Bréhier's Sources

angelegt 31.06.2021

Although scholars have rarely raised the question of the sources of Bréhier’s views of Indian thought, it is not difficult to show that Bréhier is, in fact, recapitulating a debate concerning the charge of pantheism filtered through the work of the leading German Indologist of the day, Hermann Oldenberg (1854–1920). Thus, we should first look at Bréhier’s reliance upon Oldenberg and then at the historical context of Oldenberg’s own work, especially as this was influenced by the Pantheismusstreit of the nineteenth century.

In his book on Plotinus, Bréhier cites only two sources for Indian philosophy. The first is Deussen’s translation of the Upanisads (Deussen 1897); the second Oldenberg’s introductory text on the philosophy of the Upanisads (Oldenberg 1915). This constitutes the sum total of his knowledge of Indian philosophy. He is neither aware of the Upanisads first hand nor that there are complex debates concerning their correct interpretation and ultimate purport within the Indian tradition nor that the philosophy of the Upanisads is not simply reducible to a pantheistic or monistic doctrine. To be sure, the Upanisads speak of an ultimate reality known as brahman (a neuter singular term meaning “being”), but they do not arrive at brahman dogmatically. Further, it is by no means clear that by positing brahman or by upholding it as the ultimate real they imply a denial of phenomenological reality, that is, the universe of change and plurality. Thus, Bréhier is clearly following not the texts themselves (which always require an exegete, no less than Plotinian philosophy requires a master), but a naïve (and polemically motivated) reading of Indian thought when he presents Indian philosophy as the counter-concept to the rational philosophy of the Greeks. In this, he follows the lead of the German scholars, whom he explicitly thanks for “singularly increas[ing] our knowledge of the philosophy of India through their translations and commentaries”. Further, the idea of commonality between Plotinus and Indian philosophy is not Bréhier’s own, but was suggested to him by these thinkers.

Along with the names of Spinoza and Schelling, it is that of Plotinus which occurs most often in the works of Deussen and Oldenberg. Identity in the philosophy of Schelling, the union of the soul with God in the intellectual love in Spinoza, are conceptions closely related to the identity of the self with the universal being in Plotinus. They are found in the Upanishads. (Bréhier 1958: 123)

Of the two, Oldenberg is by far the more important for Bréhier’s work, both in terms of the number of references to his work and the central place assigned to his work. Deussen, by contrast, plays a relatively minor role. Bréhier only occasionally cites his translation of the Upanisads in support of a point made in Oldenberg. Indeed, Bréhier does not appear to have read the Upanisads independently. As he notes:

The state of mind implied by such an idea has been described very definitely by Oldenberg: “In India,” he writes, “the sense of personality does not acquire its full force. Moreover, a permanent and positive existence within fixed limits is not attributed to things. This is because, for Indian thinkers, life is not dominated by activity, which is conditioned by the individual and fixed nature of resisting objects. What prevails is the impatience of an intellect which cannot grasp rapidly enough a unity through the knowledge of which the entire universe is known .... The eye is closed to appearances and their color and detail. One seeks to understand how the vital stream, which is unique in all things, springs forth from its obscure depths.”⁴⁹

Bréhier’s reliance on secondary sources is problematic inasmuch as neither Deussen nor Oldenberg were philosophers. Their grasp of Indian philosophy was weak and filtered through Orientalist lenses. Neither had studied Neoplatonism in depth. By training, both were Sanskritists. In addition, Deussen had studied some classical philology, but Oldenberg’s specialization was what he called “the comparative study of religions”. While Deussen made some efforts to learn Indian philosophy first hand (developing a friendship with Swami Vivekananda, for example), Oldenberg neither knew nor cared for Indian intellectual traditions. Indeed, he was frankly dismissive of the tradition, which he labelled as “Indian-knowledge [Inderwissen]” (Oldenberg 1906: 5). Deussen and Oldenberg also had only the haziest ideas about Western philosophy. Drawing their ideas about philosophy from the prevailing Kantianism of the time, they understood philosophy to mean systematic philosophy and rationalism as opposed to mysticism and to pantheism. From the perspective of their Western, nineteenth-century presuppositions, the Upanisads (which appear to preach a doctrine of identity with the One) seemed the most obvious instantiation of a non-rational, experiential philosophy urging the loss and merging of individual consciousness into the One. The contrast they drew between philosophy and religion, which Bréhier also borrows from them, was a relic of nineteenth-century neo-Kantianism. In ancient philosophy, there was no systematic distinction between philosophy and theology. As recent scholarship has shown, Platonic philosophy relied upon many sources, including the mystery religions, and its epistemological concerns cannot be separated from soteriological ones (see, above all, the articles in Adluri 2013). The same holds true, perhaps to an even greater degree, of the Neoplatonic tradition.⁵⁰

Philosophically, too, Oldenberg could not appreciate the complexity or depth of the Upanisads, which he held rather to be evidence of the rise of pantheistic doctrines in India, occluding the original rationalistic and monotheistic spirit of Aryan religion. In his book Die Lehre der Upanishaden und die Anfänge des Buddhismus (Oldenberg 1915), he propounded a four-stage development of Indian thought: (1) primitive worship of natural forces, leading to (2) the development of ritual techniques and magical incantations for controlling these forces; thereafter to (3) ideas of the unity and connectedness of all beings; and, finally, (4) to the emergence of a mature philosophy centring in the question of the relationship of the plurality of beings to brahman or the One. This development contrasted with what Oldenberg, borrowing a page from Comte, saw as the natural evolution of human culture: from fetishism to polytheism and, finally, to monotheism. In the first phase, Oldenberg saw the incipient beginnings of a monotheistic religion, especially with the emergence of Vedic deities such as Indra:

There is Indra – originally, it appears, a storm god – fond of intoxicants, ready for war and conqueror of foes. Agni – Fire – the divine friend and guest of humans. Varuna – in prehistoric times, as one may suppose, a moon god – the one who sees through and punishes even the most deeply hidden sins. (Ibid.: 12)

To be sure, alongside simple feelings of awe and reverence, there also existed commerce between humans and gods:

The effective means of securing the grace of these gods for oneself are, closely related to each other, prayer and sacrifice, in which – the main idea of Vedic sacrifice at least may be expressed thus – the human gives to god so that he may give him in turn, [he may] spare and protect him. (Ibid.: 12–13)

Yet, under the influence of the Brahmans, ideas of reciprocity gave way to control and reverence for the gods to the domination of the priestly caste. As Oldenberg notes:

in these gods [that is, the Vedic deities], the element of personhood, which, previously, in human existence and therefore also in religious existence played a minor role, begins to celebrate its triumph. Naturally, [it was] not an uncontested triumph, and even less was it a final triumph. (Ibid.: 13)

Gradually, with the rise of Brahmanism, Indian thought took a different turn:

The turn towards magic instead of the worship of Gods becomes even more pronounced, as following generations of Brahmans, who now possessed a completed system of sacrificial rituals and prayers, now took up the next task, of explaining all this [that is, the sacrificial ritual, gods, being and existence] in their own way so as to secure all power in the hands of the knower ...

Here we have reached the point where we encounter the Brahmanic science of sacrifice, which requires our attention as the foundation and breeding ground of the great pantheistic speculation. (Ibid.: 16)

Concerning pantheism, Oldenberg raises all the charges already familiar to us from the preceding section against it: pantheism is opposed to the spirit of rationality, it is antithetical to the true religion (which Oldenberg, in keeping with the climate of his time, considered, naturally, to be Christian monotheistic faith), it is destructive of individuality and individual responsibility, and, finally, it does not permit the development of an appropriate feeling of dependence and devotion towards God. Indeed, Oldenberg associates pantheism with the Brahmans’ desire to feel themselves superior to the (intra-cosmic) gods and coeval with the godhead. Finally, there is the ethical aspect of power, control and riches which accrue to one who can thus command the gods.

From ethnographic and sociological perspectives as well, Oldenberg saw pantheism as a fatal choice. Although the earliest Aryan races had had an intimation of the notions of personhood, both at the level of the human and at the level of the deity, under the influence of the climate and racial admixture, they lost interest in a personal (and ethical) religion. Whereas in the earliest periods, we

may think of the higher classes of the Aryan Indians, who, as is well known, entered India from Iran perhaps a thousand years earlier, as not as yet all too seriously affected by racial admixture with the despised dark skinned aboriginals: even today, in many places Brahmans of a purely or almost purely white type have preserved themselves. (Ibid.: 4)

However,

the nature and the climate of India, the easy domination of the native population, the absence of great historical battles created an atmosphere of undisturbed peace for the Brahmans. There flourished the tendency to reflection, to nurturing complicated knowledge, to the play of a phantasy that lost itself ever more uncontrollably in monstrosity and the monstrous. (Ibid.)

It is not necessary to trace further here how Oldenberg sees the development of pantheism in India from the earlier to the later Upanisads and from the later Upanisads to the earlier and later schools of Sāmkhya philosophy. This periodization of Indian culture, as I have argued elsewhere, becomes problematic, once one sees that it is based upon an a priori theory of Indian history and not sustained by objective historical investigations. In any case, the salient point for us is not the later history of philosophical pantheism in India, but to understand the narrative of origins surrounding this concept – a narrative that first explains why pantheism was seen as a corruption rather than an enrichment of Indian thought.

Unaware of these issues or of the Pantheismusstreit that is at the back of Oldenberg’s criticisms,⁵¹ Bréhier ends up transferring the full weight of Oldenberg’s antiphilosophical prejudices into Plotinian–Indian studies. In doing so, he completely overlooks the fact that the thought of the One, in Plotinus no less than Indian philosophy, is rigorously grounded in the principle of non-contradiction. It is not, as he so eloquently says, the destruction of intellectualism through its exaggeration, but the principle of all explanation and intellection, and has been so in the Western tradition since Parmenides.⁵² To reject Plotinus’ Orientalism is therefore only a partial solution; in truth, anyone wishing to reject this aspect of Plotinus’ thought must then also go back to Plato and Parmenides and explain how and why Being should not be a criterion of knowledge.⁵³