pathway back to the transcendent realm (e.g., the Forms,
> or God). With specific regard to language, suspicion about the
> interior played an essential role in the correspondence theory
> of truth. The world, like God, was seen as transcendent in its
> essential nature, so truth could only arise when our concepts and
> propositions corresponded to the world as it really is. This
> scheme presents a challenge to language, which must re-present
> a world that is ontologically distinct. For the most part, as
> the primordial Babel story illustrates, language was thought to
> founder on "the impassable barrier imposed upon it by the reality
> that it unsuccessfully tried to represent" (p. 79).
>
> In Biderman's analysis, India posits a different, perhaps more
> optimistic theory: stemming from the Vedic precedent, language
> was never conceived as a dim copy of an external reality. In fact,
> the Vedic hymns emanated "from an internal process of connection,
> from the deep relation between existence and interiority" among
> the ancient seers (p. 96). In contrast with the correspondence
> theory of truth, language had an independent status; it was
> truth-bearing because of its association with the interior of the
> subject and its own internal coherence, not because of some
> tenuous link with transcendent objects.
>
> In chapter 3, Biderman focuses on the question of the self by
> drawing out the contrast between Renee Descartes's and Upaniṣadic
> notions. The move to Descartes makes sense: one might be willing
> to accept Biderman's characterization of the "presupposition of
> transcendence" in the West to this point, but didn't modernity
> change the rules of the game? Indeed, "introspection turns out
> to be the Archimedean point of the new certainty that [Descartes]
> originates" because it reveals foundational knowledge of the
> thinking self. Transcendence reasserts itself, however, in
> Descartes's retrieval of God, which is necessary to preserve
> the stability of knowledge. The inward turn of Descartes, which
> seems so radical, actually leads back to the old presupposition;
> in fact, according to Biderman, the Cartesian enterprise presumes
> the "ontological precedence" of the transcendent realm from the
> beginning (p. 137).
>
> In contrast, we find a very different picture in the pages of
> the Upaniṣads. At first glance, we might notice interesting
> similarities with Descartes, but Biderman argues that the
> Upaniṣadic account has very different assumptions and aims.
> In the famous creation story found in Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad
> 1.4.1-4, for example, all sentient beings emanate from ātman
> ("self"), and unlike Descartes, "this expansive motion is not
> dependent on any prior assumptions (not even implied ones)
> regarding the ontological precedence of the external over the
> internal or the objective over the subjective" (p. 149). This
> Upaniṣadic self is therefore free to engage in unlimited
> "internalization" and "complete reflexivity" that results in
> unfettered creativity (p. 168).
>
> Chapter 4 reverses field and compares two figures who harbored
> radically skeptical views about the self: Franz Kafka (following
> Immanuel Kant's philosophical precedent) and Buddhist philosopher
> Nagārjuna. Biderman first summarizes Kant's "Copernican revolution"
> in philosophy and charts its impact on the Western "presupposition
> of transcendence." On the theoretical side of his philosophy,
> Kant foreclosed the realm of transcendent objects of knowledge
> (God, forms, monads, etc.), leaving only content-less noumena.
> If transcendence, "that presence of the other," remains an
> assumption in Kantian thought, it is "shrunken down to a hollow
> remnant called the thing-in-itself" (p. 183). A similar move
> occurs in Kant's consideration of subjectivity. Following
> Descartes, Kant asserted the indispensability of a transcendental
> ego, which bestows continuity on our experience, but this "I think,"
> this "subject=X," is purely formal and empty. It is at the center
> of experience, but it is also "unreachable in itself." In the
> depths of subjectivity, we now find an unfathomable yet unavoidable
> abyss, a situation that Biderman calls "Kafkaesque" (p. 186).
>
> So, in Biderman's view, Kant emptied out the transcendence of
> the world and God, and Kafka followed suit: dead, spectral
> authorities haunt so many of his tales, and while the world
> offers much in the way of phenomenal experience, Kafka made it
> blisteringly clear that there is no ultimate meaning behind it--
> or if there is such meaning, it remains entirely inaccessible.
> The "Kafkaesque" subject also extends Kant's insights.
> Interpreting the unfinished short story "The Burrow" (1931),
> Biderman argues that Kafka crystallized the way "the self
> gradually begins to recede from the West's cultural horizon"
> after Kant (p. 203).
>
> The next Indian counterpoint in _Crossing Horizons_ is Nāgārjuna,
> the great Mahāyāna Buddhist philosopher. In general, as Biderman
> notes, the Buddha attempted to dispel the delusion of stable
> metaphysical concepts like the self, and Nāgārjuna radicalized
> his analysis. In response to Buddhists who asserted that some
> foundational reality stood behind our mental constructions (e.g.,
> "aggregates," "atoms," "dharmas," etc.), Nāgārjuna rejected any
> such theory. But he went even further. Through his use of
> reductio-style arguments, he showed that all linguistic claims
> are ultimately empty of intrinsic meaning because they fail to
> match up with "extralinguistic reality," and that includes,
> paradoxically enough, his own claims, which constitute mere
> pragmatic, "performative" warning signs (pp. 217-218). This
> self-reflexive skepticism resembles Kafka's, but of course
> the contrast is clear: Kafka's "emptiness" is permeated by
> disillusionment because it reflects the breakdown of the
> framework of transcendence in the West; Nāgārjuna's "emptiness"
> is associated with liberation, perhaps because there was no
> Indian reliance on transcendence in the first place.
>
> In the final chapter of his book, Biderman examines Western and
> Indian forms of Idealism, with special attention to George
> Berkeley and Buddhist thinker Vasubandhu. In contrast with John
> Locke's empiricism, which suggests that ideas are "intermediaries
> between us and the things 'out there'" (p. 244), Berkeley argued
> that "there are only ideas" (p. 245), hence his famous motto, _esse
> est percipi_ (to be is to be perceived). Of course, this doctrine
> leads to any number of problems, which Berkeley resolved, following
> Descartes, with an inward turn that ultimately rediscovered God, an
> infinite mind that "'knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits
> them to our view'" (p. 254). To this extent, despite his radically
> subjective turn, Berkeley maintained traditional assumptions.
>
> Biderman pairs this early modern European thinker with Vasubandhu,
> the fourth-century CE proponent of Yogācāra Buddhism. Like Berkeley,
> Vasubandhu rejected realist conceptions, and in response he
> articulated a cittamātra ("mind only") position. In no case can we
> be sure that an external reality corresponds to our perceptions;
> instead, "the only thing we can know for sure is that our perceptions
> contain mental images," and so we are wise "to deduct 'reality' from
> our perceptual experience" (p. 261). This view is similar to
> Berkeley's, though the point of departure is, once again, plain to
> see: "Berkeley's notion of God was not a viable option for
> [Vasubandhu]" (p. 265).
>
> _Crossing Horizons_ concludes with an intriguing mélange: George
> Orwell's _1984_ (1949), which displays the nightmarish side of
> idealism; Arthur Schopenhauer, who hovered on the edge of Western
> transcendence and Indian immanentism; T. S. Eliot's _Four Quartets_
> (1943), which espouses the distinctly Indian suggestion (only
> recently discovered in the West) that "knowing reality is knowing
> oneself" (p. 308); and finally Ingmar Bergman's _Persona_ (1966) and
> Federico Fellini's _And the Ship Sails On_ (1933), which dramatize
> the creative "aestheticization of reality" that the Indian tradition
> articulated from its earliest moments (p. 310). Biderman implies
> that Western thought has only just caught up to some very ancient
> insights in the Indian tradition. These modern revelations have
> often been accompanied by nightmares, because they have arisen out
> of the traumatic breakdown of long-held intellectual commitments,
> but Biderman also seems to suggest that these ruptures open
> possibilities for a newly reconfigured concept of human
> subjectivity in the West.
>
> As this summary indicates, there is no shortage of provocative
> insights in _rossing Horizons_ and Biderman's "conversational style"
> is intended to engage his reader directly (p. 11). On that count,
> the book is highly successful, and so, in the spirit of dialogue,
> I turn to analysis and critique.
>
> Given the content of this volume, it is not surprising that Biderman
> is at times pugnacious about "generalizations." In reading the book,
> one has the temptation--over and over again--to write "Yes, maybe,
> but what about ... ?" in the margins. Of course, the author has a
> ready response: generalization, he admits, "traverses much cultural
> terrain," and as a result, "exceptions abound at its extremities."
> Exceptions do not invalidate the rule, however. In fact, if we
> worry about them too much, they become "obscuring clouds" that
> "obfuscate the broader picture" and cover over the essential
> truths lying beneath (p. 24).
>
> What counts as obfuscation in Biderman's book often proves surprising.
> He proclaims, for example, that his characterizations "cannot be
> reduced to anything one believes in" (p. 27); the cultural pre-
> suppositions he explores do not "necessarily manifest [themselves]
> in the beliefs and practices of the believer's everyday life" (p. 26).
> Instead, he is interested in "certain thought patterns, a way of
> understanding, a mode of expression" (p. 27). And so, immanence in
> "the West," to cite one example, arises as a "feeling" that often
> overwhelms transcendence in practice, but transcendence persists
> as the conceptual underpinning (p. 48). Similarly, anthropomorphic
> imagery of God is merely a way of representing divine "behavior and
> actions," but it does not compromise the more fundamental property
> (transcendence) (p. 29). Biderman's favorite metaphor for making
> these kinds of distinctions is examination of the skeleton as opposed
> to the flesh; his gaze, his analysis, is the "X-ray."
>
> This approach requires constant management of an essence that both
> underlies and overrides "exceptions" at the "extremities." In
> _Crossing Horizons_, Biderman's grand comparative thesis requires two
> civilization-wide narratives--and many supposedly minor characters
> must be written out of them. In the West, these voices include "the
> Jewish midrashic, kabbalistic, and Hasidic literature," "the mystical
> speculations of Meister Eckhart and certain forms of Sufism" (p. 45),
> "the theological and mystical dimension of Western religious
> phenomenology" taken in its entirety (p. 48), and "the Stoics of ancient
> Greece or Spinoza's pantheistic philosophy" (p. 49). Biderman's
> strategy for contending with these rather substantial divergences
> can be vexing. As he suggests, when an "intrepid ... [Western]
> mystic excels himself, and attempts to bridge the gap between
> transcendence and immanence," the mystic's effort presupposes the
> gap: transcendence is the premise of such unorthodox endeavors (p. 49).
> To put it another way, "understanding of immanence [e.g., Baruch
> Spinoza's]
> is conscious of what it is rebelling against and aware of the conceptual
> underpinning that it challenges" (p. 50). In a quasi-Hegelian fashion,
> alternative visions always presuppose the master narrative that they
> react against, which consigns them to the interpretive margins. This
> reconstruction of cultural essences bespeaks a conservative and perhaps
> pessimistic view: while cultures do evolve and differentiate, they are
> restrained by "gravitational forces" that draw them back "to a
> center of attraction" "in a compulsive manner" (p. 86). Once a
> presupposition (like transcendence) has been laid down, there's
> virtually no escaping it.
>
> Here we might well detect a tight connection between the supposed
> "compulsiveness" of cultural essences (e.g., "Indian" and "Western")
> and that of the scholar's own insistence on his thesis. In responding
> to Biderman's book, we need to unravel this connection and scrutinize
> its generalizations with care, for as our author himself suggests in
> his comments on Kafka's oeuvre, "[o]ne should … avoid succumbing to
> the enticing urge to generalize … as if the commentator were an omnipotent
> God that can, at will, marry content to form and weave it all into one
> faultless fabric" (p. 187).
>
> The problems to which this "enticing urge" gives rise are often apparent
> in _Crossing Horizons_. In his treatment of the biblical conception of
> divinity, for example, Biderman reminds us that in the Bible, God must
> remain unbridgeably distant, and yet "man and God must connect" (p. 36).
> There is nothing more desirous (and obligatory) than turning towards God,
> but every revelation is a danger, because it potentially breaches God's
> transcendence and opens the door to idolatry. In drawing out this point,
> however, Biderman overreaches. The presupposition of transcendence
> apparently "explains the hostility encountered by any attempt to
> eradicate or reduce the gap between the absolute and the human" (p. 42)
> within ancient Judaism--and within premodern Western civilization in
> general. But "any attempt"?
>
> In this context, Biderman ponders a rather telling question: "Perhaps
> the tablets of stone, the Tables of the Covenant, are themselves a form
> of idolatry?" (p. 45). If his characterization of the biblical worldview
> is correct, then, indeed, it seems that all forms of revelation represent
> a breach of divine transcendence. A word that is conspicuously missing
> from this account, however, is "covenant." Covenant relies on God's
> initial, exterior call, but it then focuses on two distinct agents who, in
> a sense, transcend each other while upholding a structured relationship.
> To this extent, covenant is a form of "reduc[ing] the gap between the
> absolute and the human" that is not traditionally thought to be
> idolatrous. Perhaps Biderman has in fact uncovered an inconvenient truth
> for Western monotheisms in light of their obsession with transcendence:
> all revelation, all relation with God, has always been idolatry. But we
> might consider another possibility: covenant disputes the premise of
> his argument. Perhaps "the West" is not quite as compulsive about
> transcendence as Biderman proposes, even in the midst of its biblical
> foundations. It might be just as plausible--if not more so--to suggest
> that the "skeletal framework" that grounds the monotheisms of the West
> is in fact a "presupposition of covenantal (or lawful) relation."
>
> Covenant suggests a more nuanced conception of transcendence, and
> along the same lines, Biderman's treatment of the Christian intellectual
> vision is not adequate. Christian thought appears here and there in
> _Crossing Horizons_, but the central and most challenging issue--the
> mediation of transcendence and immanence that is at the core of
> Christian thought--remains unexamined. Biderman would perhaps tell
> us that the Christ event is premised on transcendence (there is no
> God-man-Son without there being a transcendent God the Father, and the
> risen Christ clearly transcends this world). Or, less charitably,
> Christian belief is indeed a form of idolatry.
>
> But these arguments fail to satisfy, as does Biderman's treatment
> of important Christian themes. Biderman downplays the premodern
> Christian urge to inspect the interior in figures like Paul and
> Augustine, for example, because, he argues, it was ultimately about
> charting a course back to the transcendent God. He also makes the
> related claim that the "radical Indian idea" of internalizing ritual
> "without a doubt, sounds strange to Western ears" (p. 99). Whatever
> we might say about their abiding belief in a distant Father God,
> this "idea" certainly did not sound strange to Matthew and Luke,
> when they reported on Jesus's injunction to internalize the dictates
> of the Torah (e.g., Mt. 5.21-22, 27-28). And it was hardly foreign
> to Paul, who recommended circumcision of the heart. These examples
> reflect a complex vision of transcendence and immanence, a
> mediation of self, other human, and divine other--it would be
> interesting to see Biderman attempt to fit the Christian notion
> of "spirit" within his thesis. In broader terms, powerful notions
> in both the Jewish and Christian traditions suggest that "the
> presupposition of transcendence" has often been renegotiated, and,
> as a result, it has become much less of a singular, inevitable
> constraint--if it was ever firmly established in the first place.
>
> Biderman's treatment of modern philosophy assumes acceptance of
> his premise as he explores both the staying power of the
> "presupposition of transcendence" and the traumas that were
> unleashed when it broke down. As I have suggested above, we have
> reason to believe that this presupposition was already compromised
> by the time that Descartes came onto the scene. Biderman is quite
> right, however, to argue that something dramatic happened in modern
> thought--and it surely revolved around subjectivity. That
> Descartes circles back around to God in the Meditations (1641) is
> not surprising, but whether the cogito or a transcendent God has
> "ontological precedence" (p. 136) is a matter of considerable debate.
> In keeping with his thesis, Biderman of course argues that it is God,
> though he recognizes that the Cartesian subject opens up the distinct
> possibility of abandoning divinity, so it is difficult to discern his
> answer.
>
> More importantly, however, Biderman correctly indicates that Descartes
> paired a "primary, independent, separated" self in the sense of "an
> individual person," "limited merely by the boundaries of his thought"
> (p. 129), with a "'philosophical' subjectivity" that was "impersonal"
> and purely formal (p. 132). Here we discern the seeds of an alternate
> explanation for the rupture of modern thought: an inexpressible X,
> or "impersonal objectivity," as Biderman calls it, appears "at the
> very core of subjectivity" (p. 138). This core was, we might suggest,
> always with "the West," but it was by and large covered over by
> positive dialectical transactions of transcendence and immanence. This
> dialectical conception is a more accommodating way of characterizing
> the abiding influence of Western monotheisms than what we find
> outlined in _Crossing Horizons_.
>
> Turning now to the Indian tradition, we should recall Biderman's
> overarching strategy. Serious, engaged inquiry, he argues, is
> essential to dislodging dangerous prejudices about other cultures,
> but cross-cultural comparison is also vital to understanding one's
> own. Comparison with the religious and philosophical traditions of
> India brings "the presupposition of transcendence" in the West
> into sharp relief, because in India this presupposition is
> conspicuous in its absence.
>
> To explore this side of argument, we begin with the understanding
> of divinity in India, which contrasts significantly with the
> traditional Western conception. The ancient Vedic gods were encircled
> by greater forces, such as cosmic order, ritual activity, and the
> scriptures themselves, Biderman argues. In fact, in contrast with
> "the West," the Vedic scheme is characterized by "inverse transcendence"
> because human beings took precedence over the gods. With regard to
> later devotional theisms, Biderman admits that Hindus "delight in
> recounting Śiva's omnipotence, or wax about Kṛṣṇa's allure, or ruminate
> on the metaphysical aspects of that divine impersonal principle that
> they refer to as Brahman," but transcendence "rarely occupies a key
> position in the conceptual framework of Indian culture" (p. 52).
>
> This claim would come as a surprise to many interpreters of the Hindu
> tradition--not to mention its adherents. Going back to the Vedic
> worldview, it seems clear that "transcendence" was a foundational
> principle, but--to put the matter simply--it was identified with
> something besides God/the gods. For example, the Vedas certainly
> manifest themselves in the interior of the sage or priest, but the
> source of their authority is their eternal, objective, and transcendent
> nature, as Biderman himself suggests in his chapter on language. Once
> again, we should be analyzing dialectical systems of transcendence
> and immanence, rather than insisting that a culture is reducible to
> one of these concepts or the other.
>
> We could readily cite instances from later Hindu devotional movements
> that support this suggestion. One of the most obvious and well known
> is Kṛṣṇa's "theophany" in chapter 11 of the Bhagavadgītā. Here the
> warrior Arjuna requests that Kṛṣṇa, his trusted friend and advisor,
> reveal himself in his true, divine form. Kṛṣṇa complies, and the
> warrior is overwhelmed by a vision of an entirely outward, exterior,
> universal, and objective god--a transcendent god.
>
> Examples of this kind are pervasive in the Hindu tradition--but
> Biderman would want to argue that these visions of transcendence do
> not reflect the essence of the tradition: episodes like this are
> merely the devotional flesh of lived religion, covering over the
> conceptual skeleton. Instead, the monistic concept of divinity is
> the real foundation; the Gītā is most distinctively "Indian" when it
> portrays the interiorization of ultimate reality. Indeed, the center
> of gravity in Biderman's account revolves around the assimilation of
> ultimate reality, subjectivity, and insight that is often articulated
> in the Upaniṣadic corpus. In this picture, subjectivity trumps any
> form of transcendent divinity; advanced practitioners take precedence
> over the gods when they retreat into the interior and find the
> ultimate, non-dual truth.
>
> The Upaniṣadic, Vedānta breakdown of dualities, however, is itself a
> problem for Biderman's argument. At times Biderman equivocates
> around his characterization of the immanent, interior subject.
> To make his comparison with "the West" stick, however, he most
> often seems to identify Indian concepts of subjectivity with
> individual human beings. Hence, Western selves were dominated by
> transcendent reality outside of themselves, and Indian individuals
> got free reign to explore, imagine, and create from the interior.
> But we should be very clear: the realm of Upaniṣadic subjectivity
> is much more expansive than the personal human sphere, and in fact
> the subject attains liberating insight when it becomes homologous
> with the objective, or, we might even say, with the transcendent
> (e.g., "ātman is Brahman," "I am Brahman," etc.). In the Upaniṣads,
> the personal or individual self is not the source of ultimate truth
> --the individual must meet up with impersonal subjectivity, which
> is another way of saying that it must have an objective, transcendent
> side. How is this different, we might wonder, from the Platonic or
> Augustinian forms of introspection, which lead to a reality well
> beyond the self?
>
> The dialectic between subject/object, outward/inward, and immanent/
> transcendent is an essential presupposition to even the most
> introspective of Upaniṣadic texts. Contra Biderman's reading of
> Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.1-4, for example, which suggests that
> "self-identity is ascertained here without it needing a specific
> object (and not even the conceptual differentiation between an
> external object and an internal subject)" (p. 161), it is
> impossible to avoid these determinations in the act of self-
> recognition. "Here I am" is the first thing that the lonely
> first man says: the subject identifies an outward place from
> which to speak and then makes of itself an object; the ātman
> then fearfully recognizes his aloneness and begets other beings to
> fill the emptiness. Is not this initial outward void a version of
> "transcendence", conceived as a bare externality and objectivity?
> Even in this highly subjective account of creation, it is difficult
> to say that we find no "prior assumptions (not even implied ones)
> regarding the ontological precedence of the external over the
> internal or the objective over the subjective" (p. 149).
>
> This line of critique arises from a very basic observation about
> Indian intellectual foundations: dualism was as much of a
> presupposition as monism. The Sāṃkhya philosophical school, for
> example, can trace its origins into the depths of the Vedas, and
> while it deemphasized God/gods (at least in its classical form),
> it was founded on a strict dualism between two substances:
> puruṣa (conscious, passive self) and prakṛti (unconscious, active
> nature). Building on imagery from the Vedic literature, Sāṃkhya
> starts with the premise that puruṣa is radically distinct from
> dormant prakṛti, and it sees transcendence of prakṛti as the path
> to liberation. When these notions combine with theism in the highly
> influential Yoga school of philosophy, the conclusion becomes
> unavoidable: a strong presupposition towards transcendence is in
> fact present in the Indian philosophical tradition. This
> presupposition is potent in the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: his
> Iśvara (Lord) is so radically isolated and distant that it is
> difficult to imagine how he could have had a hand in creation.
>
> The prominence of dualism in the Indian tradition relates to
> another fraught issue in _Crossing Horizons_: the status of
> external reality, and the capacity of language to represent it.
> Biderman argues that the correspondence theory of truth is
> distinctive to the Western tradition, and he proposes that it
> owes a great deal to a religio-philosophical frame that gave
> precedence to transcendent realities (God and the world). In
> India, this theory plays a "minor role" because of the rare
> appearance of "the realist assumption according to which perceived
> reality is completely independent of our perception of it" (p. 100).
> In fact, realist perspectives of this kind abound in the Indian
> philosophical tradition. While Vedāntins and some Buddhists
> rejected realism and maintained skepticism about the capacity
> of language (and these are examples that Biderman focuses on),
> basic forms of observation, both internal and external, played
> an essential role in Indian thought, often with the assumption
> that the objects of our experience have some kind of independent
> standing. This impulse is persistent in the tradition. In their
> later formalization of the accepted sources of knowledge (pramāṇas),
> for example, all schools of Indian philosophy accepted the authority
> of perception. While there were complex debates about this concept,
> many of these schools (including Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṃkhya, early
> forms of Buddhism, etc.) started with the basic understanding that
> truthful discourse arose from the proper matching of propositions
> with objects met with in experience--i.e., they espoused, at one
> time or another, a form of realist foundationalism. Of course,
> the process of judgment was most often thought to be mediated
> by other intellectual structures, much as we find in Western
> tradition, but the broader point is very clear: both realisms
> and correspondence theories of language were relatively common
> in the history of Indian thought.
>
> It would not be difficult to continue with "exceptions" that
> "abound at [the] extremities" (p. 24) of _Crossing Horizons_, but
> to be fair, Biderman never claims to offer a comprehensive treatment
> of either Western or Indian thought. As we have seen, he is fully
> cognizant that generalizations require sacrifices, but he urges
> us not to lose the forest for the trees. Of course both the West
> and India have many divergent religious and philosophical strands;
> however, each tradition also has its own consistent, foundational
> identity, which we clarify and differentiate through the art of
> cross-cultural comparison.
>
> The comparative impulse in _Crossing Horizons_ is admirable, and
> the pairings it contains often prove fascinating. But the constant,
> looming presence of Biderman's grand thesis often threatens to
> compromise his book's highpoints, as does his practice of writing
> off rather significant exceptions. To recognize that major strands
> of thinking in Western contexts fail to adhere to "the
> presupposition of transcendence," or that transcendence was a
> premise within important branches of the Indian tradition, does not
> obscure and obfuscate some essential truth with needless worries,
> as Biderman seems to argue. Instead, it disputes his thesis with
> contrary evidence and demands a more nuanced treatment of the
> subject matter. If we can identify significant examples within
> the Indian tradition that temper Biderman's comparisons with
> "Western" concepts of God, self, world, and language, and we
> can simultaneously find significant exceptions to the rule of
> transcendence in the West, then just exactly how far has the
> overarching comparison taken us? Would so much be lost if the
> generalizations about "the West" and "India" were left aside,
> leaving the individual, comparative case studies to do their
> work, with conclusions limited to what the data can bear?
>
> Urging this more targeted form of analysis is a straightforward
> matter of getting the texts, schools, and thinkers that populate
> these two traditions right, but there is also a bigger picture.
> As recent critical perspectives on Orientalism have shown, the
> representation of non-Western cultures has a long history with
> some disturbing political and social implications. In his
> opening, Biderman acknowledges this form of critique by suggesting
> that anyone who approaches India from the outside has
> "autobiographical demon[s]," "personal motivations," and
> "hidden agendas" that have the potential to corrupt the
> investigation (p. 2). Surely he is right, but this way of
> accounting for distorted representation of the Indian tradition
> is far too limited. It suggests that misunderstandings have
> been (and continue to be) the product of idiosyncratic,
> individual factors and not features of larger patterns or
> products of cultural forces. "[P]ersonal motivations" and
> "hidden agendas" need to be linked with broader discourses
> of representation if we are to clear the ground of cross-
> cultural interpretation.
>
> Biderman is aware of this point; the privileged narrative of
> Western philosophy, which he resists, is itself part of a discourse
> that has been aligned against the very kind of comparative work he
> wishes to perform. But counter-assertion of India's integrity,
> particularly within the framework of broad generalizations that
> are ultimately designed to serve Western self-understanding, is
> not without its own genealogy, and its own danger. It has long
> been a common move of both Romantic devotees and hard-nosed
> colonizers to align the essence of the "Indian mind" with the
> suppressed elements in the Western tradition (e.g., mystery cults,
> Neo-Platonism, kabbalah, Spinozism, etc.). Also, Western
> intellectuals have consistently isolated Upanishadic, Vedāntin
> monism as the essential teaching of India, with a number of
> accompanying associations: India has often been represented as
> a land of dreamy, anti-realist imagination. Finally, the
> association between European pessimism and Buddhism is long-
> standing gesture that has further intertwined India with very
> Western debates and obsessions. These strands have woven together
> in a rather worn-out tale that has often framed interpretive
> encounter with India: "the West" has finally ended up in the
> same places that Indian thinking ventured long time ago, but
> this late realization is yet poisoned by lingering narrowness and
> dogmatism. If only India could set us straight! If only we could
> hear its pure, essential voice! For over two centuries, this
> hermeneutical frame has drawn Indian texts, religion, and
> thought-forms into a curious mix of Romantic enthusiasm and
> broken-hearted disillusionment in the face of modernity's disasters.
>
> Does _Crossing Horizons_ contribute to this story? It has its moments:
> consulting the growing body of contemporary scholarship on the
> historical reception of India in the West might well have raised
> warning flags for Biderman, leading to further refinement in his
> analysis. But in its intriguing details this book does rise above
> the old stories--and in its bold comparativism: Biderman acts on
> Müller's dictum, "He who knows one, knows none" with great energy
> and vision, calling to account our lingering biases and parochialisms.
>
>
>
> If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it
> through the list discussion logs at:
> https://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.
>
> Citation: Bradley L. Herling. Review of Biderman, Shlomo, _Crossing
> Horizons: World, Self, and Language in Indian and Western Thought_.
> H-German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2013.
> URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=32783
>
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
> Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
>
>
> Citation: Bradley L. Herling. Review of Biderman, Shlomo, _Crossing
> Horizons: World, Self, and Language in Indian and Western Thought_.
> H-German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2013.
> URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=32783
>
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
> Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
> License.
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