Internet Encyclopedia wrong on Bhagvad Gita

The cretin Shyam Ranganathan has this to say in the 'Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy'

Historical Reception and the Gītā’s Significance

The Gita has the most impressive 'theophany' of any Scripture or Religious tradition. Also, though celebrating devotional piety, it supports a karma based theodicy which many seekers find attractive no matter where they come from. 

The historical reception of the Gita- like the historical reception of Shakespeare- has been good because the text, even in translation, is very very good.  One might add that Darwin's big idea made reincarnation seem more 'scientific' than 'bodily resurrection'. 

One could certainly write a lot about specific literary traditions- e.g. in England the influence of the Gita on Matthew Arnold, Yeats, Eliot etc- but you'd have to actually know a little about literature to do so. 

Ranganathan is innocent of any such thing. He writes- 

The relationship of the Gītā to what is known as Hinduism,

because it is a Kripkean rigid designator used as such by Law Courts all over the world 

and to what we understand as religion,

speak for yourself Ranganathan. What you understand is shit.

is more complicated and problematic than a straightforward philosophical study of the Gītā.

Only if your brain is full of shit. 

In a world dominated by Western imperialism,

which ceased to exist, as far as South Asia was concerned, in 1937 when Provincial Autonomy took root and something similar could have been achieved at the Federal level if the Muslim League had not objected.  

it is common to take religious designations at face value, as though they are dispositive of the “religious” traditions and not an artifact of colonialism.

This is common because it is sensible. This shithead may think that Muslims want to eat pork and drink wine so as to get closer to God. Sadly, Whitey fooled Muslims into thinking they ought to do no such thing.  

An historical claim commonly made, as we find in the Encyclopedia of World Religions, is that the “Bhagavad-Gītā” is “perhaps the most widely revered of the Hindu scriptures.”

For Iyers- and Ranganthan, though good looking, is as stupid as shit and thus more likely to be an Iyer than an Iyengar- Adi Sankara confirmed this view. 

The expectation that the Gītā is a religious work

It is. It counts as an Upanishad. 

leads to the notion that there is some type of thematic religious development in the text that is distinct from the philosophy it explores.

Quite true. I've described it. However, to be fair, it wasn't till the work of Von Neumann, Nash, Aumann, Shapley, Schelling etc. penetrated to lowly Econ undergrads that I had the vocabulary to do so.  

So, for instance, the same entry suggests that the religious theme of the opening lines of the Gītā is to be found when Arjuna (the protagonist) is faced with a fratricidal war. “The problem for Arjuna is that many other revered figures, such as Arjuna’s teacher, are fighting for his cousins. Seeing in the ranks of the enemy those to whom he owes the utmost respect, Arjuna throws down his bow and refuses to fight” (Ellwood and Alles 2008: 49-50). That is not at all how events unfold, however.

Nonsense! That's exactly what happens though, obviously, a Hindu like me would give a richer account. 

Arjuna, upon arriving at the battlefield, provides three distinct arguments

No. He says he won't fight and gives different reasons why he won't fight. 

based on three prominent ethical theories that comprise what we might call conventional morality (Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism, and Deontology)

This is a recent academic availability cascade. Virtue is prudent and mindful of consequences. Utilitarianism can be purely deontological because of Knightian Uncertainty, reputation or mimetic effects, etc. Deontics arises only if there is a duty to have a duty and is thus essentially meta-ethical and dependent on justiciable social arrangements.

Hindus, like me, reading Gita, are on tenterhooks as to whether Arjuna's unvested boon of being able to see whatever he wants in the way he wants to see it will, by reason of 'Vishada', or self-alienation,vest in himself such that he sees that

1) Krishna is God

2) Karna is his true elder brother. There can be no War because Yuddhishtra will immediately concede Karna's right to dispose of the Pandavas. 

and then concludes on the strength of these objections that he should not fight. Expecting to distinguish the thematic development from the philosophy in the Gītā

there is a thematic development of Samkhya-Yoga philosophy and its integration into Vedanta. But there is no Benthamite Utilitarianism because that is an economic (Artha Shastra) doctrine and beyond the scope of the Gita.

is like attempting to distinguish the thematic development in a Platonic dialogue from the philosophy:

A Platonic dialogue is a thematic development of Platonic philosophy.  

It cannot be done without great violence—

Nonsense! Plato wrote to be understood.  

and the fact that we might expect this as possible in the case of South Asian philosophy but not in the case of Plato is inconsistent.

Both the Gita and Plato are clear enough- save to cretins like Ranganathan. 

Moreover, the gloss that the Gītā is scripture is mistaken on points of history.

No. Hindu history- which is known to Hindus- describes Gita as an Upanishad. It is Scripture. 

Historically, and in the South Asian tradition, the Gītā was not thought of as scripture.

Yes it was. It is literally the Song of the Lord containing the theophany of the Godhead.  

Indeed, “scripture” is often reserved to designate texts that are thought to have a revelatory character, like the Vedas,

No. The Vedas are for the the three 'twice-born' castes. The Gita is for everybody. It is both smriti- being part of Itihasa, as well as shruti being a direct revelation of the Godhead.  

and are called śruti (what is heard). The Gītā, in contrast, was thought to be an historical or commemorative document, or smṛti (what is remembered), as the Mahābhārata, of which it is a part, was regarded as such historical literature.

The shruti/smriti distinction is only relevant for Brahmins or Shastris. I'm a Smartha Brahmin not a Shrauta Brahmin and thus perform different rituals. But, soteriologically speaking, I would follow प्रस्थानत्रयी which includes Gita and Brahma Sutra. Since 'apoorvata' is needful for reception, it doesn't matter whether the thing is heard or remembered. What matters is that the novelty or fresh illumination is received. Otherwise the thing is just a mechanical exercise. 

Calling it scripture is ahistorical.

No. Sankara treats Gita as scripture and those who follow him naturally do so too. That's over a thousand years of history right there.  

The motivation to regard the Gītā as a religious text is no doubt derivable from the uncritical acceptance of the Gītā as a basic text of Hinduism. By analogy to other religions with central texts, the Gītā would apparently be like a Bible of sorts. In this case, the confusion arises because of the ahistorical projection of the category, “Hinduism,” on to the tradition.

What this nutter is getting at is that India was inhabited by savages and kaffirs till Muslim or Christian invaders showed up. 

As Western powers increased their colonial hold on South Asia, there was pressure to understand the South Asian traditions in terms of a category of understanding crucial to the West’s history and methodology of alterity: religion (Cabezón 2006).

But 'Western powers' already knew about Hinduism and Buddhism and Confucianism because of Jesuit and other missionaries and merchant adventurers. Once colonies were established, Colonial courts had to codify the Religious laws of different sects so as to resolve disputes. 

Religion isn't a 'methodology of alterity'. It is a protocol bound ipseity which is worth acquiring knowledge about so as to promote mutually beneficial interchange.  

Historical research shows that it was under the British rule of South Asia that “Hindu”—originally a Persian term meaning “Indus” or “India”—was drafted to identify the indigenous religion of South Asia, in contrast to Islam (Gottschalk 2012).

Fuck off! The ancient Greeks had not just visited the country the called India but some had converted to Buddhism or Vaishnavism.  

By default, hence, anything South Asian that is not Islam is Hinduism.

unless it is Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism etc, etc.  

Given its baptismal context that fixes its referent (compare Kripke 1980), “Hinduism” is a class category, the definition of which (something like “South Asian, no common founder”) need not be instantiated in its members, and the function of which is rather to describe Hindu things at the collective level.

Nonsense. There is a rigid designator for sects which the Greeks found in the place they called India. But, pragmatics alters the scope and range of such terms.  

“Hinduism” as a class category is much like the category “fruit salad”:

Only in the sense that 'Catholicism' is.  

Fruit salad is a collection of differing pieces of fruit,

Catholicism is a collection of different Churches not all of which are exclusively devoted to child molestation.  

but members of a collection that is fruit salad need not be, and would not be, a collection of different pieces of fruit.

Yes they would. You can empty a bowl of fruit salad and say 'look- this is a collection of different types of fruit.'  

Indeed, it would be a fallacy of composition to infer from the collective definition of “fruit salad” that there is something essentially fruit salad about pieces of fruit salad.

Nonsense! You can eat pieces of fruit or you can eat fruit salad. There is no 'fallacy of composition' here. Ranganathan is as stupid as shit.  

Similarly, at the collective level, we might include the Gītā among Hindu texts because the collection is definable as being South Asian but with no common founder.

Veda Vyasa is the common founder. He edited the Vedas and authored the Mahabharata etc. This man isn't just stupid, he is incredibly ignorant.  

It would be a fallacy of composition, though, to infer that the Gītā bears defining traits of being Hindu, or even religious, for that matter, as these characterize the collection, not the members.

The Gita is Hindu and religious just as the Vedas are Hindu are are religious. Moreover, as Adi Sankara showed, they are univocal.  

If, as history shows, the only things that world religious traditions share is

that they are religious traditions are are found in the world 

that they have non-European origins,

Roman Catholicism is plenty European. Greek Orthodoxy is...urm...Greek. Anglicanism is English. The fact is St. Paul was a Greek speaking Roman citizen. He may have been from the wrong side of the Mediterranean but, at that time, it was part of the same oikumene. 

that the philosophical diversity across all things religious is equivalent to philosophical diversity as such,

which is not true at all. There is less diversity between religions than there is diversity in the philosophy of mathematics.  

and that religious identity was manufactured

by Prophets and Seers who existed long before there was any fucking 'Western tradition' 

as a function of the Western tradition’s inability to explain and ground non-Western philosophical positions in terms of the Western tradition (Ranganathan 2018b),

This is sheer nonsense. Any non-Western philosophical position can be easily expressed within the Western tradition- e.g. Celtic tuirgen is parallel to Shantideva's paratman parivartana. 

then Hindu texts would be treated as essentially religious and not primarily philosophical because of their South Asian origins.

Hindu religious texts are religious though, no doubt, they can be explicated by recourse to the 'darshanas' which are Indian philosophical traditions. But the same point may be made about Christian or Islamic of Taoist scriptures.  

This depiction of texts such as Gītā as religious, however, like the historical event of defining Hinduism, is a straightforward artifact of Western colonialism,

This simply isn't true. Al-Biruni was describing Hinduism long before there was any Western colonialism. 

and not a trait of the texts being studied under the heading of Hinduism.

This worthless shithead doesn't get that his ancestors, like mine, studied Hindu texts because they were Hindus. No doubt, they may have described themselves as Smartas, Shrautas, Vaishnavas, Saivites etc, etc, but they had no difficulty in accepting the name of 'Hindu' if that is what they were.  

Historically, to be Hindu is

to practice Hinduism- which is what a billion people do. 

apparently to share nothing except philosophical disagreements on every topic:

Nobody gives a toss about 'philosophical disagreements'. 

One can be an evolutionary materialist and atheist, as we find in the Sāṅkhya Kārikā,

but there are no atheist followers of Sankhya or Yoga.  All one can say is that the philosophy does not need to posit a Creator though its adherents are free to do so. 

or take a deflationary view about the reality of the Gods while endorsing Vedic texts, as we find in Pūrva Mīmāṃsā works,

This is an interpretation merely. Where will you find a Mimamsaka who merely goes through the motions of ritual activity? The thing is a logical possibility- nothing more.  

and be a most orthodox Hindu merely because one’s philosophical views are South Asian and because they can be grouped in the category of South Asian, with no common founder (Ranganathan 2016a, 2018b).

But Hinduism has a notion of a common founder in Manu or Brhaspati.  

Yet, the common expectation is that religions are kinds, not classes,

No. The common expectation is that religions actually exist. There must be an extensional class corresponding to a particular religion. Whether there is an intensional definition of this class is  a separate matter. A stupid person, like Ranganathan, wouldn't be able to supply such a definition, but a smart person could do so. As a matter of fact, Indian law has a good enough definition.  

that specify criteria of inclusion that are instantiated by their members, as this is true of virtually every other religion.

Nonsense! Is the Mormon religion part of Christianity? What about the Ba'bis or Ahmadiyas? Do they fit into Islam? These are matters which can have great legal import. Currently we feel Mormons are Christians. Ba'hais are separate from Islam. But this was not always so. In Iran, some Ba'hais registered as Zoroastrians (which is what they may originally have been) so as not to be regarded as apostates. But then several Hindu sects- e.g. Brahmos and Swami Narayanis- have tried to claim to be non-Hindu so as to get minority status.  

Under this particular set of expectations—that examples of Hindu things must exemplify something distinctly Hindu—the Bhagavad Gītā has come to be valued not merely as a popular contribution to moral philosophy, but as the Hindu equivalent to the Christian Bible, something one can swear oaths on, and can look to for religious advice (compare Davis 2015).

Hindus are welcome to seek religious counsel from the Quran Sharif or the Holy Bible or the Book of Mormon. Plenty of Christians have found great spiritual consolation in the Gita and the Upanishads.  

Attempting to project this colonial development back onto the tradition, though commonplace, is mistaken.

There was no such 'colonial development'. Suppose there had been, then every part of Africa- which has a very rich indigenous spiritual tradition- would, once colonized, have been given its own religion and revealed scripture. Sadly, colonizers are interested in making money, not helping indigenous religion. In the Indian case, barristers could make money by studying religious law and in any case there was a big indigenous market for print versions of sacred texts. At a later point, Hindu religious leaders played a big role in the Freedom struggle though one result of this was the partition of the sub-continent on religious lines.           

It generates the perception that what we have in the Gītā is not primarily philosophy, as we have decided to ignore it.

Religion matters. Philosophy is stupid shite. That's why we ignore the latter and pay attention to the former.  

The depiction of the Gītā as essentially religious,

because Lord Krishna discloses his awe-inspiring Cosmic Form 

and not contingently religious given the colonial artefact of religious identity,

but if religious identity is a 'colonial artefact' why did no other colony have a world religion named after its people? Surely there should be a Kenyan religion and a Ugandan religion and a Zimbabwean religion? Why is there only a Hindu religion which gains converts in the West on the basis of the Bhagvad Gita?  

is a self-fulfilling prophecy that arises when we do not pay attention to the history of South Asian philosophy

South Asians decided that philosophy was stooooopid just as Western Europeans and everybody else did.  

as relevant to understanding its texts because we have assumed, as a function of the colonial history that makes up religious identity, that such texts are religious.

A text about a guy who discloses his Cosmic Form as the Lord of the Universe can only be religious. It can't be philosophical save adventitiously by way of providing a synoptic soteriology. That's what the Gita does. It truly is a work of art though, no doubt, part and parcel of 'uncreated' Revelation. 

Shyam Ranganathan's startling stupidity- part II

Prof. Shyam Ranganathan of York University has staked a claim to be the stupidest academic to write nonsense about the Gita.

It appears that he combines the stupid notion of a 'moral parasite' with an imbecilic theory re. 'just war. 

Consider the following- 

India’s forceful reclamation of Goa from Portuguese rule (1961) was just; the Portuguese as colonizers

They established their rule in 1510! That was nine years before Babur first invaded India. The fact is, Goa had only come under Muslim rule a couple of centuries previously. The Portuguese killed the Muslims and appointed a Hindu Governor. More importantly, the Portuguese trade networks brought commercial opportunities.  

were participating in the breakdown of conventional morality by the imposition of their laws as a means of controlling the local population.

But that had happened four hundred years ago! The fact is, Nehru had to invade only because JP was making a nuisance of himself on this issue. But Nehru got his comeuppance when the Chinese invaded to, as they said, take back territory that the Brits had grabbed from their feudatories.  

Portuguese control of Goa was hence unjust,

It was foolish. Salazar should have done a deal with Nehru the same way the French had done.  

and the Portuguese were hence not justified in resisting Indian takeover,

they couldn't put up much resistance. 

which had the effect of returning local South Asian control to Goa. India’s military intercession in Bangladesh’s liberation from Pakistan (1971) was similarly justified;

Pakistan initiated hostilities. 

West Pakistan’s violent attempt to wrest control of East Bengal,

It had control. The Mukti Bahini was trying to wrest control from the Punjabi/Pakhtoon dominated Army. 

after a history of marginalization and imperial rule from the west, not only justified Bangladesh’s break

Success justified it.  

but also India’s intercession on behalf of the breakaway East Bengal to establish unconservatism and self-governance for all concerned.

Bangladesh suffered a big famine, worsened by massive corruption, and became a military dictatorship and Islamic Republic quickly enough. What fucking 'unconservatism' was achieved? Hindus had to run away from the place. Their population share has more than halved since 1971. 

From the Indian point of view, the War was justified because it removed a threat to the Siliguri gap such that a Pak/Chinese joint operation might capture Kashmir and the North East. However, if the Pak Army had not committed genocide and if American diplomats hadn't noticed this, then India would not have been able to act. As things were, Nixon tried to bluff Indira that he would 'nuke Calcutta'. Who knows what would have happened if the Pak Army hadn't surrendered so quickly? 

 To be fair, Ranganathan is too young to remember the Bangladesh War. But he can remember the War on Terror during which he wrote-

Jeff McMahan in his remarkable Killing in War

makes the novel distinction of 'just combatant' as opposed to 'unjust combatant'. We might say, a suicide bomber whose Mum was killed by American troops is a 'just combatant'. But some teenager from Bradford or Baltimore who thinks it would be fun to go to Syria and live large as an executioner for the Caliphate is an 'unjust combatant'.  

draws a distinction between two senses of “war.”

Ranganathan is too stupid to understand McMahan. 

In the first sense, war stands for a conflict between opposing parties.

This cretin does not understand that there is no fucking war unless there is murderous conflict between parties who oppose each other. If they support each other, you are witnessing a sado-masochistic orgy. Get out while you can.  

In the second sense, war is party relative, and some side may have a right of war (jus ad bellum), whereas others lack justification for war.

But this is true of every type of activity! Eating ice-cream is party relative. One side may have the right to eat the ice-cream. The other side may have stolen the ice-cream from a child which is now weeping copiously.  

In this sense, some parties fight a just war, whereas others fight an unjust war.

A thing is just only if it is justiciable. But different jurisdictions may disagree on what is justiciable or what is just. War can extend one jurisdiction and extinguish another. 'Trial by Combat' was one method of determining who had justice on her side.

According to McMahan, there is no radical difference between the moral considerations that operate outside of war and in war;

Only if there is no radical difference between any type of moral consideration, which may indeed be the case for armchair moral philosophers, till some punks rape and kill their wives after which they buy a 44 Magnum and turn into Charles Bronson. 

Moral considerations are either urgent and action motivating or they are cheap talk. 

the same moral considerations apply in both cases. Those who violate moral considerations fight an unjust war,

Why not just get rich on the black-market? Those who like violating moral considerations don't want to go to the battlefield where the enemy shoots at them. They would prefer to gangrape the wife of a moral philosopher- unless he is known to own a 44 Magnum and has a big Die Hard Video collection. 

whereas those who do not violate moral considerations fight a just war. Whereas Michael Walzer defended the idea that there is a logical independence between the considerations that justify going to war and the considerations pertaining to just conduct in war

Nonsense! The justification for going to war must include a plan for winning it. Nobody goes to war if defeat is inevitable unless, of course, the thing is purely pro forma.  

—and the related idea that there is a moral equality among combatants such that fighting for the wrong side does not entail wrongdoing in the conduct of war—he argues that one’s conduct in war does not count as just (jus in bello) if one fights for the wrong side and that one has no right to fight those whose cause is just.

All this is purely arbitrary stipulation. McMahan was writing at a time when the West thought it would win the war on terror. Consider the following

 This of course leaves open the question of what may be done when an adversary who has fought without justification demands as a condition of surrender something to which they are not entitled, yet the demand is also of a type that it would not be permissible to resist by means of war. Suppose, for example, that an adversary who has been largely defeated militarily demands as a condition of surrender that they be allowed to continue certain unjust domestic practices, such as certain forms of religious discrimination (for example, providing state funding for schools that promulgate the state religion, but not for others). Just as it may be necessary for an individual not to resist certain forms of wrongdoing when the only effective response would be inappropriate or excessive in relation to the offense, so it may be necessary in war to grant certain undeserved concessions when the only alternative is to continue to fight without sufficient justification.

Biden decided that fighting might cause American soldiers to suffer ouchies. Thus American won't fight any more. They may cheer Ukrainians on from a safe distance. But then again they may not.

Ranganathan's stupid paper asks us to

consider what may be the most famous argument for just war defended in the Bhagavad Gītā (where the philosopher–deity Krishna provides an extended pep talk on just war and moral theory to his cousin Arjuna on the battlefield before the commencement of war) and implicitly explored in the wider epic from which it is from, the Mahābhārata. 

There is no 'just war' argument in the Gita. Yuddhishtra had previously decided, on the basis of Krishna's advise,  that it was just to go to war. But, by then, he had learnt statistical game theory (in the Nalophkhyanam) and thus this was a strategic decision. Though militarily weaker, the Pandava coalition was more cohesive and adopted better tactics. 

This epic about a fratricidal war provides grounds for rejecting the idea that the justice of a war is elucidated by the fidelity of combatants to conventional standards of morality.

No. It is obvious that there is a superior correlated equilibrium such that both sides fight according to the rules. Still, there is a doctrine of exigent circumstances- apadh dharma- which however involves humiliation or else entails bad karmic consequences.

Rather, the need for war arises from

the need for territory. If land is a free good, it would be foolish to go to war. No scarcity, no war, because there can be no Stationary Bandit.  

a breakdown of conventional morality,

very true. If people commit adultery, a terrible war will break out.  

which identifies ethical considerations with the good.

though pornographic considerations may be better.  

Such conventional moral considerations break down when they provide shelter for parties who endorse conventional morality as a weapon to undermine the conventionally moral, the conventionally moral whose cause is prima facie just must hence depart from conventional morality to rid themselves of this hostility and reset the moral order.

Nonsense! Resetting the moral order involves proselytization and exhortation. It is perfectly compatible with conventional morality. Preachers who get us to give up adultery and arson and farting loudly in the faces of commuters are not doing anything anybody considers wrong. 

Yet, according to the alternative moral paradigm that resets the moral order, the Gītā entails that we can agree with McMahan: the side of those whose cause is just have a right to fight, and those whose cause is unjust have no such right and do wrong by engaging in conflict.

This is wholly false. Krishna sends his troops to fight for the bad guys. But Drona and Bhishma aint evil for fighting on the wrong side. Indeed, the Bhishma Parva, which is very very long, shows that the dude was considered the foremost authority on dharma.  

Those who fight for a just cause do not get their hands dirty by way of transcendent conditions of justice,

nor do those who fight for an unjust cause. There are no 'transcendent conditions of justice'. There is only God who may be the efficient cause of everything in Creation.  

though they get their hands dirty by conventional moral expectations.

Killing peeps tends to get your hands dirty. Also, you may poop your pants. War can be very scary.  

The point of convergence between the argument from the Gītā and McMahan is noteworthy, as is their divergence.

There is no convergence. McMahan isn't an occasionalist. He's just a silly man teaching worthless shite. 

Consider the following

 Suppose that country A is about to be unjustly invaded by a ruthless and more powerful country, B.

In that case, A needs to get allies or else develop an offensive doctrine to 'front load' pain on B. This means get nukes and have a delivery system so B loses a couple of Cities. If this is not possible, A needs to prepare defensive positions and mobilize the entire population. It should also be applying 'scorched earth' and 'materiel denial' policies. 

McMahan, cretin that he is, suggests A should invade some third country C. 

 A’s only hope of successful defense is to station forces in the territory of a smaller, weaker, neighboring country, C,

which will ally with B and kick the shit out of A.  

in order to be able to attack B’s forces from prepared positions as they approach A along the border between B and C.

But B will roll over C the moment hostilities commence. A's supply lines will get extended and so its own defensive doctrine will be compromised.  

A’s government requests permission from the government of C to deploy its forces on C’s territory for this purpose, but C’s government, foreseeing that allowing A to use its territory in this way would result in considerable destruction, denies the request. Suppose that C is within its rights to deny A the use of its territory but that, all things considered, it is nonetheless justifiable for A to avoid an otherwise inevitable defeat at the hands of B by going to war against C in order to be able to deploy troops there, provided that it will withdraw immediately after fighting off the invading forces from A. (One historical case

is the Anglo-American invasion of Vichy North Africa. Eisenhower found it very difficult to understand why the first target of the Allies had to be French. The answer, of course, is if you want to win a War first shit on cheese-eating surrender monkeys.  

that approximates this scenario is Russia’s war against Finland in 1939–40.

The Finns did offer to cede some territory to make Leningrad safer. Stalin mistakenly thought that his troops would quickly overrun Finland. The miserable performance of the Soviet forces probably strengthened Hitler's resolve to attack the Soviet Union before making peace with the Brits.  

The Russian government believed that control of Finnish territory within artillery range of Leningrad was necessary to protect the city from Nazi bombardment. It offered the Finns an exchange of territory, but the offer was refused, and the Russians then went to war to capture the territory they thought was necessary as a buffer against the Nazis. One reason this is only an approximation of my hypothetical example is that the Finns had good reason not to trust Stalin’s assurances that Russia’s aims were limited, since, among other things, Russia had only a short time earlier collaborated with the Germans in carving up Poland.)

Stalin kept denouncing the Finnish regime as 'Fascist'. There is nothing novel about what Putin is up to.  

Given that C is not morally required to sacrifice its territory for the sake of A, it seems that C does nothing to make itself liable to attack by A. On the account I have offered, therefore, A does not have a just cause for war against C. Yet if A is nevertheless morally justified in going to war against C, it must be possible for there to be wars that are morally justified yet unjust.

This is the case with any type of action. Moral justification arises even where there is no justiciability. Where there is justiciability, and jurisprudence is protocol bound, morality may conflict with justice. But this is true of farting or eating ice-cream just as much as it may be true of making war or concluding peace.  

A war is just when there is a just cause

No. A war is just if the matter is justiciable. But the cause of the war is a highly contested matter. However, if no protocol bound juristic process can alter the outcome of the war, then the matter is not really justiciable though it may become so.

and all other relevant conditions of justification are also satisfied.

by arbitrary stipulation.  

But, while all just wars are morally justified,

None are- save by arbitrary stipulation. 

it seems that not all morally justified wars are just wars.

save by arbitrary stipulation. This isn't philosophy it is bigotry. 

As the example of A, B, and C suggests, there seem to be wars that are morally justified

in the sense that killing and eating your kids is morally justified- by you because you keep saying so 

despite their requiring the targeting of those who are innocent in the relevant sense, so that at least some necessary phases of the war, and perhaps indeed all of its phases, lack a just cause. 

Telling moral philosophers that they are stupid and should shut the fuck up is a just and morally compelling cause. But why bother? If shite is taught, why not let shitheads teach it?

Ranganathan clearly fits the bill- 

My approach is distinct from the standard approach to talking about Indian thought

i.e. the approach taken by thoughtful Indians  

in general.  I recommend  that reading philosophy is about isolating perspectives

which is impossible if intersubjectivity obtains. How do we know what portion of our perspective is determined by our position in society and what portion arises out of our addiction to cough syrup?  

and that we treat each perspective P as entailing a theory T

But perspectives don't entail theories nor do theories give rise to perspectives. One may say that such and such theory altered one's perspective or that such and such ideologue's perspectives modified their exposition of such and such theory. But this does not mean theories entail perspectives or vice versa.  

about its controversial t claims and understanding the concept t as what competing theories of T disagree about.

But competing theories may have the same understanding of key concepts. They differ as to how those concepts interact.  

For instance, to read philosophy is to identify distinct perspectives in a dialectic or tract;

No. It is to identify different arguments and separate out de facti assertions from what may be called de juri deductions.  

An argument is dialectical from a single perspective though it may change over time. When climbing a mountain, one's perspective changes from being 'worm's eye view to that of a soaring eagle. But it still remains our own perspective. 

identify a perspective’s theory that entails all its claims about a topic, such as ethics; and identify the common concept of ethics as what competing theories of ethics disagree about.

This man is as stupid as shit.  

This approach contrasts with interpretation,

Mimansa or hermeneutics 

which is explanation by way of what one takes to be true.

Nope. Interpretation is not explanation. An interpreter speaks two languages and translates from one to the other. The diplomat who employs the interpreter supplies his own explanation for why his counterpart is lying his ass off.  

In my preferred approach, which I call explication, we can remain agnostic about all substantive matters as we pursue research in philosophy.

more particularly if we are actually scratching our butt rather than researching shite. 

One of the outcomes of explication is that we acknowledge that the various uses of the term “dharma”

which the Greeks translated as 'eusebia'- i.e. pietas. A pious observance is part of dharma. 

in Indian thought serve to articulate theories of dharma;

Because a theory of x uses the word x. What an amazing discovery.  

the common concept of dharma is the Right or the Good; and, moreover, if we apply this method to contemporary philosophy in the Western tradition, we find that “ethics” has the same conceptual content.

Ethics is about doing the right thing. Who knew? 

The contrary unprincipled approach is to treat one’s perspective (and beliefs) as a frame to study Indian thought, and uses of terms, such as “dharma,” are correlated with distinctions that we subjectively draw;

we are perfectly entitled to do so. Plenty of Christians have had their faith deepened after reading the Gita. 

this results in the multiplication of meanings associated with “dharma” and the ubiquitous claim that it is difficult to translate this term into English or any other language.

Eusebia that is pietas is a rigid Kripkean designator for dharma.  

In endorsing explication, we are in a position to understand the dialectic of the Mahābhārata’s and the Gītā’s account of just war. The governing moral theory is what we could call yoga (i.e., discipline)

No. Anushasan is discipline. The aim of Yoga- samadhi- can be achieved without any discipline. 

or bhakti (i.e., devotion).

Bhakti means Faith of a soteriologically efficacious type. But Virodha Bhakti which is oppositional can be superior to Maryada Bhakti.

According to this theory,

Which theory? Samkhya-Yoga? But it does not have a 'sittlichkeit'. It is wholly soteriological and aims to still 'the whirlpool of consciousness' so that samadhi is attained.  

the right action is defined by a regulative or procedural ideal

Nonsense! Samadi is substantive. It doesn't matter how you get there. What matters is to get there. There are lots and lots of Yogas- including 'vishada yoga'. 

(the Lord, defined by the characteristics of unconservatism and self-governance, which in the story is the character Krishna)

But Samkhya-Yoga can be atheistic. Indeed, older philosophy text-books made that claim.  

, and the good is the perfection of the practice of devotion to the ideal.

No. One may aim at perfect 'daksha' dexterity in the performance of ritual activities but devotion is not a mere ritualism.  

Yoga not only provides the moral standards and practice to reestablish a moral order when conventional morality breaks down;

In which case, this Ranganathan dude must be a fan of Yogi Adityanath- right?  

it also reestablishes the moral order by dissolving the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello;

No such thing occurs. There is a doctrine of exigent circumstances- of apadh dharma- but the distinction remains.  

what justifies action is this approximation to the regulative or procedural ideal,

No. Nothing justifies actions relating to non justiciable matters. But justiciability arises only where there is a mechanism to implement the solution of a coordination game. Samkhya is mathematical and Game theory is a branch of math.  

and what makes it right is the same approximation.

This is only true of a protocol bound juristic system. But such a system can have 'equitable' exceptions or wholly arbitrary 'tie-breaking' or 'buck stopping'.  

The Mahabharata is the only epic which explicitly states that the Just King must learn mathematical game theory. As a matter of fact, the village barber can give us a good enough 'Shapley value' for members of the ruling coalition in the district though, obviously, the heavy duty math behind it is post-war. 

Ranganathan, cretin that he is, doesn't understand either game theory or the Epic most Indian origin folk have known and loved since childhood. 

It was conventional morality that made it possible for the Kauravas to exercise their hostility against the Pāṇḍavas

No.  Yuddhishtra had a gambling addiction. This caused his 'vishada' which was only dispelled by the 'Vyadha Gita' & 'Nalophkyanam'. 

by restricting and constraining the Pāṇḍavas. The Pāṇḍavas could have rid themselves of the Kauravas by killing them

in which case most Princes would have turned against them and have hunted them down.  

at any number of earlier times when they had the chance in times of peace, and everyone who survived would have been better off for having been rid of moral parasites as rulers

Duryodhana was a good enough King. That's why he had a lot of allies. But he mishandled the War and the negotiations leading up to it.  

and having the benevolent Pāṇḍavas instead. They could have accomplished this most easily by assassinating the Kauravas in secret or perhaps openly in public when they were not expecting it because the Kauravas never worried about nor protected themselves from such a threat, owing to the virtue of the Pāṇḍavas, whom they counted on.

This is foolish. Yuddhishtra wanted to transition from a thymotic type of regime to a metic friendly, mercantile type of 'homonoia'. The age of heroes was drawing to a close. What would follow would give more scope to industry and commerce and transnational mercantile guilds. 

There is a good reason why every oikumene will have rules of war- basically, if you do bad shit, the other side does worse shit- and a notion of 'just cause' to launch a war such that your allies feel they can join in without sending the wrong signal. 

Rangathan is too stupid to understand this.  

And yet the Pāṇḍavas’ fidelity to conventional morality created a context for the Kauravas to ply their trade of deceit and hostility.

Nonsense! Guys who aint addicted to gambling tell those who propose a dice game to go fuck themselves.  

The game of dice that snared the Pāṇḍavas is a metaphor for conventional morality itself:

Only in the sense that an invitation to a homosexual orgy is a metaphor for quantum mechanics 

a social practice justified by prospects of a good outcome (consequentialism),

this nutter thinks gambling has good outcomes. I suggest he take up Russian roulette.  

organized around good rules that make the participation of all possible (deontology),

deontology deals with claims regarding duty. But few have any relevant duties in any given context. That is why, when a Doctor discharges his medical duty by operating on a patient, a random nutjob is not allowed to participate even if he has brought his own scalpel.  

and actions that follow from the courage and strength of its participants (virtue ethics).

no action necessarily follows from courage or strength neither of which are virtues in and of themselves. 

The lesson of the Mahābhārata generalizes;

be nice to your cousins even if they have crowns on their heads. This was the lesson the Kaiser should have learned. He shouldn't have got jealous of his cousin the King Emperor or allowed his Generals to undermine the Tzar by sending Lenin to Russia.  

conventional morality places constraints on people who are conventionally moral,

in which case they experience no constraint on themselves. It is not the case that I feel constrained by morality not to beat or rape passersby. This is because my morality is wholly conventional in this respect.  

and this enables the maleficence of those who act to undermine conventional morality by undermining those who bind themselves with it.

This simply isn't true. We follow Tit for Tat. That's conventional morality. Something higher might be demanded by Theistic religion. But, there is a reputational benefit for conforming to sittlichkeit and a big big penalty for transgressing it.  

Call the latter, who use conventional morality as a weapon against the conventionally moral, moral parasites (Kauravas)

they weren't parasites. They were a kick ass bunch of warriors who had bound valuable allies- like Karna- to themselves by their generosity. 

and the former, who are happy to be bound by conventional morality, moral conventionalists (Pāṇḍavas).

But the Pandavas well knew that the tradition of their house was for the rightful heir (who would have been Karna, in any case) to yield the throne to a cadet branch. That's what Bhishma did.  

The moral parasite is someone who, for instance, wishes you to be honest and to abide by conventions of transparency so they can steal from you.

In which case you name and shame the fellow and then everybody gangs up on him and the fellow turns into a social leper.  

The moral parasite is someone who, for instance, wishes for you to behave in a manner that is courteous, kind, and accommodating so they can assault you, without resistance.

At which point you kick the cunt's head in.  

The only way to end this relationship of parasitism is for the conventionally moral to give up on conventional morality

conventional morality is a 'separating equilibrium' based on a costly, reputational, signal. There may be some higher type of morality based on turning the other cheek but that involves a Heavenly reward. Sinners, meanwhile, will be burning for eternity in Hell fire. 

and engage moral parasites in war. This would be a just war—dharmyaṃ yuddham—

dharma yuddha- rules of engagement for Kshatriya warfare . They don't arise if the enemy is non-Hindu.  

and the essence of a just war

an essence is something true in all possible worlds. But dharma-yuddha in Mahabharata is specific to a particular place and time when it made sense to have rules about elephants not attacking cavalry and so forth. 

because the cause would be to rid the world of moral parasites.

Just beating them and chasing them away is enough. Prasites aint known for their martial spirit or military genius.  Fuck does this stupid American think was happening during the War on Terror? Did he think Osama Bin Laden said to Bush 'If you are a true Christian, you will let my homeboys crash some planes into the World Trade Center and the White House and the Pentagon. Believe me, Jesus Christ would have been totes cool with that.' Bush was all like 'Are you sure? Is that really in the Bible?' and Osama is like 'Dude! Its in Revelations. Crack the Holy Book sometime!' Then Blair told Bush that Osama had been lying. There's nothing in the Bible about having to let A-rabs crash planes in your country. 

Ranga quotes McMahan

As I have presented it, the alternative conception of innocence is

guilty of being as stupid as shit 

that one is innocent if one is neither morally responsible for nor guilty of a wrong.

but both are arbitrary stipulations. 

While the classical just war theorists focused on guilt, I think we should focus instead on moral responsibility.

while jerking off. Otherwise, why bother? Moral responsibility can arise by arbitrary stipulation. Everybody could be morally responsible for anything. There is no 'natural' or non-arbitrary way to assign moral responsibility precisely because morality is unnatural if not ontologically dysphoric- i.e. not at home in this world.  

It is, I think, a mistake to suppose that noninnocence in the sense of moral guilt or culpability is necessary for liability to attack in war.

Not having nukes and a delivery system and being as weak as fuck is what attracts that liability.  

Something less is sufficient: namely, moral responsibility for a wrong, particularly an objectively unjustified threat of harm. . . .

In which case, it is objectively justified to attack fuck up any country with nukes and ballistic missiles- at least, if you take the word of this cretin.

[P]osing an objectively unjustified threat is not sufficient for liability in the absence of moral responsibility for that threat.

Only if the people of that country have a very very fucking low IQ. Otherwise, they'd have figured out that they pose an objectively unjustified threat.  But a race of morons who pose an existential threat will be wiped out anyway. 

In short, the criterion of liability to attack in war is moral responsibility for an objectively unjustified threat of harm. 

 No it isn't. A bunch of drooling cretins playing with a doomsday device should be attacked and put under restraint. Indeed, a place whose people can't have 'moral responsibility' is a terra fucking nullis. 

What the Gītā and Mahābhārata show, however, is that this threshold is too high.

Why? Coz Indians are stupider than cows?  

Moral parasites do something objectively wrong by being moral parasites, but the wrong is much less than a threat of harm;

Actually, a weaker country which drags its treaty allies into an apocalyptic war could be termed a moral parasite. The problem is that once blood and treasure start getting expended, the parasite is abandoned and the nuisance is curbed.  

it is merely the imposition of conventional moral standards on others as a means of hostility.

Disapproval does not fall under the heading of military hostilities. Ranganathan doesn't understand that war is about killing people.  

 In the Mahābhārata itself, it is most important that Krishna, the adviser of the Pāṇḍavas, steps in as their representative when they return from their exile and pursues peace and compromise to its logical extent. Krishna attempts to broker that the Pāṇḍavas should be given five villages for them to live in so that they can each sustain themselves as professional rulers of these communities. The Kauravas refuse, though they only took hold of the land in trust while the Pāṇḍavas were in exile.

If the Kauravas feared that the Pandavas would use any territory ceded to them to build up a hostile coalition then their strategy is sensible. But, the fact is, their calculation than they would prevail in an immediate conflict proved to be wrong.  

But now a new set of conventions has been created, with the Kauravas in charge of everything, and it is the imposition of this convention that constitutes the Kauravas’ final assault as moral parasites.

Nonsense! Possession is nine tenths of the law. The Kauravas were asserting their superior strength. They weren't appealing to some higher court or paramount power or making out that they possessed superior virtue.

It is important to remember that the right to rule a territory was predicated on one's ability to defend it. If the Kshatriya clan ruling your territory couldn't defeat a rival claimant, their legitimacy was established. War was not just the 'sport of Kings'. It was the final arbiter of their rival territorial or other claims.  

In this case, it is difficult for the Pāṇḍavas to see the move as an imposition of conventional morality (because it excludes them),

It was a challenge to battle of a type perfectly compatible with conventional morality of the military aristocracy of the period. 

and perhaps for this reason the Pāṇḍavas are inclined to fight. But the real reason war is inevitable is not for lack of conciliation on the part of the Pāṇḍavas but by virtue of the parasitism of the Kauravas.

Over confident belligerence- not parasitism. 

Ranganathan believes that in the Gita

1) Krishna first appeals to a 'form of deontology he calls karma yoga,

which is '"selfless action performed for the benefit of others" not

 the discipline of action.

which includes any disciplined action befitting even a mercenary soldier 

Action is itself purposeful, and the discipline of action is a practice of perfecting purposeful action. The argument is delivered generally as an argument for correct action in the face of uncertainty: no matter who you are, something counts as your duty, and the perfection of this duty is itself a good that relieves one from trouble. 

This simply isn't true. If you do your duty for the sake of the associated reward you are not doing 'karma yoga' at all.  

Moreover, all people who uphold a transcendental moral order (including Krishna, who is depicted here as the Lord—the procedural ideal of right action,

Krishna is not a 'procedural ideal' which is why devotees of Krishna don't have thousands of lovers who are gopis.  

which in its essence is both unconservatism and self-governance) participate in this moral order by doing their duty.

Hinduism makes no such stipulation. A Sadhu- i.e. ascetic may have no duty or obligation whatsoever. Yet such a person may uphold a transcendental moral order.  

Krishna too, the procedural ideal, must participate in dutiful behavior,

No. Nothing compels the Godhead. Grace is a purely gratuitous gift.

and the Lord’s duties include lokasaṃgraha (the maintenance of the welfare of the world)

No. That is a predicate. It is not a Hohfeldian incident of any type.  

 and to reestablish the moral order when it declines

This is 'matam' or doctrine (as opposed to vigyan) and is similar to 'vidhi'. It concerns a predicate of the Lord which we have no mundane method of elucidating. We can't say 'God had a duty to do x. Let's sue Him for negligence.' This is because law suits are mundane but predicates of the Lord found in Revealed Scripture convey no mundane information. 

The next step is bhakti yoga,

 devotion to the incarnate Lord as one's personal God and Savior. 

the discipline of devotion. Here, right action is defined by its conformity to a regulative ideal—Krishna himself—

No. If the action is impelled by devotion it is right or, at any rate, has no evil consequence for the doer because the Lord takes that evil upon himself. Krishna is not a 'regulative ideal'. He is a full incarnation of the Lord. 

and, in doing what is right, we sacrifice a concern for the outcome as a means of worshipping the procedural ideal.

This has nothing to do with theistic devotion. There may be a procedural ideal in Purva Mimamsa. There is none in the Gita which is classed as an Upanishad and thus part of Uttara-Mimamsa. 

This same theory is found elsewhere, articulated more clearly in the Yoga Sūtra; it is the moral theory of yoga (discipline) or bhakti.

Rubbish! There is no mention of bhakti. However, us Theists consider its mention of Ishvar as type of Purusha (purusha-vishesha) to license our belief that Lord Krishna, as Yogishvara, can grant us liberation by his own gratuitous gift without any effort or discipline on our part. Of course, as we grow in devotion, we wouldn't want liberation. We would only want to humbly serve.  

According to this account, right action is defined by a procedural ideal—unconservatism and self-governance—and perfecting our practice of the right is the good.

fuck is 'unconservatism'? I suppose Ranganathan has been perfecting his practice of the rite of masturbation with the result that has brain has softened. 

This theory differs from deontology in an important respect.

There is no duty to wank. 

Whereas deontology treats our duty as itself a good,

No it doesn't. Something has to be added to deontology- Theism or Deism or the Hegelian Geist- for this to be the case. On the other hand, the argument could be made that Deontology is 'Regret-Minimizing' or has some other valuable game-theoretic property. But duty can't itself be a good because otherwise we can exponentially increase good simply by relabeling everything as a duty or meta-duty or meta-meta duty. 

justified by procedural considerations only, in yoga/bhakti, the right is defined by a procedural ideal,

No. Yoga is synonymous with 'samadhi' towards which there may be a procedure but which is also realizable by the gratuitous gift of Grace though it may also be spontaneously and instantaneously achieved.  

and hence we do not need to understand our moral practice in terms of the good. 

No. Our moral practice involves a pragmatics of 'good' and 'nice' vs. 'bad' and 'naughty'.  

In contrast to virtue ethics, consequentialism, and deontology,

the path of devotional piety can incorporate a virtue ethics as well as a consequentialist calculus or a deontology which, au fond, is merely a rules based utilitarianism such as a 'bonus paterfamilias' might adopt to avoid culpa levis in abstracto type torts. 

it alone accounts for morality without recourse to the good.

Fuck off! God is good. Getting with God is the Holy Grail. 

The good is not a primitive notion, here, but one definable by way of the perfection

but perfection means becoming more and more good at something till one is maximally good. This cretin doesn't get that though the good can be a Tarskian primitive, perfection or optimality can't.  

of the right. So, whereas conventional morality is structured around the good, bhakti dispenses with the good.

Nope. We are devoted to the Lord because God is good.  

A third moral practice that Krishna recommends is jñāna yoga:

self-realization through metaphysical discrimination between what is real and what is illusory 

the discipline of thoughtfulness or knowledge. Jñāna yoga is the critical appreciation of the framework of moral action,

it is unconnected to it. Having the correct doctrine or teaching ( मतम् ) may be enough. Saivites opine that a jivanmukta can exist. It is perfectly possible that a thief or a prostitute has this quality. 

which complements karma yoga’s disinterest in trying to understand action as justified by outcome.

Karma yoga is concerned with outcomes for other people. It only requires the agent not to focus on his own gratification. Ranganathan is a moral imbecile. 

It is the metaethical component of the shift away from conventional morality to a fully procedural approach to ethics.

Why bother having a procedural approach to stupid shite? There is some point studying medicine or chemistry. There is none in bullshitting about ethics. The thing is part and parcel of 'maya'- delusion.  

Is Ranganathan the stupidest academic to have commented on the Gita? I suppose his IQ is markedly inferior to others I've mentioned on this blog. Still, it is interesting that he so loathes 'moral parasites'- i.e. virtue signaling, 'woke', nutters. Perhaps, he is a Hindutvavadi at heart. The other explanation is that he is simply an ambitious academic who understands that writing the stupidest and craziest shite possible is the only way to get ahead in non-STEM subjects. Still, he will have to up his game if he wants to compete with Amia Srinivasan. 

Shyam Ranganathan's startling stupidity- part 1

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an entry dedicated to the Bhagvad Gita where I found this oxymoronic gem of nescience-  

Just War and the Suppression of the Good

This shite appears to be the work of one Shyam Ranganathan- a handsome young American of truly startling stupidity. York University employs this moron. 

The Gītā and the Mahābhārata have garnered attention for their contribution to discussions of Just War theory.

The Mahabharata is set in the Dvapara Yuga which ended long ago. Nothing in it helps us decide what is or isn't a Just War now in Kali Yuga. 

Indeed, Justice is merely a service industry or 'conventional' (samskari) solution to a coordination game. If you are paid to fight in a 'Just War'- do so. But what is or isn't Just is a game theoretical matter involving 'uncorrelated asymmetries' and Shapley Values and degenerative Nash equilibria and so forth. 

To be clear, War is about winning. It is never just to go to war if you are bound to lose. The question of morality only arises to the extent that it may attract or deter allies or affect the morale of the other side. 

Yet, as most accounts of South Asian thought are fuelled by an interpretive approach that attempts to understand the South Asian contribution by way of familiar examples from the Western tradition, the clarity of such accounts leaves much to be desired.

Because the people giving such accounts are as stupid as shit. A smart guy can always give a good enough account. But no smart people study or teach Ranganathan's stripe of shite. 

Explicated, with a focus on the logic of the arguments and theories explored as a contribution to philosophical disagreement—and not by way of substantive beliefs about plausible positions—we see that the Mahābhārata teaches us that the prospects of just war arise when moral parasites

in this context, a 'free rider' or agent who takes advantage of the superior moral commitment of others. However, if War is a possibility, no moral parasite can exist precisely because the people you are trying to take advantage of are on the point of killing you and grabbing your cool stuff. 

inflict conventional morality on the conventionally moral

who, conventionally, kill them of threaten them till they fuck off 

as a means of hostility.

Nothing of the sort happens in the Mahabharata. There is a dice game where one party cheats but the fact remains that the cheated party had a weakness (hamartia) for gambling. He overcomes this by learning statistical game theory.  

Gambling is immoral. So is taking drugs. An immoral parasite may get you to take drugs or to gamble but then your Mummy may beat or kills such peeps, so the problem tends to diminish.

Parasites effect this hostility by acting belligerently against the conventionally moral, while relying on the goodness of the conventionally moral to protect them from retaliation in response to their belligerence.

This can only happen if the 'mechanism' in question is faulty. Better game theory is needed to eliminate the pathology. Alternatively, 'equitable remedies'- e.g. estoppel- may be provided so that the guy who is trying to game the system is frustrated and hoist by his own petard. 

The Mahabharata is about hefty Iron Age warriors deeply invested in a Thymotic Code of a type unfit for an emerging Pan Indian market where merchants- like the meat vendor in the Vyadha Gita- have increasing importance. The Kurukshetra holocaust or purgative 'vishodhana' marks the transition to our more commercial age based on 'universal' homonoia.  

Any such retaliation would be contrary to the goodness of conventional morality and hence out of character for the conventionally moral.

Fixing a fault in a mechanism aint 'retaliation'. It is just good housekeeping on the part of Civil Society is all.  

The paradox here is that, from the perspective of the conventionally moral, this imposition of conventional moral standards is not wrong and is good.

Nonsense! An imposition is irksome, more particularly if it is wholly otiose. The fact is, I don't incessantly masturbate while in the office. I would resent my boss imposing a regime of surveillance and exhortation  in this regard even though I genuinely don't want anybody to wank in the workplace. You may say, 'Vivek, if such indeed is the case why do you constantly raise the issue of anti-masturbation vigilance at Staff Meetings?' My answer is that if some cunt proposes 'Racial Sensitivity training', I retaliate by expatiating on hazards posed by the incessant squirting of jizz all over the place to older Black workers who may slip and break their fucking necks. As for yet more copious vaginal secretions or 'squirting'- don't get me fucking started mate.

However, it is the means by which moral parasites exercise their hostility to the disadvantage of the conventionally moral.

The conventionally moral don't have any trouble telling useless tossers to go fuck themselves. I think what the anonymous author is getting at is virtue signalling cunts who- being parasites themselves- have to put up with a like annoyance as that which they themselves cause.

But, that's the Coasian solution to the problem of 'nuisance goods'- viz. encourage nuisances to be nuisances to each other till they cancel each other out. 

As Jonathan Swift put it-

The Vermin only teaze and pinch

Their Foes superior by an Inch.

So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea

Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,

And these have smaller yet to bite 'em,

And so proceed ad infinitum:

Prima facie, it would be just for the conventionally moral to retaliate as moral parasites act out of the bounds of morality.

Fuck off! Conventional morality has nothing to do with 'retaliation'. It is enough to say 'go fuck yourself you hypocritical, virtue signalling, utterly worthless tosser'. Telling the truth ain't 'retaliation' unless you yourself are just as bad as the flea that preys on your own parasitic existence.  

However, the moment that the conventionally moral engage such parasites in war,

they must launch a superior propaganda war in parallel to a superior 'kill-rate' offensive doctrine. Otherwise, running away is better than fighting.

they have departed from action as set out by conventional morality,

Fuck off! Conventional morality is about kicking in the fucking head of pedo scumbags- or saying so down the Pub on a Friday night after the girls gave you the slip and moved on to the Disco with them fucking I-fucking-talian waiters wot were giving them the fucking eye, mate! 

and it would appear that they thereby lack justification.

There can be no justification where there is no justiciability. But justiciability is a matter of economia, not akribeia, and economia is always ideographic. Universals obtain purely nominally and  'universalizability' is always only a type theoretic, or bootstrapped, heuristic, business which either pays for itself or turns paranoid and bankrupts its sponsors. 

This standing relative to conventional moral expectations is the same as the parasite’s.

Only if you ignore 'uncorrelated asymmetries'. But only an Amartya Sen would be that fucking stupid.  

This was Arjuna’s problem at the start of the Gītā. Arjuna indeed explicitly laments that fighting moral parasites would render him no better (Gītā 1.38-39).

Fuck off! Arjuna's true eldest brother is Karna who is best pals with Duryodhana- the bad guy. If Arjuna, using the Gandharva he defeated's boon of chaksuchi vidya, divines this truth for himself- then there is no War and he himself, in a state of 'Manyu' (dark anger) won't kill his true liege Lord (under primogeniture of the sort that still obtains in the Indian National Congress). Of course, Karna could refuse to be a 'Pandava'. But he doesn't. His stipulation is that, whatever happens, the number of Pandavas will be conserved. That's Noether's fucking theorem right there!  

A procedural approach to ethics, such as we find in the Gītā,

Fuck off! The Gita is great poetry! Would this cunt say 'there is a procedural approach to ethics in Shakespeare's Hamlet'? 

Perhaps. The man is a moral and intellectual parasite.  

transcends conventional morality especially as it deprioritizes the importance of the good (karma yoga).

WTF! Karma Yoga just means doing your duty- including ritual 'karma kanda' if you happen to be a Brahmin and that's how you get money to feed your kids.  

Indeed, it rejects the good as a primitive moral notion in favour of the right (bhakti yoga)

This is nonsense. If you are devoted to God you can do what you like. The Creator does not greatly care about minute differences in 'morality'. This also means God loves you even if you are very flatulent and everybody gives you a wide berth. I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about this bloke I know. We were in the S.A.S together so I can't tell you his name. 

and thereby provides an account of the justice of those who wage war on moral parasites:

You don't wage war on parasites. You tell them to fuck off. 

The justice of the war of Arjuna and other devotees of Sovereignty should be measured by their fidelity to procedural considerations of the right, and not to considerations of the good.

So if some guy whose name is Arjun kills your family then you should fist yourself vigorously while measuring fidelity to procedural considerations of some nonsensical type. 

Arjuna and other just combatants fight as part of their devotion to Sovereignty and hence conform their behavior to an ultimate ideal of justice: that all concerned should be sovereign and thus made whole.

Nonsense! Arjuna and others were fighting to gain or retain territory.  

Hence, just war (jus ad bellum) and just conduct in war (jus in bello) come to the same thing:

Not for Kshatriyas in Dwapara Yuga. Basically, if you get an invite to a big battle you show up regardless of which side invited you. War was a competitive sport. After the war, the winning coalition might decide to restore territory to the main loser for reasons of justice or to preserve the balance of power.  

For the just cause is devotion to the ideal, and right action is the same.

Nonsense! Devotion is wholly independent of action or justiciability. Ranganathan is truly as stupid as shit. 

In contrast, those who are not devoted to the regulative ideal fail to have a just cause, or just action in war.

Absolutely false. If a matter is justiciable- e.g. the UN decides that a specific military action is the crime of 'aggression' under international law and if mercenaries are recruited to enforce the UN resolution, then those mercenaries have a just cause and their military actions attract no penalty of law. 

Jeff McMahan’s conclusion in his Killing in War (2009), that those who fight an unjust cause do wrong by fighting those whose cause is just, is entailed by bhakti yoga.

No it isn't. Oikeiosis determines which side a Kshatriya fights on. That is perfectly just and in conformity with bhakti yoga. Krishna is a non-combatant but his followers fight for the Kauravas. They don't fall into 'adharma' by doing so.  

However, McMahan appears to claim that the justice of a war is accounted for not by a special set of moral considerations that come into effect during war, but the same considerations we endorse during times of peace.

A thing is just only if it is justiciable. People who avoid injustice most of the time are mindful of the relevant considerations. When they transgress, a judicial decision may be taken such that they are punished- or the attempt to punish them is made.  

Yet in times of peace it appears that conventional morality wins the day, vitiates against war, and all parties depart from it when they wage war—or at least, this seems to be the analysis of the Mahābhārata.

Rubbish! Kshatriyas had a duty to turn up if invited to fight on one side or another in a war. Soldiers learn their craft by participating in Wars. In early modern Europe, when most Wars were wars between cousins- just like Kururkshetra- it was quite usual for ambitious officers to get permission to join one side or the other in a distant War. They were permitted to take part in combat and, if captured, would be paroled and sent back to their own countries. There were also plenty of aristocratic Soldiers of Fortune. 

It is because there are two competing moral frames—conventional morality of the good and the proceduralism of the right, or Yoga/Bhakti—

This is nonsense. Conventional morality is 'aachar' which is perfectly compatible with Bhakti. However, those who dedicate themselves to Yoga adopt a stricter code of conduct.

that we can continue to monitor the justice of war past the breakdown of conventional moral standards (for more on the just war theory here, see Ranganathan 2019).

Ranganathan- who is as American as apple pie- has written a Divya Dwiwedi level crazy paper which can be found here.  

It is because of the two standards that Yoga/Bhakti can constitute an ultimate standard of moral criticism

Rubbish! Yoga is different from Bhakti. Both come in many different flavors. One could say that a particular type of devotional theism is 'Bhakti Yoga' but it has nothing to say about which wars are just or not unless the King being attacked belongs to our sect. But that is 'oikeiosis'. Anyway, lots of theists run away when Crusaders or Jihadis or whatever invade. This is because they know their own Princes are shitty and crap at fighting. 

of the right even as the conventional moral standards of the good that characterize peace deteriorate under the malfeasance of parasites.

This is nonsense. Parasites don't matter. Heavily armed invaders put an end to peace. Hindus found that surrendering to the Brits tended to make their lives better- at least in South India.  

With respect to success, we see that the Gītā also has a story to tell about which side wins the war.

The Gita is occasionalist. God is the only efficient cause. But God only cared about Kurukshetra. There were plenty of other Wars which God didn't fix in advance. 

As the bhakti yogi is committed to a process of devotion to sovereignty, their behavior becomes sovereign in the long run

Fuck off! I have been devoted to Sarah Michelle Gellar in Buffy the Vampire Slayer for a quarter of a century. But my behavior is not becoming that of a 17 year old cheerleader. 

Maybe Ranganathan thinks that the Vaishnavite hopes to himself become God like. But theosis is off the table for that sect. Their only wish to to be reborn so as to serve the Lord more humbly. 

and hence their success is assured.

This man is a nutter. Being devoted to Mummy won't turn you into Mummy in the long run. 

Moral parasites, in contrast, are not engaged in an activity of self-improvement.

They may be. Their parasitism may be tactical.  

Their only means of survival—taking advantage of the conventionally moral—now lacking (as the conventionally moral have renounced conventional morality to become devotees of Sovereignty), renders them vulnerable to defeat by devotees of Sovereignty.

Parasites aren't 'defeated', they are told to fuck the fuck off.  

Moral parasites only have the one trick of taking advantage of the conventionally moral, and the transition to bhakti yoga on the part of the formerly conventionally moral deprives parasites of their victims and source of sustenance.

The Vyadha Gita, which is the dual of the Bhagvad Gita, shows that anybody at all- a housewife, a butcher- can tell Princes and Prelates to fuck the fuck off. Yet they can gain the honeyed wisdom of the Chandogya.