Wednesday 26 September 2012

Flatulence as Philosophy- Purushotam Bilimoria on Kant,Matilal & Spivak


This is a link to a paper by Prof. Bilimoria which makes the astounding claim that Gayatri Spivak can throw some light on Matilal's relationship with Kant. Spivak  has pointed out in a recent book that Prof. Matilal, in his final days, suffered from a serious medical condition which caused flatulence and that, to ease his embarrassment, she had quoted Derrida- 'Ontology can't lay hold of a fart'- a remark whose fatuity lies in demonstrating that its subject does nothing else- but, regrettably, Bilimoria hasn't approached his topic from this angle- one singularly fecund for Socioproctology- but rather from something he claims to be a ' genuine critique of the rational'- this in the context of the 'Post Colonial Subject'- such a critique being, he assures us, 'Spivak's gift.'

Before wading into Bilimoria's essay, let me first say that there was another female Professor at Columbia, Graciella Chichilnisky, who addressed the same issue and resolved it once and for all by using innovative mathematical techniques. Essentially, a concept of 'limited arbitrage'- i.e. constrained preference diversity as in Amos 3.3- 'can 2 walk together except they be agreed?' - is sufficient to clarify all the so called 'aporias' of Reason dating back to Hegel's career as a Calculus instructor or Kant's senile failure to engage with the drunkard, but solid Math student, Solomon Maimon.
Chichilnisky, an Argentinian Jew who, quite unforgivably, lacked a penis, studied the North South problem as an engaged intellectual. Because she was five types of Smart, she cracked the Math and published her solutions. Mediocre men hated her but great men, like Ken Arrow, but also Amartya Sen, recognized her genius. Perhaps, Cambridge, England, would have been more hospitable to her but the fact remains that her results, at least in this respect, have stood up to scrutiny and though she may not get a Nobel, she has prevailed.
Essentially, Chichilnisky's work shifts the focus to preference diversity- too much of it and there is no Economics, no Literature, no prescriptivity in 'Rational' Ethics or 'Rational Historicism'- indeed, those projects are empty. Think about it for a moment. If all human beings were completely different from each other in terms of what they wanted or how they thought or what linguistic collocations appealed or felt 'natural' to them, then there would be no Commerce, no Society, no meaningful interchange. Man would be a feral animal interacting according to some Evolutionarily Stable Ethology to which he himself had no cognitive access. Granted, this describes almost everything about my own inwardness- and it may be the vast majority of people out there are like me in being what modern Philosophy of Mind calls 'p-zombies' (in other words, beings who look like or even sound like 'real' people, but who in fact are no such thing)- but Commerce & Law, if not Literature & Ethics, do exist and supervene on the Zombie Apocalypse of my Species Being. It may be that I don't actually do 'limited arbitrage' myself- in the quod nescis quo modo fiat, non facis sense (i.e. I don't know what I'm doing so I don't really do it)- but statistically the survival (or perhaps preponderance) of people like me still gives rise to Economics and Social Choice without aporias.
The corollary of the p-Zombie, for shite Ethics, is the Kantian heteronomous subject. Billimoria, in charity to Kant, points out that some of his writing militates for the notion that  'primitive' people like Iyers and Hottentots can progress towards autonomy through trade and interaction with Europeans and, in that context, it might be a good idea to treat them as thought they possessed rights. However, Billimoria undoes his charity, he proves an Indian giver, by going on to say that Post Colonial Reason arises out of the ashes of the Nietzche-Heideggerian 'destruktion' of a 'purer metaphysics of reason'. This is sheer nonsense. It is like saying, 'Obama's thinking arose out of the ashes of the John Birch Society's critique of the Ku Klux Klan's deconstruction of the purer metaphysics of reason' of Abraham Lincoln or Dr. Martin Luther King'. The fact is, back then, Kant was still a guy who knew from Science, even Hegel had actually taught Calculus- he could do sums. By contrast, Nietzche was merely mad and Heidegger was really bad. Fuck they have to do with 'Post Colonial Reason'?
 Germany didn't have any colonies- they were taken off them at bayonet point- there is no actual Post Colonial Subject who isn't simply jumping on an academic bandwagon who pretends those two shit-heads have any fucking relevance to their own Credentialist Ponzi scheme aimed at making out they actually 'represent' some great seething subaltern mass of alterity.

 I recall reading about Alexander Gershenkron- associated in Development Econ with a (specious) theory or relative backwardness such that the State dominates Civil Society- who, while a Prof at Harvard, had to deal with the ridiculous claim that like the Ivy League gotta cater for Black Studies- mebbe 'Fuzzy Wuzzy Logic'?- coz them niggers now got guns, dude! The truth was, niggers with or without guns, were like Obama's dad- the threat they represented proved useful coz it led to the foreign language requirement being dropped in favor of more Math for Econ PhD candidates- surely a good thing.
There is no 'Post Colonial Reason'.  What there has been- and here I have been as guilty as any- is whining about how being black aint no picnic coz like it don't actually make your dick any bigger and how like Kipling aint really racist- he's a treasure trove of positive images of the kind of working class people in India I still fondly remember. I recall being addressed as 'Gunga Din' by an elderly Cockney warehouse 'gaffer' back when I was 17. I loved that little old man and the richness of his baritone 'palaver' .
 I remember I got into a little tiff with a real big, muscular, white guy and waited for him after work 'to have it out'- i.e. get a black eye and thus become properly integrated into the team- but, it turned out there was this little white guy who had been riding the big fellow all day and he was of Turkish origin and had three brothers in Jail and two out and about with Boxing fucking trophies. Anyroad, this little guy wouldn't let me get a black eye in a good cause. I ended up looking a stupid 'toff'- insisting on 'fisticuffs to clear the air' when the truth was I'd have had my head kicked in. The old gaffer got wind of what had happened and, sadly, he changed towards me. He wanted me to do the books rather than tote boxes. He even wanted to call me 'College'- the final nail in my coffin. I wanted to remain 'Gunga Din'- if only for him- and recited the poem (badly) to try to tearfully defend my 'birth-right' in this respect. How could I prevail? 'Gunga Din' is a fucking beautiful poem- the Saqi-e-Kausar as a Kabir-panthi bhishti, what's not to like?- but it did me no good- suddenly I was like Pundit fucking Nehru or Mahatma fucking Gandhi rather than just one of the lads. I had screwed myself.  Anyway, that's my bit of Post-Colonial reason. What does it amount to? Things aint what they seem. Teachers are good people but they get Literature wrong. Well, they don't get their own literature wrong- the Irish Christian Bros. at St.Columba in Delhi loved teaching us Joyce- they knew he was a good Catholic precisely because he wasn't- but I can't blame a White School teacher in Hackney or Hounslow or wherever not showing enthusiasm for Kipling's 'Gunga Din'. Indeed, if I weren't a big made feller (though crap at fighting), what's more one with a 'posh' accent,  some well-meaning idiot might have protected me, despite myself, from being called Gunga Din. BTW, Sambo was actually a little Tamil boy- so I'm reclaiming that name as well. Anyroad, it beats being called 'Iyer, you fat cunt' though I've got to admit Mum does put a lot of affection into her voice when she addresses me thus.
  Prof. Billmoria, who is probably a posh guy who never wanted to tote boxes in an East London warehouse- still the best job I've ever had and that was 35 years ago when I was sweet 17- don't get that there are actual Post Colonial people- billions of us- and we do too Reason. He thinks Dilthey and the historicist turn in hermeneutics was a good thing. It wasn't. It turned everybody against everybody. It negated Scripture and the factual truth of 'the unseen' by which we all dun be brothers from different mothers. The Turkish guy who wouldn't let me get my black eye would, according to historicist hermeneutics, be obliged to fucking give me the cold shoulder either as a kaffir or a descendant of a supporter of Khilafat. I'm supposed to hate all White people. Fuck, I'd wanna do that? But, I myself, must be an object of hate to all non-Brahmins, not to mention females (okay, the latter have a legitimate complaint against me- vide Prof. Vagina Dentata Choothopadhyay's magisterial - 'Fat is not a Feminist issue- Penis size is').
  Okay, okay, I know there was an earlier theory according to which we could all get along if we could only agree to just eat the rich already. But those days are gone. Anyway, nowadays, I feel rich- I probably am not but how the fuck is anybody supposed to know whether they are actually rich or totally impoverished what with all them shenanigans in the City and what have you?
   Billimoria, following Spivak, thinks the West wants us guys to fuck each other over coz that's like 'authentic'. Believe me Billimoria Sahib- the West wants no such thing. Not after 9/11. What they are saying to us is- Could u guys just kindly go back to just being darkies or wogs or whatever? Fuck we want to know which type of towel head sand nigger u r?  Get with the fucking program already. You know you want to. Just say yes.
Billimoria says Spivak has a defence against being cast as Brahmin apologist herself. She does- it is ignorance. She says in her book, apropos of nothing, that India is called Bharat coz that was Ram's younger brother's name. Is Billimoria equally ignorant or did he read no more than one chapter of Spivak's shite book? The notion that anyone with any power with respect to India ever read Hegel is ludicrous. Yes, Hegel was European- but from a backward, piece of shit, Princedom called Prussia which the Brits have long abhorred and anathematized. (Think Thatcher's Cabinet's fervent espousal of the traditional British belief (as in A.J.P Taylor's post-War book for Allied Occupation troops I remember reading for my History A level) 'Good Germans are Rhinelanders or Hanseatics like Schopenhauer (big fan of India)- Bad Germans are Prussians.')
Berlin did become a great Educational centre but in Maths and Physics and Electrical Engineering. There was literally no fucking bleed through, to either Brit or Indian, of their provincial, racist, shite- and, if you read the Education of Henry Adams, one can easily see why. German Gymnasiums were crap. Their PhD's- at least in Econ, were and are shit- Hoppe & Sinn looked kosher for a bit but they have now abundantly shown the kraut or cloven hoof, so fuck them. Germany has a good Economy coz it has only self-evidently crap 'famous' Economists. It's just Rothbard's Law is all it is- Economists fuck up the more the more famous they get- and Germans (I was born there myself) are very good at obeying laws coz if it aint forbidden it's compulsory (my winsome humour and sparkling wit, such as is displayed in this post, conforming entirely to the law regulating such scatology in the country of my birth).
Billimoria writes-
This is mad. Schopenhauer and Herder and Karl Krause may marginally affect Indian reception of the Gita, Hegel does not. He was too fucking Racist and, in any case, couldn't write worth toffee.
I don't know who Sardesai and Bose are- fuckwits apparently- but Tilak, Ghose and Radhakrishnan have nothing to do with Hegel. You may say, what about Bradley & McTaggart? My reply is- what about them? They don't fit the bill. Radhakrishnan could availability cascade along lines they'd laid down but there is nothing from Hegel on the Gita in them. Kosambi is a different story- indeed the only good bits in Spivak come from him- but he was a Maths guy who did folk-lore on the side. He built no Academic Empire and created no School. This son of Acharya Kosambi was the opposite of Matilal. Not a flaneur precisely- just a rasika, perhaps- but certainly not a fucking Credentialist Ponzi scheme running Academic.
  Billimoria sees Matilal not as a fuckwit rescued from penury by getting a job in the West based on knowing a bit about Voodoo- sorry I mean worthless navya-nyaya shite no fucking Hindu ever subscribed to- who tried to set up as an Analytic or mebbe Ethics guy and fucking failed- no, that would be the common sense view, Billimoria sees Matilal as doing something else- viz. listening for a 'dissident voice' (subversive of Brahminical orthodoxy) within the text.
This is incredibly stupid. The Gita and Itihasas and so on aint Brahminical orthodoxy. They are not dim & dissident but a loud and resonant voice which says- Brahminism is a worthless fucking pile of shite. The very castes and classes which patronized or purveyed this sublime message were non-Brahmin in the main. Brahmins themselves had every reason to espouse this view. Otherwise they would constantly be at risk of beheading or ostracism for some tiny ritual mistake. The rains didn't come on time- guess the Bhramins goofed up, let's kill them. Who wants this? The pure Occassionalist doctrine propounded in the Gita (God does everything, humans do nothing) doesn't just let Bhramins off the hook if the rains don't come on time or the Turks invade, it fucking re-valorizes karma kanda rituals as a purely gratuitous theistic gesture. 
An evil fuckwit like me will act as yajman for a Brahminic ceremony if
a) it's very very fucking cheap and imposes no educational burden on me- like learning that Gayatri mantra which is way too long
b) I already very firmly believe that the Lord of the Universe is just like gonna borrow my beloved Mum and Dad and everybody else I love and keep them in Heaven till the cup of my inequities is full and I voluntarily turn back to the virtuous path of harassing all those noble souls with my importunate love and affection and demands to like tell me a story already.
Come on Billimoria- you may be a high I.Q type. Did you really have no fuckwit friends or siblings like me growing up? Do you really know shit about how Hinduism works? What was the date of the last 'Smarta Vicharam' or khap panchayat down your neck of the woods? For Tamil Iyers- you have to go a hundred years back. That's a long time dude. I'm not saying there aint a specifically Hindu preference falsification based Social Inquisitorial process- I'm just saying it's non Brahmin is all. You know this. Why pretend otherwise?
Further to a pretence that Dharma-ethics does not forbid its own grounding in a rational choice hermeneutic (because, if this were possible its 'apurva' or epoche making element would vanish along with its own topos-as-Maya) Billimoria highlights a particularly crap essay by Matilal- though I suppose it has a resonance, or conjures a revenant, with respect to the crap Traditionalist anti-Brahmo polemics of the mid-Nineteenth Century, but that shite was dead in the water by the time Tagore published 'Gora'- Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and Aurobindo Ghose's younger brother didn't just steal the Reformist's clothes, they fucking cat-walked it in Chicago and all points East of the Pacos- but, what does Billimoria's highlighting of that shite essay say about his own project? Only this- the availability cascades he surfs are such as might occur in not Adelaide but land-locked Canberra.
Take a butchers at this me old ocker-

The point here is that Kant and Hegel were stupid, racist, fuckwits. I'm sure Hinduism had its Kants and Hegels- them's the guys our Sacred Books hold up to ridicule, hatred and contempt. Nobody has any problem with Utilitarianism- deontology cashes out as Utilitarianism once you admit some course of action can expand your information set because it becomes your duty to so act. Buddhism knew this. No doubt some Brahmin fuckwits had fun with Buddhist wholly Intentionalist Ethics and this has been preserved somewhere BUT those Bhramin fuckwits were laughed at as fuckwits by everybody, including their teachers. 
Billimoria thinks India's corruption has to do with Utilitarianism. Why? How fucking ignorant is he exactly? Utilitarian Social Engineering- i.e. mechanism design- tackles the problem directly. It's what Arthashastra says- but also what Tiru or anybody else says. No fucking Indian, Muslim or Hindu or whatever ever said the way you get people to stop stealing is by preaching at them. No. Carrots and sticks and fucking Tiebout model Law-compliance as a local public good was what these guys not just said but actually fucking implemented.  What is Matilal's alternative? Worthless pi-jaw. His thought is irrelevant. He was a fuckwit. No fucking Indian reads him and he made no attempt, not ignominious, to get them to read him. How is his 'thought' prescriptive? Why does Billimoria mention it? To whom exactly is he flashing this Credentialist laissez passer? 
Does Billimoria really believe there was some supposedly 'liberative event'? Which Indian shares that belief? Fuck the 'official ideology'. It is 'pakhand', it is 'munafiqat', it is a 'preference falsification/ availability cascade' in the terminology of Prof. Timur Kuran- a future Nobel winner surely? (his analysis of Islamic Societies is crap, racist crap, so Stockholm has already booked his flight youbetcha).
Who does not know this?
How fucking stupid are the people who read Billimoria and Spivak and Amartya Sen? Certainly not more stupid than me. They are just more successful coz hypocrisy is a work-skill.
Read this and tell me Billimoria isn't a wanker.
Why is this fucked? What Billimoria and Spivak are talking about is a 'Transfer paradox' whereby shite donated by 'an advanced' country further impoverishes a 'developing' one. Graciella Chichilinsky did the Maths on this dude. She showed, so long as there are at least 3 countries, 'Transfer paradoxes' were phipty-phipty. 

I suppose, at this stage, I should say something nice about Matilal coz de mortuis &c- okay, he highlights an episode that is the dual to the Gita whereby Krishna prevents Arjuna killing the guy he thinks is his elder brother (as opposed to his actual elder brother whose will it is that the battle go forward). 
But Matilal misses the most important point about this (I've dealt with this in my book Ghalib, Gandhi & the Gita) which is that it shows that Krishna's Visvarupa in the Gita is a 'self-slaying', a Christ like sacrifice.
Matilal sees no mathematical structure to the Gita. Nor does Billimoria. These guys can't stop Spivak from writing ignorant, school-girl, crap- like saying 'India is called Bharat coz that's what Ram's younger bro was called and like... I dunno... well, like maybe at the end of the film he gets to be the Emperor of India or something? What? India is named after the son of Shakuntala? Oh! Right! Coz like Goethe really liked Kalidasa's 'Shakuntala'. But, I mean my point still stands coz Goethe was like all you know Bourgeois or something and like Hegel, y'know, he was like y'know totally NOT like sittlichkeit guy or maybe he was but then like y'know there was like Marx and Mamta Bannerjee- not Mamta- anyway, you know what I mean. 

Billimoria, worthless cunt that he is, writes this- 
Kant as the 'father of speculative reason'? Okay, there's an academic availability cascade there so let it slide; but 'father of the conceptual conditions for the possibility of imperialism that affected colonialism as an anthropological reality'? Are you fucking kidding me? Spivak writes shite but not quite such shite shite. What is this cunt? A fucking 'mayavadi'? Did he learn phenomenology from Colin Wilson's 'the Space Vampires' (okay, full disclosure, I did. Happy now?) where the value of pi actually changes as people get better at mensuration- or menstruation, BTW, as the only under 50 middle aged Hindutva blogger in Fulham, being 'groomed' by the witchy Wimmin at the Elderly Iyengar Mamiar Activity Centre, down Dawes road- I know it is only you guys who leave comments on my posts-  I will not fucking go down on you however menopausal you claim to be. Once bitten twice shy. Mind it kindly.




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Toward an Indian Theodicy: Hindu responses to the problem of evil and universal injustice
Purushottama Bilimoria
Abstract (150 words)

Indian theistic solution to the problem of evil – or universal injustice - is an off-shoot of the logical theism of Nyāya and philosophical theologies of Vedānta thought. Their respective teleo-cosmologies embed an ontology of divine creation, sustention and periodic dissolution of our world. An N-factor is introduced governing the moral sphere, namely, the principle of karma. The presence of karma (admitting freely-willed choices) potentiates individuals’ actions, good and bad; this then mitigates the need to seek justification for God allowing horrendous amounts of suffering to occur. God cannot be held morally responsible for the evil in the world because he depends on the laws of karma toward maintaining just order. Hence, it is consistent within Hindu philosophy to hold both that there is evil qua karma in our world and there exists an omnipotent God. The role assumed by karma theory is a unique feature of Indian theodicy (theistic and non-theistic). Still, doubts persist.

windwheel said...

Karma has been suggested as a 'blame the victim' type theodicy in many Religions- not just Indian ones. Great Rishis, in Hinduism, have the power to change the laws of karma if they think them unjust and they generally do so in a manner which makes the law apply only to intentional acts by adults rather than unintentional acts by minors or laws which were simply stupid to start off with- e.g. always tell the truth even if it is to a murderer seeking out his victim.
The concept that men can change the laws of karma is not confined to Hinduism. It is at the root of all sacrificial religions. One's bad karma (burden of sin) is taken on by the sacrificial animal- the korban or pharmakos- which is slain in one's place. Christ is such a korban- sacrificing Himself to take on the sins of his followers and cancelling their bad karma of Original Sin. Krishna's visvarupa in Gita can similarly be seen as a self-sacrifice.
Theistic Hinduism of an Occassionalist type injects a teleological element such that everybody ultimately gains Liberation from the Lord- either by piercing the veil of Maya or by being killed by the Lord or simply by asking for it. But karma is now just an aspect of Maya- i.e. it is nonsense, an illusion, sheer stupidity.
It is not 'consistent within Hindu philosophy to hold both that there is evil qua karma in our world and there exists and omnipotent God'. The correct statement is 'if you are a stupid, egotistical fool you may think that it is logically consistent to believe any worthless non sequitur you like. That doesn't mean God wants you to be stupid. He is trying very hard to shake you out off your delusion just as a Mother tries very hard to soothe an infant in the grip of night-terrors. You may of your free choice wish to remain within the delusion to savor God's trying to shake you out of it- like a guy who enjoys watching horror movies with his girlfriend because she hugs him tightly when he screams and turns away from the screen- but that's kind of silly, dude. Grow up.'

windwheel said...

'One shirt' Sastri was a folk hero for Tam Brams. He was skeptical of both Besant & Gandhi but ultimately, along with the other 'Liberals', sold out to Gandhi who, say what you like about him, was a money tree.
Jeddu, poor fellow, was buggered senseless by Leadbetter= if that don't make your kundalini squirm away from your rectum and try to escape out of the top of your head, nothing will- but started getting better in California by sleeping with his brother's wife. Pity. Otherwise he could have eloped with Nandini Mehta and had a half Gujerati kid.
The other Krishnamurti, worshiped by Mahesh Bhatt, was less academically stupid than Jeddu but this was history repeating itself as farce, probably because he didn't have any Gujju spiritual consort at all (my memory is his protector was Swiss).
This brings us to Raghavan Iyer, who fulfilled Annie Besant's dream of World Messiah who had attended Eton and Baliol (Jeddu was too stupid to get in), by firstly marrying a Gujerati girl and then refraining from consummating the marriage while he worked for the Planning Commission.
Thus, his academically gifted son, Pico, was both conceived and born on British soil (he retains British Nationality to this day, though dividing his time between Japan and the West Coast) and was careful not to get infected by any of them dirty Indian languages like Sanskrit or Tamil or whatever.
This is a good thing. We now have a Prime Minister who talks about toilets not Transcendental Reason- which, of course, means getting rid of the Planning Commission. This low caste Gujju wants to turn India into a country which makes things. 'Spirituality' can now safely be outsourced to countries with more robust sewer systems to deal with that nuisance.
What does Bilimoriaji mean when he refers to 'certain imperialism from the South'? The Bhakti movement 'which is born in Tamil country and dies in Gujerati'? Not really. The Jains integrated 'Sadhana' of a Bhakti type into a Grace denying Soteriology. Perhaps, in Gujerati Sages like Dayanand Saraswati and Raichandbhai Mehta, we see a superior rationalism and pragmatics which, howerver, is wholly infused with the sentiment of Devotion.
However, as 'Sanskritization' Srinivas's Research Program has revealed, South Indian Brahmin males are addicted to shitting all over the place- we like marking our territory- and this is clearly Imperialist. Gujeratis, even Brahmins, don't like shitting all over the place. Hai! Hai! under Modi sarkar, people like me will be persecuted when we lift up our veshti to take a dump on the pavement! I look to Prof. Amaresh Mishra to protect us holy cows of Hinduism. Shitting all over the place is TRUE meaning of Swaraj. It is my birth right and I will have it. Mind it kindly. Aiyayo.