The History of Evil in the Early Twentieth Century by Victoria S. Harrison

Author:Victoria S. Harrison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2018-05-24T16:00:00+00:00

M. Hiriyanna: connecting ethics and aesthetics in a solution to individual suffering

For the Mysore University professor M.K. Hiriyanna, the connections between self and public service become crucial in solving the problem of suffering. In “Subjective Self-less-ness: The Message of Indian Philosophy” ([1939] 1994), Hiriyanna offers a pointed rejoinder to the all-too-familiar charge that Hindu concern with suffering is too individualistic and that its solution requires, or at least invites, a rejection of this earthly world. Instead, Hiriyanna demonstrates that in fact it is “unselfishness” that Indian philosophical schools in general have emphasized as the ideal of life. This in turn suggests self-renunciation rather than world-renunciation. Not only this, but self-renunciation, argues Hiriyanna, requires a self that acts in the world, in service to all human beings who inhabit it. Tying this to an interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita as advocating a life of incessant activity, Hiriyanna concludes that public service is not only consistent with renunciation, but is rather “the very means of cultivating it. Consequently, the aim is not renunciation and service, but renunciation through service” (Bhushan 2010: 170).

In this way Hiriyanna simultaneously disabuses his audience of two related notions. The first is that the Hindu’s concern is primarily for the suffering of an individual self, rather than for community. Indeed, on his view, since the cultivation of the virtue of “unselfishness” is the primary means for individual self-transformation, the Hindu concern cannot but be for individuals in society rather than for individuals conceived of in isolation from society. Second, and related to his first point, if it is the individual in society who is the target of Hindu concern, rather than the singular individual in grand isolation, then we need to rethink the meaning of that other grand Hindu virtue – that of renunciation. In what does renunciation consist? The familiar response is that renunciation requires detachment from the society in which one participates. Hiriyanna suggests instead that participation of the self in society in the form of service, rather than being viewed in opposition to renunciation, is precisely what would cultivate and strengthen the habit of renunciation. The ethical life, in the public domain, is thus seen as integral to the Hindu goal of self-transcendence, and not adjacent or orthogonal to it.

Hiriyanna is also among the first academic philosophers to underscore the role of aesthetics in questions concerning freedom from evil.1 Hiriyanna says, provocatively, that “it is the problem of evil that gives rise to art as well as to philosophy” (Bhushan & Garfield 2011b: 215 fn.). With this declaration, while acknowledging the centrality of traditional metaphysical and epistemological concerns to the Hindu view of life – of a quest for truth, knowledge and Ultimate reality – Hiriyanna brings aesthetics to the front and centre as he uses the notion of the jivanmukta (a person who is free on this earth, rather than in the hereafter) to argue for aesthetic (and ethical) practice as making possible freedom for an individual. This is a freedom that comes, not from an extinction or suppression of instincts and interests, but rather from their expansion.

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