The Bhagavad Gītā
The Bhagavad Gītā occurs at the start of the sixth book of the Mahābhārata. It is a dialog on moral philosophy. The lead characters are the warrior Arjuna and his royal cousin, Kṛṣṇa, who offered to be his charioteer and who is also an avatar of the god Viṣṇu. The dialog amounts to a lecture by Kṛṣṇa delivered on their chariot, in response to the fratricidal war that Arjuna is facing. The symbolism employed in the dialog—a lecture delivered on a chariot—ties the Gītā to developments in moral theory in the Upaniṣads. The work begins with Arjuna articulating three objections to fighting an impending battle by way of two teleological theories of ethics, namely Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism. In response, Kṛṣṇa motivates Arjuna to engage in battle by arguments from procedural ethical theories—specifically, which he calls karma yoga, and a radically procedural theory unique to the Indian tradition, Yoga, which he calls bhakti yoga. This is supported by a theoretical and metaethical framework called jñāna yoga. While originally part of a work of literature, the Bhagavad Gītā was influential among medieval Vedānta philosophers.
1. Introduction
The Bhagavad Gītā (Gītā) one of South Asia’s two main epics. Like the Rāmāyaṇa, it depicts the god Viṣṇu in avatāra form. In the Rāmāyaṇa, he was Rāma; in the Mahābhārata he is Kṛṣṇa. This time, Viṣṇu is not the protagonist of the whole epic, but unlike the Rāmāyaṇa, here he shows awareness of his own identity as Īśvara or Bhagavān: Sovereignty. the Bhagavad Gītā is a protracted discourse and dialog on moral philosophy. What is unique about this exploration of philosophy is that it happens on a battlefield, prior to a fratricidal war, and it addresses the question of how we can and should make tough decisions as the infrastructure of conventions falls apart.
2. The Eighteen Chapters of the Gītā
The Bhagavad Gītā contains eighteen chapters. Gītā dived into three parts, each with six chapters. The first hexad concerns, on his account, an emphasis on karma yoga (a perfection of duty) and jñāna yoga (elucidation of the conditions of ethical reasoning). The middle hexad emphasizes bhakti yoga, the Gītā’s label for the position also called Yoga in the Yoga Sūtra and other philosophical texts: The right is action in devotion to the procedural ideal of choice (Sovereignty), and the good is simply the perfection of this practice. The last hexad “which subserves the two preceding hexads,” concerns metaphysical questions related to the elaboration of Yoga. Specifically, it explores and contrasts nature (prakṛti), or explanation by causality, and the self (puruṣa), or explanation by way of responsibility. Īśvara, or sovereignty, is the proper procedural ruler of both concerns. The last hexad summarizes earlier arguments for karma yoga, bhakti yoga, and jñāna yoga.
What follows below summarizes the chapters.
Chapter 1 concerns Arjuna’s lament: Here, we hear Arjuna’s three arguments against fighting the impending war, each based on one of the three theories of conventional morality: Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism.
Chapter 2 initiates Kṛṣṇa’s response. Kṛṣṇa extols a basic premise of Yoga: Selves (persons) are eternal abstractions from their lives, and hence cannot be confused with the empirical contingencies that befall them. This is meant to offset Arjuna’s concern for the welfare of those who would be hurt as a function of the war. Here we hear of the first formulations of karma yoga and bhakti yoga.
Kṛṣṇa here articulates the idea that blameless action is done without concern for further outcome, and that we have a right to do what we ought to do, but not to the further outcomes of activity (Gītā 2.46-67). This radical procedural frame for moral reasoning Kṛṣṇa defines as “yoga” (Gītā 2.48), which is skill in action (2.50).
Chapter 3 introduces karma yoga in further detail. The chapter begins with Arjuna concerned about a contradiction: Kṛṣṇa apparently prefers knowledge and wisdom, and yet advocates fighting, which produces anxiety and undermines clarity. Kṛṣṇa’s response is that action is unavoidable: no matter what, we are choosing and doing (even if we choose to sit out a fight). Hence, the only way to come to terms with the inevitability of choice is to choose well, which is minimally to choose to do what one ought to do, without further concern for outcome. This is karma yoga. Here we learn the famous formula of karma yoga: better one’s own duty poorly performed than someone else’s performed well (Gītā 3.35). Kṛṣṇa, the ideal of action (Sovereignty), is not exempt from this requirement either. Rather, the basic duty of Kṛṣṇa is to act to support a diversity of beings (Gītā 3.20-24). This too is the philosophical content of all duty: Our duty constitutes our contribution to a diverse world and a pedagogic example to others to follow suit. Chapter 4 focuses on bhakti yoga, or the practice of devotion. As Kṛṣṇa is the ideal of right action, whose activity is the maintenance of a diverse world of sovereign individuals responsible for their own actions, the very essence of right action is devotion to this ideal of Sovereignty. Chapter 5 introduces jñāna yoga, or the metaethical practice of moral clarity as a function of the practice of karma yoga. Chapter 6 picks up threads in previous comments on yoga, bringing attention to practices of self-regulation that support the yogi, or one engaging in skillful action.
Chapter 7 shifts to a first-person account of Sovereignty by Kṛṣṇa and the concealment of this procedural ideal in a world that is apparently structured by nonnormative, causal relations. Chapter 8 distinguishes between three classes of devotees. Chapter 9 explores the primacy of the ideal of Sovereignty and its eminence, while Chapter 10 describes the auspicious attributes of this ideal. Chapter 11 explores Arjuna’s dramatic vision of these excellences, but it is one that shows that the moral excellence of the procedural Ideal of the Right is not reducible to the Good, and logically consistent with both the Good and the Bad. Chapter 12 returns to the theme of bhakti yoga and its superiority.
Chapter 13 turns to the body and it being a tool and the seat of responsibility: the self. Chapter 14 explores a cosmological theory closely associated with Yoga, namely the idea that nature (prakṛti) is comprised of three empirical properties—sattva (the cognitive), rajas (the active), and tamas (the inert)—and that these empirical characteristics of nature can conceal the self. In chapter 15, the supreme Self (Sovereignty) is distinguished from the contents of the natural world. Chapter 16 contrasts the difference between praiseworthy and vicious personality traits. Chapter 17 focuses on the application and misapplication of devotion: Outcomes of devotion are a direct function of the procedural excellence of what one is devoted to. Devotion to Sovereignty, the ultimate Self, is superior to devotion to functionaries. Chapter 18 concludes with the excellence of renouncing a concern for outcomes via Yoga. Kṛṣṇa, speaking as the ideal, exhorts Arjuna to not worry about the content of ethics (dharma): He should focus instead on approximating the procedural ideal as the means of avoiding all fault.
3. Just War and the Suppression of the Good
Gītā, transcends conventional morality especially as it deprioritizes the importance of the good (karma yoga). Indeed, it rejects the good as a primitive moral notion in favour of the right (bhakti yoga) and thereby provides an account of the justice of those who wage war on morality. 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. 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.
Gītā also has a story to tell about which side wins the war. As the bhakti yogi is committed to a process of devotion to sovereignty, their behavior becomes sovereign in the long run and hence their success is assured. Moral parasites, in contrast, are not engaged in an activity of self-improvement. 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. 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 morality deprives of their victims and source of sustenance.
4 Mahābhārata: Narrative Context
The Bhagavad Gītā is itself a dialogue, but one of a philosophical character. The text begins at the battlefield of the fratricidal war that is itself the climax of the Mahābhārata. Hence, to understand the motivation for the arguments explored in the Gītā, one needs to understand the events that unfold in the epic prior to the fateful conversation between Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna.
The Mahābhārata (the “Great” war of the “Bhāratas”) focuses on the fratricidal tensions and all-out war of two groups of cousins: the Pāndavas, numbering five, the most famous of these brothers being Arjuna, all sons of Pāṇḍu; and the Kauravas, numerous, led by the oldest brother, Duryodhana, all sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra. Dhṛtarāṣṭra, though older than Pāṇḍu and hence first in line for the throne, was born blind and hence sidelined in royal succession, as it was reasoned that blindness would prevent Dhṛtarāṣṭra from ruling. Pāṇḍu, it so happens was the first to have a son, Yudhiṣṭhira, rendering the throne all but certain to be passed down via Pāṇḍu’s descendants. Yet Pāṇḍu dies prematurely, and Dhṛtarāṣṭra becomes king as the only appropriate heir to the throne, as the next generation are still children.
As the sons of Pāṇḍu and Dhṛtarāṣṭra grow up, Pāṇḍu’s sons distinguish themselves as excellent warriors, and also virtuous individuals, who are not without their flaws. The Kauravas, in contrast, are less able in battle, but mostly without moral virtues or graces. The rivalry between the two sets of cousins is ameliorated only by the Pāṇḍava’s inclination to compromise and be deferential to their cousins—this despite attempts on the Pāṇḍava’s lives by the Kauravas. Matters turn for the worse when the Pāṇḍavas accept a challenge to wager their freedom in a game of dice, rigged by the Kauravas. The Pāṇḍavas seem unable to restrain themselves from participating in this foolish exercise, as it is consistent with conventional pastimes of royalty. After losing everything, and even wagering their common wife, Draupadī, who is thereby publicly sexually harassed, their freedom is granted back by Dhṛtarāṣṭra, who caves into Draupadī’s lament. Once the challenge of the wager—taking a chance—is brought up again, the Pāṇḍavas again lose everything and must subsequently spend fourteen years in exile, and the final year incognito, and if exposed must repeat the fourteen years of exile. They complete it successfully and return to reclaim their portion of the kingdom, at which point the Kauravas refuse to allow the Pāṇḍavas any home area so that they might eke out a livelihood as rulers. Despite repeated attempts by the Pāṇḍavas at conciliation, mediated by their mutual cousin Kṛṣṇa, the Kauravas adopt a position of hostility, forcing the Pāṇḍavas into a corner where they have no choice but to fight. Alliances, loyalties, and obligations are publicly reckoned and distinguished, and the two sides agree to fight it out on a battlefield with their armies.
With all attempts at conciliation dashed by the Kaurava’s greed and hostility, war is a fait accompli. Kṛṣṇa agrees to be Arjuna’s charioteer in the fateful battle. What makes the impending war especially tragic is that the Pāṇḍava are faced with the challenge of fighting not only tyrannical relatives that they could not care less for, but also fight loved ones and well-wishers, who, through obligations that arise out of patronage and professional loyalty to the throne, must fight with the tyrants. Bhīṣma, the granduncle of the Pāṇḍavas and the Kauravas, and an invincible warrior (gifted, or cursed, with the freedom to choose when he will die), is an example of one such well-wisher. He repudiated the motives of the Kauravas, sympathizes with the Pāṇḍavas, but due to an oath that precedes the birth of his tyrannical grandnephews (the Kauravas), he remained loyal to the throne on which the Kaurava father, Dhṛtarāshtra, presided. Arjuna, who looked upon Bhīṣma and others like him as a loving elder, had to subsequently fight him. The conflict and tender feelings between these parties was on display when, prior to the war, Arjuna’s eldest brother, Yudhiṣṭhira, wanted the blessings of Bhīṣma on the battlefield to commence the war, and Bhīṣma, his enemy, and leader of the opposing army, blessed him with victory (Mahābhārata 6.43).
What follows prior to the battle are two important philosophical moves. First, Arjuna provides three arguments against fighting, each based on three basic ethical theories that comprise conventional morality: Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism. The essence of this package is the importance and centrality of the good (outcome) to an articulation and definition of the right (procedure). This is then followed by Kṛṣṇa’s prolonged response that consists in making a case for three philosophical alternatives: karma yoga, bhakti yoga (a fourth ethical theory, more commonly called Yoga, which does not define the Right by the Good), and jnana yoga (a metaethical theory that provides a justification for the previous two). Indeed, Kṛṣṇa’s exploration of the three options constitutes the dominant content of the 18 chapters of the Gītā. The preoccupation with the good, characteristic of conventional morality, allows moral parasites to take advantage of conventionally good people, for conventionally good people will not transcend the bounds of the good to retaliate against moral parasites. Kṛṣṇa’s arguments, in contrast, are focused not on the Good, which characterizes conventional moral expectation, but the Right. With an alternate moral framework of Yoga that does not define the Right in terms of the Good, Kṛṣṇa is able to counsel Arjuna and the Pāṇḍavas to victory against the Kauravas: For as Arjuna and the Pāṇḍava brothers abandon the good of conventional morality, they are no longer sitting targets for the malevolence of the Kauravas. Moreover, this frees the Pāṇḍavas to take preemptive action against the Kauravas, resorting to deception and treachery to win the war. At the end of the war, the Pāṇḍavas are accused by the surviving Kauravas of immorality in battle at Kṛṣṇa’s instigation (Mahābhārata 9.60.30–34)—and indeed, the Pāṇḍavas do resort to deception and what might be thought of as treachery, given conventional moral practice. Kṛṣṇa responds that there would have been no prospect of winning the war if constrained by conventional moral expectations (Mahābhārata: 9.60.59). This seems like a shocking admission until we remember that war is the very dissolution of such conventions, and it is the Pāṇḍavas capacity to pivot to an alternate moral paradigm (Yoga) that defines the Right without respect to the good which allows for their victory both with respect to the battle and with respect to Just War. A new dharma, or a new ethical order, is the perfection of the practice, not the means. Unlike the Kauravas, who had no moral code and were parasites, the Pāṇḍavas do have an alternate moral code to conventional morality, which allows them to re-establish a moral order when the old one is undermined by moral parasitism. The kernel of the Gītā Just War Theory is hence indistinguishable from its arguments for Yoga.
5. Arjuna’s Three Arguments Against Fighting
Prior to the commencement of the battle, on the very battlefield where armies are lined up in opposition, and with Kṛṣṇa as his charioteer, Arjuna entertains three arguments against fighting.
First, if he were to fight the war, it would result in death and destruction on both sides, including the death of loved ones. Even if he succeeds, there would be no joy in victory, for his family will largely have been decimated as a function of the war (Gītā 1.34-36).
Second, if the battle is between good and evil, his character is not that of the evil ones (the Kauravas), but yet, fighting a war would make him no better than his adversaries (Gītā 1.38-39). This is a Virtue Ethical argument. According to such arguments, the right thing to do is the result of a good, the virtues, or strength of character.
Third, war results in lawlessness, which undermines the virtue and safety of women and children (Gītā 1.41). This might be understood as an elaboration of the first Consequentialist argument: Not only does war end in suffering, which should be avoided, but it also leads to undermining the personal safety of women and children, and as their safety is good, we ought to avoid war so as to protect it.
6. Kṛṣṇa’s Response
Prior to the serious arguments, which Kṛṣṇa pursues to the end of the Gītā, he begins with considerations that are in contrast less decisive, and which he does not dwell on, except sporadically, through the dialogue. Kṛṣṇa responds immediately by mocking Arjuna for his loss of courage. Indeed, if maintaining his virtue is a worry, appealing to Arjuna’s sense of honor is to motivate him via Virtue Ethical concern (Gītā 2.2-3, 2.33-7), intimating that Virtue Ethics is not uniquely determinative (justifying both the passivist and activist approach to war). He also makes the claim that paradise ensues for those who fight valiantly and die in battle (Gītā 2.36-7). This would be a Consequentialist consideration, intimating that Consequentialist considerations are not uniquely determinative (justifying both arguments to fight and to not fight). He also appeals to a Yogic metaphysical view: As we are all eternal, no one kills anyone, and so there are no real bad consequences to avoid by avoiding a war (Gītā 2.11-32). The last thesis counters the third and last of Arjuna’s arguments: If good practice that entrenches the welfare of women and children is in order, then the eternality of all of us should put to an end to any serious concern about war on these grounds.
These three considerations serve the purpose of using the very same theoretical considerations that Arjuna relies on to argue against war to motivate fighting, or at least deflate the force of the original three arguments. The last claim, that we are eternal, is perhaps the more serious of the considerations. This is indeed a very basic thesis of a procedural approach to ethics for the following reason. People cannot be judged as outcomes, but rather procedural ideals themselves—ideals of their own life—and as such they are not reducible to any particular event in time. Hence, moving to a procedural approach to ethics involves thinking about people as centers of practical rationality that transcend and traverse the time and space of particular practical challenges.
Kṛṣṇa, as the driver of Arjuna’s battle-ready chariot, has the job of supporting Arjuna in battle, and so his arguments that aim at motivating Arjuna to fight are an extension of his literal role as charioteer in the battle, but also his metaphorical role as the intellect of the chariot, as set out in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad. One of the problems with the frame of conventional moral expectations that Arjuna brings to the battlefield is that it frames the prospects of war in terms of the good, but war is not good: It is bad. Even participants in a war do not desire the continuity of the war: They desire victory, which is the cessation of a war. So thinking about war in terms of the good gives us no reason to fight. Moreover, war is a dynamic, multiparty game that no one person can uniquely determine. The outcome depends upon the choices of many players and many factors that are out of the control of any single player.
Kṛṣṇa distinguishes between two differing normative moral theories and recommends both: karma yoga and bhakti yoga. Karma yoga is formulated as doing duty without the motive of consequence. Duty so defined might have beneficial effects, and Kṛṣṇa never tires of pointing this out (Gītā 2.32). However, the criterion of moral choice on karma yoga is not the outcome, rather it is the fittingness of the duty as the thing to be done that justifies its performance: Hence, better one’s own duty poorly performed than someone else’s well performed (Gītā 2.38, 47, 18.47). Yet, one’s duty properly done is good, so one can have confidence in the outcomes of one’s struggles if one focuses on perfecting one’s duty.
Bhakti yoga in turn is Bhakti ethics: performance of everything as a means of devotion to the regulative ideal that results in one’s subsumption by the regulative ideal (Gītā 9.27-33). Metaphorically, this is described as a sacrifice of the outcomes to the ideal. Ordinary practice geared toward an ideal of practice, such as the practice of music organized around the ideal of music, provides a fitting example: The propriety of the practice is not to be measured by the quality of one’s performance on any given day, but rather by fidelity to the ideal that motivates a continued commitment to the practice and ensures improvement over the long run.
Kṛṣṇa also famously entertains a third yoga: jñāna yoga. This is the background moral framework of bhakti yoga and karma yoga: What we could call the metaethics of the Gītā. Jñāna yoga, for instance, includes knowledge of Kṛṣṇa himself as the moral ideal, whose task is to reset the moral compass (Gītā 4.7-8, 7.7). It involves asceticism as an ancillary to ethical engagement—asceticism here is code, quite literally, for the rejection of teleological considerations in practical rationality. The proceduralist is not motivated by outcomes and hence attends to their duty as an ascetic would if they took up the challenge of action. What this procedural asceticism reveals is that the procedural ideal (Sovereignty) subsumes all of us, and hence, jñāna yoga yields an insight into the radical equality of all persons (Gītā 5.18).
Kṛṣṇa, Sovereignty, sets himself up as the regulative ideal of morality in the Gītā in two respects. First, he (Kṛṣṇa) describes his duty as lokasaṃgraha, the maintenance of the welfare of the world, and all truly ethical action as participating in this function (Gītā 3.20-24). To this extent, he must get involved in life to re-establish the moral order, if it diminishes (Gītā 4.7-8). Second, he acts as the regulative ideal of Arjuna, who is confused about what to do. The outcome of devotion (bhakti) to the moral ideal—Kṛṣṇa here—is freedom from trouble and participation in the divine (Gītā 10.12), which is to say, the regulative ideal of ethical practice—the Lord of Yoga (Gītā 11.4). This, according to Kṛṣṇa, is mokṣa—freedom for the individual. Liberation so understood is intrinsically ethical, as it is about participation in the cosmic regulative ideal of practice—what the ancient Vedas called Ṛta.
7. Good and Evil
Chapter ten contends with the outward instantiation of the virtues of the ideal. It is claimed that the vices too are negative manifestations of the ideal (Gītā 10.4-5). This is an acknowledgment of what we might call the moral responsibility principle. This is the opposite of the moral symmetry principle, which claims that two actions are of the same moral worth if they have the same outcome. The moral responsibility principle claims that different outcomes share a procedural moral value if they arise from devotion to the same procedural ideal. As outcomes, vices are a consequence of a failure to instantiate the moral ideal. Hence the moral ideal is responsible for this. This only shows that devotion to the ideal is preferable (Gītā 10.7).
Kṛṣṇa in the Gītā recommends treating outcomes as such as something to be renounced, and this may seem to vitiate against the notion that we are responsible for the outcome of our choices. On a procedural approach to action, though, we renounce the outcomes of actions precisely because they are not, on the whole, anything to calibrate moral action to, as they may be good or bad.
Chapter eleven refers to the empirical appreciation of the relation of all things to the regulative ideal. Here, in the dialog, Kṛṣṇa gives Arjuna special eyes to behold the full outcome of the regulative ideal—his cosmic form, which Arjuna describes as awe inspiring and terrifying. Good and bad outcomes of reality are straightforwardly acknowledged as outcomes of the regulative ideal.
Chapter twelve focuses on the traits of those who are devoted to the regulative ideal. They are friendly and compassionate and do not understand moral questions from a selfish perspective (12.13). Importantly, they renounce teleological markers of action: good (śubha) and evil (aśubha) (12.17). Yet they are devoted to the welfare of all beings (Gītā 12.4). The Bhakti theory suggests that these are not inconsistent: If the welfare of all beings is the duty of the regulative ideal, Kṛṣṇa (Gītā 3.24), then ethical practice is about conformity to this duty. And this is not arbitrary: If the procedural ideal (the Lord) of unconservatism and self-governance accounts for the conditions under which a being thrives, then the welfare of all beings is the duty of the ideal. The outcome is not what justifies the practice; the good outcome is the perfection of the practice.
9. Moral Psychology
Chapter thirteen emphasizes the distinction of the individual from their body—this follows from the procedural analysis of the individual as morally responsible yet outside of the content of their experiences. Chapter fourteen articulates the tri-guṇa theory that is a mainstay of Sāṅkhya and Yoga analyses. Accordingly, aside from persons (puruṣa), nature (prakṛti) is comprised of three characteristics: sattva (the cognitive), rajas (activity), and tamas (inertia). Nature so understood is relativized to moral considerations and plays an explanatory role that ought to be downstream from regulative choices. Chapter fifteen is an articulation of the success of those who adhere to Bhakti: “Without delusion of perverse notions, victorious over the evil of attachment, ever devoted to the self, turned away from desires and liberated from dualities of pleasure and pain, the undeluded go to that imperishable status” (Gītā 15.5).
Chapter sixteen is an inventory of personalities relative to the moral ideal. Chapter seventeen returns to the issue of the three qualities of nature, but this time as a means of elucidating moral character. Most importantly, it articulates the bhakti theory in terms of śraddhā (commitment), often also identified with faith: “The commitment of everyone, O Arjuna, is in accordance with his antaḥ karaṇa (inside helper, inner voice). Everyone consists in commitment. Whatever the commitment, that the person instantiates” (Ch 17.3). Here, we see the theory of bhakti universalized in a manner that abstracts from the ideal. Indeed, we are always making ourselves out in terms of our conscience—what we identify as our moral ideal—and this warrants care, as we must choose the ideal we seek to emulate carefully. The three personality types, following the three characteristics of nature, choose differing ideals. Only the illuminated choose deities as their ideals. Those who pursue activity as an ideal worship functionaries in the universe (yakṣa-s and rākṣasas), while those who idealize recalcitrance worship those that are gone and inanimate things (Gītā 17. 4).
10. Conclusion
Influential scholarship on the Bhagavad Gītā begins with famous Vedānta philosophers, who at once acknowledge the Gītā as a smṛti text—a remembered or historical text—but treated it on par with the Upaniṣads of the Vedas: a text with intuited content (śruti). In the context of the procedural ethics of the later Vedic tradition, as we find in the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta traditions, the Vedas is treated as a procedural justification for the various goods of practical rationality. For Vedānta authors, concerned with the latter part of the Vedas, the Gītā is an exceptional source, as it not only summarizes the teleological considerations of the earlier part of the Vedas but also pursues the Moral Transition Argument (from teleology to proceduralism) to a conclusion that we find expressed in the latter part of the Vedas, while ostensibly also endorsing a caste and Brahmanical frame that made their scholarship and activity possible. Yet, the commentaries on the Gītā differ significantly.
Interpretation—explanation by way of what one believes—is the default method of reading philosophical texts, then we should expect that the various commentaries on the Gītā from such philosophers would differ in accordance with the beliefs of the interpreter. Interpreted, there are as many accounts of the Gītā as there are belief systems of interpreters. The standard practice in philosophy (explication), however, employs logic to tease out reasons for controversial conclusions, so that contributions can be placed within a debate. This allows philosophers who disagree the ability to converge on philosophical contributions as contributions to a disagreement. Or put another way, in allowing us to understand a text such as the Gītā in terms of its contribution to philosophical debate, an explicatory approach allows us to formulate divergent opinions about the substantive claims of a text such as the Gītā.
All things considered, reading the Gītā via interpretation renders it controversial, not merely in scope and topic (for all philosophy is controversial in this way) but also in terms of content—it is unclear what the text has to say, for the reading is determined in large measure by the beliefs of the interpreter. Yet, ironically, interpretation deprives us the capacity to understand disagreement as we can only thereby understand in terms of what we believe (and disagreement involves what we do not believe), so the controversy of the conflicting interpretations of the Gītā remains opaque. Explication, an explanation by way of logic that links these with controversial conclusions, renders the content of controversy clear, but this also allows us to converge on a reading though we may substantively disagree with the content of the reading. The Gītā itself displays such explicatory talent as it constitutes an able exploration of moral theoretical disagreement. Students of the text benefit from adopting its receptivity to dissent, both in being able to understand its contribution to philosophy but also in terms of the inculcation of philosophical thinking.
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