CHAPTER- 1 FUNDAMENTAL OF ETHICS

v Meaning of Professional Ethics

Professional ethics is the set of standards adopted by professionals insofar as they view themselves acting as professionals. There are several important characteristics of professional ethics:

• professional ethics is usually stated in a formal code.

• The professional codes of ethics of a given profession focus on the issues that are important in that profession.

• When one is in a professional relationship, professional ethics is supposed to take precedence over personal morality.

WHY PUBLIC SERVANTS NEED ETHICS?

• First, many of the ethical decisions that public servants must make are not settled by rules. After all. Rules do not encompass every situation: often the rules only set limits within which decisions must be made, and some situations are not covered at all.' In addition, rules require interpretation. In some cases it may be easy to see which interpretation of a rule is best, but in others it is not so easy. No set of rules or policies can anticipate every ethical problem that may arise, and even the sincerest public servant may need help in understanding the ethical aspects of some situations. So only ethically aware public servants can correctly apply ethical rules to complex situations, keeping to the spirit as well as the letter of ethical rules.

• Second, public servants should be sensitive to ethical questions because public servants who understand the ethical dimension of governance are better and happier professionals

• Third, good ethical behaviour usually leads to good consequences, both for ourselves and for society.

• Fourth, public servants make decisions crucial to society at large, and therefore shoulder an enormous burden of public trust. When important and complex questions of right and wrong confront them in their professional work, they sometimes find themselves inadequately prepared about how to approach the issues or to communicate their advice clearly. Formal study of ethics can help to overcome these problems.

WHAT IS ETHICS?

Ethics has sometimes been viewed by public servants as a somewhat vague theoretical aspect of philosophy having little relevance to their practical activities in the world. Ethics certainly involves philosophical activities such as careful conceptual analysis and reflection. However, ethics is in essence practical, for the way in which we choose to act and live is the primary objective of such analysis and reflection.

In everyday use, "ethics" often refers to principles of action that implement or promote moral or ethical values. Morals (derived from the Latin mores or customs) refer to standards of right conduct.

For the purpose of the exam we will be using ethics and morals interchangeably.

What makes ethics so important to public serviceis that it goes beyond thought and talk to performance and action? As a guideline for action, ethics draws on what is right and important. Rooted in the idea of responsibility, ethics implies the willingness to accept the consequences of one's actions.

Definitions of Ethics

• "the standards of conduct derived from the philosophical and religious traditions of society" (Means)

• "ethics is concerned about what is right, fair, just, or good; about what we ought to do, not just about what is the case or what is most acceptable or expedient" (Preston)

Dimensions of Ethics

Ethics is a requirement for practicing administrators as it serves as a tool for deciding any course of action. Without it, actions would be random and aimless. They would have no means of considering what will be right (ethical) or what will be wrong (unethical) in their actions; and would have limited guidance for decisions aimed at resolving ethical dilemmas in practice. The four main branches of ethics are applied ethics, normative ethics, meta-ethics, and descriptive ethics; each is a potential tool for analysing ethical problems and making ethical decisions.

• Applied ethics is the branch of ethics that consists of the analysis of specific, controversial moral issues such as genetic manipulation of foetuses, euthanasia; whistle blowing, mandatory screening for HIV and so on.lt helps professionals to identify relevant issues and ask what is right or wrong in the particular situation and attempts to provide an objective answer. It may be termed the most specific type of moral philosophy as it aims to address the problem of knowing what is right, wrong, good, and bad. However, what is right or wrong varies from society to society. It varies from one person to another person and can also vary among different cultures, religions, nationalities, and professions. As specific type of moral philosophy, applied ethics is concerned with the basis upon which people, either in person or jointly, decides that certain actions are right or wrong, and whether one ought to do something or has a duty to do something.

• Normative ethics looks for an ideal litmus test of reasonable behaviour. Fieserstates that if provides The Golden Rule' of doing to other as we want them do to us. For example, since we do not want our neighbours to throw stone through our glass window, then it will be wise not to first throw stone through the neighbour's window. Based on this type of reasoning, one could theoretically determine whether any possible action is good, bad, right, or wrong.

• Meta-ethics differs remarkably from applied and normative ethics, in that, it does not concern with determining what is right or wrong but instead it asks questions about the nature of morality, rather than the specifics of right or wrong. For example, meta-ethics questions whether morals as we know it exist in the world naturally or are invention of men, and if so, can they be objective. Meta-ethics can be viewed as synonymous with analytical ethics becauseit concerns analytical enquiry into what is goodness, excellence, c'imoral, immoral, and so on. The knowledge of the ethical theories and principles will be useful in terms of elucidating the meaning of ethical terms and development of principles for distinguishing between the good and bad conduct. For example, Meta-ethics asks the questions such as what does it mean to say that a decision is good or how one could know or recognise that something is ethically good.

• Descriptive ethics concerns what one believes to be right or wrong, and holds, condemns or punishes in law or custom. It is sometimes referred as comparative ethics because it involves comparing ethical systems, comparing the ethics of the past and present, comparing the ethics of one society against another, and comparing the ethics which people claim to follow with the actual rules of behaviour that explain their conducts.

v Ethical Dilemma Or Value Conflicts

A value conflict can be defined as a problem in which value issues are a primary concern of the parties involved. A value is a quality, characteristic, or standard considered meritorious, important, or dosirable. When two or more parties have conflicting values or assign dillerent levels of importance to values, a value issue occurs. Value issues common to ethical

dilemmas include dishonesty, selfishness, and inefficiency. Common basic characteristics of a value conflict include the following:

• Competing values have divided two or more parties.

• Those involved perceive the competing values to have different levels of importance.

• The uncertainty associated with alternative solutions is perceived differently.

• Any decision will require values of the other party to be sacrificed.

• One or both parties are unwilling to compromise.

Each person places a different level of importance or weight on a value such as honesty or diligence, and it is this weight that influences that person's decisions. The set of weights on all relevant values can loosely be defined as the person's value system. In most cases, issues other than values are involved, usually economic factors or technical details.

Value conflicts are often more difficult to resolve than either technical or economic-based conflicts, because the latter types of conflict involve issues that are more easily measured and quantified. For example, benefit-costanalyses can assist in resolving economic differences. Theoretical considerations or empirical data can help conflicts where technical issues are a central focus.

CASE

You are the captain of one of the city's fire stations. The fire station is in serious need of

repairs as a critical portion of the station has become weak, causing it to become unstable. A tropical storm has blown across the city, causing heavy damage and flooding. The area in and around the city has been declared a disaster area and both state and central disaster officials are assessing damage for emergency relief.

The fire chief has advised central and state officials that the damage to the station was caused by the storm. Prior to relief officials arriving to assess the damage at the station, the fire chief calls you to advise you of their impending arrival and tells you to inform the relief officials that the damage is result of the storm.

Although this is not stated, annual evaluations are due next month and the chief is known to use the evaluations to reward loyalty and punish those who do not follow his wishes. Due to a previous illness in the family, you are very dependent on his annual evaluation to keep your salary up with inflation.

In the above case, as a captain working in a city's fire station you are caught in a dilemma where you had to make a choice between your personal integrity and your family's long term interest. In other words, you are caught in a value conflict involving your personal values and professional commitments. Alternatively, these situations are also termed as ethical dilemmas and crisis of conscience.

ELEMENTS OF ETHICAL DILEMMAS

Ethical dilemmas can occur in many forms, from plagiarism to bid rigging, from data fabrication to identity theft, and from software piracy to resume padding. Each of these dilemmas has unique characteristics, but all conflicts have common characteristics.

• First, ethical dilemmas involve value conflicts, which are often associated with other factors such as economics, public safety, or technical concerns. The relevant values need to be identified and their importance measured. For example, when fabricating data, the person puts too much weight on personal values (e.g., pleasure, efficiency) at the expense of values of the employer, scientific community,or school system (e.g., honesty, fairness, knowledge).

• Second, ethical dilemmas generally involve multiple value responsibilities. A professional has responsibilities to society, the profession, the client, and the employer, as well as to himself or herself. Conflicts often arise because an individual places excessive weight on one of these at the expense of another. For example, in bid rigging, the individual places more weight on

employer success than on fairness with the client. In falsifying a resume, the person places greater weight on personal advancement than on honesty with a prospective employer.

• Third, the perpetrator may feel pressure to act unethically. The pressure can be internally or self- imposed, or externally imposed by an employer or client. A person may feel the necessity to act unethically because of the need to compete with friends or appear more competent than he or she really is. An employer can apply pressure to do something unethical in order to gain an economic advantage.

• Fourth, the perpetrator rationalizes, either a priori to justify committing the act or after the fact in order to avoid a feeling of guilt. Rationalizations are excuses people make to avoid acting according to their value system or to avoid changing their value system. Common rationalizations include "everybody does it," "no one will be hurt," and "it is not my responsibility to report cheating."

• Fifth, people often do not know how to properly respond to ethical dilemmas, which often leads to actions that complicate the dilemma.

CHARACTERISTICS OF UNETHICAL CONDUCT

• First, moral misconduct involves values that are in conflict. For example, in the case of cheating, the cheater must weigh honesty against personal pleasure.

• Second, the individual making the decision has a value system, which encompasses the individual's knowledge of values, the weights applied to the values, and the process followed in making a decision. Unfortunately, the individual has a selfish personality that places greater weight on personal values such as pleasure or advancement.

• Third, those who are guilty of moral misconduct generally rationalize their actions in order to avoid both feeling guilty and changing their value system so that they will not repeat the misconduct.

• Fourth, even fundamentally honest people feel pressure from internal or external sources, which can cause them to place greater weight on the values associated with the misconduct than on the values associated with doing the right thing.

ETHICAL THEORIES/TRADITIONS/APPROACHES

Our thinking about ethics rests on three broad philosophical traditions

• Virtue ethics: ethics grounded in virtue & moral character

• Deontology: duty or principle behind the action

• Teleology/Utilitarianism: the consequences of action

v Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism holds that those actions are good that serve to maximize human well- being. Theemphasis in utilitarianism is not on maximizing the well-being of the individual, but rather on maximizing the well-being of society as a whole, and as such it is somewhat of a collectivist approach. An example of this theory that has been played out in India many times over the past century is the building of dams (Multi-purpose projects). Dams often lead to great benefit to society by providing stable supplies of drinking water, flood control, and economic opportunities. However, these benefits often come at the expense of people who live in areas that will be flooded by the dam and are required to find new homes, or lose the use of their land. Utilitarianism tries to balance the needs of society with the needs of the individual, with an emphasis on what will provide the most benefit to the most people.

However, as good as the utilitarian principle sounds, there are some problems with it.

• First, as seen in the example of the building of a dam, sometimes what is best for everyone may be bad for a particular individual or a group of individuals? An example of this problem is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico (US). WIPP is designed to

be a permanent repository for nuclear waste generated in the United States. It consists of a system of tunnels bored into underground salt formations. These salt beds are considered by geologists to be extremely stable, especially to incursion of water which could lead to seepage of the nuclear wastes into groundwater. However, there are many who oppose thisfacility, principally on the grounds that transportation of the wastes across highways has the potential for accidents that might cause health problems for people living near these routes.An analysis of WIPP using utilitarianism might indicate that the disposal of nuclear wastes is a major problem hindering the implementation of many useful technologies, including medicinal uses of radioisotopes and nuclear generation of electricity. Solution of this waste disposal problem will benefit society by providing improved health care and more plentiful electricity. The slight potential for adverse health effects for individuals living near the transportation routes is far outweighed by the overall benefits to society. So, WiPP should be allowed to open. As this example demonstrates, the utilitarian approach can seem to ignore the needs of individuals, especially if these needs seem relatively insignificant.

• Another objection to utilitarianism is that its implementation depends greatly on knowing what will lead to the most good. Frequently, it is impossible to know exactly what the consequences of an action are. It is often impossible to do a complete set of experiments to determine all of the potential outcomes, especially when humans are involved as subjects of the experiments. So, maximizing the benefit to society involves guesswork and the risk that the best guess might be wrong. Despite these objections, utilitarianism is a valuable tool for ethical problem solving, providing one way of looking at engineering ethics cases.

Before ending our discussion of utilitarianism, it should be noted that there are many flavours of the basic tenets of utilitarianism. Two of these are act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism.

Act utilitarianism focuses on individual actions rather than on rules. The best known proponent of act utilitarianism was John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), who felt that most of the common rules of morality (e.g., don't steal, be honest, don't harm others) are good guidelines derived from centuries of human experience. However, Mill felt that individual actions should be judged based on whether the most good was produced in agiven situation, and rules should be broken if doing so will lead to the most good.

Rule utilitarianism differs from act utilitarianism in holding that moral rules are most important. As mentioned previously, these rules include "do not harm others" and"do not steal." Rule utilitarian's hold that although adhering to these rules might not always maximize good in a particular situation, overall, adhering to moral rules will ultimately lead to the most good. Although these two different types of utilitarianism can lead to slightly different results when applied in specific situations, in this text, we will consider these ideas together and not worry about the distinctions between the two.

Duty Ethics and Rights Ethics

Two other ethical theories—duty ethics and rights ethics—are similar to each other and will be considered together. These theories hold that those actions are good that respect the rights of the individual. Here, good consequences for society as a whole are not the only moral consideration.

A major proponent of duty ethics was Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who held that moral duties are fundamental. Ethical actions are those actions that could be written down on a list of duties: be honest, don't cause suffering to other people, be fair to others, etc. These actions mo our duties because they express respect for persons, express an unqualified regard for autonomous moral agents, and are universal principles. Once one's duties are recognized, the ethically correct moral actions are obvious. In this formulation, ethical acts are a result <»/ proper performance of one's duties.

Rights ethics was largely formulated by John Locke (1632-1704), whose statement that humans have the right to life, liberty, and property was paraphrased in the Declaration of Independence of the soon-to-be I lulled States of America in 1776. Rights ethics holds that people have fundamental rights that other people have a duty to respect.

Duty ethics and rights ethics are really just two different sides of the name coin. Both of these theories achieve the same end: Individual persons must be respected, and actions are ethical that maintain this respect for the individual. In duty ethics, people have duties, an important one of which is to protect the rights of others. And in rights ethics, people have fundamental rights that others have duties to protect.

Criticism of Duty Based approach

As with utilitarianism, there are problems with the duty and rights ethics theories that must be considered.

• First the basic rights of one person (or group) may conflict with the basic rights of another group. How do we decide whose rights have priority? Using our previous example of the building of a dam, poople have the right to use their property. If their land happens to be in the way of a proposed dam, then rights ethics would hold that this property right is paramount and is sufficient to stop the dam project. A single property holder's objection would require that the project be terminated. However, there is a need for others living in nearby communities to have a reliable water supply and to be safe from continual flooding. Whose rights are paramount here? Rights and duty ethics don't resolve this conflict very well; hence, the utilitarian approach of trying to determine the most good is more useful in this case.

• The second problem with duty and rights ethics is that these theories don't always account for the overall good of society very well. Since the emphasis is on the individual, the good of a single individual can be paramount compared to what is good for society as a whole. The WIPP case discussed before illustrates this problem. Certainly, people who live along the route where the radioactive wastes will be transported have the right to live without fear of harm due to accidental spills of hazardous waste. But the nation as a whole will benefit from the safe disposal of these wastes. Rights ethics would come down clearly on the side of the individuals living along the route despite the overall advantage to society.

Alieady it is clear why we will be considering more than one ethical Already in our discussion of engineering cases. The theories already presented clearly represent different ways of looking at ethical problems and can frequently arrive at different solutions. Thus, any complete analysis of an ethical analysis of an ethical problem must incorporate multiple theories if valid conclusions are to be drawn.

Virtue Ethics

Fundamentally, virtue ethics is interested in determining what kind of people we should be. Virtuous is often defined as moral distinction and goodness. A virtuous person exhibits good and beneficial qualities. In virtue ethics, actions are considered right it they support good character traits (virtues) and wrong if they support bad character traits (vices). Virtue ethics focuses on words such as responsibility, honesty, competence, and loyalty, which are virtues. Other virtues might include trustworthiness, fairness, caring, citizenship, and respect. Vices could include dishonesty, disloyalty, irresponsibility, or incompetence. As you can see, virtue ethics is closely tied to personal character. We do good things because we are virtuous people and seek to enhance these character traits in ourselves and in others.

In many ways, this theory may seem to be mostly personal ethics and not particularly applicable to engineering or professional ethics. However, personal morality cannot, or at any

rate should not, be separated from professional morality. If a behavior is virtuous in the individual‘s personal life, the behavior is virtuous in his or her professional life as well.

Criticism of Virtue Based approach

· One of the criticisms of ethical theory of virtue is the following question of what is the right sort of character a person should have? Majority of virtue theorists have treated the answer to this question as self-evident. However, one scholar suggested that one man‘s virtue may be another man‘s vice and vice versa (Cline, 2009).

· Another criticism is the difficulties involved with establishing the nature of the virtues. What constitutes virtue depends on different people, cultures, and societies. Different cultures seem to provide different models of moral virtue, and there may be several, some conflicting, within a given culture.

· The virtue-based theory has also been criticized for not considering the sort of actions that are morally allowed and those that are not allowed, but rather focuses on the sort of qualities one is expected to foster in order to become a virtuous person.

· Virtue ethicists are not chiefly concerned with what rule one follows or what penalty one incurs, but what kind of person one is, for example, generous or stingy, courageous or cowardly, moderate or weak-willed, or self-indulgent.

· Lastly, virtue ethics does offer action guidance individuals must follow in order to be moral.

INDIAN ETHICS

The philosophical traditions of the Indian subcontinent are the oldest surviving written philosophical system in human civilization. Discussing Indian philosophy and Indian ethics are made very difficult by the diversity and richness of the various cultures that make up the modern nation of India, each with its own literature and philosophical background. Indian philosophical and ethical thinking have their origins in the ancient texts known as the Vedas, further developed through the Upanishads, and also expressed in the Bhagavad-Gita. These ancient texts continue to inform current philosophical thinking in India, though more contemporary thinkers such as Tagore, Gandhi, and Nehru have adapted these traditions to the modernworld.

Indian philosophy and ethics, like many other non-Western philosophies, focuses less on the theoretical and intellectual aspects of philosophy, and more on the practical andthe spiritual.

―Indian ethics, instead of analysing the nature of good, lays down practical means of attaining a life of perfection..‖ This practical orientation speaks directly to our interest in ethics; nothing could be more practical than the ethical concerns about human social behavior. In a very general way, like Chinese ethics, Indian ethical philosophy has much in common with virtue ethics discussed in Western ethical traditions. For example, ―the Bhagavad-Gita mentions the virtues of non-violence, finding, compassion to living beings, freedom from greed, gentleness, modesty, steadfastness, forgiveness, purity, freedom from malice; and excessive pride, anger, harshness, and ignorance.‖ These virtues are similar to those discussed by Western philosophers, and in the same way can be thought of as leading to good or bad character traits.

How do Indian philosophical and ethical traditions speak to modern engineering practice ? The emphasis on the practical everyday nature of philosophy directly speaks to modern engineers and engineering practice. In addition, the emphasis on reinforcing virtues and avoiding vices directly mirrors the language used in modern engineering codes of ethics, indeed, codes of ethics of engineering professional societies in India are basically the same as those in Western countries. Of course this is partly due to the international nature of the engineering profession, but certainly also reflects ancient Indian ethical thinking applied to the modern world.

ISLAMIC ETHICS

The early Muslim philosophers who formulated the foundations of Muslim ethical thinking were influenced by the early Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle, whose works had been translated into Arabic and were available throughout what is now known as the Middle East.

Broadly speaking, Muslim ethics have much in common with what Western philosophers refer to as virtue ethics. For Muslim philosophers, ethics is derived from principles set forth in the Qur‘an. Specific virtues mentioned in the Qur‘an are humility, honesty, giving to the poor, kindness, and trustworthiness. Very clearly honesty and trustworthiness are important virtues for those practicing a profession such as engineering, and indeed are articulated in the codes of ethics of the engineering society‘s world-wide. It‘s also not much of a stretch to see how humility and kindness can be applied to professional practice. The Qur‘an also mentions vices such as boasting, blasphemy, and slander. While blasphemy is only applicable in a religious context, the other two vices do speak to engineering professional practice. For example the engineering codes of ethics discuss making accurate and realistic claims based on available data and prohibit engineers from making false claims about other engineers. Thus, it seems that although some of the roots of ethical thinking common in the Islamic world are different from those in the Western world, the way Islamic ethics impacts engineering professional practice is the same as that of Western ethics. Indeed, the codes of ethics of professional engineering societies in the Middle East are similar and frequently overlap those from the United States.

BUDDHIST ETHICS

Buddhism had its origins between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE in India and is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama also known as Buddha. Buddhistteachings come down to us through various ancient religious and philosophical writings in Pali SSanskrit, and through subsequent interpretations and thought regarding these ancient works. Buddhism was very influential outside of India and is the dominant religious tradition in nations of the Far East such as Japan, China, Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Like other formulations of ethical thinking in non-Western societies, Buddhist ethics can appear to be similar to the Western concept of virtue ethics. Buddhist's speak of five major vices: destruction of life, taking what is not given, licentiousness, lying and taking intoxicants. Buddhism also speaks of virtues such as friendship, spiritual development, learning and mastery of skills, filial piety, generosity, diligence, patience, and a sense of proportion or limits. Buddhist teachings also emphasize the basic equality of mankind, and the interdependence of people on each other as well as our dependence on nature. Clearly, these virtues and vices have much in common with the virtue ethics systems developed by Western thinkers. Equally clear is how many of these virtues and vices speak to our roles in the engineering profession. For example, the desire to avoid destruction of life tells us that the safety of those who will use products and structures based on our engineering work is important and closely parallels the statements in codes of ethics that tell

us to keep paramount the health and safety of the public. Likewise, the Buddhist teachings against the vices of theft and lying have parallels in the codes of ethics relating to honesty and integrity. We should also examine the role that the Buddhist virtues of learning, mastery of skills, and diligence have in relation to engineering practice. The engineering codes of ethics often discuss the importance of continuous development of an engineer's skills, and supporting others in developing their skills. It is interesting to note that many of those involved in the origins of the environmental movement beginning in the 1970s based their ideas on the Buddhist principles of the sense of limits and human's basic interdependence with nature. Thus, the ideas regarding protecting the environment and sustainable development that appear in the most recent versions of the codes of ethics of professional engineering societies are similar to ideas found in Buddhist teachings.

CHAPTER- 2 HUMAN VALUES

it is said the most important thing in life is to decide what is important, in decide how to live our lives. Values are what matter. They determine who a person is and what gives meaning to life. Everything that is done is influenced by values. They are core beliefs that shape one's worldview and impact the character of individual and the community. Our external behaviours are manifestations of values, attitudes, and beliefs we acquire from family, school, religious affiliation, friends, professional training, and organizational involvement. Through these experiences we begin to perceive patterns in physical nature and in the behavior of others that become a part of our cognitive system.

According to Rokeach, these beliefs may be:

• descriptive ("I believe rain is a form of water")

• evaluative ("I believe rain is good for the earth")

• prescriptive ("I believe experiments to increase rainfall should be encouraged")

Those beliefs, Rokeach explains, are organized into attitudes as they become oriented around types of situations. They are relatively enduring and tend to create within us predispositions to respond in a consistent fashion to particular situations—another way of saying that they contribute to the development of both character (predispositions) and integrity (consistency of conduct over time).

Values are types of beliefs more basic than other beliefs we may hold, they are central to our belief systems and thus to our attitudes. They are beliefs about how we ought to behave and about the desirability of certain end states.

Values are powerful influences in human experience. They have three components that affect the way we live:

• cognitive

• affective

• behavioural

Values not only emerge from our cognitive interaction with our environment but also shape our perceptions as we continue to experience the world. Values also evoke emotional responses to what we perceive; we have positive and negative feelings associated with what we believe about what we perceive. The combination of cognitive and affective responses to the physical and social environment creates predispositions within us toward certain kinds of behaviour. In other words, what we believe and how we feel about those beliefs affect our character, which shapes our conduct. A value functions as a powerful imperative to action; it is "a standard or yardstick to guide actions." For instance, as a public servant considering the hazardous highway, you may previously have formed an attitude of support for any effort that proposes to alter highways for the increased safety for children. This attitude may be composed of a number of beliefs about the accident rate on narrowhighways, the best means for reducing that rate, the vulnerability of pedestrians and bicycle riders, the special vulnerability of children traveling by these means, and the desirability of walking and riding bicycles instead of being driven in motor vehicles. At a deeper and more determinative level in your cognitive system, there may be some fundamental values about preserving the dignity of human life and the particular importance of protecting children. These values motivate you to feel responsible for expediting the widening of the highway. They cause you to want to take action in that direction.

The moral values held by an individual are enduring or lasting beliefs. There are a small number of general moral values the world over. These include honesty, fairness, respect, compassion, and responsibility.

Trust

Trust is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "confidence in or reliance on some

quality or attribute of a person or thing, or the truth of a statement."

When trust is used in an organizational context, it almost always takes on the primary meaning of trustworthiness—inspiring customers, vendors, regulators, the media, and the public to feel confident in and rely on a person, a team, an organization, a product, or a service. It is widely recognized, however, that one of the best ways to create trust worthiness is to act with trustfulness—first extending a sense of trust to others, so that they will trustyou.

Scholars have added different meanings to what trust means in public service. For

some:

• Trust refers to the public's belief that activity in the public sector will promote shared values and interests and respond to public needs.

• In another version, "Trust is the expectation that arises within a community of regular, honest, and cooperative behaviour, based on commonly shared norms, on the part of other members of that community."

• A third formulation takes a relational view founded on reciprocity and mutual interdependence: "Trust exists when one party to the relation believes the other party has incentive to act in his or her interest or to take his or her interests to heart."

All these different definitions have the common elements of belief, mutuality, and predictability. Trust involves thinking, emotion, and behaviour, and trust applies to relationships among and expectations about individuals and formal institutions.

Honesty

Honesty has the following dimensions:

• Honesty in acts including not stealing, not engaging in bribes and kickbacks.

• Honesty in speech means not deceiving, that is, not intentionally misleading others, whether by pretending, manipulating someone's attention, lying, or with holding information that someone has the right to know. More positively, honesty in speech means, willingly revealing all pertinent information.

• Honesty in beliefs (intellectual honesty) means forming one's beliefs without selfdeceptionor other forms of evading unpleasant truths and accentuating evidence favourable to one's self esteem and blases.

• Discretion is sensitivity to the legitimate concerns of privacy, especially with regard to confidential information.

Courage

French philosopher Comte-Sponville, arguing for the universality of courage, reminded us that while fears and the acts to defeat them vary from society to society, the capacity to overcome fear "is always more valued than cowardice or faintheartedness".

Several elements of the definition warrant emphasis:

• Courageous action must be voluntary, and coerced action cannot qualify.

• Courage must also involve judgment—an understanding of risk and an acceptance of the consequences of action.

• Courage requires the presence of danger, loss, risk, or potential injury.

• Courage involves the mastery of fear rather than fearlessness.

Moral Courage

It can be defined as the quality of mind and spirit that enables one to face up to ethical challenges firmly and confidently, without flinching or retreating.

• It is a "quality of mind" as well as "spirit" because, like all ethical endeavours, it involves of both the rational and the intuitional " capacities, both the processes of intellectual discourse and the feelings of rightness and wrongness inherent in each individual.

• It enables us to "face up" to problems—not necessarily to resolve them, and certainly not to promise that we will master them, but to address them squarely, frontally, and with determination.

• It requires action that is both "firmly" persistent and "confidently" assured that its tools—the moral, mental, and emotional elements of argumentation and persuasion—are sound enough to weather serious resistance.

• It requires us to act "without flinching or retreating" in the face of persuasions, from the subtle to the violent, that make us want to turn tail and run.

Integrity

Moral integrity is the unity of character and the unity is consistency among our attitudes, emotions and conduct in relation to justified moral values. Integrity is a bridge between responsibility in private and professional life. Morality requires that our lives be unified where fundamental values are at stake, not compartmentalized.

Integrity and authenticity capture a character trait in which people are true to themselves, accurately representing—privately. And publicly—their internal states, intentions, and commitments. Such persons accept and take responsibility for their feelings and behaviours, owning them, as it were, and reaping substantial benefits by so doing.

The word integrity comes from the Latin integritas, meaning wholeness, soundness, untouched, whole, and entire. Some researchers contend that the construct remains vagueand ill-defined after more than 50 years of research.

We suggest the following definition, phrased in terms of behavioural criteria:

• a regular pattern of behaviour that is consistent with espoused values—practicing what one preaches

• public justification of moral convictions, even if those convictions are not popular

• treatment of others with care, as evident by helping those in need; sensitivity to the needs of others

Although they share a common thread of meaning, integrity, authenticity, and honesty, each has somewhat different connotations. Honesty refers to factual truthfulness and interpersonal sincerity. Authenticity refers to emotional genuineness and also psychological depth. Integrity refers to moral probity and self-unity; in terms of moral character.

Kindness

"The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing inprayer" Mahatma Gandhi

Kindness is the pervasive tendency to be nice to other people—to be compassionate and concerned about their welfare, to do favours for them, to perform good deeds, and to take care of them. Kindness can be a fleeting act directed toward strangers, as when we give up our seat on a bus to a young mother holding an infant, or it can be a profound gift within an established relationship, such as donating bone marrow or a kidney to a close relative.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness represents the number of positive changes that occur within an individual who has been offended or damaged by a relationship partner. When people forgive, their basic

motivations or action tendencies regarding the offender become more positive (e.g., benevolent, kind, generous) and less negative (e.g., vengeful, avoidant).

Humility

Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself. (T. S. Eliot) Humility implies people's ability to transcend a focus on the self or to view themselves from a broader perspective. J. P. Tangney identified a number of humility's key features:

• An accurate sense of one's abilities and achievements

• The ability to acknowledge one's mistakes, imperfections, gaps in knowledge, and limitations

• Openness to new ideas, contradictory information, and advice

• Keeping one's abilities and accomplishments in perspective

• Relatively low focus on the self or an ability to "forget the self"

• Appreciation of the value of all things, as well as the many different ways that people and things can contribute to our world

Gratitude

Gratitude is a sense of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a gift, whether the gift be atangible benefit from a specific other or a moment of peaceful bliss evoked by natural beauty.

The word gratitude is derived from the Latin gratia, meaning "grace," "graciousness," or"gratefulness." Literally, gratitude stems from the perception that one has benefited due to the actions of another person, There is an acknowledgment that one has received a gift and an appreciation of and recognition of the value of that gift.

Hope

Hope, optimism, future-mindedness, and future orientation represent a cognitive, emotional, and motivational stance toward the future. Thinking about the future, expecting that desired events and outcomes will occur, acting in ways believed to make them more likely, and feeling confident that these will ensue given appropriate efforts.

CHAPTER- 3 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Peterr Salovey & John Mayer

Definition of Emotions

• We view emotions as organized responses, crossing the boundaries of many psychological subsystems, including the physiological, cognitive, motivational, and experiential systems.

• Emotions typically arise in response to an event, either internal or external, that has a positively or negatively valanced meaning for the individual. Emotions can be distinguished from the closely related concept of mood in that emotions are shorter and generally more intense.

Intelligence Defined

Intelligence has been defined differently in different epochs. Definitions have rangedfrom Pythagoras's none-too-helpful depiction of intelligence as "winds" to Descartes's definition that intelligence is the ability to judge true from false. Perhaps the most often cited definition is Wechsler's statement that "intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment". Such a definition has the advantage of broadly encompassing what people think of as intelligence, as opposed to more restrictive definitions, such as those proposed by Terman and others (e.g., the ability to carry on abstract thinking). It includes the broad areas historically designated as involving intelligence, such as the distinction among Abstract (Verbal), Mechanical (Visual/Spatial), andSocial intelligences as well as those distinctions proposed by more con temporary theorists such as Gardner and Sternberg et al.

Emotional Intelligence

• We define emotional intelligence as the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and other's feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions.

• Emotional intelligence is also a part of Gardner's view of social intelligence, which he refers to as the personal intelligences, like social intelligence, the personal intelligences (divided into inter-and intrapersonal intelligence) include knowledge about the self and about others. One aspect of the personal intelligence relates to feelings and is quite close to what we call emotional intelligence:

• The core capacity at work here is access to one's own feeling life-one's range of affects or emotions: the capacity instantly to effect discriminations among these feelings and, eventually, to label them, to enmesh them in symbolic codes, to draw upon them as a means of understanding and guiding one's behavior.

• Emotional intelligence does not include the general sense of self and appraisal of others. It focuses, rather, on the processes described specifically above, that is, the recognition and use of one's own and others' emotional states to solve problems and regulate behaviour.

Models of Emotional Intelligence

• Studies of emotional intelligence initially appeared in academic articles beginning in the early 1990s. By mid-decade, the concept had attracted considerable popular attention, and powerful claims were made concerning its importance for predicting success.

• Emotional intelligence is the set of abilities that accounts for how people's emotional reports vary in their accuracy and how the more accurate understanding of emotion leads to better problem solving in an individual's emotional life.

• Formally, we define emotional intelligence as the ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in the self and others.

v Ability Models of Emotional Intelligence

• The domain of emotional intelligence describes several discrete emotional abilities. As we now view it, these emotional abilities can be divided into four classes or branches. The most basic skills involve the perception and appraisal of emotion. For example, early on, the infant learns about facial expressions of emotion. The infant watches its cries of distress, or joy, mirrored in the parent's face, as the parent empathically reflects those feelings. As the child grows, he or she discriminates more finely among genuine versus merely polite smiles and other gradations of expression.

• The second set of skills involves assimilating basic emotional experiences into mental life, including weighing emotions against one another and against other sensations and thoughts and allowing emotions to direct attention. For example, we may hold an emotional state in consciousness so as to compare it with a similar sensation in sound, color, or taste.

• The third level involves understanding and reasoning about emotions. The experience of specific emotions - happiness, anger, fear, and the like - is rule-governed. Anger generally rises when justice is denied; fear often changes to relief; dejection may separate us from others. Sadness and anger move according to their own characteristic rules, just as the knight and bishop on a chessboard move in different ways. Consider a woman who is extremely angry and an hour later ashamed. It is likely that only certain events may have intervened. For example, she may have expressed her anger inappropriately or discovered she falsely believed that a friend betrayed her. Emotional intelligence involves the ability to recognize the emotions, to know how they unfold, and to reason about them accordingly.

• The fourth, highest level, of emotional intelligence involves the management and regulation of emotion in oneself and others such as knowing how to calm down after feeling angry or being able to alleviate the anxiety of another person.

• The mental ability model of emotional intelligence makes predictions about the internal structure of the intelligence and also its implications for a person's life. The theory predicts that emotional intelligence is, in fact, an intelligence like other intelligences in that it will meet three empirical criteria. First, mental problems have right or wrong answers, as assessed by the convergence of alternative scoring methods. Second, the measured skills correlatewith other measures of mental ability (because mental abilities tend to intercorrelate) as well as with self-reported empathy. Third, the absolute ability level rises with age.

Mixed Models of Emotional Intelligence

Mixed models of emotional intelligence are substantially different than the mental ability models. These models expanded the meaning of emotional intelligence by explicitly mixing in non-ability traits. For example, Bar-On's model of emotional intelligence was intended to answer the question, "Why are some individuals more able to succeed in life than others?" Bar-On reviewed the psychological literature for personality characteristics that appeared related to life success and identified five broad areas of functioning relevant to success. These include

• intrapersonal skills

• interpersonal skills

• adaptability

• stress management

• general mood.

Bar-On's theoretical work combines what may qualify as mental abilities (e.g., emotional self- awareness) with other characteristics that are considered separable from mental ability, such as personal independence, self-regard, and mood; this makes it a mixed model.

THIRDVIEW

A third view of emotional intelligence was popularized by Goleman. Goleman created a model that also was mixed and was characterized by the five broad areas: depicted in including

• knowing one's emotions

• managing emotions

• motivating oneself

• recognizing emotions in others

• handling relationships.

Conclusion

The mental ability model focuses on emotions themselves and their interactions with thought. The mixed models treat mental abilities and a variety of other characteristics such as motivation, states of consciousness (e.g., "flow") and social activity as a single entity.

Why is El critical for Administrators?

When a person is intelligent in one's field or subject, it means that the person has an in- depth understanding of that area or subject. This type of intelligence results from worldly experience and knowledge especially in one's own field. These intelligent persons usually solve complex problems in their respective fields or subjects. But it has been observed that such intelligent persons sometimes expect the persons around them to be as intelligent as themselves. When their expectations are not met by the persons around them, they may exhibit emotionally unintelligent behaviour by looking down on them.

Therefore, El is critical for building harmonious relationships with people in our work and social environment.

Looking at the importance of El from the perspective of administering or managing an organisation, an emotionally intelligent administrator is sensitive to the emotional states of self and others. This sensitivityenables the emotionally intelligent administrator to motivate self and others to perform at an optimum level. On the other hand, lack of El in an administrator is likely to reduce the morale of the persons working in the organisation. Thus, El is essential for administrators to build and maintain relationships with the members of their respective organisations at all hierarchical levels. El enables Administrators to resolve conflicts among the members of their respective organisations. Administrators with high El make their organisations work with high synergy and efficiency. El is crucial for people management including self management.

El and psychological conditioning

A stimulus from the environment invokes a specific response from an individual. If the stimulus repeats in the environment, it is likely to invoke the same response again from the individual. This repetition of stimulus-response is known as Conditioning. If the experience was pleasant, the individual is likely to repeat the same behaviour by engaging in the activity again. On the other hand, the individual's response is likely to be avoidance if the experience was painful or unpieasant. Psychological conditioning happens in both the scenarios. Emotionally intelligent behaviour can very well be a result of years of conditioning. The same logic is true for emotionally unintelligent behaviour too.

El with sub-ordinates

Being emotionally intelligent with one's sub-ordinates is usually tougher than being emotionally intelligent with one's superior or Head due to the difference in power or status. If the process of an organisationemphasises obedience to instructions from superiors, it becomes even more difficult to be emotionally intelligent with one's sub-ordinates. If people have been obeying a person in a very senior powerful position over several years, it becomes even more challenging for the person in power to be emotionally intelligent. The reason is the conditioned

behaviour of all the persons involved. Obedience has become an established habit in such a scenario. The powerful person is conditioned to expect obedience to his or her instructions every time. The sub ordinates are conditioned to be obedient to the instructions every time. Even if the sub-ordinates do not agree with each and every instruction, they are mostly afraid to disagree. So they do not express their feelings of disagreement openly. As we have already seen before, feelings become emotions when their intensity increases. Suppressed feelings become suppressed emotions over a period of time. If the powerful person never bothers to ask the sub-ordinates how they feel about their instructions, the suppressed emotions are very likely to turn into dormant volcanoes. The sub ordinates are likely to explode any time in anger. Since they cannot explode against their respective powerful superiors or bosses, they usually explode against their respective sub-ordinates or other weaker persons. As a result, the morale of the entire organisation is corroded over a period of time. Hence, it is essential for Administrators to be emotionally intelligent with their sub-ordinates.

El with superiors

Earlier, we saw why it is difficult for a powerful person to be emotionally intelligent with his or her sub- ordinates. Is it easy for a sub ordinate to beemotionally intelligent with his or her superior/boss? Let us step into the shoes of the sub-ordinate in order to understand the situation from his or her perspective. It is fairly easy to see that the crucial factor in this case is the quality of the relationship between the sub- ordinate and the superior. If the sub-ordinate has worked with success over a period of time with the superior, being emotionally intelligent is very easy for both of them. On the other hand, if they have met with very little success while working together then it is very difficult to be emotionally intelligent. This holds true for both the superior as well as the sub-ordinate. Everyone would agree that it is always a mixture of success and failure in life. The key is to keep the net result a success, Therefore, the sub- ordinate is likely to encounter challenges in being emotionally intelligent with the superior at times. This happens when the subordinate has been feeling stressed out at work for a significant period of time. When a person is stressed out, errors occur and completing projects quickly becomes increasingly difficult. It is really annoying for the sub ordinate if his or her superior/Head suddenly assigns another large project without enquiring about the current work overload of the sub-ordinate. The top people in the organisations tend to accept work overload as part and parcel of their professional lives for the sake of promotions and other benefits. On the other side, fears of losing jobs, perks, hikes etc. tend to make the sub-ordinates in accept the higher workloads in spite of being aware of the risks to their physical and mental well-being. In such scenarios, work and targets receive topmost priorities irrespective of emotions. So emotions are neglected for the sake of performance and output. Hence, El is totally out of picture until stress burnout occurs due to work overload. The sub ordinate should take care not to wait until (s)he burns out; (s)he should identify emotions within self and superior and persuade the superior in advance to see the risks of ignoring El. After all, prevention is better than cure!

Competencies of Emotionally Intelligent Persons

Emotionally intelligent persons behave in certain specific competencies.And they are:

Self-awareness

An emotionally intelligent person is aware of his or her own emotions amd feelings. They understand their own behaviour - both internal and external. Hence, they can regulate their emotions and channelize them constructively. As a result, they feel realistically confident about their own skills and strengths while being aware of their own weaknesses and shortcomings. They accept their mistakes proactively and take corrective actions quickly. Once one is aware of one's own emotions and feelings, it is easierto empathise with and understand the emotions of the people in one's environment.

v Repect for self and others

Persons with high El understand that it is impossible to be perfect all the time. They learn from their mistakes and try to improve themselves. They iiccept themselves while trying to improve. They understand that the same logic applies to the other persons as well. Hence, they have a general respect for self and others while trying to improve self and others around them. When mistakes occur, they criticize self or otherswithout putting anyone down. Emotionally intelligent people value not only their own self- respect but respect the other persons as well.

Stress management skills

Persons with high El know themselves very well. Hence, they know when their stress level is approaching the threshold. Once their stress level is nearing the maximum limit, they consciously make an attempt to manage the stress levels. In fact, stress tolerance and management is a key attribute of an emotionally intelligent individual. Every administrative set will have its own share of stress quotient, therefore it is advisable for administrators to develop their stress tolerance abilities.

Balanced temperament

Emotionally intelligent individuals have a balanced temperament. Have you noticed that some people never seem to get angry or stressed? These individiuals look relaxed and friendly all the time! The fact is that everyone gets upset and angry but people with high El know exactly why they get upset and angry. So when they are able to notice their anger they immediately neutralise it without making any visble attempt in suppressing it. Hence, they have a balanced temperament. They understand the importance of both head (common sense) and heart (emotions) and maintain the right balance.

Attentiveness and empathy

Listening and observation are precise when the listener or the observer is in a state of keen attention. A person in distress often feels light after talking about it to someone. Therefore, just listening attentively usually helps the other person. There are persons who do not open up easily. Yet the eyes, face and body language often expose their true emotional states. In order to pick up these non-verbal signs, one has to be a keen observer. Persons with high El are keenly attentive and they usually pick up these non- verbal signs. Once they observe the distress signs, they take the initiative to go and ask the person how (s)he feels and/or whether everything is fine. The affected person usually opens up and begins to talk about their emotional states and the associated events. Emotionally intelligent persons are good at stepping into the other person's shoes and empathising with her or him.

Awareness of others' feelings

An emotionally intelligent person is aware of the mutual feelings among the persons in his or her circle. (S)he knows how each person in their circle feels towards each other. Therefore, (s)he is capable of promoting team spirit and friendship among his or her team members. Most importantly, they do not use this awareness of others' feelings for selfish purposes such as politicking, emotional manipulation etc. They use it only for the common good.

Excellent communication skills

There is no point in identifying and understanding the emotions of self and others if the emotions cannot be communicated. Persons with high El communicate emotions very well. Communication of emotions involves both speaking and listening in an emotionally meaningful manner. A major part of communicating emotions involves non-verbal cues. We have already seen that emotionally intelligent persons are keen observers and listeners. So they pick up non verbal cues quite easily. They understand the value of non-verbal cues in sending messages. So they use eye contact, eye movements, facial expressions, physical touch and body language

to send non-verbal messages about their emotions as well as in response to the messages about emotions from the others. A simple pat on the back or a smile can lift the morale of the other person more than a long talk or advice. Persons with high El communicate such encouraging non-verbal messages very well.

Simplicity and clarity

Persons with high El keep things simple and clear. As a result, others find it easy to understand them and vice-versa. Once the initial understanding is established through simplicity and clarity, the relationship blooms fast leading to frequent win-win situations. Stress level never goes up when things are kept simple and clear. Communication gap never occurs and even if it does, it is easily resolved due to simplicity and clarity. Mistakes are accepted and corrective measures are taken immediately when things are simple and clear. If complexity and/or confusion arise, emotionally intelligent persons sit down with the other persons involved and simplify things together as a team.

Role-oriented team player

Emotionally intelligent persons understand themselves as well as the other team members. They understand the other teams / groups within their organisation over a period of time. Individuals are by nature unique. So, emotionally intelligent persons are aware of each team member's strengths and weaknesses including their own. They are aware of the roles played by each team member and how one team member's weaknesses are covered by another team member's strengths. Therefore, they stick to their specific roles and fulfill the responsibilities associated with their respective roles without stepping on another team member's toes. As a result, the chances of politics and conflicts within the team are minimised significantly. The whole team benefits due to the role-oriented behaviour of emotionally intelligent poisons.

Conflict resolution and negotiation skills

Emotionally intelligent persons face conflicts directly and do not try to avoid or evade it. They may be extremely anxious but they manage their emotions well. Hence, they identify the root cause of a conflict and resolve it. Since they have already handled their own inner conflicts, they can resolve the conflicts occurring outside them as well. They do not try to escape or look for shortcuts. They bring together the persons involved in the conflict, persuade each person to understand each other and negotiate effectively to resolve the conflict.

v Identifying & Understanding Emotions

The moment we call a person emotional, do we not imply that the person is subjective? Think about it and look at your own past life experiences. It is likely to be true in everyone's life. Therefore, identifying emotions could be extremely difficult if the individual identifying them is emotional. To put it differently, we need to identify our own emotions before attempting to identify the emotions within others. If we do not identify our own emotions, we are not going to be objective in the identification of emotions within others.

v Types of emotions

The most common types of emotions we find in our daily lives are happiness, sadness, love, fear, disappointment, enthusiasm, passion, Surprise, shock, disgust, anger, pain and frustration. If you examine each emotion closely and trace their origin, you would discover that all emotion are reactions to fulfilment or non-fulfilment of desires. When we have a desire, we often expect it to e fulfilled. We express happiness when our desire are fulfilled. On the contrary,

we feel sad and disappointed when our desires are unfulfilled and our expectations are not met. The same holds true for our professional lives too. A superior desires, defines ad expects certain results from sub ordinates. If the sub-ordinates do not deliver as per expectations, the superior feels angry or disappointed. There is always the fear of rejection of failure in the minds of all professionals. Some people love their work and show their enthusiasm and passion. Some people work only for the sake of earning and they really do not enjoy their work. Frustration and disgust could creep into their minds they do something that they do not truly enjoy. Yet it may not be possible for them to express their disgust and frustration openly due to fear. When there is a huge gap between expectation and reality, there is shock or surprise. When works out faster than estimated, the professionals involved in the project are happy and pleasantly surprised. So we are likely to encounter situations with a mixture of various emotions. Identifying emotions could become tricky when we have mixed emotions.

Identifying emotions within oneself

Before managing the other persons in one‘s organisation, it is important to manage oneself, identifying emotions within oneself is extremely helpful in managing oneself. The next obvious question is: ―How does an individual identify one‘s own emotions?‖. The following guidelines would help you in identifying the emotions within herself or himself.

· It is extremely difficult to identify our emotions precisely when we are not calm and still within. Therefore, we have to relax first and only then look within ourselves to identify our emotions.

· Ask yourself ―How do I feel now?‖ and record your responses if your are alone. You can either write down or talk about it and record it. If you read what you have written or listen to what you have talked after few days or weeks, you are most likely to be surprised to see the difference between then and now.

· Involving someone whom we trust would help us to ensure our objectivity. We can tell the person how we feel and encourage her or him to ask us questions so that we can verify the accuracy of identification of our emotions.

· Looks out for repetitive pattern in your emotional behaviour. If it is desirable, you can consciously reinforce the behaviour pattern. On the other hand, you can prevent undesirable conditioning if it is not desirable.

Identifying emotions within others

Identifying emotions expressed by another person could be as simple as asking the other person ―How do you feel now?‖. Quite obviously, it should not be a routine mechanical artificial question without genuine concern. You might as well not ask the question if you do not feel like asking the question from your heart because you would expose yourself sooner or later. The following guidelines would help the learner in identifying the emotions within another person.

· Be attentive to the other person. Do not multitask when the otherPerson is telling you something. Listen and observe with keenness.

· It may be easier to ask how the person feels is (s)he is a sub ordinate. If the other person happens to be a superior, you have to wait for the right moment to ask the

question. You could also put the question differently by asking ―Would you like to talk about anything else with me now?‖ and then give the person time to respond. Do not insist on an answer if they are not in a mood to talk.

· Observe the other‘s facial expression without staring. Prolonged staring with fixed eyes may make the other person uncomfortable. Let your eye movements be natural and friendly. The other person may be observing your eyes and facial expressions as well.

· Listen to the other person‘s voice and look out for significant and subtle modulations. Her or his paralanguage may reveal the person‘s innermost feelings in a subtle may.

Understanding Emotions.

Why do we have to understand emotions? Why cannot we stop with just identifying emotions? When we identify emotions, we identify only the effects. When we understand emotions, we have traced the origin and the root cause of the identified emotions. Imagination dominates sometimes and it becomes difficult to segregate facts from imagination. Human memory itself may not be accurate or precise at all times. The following guidelines would help you to trace the origin of the emotions identified within one‘s own selves as well as within others:

· While the question how one feels enables us to identify emotions, the question why one feels the way one feels would enable as to trace the origins of the identified emotions. So, ask yourself

―Why do i feel this way?‖ and ask the other person ―Do you know why you feel this way?‖ in order to understand the identified emotions deeply.

· Our lives are filled with conditioned behaviour patterns. The emotions identified by us are most likely to be behaviour patterns caused by psychological conditioning. For example, a powerful person surrounded by sycophants is most likely to feel positive on being appreciated. On the contrary, the person may become hostile and aggressive even if we point out an obvious mistake committed by them. So, we got to be extremely delicate and diplomatic while pinpointing the mistake of such a person. One of the ways could be to tell the person: ―You have achieved great things in your career. You are a wonderful person. I am sure you are going to do a lot better than what you have done now.‖ Framing this kind of balanced statements requires high EI.

· Most of our emotions responses directly or indirectly originate from our childhood experiences. Therefore, trying to map each identified emotion to a specific childhood experience would reveal their respective origins. Having said that, it may prove to be extremely difficult for an older person to recollect specific childhood experiences. We can try and remember the earliest possible experience instead of a childhood experience. Consulting one‘s parents or childhood friends may help. You can suggest the same course of action to the other person whose emotions you are trying to understand.

· Sharing emotions usually creates a bond among the persons involved. When the sharing of emotions is related to one's career, the bond would enhance team spirit. As an Administrator, you can organise team outings in informal environment such as sports, excursions, tours, trekking etc. Joint activities are highly likely to bring out emotions. Understanding these emotions would enhance team spirit and camaraderie.

· It would be sometimes very tempting to say "I have enough work already and I don't want to overload myself by trying to understand other people's emotions. I hardly have the time to understand my own emotions." If this is how the learner feels, it is obvious that the learner is not yet convinced about the importance of El. One crucial point to remember is that it takes lot more time and money for a new employee to start being productive. Therefore, it makes lot of business sense to identify and understand emotions of self and others. Work gets done faster and at a lesser cost in the long run if everyone in the organisation is emotionally intelligent.

Managing Emotions Effectively Challenges to El

Let us now look at various factors and situations which make it extremely difficult for people to be emotionally intelligent.

Unbalanced ego

El is difficult to practise when the ego is either too high or too low. On the other hand, persons with balanced egos find it easier to be emotionally intelligent. It is common to find unbalanced ego in persons with disturbed childhood. A person who perceives lack of attention from parents during childhood is likely to grow up into an adult with tendencies to create dramatic situations so as to attract attention from others. A person who has been pampered during childhood grows up into an adult who wants everyone around him or her to do what (s)he says. Thus, unbalanced ego is a major challenge to El.

Gap between desire and reality

The most common attribute of emotionally challenging situations is the gap between desire and reality. The larger the gap the more emotionally challenging the situation is. The superior/boss is expecting a project to be completed smoothly on time as per schedule promised to his Higher Ups. The sub ordinate comes on the delivery date to tell the superior that a problem is taking a lot more time than estimated and that there may be a delay in delivery. The superior has a deadline for delivering the project and there is not much time left. Being emotionally intelligent is quite tough in such situations without any doubt. The superior has to manage not only his own emotions but also the emotions of the Higher Ups and those of the sub-ordinate. The superior is likely to blast the sub-ordinate for informing about the problem on the last day. But would it be of any help to blast the sub-ordinate verbally? I am quite sure that the readers would have faced many such challenges in their respective careers as administrators. This is a good time for the readers to review emotionally challenging experiences of similar nature in their own careers with focus on the behaviour of self and others.

Extreme focus on goals and performance

When a superior is focused only on goals and performance, (s)he cannot be aware of the emotions of self and others. Such extreme focus often results in loss of work-life balance for everyone including the superior. A person who is extremely focused on goals and performance to the exclusion of everything else is like a horse running with blinkers. They are blind to the emotional problems being caused by their behaviour not only in the sub- ordinates but within them as well. Such extreme unbalanced focus usually builds up health problems which are suppressed over a period of time. Sooner or later, these problems explode like a dormant volcano and the after- effects are extremely unpredictable and hence it is extremely difficult to mitigate the risks.

High stress

Temperament is essential for El and we have already seen that it is one of the qualities of emotionally intelligent persons. High levels of stress can really test a person's temperament. What causes stress? Stress is primarily caused by conflicts within the individual. High stress significantly reduces clarity of thoughts, words and actions of the affected individual. Individuals who are able to be relaxed and calm are often excellent in stress management. Their composure and temperament exert a positive influence on the other team members as well. Such persons usually possess high El as well.

Dictatorial attitude

Being dictatorial implies one-way communication. El implies open two-way communication. There is no listening in dictatorship, only obedience. Consistent suppression of emotions could make a person a dormant volcano and you never know when (s)he is going to erupt in frustration. In extreme suppression of emotions, the affected subordinate may even go to the extent of committing suicide. Hence, It is important for superiors to avoid a dictatorial attitude as much as they can. There may be some short-term goals which require top-down execution of instructions/commands. In such situations, a quick team meeting to inform the sub-ordinates about an extraordinary situation is likely to elicit understanding and cooperation.

Managing one's own emotions effectively

One frequent mistake we make while trying to manage our own emotions is suppression. Suppressing emotions may work in the short run but it is not good for us in the long run. The suppressed emotions start working subconsciously or unconsciously within us and they affect our behaviour sooner or later. Control without understanding is suppression whereas control through awareness and understanding is management.

We often tend to think that people with high El never get angry. Emotionally intelligent people regulate their anger and express it in a controlled way to motivate the people in their environment. They express their anger without affecting the other person's self-respect. Their anger does not destroy the morale of the other person. In fact, their anger stimulates the other person's potential and motivates the other person to perform to his or her maximum potential.

Managing emotions of sub-ordinates effectively

We have already seen how emotions of sub-ordinates can be identified and understood by listening, observing and communicating with a sub-ordinate. We know why the sub-ordinate feels in a particular way. If the feeling is favourable for the morale, it is fine to continue withoutchange. On the contrary, if the feeling is unfavourable, how can the superior change the emotions of the sub- ordinate so that it becomes a win-win situation? The most important point to note before answering this question is that no one can directly change emotions within another person. One can only motivate the other person to change the emotions within her or him. The difference is subtle but it is extremely crucial in managing emotions within others. So the correct way to ask this question is: "How can the superior motivate the sub ordinate to change the emotions within her or him?". In order to motivate the subordinate to change the emotions within her or him, the superior has to determine the exact pain or fear which is causing the undesirable emotion. Then, the perception has to be changed by redefining the situation. Let us consider an example. A sub-ordinate is unhappy because he was expecting an appraisal with a hike in salary. But this expectation was not fulfilled because the margin in the business of your organisation has fallen due to intense competition. The sub-ordinate perceives this situation thus: "I have put my heart and soul into my work and I have performed to the best of my abilities. But my organisation is not recognising my sincere efforts." While this is the emotion within the sub-ordinate, the superior understands the actual reason for not giving the hike. How can the superior manage the negative emotion within the sub-ordinate? One strategy for the superior is to take the sub- ordinate out of office to an informal setting such as a restaurant. The superior should not bother about performance for one day. Showing genuine care for the sub ordinate would certainly make the sub-ordinate feel the emotional bond. Then, the superior can explain the actual reason - drastic reduction in margins due to intense competition. The superior can also share his or her own appraisal without revealing the exact salary (most companies adopt the strict HR policy of not revealing one's salary). The superior can tell the sub ordinate that the reduction in margins has affected not just him but the organisation as a whole. If the superior can prove that the entire industry is affected, it would be a lot better. Thus, the sub-ordinate's perception as a lonely victim begins to change and he realises that the situation is beyond the control of his superior. He does not feel that he has suffered an injustice. An emotional bond has to be created by focusing on a common attribute shared by the superior and the sub- ordinate.

Managing emotions within sub ordinate requires sharing and bonding. Hierarchical attitude can be useful for managing emotions within sub-ordinates but it works only for a short while. Forming emotional bond through sharing works consistently in the long run.

Managing emotions of superiors effectively

If your superior feels good about you, there is absolutely no problem. On the contrary, what do you do if your superior feels bad about you? How do you manage the emotions of your superior? The crucial factors in managing the emotions of your superior are your own temperament and your superior's temperament. If you expect your superior to be democratic and the superior is democratic then it is extremely easy to manage your superior's emotions. You simply go and talk one-to-one. On the other hand, if you expect your superior to be democratic and the superior has a hierarchical attitude then you have to be really careful. If you have already made the required adjustment then youcan manage the superior's emotions easily. But if you have difficulty in making the adjustment in your attitude, you have to start with managing your own emotions before thinking about managing your superior's emotions. Once you are relaxed, you can gently express your expectation of democratic attitude to your superior by making a gentle suggestion such as "Sir / Madam, what do you think about the advantages and disadvantages of democratic attitude in comparison to hierarchical attitude?". You have to first let your superior talk and make him or her feel important by listening. You have to be open- minded and listen to their opinions and experiences without interrupting. By listening to your superior, you are increasing the probability of your superior listening to you. The change may not happen overnight and you have to patiently work and wait for the change in your superior's emotions about hierarchy.

Managing emotions of group effectively

The best examples of motivating groups can be seen in various popular speeches delivered by various political leaders across the world. But Ihe results are often unmanageable. It is extremely difficult to manage Ihe collective emotions of a large group of people. Motivating a group is different from managing a group's emotions. History is replete with mob violence due to ineffective management of emotions of groups. What we mean here by managing emotions of group is empowerment of each individual in the group towards self-awareness and self- management. In order to manage a group's emotions, it is essential to identify a common motivating factor among the members of the group. At the same time, it is essential to define clear roles for each individual. Ihe roles should be defined in such a way that one individual's strengths compensate for another individual's weaknesses. Once the unique strengths of each individual are identified and matched with Ihe weaknesses of another individual, the group's emotions are easier to manage. Everyone has a reasonable sense of security about their respective roles. But, this is an ideal scenario. In reality, it is difficult to lorm such a group and conflicts are bound to arise due to insecurity and fear. Yet again, listening and observation are important. One-to-one interactions with each group member are required to manage the emotions of each individual member. A team meeting is required to bring out the individual emotions. Group activities in informal environments make it easy to manage a group's emotions. As an Administrator, it is important for you to know how each group member feels about you as much as how you feel about each group member.

CHAPTER-4 ATTITUDE

Attitude Content

Attitudes can be thought of as a global evaluation (e.g., like—dislike) of an object and from this perspective a number of conceptual models of the attitude concept have evolved. The most influential model of attitude has been the multicomponent model.

• According to this perspective, attitudes are summary evaluations of an object that have Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral components.

v CAB

• The cognitive componentoi attitudes refers to the beliefs, thoughts,and attributes we associate with an object. In many cases, a person's attitude might be based primarily upon the positive and negative attributes they associate with an object.For example, when one author recently bought a new car, he devoted considerable attention to different vehicles' safety records, gas mileage, and repair costs. In this example, attitudes toward the different cars were formed through a methodical consideration of the positive and negative characteristics of each car.

• The affective component of attitudes refers to feelings or emotions linked to an attitude object.Affective responses influence attitudes in a number of ways.A primary way in which feelings shape attitudes is through feelings that are aroused in response to an attitude object. For instance, many people indicate that spiders make them feel scared.This negative affective response is likely to cause a negativeattitude toward spiders.

• The behavioral component of attitudes refers to past behaviorsor experiences regarding an attitude object. For instance, peoplemight guess that they must have a negative attitude toward factoryfarming, if they remember having signed a petition against theunethical treatment of animals.

Do the CAB components predict attitudes?

So far, we have shown that cognitive, affective, and behavioralinformation are three separable components of attitude. But how welldo they actually predict a person's attitude? Numerous studies have addressed this important question. The primary idea behind this line ofresearch is to examine the degree to which the favorability of people'scognitions, feelings, and behaviors are correlated with a person's overall attitude.

Key conclusions of the research

• Attitudes have cognitive, affective, and behavioral components.

• The cognitive component refers to beliefs, thoughts, and attributes associated with an attitude object.

• The affective component refers to feelings or emotions associated with an attitude object.

• The behavioral component refers to past behaviors with respect to an attitude object.

• These components have a "synergistic" relation. When an individual possesses positive beliefs about an attitude object, they typically have positive affective and behavioral associations with the object.

• Despite their synergism, the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components are quantitatively and qualitatively distinct. Further, people differ in the degree to which their attitudes are based on each of the CAB components.

Attitude Structure

In addition to considering the content of attitudes, another important issue concerns how positive and negative evaluations are organized within and among the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of attitudes. It is typically assumed that the existence of positive beliefs, feelings, and behaviors inhibits the occurrence of negative beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. For

example, this assumption implies that an individual with positive beliefs, feelings and behaviors about the New York Yankees baseball team in unlikely to have negative beliefs, feelings, and behaviors about this team. In other words, according to this one-dimensional perspective, the positive and negative elements are at opposite ends of a single dimension, and people tend to experience either end of the dimension or a location in between.

This one-dimensional view is opposed by a two-dimensional view. This view suggests that one dimension reflects whether the attitude as few or many positive elements, and the other dimension reflects whether the attitude has few or many negative elements. If this view is correct, then people can possess any combination of positivity or negativity in their attitudes. Some of these combinations fit the one- dimensional view attitudes may consist of few positive and many negative elements, few negative and many positive elements, or few positive and few negative elements (i.e., a neutral position). Another combination is inconsistent with the one- dimensional view: attitudes might occasionally contain many positive and many negative elements, leading to attitudinal ambivalence to occur, whereas the one- dimensional perspective does not.

The top panel depicts the one-dimensional view of attitudes. In this panel, Person X who is plotted on an axis depicting the one-dimensional view, would be slightly negative. The single axis does not permit one to mark. Person X as being both negative and positive. The bottom panel depicts the two- dimensional view of attitudes, with one axis (from middle to top) representing variability in negative evaluations and the other axis (from middle to right) depicting variability in positive evaluations. From this perspective, a person can possess high amounts of negativity and positivity toward an object. For example, Person Y in the figure could be considered highly ambivalent.

Which perspective is superior? At first glance, the two-dimensional perspective seems as though it should be superior because it allows for the same patterns of positivity and negativity as the one- dimensional view, while also allowing for ambivalence. For instance, it is difficult to interpret the meaning of the natural point in one-dimensional scales for assessing attitudes. Imagine that people were asked to report their attitude toward eating rhubarb (a tart vegetable) on a nine-point scale that ranged from ―1-extermely unfavorable‖ to ―9-extremely favorable‖ as the end points, with ―5-neither unfavorable not favorable‖ in the middle. If someone indicated that his or her attitude was 5, it is half-way between the most extreme positive response option and the most extreme negative response option. People could choose this option because it is a compromise between many positive and negative elements of their attitude (e.g., they have many positive and negative thoughts, feelings and behaviors regarding eating rhubarb) or because they have no positive or negative elements whatsoever (e.g., they have never eaten rhubarb).

The failure to distinguish between these two reasons for the neutral selection is important, because measures that directly assess attitudinal ambivalence predict a variety of outcomes. The best known outcome is response polarization. People who are highly ambivalent toward an object are more strongly influenced by features of their environment that make salient the object‘s positive or negative elements are salient. In contrast, non-ambivalent people are less strongly influenced by the acute salience of the positive or negative attributes.

Key Points

• An important issue related to attitudes concerns how positive and negative evaluations are organized within and amont he components of attitude.

• The one-dimensional view postulates that the positive and negative elements are stored as opposite ends of a single dimenstion.

• The two-dimensional view postulates that positive and negative elements are stored along two separate dimensions.

• Feelings of ambivalence may only partly reflect the potential ambivalence in thoughts feelings, and behaviors relevant to our attitude.

v Attitude Functions

Individuals hold attitudes for a variety of reasons. The most prominent models of attitude functions were developed almost 50 years ago suggested that attitudes serve three primaryfunctions:

• Object-appraisal: Object-appraisal refers to the ability of attitudes to summarize the positive and negative attributes of objects in our social world. For example, attitudes can help people to approach things that are beneficial for htem and avoid things that are harmful to them.

• Social-adjustment: Social-adjustment is fulfilled by attitudes that help us to identify with people shom we like and to dissociate from people whom we dislike. For example, idividuals may buy a certain soft drink because this drink is endorsed by their favorite singer.

• Externalizationn: Externalization is fulfilled by attitudes that defend the self against internal conflict. For example, bad golfers might develop an intense dislike for the game because their poor performance threatens their self-esteem.

Daniel Katz proposed four attitude functions

• Knowledge: this function represents the ability of attitdes to organize information about objects.

• Utility: this function exists in attitudes that maximize reward and minimize punishments obtained from attitude objects.

• Ego-defense: ego-defensive functions exists in attitudes that serve to protect an individual;s self- esteem

• Value-expression: attitudes serve a value-expressive function, such that an attitude may express an individual‘s self-concept and central values. For example, a person might cycle to work because she values health and wishes to preserve the environment.

A new generation of research has provided fresh new insights into the functional perspective. For example, Gregory Herek suggested a distinction between evaluative functions. Which pertain to the ability of attitudes to summarize information about the attitude object itself, and expressive functions, which are fulfilled upon the expression of an attitude.

Key Points.

• Individuals hold attitudes for a variety of reasons.

• Among the functions, the object-appraisal function is especially important as it suggests that attitudes serve as energy-saving devices that make judgments easier and faster to perform.

• Research on attitude functions requires further improvement in the methods used to assess them.

Chapter-5 THINKERS

Thales of Miletus (c.620-540 bc)

The first natural scientist and analytical philosopher in western intellectual history

Credited as the first philosopher of Ancient Greece, and therefore the founder of western philosophy, Thales hailed from the lonian seaport of Miletus, now in modern Turkey Miletus was major centre of development for both science and philosophy in Ancient Greece. Thales, probably born somewhere around 620 BC is mainly remembered as the presocratic philosopher who claimed that the fundamental nature of the world is water. Aristotle mentions him, as does Herodotus, and these are really our only accounts of Thales‘ background, However, his significance as a philosopher is not so much what he said, but his method. Thales was the first thinker to try to account for the nature of the world without appealing to the wills and whims of anthropomorphic. Homerian gods, Rather, he sought to explain the many diverse phenomena he observed by appealing to a common, underlying principle, an idea that is still germane to modern scientific method. He is also credited by Herodotus with correctly predicting that there would be a solar eclipse in 585 BC during a battle between the Medes and the Lydians. As such, Thales can with some justification be thought of as the first natural scientist and analytical philosopher in Western intellectual history.

Thales had other modern traits, for it also seems that he was something of an entrepreneur. According to one story, Thales made a fortune investing in oil-presses before a heavy olive crop-certainly he would have had to be wealthy in order to devote time and thought to philosophy and science in seventh century BC Ancient Greece.

According to his metaphysics, water was the first principle of life and the material world. Seeing that water could turn into both vapour by evaporation and a solid by freezing, that all life required and was supported by moisture, he postulated tat it was the single causal principle behind the natural world. In a crude anticipation of modern plate tectonics, Thales professed tht the flat earth floated on water. Aristotle tells us that Thales thought the earth had a buoyancy much like wood and that the earth floated on water much like a log or a ship-Indeed, many floating islands were said to be known to the sea-farers of Miletus, which may have served as either models of evidence for Thales‘ theory. He even accounted for earthquakes as being due to the rocking of the earth by subterranean waves, just as a ship may be with the phenomenon of sedimentation, possibly believing it to be the spontaneous generation of earth from water, an idea held as recently as the 18the century.

Having sought to give a naturalistic explanation of observable phenomena, rather than appealing to the wills of gods, Thales claimed that god is in all things. According to Aetius, Thales said the mind of the world is god, that god is intermingled in all things, a view that would shortly appear contemporaneously in a number of world religions, most notably Buddhism in India. Despite his metaphysical speculations being clearly mistaken, it seems that Thales was a modern thinker in more ways than one, pre-empting many ideas in religion, philosophy and science.

v PYTHAGORAS OF SAMOS(c.570-480bc) The ultimate nature of reality is number

Probably born around the mid-sixth century BC no exact date is known as to when Pythagoras lived. Despite his name being familiar to every schoolchild for Pythagoras' Theorem, which states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of

the squares of the remaining two sides, it is likely that this was known both to the Babylonians - where Pythagoras is thought to have travelled in his youth - and the Egyptians.

Pythagoras was a somewhat shadowy figure and like Socrates after him wrote nothing himself, preferring to leave his students to document his thoughts. Reputed to be a mystic as well as a thinker, the school he founded would nowadays be thought of as a religious cult that taught many unusual and strange doctrines including, notoriously, the veneration for - and abstinence from the eating of -beans. Pythagoras also preached reincarnation and the transmigration of souls and is largely responsible for the modern belief in numerology, later popularised by Nostradamus.

According to Pythagoras, the ultimate nature of reality is number. This idea developed out of his theory of music, in which he proved that the intervals between musical tones could be expressed as ratios between the first four integers (the numbers one to four). Since part of Pythagoras' religious teaching consisted in the claim that music has a special power over the soul, infused as it is into the very fabric of the universe, the belief that number is the ultimate nature of reality quickly followed.

The Pythagoreans went on to venerate certain numerical patterns, especially the so- called 'tetractys of the decad'. The tetractys is a diagram that represents the first four numbers in a triangle of ten dots:

Both the triangle and the number 10 - the decad - became objects of worship for the Pythagoreans. In Pythagorean thought, the number 10 is the perfect number because it is made up of the sum of the first four integers, as shown in the tetractys. The integers themselves were thought to represent fundamental ideas - the number one representing the point, two the line, three the surface and four the solid. Further, it was thought that there were ten heavenly bodies

- five planets, the sun, the moon, the earth and a mysterious and invisible 'counter-earth' (probably invented to make the celestial number up to ten) all revolving around a central fire.

After Pythagoras' death, his school splintered into two camps. One maintained his religious and mystical teachings, while the other concentrated on his mathematical and scientific insights. The lattercontinued to believe the nature of the universe must be essentially arithmetical. Units of number, points, were somehow thought to possess spatial dimensions and be the ultimate constituents of objects. An idea later criticised by both Parmenides and Zeno. The Pythagorean cosmogony also encountered grave problems due to one of Pythagoras' own discoveries. For Pythagoras had shown how tho ratio of the diagonal through a square to its sides could not be expressed as a whole number. The problem of 'the incommensurability ol the diagonal' led to the discovery - or invention, depending on your philosophical point of view - of irrational numbers. Though a major pioblem for the Pythagorean cosmogony, irrational numbers have proven a major and lasting development in mathematical thinking.

v SOCRATES(c.470-399bc) 'The only thing I know is that I know nothing'

Socrates lived through times of great political upheaval in his birthplace of Athens, a city which would eventually make him a scapegoat for its troubles and ultimately demand his life. Much of what is known about Socrates comes through the works of his one time pupil Plato, for Socrates himself was an itinerant philosopher who taught solely by means of public discussion and oratory and never wrote any philosophical works of his own.

Unlike the Greek philosophers before him, Socrates was less concerned with abstract metaphysical ponderings than with practical questions of how we ought to live, and what the good life for man might be. Consequently, he is often hailed as the inventor of that branch of philosophy known as ethics. It is precisely his concern with ethical matters that often led him

into conflict with the city elders, who accused him of corrupting the minds of the sons of the wealthy with revolutionary and unorthodox ideas.

Socrates was certainly a maverick, often claiming to the consternation of his interlocutors that the only thing he was sure of was his own ignorance. Indeed much of his teaching consisted in asking his audience to define various common ideas and notions, such as‘beauty', or 'the good', or 'piety', only to show through reasoned argument that all of the proposed definitions and common conceptions lead to paradox or absurdity. Some of his contemporaries thought this technique disingenuous, and that Socrates knew more than he let on. However, Socrates' method was meant to provide salutary lessons in the dangers of uncritical acceptance of orthodoxy. He often railnd against, and made dialectic victims of, those who claimed to have certain knowledge of some particular subject. It is chiefly through the influence of Socrates that philosophy developed into the modern discipline of continuous critical reflection. The greatest danger to both socioty and the individual, we learn from Socrates, is the suspension of critical thought.

Loved by the city's aristocratic youth, Socrates inevitably developed many enemies throughout his lifetime. In his seventieth year, or thereabouts, after Athens had gone through several changes of leadership and a period of failing fortunes, Socrates was brought to trial on charges of 'corrupting the youth' and 'not believing in the city gods. It would seem that the charges were brought principally to persuade Socrates to renounce his provocative public speaking and convince the citizens of Athens that the new leadership had a tight rein on law and order. With a plea of guilty he might perhaps have walked away from the trial and lived out the rest of his life as a private citizen. However, in characteristic style, he robustly defended himself, haranguing his accusers and claiming that god himself had sent him on his mission to practice and teach philosophy. When asked, upon being found guilty, what penalty he thought he should receive, Socrates mocked the court by suggesting a trifling fine of only 30 minae. Outraged, a greater majority voted for Socrates to be put to death by the drinking of hemlock than had originally voted him guilty. Unperturbed, Socrates readily agreed to abide by the laws of his city and forbade his family and friends from asking for a stay of execution.

Socrates' trial, death and final speeches are wonderfully captured by Plato in his dialogues Apology, Crito and Phaedo.

v PLATO (c.427-347bc)

The safest characterisation of Western philosophy is that of a series of footnotes to Plato' A.N. Whitehead

Student of Socrates and founder of the Academy, the first reported institution of higher education

- no philosopher has had a greater or wider-ranging influence in the history of philosophy than Plato. Alfred North Whitehead once said, with much justification, that the safest characterisation of Western philosophy is that of a series of footnotes to Plato. There is no topic of philosophical concern for which one cannot find some view in the corpus of his work.

Accordingly it can be difficult to characterise such a vast and comprehensive canon of thought. However, much of Plato's work revolves around his conception of a realm of ideal forms. The world of experience is illusory, Plato tells us, since only that which is unchanging and eternal is real, an idea he borrowed from Parmenides. There must, then, be a realm of eternal unchanging forms that are the blueprints of the ephemeral phenomena we encounter through sense experience. According to Plato, though there are many individual horses, cats and dogs, they are all made in the image of the one universal form of 'the horse', 'the cat', 'the dog¹ and so on. Likewise, just as there are many men, all men are made in the image of the universal 'form of man. The influence of this idea on later Christian thought, in which man is made in the image of God, is only one of many ways in which Plato had a direct influence on Christian theology.

Plato's Theory of Forms, however, was not restricted to material objects. He also thought there were ideal forms of universal or abstract concepts, such as beauty, justice, truth and mathematical concepts such as number and class. Indeed, it is in mathematics that Plato's influence is still felt strongly today, both Frege and Godel endorsing Platonism in this respect.

The Theory of Forms also underlies Plato's most contentious and best known work, The Republic. In a quest to understand the nature and value of justice, Plato offers a vision of a Utopian society led by an elite class of guardians who are trained from birth for the task of ruling. The rest of society is divided into soldiers and the common people. In the republic, the ideal citizen is one who understands how best they can use their talents to the benefit of the whole of society, and bends unerringly to that task. There is little thought of personal freedom or individual rights in Plato's republic, for everything is tightly controlled by the guardians for the good of the state as a whole. This has led some, notably Bertrand Russell, to accuse Plato of endorsing an elitist and totalitarian regime under the guise of communist or socialist principles. Whether Russell and others who level this criticism are right or not is itself a subject of great debate. But it is important to understand Plato's reasons for organising society in this way. The Republic is an attempt, in line with his theory of forms, to discover the ideal form of society. Plato thinks there must be one ideal way to organise society, of which all actual societies are mere imperfect copies, since they do not promote the good of all. Such a society, Plato believes, would be stronger than its neighbours and unconquerable by its enemies, a thought very much in Greek minds given the frequent warring between Athens, Sparta and the other Hellenistic city-states. But more importantly, such a society would be just to all its citizens, giving to and taking from each their due, with each citizen working for the benefit of the whole. Whether Plato's republic is an ideal, or even viable society, has had scholars divided ever since.

v ARISTOTLE(384-322BC)

More than just a philosopher, Aristotle was a scientist, astronomer and political theorist

Aristotle's achievements in the history and development of western thought are both stunning and unrivalled. More than just a philosopher, Aristotle was a scientist, astronomer, political theorist and the inventor of what is now called symbolic or formal logic. He wrote extensively on biology, psychology, ethics, physics, metaphysics and politics and set the terms of debate in all these areas right up to modern times. Indeed, his writings on justice are still required reading for undergraduates reading Law.

After his death his works were lost for some 200 years or so, but lortunately were rediscovered in Crete. Later translated into Latin by Boethius around 500 AD, Aristotle's influence spread throughout Syria and Islam whilst Christian Europe ignored him in favour of Plato. Not until Thomas Aquinas reconciled Aristotle's work with Christian doctrine in the 13th century did he become influential in western Europe.

Aristotle received his education from age seventeen in Plato's Academy', where he stayed for some 20 years until Plato's death. Later he founded his own institution, 'the Lyceum', where he would expound a philosophy altogether different both in method and content Irom that of his former teacher.

More than any other philosopher before him, Aristotle made much of observation and strict classification of data in his studies. For this reason he is often considered as the father of empirical science andscientific method. Unlike his predecessor Plato, Aristotle always undertook his investigations by considering the regarded opinions of both experts and lay people, before detailing his own arguments, assuming that some grain of truth is likely to be found in commonly held ideas. Aristotle's method was nothing if not rigorous and lacked the proselytising tone of many of his predecessors.

In contradistinction to both Plato and the Presocratics, Aristotle rejected the idea that the many diverse branches of human inquiry could, in principle, be subsumed under one discipline based on some universal philosophic principle. Different sciences require different axioms and admit of varying degrees of precision according to their subject. Thus Aristotle denied there could be exact laws of human nature, whilst maintaining that certain metaphysical categories such as quantity, quality, substance and relation were applicable to the description of all phenomena.

If there is one common thread to much of Aristotle's work it lies in his conception of teleology, or purpose. Perhaps as a result of his preoccupation with biological studies, Aristotle was impressed by the idea that both animate and inanimate behaviour is directed toward some final purpose ftelos') or goal. It is common to explain the behaviour of people, institutions and nations in terms of purposes and goals (John is sitting the bar exam to become a barrister; the school is holding a fete to raise funds for the roof; the country is going to war to protect its territory), and likewise modern evolutionary biology makes use of purposive explanation to account for the behaviour of, for instance, genes and genetic imperatives. However, Aristotle thought the concept of purpose could be invoked to explain the behaviour of everything in the universe. His reasoning lay in the idea that everything has a natural function and strives towards fulfilling or exhibiting that function, which is its best and most natural state. It is by means of the concept of function that Aristotle then ties his ethics to his physics, claiming that the natural function of man is to reason, and to reason well is to reason in accordance with virtue. Unlike the opposing ethical theories of Kant and Mill, both of which view actions as the subject of ethical judgements, Aristotle's ethics focuses on the character of the agent as that which is morally good or morally bad. This so- called 'virtue ethics' was revived with much critical success by Alistair Macintyre in late 20th century moral philosophy.

v EPICURUS(341-270bc)

Epicurus s ethics consisted in the pursuit of happiness, conceived of as the elimination of pain

Born to a poor Athenian colonist in Samos, Epicurus was neither wealthy nor aristocratic and apparently suffered from ill health for much of his life. His philosophy represents a creative blend of the metaphysical interests of the Presocratics with the ethical concerns of Socrates. In line with Democritus, Epicurus espoused an atomistic metaphysics but combined and justified it with a brand of therapeutic hedonism, in which the anxieties of contemporary life were salved by the pursuit of pleasure without fear of divine punishment.

In essence, Epicurus follows Democritus' atomism but with one important modification. According to Epicurus, atoms in the void originally moved in undisturbed parallel lines. However, some atoms swerved from their course by a spontaneous act of free will. The resulting collisions giving rise to the myriad forms of things and the phenomenal world as we now know it. This important modification of atomis allowed Epicurus to proclaim mechanism but reject determinism as an explanation of human behaviour, one of the primary reasons for dissatisfaction with Democritus' philosophy. Although he kept to the idea that the soul was itself nothing but the movement of atoms in the material body, some atoms could freely 'swerve in the void'. This mysterious and wholly unaccounted for property allowed Epicurus to maintain a concept of human free will against the critics of earlier atomic theories.

It is clear, however, that Epicurus' real interest was not in speculative metaphysics but with a practical philosophy of life which required atomism only for its theoretical underpinnings. His ethical teaching consisted in the pursuit of happiness, which he conceived of as the elimination of pain, both mental and physical. Of the two, Epicurus taught, mental pain is the worse, for severe physical pain either soon abates and can be brought under control of the mind, or results in death. Death was not to be feared, since there is no afterlife and no avenging

gods, the soul being, in accordance with the doctrine of atomism, merely the concatenation of atoms which will be dispersed upon bodily death. Mental anguish, on the other hand, in the form of anxiety and fears, could continue unabated and result in distraction, depression and other psychological ills.

Although thought of as a hedonist because of his emphasis on the pursuit of pleasure, it would be a mistake to think of Epicurus as condoning a promiscuous or decadent lifestyle, an accusation unjustly levelled at him by the stoic philosopher, Epictetus. On the contrary, he was aware that many of the bodily pleasures brought with them pain or had painful consequences. He himself was a man of little means and of poor health, given which it is perhaps unsurprising that central to his philosophy were both prudence and temperance. Epicurus also taught that wisdom was the greatest virtue, for through it we could learn which pleasures to seek and which to avoid. Moreover, he professed that no one could be completely happy unless they lived a virtuous life, not because virtue was good in itself, but because it led to pleasurable consequences and the absence of pain and fear.

Like Democritus and other Presocratics before him, Epicurus injected the idea of anthropomorphic gods who were cognisant of human affairs. Indeed, he was the first to formulate an argument that Inter became called 'the problem of evil' for those who maintain that IIlore is an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful deity. Noting the many ills suffered by people in the world, Epicurus complained, 'Is God willing lo prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then how can there be evil?' Even so, Epicurus was not an atheist, since he believed there were gods, but that these gods had no interest in human affairs, which would only have distracted them from their own pursuit of pleasure in contemplation.

Epicurus' philosophy represents a curious mix of opposing ideas. He is at once a hedonist who preaches prudence and temperance, a theist who rejects divine intervention and the survival of the soul, and an atomist who upholds both mechanism and free will. His followers became known as the Epicureans, the most famous of whom was Lucretius. Epicurean philosophy enjoyed almost six hundred years of popularity, remaining faithful to the teachings of its founder throughout, before being eclipsed by the Roman interest in Stoicism.

v DIOGENES OF SINOPE(400-325BC)

Nicknamed 'the dog' for his vagrant lifestyle, Diogenes was described as 'a Socrates gone mad'

Contemporary of Aristotle, Diogenes' style and method of philosophy could not have been further removed from that taught at Plato's Academy. Diogenes was a charismatic and enigmatic character and inspiration for the Cynics, a school of thought that rejected the complications and machinations of civic life. Whether Diogenes ever actually wrote down his ideas is open to question, but if so they are all lost and it would seem out of keeping with his lifestyle and philosophyfor him to have done so.

Diogenes professed a simplistic lifestyle, foregoing the trappings and distractions of civic life in favour of a devotion to the mastery of the self. Equally he reviled metaphysics and the intellectual pretensions of philosophers. Diogenes claimed that happiness could only be achieved by living 'according to nature'. This meant satisfying only the most basic requirements of the body by the simplest means possible. Nicknamed 'the dog' for his vagrant lifestyle, Diogenes was allegedly described by Plato as 'a Socrates gone mad'. He made his living by begging, refusing to wear anything but the simplest of cloth and was renowned for outrageous public stunts - once reputedly masturbating in front of a crowd to show how easily and trivially sexual desires canbe sated.

According to Diogenes, mastery of the self, or 'self-sufficiency', leads to both happiness and freedom but requires constant practice and training in the face of adversity. His uncompromising philosophy requires that one should abandon all property, possessions, family ties and social values in order to minimise the distraction of 'illusory' emotional and psychological attachments. But to avoid such distractions is not enough. One must aggressively attack society to help liberate others, and purposefully open oneself up to ridicule and abuse in order to remain emotionally detached. Though more

radical and uncompromising, Diogenes' philosophy has its counterpart in the teachings of the oriental schools of Buddhism and Taoism. However, critics complain that Diogenes' lifestyle is self-indulgent, relying on the generosity and productivity of others to support his vagrant lifestyle. There is a philosophical point here, not just a pragmatic one, concerning the universalisability of ethical prescriptions. If everyone were to follow Diogenes' example society would collapse making it economically impossible for anyone - including Diogenes - to concentrate on the mastery of the self. Therefore Diogenes' philosophy is elitist - it cannot be universally followed.

Such criticism hardly troubled the Cynics, the loose collection of philosophers who followed in Diogenes' footsteps. It must be noted that the term 'Cynic' had a different connotation from the modern one, being derived from the Greek word 'Kyon' meaning 'dog', Diogenes' nickname. In Ancient Greece and Rome, where a resurgent Cynicism also enjoyed brief popularity around 1 AD, the term stood for what we would now understand as asceticism. As such it would be over simplistic to pass off the Cynics' philosophy as merely self-indulgent or elitist. The Cynics' popularity coincided with times of economic turbulence and social unrest. Their ideas, which taught that the one thing of real value - which was neither family, friends, cultural values or material goods, but the mastery of the self - was the one thing that could not be taken away no matter how calamitous a misfortune one might suffer. As a general philosophic principle it has merit and was highly influential upon the later Stoic philosophers.

v MARCUS AURELIUS(121-180)

The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts'

Adopted son of the Emperor Pius, Marcus Aurelius himself became Homan emperor for almost 20 years until his death in 180 AD.

He is known for his only work the Meditations or Writings to Himself written, according to critics, in the midst of the Parthian war when he might have better used his time directing the army. Still, as a 'converted' Stoic, he had great concern for the social problems of the poor, slaves, and the imprisoned. Despite this, he continued, as emperor, with the persecution of the growing Christian population, undoubtedly because he saw them as a threat to the Roman religion and way of life, based us this was on conquest, polytheism, and the deification of dead emperors. His own life ended as a result of the plague, whilst he was planning a campaign to increase the domain of the Empire to the north.

The importance of his Meditations lies in their practical and aphoristic Stoic message. A loosely- organised set of thoughts relating to stoic philosophy, they nevertheless represent an example of a living ethic, of a teaching closer to religion than to philosophic speculation.

For example, the following is typical of Marcus Aurelius: 'The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature'.

Like Seneca before him, Marcus Aurelius believed that a divine providence had placed reason in man, and it was in the power of man to be one with the rational purpose of the universe. The Stoic philosophy was primarily concerned with living in accordance with both one‘s own nature and universal Nature, perhaps best understood in the sense meant by Taoist philosophers of the East. Simple living and contentment with one's lot go hand in hand with stoicism, but run the risk of leading to quietism. As a means of social control Stoicism is the ideal 'religion', since the more that people are willing to accept that things are just as they are, the less trouble they are likely to give the Emperor. Though it is unlikely that Marcus Aurelius professed Stoicismfor political purposes - the Meditations seem sincere enough - it is a factor of his philosophy that should not be ignored.

The rationale behind the Stoic insistence on living 'in accordance with nature' stems from a certain biological outlook. According to the Stoics, all 'ensouled beings' (by which they mean what we would now call 'sentient life') strive towards self-preservation. Self-preservation leads a being to look for that which is in tune with its nature and appropriate to its own being. Man, being endowed with reason, seeks not just food, warmth and shelter, but also that which is good for the intellect. Ultimately, Reason allows us to choose that which is in tune with our true nature with greater accuracy than if we merely follow our animal instinct.

Central to this Stoic outlook is an understanding of what constitutes the good or most appropriate life for human beings. Whilst many thinkers might suppose health or wealth, the Stoics insist that the ultimate good must be good at all times. It is conceivable that wealth might sometimes be detrimental to a

person, and so too even health, if for example, my strength were put to ill-doing. Accordingly, the Stoics conclude that the only infallible good is virtue. Virtue includes the usual list of Greco-Roman excellences: wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation.

v ST AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO(354-430)

Rational thought is the servant of faith: 'unless thou believe thou shalt not understand' Isaiah

Religious scholar and philosopher, Augustine produced works, principally his Confessions and his City of God, that are classics in both the philosophy of religion and Christian doctrine. Born in Algeria, he studied in Carthage, Rome and Milan before returning to North Africa to found a monastery. He was made Bishop of Hippo Regius in 395.

At the heart of Augustine's philosophy is the belief that only through faith can wisdom be attained. He saw both philosophy and religion as quests for the same thing, namely truth, but with the former inferior to the latter in this pursuit. The philosopher without faith could never attain to the ultimate truth, which for Augustine was beatitude, or 'the enjoying of truth. Although reason alone could attain to some truths, Augustine maintained that rational thought was the servant of faith.

One of Augustine favourite texts, quoted from Isaiah, held that 'unless thou believe thou shalt not understand. One must believe in order to acquire understanding. This idea of Augustine's was not mere slavish following of Christian doctrine. Indeed, in his youth he had renounced religion, finding the scriptures intellectually unsatisfying. After converting to Christianity in his early thirties, it became his aim to show how reason could prove the tenets of faith. This was the idea that informed his philosophy.

Augustine's use of reason to justify the doctrines of faith is best known, famously or infamously depending on one's point of view, for putting down the so-called Pelagian heresy. Pelagius had questioned the notion of original sin, and further held, in accordance with the notion of free will, that when a person does good they do so from the virtue of their own moral character. As a result they are rewarded in the servant it of faith shall not understand' Isaiah

Heaven, Augustine found this doctrine subversive and distasteful. He argued, following the Epistle of St Paul, that all men are born in sin. Redemption is only possible by the grace of God regardless of our actions on Earth. Adam, in taking the apple had condemned himself and all of mankind to damnation. Our only salvation lies in repentance, but this does not guarantee that we will be chosen to go to heaven and not to hell.

AUGUSTINE's arguments, later revived by Calvin and eventually abandoned by the Catholic Church, are skilled rationalisations of called St Paul‘sEpistle to the Romans. But nowhere does he question the assumptions of the Epistle, concentrating instead on drawing out the logical conclusions of the Scripture.

In more recent times, Augustine's Confessions received attention fromWittgenstein, not for its religious or even philosophical pronouncements, but for the way in which Augustine describes the learning of language:

When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shown by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes...Thus as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and I used them to express my own desires' (Confessions, I. 8)

At the beginning of his posthumously published Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein famously called this common-place conception 'the Augustinian picture of language. Much of the rest of the Investigations is a successful repudiation of the Augustinian conception of language.

v ST THOMAS AQUINAS(1225-1274) 'If the hand does not move the stick, the stick will not move anything else'

The favoured philosopher of the Catholic Church, Aquinas is principally remembered for reconciling the philosophy of Aristotle with Christian doctrine. Born in northern Sicily, he was educated

first at the University of Naples and later at Cologne, and lectured at Paris and Naples. Aquinas was canonized in 1323 by Pope John XII.

While much of Aquinas' work was Aristotelian in derivation, he also extended and clarified many of Aristotle's ideas and made many original contributions to Aristotelian thought. Chief amongst Aquinas' many achievements are the 'Five Ways', or proofs of the existence of God, from his Summa Theologica. The Five Ways are the clearest and most succinct attempt to prove the existence of God by means of logical argument.

In the first of the Five Ways, Aquinas says the existence of God can be proved by considering the concept of change. We can clearly see that some things in the world are in the process of change, andthis change must be a result of something else, since a thing cannot change of itself. But the cause of the change itself, since in the process of change, must also be caused to change by something other than itself, and so on again, ad infinitum. Clearly, there must be something which is the cause of all change, but which itself does not undergo change. For, as Aquinas says, 'if the hand does not move the stick, the stick will not move anything else. The first mover, Aquinas concludes, is God.

In the second Way, arguing in a similar manner to the first, Aquinas notes that causes always operate in series, but there must be a first cause of the series or there could not be a series at all. Interestingly, both the first and second Ways proceed on the assumption that a thing cannot cause itself. Yet this is precisely his conclusion, that there is a thing which does cause itself, namely, God. Philosophers have criticized this form of arguing as confused, since the proposition that appears to be proven in the conclusion is the very same proposition denied in the argument.

In the third Way, it is noted that we observe that things in the world come to be and pass away. But clearly not everything can be like this, for then there would have been a time when nothing existed. But if that were true then nothing could ever have come into being, since something cannot come from nothing. Therefore something must have always existed, and this is what people understand by God. The first, second and third Ways of Aquinas' arguments are often called variations of a more general argument, the Cosmological Argument.

In the fourth Way, Aquinas offers a version of the Ontological Argument (see Anselm). In Aquinas' version some things are noted to exhibit varying degrees of a quality. A thing may be more or less hot, more or less good, more or less noble. Such varying degrees of quality are caused by something that contains the most or perfect amount of that quality. For just as the sun is the hottest thing, and thus the cause of all other things being hot, so there must be some fully 'good' thing which makes all other things good. That which is most good is, of course, God.

Finally, in the fifth Way, Aquinas relies on Aristotle's notion of 'telos' or purpose. All things aim towards some ultimate goal or end. But to be guided by a purpose or a goal implies some mind that directs or intends that purpose. That director is, once again, God. Versions of Aquinas' cosmological and ontological arguments are still accepted by the Catholic Church today, though modern philosophers have almost unanimously rejected all five of Aquinas' Ways.

v NICOLAUS COPERNICUS(1473-1543)

Copernicus revived the planets revolve idea that the earth and around the sun

Born in Poland and graduate of Cracow University, Copernicus studied Greek philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and theology before becoming a canon of the cathedral at Frauenberg, where he finally settled. Inventor of modern astronomy, Copernicus did more to revolutionise man's conception of himself and his place in the universe than perhaps any other thinker, before or since. Even if his work would have a profound and negative impact on the Church, he was a man of impeccable orthodoxy. Although he delayed publication of his findings for fear of censure by the Church, it is clear that he believed his views were not inconsistent with his theology.

Prior to Copernicus, astronomers had favoured the view, following both Aristotle and Ptolemy, that the Earth was at the centre of the universe, with both the stars, sun and the moon revolving about it. Known as the Ptolemaic system, this view was wholly in keeping with many theological teachings, in which the universe is seen to be created by God for the express purpose of man. The effect of Copernicus' work was to turn all this on its head.

Probably first posited by Aristarchus of Samos around 340 BC, Copernicus revived the idea that the earth and planets revolve around Ihe sun, which remains in a fixed position. Moreover, he proclaimed lhat in this system the earth has a twofold motion. On the one hand it lurns on its own axis, rotating one full turn every twenty-four hours, and on the other it completely circumnavigates the sun every 364 days. This heliocentric (sun-centred) system was vigorously resisted by the Church, which saw it as usurping man's central place in creationist stories of the universe. By using Pythagorean calculations, however, Copernicus managed to predict and account for various astronomical observations with amazing accuracy. Although Copernicus claimed his work was no more than hypothetical, eventually the weight of evidence would be too great to be resisted, and before long Copernicus would famously be supported by Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, amongst others. Though still not widely accepted during his lifetime, by the end of the following century Copernicus' idea would have been refined to the point of irrefutability.

The heliocentric theory would soon be condemned by the Church, but Copernicus was careful during his life not to incur its wrath, unlike Galileo after him. Indeed Copernicus even dedicated the work in which he proclaims the heliocentric theory, the De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium, with apparent sincerity, to the Pope. It was only later, in Galileo's time, that the Church condemned Copernicus' work as heretical.

So great and profound was the effect of Copernicus' hypothesis on the intellectual world that philosophers and scientists have since coined the phrase 'Copernican Revolution' to describe world- changing ideas. The effect of the original 'Copernican Revolution' on the development of Western thought, both philosophical and scientific is difficult to exaggerate. It gave birth to the scientific age and helped remove many of the superstitious and ignorant beliefs so typical of the time. It would, for better or worse, lead to the decline of the power of the church, and to a new age of scientific inquiry andinvention.

v NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI(1467-1527) Never has the phrase the ends justify the means' been more appropriate

Florentine-born philosopher of the Italian Renaissance, Machiavelli was a diplomat and dramatist, but is best remembered for his hugely influential and notorious work of political theory, The Prince.which hasmade his name synomymous with political machinations. Providing a detailed analysis of successful, if on occasion immoral, political techniques, Machiavelli's text is still used today by students of both philosophy and politics. In The Prince, Machiavelli concentrates on those techniques a successful politician must use if he is to achieve his political ends, without regard to the moral justification of the means thereby employed. Often criticised by detractors for its lack of moral sensibility, it is nevertheless a work of great intellectual integrity and consistency.

In The Prince, Machiavelli considers how best a leader can achieve his ends once he has determined that the ends he has identified are worthwhile. Never has the phrase 'the ends justify the means' been more appropriately applied than it is to Machiavellian technique. The book is almost entirely practical, rarely speculating on the Tightness or wrongness of the methods adumbrated therein.

Nonetheless, The Prince does contain certain theses about which political ends are good. Machiavelli thinks there are three primary political 'goods': national security, national independence, and a strong constitution. Beyond this, he is almost entirely concerned with practical questions of how to go about securing political success. It is vain to pursue a good political end with inadequate means, for it will surely fail. One must pursue one's convictions with strength and courage if one is to be successful, employing whatever means necessary.

The heart of Machiavelli's teachings consists in the manipulation of others, including the populace, for power. To this end, although Machiavelli does not teach that virtue is good in itself, it can often serve one's political ends to appear to be virtuous. This is perhaps the doctrine that has caused most outrage against Machiavellian thought. But Machiavelli himself is unconcerned with such weak and even hypocritical sensibility. If, as we have said, one's ends are good in themselves, all that matters is that one brings them about; in order to do this, Machiavelli tells us, one must have more power than one's opponents. Without doubt, The Prince is a work meant only for those that have the fibre to take this fact, surely true, however unpleasant, seriously.

Although The Prince is unflinching in its teachings, it must be read alongside Machiavelli's longerand more balanced work, the Discourses, if his own views are to be fairly understood. In the

Discourses, he provides more detailed background as to what he thinks makes a good and successful constitution. His political ideal is the republic run by the Princes, leaders of the principalities, but held in check by both the noblemen and ordinary citizens, all of whom share a part in the constitution. As Russell rightly says in his commentary on Machiavelli, the Discourses might easily be read by an eighteenth century liberal without occasioning much surprise or disagreement. Machiavelli has no time for tyrannies, not because people have an inalienable right to freedom, but because tyrannies are less stable, more cruel and more inconstant than governments held in esteem by a reasonably ontent population. It is the achievement of such a government that is Machiavelli's prime political concern.

v DESIDERIUS ERASMUS(1466-1536) For Erasmus, religion is...a confidence in human reason to know nnd worship God

Dutch humanist philosopher and theologian, Erasmus was the illegitimate son of a priest and was himself forced into a monastic life hy his guardians. In the monastery at Steyr his lifelong passion for I atin began, and he quickly outstripped the ability of his tutors.

He escaped the monastic life in his late twenties and proceeded lo travel and study widely. He eventually came to England and struck up a friendship with Thomas More, which lasted until the latter's death .it the hands of Henry VIII. It was whilst making his way to England on a subsequent visit from Italy that he conceived his best known work, In Praise of Folly. Arriving at More's house in London, he quickly committed it to paper and published it, with More's support, in 1509.

In Praise of Folly has a dual purpose. On the one hand, Erasmus uses it to satirise and inveigh against the offices and institutions of the Church, for which he had developed a deep hatred during his time at Steyr. He attacks the monastic orders and their conception of worship as consisting in 'the precise number of knots to the tying on their sandals'. With more venom he goes on, 'It will be pretty to hear their pleas before the great tribunal: one will brag how he mortified his carnal appetite by feeding only upon fish: another will urge that he spent most of his time on earth in the divine exercise of singing psalms... but Christ will interrupt: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, I left you but one precept, of loving one another, which I do not hear anyone plead that he has faithfully discharged."'

This introduces the central theme of Erasmus's Folly, namely his concern with religion as a worship 'from the heart' that has no need of the offices and intermediaries supplied by the Church. True religion, Erasmus insists, is a form of Folly, in the sense that it is simplistic and direct, not convoluted with unnecessary sophistications and dogmatic doctrine. For Erasmus, religion is based on a thorough-going humanism, understood in its classical sense as a confidence in human reason to know and worship God.

In similar vein, Erasmus was no friend of scholasticism, nor indeed of the philosophical fathers of his day, Plato and Aristotle. Erasmus's hero was Augustine, from whom he took the doctrine that reason must be the servant of faith. Apart from In Praise of Folly and his later Colloquia much of his work consisted in Greek and Latin translations of the Bible.

Erasmus had enormous influence on ushering in the Reformation, but surprisingly, in the struggle between the Catholics and the Protestants, the latter of whom were undoubtedly closer to Erasmus' religious ideas, he eventually sided with the Catholics. This apparent contradiction reflects his somewhat timid nature. He could not condone the violence of the Lutherans, preferring to attack the Catholics with words rather than actions. When More was executed by Henry VIII for refusing to accept his supremacy over the Pope as head of the Church of England, Erasmus is quoted as saying, 'Would More have never meddled with that dangerous business, and left the theological cause to the theologians. A quote that brings into sharp relief the difference between his character and the uncompromising, incorruptible nature of More.

v FRANCIS BACON(1561-1626)

The repetetive occurrence of an incident does not guarantee that the same thing will happen again'

English philosopher of science, Francis Bacon was the forerunner of the famed British school of philosophers that include Locke, Berkeley, Hume, J. S. Mill and Bertrand Russell. Bacon's important works include The Advancement ofLearning, New Atlantis and the Novum Organum. Bacon was also an essayist and enjoyed a successful legal and political career, in particular after James I's succession of Elizabeth, whereupon he was made Lord Chancellor until being found guilty of corruption.

Attributed as the originator of the saying 'knowledge is power', his importance as a philosopher is most notable with regard to his concern for scientific method. Bacon was troubled by the two schools of thought that had come out of Platonism and Aristotelianism respectively. Firstly, the rationalist view that knowledge could be gained by examining the content and meanings of words - a view Bacon dismissed as like spinning a web from the inside of one's own head. Secondly, the Aristotelians, intent on collecting masses of empirical data, where equally useless at helping a man arrive at any scientific hypotheses. What was needed, insisted Bacon, was a new way of collating and organising data that would help generate inductive hypotheses.

Bacon, like many of his contemporaries and predecessors, had been concerned with the problem of induction, a problem that would later receive an astonishingly sceptical response from Hume. The problem of induction, as Bacon's contemporaries saw it, was that the mere repetitive occurrence of an incident does not guarantee that the same thing will happen again. To give a simple example, suppose a man draws nine blue marbles out of a bag of ten. It is no more likely that the tenth marble will be blue than it is that it will be red. The previous instances do not guarantee anything about the following instance.

Bacon saw that the answer to this problem lay in placing the emphasis of investigation on looking for negative instances to disconfirm hypotheses, rather than finding ways of confirming them. This is a striking precursor to Karl Popper's twentieth century falsificationist scientific methodology and his much vaunted claim of 'solving the problem of induction. As Popper readily admits, he owes much to Francis Bacon.

However, unlike others of his time, and later, Hume, Bacon was less interested in the problem of justifying inductive generalisations, than in how to generate good inductive hypotheses out of the masses of data collected by observation. Bacon devised a new method. To illustrate it, Bacon shows how one might generate an hypothesis on the nature of heat. One should, Bacon tells us, list all those things in which the property under investigation, in this case heat, is present, then all those things in which the property is absent and finally all those cases which admit of varying degrees of the property in question. From such a list. Bacon believes the natural hypothesis will present itself, which in this case, as he well knew at the time, is that heat is produced according to the movement or excitation of molecules within a body.

Although Bacon's method is undoubtedly one way of applying order to a body of data, and even perhaps a useful way in some cases, it nevertheless seems unlikely to fulfil his ambition, which was to find a systematic way of deriving scientific hypotheses from the arrangement of data. It is unlikely that there ever could be such a system. Bacon failed to take into account the creativity and imaginative aspect of scientific theory building. No matter how systematically one organises data, inductive hypotheses cannot be guaranteed to appear out of them. One may find that some facts deductively follow from a certain ordering of data, but that is not what Bacon was after.

Despite his failure in this regard, Bacon nevertheless made some important contributions to the philosophy of science and to the problem of induction, not least, as we have seen, in being the first to stress the importance of negative instances.

v GALILEO GALILEI(1564-1642)

The first to discover the law of falling bodies, Galileo was far more than just an astronomer

Italian philosopher, astronomer, scientist and mathematician, Galileo is probably best remembered for his work in support of Copernicus' heliocentric theory of the solar system. For the sake of his life, Galileo recanted his views in 1633, admitting that the earth did not spin on its own axis. It is unlikely that the recantation was sincere and he nevertheless remained under house arrest.

In 1608 the Dutchmen Lippershey invented the telescope. Within two years Galileo used it to dramatic effect, showing by his astronomical observations that the Ptolemaic or geocentric theory which held that the Earth was at the centre of the universe, was seriously flawed. Galileo also observed that the Milky Way was in fact made up of many millions of individual stars. He observed the phases of Venus and discovered the moons of Jupiter, which had theological experts up in .irrns. Indeed, Galileo's findings attracted such sharp criticism, both Irom secular and ecclesiastical quarters that he felt compelled to offer, both in his defence and in reply to his critics, the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina in 1615. In the Letter, Galileo argues that scientific .ind theological matters should not be confused. Science could not cast doubt on religious doctrine, only strengthen it. Nonetheless he was condemned by the Inquisition, first in private communication in 1616 and later in 1633, when he publicly recanted.

Although his work was instrumental in bringing the Copemican system into prominence, Galileo was far more than just an astronomer. Much of his important work lay in dynamics and the principles of movement. He was the first to discover the law of falling bodies, or constant acceleration, published after his recantation and whilst still under house arrest in 1638, in his Discourse on Two New Sciences. Moreover, what would later be Newton's celebrated First Law of Motion was directly taken from Galileo's principle of inertia, namely that a body moves in a straight line with uniform velocity unless acted upon. This principle was important in helping to support the Copernican theory. Critics of Copernicus had claimed that if the heliocentric theory weretrue, then a falling body should not fall in a straight line, but in fact land somewhat to the west of the point from which it was dropped, on account of the eastwise rotation of the Earth. It had been proven by experiment that this was not the case, a result which led many to dismiss Copernicus as wrong even if they did not share the religious reasons for dismissing him. It took Galileo's work in dynamics to show why the prediction was not fulfilled. Simply put, the falling stone retains the rotational velocity of the Earth.

Philosophically, Galileo held that 'the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics'. He was heavily influenced by Greek philosophy and a great admirer of Archimedes. He also maintained, like Locke, that there was a metaphysical distinction between the primary and secondary qualities of bodies. The former are essential and inherent in objects, whereas the latter exist only insofar as they cause certain effects in the minds of observers. Undoubtedly, Galileo was a great thinker who risked much in the pursuit of truth, helping to set free the quest for knowledge from the chains of religious dogmatism.

THOMAS HOBBES(1588-1679)

Without the rule of law, the life of man would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short'

British philosopher and author of the famous political treatise Leviathan. Although Hobbes made important contributions in a number of other fields, including geometry, ballistics and optics, it is for his work as a political thinker that he is best known. Like both Bacon and Descartes, Hobbes sought to underpin his inquiries not by finding out more facts but by finding and using a new methodology. Unlike Descartes, his concerns were more political than epistemological, but he borrowed from him, and other contemporaries such as Galileo and Newton, the idea that if the natural sciences could be underpinned by axiomatic laws of nature, then this should also be the case for the social sciences. Hobbes' method was to apply the rule of natural law to the realm of politics.

Hobbes‘ new political science first appeared in his Elements of Law in 1640, a treatise not intended to be published, but rather for use by supporters of King Charles I to justify the king's actions to an increasingly hostile Parliament. Hobbes spent the next ten years in self-imposed exile in France, where he made a name for himself as a serious thinker. His De Cive, published in Paris in 1642, develops the themes of the Elements, but his thought is exhibited at its best in his masterpiece, the Leviathan. According to Hobbes man acts according to certain natural laws. In an analogy reminiscent of Newton's first law of motion, which says matter will behave in a uniform way unless acted upon, Hobbes believes the natural state of man is one of war and strife, unless acted upon and governed by the rules of social living. Only a covenant kept by the rule of the sword can keep man from falling back into his natural state. Without the covenant, Hobbes tells us, society would disintegrate and it would be 'a war ofevery man, against every man' and the result would inevitably be that the life of man would be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Accordingly, Hobbes advances the notion of a social contract by which we are kept - and keep each other - from falling into this dark, naturalstate of war and strife. Every man operates, says Hobbes, according to a natural law of selfpreservation. We each naturally want what is good for ourselves, and the covenant ensures that this can only be gained by taking into account the good of others.

Hobbes' social contract is premised upon the naturalistic forces that drive human beings. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Hobbes turns out to be a materialist, for whom everything in the universe is corporeal, ruling out the existence of such things as incorporeal spirits or souls. Even God is merely matter. Not since the presocratic Greeks had a philosopher advanced such an unremitting materialism. Although in the spirit of his times, many of his contemporaries hesitated to make so bold as he, fearing the censure of the Church.

This materialism, however, had to make way for some element of free will without invoking the incorporeal soul or mind. For although Hobbes made much of the natural state of man, he had to give

some account of how societies came about according to a covenant. For Hobbes, free will and determinism were not mutually exclusive, but compatible notions. Just as water is unconstrained and yet will always How to earth, so is man free but constrained by natural law. So long as a man is free to follow his natural inclinations, which ultimately are to survive and multiply, he is free to act. That man's inclinations are determined by his nature presents no problem for Hobbes.

v RENE DESCARTES(1596-1650) 'Cogito ergo sum' (I think, therefore I am)

French philosopher and mathematician, Descartes is often called the father of modern philosophy. Known to physicists as the discoverer of the law of refraction in optics, Descartes' most famous work is in philosophy. Meditations onFirst Philosophy set the agenda for speculation in the philosophy of mind and epistemology for at least the next 300 years. He raised problems of such radical scepticism about our knowledge of the world that he suggests that the only thing one can be certain of is the fact of one's own existence, an insight summed up in his famous maxim 'cogito ergo sum', popularly translated as 'I think therefore I am'.

Descartes' program in the Meditations is to put the edifice of human knowledge upon secure foundations. Reviewing his beliefs, he finds that many are contrary. Some are more or less justified than others; some, such as the propositions of mathematics, seem certain; others readily turn out to be false. He resolves to put some kind of order into this jumble of beliefs so that justification of one proposition may follow from another. In order to do that he needs to begin with whatever is most certain and infallible. The question is, where to start?

Descartes comes up with an ingenious program. Rather than attempt to examine and order each belief in turn, a task impossible to contemplate, he decides to examine his beliefs against a method of doubt. The method of doubt consists in questioning the source of his holiefs and asking whether that source is infallible. If not, he can besure that any belief from that source cannot be relied upon to provide the foundations of knowledge.

To begin with, Descartes notes that many of his beliefs are derived from his senses, or from perception. He notes that the senses, however, can often mislead. A stick may look bent viewed half submerged in water, the true size of the sun and the moon is many times greater than would appear from sight and so on. One can even suffer hallucinations such that what one thinks to be there does not exist at all. Descartes resolves not to trust completely that which has deceived him once, and therefore rejects any information obtained through the senses as being uncertain and fallible.

Even so, one might think that although the senses may deceive from time to time, Descartes can be sure, at least, that he is sitting in his study, or is a Frenchman with an interest in philosophy and so on. But he recognises that there is no clear and distinct way of telling the difference between reality and dreaming. How does he know that the life he thinks he is leading is not just part of a dream? There are no clear ways of distinguishing between waking life and a life merely dreamt.

So, rejecting all perceptual knowledge, Descartes turns to what he believes on account of his own internal reflections. Surely he knows that 2 + 3 = 5, that a mother is older than her daughter, that a triangle has three sides? But it could be the case, reflects Descartes, that he is the subject of a massive deception. Now Descartes imagines a scenario wherein he might be deceived by a divinely powerful, but malignant being; a demonic being that could manipulate his thoughts, as God might if he were not supremely good, into thinking anything the demon might choose. This idea of wholesale radical deception has been the subject of recent popular films such as The Matrix and Twelve Monkeys. Descartes realizes, however, that there is one proposition that neither the evil demon nor even God could ever make false. This is that at any time when he thinks, it must be the case that he exists. For he must exist in order to be able to think. By such reasoning Descartes is led to the cogito as the one certain, infallible rock of knowledge.

For Descartes, the cogito was the beginning of a project in which he attempted to prove the existence of God, in order to guarantee the rest of human knowledge. His commentators, unimpressed by his weak version of Anselm's ontological argument or his own 'trademark argument' to prove the existence of God, have taken the Meditations to be the definitive work of epistemological scepticism.

v BENEDICT DE SPINOZA(1632-1677)

There is only one substance, and that substance we can conceive of as either Nature or God

Dutch philosopher of Jewish origin, Spinoza remains one of the most compelling if difficult philosophers of the Rationalist school. Greatly influenced by Descartes and Euclid, he takes rationalism to its logical extremes, determining to set out the principles of an ethical system in axiomatic format, much as Euclid proved his theorems of geometry. Spinoza's ambitious project is perhaps one of the greatest ever undertaken in philosophy and it is a mark of his greatness that, to aconsiderable extent, he was remarkably successful in this undertaking.

In the posthumously published Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (Ethics demonstrated in geometrical order), Spinoza sets out the rix/omswhich he takes to be self-evident and then proceeds, step by step, to deduce ethical conclusions. Like Descartes, he is concerned to set knowledge on logical foundations: his ethical conclusions must therefore first be founded on a number of ontological, metaphysical and epistemic beliefs. Each of these is, in turn, demonstrated in geometric fashion.

Central to Spinoza's philosophy is the idea, similar to that of Parmenides, that everything in the universe is One. There is only one substance and that substance we can conceive of as either Nature or God. This substance has infinitely many attributes but human beings, being finite, can only perceive two of them, extension and thought. Unlike Descartes, who thought mind and body were two separate kinds of thing, Spinoza argues that mind and body are just different ways of conceiving the same reality.

This reality, Nature or God, is wholly selfcontained, self-causing and self-sufficient. Everything in the universe is part of God, and everything that happens is a necessary part or expression of the divine nature. The upshot of this pantheistic view is to remove free will from the realm of human actions. After all, if human beings are part of the divine reality there is no room for independent causal actions. Spinoza is more than happy with this conclusion, he is a thorough-going determinist: '...experience tells us clearly that men believe themselves to be free simply because they are conscious of their actions and unconscious of the causes whereby these actions are determined; further, it is plain that the dictates of the mind are simply another name for the appetites that vary according to the varying state of thebody.'

Nevertheless, Spinoza does find a way of making room for a kind of freedom, though it is not of the sort that philosophers are generally used to. Each individual, says Spinoza, is a localised concentration of the attributes of reality, really a quasi-individual, since the only true individual is the universe in totality. Insofar as the quasi- individual is ruled by his emotions, he is unfree and at the mercy of finite understanding. To become free, the individual must, by means of rational reflection, understand the extended causal chain that links everything as one. To become aware of the totality of the universe is to be freed, not from causal determinism, but from an ignorance of one's true nature.

What then, of wickedness, sin and evil?

Since everything is part of one reality, there is no such thing as evil from the viewpoint of the whole - 'sub specie aeternitis' (from the aspect of eternity). That which appears evil does so only because we lack the understanding to see the bigger picture, the chain of causes that makes all events a necessary part of divine reality. Though many were shocked by this in Spinoza's day, it reflects the same sentiment expressed by those Christians who persevere in the face of adversity by claiming that 'God moves in mysterious ways' and 'ours is not to reason why'. Of course, for Spinoza, to reason why is exactly what we must do to attain freedom.

Interestingly, Spinoza's philosophy is both mystical, rational and theistic. Yet he was excommunicated from the Jewish community forhis views, denounced as an atheist by Christians and declared so wicked that at one time his books were publicly burnt. Leibniz, who owes a great deal to him, rarely acknowledges the debt. Despite the rigour and integrity of his work, Spinoza remains one of the lesser studied and least regarded of all the rationalist philosophers.

v JOHN LOCKE(1632-1704)

The mind at birth is like be written on by the a blank slate, waiting to world of experience

In his day, John Locke was an important political figure and author of the liberal exposition Two Treatises of Government. An associate of the Earl of Shaftesbury, Locke spent time in exile in Holland, returning to England after the 'Glorious Revolution¹ of 1688. It is for his views on the nature of human knowledge, however, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding that he is remembered in modern

philosophy. Twenty years in the writing, the book was to exert such an influence on the next 100 years of Westemthought that its author is considered by many to be the greatest British philosopher of all time. The works of Berkeley, Kant and Hume are all direct successors to Locke's Essay.

The subject of Locke's Essay, as given in the title, is the nature of human understanding, that is, the very way in which the human mind collects, organises, classifies and ultimately makes judgements based on data received through the senses. Greatly influenced by the scientific turn of his day, and a personal friend of two renowned contemporary scientists, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, Locke's intent was to set the foundations of human knowledge on a sound scientific footing. He had read with great interest Descartes' Meditations, but rejected the rationalist philosophy that underpinned its conclusions. For Locke, there could be no innate knowledge: rather, everything we know must be derived from experience, through the actions of the physical world on our sense organs. This is the view now known as empiricism, a view still central, in essence if not detail, to the philosophies of Quine and other modern thinkers. Locke's detractors, the Rationalists (see Descartes, Berkeley, Leibniz) with whom the Empiricists battled for ideological supremacy throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, have their modern counterparts in the supporters of Noam Chomsky and his philosophy of innate, or generative, grammar.

Locke states that the mind at birth is like a blank slate, or tabula rasa, waiting to be written on by the world of experience. All human knowledge is derived from ideas presented to the mind by the world of experience. However, these ideas can be classified into two general sorts.

There are complex ideas and simple ideas. Simple ideas are the immediate products of sensory stimulation, examples would be yellow', 'bitter', 'warm', 'round', 'hard' and so on. Complex ideas are constructions out of simple ideas, and are the product of internal mental operations. These include all our ideas of familiar material objects, such as tables, chairs, cats, dogs and horses. But complex ideas need not represent anything real in the world. This accounts for ideas like that of a unicorn, a complex idea itself made up from conjoining other complex ideas, such as 'horse' and 'horn'.

Among Locke's simple ideas is a distinction between those that are primary qualities of objects and others that are secondary qualities. The distinction divides those qualities thought to be essential and inherent to all objects and those that are apparent only on account of the effect objects have on our senses. Primary qualities are those such as solidity, extension, shape, motion or rest, and number. Secondary qualities are those such as colour, scent and taste. These are secondary because, according to Locke, they do not inhere in objects themselves, but are causally produced only in our minds by the effect of an object's primary qualities upon our senses. Another way of conceiving them is to say primary qualities are objective (really exist) and secondary ones subjective (only exist in the minds of observers).

In the popular conundrum of whether a falling tree makes a sound when there is no one to hear it, Locke's view would be that the falling tiee creates vibrations in the air, but that there is no 'sound' strictly speaking, since sound is not a 'real' or primary quality. This view, sometimes called 'scientific essentialism', leads to the metaphysical conclusion, plausible to many modern thinkers, that without a perceiving mind, there is no such thing in the world as colour or sound, sweet or sour and so on; but there are really such things as shape, extension and solidity, independently of whether anyone perceives them or not.

v VOLTAIRE(1694-1778)

He [the theist] laughs at Lorette and at Mecca; but he succours the needy and defends the oppressed'

Voltaire was born Francois-Marie Arouet, to a wealthy Parisian family. Intended for the legal profession, Voltaire rebelled against his family's wishes and pursued a literary career, much to the embarrassment, at times, of his parents. He was imprisoned in the Bastille for penning libellous poems, during which time he wrote tragedies and adopted the name of Voltaire. After a second spell in prison, he quit France for England, where he came under the lasting influence of the works of Locke and Newton.

Following Locke and Newton, Voltaire championed reason over superstition and, though he held certain deistic beliefs, denounced the power of the clergy. He later contributed to what proved to be perhaps the greatest intellectual project of the times, the Encyclopedia edited by Diderot and Jean d'Alembert. The Encyclopedia was to become the subject of further controversy for Voltaire, as it was considered to be a challenge to faith by encouraging people to look to the power of mason.

Alongside his championship of reason, Voltaire became a strong voice in calls for freedom of expression. Since he had himself been persecuted for his writings this was, perhaps, a natural consequence of his own experience. Accordingly he wrote many satires on what he saw as the abuse of

power by society's elite, inevitably bringing himself into conflict with this elite once again. Typical of his view of religion is the following excerpt from his Philosophical Dictionary, an eminently readable work even by today's literary standards, in which he relates the qualities of a theist: 'Reconciled in this principle with the rest of theuniverse, he does not embrace any of the sects, all of which contradict each other; his religion is the most ancient and the most widespread; for the simple worship of a God has preceded all the systems of the world.

He speaks a language that all peoples understand, while they do not understand one another. He has brothers from Peking to Cayenne, and he counts all wise men as his brethren. He believes that religion does not consist either in the opinions of an unintelligible metaphysic, or in vain display, but in worship and justice. The doing of good, there is his service; being submissive to God, there is his doctrine. The Mohamedan cries to him; "Have a care if you do not make the pilgrimage to Mecca!"" Woe unto you," says a Recollet, "if you do not make a journey to Notre-Dame de Lorette!" He laughs at Lorette and at Mecca; but he succours the needy and defends the oppressed.'

It is small wonder the Church found him vexatious. But Voltaire's interests were much wider than theology. During his time in England, he had also greatly admired the English constitution. On considering democracy, he writes, One questions every day whether a republican government is preferable to a king's government. The dispute ends always by agreeing that to govern men is very difficult. The Jews had God Himself for master; see what has happened to them on that account: nearly always have they been beaten and slaves but do you not find today they cut a pretty figure?'

As a philosopher Voltaire is not by his own work particularly original. However, he must be included in any retrospective of Western thought for the huge influence his writings have had. Voltaire did more to popularise and instigate 'the age of reason' than any other philosopher. His style is always readable, provocative and laced with wit. Not until the plays and stories of the existentialists in the twentieth century would philosophy be again so popularly read.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU(1712-1778)

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains'

Rousseau was bom in Geneva, the son of a watchmaker. Rousseau's mother died in child birth and his father showed little interest in him; the young Rousseau was left in Geneva when his father was exiled to Lyons. At the age of fourteen Rousseau left Geneva and after several adventures, ended up in Turin. Several more years of wandering from place to place passed until he was taken into the private care of a certain Madame de Warens. Under her care he took to reading and study and spent some eight years there until obtaining a job as secretary to the French Ambassador in Venice. He did not write his first independent work until he was nearly forty years old, but soon became famous on its publication. He became the leading French philosopher of the Enlightenment, responsible for inaugurating the Romantic movement in Continental philosophy. Despite his success as a writer, Rousseau fell out with almost everyone who knew him, including the Catholics and Mme de Warens, who had by this time become his mistress. He fell out too with the Protestants and the Government of France after publishing The Social Contract. He ended his days alone in poverty and despair having fled from country to country. After quarrelling withhis one-time friend David Hume in England, he finally expired in Paris most probably committing suicide.Apart from his collaboration on Diderot's Encyclopedia, Rousseau's best works are his Confessions Emile, and The Social Contract.

The Social Contract is Rousseau's magnum opus, in which he provides a blueprint for the ideal society, in contrast to the contemporary social, political and educational climate which he had criticized in hi_ earlier work, particularly Emile and The Origin of Inequality. In these works, Rousseau had argued that injustice was a result of institution, which suppress the natural will and ability of men. In the later book, Rousseau introduces his famous concept of 'the noble savage', declaring that Men in a state of nature do not know good and evil, but only their independence', and this along with 'the peacefulness of their passions, and their ignorance of vice, prevents them from doing ill'.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains'. With this famous opening line, Rousseau begins The Social Contract. Frequently misinterpreted as a blueprint for totalitarianism, Rousseau's work stressed the connection between liberty and law, freedom and justice. The ruler, emphasises Rousseau, is the agent of the people not the master, and yet his doctrine of an abstract general will appears to license the tyranny of the majority over minorities. For although Rousseau esteems the democratic process, he combines it with a duty of all those who participate in society to obey that which is for the

greater good of the state, thus eioding any notion of individual rights. Indeed, Rousseau insists explicitly that any notion of individual rights must be forsaken.

The general will, Rousseau tells us, is the will of all those directed to their own common interests and must be understood as distinct from 'the will of all', which is merely the aggregate of individual selfish wills. 'Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole'. The general will, however, appears to generate a force that is greater than the sum of its parts. There is a suggestion in Rousseau's writings that the general will takes on the aspect of a personal will, over and above the members of the society that give it power. The populace have a duty to obey, leading to the interpretation of Rousseau as condoning totalitarianism. What is often missing in this interpretation, is, firstly, Rousseau's insistence that the direct democracy he advocates is only really practicable in small city-states, and indeed Rousseau takes as his model and ideal the city-states of Ancient Greece that were known at times to practise just this sort of democracy. Secondly, and this is the significance of the small city-state, insofar as the sovereign can impose legislation upon the members of the state in the name of the general will, the sovereign is no more than the community itself in its legislative and collective capacity. In other words, as Rousseau sees it, there can be no disharmony between the interests of the sovereign and the interests of the people, since by definition, the former is constituted from the latter.

However, one should not overlook the fact that there are serious tensions in Rousseau's concept of a social contract. Rousseau is not so much the idealist that he does not realise there will be timeswhen an individual's will runs counter to the general will. In such cases there is no compromise: the individual shall be forced to comply, or in Rousseau's pithy but rather chilling words, This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free.

IMMANUEL KANT(1724-1804)

'What are the necessary preconditions for having any experience at all?'

Probably the greatest and most influential philosopher since Aristotle, Kant spent almost the whole of his life exclusively in his birthplace, Konigsberg. Popular myth has it that the Konigsberg professor, an inveterate bachelor, was so regular in his daily constitutional that housewives would set their clocks by the time at which he passed their windows. Undoubtedly apocryphal, the story nevertheless highlights the fact that Kant was a very unadventurous fellow, with little interest in music or the arts but with a passion for mathematics, logic and science. Kant claimed in his work to have discovered and laid out universal principles of thought applicable to the whole of mankind and for all time. Kant's influence stems largely from the firsttwo of his three Critiques - the mammoth and cryptic Critique of Pure Reason (1781), in which he sets out to discover and justify the principles underlying objective judgements about reality; and the shorter, more lucid Critique of Practical Reason (1788), in which he attempts to give a rational justification for ethical judgements.

The Critique of Judgement (1790), principally concerned with the ideas of beauty and purpose, has received considerably less attention.

In the first of his Critiques, Kant was concerned to justify metaphysics as a legitimate subject of inquiry. In Kant's eyes, it had been brought into disrepute by the impasse between the rationalists (see Leibniz) and the empiricists (see Hume). The former claimed that metaphysical judgements - the fundamental principles upon which all knowledge is based - are known and justified purely by the intellect. The empiricists on the other hand, claimed that the human mind is like a blank sheet or tabula rasa waiting to be written upon by the world of experience.

Kant's genius was finding a way to synthesize these two opposing views. His fundamental insight sprang from posing the question, 'what are the necessary preconditions for having any experience at all?' He argued that in order for human beings to interpret the world the human mind had to impose certain structures on the flux of incoming sense-data. Kant attempted to define these in terms of twelve fundamental judgements he called the Categories (substance, cause/ effect, reciprocity, necessity, possibility, existence, totality, unity, plurality, limitation, reality and negation) which could only be applied within a spatial and temporal framework. Thus Kant claimed both the Categories and space and time, which he called 'forms of intuition', were imposed on phenomenal experience by the human mind in order to make sense of it. This idea Kant proudly called his 'Copernican revolution. Like Copernicus, who had turned the traditional idea of the sun orbiting the earth on its head, Kant had solved the problem of how

the mind acquires knowledge from experience by arguing that the mindimposes principles upon experience to generate knowledge. This idea was later to have great influence on the phenomenologists and gestalt psychologists of the twentieth century.

Just as Kant had laid down laws of thought in his first Critique, so in his second he claimed to have discovered a universal moral law which he called 'the categorical imperative. He gave several formulations of this law, the first of which was 'act by that maxim which you can at the same time will as a universal law. In essence, this categorical imperative is an expression of the oft-heard moral remonstration: 'what if everybody did that?' Kant realised that taking this seriously entailed that some moral rules could not be rationally broken. Suppose an agent is about to break a promise but stops first to consider Kant's imperative: 'could I will that promise breaking become a universal law?' According lo Kant the answer is no, for it is only against the background of some people keeping promises that the practice of promising makes any sense. Thus one cannot rationally assert that everyone should break their promises and hence, argued Kant, we have a duty as rational creatures to keep them.

Kant thought this kind of reasoning could be applied to many of our most cherished moral imperatives and would entail the obedience of any rational creature. Versions of Kant's theory of moral duty, often called deontological theories, have been widely upheld and defended by philosophers up to and including the present day.

v GEORGE WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL(1770-1831)

Ultimate truth is slowly uncovered through the unfolding evolution of the history of ideas

German idealist born in Stuttgart, Hegel produced perhaps the most difficult and yet influential works of any philosopher since Kant. His most important are The Phenomenology of the Spirit, an early work, and the more mature Philosophy of Right. Taking up where Kant left off, Hegel attempts to construct a grand metaphysic that will close the gap between appearance and reality that Kant's 'transcendental idealism' seemed to have left wide open.

In Kant's metaphysics, since the mind imposes certain categories on experience, all that human knowledge can attain to is a complete and systematic knowledge of the phenomena presented to the mind. This leaves the reality behind those appearances, what Kant called 'the noumenal world', utterly beyond any possible human conception. It was a result Kant saw as inevitable, but which Hegel found unacceptable.

In Hegel's philosophy, ultimate truth is slowly uncovered through the unfolding evolution of the history of ideas. There is an absolute truth which, Hegel claims, is not propositional truth but rather conceptual. Fhis difficult idea is best approached by first understanding Hegel's views on the development of history and of thought.

According to Hegel, the fundamental principle of the understanding mind is the commitment to the falsehood of contradictions. When an idea is found to involve a contradiction, a new stage in the development of thought must occur. Hegel called this process 'dialectic. Hegelian dialectic begins with a thesis, initially taken to be true. Reflection reveals that there is a contradictory point of view to the thesis, which Hegelcalls the 'antithesis', that has an equal claim of legitimacy. Faced with two incompatible ideas, thesis and antithesis, a new and third position becomes apparent, which Hegel calls the 'synthesis. The synthesis now becomes a new thesis, for which an antithesis will sooner or later become apparent, and once more generate yet another synthesis, and so the process continues.

This gradual, and in Hegel's view, necessary unfolding of thought is a progression towards absolute truth, indeed towards an absolute universal mind or spirit. But truth for Hegel is not propositional. In other words truth does not belong to assertions that say the world, or reality, is of such and such a nature. Rather, attainment of truth in Hegelian philosophy is the attainment of completeness, or the transcendence of all limitation. Ideas, or to use Hegel's terminology, concepts, are that which are capable of being false rather than assertions or propositions. Falsehood is merely limitation, the incomplete understanding of the absolute. This entails that for Hegel falsified scientific theories are not in themselves wholly wrong, but merely do not tell the whole story. They are limited conceptions of a more all-embracing truth.

Hegel's dialectic process concludes with a grand metaphysical conception of universal mind. He tells us: 'The significance of that 'absolute' commandment, 'know thyself, whether we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstance of its first utterance - is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect

of the particular capacities... of the single self. The knowledge it commands m^rans that of man's genuine reality of what is essentially and ultimately true and real - of spirit as the true and essential being.

The complexities of Hegelian philosophy are manifold and so too, perhaps as a result of both this and the obscurity of his writings, are the many schools and philosophical influences that arose from his work. Perhaps the most significant influence exerted by Hegelian philosophy, however, is in the work of Karl Marx.

ADAM SMITH(1723-1790)

Unintended consequences of intended action' will be to the benefit of society at large

Scottish philosopher of morals, politics and economics, Smith was a contemporary of Hume and is very close to him in outlook and philosophic temperament. His lectures on ethics and logic were published under the title Theory of the Moral Sentiments but he is most famous for his work of political economics, The Wealth of Nations.

Favoured philosopher of Margaret Thatcher and darling of Conservative economists, Smith is famous for his views on private property, the free market economy and the doctrine that 'unintended consequences of intended action' wiil be to the benefit of society at large. The idea behind this most fortunate if true of principles is that in intentionally serving one's own interests one unintentionally serves the interests of society as a whole.

A simple example will illustrate the essence of Smith's idea. Suppose that Jones, in seeking his own fortune, decides to set up and run his own business, manufacturing some common item of everyday need. In seeking only to provide for his own fortune, Jones' entrepreneurial

enterprise has a number of unintentional benefits to others. First, he provides a livelihood for the people in his employ, thus benefiting them directly.

Second, he makes more readily available some common item which previously had been more difficult or more expensive to obtain for his customers, thus easing one, if only minor, aspect of their lives. The forces of market economy ensure that these unintentional benefits occur, for if Jones' workers could find more profitable employ elsewhere they would either cease to work for him or he would have to raise their salaries in order to secure a workforce. Likewise, if Jones' product was available more readily or less expensively from some other source, Jones would either go out of business or be forced to lower his prices to a competitive rate. The model assumes the absence of a monopoly, both in the labour and economic markets.

The belief that unintended consequences of intended action' will be of benefit to society held great imaginative power over the industrial philanthropists of the 18th and 19th centuries and provided the philosophical groundwork for the later ethical theories of Bentham and Mill. However, criticism is not hard to come by. It is surely a blinkered view, if comforting for the entrepreneurial capitalist, to suppose that pursuing one's own self-interest constitutes a magnanimous and philanthropic act towards society at large. One has only to review the social history of industrial Britain, to witness the treacherous and exploitative working practices of the industrial age, the extreme poverty and degrading social conditions of the suffering working classes, to realise Smith's idealistic model has far more serious 'unintended' consequences. What has largely brought an end to such conditions in the industrialised West is not a triumphant adherence to Smith's principles in Western economics, but a shifting of the poverty and exploitative working practices from one part of the world to another. In other words, the living conditions of those in the West has improved lo the detriment of other countries insofar as the labour required to support Smith's economic philosophy has been removed from Western societies and transferred to those of the Third World.

Regardless of one's political views on Smith, The Wealth of Nations is one of the most important and deservedly read works of economic and political philosophy in the history of Western thought. It needs to he read and understood by its detractors as much as it does by its supporters.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT(1759-1797)

'The neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore'

The original feminist, Wollstonecraft, who died in childbirth at the early age of thirty-eight, was a radical thinker who campaigned both for the rights of women but also for the rights of man, in similar style to Thomas Paine.

Wollstonecraft's most important work, Vindication of the Rights of Women was preceded by a pamphlet, Vindication of the Rights of Man, in which she argued that the British people had the right to remove a had king and that slavery and the treatment of the poor at that timewereimmoral. Indeed, unlike some strands of the modern feminist movement, Wollstonecraft saw the rights of both men and women as mutual and inextricably linked.

For Wollstonecraft, the evil of her days and the means by which to put them right, lay in education. In the introduction to the Rights of Women, she observes, 'I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result? A profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore.

In particular, she was concerned with the way women's natural abilities were being suppressed through an education that emphasised the qualities required to flatter and serve men rather than enhance their natural abilities as people. She writes, 'One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than wives; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.

Although Wollstonecraft is clear that it is male-dominated society that has encouraged women to be 'docile and attentive to their looks to the exclusion of all else' and that marriage is merely 'legal prostitution', she is adamant that this is as much to the detriment of men as it is to women. 'Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man', proclaims Wollstonecraft. Since the good of society proceeds from the increase of reason, knowledge and virtue, it can only be to the benefit of both sexes to maximise these qualities. To treat women as mere trifles encourages them to be cunning and sly, debases their natural talents and fosters discord in the home that can only be reflected upon and perpetuated in the children.

In the cause of female suffrage Wollstonecraft argues that whilst men reject the rights of women they can make no appeal to women's duties, as either wife or mother. Can women not vote because they are not rational? If, so, quips Wollstonecraft, sardonically, 'it will be expedient to open a fresh trade with Russia for whips; a present which a father should always make to his son-in-law on his wedding day, that a husband may keep his whole family in order by the same means; and without any violation of justice reign, wielding this sceptre, sole master of his house, because he is the only being in it who has reason: the divine, indefeasible earthly sovereignty breathed into man by the Master of the universe. Allowing this position, women have not any inherent rights to claim, and by the same rule, their duties vanish, for rights and duties are inseparable.

Wollstonecraft's book was truly revolutionary, shocking many of her contemporaries. She was once patronisingly described as 'a hyena in petticoats', not just for her views on women's rights but also for calling for the abolition of the monarchy and the dissolution of the power of the Church, both of which she saw as oppressive regimes. Had she not suffered an early death the cause of women's rights may haveadvanced much quicker than it in fact did. As it is, it is significant that philosophy would have to await the arrival of Simone de Beauvoir, nearly 200 years later, before finding another female thinker of such Influence.

THOMAS PAINE(1737-1809)

The proceeds of land and property tax should be invested in a welfare system

English born political philosopher, Paine not only invented the term ‗United States of America', he inspired the revolutions both there and in France. He was forced to flee England when he tried to do the same thing there.

Awareness of his importance in the formation of the American constitution and the American 'way of life' is pivotal to understanding Ihe entity that is modern day America.

Having emigrated to the New World in the early 1770s, Paine became editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine and published one of the first essays calling for the abolition of slavery. With the beginning of the American Revolution, Paine made himself famous by publishing his book Common Sense. In it, he argues against the notion of a ruling class, insisting that government and society must be kept distinct. Independence for the American Colonies, Paine argued, was both morally and practically justified. He

continued to write and publish pamphlets throughout the War of Independence in support of the revolution.

After the success of the war for American independence, Paine went first to France and then to England. In response to Burke's Reflection* on the Revolution in France, Paine wrote and published The Rights o Man, his seminal treatise on democracy and republicanism. According to Paine, all men are born with equal rights. The necessity of social living can, however, bring about situations where we impinge on the rights of others. Moreover, we may not always have the means to protect our rights from others who do not respect them. Consequently it is necessary to develop the state and a constitution in which individua rights are encoded as civil rights, enforced by the state on behalf 0 the individual. The only morally acceptable constitution is that of the democratic republic in which citizens are granted the further right to vote in order to choose their own leaders. It is just this right, to choose one's leaders, that the hereditary monarchies of France and England deny to their people, providing justification enough to abandon them aj immoral constitutions.

The British Government, in response, charged Paine with treason causing him to flee back to France. With Paine gone, the governmen quashed the British revolution before it had chance to gain momentum In France, Paine was at first welcomed and given a seat in the National Convention. However he was later imprisoned and only just escaped execution.

Paine developed his ideas on civil rights and justice in his Agrariar Justice. He argues that a state is predicated on the basis that it makes its citizens better off than they otherwise would be without its constitution. But, he finds, many of the poorest people in the civilizedsocieties of Europe are in a worse state than the so-called 'uncivilized' native American Indians. The inequity has much to do with land and property ownership, a privilege Paine suggests should be taxed since the generation of wealth that makes it possible requires the support of society. The proceeds of land and property taxes should be invested in a welfare system, access to which is a right of every citizen.

In 1802 Paine returned to America, but it was not to be a happy homecoming. In The Age of Reason, Paine had argued against both atheism and Christianity in favour of a deism which rejects any appeal to divine revelation. Rather, the belief in God is claimed to be intrinsically reasonable, a logical conclusion to the question of why anything exists at all. Paine rejects both organized religion and the Bible's portrayal of a vindictive, vengeful God. Unfortunately for Paine, America was deeply Christian and frowned upon his religious writings, despite his previous service to her. Though he remained in the United States for the rest of his life, he died in obscurity.

Paine's work is characterized by a rare integrity that rails against political oppression, organized religion and poverty. Despite the massive influence of his early writings he remains a philosopher who, curiously, is rarely mentioned.

JEREMY BENTHAM(1748-1832)

What one ought to do is to maximise pleasure and minimise pain

Born in London, Bentham was trained to become a lawyer but became dissatisfied with its over- complex language and conflicting principles. He undertook instead an inquiry into the very nature and basis of law, morals and politics, which he found could be united by a single principle. This principle, which insists that the good for man is the attainment of pleasure and the absence of pain, is a reflection of the simple hedonistic psychology known and promoted since the time of Epicurus. However, Bentham wove the principle - which he called the principle of utility

- into the very fabric of philosophy, society and culture, popularising a system of ethics, known as 'utilitarianism', that is still of major importance today.

Bentham's genius was to show how the covenants of law, politics and ethics could all be recast in the more simple language of utility, which is concerned only with maximising that which we desire and minimising that which we fear. Utilitarianism is based on a very simple view of human nature. Bentham says:

'Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire, but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while.'

From this follows one simple moral rule, that what one ought to do is to maximise pleasure and minimise pain. As a keen reformer of political, legal and social institutions, Bentham argued that such

institutions should be set up in accordance with this rule. He famously designed a prison, the 'panopticon', in which prisoners would be visible to the authorities at all times, and thus encouraged to naturally do whatthey ought to do, in other words, to promote the greatest good for the greatest number, in order to avoid pain. Punishment was thus alway intended as a means of reform and carefully calculated so that it long-term consequences, though painful for the punished in the short term, would lead to an increase in pleasure. To this end, Bentham even constructed a 'felicific calculus', to aid the calculation of the exact quantity of pain and pleasure that would result from a given action.

It is interesting that Bentham makes no distinction between happiness and pleasure. To experience pleasure is to be happy as far as Bentham is concerned, a view that would be criticised by his utilitarian successor, John Stuart Mill. Moreover, Bentham's idea tha pleasure and pain can be calculated quantitatively, in units of equa value, counted like buttons in a jar, makes no allowance for the different quality of various experiences; again a problem Mill would later wrestle with in his developments of the utilitarian ethic.

Perhaps the greatest problem faced by Bentham's system, and to a certain extent one even modern day utilitarian theories have not fully resolved, is that created by the subjugation of individuals for the good of the majority. If all that matters in an ethical dilemma is 'the greates happiness of all those whose interest is in question' as an aggregate total, there seems no obvious reason why one person's entire pleasure should not be sacrificed for the aggregate good of the whole. What Bentham's utilitarianism lacks, in similar fashion to the 'social contract of Rousseau, is any notion of an individual's rights. Despite this, the ethical system popularised by Bentham and developed by Mill and many others has held, and continues to hold, a strong intuitive appea to many thinkers.

JOHN STUART MILL(1806-1873)

Actions are right in proportion as they promote happiness, wrong as they produce the reverse

Taught exclusively by his father. James Mill, the young John Stuart was something of a childhood genius, learning Greek at the age of three, and assisting his father in writings on political economics by his early teens. Around the age of twenty he had a breakdown, and began to react against the intellectual influence of both his father and Jeremy Bentham. Mill produced his most important work, A System of Logic inmidlife, but is principally remembered now for his short and much later work Utilitarianism published in 1863.

Mill's utilitarianism is a refinement of the views advanced both by his father and Bentham. Like Bentham, Mill maintains that the fundamental guide to moral action should be the maximisation of pleasure and the minimisation of pain. Mill formulated this as 'the Greatest Happiness Principle', which holds that 'actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse o happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

Mill recognized two failings in Bentham's earlier theory. In calculating the relative amounts of pain and pleasure in his 'felicific calculus', Bentham had weighted each unit of good or harm equally. Mill saw that pleasure cannot be reduced to a mere quantitative analysis without taking into account certain qualitative aspects. The pain of losing one's favourite pet is unlikely to be equivalent to the pain of losing a relative, but then on other occasions and for some other people, perhaps it may be; Bentham's calculus made little room for such distinctions. Secondly, Mill insisted that some pleasures were of greater value than others. He amously writes that 'it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. Accordingly, Mill distinguishes between 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures, to be taken into account in the utilitarian calculation.

The utilitarian ethic has a strong intuitive appeal due to its simplicity, but it has nevertheless, particularly in Mill's exposition, come in for wide-ranging and sustained criticism. However, much of the criticism that is directed at Mill in particular (rather than the theory in general) esults from taking his Utilitarianism out of the context of his overall thought. For example, modern commentators have complained that ill's ethical principle is too demanding. If every action must tend toward the increase of pleasure and the decrease of pain, it looks as though even our ordinary day to day behaviour turns out to be immoral. Surely, if I intend to live sincerely according to Mill's ethic, I should donate all of my disposable income to charity, and think about the wider consequences of my chosen employment. Is everything I do promoting happiness at the expense of unhappiness?

Such universal altruism may be meritorious; it is not, however, a doctrine or consequence of Mill's philosophy. His whole system is one of radical liberalism. He makes it quite clear that we should only be concerned with morality in those aspects of life that require sanctions to deter specific kinds of conduct. Otherwise a person is morally and legally free to pursue their life as they see fit. Critics of Mill have repeatedly overlooked that in the wider context of his philosophy he clearly distinguishes between what is right and what is good. Mill nowhere suggests that we are at all times compelled to act for the good; only that when questions of right and wrong arise, what is right is what is good, and what is good is that which promotes the greatest happiness of all.

CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN(1809-1892)

Complex design arises naturally without the need to posit a designer

The young naturalist's voyage aboard the Beagle in 1831 provided Darwin with observational material to put forward the most influential theory of modern times, the theory of evolution. Set out in detail in his Origin of Species and later The Descent of Man, the simplicity of Darwin's theory does nothing to detract from either its power of explanation nor its influence on almost every intellectual discipline.

Prior to Darwin, the received wisdom inherited from Plato and only partially modified by Aristotle, was that every natural kind, be it gold, silver, animal or plant, can be thought of as having essential qualities that make it what it is, and accidental qualities, that it may gain or lose without suffering a change of identity. Applied tothe natural world, what makes an individual a member of one species rather than another is that it is an instance of a particular kind, a dog or horse, rose or nettle. Clearly there are differences amongst different types of dogs as there are between individual dogs. But these are 'accidental differences. All dogs share certain fundamental qualities which make them dogs and not cats or horses. Call these fundamental qualities the 'essence' of a kind.

Philosophers had long wondered how to account for essences. From where did they appear? The obvious answer had always been they were the work of a grand designer. God designed the forms of things which are used as blueprints for the production of individuals. Darwin's work would show that complex design could arise naturally without the need to posit either a designer or a blueprint.

The background to evolutionary theory lies in the work of Thomas Malthus on population explosion. Malthus noted that in order to avoid extinction a population must continually expand. However, there will inevitably come a time when population outstrips available resources. Necessarily, some will die and others survive. Darwin's theory begins by asking, in the lottery of who will survive and who will perish, what determines the winners from the losers? He notes 'If...organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization. I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation had ever occurred useful to each being's own welfare.if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called...Natural Selection.‘

Natural selection thus has two components. First, the minor differences that exist between individuals, and second the principle of inheritance that passes these differences down through the generations. Aboard the Beagle, Darwin noted how topological and geographical features could magnify these differences. A major geological or climatic event might make some minor feature the difference between life and death in that region. Accordingly, any individuals without that feature would become extinct.

The so-called 'essential' differences between species is nothing more, Darwin showed, than 'descent by modification. Descendents are modified by time and environment to the point where what looks like design' is merely the survival of inheritable qualities. What qualities survive are not pre-ordained by a divine creator, but depend on the vicissitudes of circumstance.

Thus Darwin's Origin of Species solves the problem of 'the origin of essences', in his own words, because, 'it will be seen that I look at the term species, as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms'.

Critics have complained that evolutionary theory is scientifically vacuous because it is incapable of refutation. If true, Darwin's idea would be less of a theory and more of a blind faith. However, Darwin himself was clear about what could falsify the theory. 'If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ

existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. So far, no alternative theory has provided the required demonstration to meet Darwin's challenge.

CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE(1839-1914)

Peirce sees knowledge as habitual behaviour a means of stabilizing our in response to doubt

American scientist whose interest in philosophy began as a hobby, Peirce is responsible for one of the most recent influential movements in philosophy, Pragmatism or, as he later renamed it to distinguish his views from James and others, Pragmaticism.

According to Peirce, the guiding principle of his 'pragmaticist' philosophy is 'if one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have a complete definition of the concept. This view, then, is principally concerned with establishing the meaning of concepts and beliefs, a philosophical emphasis that would come to dominate in the 'linguistic turn' of the twentieth century.

One immediate effect of Peirce's pragmaticism is to distinguish metaphysical propositions that are, literally, nonsense from the genuinely meaningful propositions of 'scientific metaphysics. The former are those propositions which have no sense on account of not representing any idea that has observable, sensible effects that can be accorded any practical significance. Scientific metaphysics, Peirce maintains, is an observational discipline concerning the first and most very basic elements of experience, often just those elements that are so fundamental they are difficult to discern. Thus scientific metaphysics and science are not part of one continuous discipline - as many of Peirce's philosophical descendents would later claim - but maintain the traditional hierarchical order of foundational and succeeding disciplines, respectively.

Peirce's foundational, scientific metaphysics accordingly begins with phenomenology, the way things are presented to us in experience. He is particularly concerned with the difference between belief and doubt. He rejects Descartes' 'paper doubt' - doubts considered merely as an intellectual exercise - and so sidesteps the whole issue of epistemological scepticism. Rather, says Peirce, real doubt ensues when recalcitrant experience - not reflection - causes us to waver in our beliefs. A belief, as Peirce understands it. is not some intellectual disposition to assent to a proposition, but a behavioural habit manifest in action. Accordingly, when real doubt ensues it disrupts our usual behavioural patterns. Cartesian doubt, on the other hand, can make no difference to the way we act. Always scientific and pragmatic in his work, Peirce suggests that knowledge, which he defines as the resolution of disrupted habits by the revision of belief, is a 'homeostatic' process. Homeostasis is a concept borrowed from physiology, in which the body employs reaction systems to return to normal functioning in response to environmental upsets. Similarly, Peirce sees knowledge as a means of stabilising our habitual behaviour in response to doubt.

Unusual in Peirce's pragmatic philosophy is the continued insistence that truth is neither a matter of coherence in our belief systems nor success in action. Peirce never denies that truth in some way corresponds with reality, and that there must be general, independent laws of nature. Though commentators have found this to create a tension in Peirce's work, it is uncompromisingly honest, horl Peirce recognizes that the assumption on which all pragmatic theories are based - that prediction is possible - logically requires regularities in experience. Moreover, the only scientific hypothesis that can make sense of the appearance of such regularities is one that takes reality to consist of phenomena governed by laws.

'The truth is that which works'

JOHN DEWEY(1859-1952)

When Bertrand Russell wrote his retrospective analysis of philosophical thought in 1946, The History of Western Philosophy, he concluded it by claiming that Dewey is 'generally admitted to be the leading living philosopher of America'. Undoubtedly Dewey's influence is present in the work of Quine, who subsequently held that mantle until his death at Christmas, 2000, and Russell's epithet is testament to the influence of pragmatist thought both then and now on American philosophy.

Dewey's pragmatism consisted in replacing the notion of truth as 'correspondence to reality' with truth as successful rules for action. He went beyond his predecessors, however, in developing his

pragmatism as an instrumentalist theory of both logic and ethics in which the notion of 'warranted assertability' does all the same work as the notion of 'truth' but without the metaphysical baggage.

Following Peirce, Dewey upheld the idea that knowledge is a state of the human organism which consists in the settling of beliefs, understood as habits of behaviour that have proven successful in action. However, when habitual behaviour is disrupted by novel or unexpected experiences, the organism must engage in reasoning or intellection. Dewey characterized five different states of the reasoning process.

First, when the organism's habitual patterns of action are disturbed, it will nevertheless continue to act in order to resolve the situation. Since its principle of action (belief) has proven unsuccessful it must begin a process of 'intellection'. The second stage then, is to extract the significant elements of the situation in order to formulate it as a problem-solving exercise. The next step involves 'hypothesis construction', the creative use of imagination to provide possible answers. The fourth stage that Dewey identifies is the use of reason to weigh up and order the alternative hypotheses. This consists in reckoning up the different experiences each hypothesis might actually result in. Finally, 'testing' or experiment is the process by which hypotheses are eliminated as they are tried out in the court of experience.

The end result of this process is a successful resolution of the problem with the adoption of a new hypothesis that works. This led to Dewey's famous remark that 'the true is that which works. We are warranted in asserting an hypothesis only on the condition that it works, any further claim of it 'corresponding to reality' is, in Dewey's view, a ‗metaphysical' claim that adds nothing either to what we already know about or to what we can do with the hypothesis.

Dewey was keen to extend the instrumentalist approach beyond tin' theory of knowledge and into ethics, education and social theory. Societies, like individuals, are characterized by habitual patterns of action. When such patterns break down, they too must be repaired in light of the five stages mentioned above. For Dewey, what is ethically 'good' is 'a unified orderly release in action' of conflicting tensions and impulses that arise out of moral conflicts. The good, like the true, is

ultimately what works.

Dewey's instrumentalism shares certain affinities with the existentialist work of Heidegger, a connection explored in depth by the contemporary philosopher, Richard Rorty. Both Dewey and Heidegger reject the prevailing philosophical emphasis on the subject as an isolated spectator in an external world in favour of a being embedded in an environment which it must manipulate, adapt and control. The organism is nothing more than 'the organization of a material system in space-time', and whose features and capacities (psychological, social, ethical and so on), 'their emergence, development and disappearance', are wholly 'determined by changes in such organizations'. Clearly, Dewey's work falls within the scientific paradigms of the modern age and represents a sustained attempt to work out the philosophical implications of that framework.

KARL MARX(1818-1883)

Economics is the primary conditioning factor of life

Born in Treves, Germany, Marx lived the latter part of his life in England and is buried at Highgate cemetery in London. His work, along with that of Engels, profoundly influenced political events in Russia and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, and he was the darling of both European and American intellectuals up until the 1960s. His most influential works are The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. Marx's philosophy owes

a great deal to Hegel, from whom he borrowed the notion of 'dialectic. Marx, however, rejects Hegel's idealism and his notion of truth unfolding towards the Absolute, in favour of a purely atheistic 'dialectical materialism.

For Marx, the fundamental condition of humanity is the need to convert the raw material of the natural world into the goods necessary for survival. Consequently, production, or in other words economics, is the primary conditioning factor of life. Taking a historical perspective, Marx records, 'The hand-mill gives a society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill a society with the industrial capitalist. According to dialectical materialism, there is a three-sided conflict between economic classes. The landowners created by feudalism were opposed by the rise of the middle classes, forcing a 'synthesis', that is, a new economic class, the industrial employers of capitalism. However, the new 'thesis' of

capitalism generates the antithetical force of the proletariat, or working classes. The synthesis that Marx envisages from this conflict, the inevitable dialectical outcome, is socialism.

His reasons for supposing that socialism is the necessary outcome of the modern economic conflict are not, though such may appear at times to be the case from his passionate revolutionary invective, predicated on ethical judgements about what is best, or right, or just. Rather, Marx insists that socialism is necessarily the most efficient means of securing that which human beings strive for, namely the goods required for survival. Since socialism is the most efficient way to ensure productivity, the progress of 'dialectical materialism' has no need of moral sentiments. Socialism is, according to Marx, a natural outcome of the economic conditions operating on the human being.

It is at this point that the reversal of Hegel's idealism in Marx's materialism can be seen in purely philosophical terms. Whereas Hegel's history of ideas insists that it is the dialectic progress of concepts - developments in human understanding - that fuel social and political change, Marx asserts that it is transformations in economics that give rise to new ways of thinking, to the development of ideas. This reflects Marx's underlying view concerning epistemology and phenomenology. For Marx, the mind does not exist as a passive subject in an external world, as the prevailing empiricist tradition emanating from Locke would have it. Along with Kant, Marx shares the view that the mind is actively engaged with the objects of knowledge. But whereas Kant only went so far as to propose that our psychological apparatus imposes certain structures on the flux of experience, Marx held that the subject and object of experience are in a continual process of adaptation. We must order our experience in practical ways, so as to make it useful to our survival. In modern terminology what Marx is proposing is a version of instrumentalism or pragmatism, but at the more basic phenomenological level, as in the existentialist phenomenology of Heidegger, rather than at the scientific or epistemological level, as in Dewey and James.

SIGMUND FREUD(1856-1939)

'When I was young, the only thing I longed for was philosophical knowledge'

Austrian psychologist and inventor of'psychoanalysis', Freud has had a monumental impact on Western thought and philosophy. His best work is contained in the Interpretation of Dreams, The Psychopathology of everyday Life, Three Studies on Sexuality and Future of an Illusion. Though trained as a physician rather than a philosopher, Freud famously said, 'when I was young, the only thing I slonged for was philosophical knowledge, and now that I am going over from medicine to psychology I am in the process of attaining it.

The key to understanding Freud's work is two-fold. On the one hand psychoanalysis is predicated on the view that certain early childhood experiences, are 'repressed' by the Ego into the Unconscious. Typically, these are experiences that the child feels would elicit disapproval, and crucially for Freud, are tied in with the child's sexual identity in relation in one or both of its parents. The second element of Freud's theory concerns the separate, empirical claim, that such repressed memories of the cause of physiological disruptions, particularly nervous illness. Thus, Freud defines psychoanalysis as 'a procedure for the treatment pf the medically ill.

As one commentator has pointed out, however, it is an entirely unusual kind of medical treatment, in that nothing passes between the doctor and patient except conversation. The doctor's 'treatment' consists in eliciting repressed memories from the patient by interpreting the responses to his questions. This has led critics, notably Popper, to question the scientific status of Freud's procedure. Since the interpretation by the doctor is neither objective nor 'testable', in the ordinary scientific sense, and is moreover protected from scrutiny by the ethos of doctor- patient confidentiality, there is no objective way of measuring the results of psychoanalytic practice.

Despite such philosophical concerns, the popularity of psychoanalytic treatment is apparent and such popularity, its supporters would maintain, must surely be an indicator of its success. However, it is important to distinguish several logically independent claims. That personalities can be understood by interpreting an account of childhood experiences is one claim; that the interpretation given of such an account represents some objective truth about the patient is another; and that this process of 'conversation and interpretation' can effectively treat nervous illnesses is a third. The popularity of psychoanalysis could be attributable to the truth of any, all or none of these claims.

In purely theoretical term, Freud's division of a publicly responsible Ego suppressing the impulses of the Unconscious also invites criticism. In particular, it attributes conflicting intentional or purposive

agency to distinct realms of the mind. Sartre criticized Freud's psychology for incoherently proposing that the conscious censor, the Ego, suppresses unconscious desires.

If the Ego is not conscious of the unconscious ideas or desires, how could it be in a position to know that they must be repressed?

Despite this, philosophy in general has reacted well to Freud's theoretical principles. Freud himself suggested that his psychology represented a new 'Copernican revolution. Just as Copernicus had shown that the Earth is not at the centre of the universe, as Darwin had shown that man is not lord and master over the animal kingdom, but merely a continuous extension of it, so Freud claims to have proven that the conscious mind, or the self, is not 'master of its own house', as all rationalist and Cartesian philosophies presuppose.

EDMUND HUSSERL(1858-1938)

One cannot separate the conscious state from the object of that state

German philosopher and founder of phenomenology', the descriptive analysis of subjective processes and events that lies at the heart of all existentialist philosophies. Husserl insisted that philosophy must proceed like science, from real issues and problems and not merely from the consideration of other philosophers' works. Nevertheless, Husserl also conceived this scientific' enterprise as a non- empirical one. Rather, it is a conceptual exploration of perception, belief, judgement andother mental processes. Like Descartes, Husserl believed in philosophy as essentially a rational enterprise beginning with the self-evidence of one's own subjectivity. It is a view that would famously be rejected by Husserl's follower and intellectual heir, Martin Heidegger.

Husserl's phenomenology begins with the concept of 'intentionality', as conceived by Brentano. According to Brentano, all conscious states refer to a content, though that content may or may not exist, may be abstract or particular. For instance, take someone who is afraid of ghosts. That person's fear is directed towards something, namely ghosts, and yet this is true whether we believe in ghosts or not. Similarly, if one believes that tomorrow it will rain, one's belief is directed towards, or refers to, tomorrow - a possibility rather than an actuality.

Husserl, following Brentano, suggested that the intentionality of the mind entails that one cannot separate the conscious state (fear, for example) from the object of that state (a ghost, say) in an ontological sense. They can only exist together, as two aspects of a single phenomenon, the intentional act. This leads Husserl to claim that consciousness just is 'directedness towards an object. The mental state and the object of that state exist together in consciousness without implying that there is any 'material' object answering to the call. Pursuing this idea, Husserl thought that what is crucial to philosophy is to understand all the various ways in which this 'directedness' or intentionality, manifests itself.

This constitutes Husserl's non-empirical science' - a pure investigation into the very elements of mental processes. Husserl believed that stripping away all the 'contingent' or unnecessary aspects of conscious experience could fulfil such an investigation. Consequently, the inquiry does not need to consider what, if anything, lies behind appearances. Speculations about what exists beyond appearance is open to doubt and scepticism, and Husserl, like Descartes before him, sees himself as being involved in a foundational inquiry whose task is to discover certainties. Since all 'knowledge-of-things' is acquired through the intentional objects of consciousness, any science of knowledge must begin with the intentional, with what can be known without doubt. Only those phenomena that form, to borrow a Kantian phrase, 'the necessary preconditions of experience' can satisfy such an inquiry.

Beyond an inquiry into the very elements of conscious experience, Husserl realises that he faces the same obstacle as Descartes' 'cogito' (the conclusion popularly translated as ‗I think, therefore I am'), namely that it is impossible to say anything very certain about 'the external world. However, Husserl is less concerned with scepticism about ‗knowledge of things' and more with scepticism regarding 'knowledge of self.

For Husserl has identified consciousness with the intentional act, and yet the self is not the act, but is the observing subject of the act. But this subject is never given in experience, is never, in Husserlian terms, the object of an intentional act. Accordingly, Husserl endorses a view akin to Kant, that the subject of experience is transcendental - outside of the spatio-temporal causal order.

That conclusion is rejected by Heidegger but taken up again by Sartre in his Being and Nothingness, in which consciousness is portrayed as a unique phenomenon able to negate, through denial and imagination, what is real. Consequently it must stand outside of the ordinary causal order, as Husserl, Descartes and an extended line of

‗dualist' philosophers, have long agreed.

MARTIN HEIDEGGER (1889-1976)

It is only in full...awareness of our own mortality that life can take on any purposive meaning

German existentialist, born in Messkirch, Baden. After studying theology and then philosophy, Heidegger went on to study under Husserl, to whom he dedicated his main work, Being and Time, at the University of Freiburg. He founded existentialist phenomenology under the influence of both Nietzsche's and Kierkegaard's work. Notoriously, Heidegger praised Hitler in a speech of the 1930s,

an act for which he was widely criticised and which would do his career lasting harm. It is generally thought that he was at least a sympathiser with national socialism, if not an outright supporter. After the war he claimed it had been a massive social experiment that had gone drastically wrong.

His contribution to philosophy, fortunately, is not politically orientated and, for better or worse, has been highly influential. Heidegger saw the history of philosophy as concerned with the wrong kind of questions. Ever since Plato, Heidegger complains, philosophers have been asking about what there is and what they can know about what there is. For Heidegger, these questions presuppose too much. They notoriously presuppose a number of dualisms, in particular the Cartesian one of subject and external world. Like Nietzsche, Heidegger rejects the division, rejects the notion of a world as external to some conscious spectator.

In place of such dualisms, Heidegger focuses on the question 'What is Being?', by which he intends that before we can ask about what sorts of properties objects might be said to have, we have first to look and examine, in a priori fashion, what it means for something to 'be. The question can be seen as arising from the most basic philosophical puzzle of all: 'Why is there something, rather than nothing?' Few philosophers or philosophies have ever addressed this question, yet for Heidegger an answer is essential before any other philosophical questions can be engaged.

For Heidegger, the question 'what is Being?' in general narrows down to considering what type of being one is oneself. He gives Being the deliberately vague name of Dasein - 'being-there. 'Being-there' is supposed to denote what we ordinarily might call the human subject, but of course Heidegger rejects the subject-object distinction. For him 'being-there' is a perspective, which, it turns out, is a locus of action extended through time. In sum, Dasein is a perspective from which action originates.

In Heidegger's phenomenology, Dasein's first comprehension of objects is not of determined and independent material things to be measured, analysed and classified. Rather,Dasein's first comprehension of things is as tools: whether they are useful, whether anything can be done with them, and if so, what? What about Dasein's comprehension of itself?

Heidegger insists that what is characteristic of Dasein, as a temporal, self-conscious phenomenon, is that it knows its own fate. Dasein knows that it is finite and mortal. This generates what he calls angst or dread. But it is only in full and uncompromising awareness of our own mortality that life can take on any purposive meaning, insists Heidegger. Properly understood, self-awareness leads to the

‗authenticity' of a life created out of nothing, in the face of dread, by reference only to one's own deliberate purposes.

Accordingly, on Heidegger's view, the question of why there is something rather than nothing comes back to the choice of 'being-there. Dasein chooses to make something out of nothing and so, without Dasein, according to Heidegger there would be nothing. Due to the obscure language and often undefined concepts which Heidegger uses, it is not clear if the thesis is really just that without self- consciousness there would be no-one to be aware of the existence of anything. That is not a position Heidegger ought to take, for it would show that his previous rejection of the 'mind - world' distinction had been presupposed all along. Nonetheless, it is not clear what other sense we can make of Heidegger's proposal.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR(1908-1986)

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman'

French novelist and philosopher, de Beauvoir is largely responsible for inaugurating the modern feminist movement as well as significantly influencing the later views of Sartre.

De Beauvoir has become, wittingly or otherwise, the heroine of feminists across the world. Her most significant philosophical works are The Ethics of Ambiguity and, the bible of feminism, The Second sex. Both are superior works whose philosophical import has often been overlooked because of the determination to marginalize de Beauvoir within the feminist movement. In the words of Brendan Gill's 1953 review in 'The New Yorker', The Second Sex 'is a work of art, with the salt of recklessness that makes art sting.'

De Beauvoir's thought is a development of existentialist themes found in Sartre. In particular, her most famous expression, 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman', can only be understood against the background of Sartrean 'bad faith.

According to Sartre, freedom of choice is an ever-present condition of human life. However, because of the enormous weight of responsibility that this entails, we are apt to make excuses, to deny our freedom to choose. Such excuses can typically involve blaming the kind of person Hut we are on our human nature. But Sartre says cowards and heroes are not born, they are defined in action. What we are is what we do. Thus anyone who acts heroically is a hero, anyone who acts cowardly is a coward. But one always has the choice to act differently next time. There is no such thing as 'nature' which determines how we must act. Denial of this radical freedom is a kind of self-deception, or 'bad faith' as Sartre callsit.

Working within Sartre's framework, de Beauvoir accepts that an individual is born free, without essence. But the identification of ones biological gender serves, in the case of the female, to define her personhood. The female becomes 'a woman', the meaning of which is defined by culture and society, be it the 'domestic goddess' mother and wife of the 1950s or more recently, the 'Supermom' of the 1990s. Even biological facts such as menstruation are always culturally interpreted, says de Beauvoir, such that the fact of it could be lived either as 'a shameful curse, or a sexy reaffirmation of the healthy functioning of one's body', according to societies' conceptions. Consequently, one is not born a woman. The female becomes one by accepting and living the role society defines as appropriate. This acceptance, however, is not automatically 'bad faith' as Sartre would have it, and it is crucial to see how de Beauvoir extends and develops this concept.

De Beauvoir insists that acting in bad faith presupposes that one is aware of the potential for freedom in one's situation, which one then chooses to ignore. But the presence of this awareness is not a given. Children, for instance, cannot act in bad faith, because others define their being, since the child lives in the world of its parents or guardian. Only when they reach an 'awakening' in adolescence does existentialist angst take hold. Similarly, de Beauvoir argues, women have historically had their being defined for them through socio-economic circumstances. Consequently they have been ignorant of the potential for freedom in their situation, and hence could not be acting in bad faith.

It is easy to see how de Beauvoir's ideas - that women must recognize their own freedom, define their own being, and free themselves from the 'enslavement' of a society whose rules and values are defined by men - could be taken up as a war- cry by the women's liberation movement.

MUHAMMAD THE PROPHET(c.570-632 CE)

Muhammad founded the Islamic movement that has spread from his native Arabia to almost every part of the world. His central aim was to establish monotheism in place of the prevailing polytheism of his time and to teach a total allegiance to the commands of the one God. The Muslim profession of faith announces that There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God'. The word 'Islam' means 'submission' and Muslims are 'those who submit'. The Islamic scriptures, the Qur'an [Koran] are held by Muslims to be the infallible word of God.

What is known of Muhammad's circumstances is largely derived from a life of the Prophet written by Ibn Ishaq in the eighth century CE.1 He was born into the Quraysh tribe around 570 CE near Makkah [Mecca], a town long established as a sanctuary and place of pilgrimage. Makkah had been founded by monotheists but by the time of Muhammad's birth it had become? predominantly pagan and polytheist. The Prophet's early life was not a settled one. As an infant he was cared for by foster parents who were poorly off. He was then returned to his mother who died when he was 6. After two years in his

grandfather's charge he was sent to an uncle, Abu Talib, with whom he stayed for the rest of his formative years. While still a young man he became the commercial agent for a rich widow, Khadija, who in due course married him. He did not emerge as the Prophet until his middle years but accounts of his life relate that all the signs were there from his birth: a heavenly light seen by his mother around her infant son's head, the blessing of a Christian monk, his own tendency towards solitude and long hours of reflection.

Muhammad's calling came to him at around the age of 40 while he was engaged in an annual religious practice. It was the custom to spend one month of each year on Mount Hira, often with one's family, in order to bestow goods and food on the visiting poor. One night while on the mountain Muhammad dreamed that he was visited by the angel Gabriel who taught him the words that are now part of the ninetysixth chapter of the Qur'an: 'Recite, in the name of your Lord, the Creator, who created man from clots of blood...'. Over the next decade or so, further revelations of the scriptures were transmitted from God to Muhammad by means of the dream figure of Gabriel. Muhammad also dreamed of a visit to Jerusalem to meet Abraham. Moses and Jesus. These incidents determined him to begin his mission to preach monotheism, first within his family and tribal group and then to the people and pilgrims at Makkah. It seems he was at first deeply puzzled by his dreams but his confidence in his mission gradually increased; in particular when it was confirmed that the description of Jerusalem he derived from his dream—for it seems he had never actually been to that city—was an accurate one. Emboldened by this and by the steady sequence of revelatory dreams, he began to teach to a wider circle. Thus from tentative beginnings there developed Islam, a movement and form of life of immense influence and power.

The remarkable success that eventually attended Muhammad's mission is appreciated only through an understanding of conditions prevailing in Arabia and its environs at the time. That vast country is largely desert and in the sixth century its peoples were mostly nomadic, tribal and in frequent conflict with each other. The absence of a central controlling power that might have mobilized and united a formidable fighting force meant that Arabia presented little threat, other than that of an occasional marauding frontier raid, to adjacent territories. Even its traditional polytheism was beginning to feel the effects of the monotheistic influences of Jews and Christians. It has been pointed out that this picture of a large but disorganized country is one that might well have led a shrewd observer at the time to predict that Arabia would probably soon fall prey to external or invading powers and that if monotheism came to dominate there then it would do so in a Christian or Jewish form. The events which actually ensued were utterly different from any such well-reasoned conjecture.

The ground for Muhammad's work was probably prepared by his great-grandfather, Hashim, who, using Makkah as a base, established the Quraysh community as influential merchants by organizing two caravan journeys a year and by gaining protection for his merchants in the territories of the Roman empire and, in due course, in Persia, the Yemen and Ethiopia. Hashim maintained the family tradition of caring for the pilgrims who visited Makkah and did not attempt to interfere with its pagan rites. Muhammad was therefore heir to an extensive and secure trading system and a tradition of liberal toleration within his own community. When his mission developed and he began to speak out against polytheism, tensions began to manifest themselves. Schisms and regroupings occurred in the tribes as some members aligned themselves with the new monotheism and others clung to polytheism. Those who dissented from their tribal leadership were vulnerable to attack from their own group and were also insecure in their relationships with other groups. Muhammad himself was protected by the Quraysh but he arranged to send a group of his supporters, for their safety, to Ethiopia, where he was already held in considerable esteem. He then sought to strengthen his following by means of itinerant preaching, but with little success until he met six members of the Khazraj tribe in the oasis city of Yathrib. The agreement he reached with these men was a momentous one: they would protect him completely, even in the face of aggression from his own Quraysh people. Muhammad's Makkah disciples then emigrated to Yathrib while he remained to await God's command to follow them. His own emigration, known as the hijrah, took place in 622 CE, about twelve or fifteen years after his first dream encounter with the angel Gabriel. The hijrah marks the first year of the Muslim era and the starting point of the Muslim calendar.

The Prophet lived at Yathrib for the remaining ten years of his life. During that time he completed his compilation of the Qur'an. The angel Gabriel continued to appear in dreams revealing details of rituals of prayer and fasting, cleansing, alms-giving, worship and pilgrimage.

One year after the hijrah had taken place it was ordained that Muslims, when praying, should turn towards Makkah instead of towards Jerusalem. Seven years later Makkah was regained. It was then purged of its polytheism and made wholly Islamic.

After the hijrah, Yathrib became known as Medina. Muhammad's followers there were called the ansar, the helpers, and those who went with him from Makkah were called the muhajirun, the emigrants. Muhammad's mission now took an overtly militant and political turn. A document was drawn up to establish his followers as a community. It commanded them to refer any disputes between them to Muhammad and thereby to God. Rules of conduct and especially those for the conduct of warfare were laid down and so began the conquest of southern Arabia. By the time of Muhammad's death, in 632 CE, the eleventh year of the hijrah, Muslim domination was reaching out towards the Roman empire in the north. Its spread was resisted by Arabian Jews and to some extent by Christians, but with little effect on what had become an engulfing tide.

In the eighth century Islam spread into Central Asia, Sind and Spain. In the eleventh century it began to be transmitted by Turks into southern Russia, India and Asia Minor. It was taken to the Niger basin and in the fourteenth century became dominant in the Balkans and spread into China. It largely disappeared from Spain in the fifteenth century and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries its influence in the Balkans dwindled. It now flourishes in many parts of Africa and in certain regions of North and South America and, in the 1990s, began to reaffirm itself in Albania.

Muhammad saw himself simply as the recipient and channel for the transmission of the Islamic scriptures, but he occupies a special place in the series of monotheistic prophets recognized by Islam for he was taken to be the last in a succession of 'warners' among whom were Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus. It is in the context of the belief that the world had a life of only six or seven thousand years that this position was accorded him. By his lifetime the world was thought to have already endured for five or six thousand of its allotted years. The revelation of the Qur'an to Muhammad was therefore seen as the culmination of a sequence of such revelations, following on from the imparting of the Pentateuch to Moses and the Gospel to Jesus. The Muslim belief is that Muhammad was the last messenger of God before the end of the world.

The writings that constitute the Qur'an were put together in an authoritative version, shortly after Muhammad's death, during the reign of the third caliph, Uthman (644-56 CE). A few very minor changes were subsequently made in the tenth century. The Qur'an has 114 chapters, or suras, that were arranged so that the suras with many verses precede those with fewer verses. All the suras were assigned in their headings either to Makkah or Medina. Quotations and recitings of the Qur'an are always introduced by the phrase 'God has said¹, thus emphasizing Muhammad's role as the transmitter rather than author of the scriptures. The structure of the content of the Qur'an reflects the genesis and development of Islam. Broadly speaking, its earlier sections are concerned with God's majesty and power, its later ones with juridical matters and directives for conduct within the community. Its dominant theme is the uniting of believers in a total obedience to a God whose word is unchallengeable. The absolute acceptance of its doctrine is reinforced by the Islamic practice of committing the Qur'an to memory. Learning and reciting it means that its precepts inhabit the believer's mind and heart, shaping and predisposing every thought and action.

Some time after Muhammad began to preach publicly, but before the hijrah, there occurred the incident of the 'satanic verses'. This refers to sura 53, known as 'The Star', which is reported to have originally stated that three pagan goddesses, al-Lat, al-'Uzza and Manat, with shrines not too far from Makkah, were empowered to make intercessions to Allah. Commentators have pointed out that Muhammad delivered this revelation at a time when he was seeking to convert influential merchants to Islam and that the message did bring about their conversion. But a later revelation from the angel Gabriel to Muhammad made it clear that the

message had been 'put upon his tongue‘ by Satan. The correct sura was then imparted to him. It stated that the three goddesses 'are but names which you and your fathers have invented: Allah has vested no authority in them'.

The cosmogony of the Qur'an describes creation as consisting of seven earths stacked on one another beneath seven heavens, similarly stacked. The undermost earth houses the devil. Humankind inhabits the highest earth and the lowest heaven is the sky above the highest earth. The seventh and topmost heaven is Paradise. God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and indivisible. Any suggestion that his divinity might embrace a trinity or multiplicity of any kind is always rejected. In the second sura of the Qur'an we read: They say: ―Allah has begotten a son." Allah forbid! His is what the heavens and ninth contain; things are obedient to Him. Creator of the heavens and the earth! When He decrees a thing, He need only say "Be" and it is.' The Qur'anic Allah is remote, mysterious and entirely other, having no need of the worlds' yet knowing and influencing every detail of creation.

Muhammad was a prophet rather than a philosopher. But any influential declaration of the kind that he made concerning God, the universe and the relationship of both with humankind is always the object of critical scrutiny by sceptics and of justification by its upholders. From such activity there emerges a refining of concepts and ideas along with methods of analysis and discussion. And so philosophy develops. Early Islamic thought was largely theological in character and was dominated by the debate between progressive Muslim thinkers who were prepared to subject revelation to rational scrutiny, and a conservative or orthodox element that regarded any such scrutiny as impious. Both positions were rooted in theology and both had to confront difficulties about the interpretation of scriptural commands and legislation for issues and conduct not covered by the scriptures. Discussion tended to focus on the concepts of God's supreme majesty and power and on the relationship of total obedience in which human beings stood to God. In such a context questions about free will soon surfaced, since the notion of the absolute authority of God suggests the absence of freedom of choice on the part of his obedient subject. Within Islam, the presupposition of all such debates was the view that saw politics, philosophy, law and every aspect of societal life as emanating from and dependent on the one God.

Internal debate was not the only critical stimulus to the development of Islamic philosophy. The Arab conquest of Alexandria in 641 CE meant that Muslim thought became open to investigation from many quarters. In the seventh century, Alexandria was the pre-eminent centre for the study of Greek philosophy and was in touch with smaller centres of learning such as Syria and Iraq. Thus the dogmatic theology of Islam was required to respond to comment from Greeks, Christians, Jews and others and to construct a rational justification for the Qur'anic scriptures as delivered by Muhammad.6 The free exchange of all kinds of ideas and doctrines was greatly facilitated by the enthusiastic translation, in, the two centuries after Muhammad's death, of Greek works on medicine, science and, in due course, philosophy, into Arabic. This did much to enrich the vocabulary of Arabic as well as to inform Muslim thought with the ideas of Greek philosophy, especially those of Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists. By the beginning of the ninth century CE the scene was set for the emergence of Islam's first important philosopher, the Arab prince Ya'qub ibn-lshaq al-Kindi.

MUHAMMAD IQBAL(1876-1938 CE)

Iqbal was a poet as well as a philosopher. His philosophical ideaswere at first rejected but later revered in the Muslim world. Hiseducation at European universities revealed to him the gulf that laybetween the developing scientificculture of the West and the entrenchedtraditionalism of the Islamic world. At the same time it showed himthat there were relationships and affinities between Muslim and westernphilosophies. He saw the possibility of a fruitful interaction of Islamicand western ideas and sought to bring about the compatibility ofreligious faith with philosophical reasoning, drawing on the work ofHegel, Bergson and Whitehead to provide a philosophical groundingfor his synthesis. There is a strong vein of Sufist mysticism in Iqbal'sphilosophy as well as in his poetry.lt is especially apparent in hisanalysis of the concept of God and in his poem 'Secret of the Self(1915), which illustrates his concept of 'selfhood' (khudi) and whichdid much to revitalize the intellectual life of Muslims in India. In 1930he became president of the Muslim League and proposed that thereshould be a Muslim India within India. In 1947, nine years after hisdeath, the founding of Pakistan turned his proposal into a fact.

Iqbal's career was a distinguished one and he became known worldwide. He lived life intensely. His parents were deeply religiousand he seems to have shared their dispositions to mysticism. He was educated first at the Scotch Mission College in Sialkut and then at the Government College at Lahore. At Lahore he was taught by Sir ThomasArnold and began to make his name as a poet. In 1905 he travelled to Europe to study law at Lincoln's Inn and then at Trinity College, Cambridge. While in Cambridge he attended lectures given by twoBritish philosophers, John McTaggart and James Ward. It was there,too, that he established a relationship with the Muslim League. Here turned to Lahore in 1908 to pursue the professions of lawyer andcollege lecturer. In the years that followed he achieved lame as a poet,wrote numerous articles for journals and the press, and prepared thedrafts of the lectures that constitute his Reconstruction of ReligiousThought in Islam. Six of these seven lectures were delivered in Madrasin 1928 and the seventh in England. In 1932 Iqbal visited France andthere met Henri Bergson and also Louis Massignon, an orientalist witha profound knowledge of Sufism. He became more and more convincedthat there were the very closest affinities between Bergson's accountof Time and the views of Muslim mystics. In 1933, after he returnedagain to Lahore, his health began to fail. In 1935 he was unable toaccept an invitation to give the Rhodes lecture in Oxford because offrequent attacks of asthma. He died in 1938 and was buried with greathonour near the steps of Badshahi mosque in Lahore.

Iqbal saw his main purpose as that of transforming Islam by infusingits spirituality with the dynamism and vitality of the West, but withoutdepriving Islam of its own moral values and cohesion. He mgardedEuropean intellectual culture as a development, albeit in some uispectsa wayward one, of the Islamic culture of the Middle Ages. Our onlyfear', he wrote, 'is that the dazzling exterior of European culture may arrest our movement and we may fail to reach the true inwardness olthat culture.'

In the Reconstruction he examines traditional arguments for the existence of God and concludes that none of them constitutes a proof.He then argues that materialist doctrines fail to provide a satisfactory account of the true nature of things and that we have to recognize thatreality is ultimately vitalistic in character: that it is matter and mind together, in an ever-changing and active process, that constitute the totality of a universe in which Allah is perpetually creative. In this vitalist account of reality Iqbal draws freely on Bergson's conceptionof pure Time as a flowing sequence of continuous events which weare sometimes able to experience with an immediacy that connects uswith the creative energy of the cosmos. But he rejects IWirgson's viewof the place of thought in the cosmic scheme. Bergson had maintainedthat thought worked with static concepts that reduced the burgeoning flux of reality to a series of stationary points, thereby yielding ournotions of space and time.3 But for Iqbal, thought is much more thanan intellectual capacity for organizing and classifying the items of experience. It is, he says, 'as much organic as life... In conscious experience life and thought permeate each other. They form a unity.Thought, therefore, in its true nature is identical with life.'4 From thisfundamental notion of the identity of thought and life Iqbal endeavours to develop an account of reality that contains no hard distinctionsbetween reason and other modes of experience, and that emphasizesits dynamic and fluctuating nature as well as its total encompassmentby a creative God who is 'the First and the Last, the Visible and thelnvisible'. What he wishes to reject is the notion that thought is 'anagency working on things from without'. He writes: our present situation necessitates the dualism of thought andbeing. Every act of human knowledge bifurcates what might onproper enquiry turn out to be a unity into a self that knows and aconfronting 'other' that is known...The true significance...will appeal only if we are able to show that the human situation is notfinal and that thought and being are ultimately one.

To support this account he cites a wide range of theories and concepts derived from a range of philosophers of widely differing views. The concept of self, or ego (khudi), is central to Iqbal's thought. Hedescribes the self as being formed in the encountering and overcoming of obstructions in the physical universe. He writes of both ametaphysical and an ethical self. The metaphysical self is 'that indescribable feeling of "I" which forms the basis of the uniqueness of each individual'.7 The ethical self is 'self- reliance, self-confidence, even self-assertion...in the interest of life and the power to stick to the cause of truth even in the face of death'.8 The self, according to Iqbal,is partly determined, party free, and is able to increase its freedom by drawing closer to God. It is capable of a personal immortality, achieved through the

consolidation of its singularity by means of allegiance to avirtuous way of life. The self, he says, is distinct, though not apart.from God, who is the Ultimate Ego.

Iqbal's concept of God is a complex one. It has been described aspanentheistic rather than pantheistic, that is, as conceiving of God asboth including and transcending the world rather than as wholly identical with it. In this his thought is markedly Sufistic in character in that it permits the possibility and desirability of a mystical union of human beings with God and of the aspiration to a bliss that is attainable during a person's life on earth rather than in the life to come. This is entirely contrary to the orthodox Qur'anic doctrines of tho absolute transcendence or otherness of God and of the divine ordering andknowledge of every detail of the universe and its life.

Iqbal endeavours to resolve the tensions between his own ideas and those of traditional Islamic thought by means of a radical interpretation of sections of the Qur'an. For example, he connects pad:, of suras 25 and 54 with Bergson's account of Time, declaring th.it the Qur'an,with characteristic simplicity, is alluding to the serial and non-serial aspects of duration. But it is extremely difficult to detect any suchallusion in the verses, which are as follows:

Put your trust in the Ever-living who never dies. Celebrate Hispraise...In six days He created the heavens and the earth and all that lies between them, and then ascended His throne...We havemade all things according to a fixed decree. We command butonce. Our will is done in the twinkling of an eye.

Iqbal's broad grasp of western philosophy is impressive but he does not use it well in the service of his endeavour. In his employment of major concepts and ideas he tends to transmogrify their primary meanings by imposing unjustified interpretations on them or by reckless extrapolations from them. Many of his references to well-known philosophers amount to little more than name-dropping. Majid y akhry, in his History of Islamic Philosophy, has remarked of him thatVery often the multiplication of authorities, ancient or modern,Western or Islamic, is done at such a pace that the reader is leftbreathless. In the scope of six pages, for instance, the followingnames are cited: Berkeley, Whitehead, Einstein, Russell, Zeno,Newton, al-Ashari, Ibn Hazm, Bergson, Cantor and Ouspensky—to mention only the principal Injures or authorities.

In spite of such failings there is something of a visionary quality inlqbal's perception and appreciation of issues that were of profound practical significance for Muslim cultures and peoples. He wanted toreawaken the Islamic intellect to a fresh engagement with the kind of thought and discussion that had characterized the heyday of Islamic philosophy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries CE. His high hopewas that he would resolve the tensions he found between eastern and western cultures: and that he would effect that resolution in depth, bymeans of philosophy.

VARDHAMANA (MAHAVIRA)(599-527 BCE)

Vardhamana is the central figure in the doctrine and history of Jainism. He was the last of the twenty-four teachers, the Tirthankaras (literally the ‗ford tinders'), often called Jmas, who were revered for their formulation and transmission of Jain doctrine.

Jainism has been a major influence in Indian culture. Its fundamental tenet is that human beings can overcome the bondage and corruptionsof mortal life through a stringent asceticism. In classical Jain doctrine this asceticism is practised in a rigorously ordered and detailed way that passes through fourteen gunasthanas, or stages, along the path toliberation from the karma that restricts the true reality ot the soul. Asignificant element in Jain teaching is ahimsa, the scrupuloes avoidance of actions that might damage or cause harm to other living creatures.

Vardhamana was an elder contemporary of the Buddha. He wasborn in Vessali, now Bihar, and was the second son of a Katriyachieftain. Traditional accounts relate that he lived in his parents' houseuntil they died and his elder brother succeeded to the chieftaincy. Then,at the

age of 28, he decided to embark on a spiritual training. Aftertwelve years of an austere, nomadic life in which he practised self mortification he was deemed to have attained nirvana and he beganhis kevaliship, a stage of life in which he was recognized as omniscient. He was accorded the title of Jina2 ('the conqueror') and named theMahavira (‗great hero‘). The rest of his life was spent in teaching andguiding his followers and in perfecting the Jainist doctrine inheritedfrom his twenty- three predecessors. He died at Pava, in Bihar, of self starvation and in accordance with monastic practice, at the age of 72.There are numerous legends about his life: that he was born of two virgins by transference of embryo; that he lived in great luxury as ayoung man but renounced the world at the age of 30; that he tore outfive handfuls of his hair before wandering naked through India seekingrelease from samsara, the wheel of life.

Within Jainism there are some regional, linguistic and doctrinal differences, but in general its extremely ancient tradition has remained cohesive in many respects. A significant difference came about in the third century BCE at the time when the Jain community emigrated to Gujarat and Rajasthan. Its members became divided over the matterof their austere lifestyle, one group taking the view that no clothingshould be worn, since Vardhamana was said to have gone naked, another preferring to adopt plain white robes. Those who advocated nakedness became known as digambaras ('the sky-clad') and those who worerobes as shvetambaras ('the white-clad'). The distinction persists to the present day, although the digambaras now wear clothes when they are in public. Another difference that arose between these two groups concerns the status of women. The digambaras do not admit women to the monastic orders because they hold that women cannot achieve liberation until they become reborn as males. Shvetambaras reject this idea and admit women to their monastic orders.

There is a broadly shared doctrinal basis for the variations within the tradition. The Jaina divide existing things into two categories: jiva, or sentient things, and ajiva, or non-sentient things. Every living thing is both jiva and ajiva and the belief is that through association with ajiva the jiva is prevented from realizing its immortal and true nature. Each jiva is entire and separate from all others. There is no doctrine ofa 'fall' from grace that brings about the adhesion of the ajiva to jiva, their connection is said to be 'beginningless', although it may be alteredand ultimately severed by means of the ascetic discipline.

Jains share in the Hindu belief that karma impedes the jiva in itsquest for purification and immortality. They describe karma as aparticular type or form of matter that adheres to the jiva in such a wayas to cloud or obscure, though not radically to alter, its inherentproperties. The effect of karma is that the jiva has to undergo a seriesof physical incarnations and the aim of the ascetic discipline taught bythe tirthankaras is to rid the jiva of the physical accretions of karmaso that its original nature may be liberated. Since karma is a subtleform of matter it is materially real and must be dealt with as matter.There must be a severing of all bonds that connect the jiva with the ajiva and a development of a person's reliance on spiritual qualities.Total release from physical dependency is arduous in the extreme,perhaps even impossible for most people, and there is only a very lowexpectation of final liberation.

An important component of the Jain discipline is the well-known practice of ahimsa, or non-injury, already mentioned. The aim oiahimsa is to separate oneself entirely from all actions and processes involving anything approaching aggression, injury, harm or possessiveness towards other living beings. Accordingly, the practicehas arisen of carrying a small broom with which to brush lightly awayany small living creatures that might be destroyed if a person sat orlay on them. Some Jains employ a person of another faith to wield the broom before them, in case the very act of brushing the path in advertently destroys a small insect. With similar intent, many Jainswear masks to prevent the accidental ingestion of minute air borne creatures. For the same reason they also filter water before drinking it, and a vegetarian diet is the rule. Many Jains adopt professions thatavoid activities that might lead to destructive acts.3

Jains do not posit a supreme or divine jiva or creator. According totheir teaching, consciousness, or soul, is the essence of a jiva. The jivais that which knows, and the belief is that every jiva is capable ofcomplete knowledge and release, and therefore of realizing its own salvation. The Jinas, although profoundly revered as exemplars andfor their teaching gifts, are never thought of as other than human. Therendering of tirthankara as 'ford-finder' exactly describes the role ofthe Jina: someone who has the gift of 'showing the way' to cross overto the other side and reach the eternal peace of nirvana.

The severity of Jain asceticism is apparent in the life of its lay peopleas well as in the monastic orders. There is continuity and sharing ofpractice between the lay and monastic groups, although the monasticlife is, of course, the more regulated and single-minded, requiringcomplete dedication and self- vigilance. The Jain who reaches the fourthof the fourteen gunasthanas is deemed sufficiently free of

karma tocount as a pious layperson, but it is only at the sixth gunasthana that aperson reaches the level at which monastic vows may be embraced. Atthis stage, given good health and moral fitness, and having alreadyundergone considerable training, a person may be initiated and takevows. Thereafter the new monk must live a fully disciplined life, owningonly the few possessions bequeathed at the initiation ceremony, beggingfor all nourishment, studying, wandering, instructing, helping othersand making pilgrimages. Such a life, if there is no falling away, mayresult in the partial loosening of the bonds of karma, but it is acceptedthat many rebirths may be required before a person reaches the advanced grunas/hanas and the threshold of liberation. In old age a monk maychoose to die as Vardhamana did, by self-imposed fasting, and sorenounce all possibility of clinging to material existence.

From the ancient traditions and from foundations established from the time of Vardhamana the Jains developed an extremely complex epistemology that can be described here only in briefest outline. Two main categories of knowledge, direct and indirect, each of which has five varieties or subdivisions, are posited. Direct cognition of whatever variety is believed always to be preceded by an awareness of the object of its perception. It includes knowledge through the five senses (mati), clairvoyant cognition (avadhi), knowledge acquired through the understanding of verbal messages and signs (sruti), direct knowledge of others' thoughts (manaparyaya), and omniscient or perfectknowledge (kevala). This last is the knowledge attained by Vardhamana when he became a Jina. It is knowledge that is independent of thesenses, free from doubt of any kind, and it is unlimited by space ortime. It cannot be described and is the prerogative of only the liberatedy/Va. Indirect cognition includes recollection (smrti), recognition (pratnabhijna), inductive reasoning (tarka), inference (anumana) andtrustworthy testimony (agama). This last kind of knowledge is ofscripture or of the words of a fully-liberated Jina. It is important as ameans to truth for those who are still struggling towards release.

Since omniscient knowledge, kevala, cannot be described, there is a logical and conceptual problem about its transmission from a Jina toa layperson. The resolution of this difficulty gave rise to an important feature n Jain logic: the doctrine of standpoints, often spoken of as'non-one-sidedness'. The basis of the doctrine is a distinction drawn between knowledge of a thing as it is in itself (pramama), and knowledge of it in relation to other things (naya). A naya is simply astand point from which we may make a statement about something in its relation to some other thing or things. What a particular stand point and its resulting statement may be will depend on a person's particularpurpose, but the adoption of one standpoint does not preclude or denyothers. What is concluded from this is that knowledge is generallypartial and relative to the standpoints taken, and that a partial truth isnevertheless a truth insofar as it is an aspect of the total reality. Jainismaccepts and respects all such standpoints. Like the broad erepistemological doctrine, naya is a doctrine with many elaborations and subdivisions. It analyses and defines the properties and implications of a whole range of stand points and it also posits the notion oinayaniscaya, the 'complete point of view'. Even nayaniscaya may be of more than one kind: it may refer to a 'complete point of view' ofpure unconditioned reality, or of a conditioned one. The nirvana soughtby Jains does not bring about the extinction of the jiva. It admits the jiva released from all desires and physicality to eternal blessedness. Once freed it is pure consciousness and will remain so eternally, In nirvana the jiva is said to enjoy four infinite accomplishments: infinite knowledge, infinite vision, infinite strength and infinite bliss.

At the end of the twentieth century the Jain population worldwide was approximately 6 million, of which over 3 million are in Indiawhere the community grows steadily. Although not numerous, Jainshave become an influential and important element in Indian society.They translate and publish their literature in their own publishing housesand promulgate scholarly research and study of their traditions andhistory. The ethical emphasis of their doctrine means that they have alively social concern for others and, because they are predominantlymembers of the professional classes, the resources and capabilities togive practical help. But they also have to contend with widespread andrapid social change, with strong westernizing influences and with thethreat of being engulfed by a homogeneous culture. Their modern taskis to sustain the vitality of their severe and sublime vision of therecovery of original being in the face of all that assails them.

SIDHARTHA GAUTAMA: THE BUDDHA(c.563-483 BCE)

A person now known as the Buddha, 'the Enlightened One', is believed to have lived in India in the latter part of the sixth and the early part ofthe fifth centuries BCE. The example of his life and teaching

generated Buddhism, a tradition of beliefs and practices which, during two and a half thousand years, has spread peaceably through many parts of Asia.Buddhism has developed or been interpreted from the central tenets ofthe Buddha's teaching in a variety of ways. Although it has no god itis widely regarded as a religion. Any person may endeavour to achievethe buddhic condition of enlightenment: by eschewing extremes andfollowing the Middle Way: by transcending the self of everyday life.

Buddhism is essentially a practical doctrine, dedicated primarily tothe negation of suffering and only secondarily to the elucidation of philosophical issues. But of course, the two realms, the practical and the philosophical, are not unconnected and the Buddha's metaphysical conception of the impermanence and interdependence of all things profoundly influences his teaching about the conduct of daily life and the nature of human salvation.

There are no entirely reliable sources either for the facts of the Buddha's life or for his teaching (dharma), but there are numerousaccounts compiled by his followers. Written records began to be puttogether about four centuries after his death and were taken largely from the recitings of monks and from the oral pronouncements passed down from the Buddha's original disciples. Although unverifiable and often conflicting, these accounts, taken as a whole, provide a rich and detailed picture of the Buddha's world and of the ideas that mformedhis thought.

Sidhartha Gautama, later to be called the Buddha, was probably born near Nepal in north-eastern India. Early Buddhist scriptures relatethat his birth took place beneath a tree in the lowland country side nearLambini and that his mother died seven days later. His family wasundoubtedly a prosperous one, occupying a position of power within a Hindu community structured by a well-defined hierarchy of estates.This hierarchy separated people into those who prayed, those who fought and those who laboured. The Brahmins, who were the priests and scholars, constituted the highest estate. Next came thn warriors who ruled and defended society, and among these were the Sakyas ofwhom Sidhartha was one. The third and fourth estates consisted of commoners and servants respectively. Mobility between the ranks ofthe estates was not easy. It has been remarked that 'It was as if the estates were different species. In this conception there were no Humanbeings, only Brahmins, Warriors, Husbandmen and servants.'

Sidhartha was brought up in the Hindu tradition, living in pnncelystyle and marrying at 16. When he was 29 his life changed as theresult of four experiences that brought him to a realization of mortalityand the pain of human existence. It is related that he encountered, first, an old man, then a mortally sick man, then a corpse and then aman with a shaven head and a threadbare yellow robe—a monk insearch of spiritual truth, Sidhartha brooded deeply on the significance of these encounters and when night came he quietly left his sleepingwife and child and began a now life as a beggar. His aims were spiritualand practical ones: to discover the cause of suffering (duhkha) and toeffect its cure. He wandered the Ganges plains, seeking out the yogis(see yoga) and subjecting himself to a regime of extreme frugality and discipline.

Alter six years of such practices Sidhartha seems to have achieved nothing of what he sought, but he resolved to persist in his endeavour.He bathed, ate a light meal and then began a prolonged meditation onsuffering and rebirth, progressing through four stages of meditationand at last achieving the awakening he sought: first, by means of therealization that all desire is productive of pain, and then by experiencing release from every craving. In this way, at the age of 35, he achieved buddhahood. Buddhist scriptures relate that he described his joy inthese words:

I have overcome all foes; I am all-wise; I am free from stains in every way; I have left everything; and have obtained emancipationby the destruction of desire...I have gained coolness...and haveobtained Nirvana.

Nirvana is primarily a Hindu concept. It is sometimes spoken of as astate of bliss and peace that is secure because it is irreversible. It is also described as a state of 'unbecoming', or non-being, a condition thought to precede individual existence and which takes on the characterof a far place to which the existing individual might return. Perhaps itis best thought of as something that is beyond ordinary comprehension,as experienceable rather than describable. Since it involves thedisappearance of the desirous and suffering individual it is difficult,except in moments of imaginative insight, to conceive of such a state.lt is the falling away of all the pains and uncertainties that characterizecamal existence, leaving a peace that is unassailable and withoutsensation. It is sometimes referred to in wholly negative terms asa condition where there is neither 'earth', nor 'water', nor 'fire', nor 'air', nor the sphere of infinite space, nor the sphere of infinite consciousness, nor the sphere of the void... neither a coming nor a going

nor a standing still, nor a falling away nor a risingup; but it is without fixity, without mobility, without basis. It is the end of woe.

Commentators have sometimes objected that there is a contradiction speaking of nirvana as, on the one hand, a kind of negation and, onthe other, a state of bliss. The reply to that objection must surely bethat if the descriptive account borders on contradiction then the resulting incoherence has to be understood as an indication of the in expressibility and otherness of nirvana.

Nirvana is not something attainable only at death. A released person may continue, as the Buddha did, in physical existence, undergoingall the processes of ageing and bodily decay although invulnerable tospihtual regression. When he achieved enlightenment Sidhartha wasready to enter fully into nirvana, but he paused to reflect on whetherhe should do so at once or should embark instead on a teaching mission.He chose to teach. When he had prepared himself he delivered his firstdiscourse, now known as the Benares Sermon, to the five men whohad accompanied him on many of his wanderings. These followerswere at first sceptical and disapproving. In their eyes, when he washedand ate before his long meditation, Sidhartha had lapsed from theextreme asceticism they deemed necessary for true enlightenment. Butwhat he had found through that new approach was a path between thetwo extremes of worldly indulgence and punishing self-denial. Hissermon marked the beginning of a teaching ministry dedicated to theexposition and exemplification of the undogmatic thinking of theMiddle Way. That ministry continued until he died, forty-five yearslater. Most historians place his death in 483 BCE, recounting that it occurred as the result of eating food that contained a tainted ingredient.His body was cremated and its ashes distributed among eight groupsof his followers.

The Buddha's teaching is largely about human conduct and salvation and its central concern is with the abolition of suffering. However, ithas to be understood in relation to the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation, or transmigration of souls. In Hinduism this doctrine rests on thegeneral belief that all living things are besouled and that souls becomeincarnate in a succession of different types of bodies. Which body a particular soul migrates into depends on the kind of life lived throughits previous body and this conditioning or determining of its nextincarnation is karma, the universal law that governs the distinctions between embodied souls and also their particular deeds. Reincarnationis thought of as a more or less perpetual bondage to samsara, the wheel of life, a bondage maintained by the individual's passions andcravings. But release is possible and may be achieved by a gradualbettering of one's karma so that migration to bodies capable of moreascetic and spiritual living and, eventually, entry into nirvana can takeplace.

In Hinduism the bliss of nirvana is broadly conceived of as a state of total union with Brahman, the ultimate and absolute Reality of the universe, in which individuality is completely abolished. Buddhist doctrine differs from this in some important respects. For one thing, it does not assert the existence of Brahman as the unifying and ultimate power of the universe. It also rejects the concept of the individual immortal soul. It maintains that the empirical personality consists of five kinds of entity, or skandha— body, feelings, desires, mental conceptions and pure consciousness—but that none of these is permanent and so cannot constitute anything that could be understoodas soul. Accordingly, Buddhism concludes that there is an empirical personality that has a psychic or mental aspect, but it finds no reason to a ffirm the existence of an enduring soul capable of finding eternalsalvation through absorption into a Brahmanic absolute.

This view has implications for the doctrine of reincarnation, sinceits argument, if accepted, renders incoherent the idea of a persisting soul that migrates through a series of in carnations. Thus the buddhistic view is not that there is an eternal soul that migrates, but that the cumulative disposition, or karma, of a life that is ending leaps forward into a fresh incarnation and conditions its development. Buddhist scriptures describe tho karma of a dying person as finding a new embodiment, one that is uppropriate to its past, in the embryo of a pregnant woman's womb. In Ihis way, the whole disposition of a former life takes up habitation in and bofjins to influence a new one. A new consciousness arises, but with a disposition shaped by a previous one. Confronted with the question whether a released being continues to exist in some way after death, the answer given by Buddhism is that there is no appropriate answer.

Sidhartha did not hold that the development of a life is rigidly and wholly determined by the physical events that are the consequences of karma. Instead he taught that it is intentions, motives and volitions that and decisive for the karma of a future life. The painful consequences of the bad intentions of a previous life are inevitable and unavoidable, but good intentions or volitions, even those relating to a deed that fails to turn out well, can lead only towards nirvana, the condition of release. Accordingly, it is not pointless, in Buddhism, to seek a virtuous wayof life.

In the Benares Sermon the Buddha's teaching begins with the listing of the Four Noble Truths: the fact of suffering, its cause, the requirement that it shall cease, and the method of its cessation. These truths clearly coincide with the insights that came to him in the four encounters that set him on the path to buddhahood. Their discussion is followed by an exposition of what it is to tread the Noble Eight foldPath, the course of conduct that can end suffering. The path requiresone to live a life based on a right view, right thought, right speech, right conduct, right vocation, right effort, right attention and right concentration. The details of Buddhist practice are to be derived fromthis framework and worked out by reference to the principle of seeking the Middle Way in all things. In following the Middle Way, extremes are repudiated since they constitute the kind of ties and attachments that impede progress towards release. A person on the Middle Way neither constructs in his mind, nor wills in order to produce, anystate of mind or body, or the destruction of any such state. By not so willing anything in the world, he grasps after nothing; by not grasping, he is not anxious; he is therefore fully calmed within.

The literature of Buddhism is abundant and various. It falls into two main parts that correspond with the division of Buddhist doctrine into its two main schools, the Theravada (or Hinayana) and the Mahayana. The Theravada scriptures are written in Paliand are generally known either as the Pali Canon or the Tripitaka, usually translated as The Three Baskets'. The 'baskets' respectively contain a collection of the Buddha's reported sayings and sermons.the rules of conduct, and discussions of philosophical issues in Buddhism. These central works of the Pali Canon generated numerous commentaries and disquisitions. Mahayana literature iseven more copious and has a somewhat different character that was imposed on it during the wider dissemination it received over several centuries in the early development of Buddhism. It was originally written in Sanskrit but many of those originals were lost after their transmission to China and Tibet. This has meant that, in more recent times, Chinese and Tibetan versions have had to be translated backinto Sanskrit.

It is not surprising that the central beliefs and doctrines attributed to the Buddha have endured, developed and flourished. They have a practical aspect that is readily absorbed into daily life. At thesame time they deal with certain large questions that have always fascinated humankind: questions concerning the soul, the self, freewill, death, God, reality and the meaning of life. Buddhism is sensitively agnostic concerning these ultimate questions and soallows for the human sense of mystery and transcendence and the propensity to speculate and reason that are part of human consciousness in general. But it is also down-to-earth and forth right in its conclusions derived from empirical tact and it offers clear guidance on how to realize spiritual aspirations. The Buddha taughtan attitude of non-violence and an awareness of community and relatedness among all things. He condemned the rigid hierarchy ofthe Hindu estates, maintaining that inner virtue rather than birth orrank is to be valued, and he welcomed followers, both men and women, from all walks of life. He did not think of himself either asan innovator or as the maker of a philosophy, for he saw his teachingas deriving largely from the distillations of perennial human wisdomand practices. Nevertheless, his thinking is analytical and systematicand it has an independence and vigour that impart originality to it. lt possesses, too, a broad coherence that knits it into a system ofideas embracing important philosophical issues.

After the Buddha's death his doctrine survived and spread invarious forms. The monks who survived him did their best to preservehis ideas exactly as he had expressed them, reciting and promulgating the wisdom contained in the Three Baskets of the Pah Canon. In the first four or five centuries after Sidhartha's death Buddhism remainedalmost exclusively Indian. It then began to move eastwards through Asia and then to China as well, influencing and being influenced by all it encountered. Today, the Doctrine ofthe Elders (Theravada) prevails in the southern part of the Buddhist world and is the national religion of Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand. In the northern parts of the Buddhist world, the Mahayana doctrines that developed at the time of the rise of Christianity are dominant in Nepal, Korea, China, Japan and Tibet. In the late twentieth century it was only in Sri Lanka that Buddhism was largely unfettered and worked in conjunction withthe state.

The Buddha's teaching has not escaped criticism. Many have printed out that it advocates a withdrawal from life and is suitable only forthose who are willing to live in cloistered retirement, evading the abrasions and difficulties encountered in the wider world. But such acharge is no more relevant or damaging to Buddhism than it is to most other religions. Just as Judaism and Christianity, for example, are capable of sustaining a wide variety of lifestyles, ranging from those of monastic seclusion to those of full engagement with the political and economic business of the world, so is Buddhism able to do so. Itsscope and temper are aptly summarized by Michael Carrithers in hisremark that 'Buddhism is quintessential tolerant, cosmopolitan .uulportable'.

v PATANJALI

(Second century BCE)

Patanjali is the compiler and systematizer of a set of aphorisms, the longest consisting of only a few lines, known as the Yoga Sutras. Scatter redreferences are made to yoga in the Vedas, and the yogic tradition inHinduism predates Patanjali. To many people in the West the term 'yoga'is associated with exercises, popular since the 1960s, in breathing andphysical posture. The Yoga Sutras certainly incorporate mind exercises: several of the sutras contain information such as, 'The mind may alsobe calmed by expulsion and retention of the breath', and ‗posture is...firmbut relaxed through control of the natural tendencies of the body, andthrough meditation'.1 An improvement in posture and breathing is not the sole nor even the primary aim of yoga. Instead, it is either a therapeuticmethod of freeing the mind from false beliefs, or the insight into ultimatereality, the dharmas, achievable by this method Yoga is an intricate andintegrated system consisting of metaphysics, the philosophy of mind,the theory of knowledge, ethics and the philosphy of language. It aimsat the union of atman, or that within the self which is ultimately real, with Brahman, or ultimate reality in its universal aspect. 2 Patanjali's work has been of enormous influence in all schools of Buddhism that follow the meditative method, particularly that of Yogacara.

Apart from his editorship of the Yoga Sutras, very little is known about Patanjali. Even his dates are uncertain. He is estimated by some scholars to have lived during the second century BCE, but by others during the fifth century CE. One of the reasons for this wide discrepancy is the scholarly issue of whether the whole of the text of the Yoga Sutras was compiled by Patanjali. The compilation is divided into four books or chapters on, respectively, meditation (or samadhi), yogic practice, psychic powers, and liberation from samsara, or the cycle of rebirth and suffering. It is generally agreed that the first three chapters are attributable to Patanjali. The fourth chapter contains arguments against Buddhist doctrines which cannot be found in written form before the fifth century CE. If the last part of the Yoga Sutras is Patanjali's work, it cannot have been compiled before this date either. Against this view there are several considerations. One is that the Buddhist teachings to which the Yoga Sutrasare opposed may have been disseminated earlier in oral form, by being passed down from teacher to disciple. Another is that the Buddhist doctrines were recordedin earlier documents which are not now extant. A third is that the fourth chapter may be a later interpolation. Surendranath Dasgupta isinclined, on internal grounds of style, to favour the view that the Yoga Sutras is not one work, but two. 3 Whatever the merits of the various hypotheses which have been put forward, it is unlikely that the debate will ever be definitively settled. The Yoga Sutras take over the metaphysical doctrines and conceptsto be found in earlier Hinduism, particularly those of prakrti and purusha. The universe consists of elemental, undifferentiated stuffknown as prakrti. This stuff is eternal, uncreated and indestructible. Ithas three gunas, a term variously rendered as qualities, forces orenergies. There is sattwa, or intelligence, which contains unrealizedor potential essences, forms or structures: in other words, the blueprintfor whatever may become actual. Tamas is inertia or immobility, theforce or obstacle which prevents prakrti from emerging from itspotential to resolve itself into particular structured objects orphenomena. Rajas is motion, activity or dynamism, which canovercome tamas to allow the production of the particular things, ordifferentiated phenomena, of the universe. Sattwa is a disciplining forceon rajas which if acting alone would be undirected, chaotic energy.Sattwa, tamas and rajas are in unstable combination. If they are in equilibrium, there is prakrti without the phenomena of the universe.When rajas predominates, there is the creation and evolution ofparticular things. When tamas predominates, everything is destroyedand falls back into the undifferentiated prakrti. The universe is thussubject to an endless cycle of cosmic evolution and dissolution. Prakrths both caused by and incorporated into Brahman. All phenomena ormodifications, and prakrti itself, are neither mental nor physical. Anobject in its individuality appears as matter and is a 'gross phenomenon' whereas when we consider the essence of an object, or what makes it the sort of object it is, it has the appearance of mental stuff and is a'subtle phenomenon'. The aim of yoga is to liberate the at man, or trueself, often referred to in the Yoga Sutras as purusha, from prakrti, andto allow its union with Brahman. Atman, according to Patanjali, ispure consciousness and transcends prakrti, and Brahman is ultimatereality, all-encompassing and without qualities.

Patanjali maintains that the empirical mind, which is a phenomenon of prakrti, has three aspects or functions. It can receive sense impressions from phenomena; it can classify, identify and react to

them;and it is self-conscious. The awareness of the ego leads us to themistaken belief that sense impressions and reactions belong to it, and thus are private and subjective. All impressions and reactions are known as 'mental fluctuations' or 'thought-waves', and yoga is the control of thought-waves in the mind'.4 When we reach the stage of perfect contemplation, we enter into our real nature, the purusha, which is different from the empirical mind. In particular, we rid ourselves of the false notion that we are separate, unique individuals. Instead, our true selves are not differentiated from each other, but are atman, whichis to be identified with Brahman. Through yoga, the phenomenal mind rids itself of itself to allow the union of atman and Brahman.

Patanjali's teachings about the union of atman and Brahman leaveus with certain difficulties. The transcendence of the ego which can beachieved by the empirical mind entails the annihilation of individuality.There is thus no individuated subject of experience. We cannot be sucha subject, because there is no 'we', just undifferentiated ultimate reality.Our true selves are not distinct from that which is not our selves, as all differentiations are resolved into Brahman. Thus, even lo talk of our true selves is a mistake; there is only undifferentiated, impersonal, qualityless Self. This position has implications for language, which operates on the assumption that the attribution of subjecthood differentiates the subject of experiences from its object, or that whichis experienced. The at man which is Brahman does not have the attribute of pure consciousness; it is consciousness, without a subject. There is no object of which atman or Brahman is conscious, as there is nothingfrom which ultimate reality is to be distinguished.

Our character and predispositions are built up from the accumulation of thought-waves. A person who, for example, has often felt angry inthe past becomes ill-tempered and is predisposed to react angrily inthe future. Our tendencies and character need not, according lo Hindu philosophy, develop over just one lifetime; we also retain dispositions from our previous lives. They can, however, be altered through the technique of yoga. Characteristics such as anger are detrimental to us, and lead to our continuing to be trapped in samsara. We can eliminate negative characteristics by developing beneficial ones: in the words ofthe Yoga Sutras, 'Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion ror the unhappy.delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked.'

There are certain obstacles to progress in yoga, the first of which is what Patanjali calls 'wrong knowledge'. A favourite example from yogic literature is that of a rope being wrongly identified as a snake. Wrong knowledge is thus due to a failure of the classificatory faculty of the mind. The second is referred to as 'verbal delusion', which 'arises when words do not correspond to [phenomena]'. 6 Patanjali does not give any examples of mismatches between language and phenomena, but they could range over calling things by the wrong name, as in the case of the rope and the snake; the mistaken belief that we are unique, separate selves; the assumption that reality consists only of the phenomenal realm; and ambiguity in the concepts which we use. Thus if we talk of yoga as merely a set of exercises, whilst being ignorant of its considerable philosophical ramifications, we areguilty of verbal delusion. Patanjali's concerns over language mismatchare similar to those of certain Chinese philosophers on the 'rectificationof names', the confusion and lack of clarity in language which results in the misdescription of things and events, and lack of clarity in thought.

There are two types of knowledge, the first being'ordinary'or smrti, and consisting of 'direct perception, inference and scriptural testimony'. 8 Our perception of dark clouds, and our inference that it is going to rain, are two items of ordinary knowledge. They require no special techniques and are open to almost everyone. Scriptural testimony would include reports of, rather than participation in, yogic experience. The attitude of concentration in ordinary knowledge, whilst not itself yoga, is a useful preparation for it. The second type of knowledge, termed sruti, is a non-inferential, direct, immediate, mystical awareness of, and identity with, its object. We can attain suchknowledge, or samadhi, through concentration or meditation on justone object, thus allowing us to suppress our thought-waves. There areseveral hierarchical degrees of samadhi, ranging from concentrationon a gross phenomenon' to contemplation of prakrti. The most advanced form is meditation without content, known in Vedic literature as nirvikalpa. In the words of the Yoga Sutras, The other kind of concentration is that in which the consciousness contains no object...it is attained by constantly checking the thought-waves'. 9 We are the non the threshhold of achieving the union of atman with Brahman.

The teachings of the Yoga Sutrasare similar in certain ways to various theories in western philosophy. Contemplation theory inaesthetics, whilst it is not always considered to lead to an insight intoultimate reality, maintains that a true appreciation of a work of art canonly be achieved when all

distractions and considerations other than of the work itself are left behind, and the spectator or listener is engaged in single-minded absorption in its object. Schopenhauer (1788-1860) believed that such contemplation leads to the transformation of theself from a subject of blind desire and will trapped in the phenomenal world of particular things, to an eternal, will-less subject of knowing freed from all desires. This theory stops short of union with ultimatereality, but it marks considerable progress away from the phenomenal world and the empirical self. Plato (427-347 BCE) maintained that ultimate reality, the unchanging Forms, essences or independent standards, of beauty and goodness which lie behind the particular,changing, temporal things of this world can only be known by a direct,non-inferential insight achievable after years of training to rid oneselfof desires and emotions which cloud the understanding.

All levels of samadhi except nirvikalpa are 'with seeds' or, in otherwords, they have not brought about the total elimination of all desiresand attachments to phenomena. Instead, we are still subject to the cosmic law of karma, whereby all our actions inevitably have their repercussions, whether in this life or in some future one. Only whenwe attain nirvikalpa samadhi, or the purest level of contemplation, arewe released from karma and reincarnation. Nirvikalpa samadhi, asPatanjali vividly expresses it, either has 'burnt seeds' or is 'seedless'. Either we still have desires but they are sterile and thus carry no karmi cconsequences, or we are completely free from desire, thereby being in a condition of perfect non- attachment and poised for union with Brahman A 1

In the path towards self-dissolution, Patanjali gives special prominence to Isvara, often rendered as 'God' or 'personal deity'. Hesays, 'Concentration may also be attained through devotion to Isvara',and Isvara is a special kind of Being, untouched by ignorance and theproducts of ignorance, not subject to karmas or samsaras or the resultsof action'.12 It is possible, as Patanjali makes clear, that the unionwith Brahman can be achieved without devotion to Isvara, but such devotion has the advantage of cultivating the moral virtues of love,humility and service both to Isvara himself and to our fellow humanbeings. Isvara is not to be identified with Brahman, but is the creator, sustainer and destroyer of the phenomenal world. He acts within andupon prakrti and is viewed as having personal qualities of whicheveryone can form an image or idea. As he is not subject to the lawof karma, he has no beginning and no end, and as he does not sufferfrom ignorance, he is detached from phenomena. Human beingscannot attain a state of union with Isvara because he has personalcharacteristics that distinguish him from every other being. Whenthere is union between atman and Brahman, Isvara is transcendedand dissolved.

Patanjali's teachings are comprehensive and remarkably undogmatic and tolerant. Few of us can attain union with Brahman, but our effortsare not thereby wasted; what is gained from the preliminary steps of yogic practice is of value to us. The spiritual path of yoga need not be a purely intellectual one, but can take the form of moral progress and the cultivation of moral characteristics. Even the preparations we makefor entry into yoga, such as compassion for the unfortunate, are ofsocial benefit.

NAGARJUNA(About second century CE)

When Buddhism began to develop into distinct schools of thought ilsmain division occurred between what became known as the Theravada (or Hinayana) and Mahayana schools. Further division then tookplace in both these schools. Theravada Buddhism divided into theVaibhasika and Sautrantika schools. Mahayana Buddhism nave rise tothe Madhyamika school and then, more than a century later, to the Yogacara.

It is in virtue of his founding and promulgation of the Madhyamikabranch of Mahayana Buddhism that Nagarjuna ranks among the greatest of the Indian Buddhist thinkers. Madhyamika touching focuses on the Buddha's doctrine of the Middle Way, which advocates a life lived between the two extremes of a rigorous asceticism mid an over-worldly indulgence, and Nagarjuna's philosophical thought provides a kind oflogical counter part to the Buddha's teaching of the Middle Way. Hedeveloped a process of dialectical reasoning which exposed contradictions in ordinary thought and which, by reducing all claims to pairs of negations, sought to dislodge thinking from such extremes, thereby freeing the mind to achieve enlightenment. According to this procedure, when it is recognized that opposing poles of thought maybe negated by reasoning, the mind is able to acknowledge that reality is neither of them, and is able to experience sunyata, an emptiness orvoid which, although it defies description, is not nihilistic in its import.This experience of emptiness is regarded as the condition of a poised and perfect wisdom, prajnaparamita, in which intellect and intuition are united. Perhaps it is best thought of as a clarity of one's whole consciousness that permits the kind of apprehension that is not possible for a mind that thinks in terms of stark oppositions: 'the middle between these two extremes...is the intangible, the

incomparable, non appearing,not comprehensible, without any position...that verily is the Middle Path— the vision of the Real in its true form.'2 For Nagarjuna, sunyata is a concept which encompasses a range of meanings and which, together with the method of dialectical reasoning, provides the framework for a visionary yet rigorous philosophy.

Nothing conclusive is known about the exact dates of Nagarjuna's life. By all accounts it seems to have been a long one. He was probably philosophically active somewhere between 50 CE and 200 CE but hehas also been placed around 300 CE and these uncertainties about his dates have suggested to some commentators that more than one personmay have been responsible for the doctrine and writings attributed to him. The several biographical reports that are available are not entirely consistent with each other. It seems reasonably certain that he was a Brahmin, born in southern India, and that his early years were strangely clouded with the threat of sin and evil, so that peared to besomeone doomed to an early death. A biography by Kumarajiva 3 records that he was redeemed from this state in early manhood when he experienced some kind of illumination or conversion in which he recognized that desire and passion are the causes of suffering. The account relates that as a consequence of this realization he entered the Buddhist order. Some Tibetan sources tell a somewhat different story, recounting that astrologers had predicted that Nagarjuna would die atthe age of 7 but that he avoided that fate by entering the Buddhistorder in early childhood and undergoing instruction. Whatever his route to scholarship and spirituality, there is entire agreement concerning his remarkable aptitude for intensive study, the profundity of his insights and the compassion and care he exercised towards the community in which he lived.

Nagarjuna's thought constitutes a distillation and systematization of the Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) texts. Those texts form an immense body of literature that is the source of the sivnyata(emptiness) doctrine and that derives from those teachings of the Buddha that were meant for his more philosophically minded followers. It is no longer thought, as it once was, that Nagarjuna was the author of some of these texts but there is general agreement in attributing to him the authorship of approximately twenty-five works including a number of sastras, or commentaries, on the primary Prajnaparamita literature. 4 What is not in doubt is that he was the agent of a profound revolution in Buddhism in that he developed theBuddha's 'silence' concerning the nature of ultimate reality into acomprehensive critique of metaphysical dogmatism. In a conversation with a disciple the Buddha is reported to have described his position in the following words:

To hold that the world is eternal or to hold that it is not, or to agree to any other of the propositions you adduce, Vaccha, is thejungle of theorizing, the wilderness of theorizing, the tangle of theorizing, the bondage and the shackles of theorizing, attended by ill, distress, perturbation and fever; it conduces not to detachment, passionlessness, tranquillity, peace, to knowledge and wisdom of Nirvana. This is the danger I perceive in theseviews which makes me discard them all.

It is precisely this standpoint that Nagarjuna's dialectic upholds anddevelops. Broadly, the method of the dialectic is four fold: first, it considers the affirmation of something; next, its negation; then, the affirmation of both the affirmation and the negation; and, finally, the negation of both the affirmation and the negation. 6 Something of its use is exemplified in Nagarjuna's treatment of a fundamental theme in hisphilosophy: the idea of 'dependent origination'. It concerns causation and has to be understood in relation to the general Buddhist principle,a lready described, that repudiates all polarities and affirms that reality lies in the Middle Way. In the Madhyamika sastras (commentaries), and repeatedly throughout Buddhist scriptures in general, the repudiation of polarities is expressed in the following words of the Buddha: 'No production nor destruction; no annihilation norpersistence; no unity nor plurality; no coming in nor going out'.lnaccordance with this principle, when Nagarjuna considers causality, he rejects both a total determinism and a total indeterminism andespouses a Middle Way account of causation. He maintains that it isby means of an interdependence, or 'dependent origination', that the world has its being, and that a certain kind of intuitive realization ofthis fact of interdependency, although not dogmatically stateable inlanguage, is essential to enlightenment and spiritual development: it is the condition of the Middle Way. He writes: 'Dependent originationwe call emptiness. This is metaphorical designation and is, indeed, the middle path'.

In examining causation, Nagarjuna considers three positions: first, that of identity, which holds that the effect is included in the cause; second, that of non-identity, which holds that the effect is distinct fromthe cause; third, a mixed view in which a cause is regarded as the consequence of a pre-existent cause and becomes so in virtue of an external combination of conditions. When subjected to Nagarjuna's dialectical logic, all three positions are shown to be untenable: the first because if an effect already exists

as part of its cause then it cannot be produced; the second because if the conditions supposedly giving rise to the dfect are distinct from it, then 'anything can come out of anything', and that is not what is understood by 'causation'; the third for the reasons already given for the unacceptability of the first two. Nagarjuna further points out that causality presupposes change and that this disposes us to adopt a view of reality as consisting of momentary events, since it is absurd to speak of change with regard to what is permanent. But .is change involves a process of change requiring continuity, there cannot be a process of change in relation to events which are merely momentary. Deployed thus, the dialectic reduces all three accounts of causality to incoherence and there appears to be noway in which to enunciate an intelligible causal theory. The condition for the realization of sunyata obtains.

What has to be remembered in the endeavour to grasp Nagarjuna's ideas is that when his logic has demolished a particular position orpoint of view it is not because he is going to assert its contrary or opposite. That, too, will be similarly demolished in order to experience the emptiness in which it is recognized that the distinctions of opposites are false distinctions and, more profoundly, that essentially there areno differences between the polarities formulated by reason.

Has Nagarjuna, in exposing inadequacies in the several accounts of causality, also destroyed the buddhistic understanding of dependent origination that he wishes to promulgate? Some commentators have said that he has and that his doctrine is a negating and wholly nihilisticone in that it rules out any kind of conceptualization. Others have defended his method on the grounds that it can bring someone to the experience of sunyata and so to the central focus of Madhya mikadoctrine; that is, to the point at which polarities of thought collapseinto incoherence and it is recognized that apparent oppositions are actually non-existent, that there is 'no production nor destruction; no annihilation nor persistence', indeed, no oppositions of any kind, because there is really no difference between the posited opposites.Ultimately, Nagarjuna maintains, we come to see even that the conditioned existence of samsara is not different from nirvana. This does not mean that he wanted to deprive ordinary empirical distinctions of their utility and validity. Their legitimate use, he held, is in the transactions of daily life. However, they have to be recognized as misleading if applied to higher or philosophical truth. What is important is that the empirical distinctions of practical living are understood within the context of the critical account of their relationship tothehigher reality.

Nagarjuna's discussion of dependent origination is a corollary of the general tenet of Buddhism that everything is in flux, is becoming rather than being, and that the notion of an enduring essential substanceas the foundation of the real is an illusion or an incorrect interpretation of experience. His remarks on the existence of the self are similarly consistent with this view. He held that the entities of the world cannot be said to have enduring self-natures, or souls, and that prajna, orwisdom, consists in the continuing consciousness of the transitoriness of all things. Once again, this is not to be taken as a refutation of claims for the existence of the self but as a critique of all definitive assertions both of its existence and non-existence. Thus Nagarjuna writes: 'The self is not different from the states, nor identical with them; (there) is no self without the states; nor is it to be considerednon-existent.

It could be claimed that Nagarjuna's repudiation of all systems and theories cannot escape being construed as yet another system or theory. In contesting such a claim it may be pointed out that, unlike theories and systems, his thought is not concerned to provide anything resembling an explanation of things according to some pattern or formula, but to generate a critical awareness of the presuppositions on which all such formulas depend and to note that our choices of suchpresuppositions are often entirely arbitrary or a matter of purelypersonal dispositions. T.R.V.Murti has likened Nagarjuna's critiqueto the procedures of the western philosophers David Hume andlmmanuel Kant,11 both of whom set out to be profoundly sceptical ofall traditional justifications of metaphysical claims. It may also becompared, perhaps at an even more fundamental level, with theexistentialist approach of Jean- Paul Sartre; in particular with Sartre'sclaim that free human choice is ultimately an absurd choice since it ismade on the basis of nothing. Murti remarks:

The Madhyamika method is to deconceptualize the mind and to disburden it of all notions...The dialectic is not an a venue for the acquisition of information, but a catharsis... It is the abolition of all restrictions which conceptual patterns necessarily impose. lt is not nihilism, which is itself a stand point asserting that nothingis. The dialectic is a rejection of all views including the nihilistic.

By those who practise it, Buddhism is often spoken of as dharma 'The word derives from the root dhr, 'to uphold', and has numerous meanings. Chiefly it refers to the ultimate reality of nirvana, the lawor nature of the universe, the moral life, right conduct and teaching, and the insights of enlightened understanding. It is also used to speak of particular things. Terms such as 'dharma-body' and 'dharma-

eye'occur frequently and there are countless other uses that have to be interpreted in relation to their particular contexts. A broad distinctionis always maintained between everyday entities, which are illusory or false in some way, and 'dharmas', which are always aspects of adeeper and more essential reality. The bodhisattva, the devout Buddhist who has achieved enlightenment but for goes transition tonirvana for the sake of guiding others towards the same goal, is someone who has progressed even beyond dharmas. The mind of such a person maintains a transparency from which self consciousness and all other forms of dualism have been banished by means of the union of intellect and intuition and its concomitant condition of complete freedom: Bodhisattvas do not grasp at ideas, they cling to nothing, their perfected knowledge is empty. This is theessence of supreme isdom.'13 ln his writings, Nagarjuna describes a six fold path of spiritual discipline for those who aspire to this condition. His emphasis in this aspect of his teaching is always on the transcending of—although he never belittles—the everyday virtues of life. He rejects the ideal of the arhat, the saintly person of traditional Buddhism whose purposes were confined to the bringing about of the cessation of personal suffering and the realization of nirvana. Instead, his concern is with the bodhisattvas dedication to the service of othersand a sense of the community of all beings. His is not a discipline for the recluse. It has a moral quality not unlike that which informs Plato's account of the ascent of the human mind from illusion and shadows to a direct, intuitive knowledge of the Good. Like Nagarjuna, Plato advocates that those who achieve such knowledge should return to help those who are still struggling at the lower levels of understanding.14 The scope, detail and rigour of Nagarjuna's thought are not easily conveyed in a short essay; nor is its spirituality, which is atonce intense and serene. His ideas have been powerfully influential India, China, Tibet, Japan and Korea for over two thousand years and were, in particular, notably formative of Chinese

ZenBuddhism.15 Nagarjuna is closely studied in the West as well asin Asia, for occidental philosophers seem able to detect countless affinities between his views and certain elements of the western tradition. Since no more than about 5 per cent of The Prajnaparamita literature has so far been reliably translated and edited, this is an area of scholarship that will surely continue to develop and flourish.

VASUBANDHU(Fourth or fifth centuries CE)

In his recorded utterances, the Buddha repeatedly states that his ideas are not intended to be a darsana or philosophy but a yana or vehicle, a practical method leading to enlightenment. Consistently with this view, and with his refusal to speculate about what lies beyond or behind human experience, the Buddha made no attempt to set out a meta physical basis for his vehicle for the relief of suffering. However, as Radhakrishnan suggests, it seems that there is in human beings an inbuilt need to speculate about ultimate questions, and for this view the subsequent history of Buddhism provides ample evidence.1 Unable to resist the urge to fill in the deliberate omissions of the Buddha, later generations of Buddhists added their own metaphysics and epistemologies to complete the picture he left, their differences generating the various schools in the history of Buddhism. The major division is that between the Theravada (or Hinayana) on the one hand, and the Mahayana on the other. In turn, each of these major schools itself split into two, divided by philosophical differences to be touchedon below. The Theravadins are divided into the Vaibhasikas and the Sautrantikas, and the Mahayanists into the Madhyamikas and the Yogacarins. The ideas of these two latter schools have been of the first importance in the development of the Mahayana, and are used as reference points not only by Indian thinkers, but also many in Tibet, China, Korea and Japan. The greatest representative of the Madhyamika is Nagarjuna, and Vasubandhu is a leading figure of the Yogacara school.

Despite the existence of a fairly early biography of Vasubandhu by Paramartha (499-569 CE) —a leading exponent of Yogacar in doctrine in China—there is very little agreement about the facts of Vasubandhu's life. According to Paramartha's Biography of Master Vasubandhu (C.Posoupandou fashih zhuan [P'o-sou-p'an-tou fa-shih chuan]), Vasubandhu was born in Purusapura (Peshawar), son of a Brahmin named Kausika and younger brother of Asanga, himself to become a major figure in the Yogacar in tradition. In his earlier years, Vasubandhu is said to have been a follower of the Theravadin Abhidharma, 2 composing a major summary of doctrine, the Abhidharmakosa, in 600 verses, to be followed by a prose commentary, the Abhidharma kosabhasyam. This work, together with his skill as a disputant, is said to have brought Vasubandhu a considerable reputation.

It is said that Asanga, a Mahayanist, feared that his younger brother would use his considerable powers to attack the Mahayana. Feigning illness, Asanga persuaded Vasubandhu to return to him at Purusapura. In the course of the visit, Asanga converted Vasubandhu to the Mahayana, and the latter then turned his considerable intellectual gifts to its service. Together with commentaries on major Mahayana scriptures (e.g. on the Avatamsaka, Vimalakirti, Nirvana and Prajnaparamita sutras), Vasubandhu also wrote a number of what became key texts of the Yogacarin school, notably the Twenty Verses and their Commentary (Vimsatika-Karika Vrtti), the Thirty Verses (Trimsika Karika) and The Teaching of the Three Own-beings [or Natures] (Tri-Svahbava-Nirdesa). Vasubandhu is said to have died in his eightieth year at Ayodhya.

Such is the outline of the biography given by Paramartha. Many scholars have been reluctant to accept this evidence, however, since other early sources give conflicting dates for Vasubandhu's life by upto two hundred years, and in addition there are several figures in Buddhist history named Vasubandhu. In an attempt to accommodate all the evidence, the scholar Erich Frauwallner proposed that there were in fact two Vasubandhus whose lives and works have been confused, one responsible for the Abhidharmika works, and the other Asanga's younger brother. 4 Frauwallner's thesis is accepted by some scholars and disputed by others, and it is unlikely that the issue can be settled unless new evidence comes to light. It is one of several profound disagreements in Vasubandhu studies.

One point which is beyond dispute is that the Yogacarin school of the Mahayana has accumulated more names than any other, being standardly referred to in no fewer than four ways. The terms used are worth noting, since they indicate some important features of this school of thought from which to begin. The terms are as follows:

(1) Yogacara, from yoga and acara, a therapeutic course of action; this is the most ancient of the terms used to designate this school, and it indicates its concern to free the mind from false beliefs (apsychological therapy) by means of yogic practices. It may also indicate that the metaphysical doctrines of the school are founded on insights derived from yogic states of meditation as much .is discursive reasoning, 5 a thesis for which there is evidence, as will be seen, in Vasubandhu's works;

(2) cittamatra or mind-only;

(3) vijnaptimatra or perception-only;

(4) vijnanavada or consciousness- (or mind-) doctrine.

Terms (2) and (4) are roughly equivalent, and indicate the rontral metaphysical doctrine of the school, idealistic monism, i.e., the view that reality is one and not many, and the one is mental in nature, notmaterial.6 Term (3) indicates the principal way in which this metaphysical belief is argued for, namely by means of a philosophical analysis of perception.

The philosophy of perception had been for some time an area of dispute between the two major schools of The ravadins, among whom Vasubandhu received his intellectual training. The Vaibhasikas accepted what is termed a naive realist theory of perception, i.e. the view that what is given in perception is the external world, not a sensation caused by something in the external world. On this view, we do not in anyway create the objects of which we are aware in perception, which are held to be entirely unaffected by the nature of our perceptual apparatus. Instead we simply discover the external world, as it is, via direct perception of it. By contrast, those belonging to the Sautrantika school, whilst accepting the existence of the external world, deny that it is directly experienced in perception. 7 They hold a form of what is termeda representation a list theory of perception. Common to all forms of this view is the thesis that what is immediately experienced in perception is not an object but a mental entity or datum, from which the existence of an external object must be inferred.8 The belief in the existence of the external world, no longer itself immediately experienced, is justified as the most plausible hypothesis by means of which to account for the major features of perceptual experience, namely its coherence and its independence of our will.

Vasubandhu accepts the Sautrantika view that the immediately given in perception is something mental in nature, a sensation or sense-datum in western terminology. What he then argues is that there is no need to add the hypothesis that these sensations are caused by physical objects in an external world. All there is can be explained equally well in terms of mental events alone: hence the term cittamatra or mind-only as a name for this philosophy. 9 He begins his argument for this conclusion by drawing attention to the fact that perception can malfunction. We can believe ourselves to be experiencing external objects but be deceived by a malfunction in our perceptual apparatus:

All this is perception-only, because of the appearance of non existent objects, just as there may be the seeing of non-existent nets of hair by someone affected with an optical disorder.

10. That is, in delusory perception something is perceived, but what is perceived is not an external stimulus, and must therefore be something mental in nature.

It may be objected that this argument can at best only establish that some and not all experiences have mental contents as their immediate data. Further, how can the coherence and involuntariness of perceptions be accounted for on the hypothesis that there is no external world to cause them? Somewhat as Descartes was to do again many centuries later when wishing to cast doubt on the trust-worthiness of the senses, Vasubandhu now turns to the experience of dreaming:

In a dream, even without an [external] object of sense or understanding, only certain things are to be seen: bees, gardens, women, men, etc. and these only in certain places, and not everywhere. And even there in those places, they are there to be seen only sometimes, and not all the time.

11 That is, in dreams, where there is agreed to be no external object, our mental contents exhibit coherence and involuntariness, and therefore coherence and involuntariness do not entail the existence of an external world.

This argument is by no means immune to criticism, though Vasubandhu would not have been unduly troubled, since he has another and quite different type of argument to support his mind-only thes is, and this is an argument based on the insights derived from non dual awareness:

when [people] become awakened by the attainment of a super mundane knowledge free from discriminations, which is the antidote to these [discriminations], then they truly understand the non-being of those sense objects through meeting with a clear worldly subsequently attained knowledge.

Super mundane knowledge free from discriminations' is the non dual awareness of enlightenment, direct non-conceptual awareness of being as-is. Those who attain this level of insight have direct apprehension of the unreality of all individuals, and this Vasubandhu regards as incorrigible evidence in favour of the mind-only thesis. A clear worldly subsequently attained knowledge' is the state of mind of the enlightened after the enlightenment experience itself: a pure, non-clinging reflection, in which dualistic experiences are apprehended as they are, i.e. mere constructions, mental in nature.

The acceptance of monism in metaphysics generates an agenda of philosophical problems which monists must address. Just as those who accept materialistic monism (the view that what there is matteronly)must give an account in materialistic terms of all the phenomena ordinarily called mental, so those who accept idealistic monism are faced with a corresponding set of difficulties. In the present case, Vasubandhu has to give an account of the ordinary distinction between veridical and non-veridical perception, and of the major features of our experience— How does it come about that it is ordinarily dualistic? How do causal sequences operate over time? — in ways which do not presuppose the existence either of matter or an external world. Vasubandhu sets out to do precisely this, within the context of abuddhistic framework whose ultimate goal is a practical one, the attainment of nirvana, the release from suffering.

The distinction between veridical and non-veridical perception is a difficult issue for idealistic monists. In the framework of a pluralistic metaphysics which accepts (roughly) the common-sense picture of the world as composed of variously related discrete individuals in space and time, this distinction can be fairly easily accommodated, in principle at least: veridical perceptions accurately reflect the way things are in the external world, and non-veridical ones do not. Vasubandhu has dispensed with the external world, however, and so cannot have recourse to this idea of correspondence or lack of it between perception and what is perceived. Instead, he recasts the distinction in terms of the mutual coherence or incoherence of perceptions: 'The certainty of perceptions takes place mutually, by the state of their sovereign effect on one another.'14 In other words, since ordinary experience is simply a sequence of mental events, all change is change within this sequence. What we ordinarily regard as veridical perceptions are those which cohere with the rest of the sequence. We regard as non-veridical those which are incoherent with this sequence. This way of recasting the distinction is a fairly standard move in metaphysics of the kind under discussion.

Next, Vasubandhu has to accommodate within his mind-only metaphysics both the major features of our mental life and the buddhistic view that our ordinary mental life is delusory and can beabrogated. The major features of our ordinary mental life which are of most pressing concern to Vasubandhu are:

(1) that it is dualistic, i.e. of a world of individuals, based on the dualism of self and not-self, articulated by means of conceptual discrimination; and

(2) that it is an ordered succession of cause and effect, not a series of random changes, and these causal sequences are independent of our volition.

In order to account for the dualistic nature of our ordinary world picture, and to accommodate the buddhistic notion of enlightenment, Vasubandhu introduces the doctrine of the three own-beings or natures.

According to this doctrine, all the elements of consciousness can be divided into three classes, which Vasubandhu calls the interdependent own-being (S: para-tantra-svabhava); the constructed (or imagined) own-being (S: parikalpita-svabhava); and the fulfilled(or perfected) own-being (S: parinispanna- svabhava). Theinterdependent own-being is the play of the phenomenal world, thestream of experience. All conceptual discriminations within this stream of experience are the result of the activity of the imagination (parikalpa), which thus fabricates or constructs the common-sense(and delusory) world- picture, i.e. the constructed own-being. Against the views of the Madhyamik as, the Yogacarins consider that it is incoherent to suppose that such fabrication is possible except on the hypothesis of a substratum: hence their insistence that there are three basic classes of elements of consciousness rather than two. The fulfilled own-being is the absence of discrimination, i.e. enlightenment or the condition of a Buddha.

Vasubandhu describes the relations between the three own-beings in the following way:

At first, the interdependent, which consists of the non-being of duality, is entered; then and there construction only, non-existent duality, is entered; then and there the fulfilled, the non-being of duality, is entered.

This ordering is party logical and party psychological. The construction of the dualistic world- picture, as has been indicated, in Vasubandhu's view presupposes something out of which to construct it: thus the interdependent own-being is logically prior to the constructed. Psychologically, the attainment of non dual awareness or fulfilled own beingis posterior to the ordinary awareness of constructed own-being. Logically, however, the fulfilled own-being is prior to everything else, being reality and so the ground of all events:

Through the non-apprehension of duality, There is apprehension of the Ground of events.

(Strictly speaking, the fulfilled own-being cannot be an own-being at all, as Vasubandhu sometimes notes. Since it is Suchness or being-asis.no predicates apply to it, and so it can have no own- being or nature. When he speaks in this way, Vasubandhu's views come close to these of Nagarjuna.)

The next stage in Vasubandhu's account of the major features of experience involves one of the most characteristic and influential Yogacarin doctrines, the analysis of the eight types of consciousness. Within the context of idealistic monism, Vasubandhu has to explain in detail why it is that the phenomenal world appears to us to be ordered in causal sequences which operate independently of our volitions. This is an especially high priority for a Buddhist, since to do this is to explain how the law of karma can operate without reference to a world of material individuals to be the vehicles of causal interactions. The law of karma states that our past and present actions, good or bad, generate consequences of a like kind which will unfailingly be visited upon us at some time in the future. How is this possible within a purely mental universe?

Vasubandhu's answer to this difficulty is the theory of the store consciousness (alayavijnana),, the first of the eight types of consciousness discriminated in Yogacarin thought. The store-consciousness is an ever changing stream of mental events which underlies samsaric experience.lt is held that all actions leave what the Yogacarins metaphorically term seeds (S: bija) and these are deposited, so to speak, in the store consciousness. They mature, i.e. return to consciousness, when required to do so by the law of karma. In this way, momentary mental events(which is what our actions really are), can have consequences which do not appear to consciousness until well after the event in question, independently of our conscious will:

The residual impressions of actions, along with the residual impressions of a 'dual' apprehension, cause another maturation (of seeds) to occur, where the former maturation has been exhausted.

The store-consciousness is subliminal or on the borderline of ordinary awareness, yet it has experiences, including volitions: Vasubandhu must claim this, in order to provide a motivating force for change:

Its appropriations, states, and perceptions are not fully conscious,

Yet it is always endowed with contacts, mental attentions, feelings, cognitions, and volitions.

It is important to note that the store-consciousness is not the ultimate reality in Yogacarin thought. Indeed, the goal of Yogacarin training is to bring its operation to a halt, at which point it ceases. It ceases when no more seeds are deposited and so when no more karma are generated, i.e. when the condition of the bodhisattva (i.e. sainthood) or of a Buddha is attained.21

The store-consciousness forms the basis for the seven other types of consciousness identified by Vasubandhu: one type of consciousness is associated with each of the five senses, and an accompanying sixth type, manovijnana, is the aspect of consciousness which synthesizes the impressions of the senses and the data of introspection. The seventh type of consciousness is 'tainted mind' (S: klistamanas), a type of consciousness which takes the store-consciousness for its object, and mistakenly regards the latter as the true, real self. Tainted mind involves our ordinary, mistaken sense of self-consciousness, and is the source of suffering: 'It is always conjoined with four afflictions... known .is view of self, confusion of self, pride of self, and love of self. Since the illusion of ordinary self- consciousness is removed by enlightenment, tainted mind, like the store-consciousness, ceases when non dual awareness is attained.

It may seem paradoxical that, in a philosophy whose goal is the attainment of a state of awareness in which all discriminations are abrogated, Vasubandhu should spend so long, and with such evident relish, elaborating a complex idealism embodying many line distinctions. Vasubandhu was aware of the seeming paradox, and has a consistent response to it. In one sense, the entire Yogacarin system is a therapy: its analyses are designed ultimately to free the mind from the grip of delusory conceptual thought. it is a ladder which is to be thrown away once the higher levels of awareness have been reached. Vasubandhu is careful to point out that knowledge of the Yogacarin system itself does not constitute enlightenment. To entertain the belief, "All this is perception only" involves an apprehension', 24 i.e.conceptual discriminations, and so is not enlightenment. The latter is non dual awareness, in which 'consciousness does not apprehend any object of consciousness':

25 It is the inconceivable, beneficial constant Ground, not liable to affliction, bliss, and the liberation-body called the Dharma-body of the Sage. The ultimate purpose of this elaborate and influential philosophy is to bring about a state in which all philosophizing comes to an end.

v SANKARA(C.788-C.820 CE)

Among the most highly revered of the sages of India, Sankara ranks second only to Gautama Buddha.

1 He represents the flowering of the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy, the last of the six schools which developed from extremely ancient foundations.

2 Sankara's system of thought is known as Advaita, a term that classifies it as nondualistic.lts central theme is an examination of the relation between Brahman, the divine power of the cosmos, and atman, the individual human self. Sankara held that reality is ultimately one and that the apparent plurality of the individual selves and entities of empirical existence is illusory: what seems to be an individual self, or atman, is in fact not essentially different from the one Self (Atman), just as the space contained in an individual jug or pitcher is not different from space as a whole. The one Self, he maintains, is identical with Brahman and the aim of the individual human being must be to obtain release from the illusory conceptions of the differentiated self by achieving a full realization of the identity of Self with Brahman. The western understanding of Hinduism is largely derived from Sankara's Vedantic thought.

Sankara was born in Kaladi, in what is now Kerala state, in southern lndia. His family was of the priestly class, the Brahmin, and in due course he became a disciple of Govindapada, a well-known teacher. The details of Sankara's short lifetime are few, although it is evident that during it he achieved much, exerted a charismatic influence on his followers and became widely revered. Like other gurus, he is regarded by his biographers as having supernormal, though not supernatural, powers. He was a highly skilled dialectician, a religious reformer and a gifted writer of devotional hymns. He regarded all these activities, along with ritual, meditation and other religious practices, as stages of an ascent to a higher experience that would transcend not only personal existence but also traditional Hindu thought and customs

The foundation of Hindu thought is the unquestioning acceptance of its tripartite doctrine of samsara, karma and moksa. Briefly, samsara‘s the wheel of continual rebirth or transmigration of souls; karma is the principle, or law, of action and consequence, a kind ol causal destiny, believed to condition the types of rebirth an individual undergoes; moksa is the liberation or salvation from samsara, achieved by means of union with Brahman. It is on the basis of this doctrine that Sankara built his philosophical conception of the nature of things.

The source of many of Sankara's ideas was the Brahma Sutra, in a collection of writings that dates from the first century CE and that provides an interpretation of the Upanisads. The Upanisads are there putedly 'secret' or 'hidden' teachings that are attached to the Primary Hindu scriptures, the Veda, which are regarded as infallible. Sankaraderives much of his account of the nature of things from parts of the Upanisads that assert that there is a sense in which Brahman and at man are one. But within this fundamental unity he develops the notion of comprehending the world at two levels or from two points of view. This distinction permeates all his thought and provides the basic structure for his, account of the nature of reality and human experience. At the higher level of comprehension, he maintains, it is possible to comprehend the ultimate oneness of reality; at the lower level, everyday experience Ieads us to think of reality as a multiplicity of individual persons and limits and at this lower level there is no escape from samsara. Moksa, the releasefrom samsara, is obtained only by an experiential realization of oneness at the higher level of comprehension.

According to Sankara, the lower level of experience is maya, often translated as 'illusion'. It is important to understand exactly what is meant by this. The Indian philosopher R.Puligandla has pointed out that the word maya has at least three meanings which have to be understood in relation to each other. In a psychological sense maya is the human tendency to regard appearance as reality and reality as appearance. In an epistemological sense it signifies human ignorance concerning the difference between appearance and reality. In an ontological sense it refers to the creative power of Brahman. Maya is. Puligandla says, the creative power of reality by virtue of which the world of variety and multiplicity comes into existence. Some times maya as the creative power of reality is referred to as 'the sheer cosmic playfulness (lila) of unility'. 3 On this understanding of maya, Sankaras 'illusory' world of individuated phenomena is not without a foundation in reality, for the illusion that is maya refers to the way in which reality appears from the Iower-level point of view. It is not a deception, nor is it a falsehood, but rather an erroneous or inadequate conception of reality, the result of a misunderstanding which vanishes when it is ousted by knowledge, Sankara maintains that the world of appearances is neither real nor unreal. It is simply an incorrect conception of the true reality.

Sankara employs the concept of sublation in order to develop his account of the human person's progress from error to truth, or from appearance to reality. Sublation is a process of correcting errors of judgement. An erroneous conception of something is sublated when experience enables it to be replaced by a less erroneous conception.Thus a person draws closer to reality through successive sublations of appearances. For Sankara, appearances are of three Muds of existents: real existents, existents and illusory existents. To experience a mirage of an oasis in the desert is to experience an illusory existent, and the perception is sublated by the discovery, on at the place, that there is no such oasis. Existents are items of common sense orconventional knowledge which may be sublated by more general ormore scientific principles, as when the conception of a rainbow as a coloured arc in the sky is sublated by a description of it in terms of the prismatic refraction of light through drops of water. This scientific principle, along with other general principles such as the law of contradiction, is a real existent. Real existents are sublatable only by reality itself; that is, by being wholly transcended in the experience of an ultimate unity that obliterates all subject—object distinctions. Reality itself, since it is one and undifferentiated, and since sublation requires distinct objects, is unsublatable. At the other end of the scale is unreality, or non-being. Unreal objects are contradictions such as square circles, married bachelors and so on. Unreality cannot be sublated because it cannot be experienced.

Some difficult questions are generated in reflecting on Sankara's philosophical point of view; in particular, in connection with the relationship of his notion of two levels of knowledge to his claim concerning the ultimate oneness of reality. For how is it that maya, the world of particular, individual entities, can have come into existence? The oneness of reality precludes any attribution of maya to an alien or separate power and Sankara clearly did not want to think of it as some sort of wilfully deceptive act of Brahman. He therefore describes it briefly as without beginning and concentrates his attention on an analysis of how things are rather than on how they came to be as they are. Perhaps maya is best thought of by reference to the description of it as the generative power of Brahman; as a kind of

spontaneous creativity that provides the possibility of the phenomenal world, and that is the necessary condition of any kind of human experience of as ubject—object sort. Thus Sankara points out that Brahman is the 'basis of this entire apparent world...while in its true and real nature...it remains unchanged'.4 Essentially, Brahman is formless and beyond description. It is a totality of pure knowledge and the variety and flux of the phenomenal world 'are names only.. .in reality there exists no such thing as modification'.

Further difficulties arise concerning the relation of the individual self, or atman, to the one Self. Sankara holds that each person is a being who is essentially and fundamentally an aspect of the changeless Self, arguing that this is so because when we are conscious of the empirical self it is the Self in us that is aware. But at the lower level of understanding, a person takes herself or himself to be an individuated being, subject to karmic destiny and reincarnation, and inhabiting a world of individual and perishable entities. But the task of each person, Sankara maintains, is to aspire to a participation in the oneness of Brahman. This cannot be a matter of becoming a radically different being, for it already is the case that the apparently individual self isreally Self or Brahman It must therefore be a matter of dispelling maya; of shedding one's illusory conception of things by means of a progression of successive) experiences of sublation, and there by proceeding from an inadequate conception of reality to knowledge of it. Yet the achievement of thin higher state does seem to embody something of a contradiction. For the loss of individuality involved means that there can be no senso or awareness of the achievement of union. There is release from the thralldom of the desires and propensities of the empirical self and from the possibility of a continuing cycle of rebirth; but if such release is total then it can only be lived and not contemplated as an object, since there remains no subject capable of the awareness that one exists in the bliss of union with Brahman. Multiplicity, change and individuation constitute the conceptual conditions that make experience possible. These conditions are abolished by the notion of oneness with Brahman, so that it is impossible to conceive of the experience other than in terms of a total negation or nothingness.

Various affinities between Sankara's ideas and those of western thinkers have been pointed out by commentators on his philosophy. His notion of a progress from illusion to knowledge is reminiscent of Plato's account, in The Republic, Bk 7, of the ascent horn the illusions and appearances of the cave to the direct, intuitive knowledge that is noesis. There are clear affinities, too, in Sankara's philosophy, with Spinoza's account of inadequate and adequate ideas; with Kant's distinction between the nominal and the phenomenal; and, in the claim that it is the universal Self, or Atman, in us that is aware of the empirical self, with Descartes's argument for his existence as at hinking substance or consciousness. But the western philosopher whose thought has most in common with Sankara's is Arthur Schopenhauer (1/88- 1860). In particular, Schopenhauer's doctrine of the quieting of the individual will and the resulting attainment, through the nullification of individual striving, of ecstasy, rapture, illumination, union with God, bears a very close resemblance to Sankara's views concerning the recognition and experience of unity with Brahman. For Sankara, the attainment of moksa, through a discipline of asceticism, study, reflection and meditation, had similar results, effecting a transformation of one's relationship with the world and an intuitive realization that one's essential being is imperishable,and untouched by either life or death.

Sankara's thought became extremely influential during his lifetime and has remained important in the Indian tradition through subsequent centuries. But its unequivocal non dualism provoked a reaction: an interpretation of Vedanta that argued the necessity for differentiation within the unity that is Brahman. In this new interpretation, atman (the Personal self) and Brahman were regarded as capable of union and so id being one, but also as able to be distinguished one from the other.

RAMANUJA(c.1016-1100(?)CE)

Ramanuja was a Hindu philosopher and the ologian who exerted considerable influence of the tradition of thought known as Vedanta 1 and who led a community that revered him for his saintly example and inspiration. His philosophy is a questioning and critical development of the monistic teaching of Sankara2 and is described as Visistadvaita, or qualified non dualism.

Ramanuja espouses non dualism in so far as he maintains that the soul and God are fundamentally one but he qualifies that claim in holding that the soul retains self-consciousness and so is capable of anextemal relationship with God. His views provided an impetus for theism 3 and the development of 'the way of devotion', in contrast to' the way of knowledge' which had been established two and a half centuries earlier by Sankara. A century after his death, Ramanuja's thought was developed by Madhva into an unequivocal dualism and theism. These three philosophers, Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva, represent the most influential doctrines of medieval Vedantism.

Ramanuja was the last in a succession of three great acaryas, or teachers, the first being Nathamuni, and the second Yamuna, grandson of Nathamuni. There are sources that attribute a life of 120 years to Ramanuja and there is some uncertainty about the date of his birth, India. He was married at 16 and then went to Kanci (Conjeevaram) to but it is likely that he was born around 1016 at Bhutapuri in southern study. He was to have sat at the feet of Ramuna in Srirangam, but Ramuna died before Ramanuja arrived. Ramuna's disciples taught him the five aspects of Yamuna's doctrine and then, after being sworn to secrecy on eighteen separate occasions, Ramajuna ceremonially received the secret knowledge of the meaning of the mantra, or ritual, of his community, the Sri Vaisnavas. Tradition has it that on the day after he had sworn the final vow of secrecy, Ramanuja ascended to the balcony of the temple and shouted the secret to the Sri Vaisnavas assembled below. Subsequently he acknowledged to his teacher, Yadavaprakasha, that his disobedience should be rewarded by condemnation to hell; at the same time he remarked that the people to whom he had revealed the secret would be saved by their contact with the more faithful of Ramuna's disciples. This observation so impressed his teacher that Ramanuja was immediately recognized as a leader capable of reforming and inspiring his community. Ramanuja's subsequent work of transforming and reconstructing the tradition he inherited was based on scholarship, wide consultation and practical reorganization. At around the age of 30 he renounced domestic life and began to travel as a religious teacher, working in both northern and southern India and founding a monastery at Puri. He was persecuted by a Saivite king, Rajendracola, and so fled to the Hoysala region, but in due course he was able to return to Srirangam where he remained until his death.

Ramanuja's thought is best understood as a kind of loosening of Sankara's somewhat rigid monism. Sankara had maintained that Brahman, the Supreme Power of the universe, is without form and that all differentiations and cognitional forms imposed on Brahman are illusory and false: they are appearances that are generated by ignorance and that vanish once a knowledge of true reality is achieved. Ordinary, everyday experience, according to Sankara, is flawed and is inferior to knowledge of the one because it is made up of distinctions, differences and separations. His condemnation of the pluralism of ordinary experience is summed up in the following declaration:

Eternal, absolutely non-changing consciousness, whose nature is pure non-differentiated intelligence, free from all distinctions whatever, owing to error illusorily manifests itself...as broken up into manifold distinctions— knowing subjects, objects of knowledge, acts of knowledge.

As already indicated, Ramanuja's challenge to Sankara's view does not take the form of a direct opposition to it; his doctrine is not dualistic but a 'qualified no dualism'. He maintains that Brahman, matter and the individual souls of the cosmos are indeed an ultimate unity, since matter and souls constitute the body of Brahman and have no existence apart from Brahman. But matter and souls, he says, are essentially different from, even though not independent of, Brahman

There is not a dualism of Brahman and the world, but a non dualism that is qualified by a certain kind of plurality. He rejects Sankara's doctrine of maya, or illusion, concerning reality and maintains instead that the world of change and distinctions is entirely real.

Ramanuja offers some detailed and systematic criticism of Sankara's doctrine. He argues that there can be no proof of Sankara's claim that Brahman is unqualified, because all proof depends on the making of qualifications and on the necessarily qualified experience of the experience.. He argues that to say that Brahman is pure consciousness, infinite, and so on, is to ascribe properties to Brahman. When we assert something—for example, This is a basin' —we assign characteristics; perception necessarily reveals something that has characteristics and there is no source of perception or knowledge that can reveal something that has no characteristics.

Ramanuja names three sources of knowledge: perception, inference and scripture. He distinguishes between indeterminate and determinate perception. The former is the first perception of something, in which its characteristics are not fully grasped; the latter In subsequent perception in which previously discerned features are reconsidered and more fully comprehended. He argues that perception cannot, as Sankara had maintained, provide us with knowledge of unqualified being because of

perception made us apprehend only pure lining, judgements clearly referring to different objects—such as 'Here is jar', There is a piece of cloth—would be devoid of all meaning. And if through perception we did not apprehend difference...why should a man searching for a horse not be satisfied with finding a buffalo? If all acts of cognition had one and the same object only, everything would be apprehended by one act of cognition.

Ramanuja points out that inference, understood as knowledge derived from a principle, is founded on perception and accordingly is as much dependent on qualities and characteristics as perception is: 'its object is only what is distinguished by connection with things Known through perception and other means of knowledge'.6 Scripture, .though absolutely authoritative, is similarly grounded in distinctions. It is an arrangement of words; and a word, Ramanuja writes, 'originates from the combination of a radical element and a suffix, and as these two elements have different meanings it necessarily follows that the word itself can convey only a sense affected with a difference'. 7 thus, according to him, none of the forms of knowledge can provide us with knowledge of the unqualified oneness of pure being asserted by Sankara. Knowledge involves distinctions and discrimination and can never be of an undifferentiated object.

Ramanuja makes a careful analysis of the concept of the self. Heargues that the self always persists in its own being, never losing its identity in pure consciousness. Once again, this is a view that is contrary to that of Sankara, who had maintained that the entity referred in to as I has two parts of which one is pure consciousness and the other the individual 'ego' which is dependent on the pure consciousness. Ramanuja, in contrast, denies that there is a self that is also pure consciousness. He argues that the self is simply the individuated ego that persists through times of consciousness and unconsciousness, and that consciousness itself cannot also be the subject that is sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious. He writes:

we clearly see that this agent [the subject of consciousness] is permanent [constant], while its attribute, i.e. consciousness, not differing here from joy, grief, and the like, rises, persists for some time, and then comes to an end. The judgement 'I amconscious' reveals an 'I' distinguished by consciousness; and todeclare that it refers only to a state of consciousness —which isa mere attribute—is no better than to say the judgement 'Devadatta carries a stick' is about the stick only.

Ramanuja's insistence not only on the reality of the distinction between subject and object but also on their fundamental non-duality meansthat he has to demonstrate both the logical feasibility of that conceptionof reality and its consonance with holy writ. He has to show thatBrahman is transcendent as well as immanent and that such conclusionsare derivable from the scriptures, which, he holds, are fully coherentand consistent when properly understood.

He therefore starts by affirming the supreme reality of Brahman.We cannot comprehend the glory of Brahman, he says, because it is infinite; it is free from limitation and from any constraints of substance, time and place, and it is unchangingly perfect. The world is the body of Brahman and the texts that deny Brahman's possession of attributesare denying only false or finite attributes. What such texts are repudiating, he points out, is the notion of any reality that is separate from the unified reality of Brahman. At the same time he rejects the interpretation of the famous scriptural pronouncement. That art thou'(Tat tvam asi) that takes it to be a declaration of the absolute onenessof Brahman with the individual soul. He argues that if there were notsome difference between the two it would not be possible to asserttheir union: they are two meanings belonging to one substance. This kind of thinking is the basis of Ramanuja's theism. The distinctionbetween Brahman and the individual soul a scribes personhood to thepower that is Brahman and provides a basis for a devotional relationship between God and the souls of the world.

Ramanuja makes it clear that the individual soul is to be thought of not as a falsity or aberration but as something real, unique and eternal. lt is distinct from the body although, in its human manifestation, it is bound to a body as knower and agent. It remains essentially unchanged even though it is born or reborn many times into the sensible world. It is an aspect of, though not identical with, Brahman. God, he argues, bestows free will on souls but also acts according to laws that are the expression of his own nature. These laws relate to the rewarding ofvirtue and the punishment of evil in accordance with righteousness.Karma, the law governing the kind of rebirth a soul must undergo as aconsequence of its previous existence, is not independent of God butexpresses his will. God is therefore the source of everything, but notthe cause of evil. In discussing this aspect of Ramanuja's theology, the twentieth- century Indian philosopher Radhakrishnan cites thefollowing scriptural passage:

The divine being...having engaged in sport befitting his might and greatness and having settled that work is of a two fold nature, good and evil, and having bestowed on all individual souls, bodies and sense organs enabling them to enter on such work and the power to control their bodies and organs, and having himself entered into their souls as their inner self, abides with them.The souls endowed with all the powers imparted to them by the Lord...apply themselves on their own part and in accordance with their own wishes to work out good and evil...The Lord then recognizing him who performs good acts as one who conforms to his commands, blesses him with piety and wealth, happiness and release, while he makes him who transgresses his commands experience the opposites of all these.

According to Ramanuja, moksa, or the soul's release from the body, is not the end of the self but the disappearance of limitations that were barriers to community with God. When release is obtained, all desire goes, so that return to samsara, the wheel, is impossible, the capacity for intelligence and holy joy is unimpeded and all souls become alike in that they are freed from the egoism of particular bodies. This does not mean that a soul loses its individuality but that the distinctions between animals, plants, men and gods no longer obtain. The liberated soul is able to give to its nature without the impediment of a body, thereby perfecting itself as an element in the whole which is at once aunity and an interrelated community of souls. The soul never becomes absorbed into God. For Ramanuja it is an atomic entity that retains itsindividual nature eternally, even in its ultimate perfection. He regards the longing of the mystic for a complete loss of personality in a union with God as an impossibility. Radhakrishnan has remarked: 'In thenature of things, Ramanuja contends, evidence of such absorption intoGod is impossible. He who has become God cannot return to tell us of his experience: he who narrates his story cannot become God'

11 Ramanuja's philosophy is a timely reminder of the fact that Hindu thought does not, as many are inclined to believe, adhere uniformlyto a theory of abstract monism, which is the general view that onlyone substance is real and that the total absorption of the individual into the one is the only true value. In place of such a monism heexpounds iho theistic conception of a relationship between God and souls which allows for the full reality of both and the complete dependence of the latter on the former while denying the possibilityof their identity.

Ramanuja's theism exhibits the difficulties to which theism in general is subject: those of giving an account of the exact nature of therelationship of God's attributes to God and of the relationships obtaining between the attributes themselves; that of describing therelationship between individual souls and God; in short, the difficulty of setting out the irlationship between the finite and the infinite, the changing and the changeless. But his arguments commanded intellectual respect as well as intuitive agreement. His doctrine maderoom for the worship and adoration of the Supreme Power without abandoning either the possibility of union with the Lord or the fundamental monism so strongly asserted by Hindu scripture. At the same time he was able to offer a philosophical structure that manymust have found more satisfying, more comprehensively explanatory,than the austere conclusions of Sankara.

VIVEKANANDA (1863-1902 CE)

In 1893, the distinguished representatives of the world's leading religions met at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. A young Swami named Vivekananda, only 30 years of age, electrified this audience by his direct, forceful and moving oratory, and almost single-handedly began a movement to make the world aware of modern Hinduism, a movement which has lasted to this day. Vivekananda combined in one personality an unusual range of qualities: the intense spirituality which had attracted him to the path of the Hindu samnyasin or renunciant, counter balanced by real concern for social reform in his native India; great philosophical competence, especially with regard to the ideas of Sankara, combined with insights gained from yogic, religious experience; and added to these enormous energy, powers of persuasion and oratorical skill. Vivekananda believed with absolute sincerity that the Hindu outlook had much to offer the world, and devoted much of his short life to a brilliantly successful attempt to make these ideas known in the West.

Vivekananda ('bliss of discerning knowledge') is the religious name adopted in the early 1890s by Narendranath Datta. Born on 12 January 1863, son of a successful lawyer in the Calcutta High Court, Vivekananda was at first destined to follow his father into the legal profession. He was duly entered at college in Calcutta between 1878 and 1884. During these college years, his concern for social reform led Vivekananda to become a member of one of the liberal Indian reform organizations of the time, the Brahmo Samaj, though this movement was ultimately unable to satisfy his profound spiritual needs.

The search for that satisfaction had caused Vivekananda in 1881 to seek out the great Hindu visionary Sri Ramakrishna (1836-86 CE), who at once recognized in the younger man a hunger and aptness for spiritual experience. Vivekananda, though he recognized the spiritual genius of Ramakrishna, found him insufficiently interested in the social issues which had led him to the Brahmo Samaj. It was not until 1885, after his father's death, that Vivekananda finally accepted Ramakrishna as his guru. He remained as Ramakrishna's disciple, undergoing intensive spiritual training and attaining profound religious experience, until the latter's death in August 1886. Appointed his successor by Ramakrishna, Vivekananda acted as leader to the other disciples for three years, but left them in 1890 as a result of a crisis of belief. During the extended pilgrimage in India which followed, Vivekananda worked out his own philosophical and religious outlook, based on the Advaita Vedanta of Sankara, combining it with elements both from Buddhism and the beliefs of Ramakrishna. It was with these convictions, to which he refers in his works as 'practical Vedanta', that Vivekananda set out for Chicago in 1893.

Following his success at the World's Parliament of Religions and offers of academic appointments in America (which he declined), Vivekananda began work to realize his vision of a worldwide movement based ultimately on Hinduism. The Vedanta Society of New York was founded in 1895, soon followed by a London branch, and Vivekananda returned to India in 1897 to carry on his work. By May of that year he had founded the Ramakrishna Mission, which within two years established itself worldwide. By this time, the intensity of his programme of work had begun to undermine Vivekananda's health. After one further brief visit to the West, he died in India on 4 July 1902.

The metaphysical basis of Vivekananda's thought is Advaita or nondual Vedanta, derived to a considerable degree from the philosophy of Sankara. Being-as-is or reality is not the phenomenal world of individual beings and entities, causally reacting in space and time. Reality or Brahman is a unity, oneness or absolute, changeless, eternal, and such that no predicates can apply to it:

in the Absolute there is neither time, space nor causation. The idea of time cannot be there, seeing that there is no mind, no thought. The idea of space cannot be there, seeing that there is no external change. What you call motion and causation cannot exist where there is only one.

Vivekananda himself had attained mystical awareness of Brahman during his period of discipleship to Ramakrishna. Aware, however, that western audiences were by and large innocent of such experiences, Vivekananda uses a number of arguments to support this view. Of these, the one he uses most frequently begins from an analysis of perception.

Perception, he argues, is a complex process. It begins with sensations produced as a result of stimulation of a sense organ, and transmitted along neural pathways to the brain. Perception does not occur, however, unless we are paying attention to sensation, and attention is a property not of the brain but of the mind, which in Vivekananda's view is not identical with the brain. Yet even the joint occurrence of sensation and attention is not sufficient for perception. The mental event which results from attended-to sensation is not a perception unless it is a property of a self, or, in other words, there cannot be a perception which is not someone's perception. Human experience presupposes selfconsciousness. The process of perception 'will not be completed unless there is something permanent in the background, upon which the picture, as it were, may be formed, upon which we may unify all the different impressions'.This unifying, constant background, the precondition of all experience, Vivekananda calls the soul or Atman. The Atman, he contends, is distinct not only from the body but also from the mind.

The next stage in the argument leads back to the concept of Brahman. The Atman or soul has no shape or form, and if it has neither shape nor form, it must be omnipresent, since whatever is without shape or form is without limit, and whatever has no limit or boundary logically cannot be located in a particular place. Again, time, space and causality, the preconditions for and generators of the phenomenal world of individuals, pertain to the mind but not to the soul. If Atman is beyond space, time and causality, it must be infinite. If Atman is infinite it must be One. If Atman is omnipresent, infinite One, Atman and Brahman must be one and the same: thus Vivekananda returns lo the classic doctrine of the Upanisads.

This metaphysics of nondualism generates a number of profound philosophical difficulties, of which the first is this, why did the one manifest itself as the many? Why did the eternal become temporal, the infinite become finite, the immutable become mutable? Many thinkers in the orthodox Hindu tradition argue that the answer is delight (S: ananda). the universe is Brahman's expression of delight in creation. Vivekananda's reply is different: the question why the Absolute became finite cannot be answered because it is a logically incoherent question. It is an incoherent question

because it applies to the Absolute concepts which cannot apply to it, and an answer would likewise have to be given in terms of human conceptual systems inapplicable to it:

To ask this question we have to suppose that the Absolute also is bound by something, that it is dependent on something. Thus we see that the very question as to why the Infinite became the finite is an absurd one, for it is self-contradictory.

Even if it is not possible to say why Brahman manifested itself, it is possible to say a good deal, in Vivekananda's view, about a closely related issue: how does it come about that the phenomenal universe takes the form it does, composed of causally interacting individuals in space and time? The Advaitist answer is that the phenomenal universe is an appearance only, an appearance which can be dispelled by appropriate spiritual discipline. The illusion of division is a product of ignorance (avidya). It functions through our ordinary patterns of conceptual thought, to which Vivekananda summarily refers by means of classic formulation 'name and form' (nama-rupa) The operation of nama-rupa generates the categories of space, time and causality (desa; kala; nimitta) and with them the whole phenomenal universe. To take the universe of nama-rupa for reality is to be in the grip of maya or illusion. The operation of maya Vivekananda likens to what is now called seeing-as: when a rope is seen as a snake, the rope is really there, unchanged by the delusory perception, and the snake is not. Analogously Brahman is always what is really there, unaffected by the operation of nama-rupa.6 Maya is no less than a way of describing the entire condition of those ignorant of the true nature of reality:

The whole of human knowledge is a generalization of this maya, an attempt to know it as it appears to be...Everything that has form, everything that calls up an idea in your mind, is within maya; for everything that is bound by the laws of time, space and causation is within maya.

One of the most far-reaching of the errors we entertain in the condition of maya concerns the nature of the self. Vivekananda's nondualist metaphysic entails that our ordinary concept of the self as a limited individual is merely an instance of nama-rupa. Our real nature, our true individuality, does not reside either in bodily identity or a set of memories or a congeries of habits. All these are mutable, and could form the basis only for a frail, inconstant individuality. The truth concerning our real nature is quite otherwise: 'There is no individuality except in the infinite...We are not individuals yet. We are struggling towards individuality; and that is the Infinite. That is the real nature of man.'8 The real self is the Atman, and the Atman and Brahman are one and the same. The real self is divine.

This belief in turn entails a particular view concerning the nature of immortality. The real self or Atman is eternal: it is beyond death, and so also can never be said to have iived: 'That which does not die cannot live. For life and death are the obverse and reverse of the same coin.

9. This is a consequence of the identity of Brahman and Atman, for, if no predicates (like 'living' or 'dead') apply to the former, no more can they upply to the latter. It follows that the immortality which is a consequence of nondualism is not personal: it is immortality of the Atman, the One. Moreover, it follows also that, if the real self is to continue to manifest itself, it must do so by means of reincarnation in a number of mortal hodies. Thus Vivekananda regards reincarnation as 'the only logical conclusion that thoughtful men can arrive at. If you are going to exist in eternity hereafter, it must be that you have existed through eternity in the past; it cannot be otherwise.'

10. It is often objected to the doctrine ol reincarnation that we cannot recall past lives, but this, Vivekananda contends, is merely because we live only on the surface of the psyche. I here are depths of memory which can be tapped by yogic training, and memories of past lives can be recovered.

There are further important consequences of nondualism in the urea of moral philosophy. There is one belief, Vivekananda contends, which is common to all moral systems, which is to put others before oneself. The question arises at once: why should I be moral in this sense? What reason have I to put others before myself? The principle ol utility, much discussed

in the nineteenth century, can provide no convincing answer to this question, in Vivekananda's view. At the tune when he was writing, the most commonly advanced form of the principle of utility was: so act as to maximize the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

12 Vivekananda objects first: 'If happiness is the goal of mankind, why should I not make myself happy and others unhappy? What prevents me?'

13 Secondly, utilitarianism is an ethical system designed very specifically to suit society in its present stage of evolution. There is no reason to regard our current social structures as other than transient, and when they are swept away by time the destroyer, utility will cease to have any relevance to moral decision making. The only philosophical system which can supply an answer to the question of why I should be moral, and indeed the only system which makes intelligible the central moral recommendation to put others before myself, is Advaita Vedanta. The truth behind the imperative to altruism is the nondualist assertion, the 'eternal truth that "I am the universe; this universe is one". Or else where is the explanation? Why should I do good to my fellow men? ...It is sympathy, the feeling of sameness everywhere.'I do good to others because they are myself.

A second important moral consequence of nondualism is that it allows Vivekananda to give an answer to the serious philosophical issue of the problem of evil: how does it come about that Brahman manifests itself in such a way as to bring manifold pain and suffering into the phenomenal world? Brahman is pure delight (ananda), so how can this be? Vivekananda's answer follows from the doctrine of maya: the concepts of good and evil, pleasure and pain are instances of nama-rupa, and have no counterpart in Brahman, to which no predicates apply. Hence, 'throughout the Vedanta philosophy there are no such things as good and bad; they are not two different things; the same thing is good or bad, and the difference is only in degree'.15 All the universe is Brahman, manifesting itself both as what we call good and what we call evil. For those who attain to knowledge of the real self, that is, those who attain direct awareness of Brahman, the distinction between good and evil dissolves. Thus Vivekananda remarks with only apparent paradox that such a person realizes 'How beautiful is good and how wonderful is evil', for in reality nothing corresponds to this distinction.

Advaita has further important consequences in the philosophy of religion. As with other nondualisms—Zen is also an example—it follows that the kernel of religion lies not in adherence to a given set of beliefs or the practice of specific rituals but in direct awareness of the One. The path to religious truth is a voyage inward: 'only the man who has actually perceived God and the soul is religious...religion is not in books and temples. It is in actual perception', and this conviction led Vivekananda to believe in the possibility of a universal religion. Further, Vivekananda believed that just as the imperative to altruism is common to all moral systems, so all religions embody one common presupposition, 'the knowledge that we are all advancing towards freedom', and freedom consists in awareness that God and real self are one and the same. This belief, combined with his belief in the impersonal divinity of nondualism, leads Vivekananda to advocate extreme mutual toleration between the various religions of the world. Each is in its own way a valuable vessel of truth, and that adherents of diverse religions should persecute each other on the ground of disagreement over the less profound areas of belief struck him as madness. To those who have realized the truth of nondualism, all violence and all competition are against oneself, and so are pointless.

In the light of this profound tolerance of the variety of religious belief, it is not surprising—and here he follows an ancient tradition in Hindu thought—to find that Vivekananda contends that there is no single form of discipline (or, as he would put it, yoga) suitable to lead all human beings to a realization of the truth of Vedanta. In his view, there are four major types of personality, and for each an appropriate yoga. To each of these yogas he devoted one of his major works. The approach to Vedanta via philosophy is the jnana-yoga which has been outlined above, and which is suitable for the person in whom reason is the dominant feature of the personality. Others are primarily given to action (karma) or work, and for them karma-yoga is appropriate, outlined in a work with this title. The goal is to act or work whilst maintaining absolute non-attachment to the work or its fruits: 'let us do good because it is good to do good...Any work that is done with even the least selfish motive, instead of making us free, forges one more chain for our feet.' In others, emotion is the strongest aspect of the personality, and for these

adoration (bhakti) is the natural attitude to God. Yet the emotion of which this is typical usually creates bonds which bind us to this world of maya, rather than freeing us from it. In his work Bhakti-yoga, Vivekananda describes how emotion can be controlled for spiritual ends, the ultimate goal being to love God because it is good to love God, entirely without ulterior motive. Finally, there are those who aspire to direct awareness of Brahman in mystic experience, and the discipline for them is raja-yoga, the king of yogas. Vivekananda's work with this title is his commentary on the classic Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, describing the path to the ultimate religious experience.

The difficulties in Vivekananda's philosophy are those of the Advaita of which it is a fine recent example, difficulties which centre on the possibility of articulating a satisfactory nondualist account of the relation of the one and the many, both in metaphysics and the ethical Inrm of the problem of evil. That the West knows of this philosophy in such detail is in no small measure due to Vivekananda's work, and in this connection he has with respect to Advaita a position somewhat analogous to that of Suzuki regarding Zen. This is the result not only nl lucidity and rhetorical skills, but of the appeal of the transparently sincere and tolerant personality which informs all his works.

MOHANDAS KARAMCHAND GANDHI (1869-1948 CE)

In each period of history, a few human beings change the course of events not by political machination or military conquest but through leading lives of absolute purity and resoluteness of moral purpose. Such a one was Gandhi, who altered the direction of Indian history with no weapon beyond an inflexible adherence to his moral, political and economic goals. Gandhi did not claim to be either a philosopher or a mystic, but there can be no doubt that behind his programme of action there lies a comprehensive world-view. Though this system of ideas does not follow exactly any of the classical patterns of Indian thought, it is clear that Gandhi's deepest insights tend towards Advaita (nondual) Vedanta, blended with a profound admiration for the ethics of the Bhagavad Gita. On the basis of these beliefs, Gandhi formulated an ethical, political and economic programme which touched every aspect of life. Though he wrote and spoke in favour of this programme extensively—his Collected Works run to over seventy volumes—he never simply preached it at others. Everything he advocated he did: he believed firmly that the best recommendation for a philosophy or a leliqion is not a book, but the life it inspires.

Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 at Porbandar, capital of the principality of Gujarat in western India. His father was chief minister "I Porbandar, while his mother Putlibai divided her time between care lor her family and religious devotion. Gandhi grew up in a religious ambience which compounded the worship of the Hindu god Vishnu with a strong element of Jainism, and thus from childhood was acquainted with the principle of ahimsa (love of all things or non-violence). After a local schooling in which he did not shine, and a child marriage at the age of 13, Gandhi's family decided that he should become a barrister. To qualify he had to carry on his education in England, for which he set sail in late 1888, and where he remained until 1891.

Hack in India, Gandhi found that his qualification did not open the door to a successful career. His natural diffidence did not help him to make a mark in an overcrowded profession. Offered a one-year post by an Indian law firm in Natal, Gandhi moved to South Africa in 1983, where his experiences were to change the course of his life. The racial oppression to which the Indians in South Africa were subjected by its European citizens transformed Gandhi into a political activist. He stayed there not for a year but until 1914, tirelessly campaigning against the legalized inequalities of the South African system, developing his technique of satyagrahaor non-violent resistance. True to his principles, however, during the Boer War Gandhi argued that Indians had a duty to the colony of Natal and organized an ambulance corps of over a thousand volunteers.

For the first few years after his return from South Africa, Gandhi took little part in Indian politics. He was finally provoked into action in 1919, in opposition to proposed legislation allowing the British to imprison without trial those accused of sedition. From that time until the end of his life, Gandhi was never to be far from the centre of the struggle for Indian independence. He used his technique of satyagrahaon a number of occasions to great effect, and transformed the Indian National Congress into a major political force. Not even he, however, could heal the rifts between Hindus and Muslims, and one of the greatest disappointments of his life was the creation of the state of Pakistan. His subsequent attempts to reconcile the conflicting elements in society did have some success, but equally attracted

suspicion from both parties. It was a Hindu fundamentalist who shot him dead on 30 January 1948 in Delhi.

At the base of Gandhi's system of beliefs is his view of the nature of ultimate reality. This he refers to not as Brahman (as is usual in advaitism) but as Satya (S: Truth), a term derived from sat, or Being. Satya or Truth alone can truly be said to be real:

It is That which alone is, which constitutes the stuff of which all things are made, which subsists by virtue of its own power, which is not supported by anything else but supports everything that exists. Truth alone is eternal, everything else is momentary.3

Being-as-is or Truth or God is nondual, and so beyond description in conceptual terms. Being nondual, it follows that it is false to assert that God has any properties since the possession of properties implies analysability and so non-unity. Hence Gandhi stresses that Truth is not a property of God, but is identical with God: it is more correct to say that Truth is God, than to say that God is Truth.'4 Further, where there is Truth there is knowledge (for which Gandhi uses the term: S: chit), and where there is knowledge there is bliss (S: ananda), and so Gandhi can accept the classic Hindu description of ultimate reality as sat-chit-ananda.

Since Truth is nondual, it cannot be an object of normal human sense-experience or ratiocination, because both these modes of awareness are conceptual, and if it is to be experienceable at all, it must be so in some other way. Gandhi, unlike, for example, Vivekananda and Aurobindo, denied that he had had direct, mystical awareness of Truth, but he did claim to have had 'glimpses' of it,5 and these glimpses were by means of what he termed faith. By this term, he did not mean pure trust in authority or belief founded on no possible evidential experience, but rather a mode of awareness independent of either reason or the senses: There is an indefinable mysterious Power that pervades everything. I feel it, though I do not see it. It transcends the senses... [and] Where there is realization outside the senses it is infallible. Again, 'Faith...does not contradict reason but transcends it. Faith is a kind of sixth sense which works in cases which are without the purview of reason. Reason and the senses are inadequate to the Truth: in their attempt to grasp it they must limit the illimitable. Any mode of awareness which bypasses them is more to be trusted and not less.

The intuitions of faith are not awareness of something outside us but within us. Gandhi accepts the advaitin doctrine that the atman or soul within us is identical with God: 'God is not some person outside ourselves or away from the universe. He pervades everything and is omniscient as well as omnipotent...Atman is the same in every one of us. A consistent advaitin metaphysic of this kind has implications for nvery other area of thought. Its fundamental consequence is that, if reality is one and divine, then to do harm to anyone or anything is to do harm to God, and this thought underlies the whole of Gandhi's ethical and political stance.

The goal of life, in Gandhi's ethics, is to serve God, and the only sure way to do this is to practise ahimsa: this means literally nonviolence (S: himsa = violence), but a better English term for it is love, used in much the same sense as in the Christian injunction to love one's neighbour as oneself. It is not correct to regard ahimsa as a means with realization of Truth as its goal. The distinction between means and ends is for a nondualist as unreal as other conceptual distinctions, and so Gandhi regards them as intersubstitutable notions: when you want to find Truth as God the only inevitable means is Love, i.e. nonviolence, and since I believe that ultimately the means and end are convertible terms, I should not hesitate to say that God is Love.

In practice, to follow the path of ahimsa is to serve others: God is present in everyone, and so all must be the object of our service. If I am to serve others, I must eliminate attachment to my own ego and its dosires. In other words, I must put myself absolutely last, I must reduce myself to a zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Atvmsa is the farthest limit of humility.

To put oneself last inevitably involves a good deal of self-discipline and self-restraint. One who has conquered the ego and is free of attachments Gandhi describes in the terms of

the Gita as Sthitprajna or Samadhista (one stable in spirit). Such a one is unrufflable in adversity, and does not hanker after happiness.

To follow the path of ahimsa will lead to the realization of one of Gandhi's most cherished goals, sarvodaya or the good of all, an ideal which follows directly from nondualism and ahimsa. since all there is is God, one must strive for the good of all. This doctrine brought Gandhi into conflict with many beliefs and institutions, both western and Indian, and he announced his views with a typical and unflinching mgard for truth. Sarvodaya entails, for example, that utilitarianism must ho rejected as an inadequate moral system, since it seeks to promote ihn good only of the greatest number, not of all:

[Utilitarianism] means in its nakedness that in order to achieve the supposed good of fifty-one percent, the interest of fortynine percent may be, or rather, should be, sacrificed. It is a heartless doctrine and lias done harm to humanity.

Again, sarvodaya entails a strict egalitarianism with regard to the treatment of others, and Gandhi was therefore bound to oppose all forms of unequal treatment of human beings. His campaign against racism in South Africa is one instance of this, but he had no more patience with the forms of inegalitarianism built into the institutions of his own country. It follows from the doctrine of the unity of atman that women are to be valued as much as and are entitled to the same treatment as men, and this was far from being the case in Indian society:

My own opinion is that, just as fundamentally man and woman are one, their problem must be one in essence. The soul in both is the same. The two live the same life and have the same feelings. Each is a complement of the other.

This does not mean that they have the same roles: Gandhi advocates a traditional division of labour with women as home-based raisers of the family and men as bread-winners, but he insists on the absolutely equivalent value of these roles, and on the need for chastity on the part of each partner. Again, sarvodaya entails that Gandhi had to oppose the caste system in India, which relegated millions of his countrymen and women to the status of untouchables. These outcasts he preferred to call Harijans (children of God), and he argued tirelessly that this systematized inequality could not be ended quickly enough.

The same absolute even-handedness moulds Gandhi's views on religion. To anyone convinced of nondualism, the outward forms of the various religions are matters of little consequence. The same reality informs them all, no matter what names and forms are used to describe and worship it, and so such a metaphysic is a perfect ground for religious toleration. Any religion which binds us to Truth is of value, and this, in Gandhi's view, is the function of them all:

I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world. I believe that they are all God- given, and I believe that they were necessary for the people to whom these religions were revealed. And I believe that, if only we could all of us read the scriptures of different faiths from the standpoint of the followers of these faiths, we should find that they were at bottom all one and were all helpful to one another. A further consequence of nondualism is that religion is not an optional component in human life: atman and Brahman/sat-chit-ananda are identical, and so God is part of our essence: therefore, 'no man can live without religion. There are some who in the egotism of their reason declare that they have nothing to do with religion. But it is like a man saying that he breathes but that he has no nose. The same atman is present in us all: to deny the essentiality of religion is therefore blindness and error. Further, it follows from the principle of ahimsa and the goal of sarvodaya that religion must function for the good of all. Gandhi could not approve of any system of belief which recommended withdrawal from the ordinary world: 'Religion which takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them, is no religion.' From this in turn it follows that politics, which has a considerable bearing on the well-being of individuals, cannot be independent of religion, and this is precisely Gandhi's view. Positions in political thought follow from beliefs about metaphysics, ethics and religion in combination with beliefs about forms of government, the nature of the state, and

related concepts. Gandhi believes in nondualism (and so the omnipresence of God), in ahimsa and sarvodaya. Therefore politics were of great concern to him:

For me, politics bereft of religion are absolute dirt, ever to bo shunned. Politics concern nations and that which concerns the welfare; of nations must be one of the concerns of a man who is religiously inclined, in other words, a seeker after God and Truth...Therefore in politics also we have to establish the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Kingdom of Heaven on earth would come about if all people lived in the light of Truth. They would consistently put the desires of their own egos last, and therefore there would be no conflict of interests. Where there is no conflict of interests, there is no need for any political institution, including that of the state, and so Gandhi's political ideal turns out to be an anarchy, i.e. the condition of society in which there is no government: 'A society organized and run on the basis of complete non-violence [i.e. ahimsa] would be the purest anarchy.'Such a social order would not be anarchic in the secondary sense of the term, i.e. chaotic, since all its members would, in western vocabulary, be saints, and the interests of saints do not conflict.

Gandhi of course realized that this vision is an ideal only, and that in practice a political system, based on the notion of a state will be needed for the foreseeable future. Consistently with his ideal, however, Gandhi subscribed to Thoreau's view that the best form of government is that which governs least, i.e. because it has least need to do so. The more extensive and interventionist the state, the worse it is, Gandhi argues, lor the further it intrudes into personal life, the less morally developed are its citizens, since they are invited to become lazy and less self-reliant. This combined set of moral and theological presuppositions informed Gandhi's support for Swaraj (self- rule) on democratic lines for India. Swaraj, for him, was not a means whereby India could maximize its political power and set about bullying its neighbours, but on the contrary was to be informed by the ideals of ahimsa. Self- rule would increase the self-reliance of all Indians, and so develop them morally in the direction of Truth. Swaraj based on ahimsa involves absolute egalitarianism towards all citizens (and so total religious toleration), and beneficent relations with other states.

The political technique which Gandhi developed, from his South African years onward, to allow him to further these goals was satyagraha. This means literally Truthforce', or, more idiomatically, 'holding fast to Truth'. In practice, it is a technique of absolutely nonviolent resistance: Gandhi coined the term to differentiate his technique from that of passive resistance. This latter was a phrase in vogue in English in the early years of the century, having been used, for example, by the suffragettes. The technique was unacceptable to Gandhi since it did not entirely forswear violent means, and the suffragettes had, on occasion, resorted to violence. Any violence is incompatible with ahimsa and sarvodaya, and is entirely excluded from satyagraha. The aim of satyagrahais to wean one's opponent from error by patience and sympathy. The only way genuinely to change someone's convictions is to touch them emotionally by taking suffering on oneself. The essential procodure of the satyagrahi is to refuse to submit to unjust laws or other objectionable institutions and to take the consequences without finching, whether they involve deprivation of property, rights, liberty or even of life itself.

`Such a technique is not for the fainthearted, and in Gandhi's view required a long period of spiritual training. The satyagrahi must become indifferent to pain, imprisonment and poverty, and so to the features of life dearest to the ego. One who is indifferent to the ego is one who realizes Truth and so satisfies a further condition for the satyagrahi, perfect religious faith: Gandhi is at one with the classical Hindu and Buddhist traditions in holding that only those who do not live in the ego are fearless.25 Gandhi also contended that celibacy (brahmacharya) is a necessary part of the conduct of a satyagrahi, since without it there will be a deficiency of inner strength.26 The ideal of the satyagrahi is in effect identical with that of the ideal human being or sthitprajna (man of steady wisdom) described above. In Gandhi, metaphysics, theology, ethics and politics are inseparable: the good man, the saint and the ideal political activist are the same, the seeker after Truth.

From a technical point of view, this set of beliefs no doubt involves some difficulties: no real consideration is given to the problem of the one and the many, or the issue of the status of the ordinary world or the question of evil, beyond cursory remarks that God has left us free to make our own moral choices. Gandhi would probably have smiled at such considerations, since they would have appeared to him, not unjustly, rather remote from the urgent business of addressing sharp injustice. The focus of Gandhi's interest is in the area of practical morality, and here the grandeur and sincerity of the vision is beyond question. Philosophy for him was dead as soon as it became merely academic: 'All our philosophy is dry as dust if it is not immediately translated into some act of living service.'

SRI AUROBINDO (1872-1950 CE)

The surest sign of the profundity of a philosophical idea, in any tradition, is that it permits and stimulates repeated reinterpretations which are themselves of philosophical value. Of no idea can this be more fittingly said than of the Upanisadic doctrine of Brahman and its identity with Atman (cf. the

Introduction to this section on Indian philosophers). In essence, the philosophy of Aurobindo is a modern reinterpretation of this belief, in which it is combined with an optimistic version of evolutionism Aurobindo argues that history has a direction, and is the unfolding of an evolutionary manifestation of Brahman which will end in universal perfection. Behind this assertion there is more than logic: Aurobindo was a yogic adept, whose thought is firmly based on his own repeated religious experiences in meditation. These experiences furnished the ground of a philosophy which aims to do no less than explain why there is a universe at all, and the significance of human existence within it.

The works in which this philosophy is expounded are all written in excellent English, a fact explained by Aurobindo's education. Aurobindo Ghose2 was bom on 15 August 1872 in Calcutta, the sixth child of a doctor who had been trained in England. Aurobindo's father had his son brought up in ignorance of Indian tradition, and sent him to England to be educated. At St Paul's High School and later at King's College, Cambridge, Aurobindo acquired an excellent knowledge of contemporary western ideas, together with mastery of Latin, Greek, French, German and Italian. He returned to India in 1893 after fourteen years in the West. The effect of the return was to trigger at once the first in a long series of spiritual experiences, 'a feeling of the Infinite pervading material space and the Immanent inhabiting material objects and bodies'.

After his return, Aurobindo occupied a number of college teaching posts, and became closely associated with the cause of Indian nationalism. He also began to practise yoga, and in so doing had further spiritual experiences of an Advaitic Vedantic kind. He later commented that these experiences 'made me see with a stupendous intensity the world as a cinematographic play of vacant forms in the impersonal universality of the Absolute Brahman'. These experiences continued during the year Aurobindo spent in gaol following his arrest by the British in 1908 for suspected complicity in a fatal bomb plot. Finally acquitted, Aurobindo briefly rejoined political life, but inner voices urged him to move instead to Pondicherry to devote himself to the religious life, and this he did in 1910.

There he established his ashram or religious community, and soon underwent the third of the four major spiritual experiences of his life, a vision of the Supreme Reality as both one and many. This began the period of his greatest literary productivity, corresponding roughly to that of the First World War in Europe. During these years, as well as the first version of his major philosophical work, The Life Divine, Aurobindo published The Synthesis of Yoga, The Ideal of Human Unity, The Human Cycle, The Future Poetry, Essays on the Gita, The Secret of the Veda and essays on the Upanisads.

In 1914, Aurobindo had met the Frenchwoman Mira Richard. She returned to Pondicherry in 1920 and took over the running of the ushram, leaving Aurobindo free to seclude himself. The fourth great spiritual experience of Aurobindo's life occurred on 24 November 1926. This he described as the descent of the Overmind (a term clarified below), a state in which all other points of view can be experienced as one's own. The rest of Aurobindo's life was spent in meditation in his ashram. He died there on 5 December 1950.

The ambitious philosophical framework which underlies the whole of Aurobindo's thought is set out in The Life Divine. His aim in this book is no less than 'to discover what is the reality and significance of our existence as conscious beings in the material universe and in what direction and how far that significance once discovered leads us, to what human or divine future'.5 To do this involves answering the profoundest of philosophical questions: why there is a universe at all; why it has the properties it has; and what is the place of human existence within it. To each of these questions Aurobindo has an answer. He begins with his view on the nature of reality or what there is, and this, following the Upanisadic tradition, he calls Brahman, the omnipresent, ultimate pure being, a predicateless unity, beyond all conceptual description: 'pure existence, eternal, infinite, indefinable, not affected by the succession of Time, not involved in the extension of Space, beyond form, quantity, quality—Self only and absolute'.6 Many thinkers in the Indian tradition would accept such a view, but Aurobindo develops this idea in an unusual way, which can be made dear, by contrasting his view with the Advaita (nondual) Vedanta of Sankara. Accepting the reality of Brahman, Sankara argues that it must follow that the material world and ordinary self must be an illusion (mayo) brought about by ignorance (avidya). To put it in traditional philosophical language, Sankara holds that only Being (Brahman, the one) is real, and that Becoming (the material world of mutable individuals, the many) is unreal. Aurobindo, by contrast, interprets differently the Upanisadic doctrine 'All This is Brahman' which is usually held to justify the Advaitin position. If All This is Brahman, then in Aurobindo's view, it follows that Matter too is real, and Matter too is Brahman. A right understanding of the universe must not only include a belief in the reality of spirit but must also 'accept Matter of which it [i.e. the universe] is made'. It is this insistence that Matter as well as Spirit is real which

shapes much of Aurobindo's thought, and which generates a number of the profound difficulties he has to face.

The first of these is the question of why Brahman chose to manifest itself at all. The major option facing a metaphysician at this point is to contend either that the universe is in some sense a necessary manifestation of the one, or that it is the result of what, in the human context, we would call free will. The first option entails that the one is not free to do other than manifest itself, and this Aurobindo rejects on the grounds that Brahman cannot lack the property of freedom. He is then faced with the corresponding difficulty facing those who opt for the thesis that the universe is the result of a free act, i.e. why should the one, self-sufficient, perfect, free, lacking and desiring nothing, choose to manifest itself at all? Aurobindo's answer is a traditional one in Indian thought:

If, then, being free to move or remain eternally still, to throw itself into forms or retain the potentiality of form in itself, it indulges its power of movement and formation, it can be only for one reason, for delight. (S: ananda)

Brahman delights in realizing the infinity of possibilities inherent in its nature.

Having established the reason for the existence of the universe, Aurobindo must now explain its most pervasive feature, i.e. mutability or change, a second aspect of the classic philosophical problem of relating one and many in metaphysical systems which include these concepts. If Brahman is a pure, eternal, changeless existent, how is temporal change possible? His answer is again a traditional one in Indian thought. Brahman not only has the aspects of pure immutable being (S: sat) and of delight, but also of Consciousness-Force (S: cit or chit), and this Force underlies all change. It is to be stressed that Being, Consciousness-Force and Delight are not distinct properties of Brahman, for Brahman is beyond all conceptual distinctions. Only the forms of our language necessitate that we divide up these aspects which in reality are one and the same. Aurobindo combines the Sanskrit terms for these aspects into the form Sachchidananda, a synonym for Brahman, a Triune Existence-Consciousness- Bliss...In everything that is, dwells the conscious force and it exists and is what it is by virtue ol that conscious force; so also in everything that is there is the delight ol existence and it exists and is what it is by virtue of that delight.

The stress on delight, combined with his acceptance that all there is is Brahman, entails that Aurobindo has to face a particularly acute form of the problem of evil: 'If the world be an expression ol Sachchidananda...of existence that is also infinite self-delight, how are we to account for the universal presence of grief, of suffering, o pain?The acuteness of the problem for Aurobindo is a consequence of his assertion that absolutely all that exists is Brahman, and so pain and evil must, it seems, be predicable of Brahman also: 'how came the sole and infinite Existence-Consciousness-Bliss to admit into itself that which is not bliss, that which seems to be its positive negation?" An analogous problem arises with respect to ignorance, since it is initially difficult to see how perfect knowledge (Brahman) can manifest itself in a lorm which involves less than perfect knowledge. These are serious dilficulties to which Aurobindo devotes a great deal of attention.

With regard to evil, Aurobindo adopts one of the classic philosophica positions, one which has close analogies in, for example, Christian responses to this question. He contends that our ideas of good and evil are consequences of our extremely limited viewpoint with regard to the universe. The ethical point of view is a human construction, and is simply inapplicable to Brahman or the universe as a whole. It will be transcended as evolution proceeds, and is merely an inevitable step in the progress of Sachchidananda towards universal delight. Again, concerning pain, Aurobindo argues that its apparent contrariety with universal bliss is a product of human limitation: pain is a contrary effect of the one delight of existence resulting from the weakness of the recipient, his inability to assimilate the force that meets him...it is a perverse reaction of Consciousness to Ananda, not itself a

fundamental opposite of Ananda: this is shown by the significant fact that pain can pass into pleasure and pleasure into pain and both resolve into the original Ananda.

The question of the possibility and nature of ignorance (avidya) is a further area in which Aurobindo's belief in the reality of matter nocessitates a sharp divergence from the Mayavada of Sankara. Since he accepts that the material universe is real, Aurobindo cannot hold that all perception (and so perceptually-based knowledge) is an illusion (maya). Instead, in Aurobindo's epistemology, the common- sonse picture of the world as composed of discrete spatio-temporal individuals has a real if extremely limited validity:

Each form [in the universe] is there because it is an expression of some power of That [i.e. Brahman] which inhabits it; each happening is a movement in the working out of some Truth of the Being

in its dynamic piocess of manifestation. It is this significance that gives validity to iho mind's interpretative knowledge, its subjective construction of the universe.

As with evil and pain, ignorance' is a term whose ground is not a contradiction in reality, but human limitation:

what we call Ignorance is not really anything else than a power of the one divine Knowledge-will; it is the capacity of the One Consciousness similarly to regulate, to hold back, measure, relate in a particular way to the action of its Knowledge.

Moreover, Aurobindo argues that evil, pain and ignorance are only temporary features of the universe, destined to vanish as time passes. This thought is profoundly optimistic, in a philosophical sense, and this is a consequence of another of his most striking beliefs, namely that the universe is evolving in a direction whose goal he has identified. The manifestation of Brahman we call the universe has evolved from a state which Aurobindo calls subconscient to its present state in which ordinary human and animal consciousnesses are present. The direction of its future evolution is towards 'the Infinite and the Supreme'. What we now regard as human nature will be transcended, replaced by 'a supreme consciousness and an integral awareness', and those who will live in this way will live what Aurobindo calls the Life Divine. This belief is the ground for Aurobindo's central moral imperative. Even with our limited consciousness we can so conduct ourselves as to live in alignment with the direction of Brahmanic evolution. To do this we must seek a 'complete and radical transformation of our nature ...[to make] spirit our life-basis'. What this means is explained by Aurobindo in some detail.

The complete transformation of human nature takes place in three major stages, with some further subdivisions. Though practice may speed up this evolution, Aurobindo contends that none of its steps can be omitted. The first stage is the psychic transformation, a formulation in which the term 'psychic' is used in a technical sense. In common with many eastern thinkers, Aurobindo contends that the ego of ordinary experience is a superficial construct, often baneful in its influence. Behind it, as it were, is the real self or 'subliminal psychic entity, a pure power of light, love, joy and refined essence of being'. This true or psychic self is 'that which endures and is imperishable in use from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine'. The psychic transformation is a major shift in consciousness such that direction of the individual passes from the surface ego to the psychic or true soul. This event has two major consequences: it results first in a complete harmonization of all aspects of our being and, secondly, permits a free inflow of spiritual experience of all kinds.

Great though the psychic transformation is, it is only the first step on the path to the Life Divine.

The next stage is the spiritual transformation, which Aurobindo epitomizes as follows:

What we see by the opening of vision is an Infinity above us, an eternal Presence or an infinite Existence, an infinity of consciousness, an infinity of bliss—a boundless Self, a boundless Light, a boundless Power, a boundless Ecstasy.

Generally, such experiences have to be repeated until the whole being lives in them, as it were, normally and habitually. In such a case, awareness of the Eternal in everything is normal. No limit can be set to this change, 'for it is in its nature an invasion of the Infinite'.

Even this, in Aurobindo's view, is not the ultimate spiritual condition. Beyond this lies what he calls the supramental transformation or descent of Supermind, a condition not attainable by the exercise of human will. No language is adequate to describe this condition, and Aurobindo attempts to hint at its nature by describing the stages of spiritual evolution discernible between the spiritual and supramental transformations. The first of these stages is Higher Mind, which is still a mode of conceptual awareness, 'a mind of spirit-born conceptual knowledge'. It also has will, the exercise of which prepares us for the next stage, Illumined Mind, 'a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light'. Both thought and vision are derived from what Aurobindo calls Intuition, and the third stage on the ascent to Supermind he calls Intuitive Mind, a power of true automatic discrimination of the orderly and exact relation of truth to truth'. When Intuition is stabilized, what Aurobind terms Overmind begins to emerge, and it is at this point that our ordinary sense of selfhood disintegrates:

When the Overmind descends, the predominance of the centralizing ego-sense is entirely subordinated, lost in largeness of being and finally abolished; a wide cosmic perception and feeling of a boundless universal self and movement replaces it.

Finally comes the supramental, or, as Aurobindo alternatively terms it, the gnostic transformation to which conceptual description is entirely inadequate. The gnostic being is free from our current form of individuality, which presupposes barriers between the self and others. Rather, at each moment, the

gnostic being will have 'the sense of the whole movement of an integral being and the presence of its entire and integral bliss of being, Ananda'. Gnostic life involves an entirely new relation of mind and body, the latter being filled with the energy of the Consciousness-Force, banishing pain and bringing instead pure delight. Again, our present mode of conceptual knowledge would be replaced by an intuitive awareness 'able to see and grasp things by direct contact and penetrating vision'. Such awareness is beyond the need for what we term morality. Morality is a consequence of our ignorance. The gnostic being has perfect knowledge and for such a being no conflict of good and evil can arise. To use a Kantian term for what Aurobindo is describing, the gnostic being has a holy will; i.e. such a being will spontaneously and with delight do what is 'right'. In Aurobindo's view, the future belongs to the gnostic beings who will inevitably evolve. Few at first, their numbers will grow. Though no indication of time-scale is given, Aurobindo is certain that human nature as we know it will be transcended as the Brahmanic evolution takes its unalterable course towards universal perfection.

This philosophy involves a number of unresolved difficulties. Aurobindo does not show conclusively why Brahman chose a manifestation which would involve so much suffering; nor can the view that evil, suffering and ignorance are a consequence of our frailty and ultimately destined to disappear be of much consolation to those presently in their grip. One cannot doubt, however, the grandeur and evident sincerity of Aurobindo's thought, nor its grounding in a wealth of genuine spiritual experience. And his philosophy has the enormous merit of tackling head-on most of the deepest of metaphysical problems. This is no technical exercise, but a genuine attempt to solve the profoundest riddles of existence.

SARVEPALLI RADHAKRISHNAN(1888-1975 CE)

Of all the distinguished thinkers in the modern Indian tradition, few may claim so wide a range of achievement as Radhakrishnan. Not only did he produce a range of philosophical works demonstrating creative thought, depth of scholarship and powers of assimilation which are rarely equalled, but combined this with a career in politics culminating in his appointment as President of India. Moreover, all the facets of his life are informed by breadth of culture, a deep knowledge not only of Indian but also of western thought and institutions, and a willingness to review each in the light of the other. If his own philosophy is a modified version of Advaita Vedanta, with a great and acknowledged debt to Sankara, his adherence to it is not to be thought of as an instance of cultural determinism, but a reasoned preference in the light of a thorough awareness of the alternatives. His philosophy, which he came to refer to as the religion of the spirit, is developed in a long series of distinguished works. Nondualism and a reinterpreted doctrine of maya form the basis for a complete system embracing ethics, aesthetics and the philosophy of religion, this last culminating in a form of spiritual life lived not in retreat but in service to the world.

The roots of Radhakrishnan's intellectual cosmopolitanism are to be found in the circumstances of his early life. Born in the town of Tirutani (near Madras) in 1888, Radhakrishnan attended schools run by Christian missionaries until 1908. During school hours he was educated in a Christian setting, whilst his home life was one of traditional Hindu piety. The contrast between the two traditions sparked an interest which never left him, becoming the driving motive for his many essays in comparative thought. The first was the two-volume Indian Philosophy (1923 and 1927) which, despite its title, employs a comparative approach.

By the time this work was published, Radhakrishnan had begun the academic career which was to last until 1962; from 1953 to 1962 he was chancellor of the University of Delhi. From 1946 onwards, senior university posts were combined with diplomatic appointments, e.g. headship of the Indian delegation to UNESCO (1946-52) and Indian Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1949-52). His career culminated in Indian politics: he served as Vice- President of India from 1952 to 1962, and President from 1962 to 1967.

Throughout this period, Radhakrishnan issued a series of major philosophical works. Some are scholarly editions of classics of Hindu and Buddhist thought: The Bhagavad Gita (1948); The Dhammapada (1950); The Principal Upanisads (1953) and The Brahma Sutra (1968). In other works, Radhakrishnan develops his own philosophy and draws out its consequences when applied to the thought and institutions of the West, e.g. The Hindu View of Life (1926); An Idealist View of Life (1932) and Eastern Religions and Western Thought (1939). By common consent, the second of these is regarded as the most complete and accessible statement of Radhakrishnan's own views. At the end of a

long and varied life, during which he had travelled widely and lived in many countries other than India, Radhakrishnan was optimistic about human nature and its future:

There are no fundamental differences among the peoples of the world. They have all the deep human feelings, the craving for justice above all class interests, horror of bloodshed and violence. They are working for a religion which teaches the possibility and the necessity of man's union with himself, with nature, with his fellow men, and with the Eternal Spirit of which the visible universe is but a manifestation.3 At the philosophical base of Radhakrishnan's thought lies the metaphysics of Advaita (nondual) Vedanta. Being-as-is or reality is not the phenomenal world of discrete entities in space and time, but a oneness, Supreme, Brahman or Absolute (all these terms are used in Radhakrishnan's works) to which no conceptual categories apply

Brahman is nondual, free from the distinctions of subject and object... |it is] before all phenomena, before all time and...is equally after all phenomena and all time. Yet it is neither before nor after. It is that which is, real, unhistorical being itself. We cannot think it, enclose it within categories, images and verbal structures.

The question arises at once as to how the oneness of Brahman, eternal and divisionless, is related to the many, the world of spatio-temporal individuals. Three major answers have been given to this question, and Radhakrishnan follows Sankara in dismissing them all: (1) creation: to say that Brahman created the universe presupposes that Brahman was once alone and then decided (so to speak) to have company, but no reason can be given for such a decision; (2) manifestation: this concept is no help, since it is utterly unclear how the infinite can manifest itself in a finite form; (3) transformation: this view involves a dilemma: either Brahman is wholly transformed into the universe or only a part of Brahman is thus transformed. If the former, then there is no Brahman beyond the universe, and if the latter it follows that Brahman can be partitioned and is not a unity. In Radhakrishnan's view, the problem of the one and the many in metaphysics and theology is insoluble: The history of philosophy in India as well as in Europe has been one long illustration of the inability of the human mind to solve the mystery of the relation of God to the world. We have the universe of individuals which is not self-sufficient and in some sense rests on Brahman, but the exact nature of the relation between them is a mystery.

Advaitism involves not only the question of the relation of one and many, but also that of the status of the many. Brahman alone is real, and to many thinkers it has seemed to follow that the many (the ordinary world) are unreal, even an illusion (maya) and so unworthy of attention. Radhakrishnan was deeply conscious that nondualism has sometimes been so interpreted as a justification for ignoring the world and its suffering, and this he regarded as morally unacceptable:

That human suffering will be healed, that the whole world will vanish like a pitiful mirage, that all our trouble is of our own making, and that in the world's finale all people will find that absolute oneness which will suffice for all hearts, compose all resentments and atone for all crimes, seem to many to be pious assumptions. The entranced self-absorption which arms itself with sanctity, involves a cruel indifference to practical lite hardly acceptable to average intelligence.

In Radhakrishnan's view, the doctrine that the status of the phenomenal world is that of maya (which he accepts) is not to be construed as the view that it is a dismissible illusion. The correct understanding of maya is this:

The world is not a deceptive fagade of something underlying it. It is u;al though imperfect. Since the Supreme is the basis of the world the world cannot be unreal. Maya has a standing in the world of reality...In I lindu thought, maya is not so much a veil as the dress of God. The world is not merely an illusion, and there is no justification for ignoring it.

The next serious philosophical issue involved in Advaitism arises in the area of epistemology or the theory of knowledge. All ordinary human experience is conceptual in nature, i.e. is organized under the categories in which we ordinarily think. However, Brahman is said to be predicateless, or, in other words, such that in principle no concepts apply to it: concepts presuppose division, and Brahman is a unity. How, then, is any form of awareness of Brahman possible for human beings? Radhakrishnan's reply is that the assumption on which this objection is based, namely that all human knowledge is derived either from sense-experience or reasoning, is false, since it misses out a third mode of knowing. This third possibility he calls intuition or intuitive apprehension.

Intuition, like sense-experience, is immediate, but it is not conceptual. In intuition, there is no distinction between knower and known, no mediation of the object of experience by any concepts. Rather, it is knowing by fusion of subject and object:

This intuitive knowledge arises from an intimate fusion of the mind with reality. It is knowledge by being and not by senses or symbols. It is awareness of the truth of things by identity. We become one with truth, one with the object of knowledge. The object known is seen not as an object outside the self, but as a part of the self.

The example of intuitive apprehension most frequently given is selfawareness. We are aware of our self, as we are aware of emotions like love or anger, not by any process of inference but by being it. Radhakrishnan contends that everything known by sense-experience or the use of reason can in principle be known by intuition. Since intuitive grasp of an object is complete, intuitive knowledge of that object cannot grow: it is final, unlike other forms of knowledge which can be added to. It is not to be confused with imagination, since intuition is direct awareness of reality, and so always coheres with truths derived from sense-experience or reason. (Radhakrishnan assumes, in accordance with advaitist metaphysics, that there is no contradiction in reality, and so that all truths are compatible.) Whilst this is so, because of its non-conceptual nature, the findings of intuition can be uttered only obliquely in linguistic terms: the vocabulary of intuition is that of myth and art, not science. Again, no intuitive finding can be doubted: all carry a feeling of absolute finality and satisfaction. Where the object (so to speak) of this mode of knowing is Brahman, what Radhakrishnan calls intuition coincides precisely with what is usually termed mystical experience.

His analysis of mystical experience follows the classic Advaitist line. He begins by distinguishing the empirical self or ego from what he calls the true subject—in traditional Hindu terminology, this is the distinction between the jivatman and the atman. The empirical self is the subject of psychology, the congeries of thoughts, emotions and sensations of which we are aware by introspection. The true subject, by contrast, cannot be introspected, since it is the precondition for introspection. It is what Kant termed the 'Ich denke' ('I think'), that in virtue of which a given experience is mine and not anyone else's, the precondition of self-conscious experience. It is studied in metaphysics, not psychology. This true subject Radhakrishnan identifies with spirit, it is 'the simple, self- subsistent, universal spirit which cannot be directly presented as the object...While the empirical self includes all and has nothing outside to limit it.' If the true self has no limit, then it is identical with Brahman, 'the Universal Self active in every ego even as it is the universal source of all things.'Brahman and atman are one and the same.

This view that human nature is tripartite, involving not only body and mind but also atman or spirit, is one of the key presuppositions of the law of karma. This law states that we will reap what we sow and entails that the universe is ultimately just. Our actions build our character which in turn influences further decisions as to action: every decision we take is morally significant because every decision shapes our destiny. This doctrine is not compatible with the view that human nature is limited to mind and body:

If man were a mere object of study in physiology, if he were a mere mind described by psychology, his conduct would be governed by the law of necessity...[but] There is in us the Eternal different from the limited chain of causes and effects in the phenomenal world. Body and mind are subject to causal laws, but the atman is not. It may be objected to the law of karma that it is false to the facts: that the wicked often prosper at the expense of the good. This difficulty is accommodated by the doctrine of reincarnation: we will inevitably reap what we sow, if not in this life then in a future one. Not to accept the hypothesis of reincarnation, Radhakrishnan argues, would mean accepting a meaningless element in an otherwise orderly cosmos: In an ordered world, sudden embodiment of conscious life would be meaningless and inconsequential. It would be a violation of the rhythm of nature, an effect without a cause, a fragmentary present without a past.'However, the doctrine of reincarnation is in turn open to a powerful objection: why do we not remember our past lives? Of what benefit is it to us to suffer if we do not know why we are suffering? If we are not aware that our present suffering is retribution, how will it help us avoid misdeeds in the future? Radhakrishnan replies that we do not ordinarily conclude from the fact that we have forgotten many experiences that it was not we who had them. Personal identity does not depend on memory of individual events. Rather, our past shapes us by forming dispositions, and it is these that are carried over between incarnations. What is reborn is not the same personality, but the results of experience: we take with us our character.

The views set out above have far-reaching consequences, notably in ethics, asethetics and the philosophy of religion. In ethical theory or metaethics, Radhakrishnan's metaphysics and epistemology leave him little choice but to accept a form of intuitionism, i.e. the view that our awareness of what is good or what it is right or dutiful to do is not lurnished by deductions from moral principles, but by (in his special sonse of the term) intuition: 'In our ethical life...intuitive insight is ossential for the highest reaches.. Mere mechanical observance of rules or imitation of models will not take us far. The art of life is not a rohearsal

of stale parts.' Those in touch with the reality of Brahman rarely have need of moral rules, and often appear unconventional to the mass of humanity, lacking this insight and forced to rely on moral codes.

The libertarianism which is part of Radhakrishnan's interpretation of the law of karma is also used by him in his response to the problem of evil, his answer to the question why Brahman or God has permitted the existence of evil in the universe. Evil is permitted by God because it can be excised from the universe only if human beings are denied freedom of the will. We are made in the image of God insofar as we are creative, and While animals are creatures we are creature-creators. There is no animal delinquency. Evil is not passivity but activity. Without creative freedom man cannot produce either a paradise or desolation on earth. God permits evil because he does not interfere with human choice. The themes of intuition and creativity lead Radhakrishnan to an interest in aesthetics, where they combine with his metaphysics in an analysis of the nature of artistic creativity and of what works of art can do for us. Creativity is a form of intuition, and so is characterized by oneness of artist and subject-matter:

In poetic experience we have knowledge by being as distinct from knowledge by knowing. The mind grasps the object in its wholeness, clasps it to its bosom, suffuses it with its own spirit, and becomes one with it.

It follows further that the outcomes of artistic creation, works of art, are not vehicles for pleasure but for the profoundest of truths: Art as the disclosure of the deeper reality of things is a form of knowledge...[the artist] discerns within the visible world something more real than its outward appearance, some idea or form of the true, the good and the beautiful, which is more akin to the spirit itself than to the visible things... Poetic truth is a discovery, not a creation.

The artist is akin to the mystic and the seer: the beauty manifested in art is the beauty of reality revealed, not a confection invented by the artist's imagination.

The intuition involved in artistic creativity or in the moral life is a pale reflection of the ultimate form of this experience, mystical union or direct apprehension of Brahman. It is this experience, Radhakrishnan argues, which underlies all religion: 'Religion means conscious union with the Divine in the universe, with love as its chief means.'Such experience has no connection with adherence to a specific set of dogmas or religious practices. The great figures in the history of religion do not enforce belief or ritual, but seek to bring about a change of heart: They invite the soul to its lonely pilgrimage and give it absolute freedom in the faith that a free adaptation of the divine into oneself is the essential condition of spiritual life. This belief leads Radhakrishnan to advocate religious toleration in a very generous form, an attitude he associates particularly with Hinduism.

Whatever the rites and beliefs involved, the goal of all religious practice is the same: release (S: moksa), which is the same as eternal life. Release is not a mode of being which will be had after death in a special place or heaven. It consists in the transformation of the inner life which occurs after mystic union with the one. It is not the destruction of the world but the shaking free from the false view of it which is avidya. It is an ego-less mode of existence, and utterly satisfying: 'Release is not a state after death but the supreme status of being in which spirit knows itself to be superior to birth and death, unconditioned by its manifestations, able to assume forms at its pleasure. Such a state can be achieved via many routes during Iife and those who attain it are said to be jivanmukti (free while living). Those who have achieved this peak of spiritual development work for the goal of the ultimate release of all (sarvamukti). When this condition has been achieved, the cosmic process ceases, and the universe lapses back into Brahman.

Radhakrishnan's philosophy is by no means free from difficulties. Some are those of advaitism in general— the problem of finding a way to characterize the relation of one and many, or of finding a reason for the manifestation of Brahman as the universe—while others are peculiar to his version of it, e.g. the assumed identity of the Kantian 'I think' with atman. Its virtues, however, are very considerable: comprehensiveness, seriousness, sincerity and a basis of formidable learning. There can be no doubt that this system deserves its honoured place in modern Indian thought.

CHINESE PHILOSOPHY CONFUCIUS (KONGFUZI, K'UNG FU-TZU)

(551-479 BCE)

The wise words and doctrines attributed to Confucius and his followers informed the moral, social and political structure of Chinese life for two and a half thousand years, from some time in the sixth century BCE until the overthrow of the Qing [Ch'ing] dynasty in 1911. Almost all the institutions of imperial China, its customs, purposes and aspirations, were founded on Confucius' conceptions of the virtuous individual and the virtuous society. Until the early years of the twentieth century, almost every aspect of

Chinese education was designed in accordance with Confucian principles. The Confucian writings known as the Four Books were required reading for the Chinese civil service examinations first set up in 1313 and not abolished until 1905.

Confucius' thought did not become known to the western world until the Jesuit missionaries who established themselves at Peking in 1583 had absorbed Chinese culture and learning and conveyed their new knowledge to Europe. It was they who latinized his name so that the great Sage became known to much of the world as Confucius.

Confucius was born in the state of Lu, now Shandong province, and lived during the Zhou [Chou] dynasty (1027-256 BCE) about five hundred years before the Christian era. He was brought up in humble circumstances by his mother, his elderly father having died when he was very young. He worked first as a keeper of granaries and director of public pastures but his ambition was to promulgate the moral virtues that characterized the earlier years of the Zhou dynasty and to revive the ideals of the kings Wen and Wu who ruled during its founding era. But the times were difficult. The political unity and strength that had been notable features of Zhou in former years had been greatly undermined by conflicts between its own constituent city states, by expansionist attacks from non-Zhou states and by raids from nomadic groups coming from the mountains and wilder regions. Confucius' own state of Lu had fallen under the control of usurpers and he was unable to obtain the kind of public office that would have given authority and influence to his teaching. Like others with similar aspirations and difficulties he therefore set out to teach peripatetically, offering his services to the courts and rulers he visited, accompanied by his small group of disciples and followers.

It is impossible to verify either the story of Confucius' life and character or the details of the doctrines attributed to him. We have only the composite accounts that were developed after his death and that were worked over, enriched and no doubt rearranged in numerous ways by his followers. In spite of some internal inconsistencies and variations of emphasis in the material available, it is possible to discern a coherent picture of a man who believed passionately in the pursuit of knowledge and moral virtue and who retained his integrity and an unswerving dedication to teaching throughout his life. Similarly, it is impossible to establish the authenticity or inauthenticity of the written sayings attributed to Confucius. We have to accept a general and hybrid account of Confucian doctrine rather than the authenticated thought of the individual man. We have to study the movement he began, looking at the stages of its development in relation to what is known about Confucius himself, and in that way arrive at a critical understanding of the ideas that have been so profoundly influential in the lives of many millions of human beings.

Many of the words and thoughts attributed to Confucius are contained in a collection of writings known as the Analects. In 1687 four Jesuit missionaries published Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, sive Scientia Sinesis. This book included not only the Analects but also two shorter works, the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean. These works, along with the writings of Mencius, constitute the Four Books that were the texts for the Chinese civil service examinations, already mentioned. The Four Books belonged to a larger body of writings known as the Thirteen Classics, which formed the enduring source literature not only for Confucianism but also for Daoism [Taoism] and Buddhism in China.

Confucius' philosophy was predominantly a moral and political one. It was founded on the belief that heaven and earth coexist in harmony and balanced strength whilst maintaining a perpetual dynamism. Human beings, he taught, are sustained by these conditions and must strive to emulate the cosmic model. In the Doctrine of the Mean we read that This equilibrium is the great root from which grow all the human actings in the world, and this harmony is the universal path which they all should pursue'.

Confucius' exhortation to live harmoniously did not mean that an individual's passions and feelings were to be entirely repressed for the sake of maintaining a kind of bland and undisturbed tenor of life. He upholds an important distinction between equilibrium and harmony. Equilibrium, we are told, is to have 'no emotion of pleasure and anger, sorrow and joy, surging up', but harmony is 'to have these emotions surging up, but all in due time'. The Doctrine of the Mean is the elaboration of the way of harmony; it furnishes the details of the kind of life that, in its recognition of due degree, will be in accordance with the principle of equilibrium, the root of all things. These ideas of harmony, justice and balance in both the cosmos and the individual provided a focus for political theory and practice. A belief that was well established long before Confucius' lifetime was that an earthly ruler held a mandate from heaven, a mandate that would be forfeited if the ruler did not pursue the objectives of maintaining peace and harmony. The Zhou dynasty so much admired by Confucius was established by men who, he believed, had gained the approval of Heaven and who therefore had a right to oust the tyrannical Shang dynasty that had preceded the Zhou. Confucius regarded the early years of Zhou, five hundred years

before his own lifetime, as a golden age. He saw a revival of its ideals as the way to restore China's unity in a time of conflict and schism and he thought of himself as the transmitter of those former values rather than the maker of new ones.

For Confucius, all social and political virtues were simply personal virtues writ large. Education was a matter of acquiring moral knowledge. But this was not simply knowledge that certain actions and attitudes were good; it was also knowledge acquired in practice and through experience; by being good and by doing good. One learned from the example of one's teacher and then taught others by being an example for them. Such education, Confucius maintained, began in a person's early years and continued throughout life. At the core of his concept of moral goodness is the notion of ren [jen], that is, benevolence or love of humankind. The Chinese word ren is difficult to translate exactly. It is sometimes rendered as 'benevolence', sometimes as 'humaneness', in order to suggest the kind of relationship that ideally should obtain between human beings. Ren is a distinctively human capacity, the development of which depends on the individual's own efforts towards self-cultivation rather than on the straightforward exercise of an innate ability. In the Analects Confucius says of ren, or benevolence, that If we really wished for it, it would come'. It is the most important single attribute of what he called 'the gentleman' or 'the superior man'. This is the person who loves learning so much that in eager pursuit of it he 'forgets his food' and 'does not perceive that old age is coming on'. Benevolence demands that self-interest and self- gratification are overcome and the way to it is in observing rites, or li, a body of rules or principles governing every aspect of human conduct and designed to guide a person towards exemplary action. The details of the rites are copious. They relate to gesture, demeanour, dress, movement and facial expression as well as procedures, actions and whole ceremonies. The following is part of a description of the behaviour appropriate to the gentleman:

In bed he does not lie in the posture of a corpse...When he sees anyone in mourning, even if he knows him well, he must change countenance; and when he sees anyone in sacrificial garb, or a blind man, even if he is in informal dress, he must be sure to adopt the appropriate attitude. On meeting anyone in deep mourning he must bow across the bar of his carriage; he also bows in the same way to people carrying official tablets. When he is given a dish of delicacies, he must change countenance and rise to his feet. At a sudden clap of thunder or a violent gust of wind he must change countenance.

It should not be thought that the Confucian titles were merely a behavioural facade or had only superficial importance. Confucius was a member of the ru[ju], the class of teachers who specialized in the ceremonies taught in the households of rulers. Under his tutelage these rituals acquired profound moral significance. He insisted that true benevolence or humaneness requires an integrity of the person in which the heart and mind are at one with the outward conduct. The rites are never trivial. They show what the inner disposition should be like, just as a true inner disposition of benevolence finds expression in appropriate rites. The performing of rites can be a training for behevolence, a way of making all things propitious for the cultivation of right-mindedness. Confucius described the act resulting from a proper moral integrity as i [yi], that is, morally fitting and in accord with the complete benevolence that consists of the cultivation of a personal morality that always aims to benefit and teach others. Love of learning was an essential element in the acquisition of the kind of discernment needed here. Confucius remarks that 'To love benevolence without loving learning is liable to lead to foolishness': it is not enough to be well intentioned. For example, it is not enough to express one's generous impulses by giving to others indiscriminately.

Knowledge and learning help to develop a moral acumen so that one can see how to deploy one's generosity towards a true good. Knowledge, learning and experience help a person to recognize what is unalterable in life and to distinguish it from what may be changed by endeavour. At the end of the Analects we read: 'Confucius said, "A man has no way of becoming benevolent unless he understands Destiny". Destiny, in Confucian doctrine, governed the unalterable and so had to do with such things as the length of human life, mortality, and so on. Reflection concerning these unalterable necessities made a person recognize the futility of trying to change them and realize that it is better to direct effort into working on what can be improved, namely, one's moral capacities and understanding.

Confucius regarded the sage as the very best kind of person but he did not consider himself to be one and he thought that very few people managed to become sages. In the Analects he remarks: 'I have no hopes of meeting a sage.' The gentleman is next in excellence to the sage and it is the gentleman who wields most influence in daily life. He is the man who, 'in his dealings with the world...is on the side of what is moral',Hand whose exemplary role is described in detail in the Analects. The gentleman is able to command and to receive obedience because of his own moral excellence which shows itself in a sincere

concern for the welfare of others. Confucius believed that, as a ruler, 'If you desire good the people will be good. He also maintained that the people must remain as the people, that 'the nature of the gentleman is like the wind and the nature of the small people is like the grass; when the wind blows over the grass it always bends', so that government is always conducted by a ruling group that benevolently exerts its powers over a society in which there is a well- defined role for every member. This did not preclude promotion for those who merited it. Confucius advocated and practised a system of education that was open to all and in which the actual practice of what a person had learned was the test of genuine ability. It did not suffice merely to adopt the ways of a gentleman; one must retain and practise them by ruling well, by guiding others and establishing correct rites by one's own example. Those who diligently followed the exemplary ruler were participating fully in good government and also benefiting from it. Confucius believed that men are equal at birth and it was this conviction that underlay all his views on education and that influenced Chinese educational policies over subsequent centuries.

It is not difficult to see how Confucius' ideas about personal morality cohere with his vision of the nature of reality: the moral activity of the individual who is seeking to achieve social harmony contributes to the cosmic shifts of balance which, through harmonious interaction, find equilibrium. Nor is it difficult to detect broad affinities between Confucian thought and some of the ideas of the pre-Socratic philosophers who flourished in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE in classical Greece. Among these latter, Anaximenes (585-528 BCE) taught that human souls and the natural world are sustained as a unity within one medium; Pythagoras (571-496 BCE) devised ritualized modes of conduct to maintain purity and held that there should be a consonance between a mathematically conceived heavenly harmony and the human soul; Heraclitus (fl. c.504-501 BCE) propounded the idea of the Logos, a principle of balanced give and take which worked to preserve a kind of cosmic justice or equilibrium. Confucius' own character, his modest wisdom and his dedication to teaching others, have been compared with similar characteristics in Socrates, and the Socratic Golden Rule of conduct which enjoins one 'not to do to others what one does not want done to oneself is one that is ubiquitous among moralists.

Confucius did not engage in elaborate metaphysical speculation; nor did he advance any theory about the nature or possibility of human knowledge. Yet he was sensitive to the limits of what the human intellect might claim to know and, concomitantly, was reluctant to make claims that were not securely grounded in what would commonly count as experiential knowledge. To a man who once spoke to him somewhat rashly he is reported to have said, 'Where a gentleman is ignorant, one would expect him not to offer any opinion'.To his follower, Zili [Tzu- lu], he remarked: 'Shall I tell you what it is to know? To say you know when you know, and to say you do not when you do not, that is knowledge.'

A Confucian doctrine referred to in the Analects as 'the rectification of names' has interesting philosophical implications. Confucius was greatly concerned because those called 'gentlemen' in his own time were failing to behave in ways that had formerly warranted the description. He asks, 'If a gentleman abandons humaneness, how can he fulfil the name?'17 and he declares that government is easy if it is in the hands of those who behave correctly so that 'the prince is a prince, the minister a minister, the father a father, the son a son'. 18 It was not, it seems, the names that Confucius wanted 'rectified' but the conduct of those who assumed the names. It is rather as if he saw names, or concepts, such as 'gentleman', 'sage', 'prince', and so on, as if they were absolutes; certainly as having been precisely defined and fixed by the golden age of Zhou that he took for his model.

Reverence for the past and for ancestors, a profound concern with ritual and a strong emphasis on the importance of filial duty and of the father—son relationship, are aspects of Confucianism that have perhaps made it seem somewhat alien to the western tradition. Yet the West is familiar to some extent with all these concerns: with the bonds of family and respect for one's elders; with the valuing of customs, conventions and ceremonies; with the moral importance of moderation, reserve and proper modesty. And so it is by no means impossible to understand the Confucian stance and to recognize a universality in many of its values and practices.

After Confucius' death in 479 BCE, his disciples quietly continued his teaching. Two of his major followers, Mencius and Xunzi [Hsun Tzu], established themselves as teachers of eminence, contributing their own ideas and emphases to Confucian thought. This was a time when intellectual discussion about many moral and political matters iourished in the courts of rulers. Debates were arranged and the earned were invited to participate. All this was taking place in a setting of political turmoil and continual conflict between the Chinese states, so that the era became known as the Time of the Warring States. The strife culminated in the ascendancy of the Qin [Ch'in] dynasty

(221-206 BCE). Its ruler, Qin Shi Huang Di [Ch'in Shih Huang Ti], unified China. He declared himself its emperor and built the Great Wall to defend his empire from invaders from the north. In 213 BCE, in order to reinforce his totalitarian power, he ordered the 'Burning of the Books', a conflagration that destroyed not only much Confucian literature but numerous other classics as well. During the Han dynasty (206 BCE-9 CE) a revival of Confucian thought took place. The fragments of the old writings were gathered together and restored, and Confucian ideas became widely re-established in spite of the arrival of Buddhism in the early years of the Christian era. Thereafter Confucianism or, more precisely, various forms of neo-Confucianism, continued to be part of the mainstream of Chinese culture, disseminated to people through the education in the classics. In this way Confucianism united millions of people spread over a vast and varied territory. It endured because it provided both personal and public ideals, and forged a clear link between the two. Its rites and ceremonies laid down exact practices that were meaningful to simple people yet capable, at the same time, of infinite refinement by the intellegentsia. It honoured the conception of the family, the social condition known to all levels of Chinese society, and it regarded the well-wrought family life as the model for a harmonious and unified society and the fulfilment of heavenly law. It saw the arts and the cultivation of the emotions not only as delightful in themselves but as valuable to the development of cultural and political cohesion and to the fostering of the profoundly moral civility that characterized the truly humane person.

The China of the mid-twentieth century rejected almost every aspect of Confucianism. Former criticisms of its rigidity, its backward-looking ideals and its obsession with hierarchy and ceremony were revived as China began to measure itself against the western world. In his book about Confucius, Raymond Dawson has drawn attention to the way in which the revolutionary spirits of the 1960s made Confucius responsible for every aspect of the state of affairs they wished to repudiate:

It was Confucius who was to blame for the rigid and hierarchical society of the past: when the young wanted to assert themselves, they pointed the finger of scorn at the Confucian subordination of children to their parents; when women's rights were at issue, reformers could blame Confucian Literature for the fact that the traditional female role was first and foremost to bear children...so as to ensure the continuity of ancestor worship.. Those who marvelled at the wonders of Western science and technology saw that China was helpless against the military strength of Western nations...The ancient criticisms of Confucius as a pedlar of ritual and a trickster who duped rulers with his moralistic nonsense resurfaced in the work of leading twentieth-century writers.

It is not easy to dispose of attitudes that are part of the cultural bloodstream. Although the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s intensified the anti-Confucian criticisms of the earlier People's Republic, the innovations that were meant to oust Confucianism were nevertheless imbued with its flavour and style. It is often pointed out that the communist aim of remoulding one's personality to conform with proper proletarian attitudes closely resembles the Confucian exhortation to cultivate oneself and that the veneration accorded to the words of Chairman Mao was akin to that previously felt for Confucius.

Ideas of harmony, unity and equilibrium have always been the instinctive presuppositions of Chinese thought. This has meant that although Daoism and Buddhism have been as much a part of Chinese culture as Confucianism has, there has been very little rivalry between these three powerful movements. Their mutual relationships are accurately described in the Chinese saying Three religions, one religion'. Each seems to complement the other two and each is used in those situations to which it is deemed to be most appropriate. Daoism and Buddhism have supplied dimensions of mysticism and spirituality that Confucianism largely neglects. Confucianism has supplied inspiration for public life and the conduct of affairs of state.

MOZI (MO TZU)(fifth century BCE)

Early Chinese philosophy was dominated by three traditions: Confucianism, Daoism and Mohism. Of these schools of thought, it was Mohism, based on the teachings of its founder Mozi (also known by the latinized Micius) which proved to be the least durable, but during the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, it was the major rival to Confucianism. Whereas Confucius and his followers looked back upon the early years of the Zhou dynasty (c. 1122-1249 BCE) as a model of social orderliness, stratification and political stability based on principles of propriety, Mozi regarded the earlier Xia dynasty (c.2183-1752 BCE) as having put into practice, at least intermittently, the ideals of peace and equal regard for everyone. In opposition to Confucius, Mozi's philosophy was that of utilitarianism. This ethical doctrine holds that actions are neither intrinsically right nor wrong; instead, they are to be judged by their consequences. Actions are right or virtuous if and only if they either increase benefit or decrease harm, and wrong if and only if they either decrease benefit or increase harm. Mozi thus condemned war as destructive, and advocated universal, impartial love or brotherhood. The Mohist school waned in importance during the third century BCE. One reason for this was that its tenets were incompatible with the political conflict and instability which characterized the Warring States period (403-222 BCE) of Chinese history, when the several states which were to compose China vied for political ascendancy and power. In the twentieth century, there has been a revival of interest in the doctrines of Mozi and his followers, partly because they form an indigenous corpus of beliefs comparable to the western philosophical tradition of utilitarianism, and party because of the current official hostility towards Confucianism.

Details of Mozi's life are scarce. Even his dates are uncertain, although it is known that he was active from about 470 to 438 BCE. He was born either in Lu, Confucius' native state, or in Song, both now in Shandong province on the North China plain. In the Shi Chi [Shiji] (Historical Records, a compilation from the first century BCE), the historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien [Sima Qian] writes, 'Mo Ti [Mozi] seems probably to have been a great officer in the state of Sung [Song]. He was skilful in maintaining military defences'. Further suggestions have been made about his career: that, when young, he was a follower of Confucius, and for a period he was a member of the x/e, a quasi- military group which could be hired for protection; and that he was an artisan, because he frequently uses measuring instruments such as compasses and set-squares as metaphors in his writings. Later in life, he led a frugal existence and travelled from province to province, seeking audiences with rulers in order to try to dissuade them from waging war on neighbouring states. By the time of his death, he had attracted about three hundred followers, probably not of aristocratic status. They were split into three groups, each with its own Elder; they practised asceticism and continued to travel in the causes of universal brotherhood and peace.

The source for the doctrines of Mozi and his followers is the text Mozi [Mo Tzu], part of which is now lost. Many of the sections contain three separate essays on the same subject, and it has been suggested that each of the three was written by a different branch of the early Mohists. There are six chapters, chs 40-5, that are generally held to be the work of the later, post-Mencian, members of the movement. These parts of the Mozi show a shift in interest away from ethics and social philosophy to epistemology and logic, and Mencius does not attack them in his comprehensive critique of the teachings of the school. Another strong condemnation of the Mohists was delivered by the Confucian Xunzi [Hsun Tzu].

Although in their writings the Mohists presented Mozi as having been bitterly hostile to Confucius and his followers, they shared many beliefs. Both Mozi and Confucius maintained that all societies were inevitably stratified, though there should be opportunity for upward mobility by the able. Both held that there should be political stability and social order. However, the two were diametrically opposed on the source of moral values. Confucius held that such values were based on society and tradition. Families formed the nuclei of society and personal virtues could be taught and cultivated by encouraging people to follow the rules of propriety, or principles guiding human conduct. Such rules constituted an elaborate set of rituals which governed one's relationships, whether familial, social or professional, with others. By following li, a person would become a zhunzi, or 'superior gentleman'. By contrast, Mozi advocated the

way of the xiaoren, or 'inferior person', whose actions were prudential. He believed that Confucian ritual was practised for its own sake, and custom and tradition yielded only an unreflective morality.

Mozi looked to tian, nature or heaven, not to society, to provide us with the basis for objective, trans-social moral standards for human behaviour. His was a straightforwardly consequentialist view, though not one which involves the subjective mental states of happiness or misery, nor the hedonistic standards of pleasure and pain. Instead, he maintained that good or right actions are those which bring about an increase in material prosperity, and wrong actions are those which cause a decrease in the material standard of living. This issue of the origin of moral values was a point of controversy between the Mohists and the Legalists; the latter believed that the only moral standards acceptable in a state were those sanctioned by the laws. For Mozi, nature also provides sanctions for right and wrong behaviour; it usually rewards the agent of good actions with prosperity in this life, and the undertaker of wrong actions with poverty, sickness or early death. It is not necessary according to Mozi, for each member of society to understand that nature provides the standards for proper moral conduct. The natural human characteristic of emulation means that each stratum of society looks to the one above it for moral guidance. The peasantry are guided by the gentlemen', who look to the ministers, who take their moral lead from the ruler. Thus it is ultimately the responsibility of the ruler to set an example of correct moral behaviour for the rest of society. This is done partly by the proper use of language, which Mozi considered to be a public, trans-social means of discourse with two major functions. The first is that it can and should correctly describe the objective standards of social utility, and the second that it can encourage people to behave according to such standards.

The appeal to nature as a crucial part of his philosophy enabled Mozi to contrast the social with the pre- social human condition. Before society, there existed a state of conflict, in which each person held to his or her own subjective set of moral values. Nature, or the will of Heaven, selected as ruler he who had the wisdom to understand the moral order, and gave him the power to govern society in accordance with its requirements. The social and political philosophy of Mozi is an interesting combination of theories also found in the western philosophical tradition. In the ideal society advocated by Plato (427-347 BCE) in The Republic, the philosopher-ruler would have a direct knowledge of objective and unchanging moral standards, whereas the theory of a pre-social condition of conflict in which everyone followed their own set of moral standards is to be found in the work of the social contractarian Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). In his repudiation of offensive warfare and state expansionism, Mozi advocated that objective and universal moral values should govern political life, thus implicitly rejecting any political philosophy which is based solely on power. He blamed aggressive rulers for promulgating the false conception that correct moral values can be promoted by war, and showed sympathy for the soldiers at whom that message is aimed. Warfare is destructive, both for the aggressor nation and the country attacked. War means that a state loses its fittest manpower to the army. Even non-combatants must leave the useful task of food production to supply the needs of the army, such as the manufacture of weapons. The crops of a conquered nation will be destroyed, thus reducing its population to destitution and starvation. Like many thinkers in both the eastern and the western philosophical traditions up to the end of the eighteenth century CE, Mozi was concerned about population levels: the scarcest resource for the improvement of material conditions was human labour. In the Mozi, there are also scattered references to defensive warfare; there is the practical recommendation that the proper maintenance of state defences is ultimately the responsibility of the ruler.

Burton Watson7 maintains that Mozi's doctrine of universal love is the most revolutionary and innovative of his whole teaching. Confucian rules of propriety and ritual enjoin upon each of us special duties only towards certain people, in keeping with our familial or social positions.

Thus we are required to behave with filial piety, reverence and espect to our parents and to care for them in their old age, or to show deference towards our older siblings or social superiors. By contrast, Mozi advocated that such partial duties should be replaced by universal love, in accordance with the universality of the moral order. This does not mean that filial piety would be abandoned; instead, the obligation of care, for example, would not be confined to our parents alone, but would be extended to anyone who needed it. The crucial criterion for the promotion of universal love is material benefit, and this condition s easily met. The doctrine can be considered as a rudimentary policy of social welfare: in the words of the Mozi, Those who are old and without children will find means of support and be able to live out their days; the

young and orphaned who have no parents will find someone to care for them and look after their needs.

Similarly, we should love members of other societies in the same way that we love members of our own. The requirements of universal love are thus stringent. Offensive war is totally prohibited, and helping others in need or refraining from causing them harm would be a global, not merely a local, moral duty.

One doctrine that Mozi considered would be destructive of, because incompatible with, his own was that of fatalism, the view that our futures are inevitably mapped out for us and we cannot avoid them whatever we do. Thus a student who is fated to pass her examination will do so, whether or not she studies for it. A belief in fate would sever the perceived links between correct behaviour (ren) and benefit or profit, good deeds and reward, and evil deeds and punishment. A state's wealth or poverty would not be seen as dependent on the industriousness or laziness of its people, nor the ability nor incompetence of its rulers. An increase in the population level or in the length of people's lives could not be achieved if fate decreed otherwise.

The concept of fate that Mozi condemns is particularly crude. The many gentlemen' whom Mozi accuses of propounding a belief in fatalism, and who thickly populate certain sections of the Mozi, are almost certainly the Confucians, but it is unlikely that they held the doctrine of fatalism attributed to them. It is much more probable that, following Confucius, they equated destiny with natural, unavoidable processes such as ageing and dying, which we may be able to delay by our own efforts but not prevent altogether.

Mozi especially condemned music, on two grounds. First, it was part of an aristocratic lifestyle, and second, it distracted people from engaging in their proper occupations. In ancient China, music was accompanied by dance, and performances took place at sumptuous banquets in the homes of the aristocracy. In order to finance such luxuries, rulers acted against the interests of their subjects by the imposition of high taxation. The sage-kings of the Xia dynasty 'likewise laid heavy taxes on the people, but this was for the purpose of making boats and carts [which] would be used for the benefit of the people'. 10 The peasantry, according to Mozi, had only three concerns, food, clothing and shelter, and taxation diverted resources from the provision of these necessities. Dancers often demanded delicate food and fine clothing, which was an additional expense. Artisans were required to make musical instruments instead of useful farming machinery such as ploughs and carts. Performances on the bells, which were 'like huge cauldrons', needed strong young people with keen senses, who should have been employed in the more useful task of food production. Rulers should rule and government ministers should see to the affairs of state, instead of allowing themselves to be distracted into attending musical performances.

Mozi's treatment of music reveals certain significant tendencies of his thought, particularly the narrow and puritanical character of his utilitarianism. He consistently criticizes the aristocracy and their retainers, whilst strongly championing the material advantage of the peasantry. However, it could be maintained that music provides less tangible benefits to the whole of society. Music, without its luxurious trappings, could be one of the ways of providing rest and relaxation so that people would return to their jobs with renewed energy and enthusiasm. Public performances of music might also promote a sense of social cohesion.

In Mozi's time, music was a feature of elaborate funerals. According to the Mozi, custom dictated that the corpse was to be buried in fine clothing and jewellery, with drapery over the several inner and outer coffins, in a deep grave. The funeral of a member of the royal family or senior minister was to be marked by human sacrifice. Ritual also specified that the chief mourners were, for a period of up to twentyfive months, to live in mourning huts, provided only with what was needed to sustain life. Burton Watsoni says that, with the exception of human sacrifice, the whole of this ritual was advocated by the Confucians. Mozi introduced three tests for funerals, none of which was based on custom: do elaborate funerals enrich the poor,

increase the population, or bring order and stability to the state? It is clear that they do not help to fulfil any of these goals. The poor are impoverished because their assets are buried with the corpse, and during the period of mourning the farmer and the artisan cannot attend to their proper occupations. Likewise, the fulfilment of their roles as mourners would prevent rulers and ministers from engaging in affairs of state, and engineers from ensuring that the defences of their territories are adequately maintained. Mozi recommends that grieving should be done at the graveside, with a return to useful occupations immediately afterwards, but this betrays a shallow understanding of human psychology; people do not mourn only for a short fixed period of time. Sexual abstinence during a period of mourning was often enjoined on man and wife, which prompted Mozi's acerbic remark.: To hope in this way to increase the population is like ordering a man to fall on his sword and wishing him long life'.

According to Chad Hansen, Mozi's philosophical objections to Confucianism prompted the Confucians into backing up their own position by philosophical argument. In Hansen's words, Mozi's 'attack on Confucian traditionalism is the catalyst of Chinese philosophical development'. Mozi's philosophy is not merely of historical curiosity. It is an interesting combination of hard-headed practical considerations, particularly with his concern for the material considerations of the poor, and the visionary ideai's of universal peace, love and brotherhood, all still of vital importance in today's world. Advocates of peace, nonviolence .ind universal fraternity are to be found in both western and eastern philosophical thought, from Leo Tolstoy to Gandhi.

CHAPTER- 6 CIVIL/PUBLIC SERVICE VALUES

Public servants are servants of the public, of government, of their immediate organisations and of the law. Their role is traditionally conceptualised as part of an interconnected structure existing alongside but outside of the private sphere. In Western society, the dominance of democratic theory means that it is assumed public servants share the values of wider society whilst also recognising the need for representative government. Though public servants perform a myriad of tasks and undertake a multitude of responsibilities, there are common elements to their work. In 1996, the UN adopted an 'International Code of Conduct for Public Officials' which opened with the following general principles:

• A public office, as defined by national law, is a position of trust, implying a duty to act in the public interest. Therefore, the ultimate loyalty of public officials shall be to the public interests of their country as expressed through the democratic institutions of government.

• Public officials shall ensure that they perform their duties and functions efficiently, effectively and with integrity, in accordance with laws or administrative policies. They shall at all times seek to ensure that public resources for which they are responsible are administered in the most effective and efficient manner.

• Public officials shall be attentive, fair and impartial in the performance of their functions and, in particular, in their relations with the public. They shall at no time afford any undue preferential treatment to any group or individual or improperly discriminate against any group or individual, or otherwise abuse the power and authority vested in them.

The public servant's duties today remain many, complex and often seemingly contradictory, but successful public servants recognise their multiple roles and prepare for them. These include maintaining confidentiality, acting in the public interest, regulating, providing quality advice, adjudicating, avoiding conflicts of interest, ensuring accountability to a range of actors and treating all colleagues equitably. In performing each of these tasks, public servants employ a range of values as a means to guide their behaviour and to assist them in steering a course through multiple requirements. The complexity of public service ensures that its value system is unique and specific to its work.

Public servants play a critical role in the implementation of public policy and should understand the importance of values to all aspects of their work. Poor clarity or uncertainty about values can not only lead to ethical and decision-making dilemmas, but also affects organisational coherence by diminishing team spirit, creating organisational confusion and weak external communication.

Some research findings

Sherman, found the following values to be the most common:

• honesty and integrity

• impartiality

• respect for the law

• respect for persons

• diligence

• economy and effectiveness

• responsiveness

• accountability.

Similarly, in a cross-national study of ethics measures, the OECD identified impartiality, legality and integrity as the most frequently stated core public service values.

Grouping of Values

Toonen (2003) identifies three 'groups' around which core values in public administration are situated:

• Parsimony and economy. Values in this group are concerned with ensuring optimal and efficient use of resources, and are at the core of public management as viewed from a financial perspective.

• Fairness, equity and rectitude: These values are concerned with honesty and the development of public trust in government.

• Robustness, resilience and sustainability. These values are concerned with ensuring that public administration and government are strong in the face of various pressures, but are flexible enough to learn and adapt to changing circumstances in order to maintain public confidence.

v Public Service Virtues

Four virtues are discussed below-humility, moral imagination, courage, and prudence.

Humility: Because administrators are temporary stewards of public authority, a certain humility is a valuable trait for them-increasing their self-restraint-especially when human fallibility is conceded. In its 1985 code, the American Society of Public Administration (ASPA) formulation of this virtue obliges members to "serve the public with respect, concern, courtesy, and responsiveness, recognizing that service to the public is beyond service to oneself". The virtue of humility implies valuing accommodation, inclusivity, and empathy and seeking reconciliation of contending views.

Moral Sensitivity and Imagination: Serious conflicts and dilemmas are endemic to ethics problems; one function of the moral imagination is to generate creative resolutions of these impasses. By redefining dilemmas as part of the process of mediating and reconciling disputes, administrators can influence outcomes without taking exclusive ownership of public affairs. The best solutions are not compromises but novel, fully adequate responses to the situation. Instead of being satisfied with doing as little harm as possible, an administrator with moral imagination seeks to satisfy as many ethical values and principles as possible; thus, a creative response to complexity is especially valued. A related function of the moral imagination is empathy, the capacity to experience from a distance the effects of an action or decision on others, including future effects. Moral sensitivity and empathy may be thought of as the conceptual equivalents in philosophy and psychology of the public interest. As Adam Smith wrote in his 'Theory of Moral Sentiments', empathy is the source of our capacity to act ethically. In 'A Theory of Justice', John Rawls proposes that the ethical decision maker should don a "veil of ignorance" in order to downplay self-interest and promote empathy.

The ability to generalize to a broad or universal and abstract plane is prized in Kant's "categorical imperative" and occupies the highest level of moral reasoning in Lawrence Kohlberg's formulation (1981) of cognitive development.

Moral Courage: Often public officials are not in doubt about the right thing to do but are reluctant to do it because it is not popular, convenient, or comfortable. Sometimes there is a personal cost or risk associated with doing the right thing, and the temptation is very great to rationalize inaction or avoid the situation altogether. But a commitment to doing the right thing is rarely an intolerable burden; one's career is at stake less frequently than one's integrity. Capability and risk are relevant to making a judgment in such situations, and they usefully distinguish courage from rashness or heroism beyond the call of duty.

Prudence: This is the basic practical virtue familiar to the founders of the republic, prudence can be traced to the ancient Greeks, for whom it embodied the wisdom to see the right thing', coupled with the will to do it. Moral, democratic public leadership requires ethical compromises, not compromise of ethics. It values principled judgment, responsively accommodates democratic inclusion over exclusive purity, and proposes principled, creative resolutions when rival claims and true dilemmas threaten to create personal or collective ethical gridlock or damaging exclusion.

Public Service Vices

Four ethical deficiencies in particular shadow public leaders today.

Self-Righteousness: When power is combined with zealotry and self-righteousness constitutional democracy is threatened. But the problem has a more intimate face as well: survey after survey consistently finds that people view themselves as more ethical than others in their profession or organization, and they view those in their own group as more ethical than others outside the group. Too often we regard ethical problems as applying mainly to other people. Self-indulgence: Most corruption scandals are due to garden-variety greed for money and/or power. This represents self-indulgence, in which an individual is unable or unwilling to resist temptation. Self- Protection: Escaping blame and hiding behind the authority of others represents an abandonment of

personal responsibility and judgment. For moral leaders, fixing the blame should not pre-empt fixing the problem. Self-Deception: Perhaps the most widespread ethical deficiency is self-deception. We often mask real but ignoble motives even from ourselves.

v SOME INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC SERVICE GUIDELINES The European Code of Good Administrative Behaviour

The European code of good administration issued by European Ombudsman11, is meant to be respected by European Union institutions and bodies, their administration and their officials in dealing with public. The Code serves as a guide and resource for civil servants, encouraging the highest standards of administration. The code with 26 Articles was adopted by European Parliament in September 2001. The following are some of the significant provision of the Code:

• Lawfulness: The official shall act according to law and apply rules and procedures laid down in Community legislation.

• Absence of Discrimination: In dealing with requests from the public and in taking decisions the official will ensure that the principle of equality of treatment is respected. The official will in particular avoid any unjustified discrimination between members of the public based on nationality, sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic feature, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation.

• Proportionality: When taking decisions, the official will ensure that the measures taken are proportionate to the aim pursued and there is a fair balance between the interests of private person and the general public interest.

• Absence of Abuse of Power

• Impartiality and Independence: The official will be impartial and independent.

• Objectivity: when taking decision the official shall take into consideration the relevant factors and give each of them proper weight in the decision, while excluding any irrelevant material in the decision.

• Legitimate expectation, consistency and advice: The official shall be consistent in his own administrative behaviour as well as administrative action of the institution.

• Fairly: The official will act impartially, fairly and reasonably.

• Courtesy: The official will be service minded, correct, courteous and accessible in relation to the public.

• Right to be Heard: In cases where the rights or interests of individuals are involved, the right of defence should be respected.

UNITED NATIONS

The United Nations concerned about the problem of corruption adopted an International code of Conduct for Public Officials in December 1996. Its salient features are as follows: General Principles

• A public office, as defined by national law, is a position of trust, implying a duty to act in the public interest. Therefore, the ultimate loyalty of public officials shall be to the public interests of their country as expressed through the democratic institutions of government.

• Public officials shall ensure that they perform their duties and functions efficiently, effectively and with integrity, in accordance with laws or administrative policies. They shall at all times seek to ensure that public resources for which they are responsible are administered in the most effective and efficient manner.

• Public officials shall be attentive, fair and impartial in the performance of their functions and, in particular, in their relations with the public. They shall at no time afford any undue preferential treatment to any group or individual or improperly discriminate against any group or individual, or otherwise abuse the power and authority vested in them.

Conflict of Interest and Disqualification

• Public officials shall not use their official authority for the improper advancement of their own or their family's personal or financial interest. They shall not engage in any transaction, acquire any position or function or have any financial, commercial or other comparable interest that is incompatible with their office, functions and duties or the discharge thereof.

• Public officials, to the extent required by their position, shall, in accordance with laws or administrative policies, declare business, commercial and financial interests or activities undertaken for financial gain that may raise a possible conflict of interest. In situations of possible or perceived conflict of interest between the duties and private interests of public officials, they shall comply with the measures established to reduce or eliminate such conflict of interest.

• Public officials shall at no time improperly use public moneys, property, services or information that is acquired in the performance of, or as a result of, their official duties for activities not related to their official work.

• Public officials shall comply with measures established by law or by administrative policies in order that after leaving their official positions they will not take improper advantage of their previous office.

• Disclosure of Assets: Public officials shall, in accord with their position and as permitted or required by law and administrative policies, comply with requirements to declare or to disclose personal assets and liabilities, as well as, if possible, those of their spouses and/or dependants.

• Acceptance of Gifts or Other Favours: Public officials shall not solicit or receive directly or indirectly any gift or other favour that may influence the exercise of their functions, the performance of their duties or their judgement.

• Confidential Information: Matters of a confidential nature in the possession of public officials shall be kept confidential unless national legislation, the performance of duty or the needs of justice strictly require otherwise. Such restrictions shall also apply after separation from service.

• Political Activity: The political or other activity of public officials outside the scope of their office shall, in accordance with laws and administrative policies, not be such as to impair public confidence in the impartial performance of their functions and duties.

v The Indian Scenario

While the Central Government has issued conduct rules for government employees known as Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules 1964, it does not lay down values which civil services should follow or a code of ethics. The rules are more in the nature of "do's" and "don't". The Conduct Rules cover matters such as property transactions, acceptance of gifts, joining of non-political organization and host of other issues covering almost every activity which a normal individual undertakes. The rules are highly restrictive, seriously curtailing freedom of operation of a government employee, couched in vague language and sometimes impractical to follow. If a government servant wishes to carry serious academic activity and publish articles and books, he has to take permission, which does not come by easily. An officer should report every purchase of a movable property such as TV or a refrigerator of more than Rs 15000 in value. To join a foreign language class run by foreign cultural organisation or attend a reception hosted by foreign diplomatic mission permission is required. The conduct rules are followed more in breach than in practice and gives a handle to government to harass honest and dedicated officers, while the dishonest and corrupt get away due to complicated procedure involved in taking disciplinary action. The rules are totally inadequate to deal with cases of malfeasance or misconduct of public servants as they give numerous escape routes for the unscrupulous. It is time to discard these rules and bring a new code of ethics for civil servants.

First Initiative for Code of Ethics- May 1997

The Department of Administrative Reforms of Government of India, had prepared a Code of Ethics for public services, as part of an Action Plan for an Effective and Responsive Government which was presented in a conference of Chief Ministers presided by the Prime Minister held in May 1997. The objective of the Code was to prescribe standards of integrity and conduct that are to apply to public services. The salient features of the code are as follows:

• The public services should assist the government in formulating and implementing policies and administering public services in the most effective way.

• Employees in public services should uphold the rule of law and respect for human rights, and act solely in public interest. They must maintain the highest standards of probity and integrity.

• They should conduct themselves in such manner that the public feels that the decisions taken or recommendations made by them are objective and transparent and are not calculated to promote improper gains for the political party in power, for themselves, or for any third party.

• They should not seek to frustrate or undermine the policies, decisions and action taken in public interest by Government by declining or abstaining from action.

• Where an employee in public service has reasonable grounds to believe that he or she is being required by superior authority to act in a manner which is illegal or against prescribed rules and regulations, he should decline to implement the instructions. He will have right to bring the fact to the notice of superior authority.

• Conflict of Inierest: Employees in public service should refrain from decisions; (i) which are calculated to benefit any particular person or party at the expense of the public interest; (ii) shall disclose any clash of interest when there is conflict between public interest and private interest.

• They should maintain their independence and dignity and impartiality by not approaching politicians and outsiders in respect of service matters or private benefits, and exercise peer pressure to dissuade those within their own cadre who do so and to set in motion disciplinary proceedings against such persons.

• Accountability to Citizens: (i) Employees in public services should be accessible to the people and practice accountability to them in terms of quality of service, timeliness, courtesy, people orientation, and readiness to encourage participation and form partnership with citizen groups for responsive government,

(ii) they should be consistent, equitable and honest in their treatment of the members of the public, (iii) they should accept obligation to recognize and enforce citizen's right for speedy redressal of their grievance.

• They should have concern for public assets and funds, avoid wastage and extravagance and ensure effective and efficient use of public money within their control.

• Non- abuse of official position: Employees in public services have a responsibility to take decisions on merits, as they are in a position of trust, they must not use their official position to influence any person to enter into financial or other arrangements with them or any one else.

The code also deals with issues such as public comment, release of official information, integrative role of public services and continuous improvement through professionalism and team work.

Second Initiative for Public Service Values - Public Service Bill 2006

In 2006 the department Of Personnel drafted a Public Service Bill which enumerated fundamental values of Public Services, a Code of Ethics, a Management Code etc, with the objective of developing public services as a professional, politically neutral, merit based and accountable civil service. The main values by which the Public Servants shall be guided are as follows:

• allegiance to the Constitution and the law, democracy, nationalism, sovereignty, integrity of India and the security of the nation;

• function in apolitical manner;

• Act objectively, impartially, honestly, equitably, and in a fair and just manner;

• Act with integrity and in a courteous and just manner;

• Establish high standards, and ensure quality service, effective working and prompt decision making;

• Be accountable for the decisions;

• Establish merit as the fundamental principle in employment, promotion and placements;

• Discharge functions with due regard to diversity of the nation/ community and religion but without discrimination of caste, community, religion, gender or class and duly protecting the interest of poor, underprivileged and weaker sections;

• Provide honest, impartial and frank advice to political executive;

• Ensure that public money is used with utmost economy and care; The Public Service Bill has not made any headway and seems to have gone in cold storage. One problem with the draft bill was that it intended to fulfill too many objectives. Apart from values and ethics, the Bill envisaged to lay down principles of management of public services, principles which should govern appointment to public services, performance indicators for public services etc. With such wide ranging and diverse coverage of matters relating to service matters, it is difficult to reach consensus and secure legislative approval.

Second ARC on Ethics

The Second Administrative Reforms Commission in its 4th report (2007), "Ethics in Governance" has extensively covered the issue of ethics and observes, "The crux of ethical behaviour does not lie in bold words and expressions enshrined as standards, but in their adoption in action, in sanction against violations, in putting in place competent disciplinary bodies to investigate allegations of violations and to impose sanctions quickly and in promoting a culture of integrity". In Its wide ranging recommendations, it has suggested partial state funding of elections; tightening of anti-defection law and code of ethics for ministers, legislatures, judiciary and civil servants. In order to check corruption it has proposed tightening the provision of Prevention of Corruption Act, making corrupt public servants liable for paying damages, confiscation of property illegally acquired and speedy trials. Its recommendations include creation of Lok Pal/ Ombudsman at national, State and local level with powers to look into charges of complaints against high pubic functionaries including ministers, chief ministers, MPs and MLAs.

While recommending a Code of Ethics for Civil Servants the Second ARC has observed:" Civil Service Values which all public servants should aspire, should be defined and made applicable to all tiers of government and parastatal organizations. Any transgression of these values should be treated as misconduct, inviting punishment"15. In order to create a regime under which quick disciplinary action can be taken against delinquent Government servants, the ARC has recommended deletion of Article 311 of the Constitution, with a proviso that legislation under article 309 be made to protect public servants against arbitrary action. The Commission has also suggested certain measures to protect honest Civil Servants against malicious complaints.

The ARC in its 10th Report on Personnel Administration has re-emphasized the need for prescribing Civil Service Values and laying down a Code of Ethics. The Code of Ethics should include: integrity, impartiality, commitment to public service, open accountability, devotion to duty and exemplary behaviour.

v Values and Ethics for Public Services

Values are the foundations on which our society is built. Values are the invisible wealth of a community and of a nation, and guide our journey through the rough and tumble of life. The history of humanity is to a large extent the history of values. They serve as a source of moral precepts that govern the actions of the community. History tells us about the adverse effect of the decline of moral values on the nation states. Edward Gibbon in his classic 'Decline and Fall of Roman Empire' observes that nepotism, rampant corruption, internal strife and general moral decay were the cause of the ruin of great Roman civilization.

Universal Values

A combination of religious and democratic values has resulted in creation of a set of universal values which has been respected by all societies in the world, and guide the behaviour of people, irrespective of religion, race, colour, social and economic background to which they belong. Some of these cherished values are listed below:

• Truth,

• Honesty,

• Dedication to work,

• Non Violence

• Compassion,

• Courage,

• Perseverance,

• Self-discipline,

• Loyalty,

• Faith

These values do not change through the march of time and are as valid today as they were hundreds of years ago, when they were originally formulated to guide human behaviour and conduct. These values may therefore be termed Eternal Values as well.

Values for Public Servants

In order that the public officials perform their duties honestly and efficiently and become an instrument of service to the people they need to possess universal values as mentioned above. They need in particular the following fundamental values:

• Devotion to Work,

• A sense of Mission and Focus

• Integrity and Honesty

• Fearlessness and Courage

• Spirit of Service and Sacrifice

Devotion to Work: Today the work culture in government offices is poor. There is an all -round atmosphere of sloth and inefficiency. Employees come late to office, take extended lunch break, leave early and are indifferent to work assigned to them. The Fifth Pay Commission had following to say , "Today the government offices is seen as dusty, moth eaten, dingy, paper infested hovel chock-full of babus, which is feudal in outlook, hierarchical in structure, antediluvian in its procedures, dilatory in examination of issues and secretive in its dealings with customers. Despite being one of the largest providers of services, there is complete lack of customer orientation in various government departments." We should change the existing work culture in public services and inculcate the philosophy of nishkam- karma propounded by our scriptures. Bhagwad Gita expounds the concept of Karamanyev adhikarste ma phalesu kadachana i.e. 'Perform your duties diligently and piously, but without expectation of what the results will be'. You must till the soil, plant the seeds, water and tend the seedlings , and take care of the tree, without any thought of how much fruit the tree will bear. Gita also talks of Yoga karmanesu kaushalam - whatever work you do, you must strive to do your best- excellence in work is Yoga.

Sense of Mission:Work should not be done simply for the sake of doing work. There should be clear focus and direction in what one is doing, otherwise it will not be productive and yield results. Ramakrishna Paramhansa said, if you are digging a well, dig deep till you strike water, if you give up after a while and go to a new place and then to another, you will never get water. Today most corporates have a mission and vision statements. This gives clarity about the task to be performed and goals to be fulfilled. The trouble with government is that it spreads its resources too wide and thin, without each department of the government having a clarity about its objectives. It was a clear sense of mission that was responsible for the success of our space programme, or operation flood which revolutionized milk production in the country. Today Finance Minister, while making budgetary allocation to various departments talks of Outcome. Budget, which implies that public services should deliver quantifiable results in term of actual services available to people such as education, health, roads, and power. If public servants are focused on what results they have to achieve and are inspired that they are working for a national cause, there will be quantum improvement in delivery of public services.

Integrity and Honesty.PubWc servants hold their office in trust, which underlies two principles; they shall not use public office for private gain, and they shall act impartially and not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual. Today corruption has become a widespread phenomenon among public officials as they unabashedly use their position and power to enrich themselves personally. How to control corruption is one of the biggest challenges facing the Government.

Public officials should also avoid conflict of interest situations. While a conflict of interest is not ipso facto corruption, there is increasing recognition that conflicts between the private interests and public duties, if not adequately managed, can result in corruption. Thus for example negotiation of future employment by a public official with a firm with which he has official dealings, prior to leaving public office is widely regarded as a conflict of interest situation.

While rules and laws have been framed for severe punishment, if officials are caught in corruption, they do not act as effective deterrence as rules give so many escape clauses. Only when public servants inculcate the noble values of integrity and honesty, a dent in massive corruption problem facing the country can be made.

Fearlessness and Courage: The Shah Commission which investigated the ‗excesses‘ committed during Emergency (1975-77), found that public servants committed irregular and illegal acts, which caused immense suffering to the masses out of fear of their political masters. The Commission observed. ‗they crawled while they were asked to bend‘. During the Nuremberg trial the top German army commandes told the war Crime Trinunal that they committed atrocities against the Jews out of fear of Nazi top brass. It is oftern seen that many public officials though honest themselves. Succumb to unjust demand of political msters or their own official superiors, out of fear that their CR will be spoiled or they will be transferred to a inconvenient place, or their promotion will be jeopardized. This happens largely due to weak character and lack of conviction that they are doing an honest job.

P S Appu Director of National Academy of Administration, showed great courage of conviction and stood by his principles and quit his job, when he found that political masters interfered with his demand to terminate the services of an IAS probationer who was indisciplined and is that they play safe and are afraid of taking bold decisions. In the complex and technocratic world of today public servants are required to take speedy and innovative decisions which needs courage. Courage means mustering the strength and will to do what you know you should do, even through you are afraid. Aristotle had said, ―we become brave by doing breave acts‖.

Spirit of Service an Sacrifice: Spirit of Service and sacrifice is an essential ingredient of public services and public officials should feel inspired that hey are working for a national cause. Today it is a common complaint that salary level in top civil services are very low as compared to private secor. While persons in civil services need to be given decent salary, their salary and emoluments can never match with their compeers in the private sector. Young men who hoin the army and are prepared to lay down their life in the eent of war or are posted in the harsh and treacherous weather conditions of Siachin glacier and brave the hardhip as they are inspired by a noble mission that they are serving the country. No amount of monetary incentive can compensate for the sacrifie and hardship they undergo.

Today in the society there is an increase in selfishness, and general lack of concern for other individuals. What we have in India today, is not a giving and sharing society, but a grabbing society, not a sacrificing society but a consumer society. Self seeking and exploitation of the weak has become common place. These maladies result in general unhappiness and a retreat from goal of general welfare and fulfillment. Mahatma Gandhi had said there is enugh in the world for ‗everyone‘s need but not for their greed‘. We need to change the societal attitudes particularly those who are in public services so that they deelo sympathy for the masses and work in the true spirit of servie to the society.

Chapter-7

Ethical Concerns and Dilemmas in Government and Private Institutions

The reputation and success of governance depends uponthe conduct of public functionaries and what the public believe about their conduct. It is therefore, very important that public functionaries act justly and fairly to all and recognize tat hey have a special duty to be open, fair and impartial in their dealings with society, personal self interest should be subordinate to the public good in all circumstances, especially if circumstances arise where the possibility of a conflict of interest may become an ethical dilemma.

Ethical Dilemma

• An ethical dilemma can be defined as ―A circumstance that requires a choice between competing sets of principles in a given, usually undesirable or intricate, situation.

• Conflicts of interest are possibly the most common form of ethical dilemma face by public servants.

• Other types of ethical dilemmas in which public servants may find themselves include conflict between: the values of public administration; justifiations for the institutions; aspects of the code of conduct; personal values and supervisor or governmental directive; professional ethics and supervisor or governmental directive; blurred values and professional ethics versus governmenatal directive; personal values and professional ethics versus governmental directive; blurred or competing accountabilities; and the dimensions of ethical conduct

Categories of Ethical Dilemma

Ethical dilemmas do arise when a public srvant decision – maker has to choose between competing consideratios of ethical values and rules in order to determine the right- thing-to-do. These dilemmas are in three broad categories:

Personal Cost Ethical Dilemmas

• These arise from situations in which compliance with ethical conduct results in a significant personal cost to the public-servant-decision-maker and / or the Agency. E.g. jeopardizing held position, missing opportunity for financial or material benefit, injuring valued relationship etc.,

Right-Versus-Right Ethical Dilemmas

• These arise from situations of two or more conflicting sets of bona fide ethical values (e.g. public servants‘s responsibility of being open and accountable to citizens versus that of adhering to the Oath of Secrecy / Confidentiality etc.

Conjoint Ethical Dilemmas

• These arise from situations in which a conscientious public-servant-decision-maker is exposed to a combination of the above-indicated ethical dilemmas in searching for the ―right- thing-to do‖.

Ethical dilemmas faced by Public Servants. Administrative discretion

• Promotion of general welfare fepaends to a large extent on the use or abuse of administrative discretion.

• Within the rules and regulations laid down by legislation and within the prescribed procedures, there is ample opportunity for the public official to use his discretion.

• When faced with alternatives the choice of the public official poses an ethical problem: the choice may be acceptable to only a small section of society. Thus, discretionary choice may be viewed as unethical or even corrupt. Corruption

• The corruption of public officials by private interests is usually very subtle. E.g. Favours by the public to the official under obligation and he gradually substitutes his public loyalties to those doing himfavours.

• If a corrupt practice or an attempt to corruption is discovered, there may be a possibility that the official's personal loyalties or party-political affiliations may be in conflict with his official duties.

• Thus, ethical dilemma arise- Should he sacrifice the public interest or try to end the corrupt practice by direct personal confrontation, or should he blow the whistle on the practitioner of corrupt practice?

Administrative secrecy

• An area which lends itself to the creation of situations and actions which could prove to become major ethical dilemmas is the secret conduct of public business. This is especially so because secrecy can provide an opportunity to cover up unethical conduct. Secrecy is an ally of corruption and corruption is always practiced in secrecy.

• In a democracy, it is generally believed that the people have a right to know what the government intends to do and it would be in the interest of the public for the administration of public affairs to be conducted openly.

Nepotism

• Nepotism is about making the appointment of relations and/or friends to public positions, thereby ignoring the merit principle. The practice of may lead to the downgrading of the quality of the public service. This disrupts trust and results in corrupt administration. The preferential treatment of one individual over another, without taking into account the relative merit of the respective individuals, represents victimization of individuals.

Information leaks

• Official information is often of such a sensitive nature that disclosure of the information can lead to corrupt practices or, for some individuals, improper monetary gains. Leaking official information at a date prior to the public announcement thereof is a violation of procedural prescriptions and can be an ethical dilemma.

Public Accountability

• Since public officials are the implementers of public policies, they ought to be accountable for their official actions to their superiors, the courts and the public. It is nevertheless, possible for them to hide behind prescribed procedures, the cloak of professionalism and even political office-bearers.

Policy dilemmas

• Policy makers are often confronted by conflicting responsibilities e.g. loyalties to their superiors and also to society. Dilemma of the public official is the clash between his view of the public interest and the requirements of law.

Political affiliations

• Political activity of public servants results in divided loyalty on the part of those officials who sympathize with the views of a specific political party Subtle personnel benefits

• Other more subtle ethical problems, such as the abuse of sick leave privileges, extended tea breaks and the violation of office rules in general.

Ethical dilemma of the public servant

The potential areas for conflict are not necessary ethical dilemmas in themselves. Rather, it is what the public servant does when he is confronted by activities pertaining to these phenomena that could prove to be the ethical dilemma, e.g.

• Would he keep silent when he finds that administrative discretion is abused, or that corruption or nepotism are practiced?

• Or should he blow the whistle?

• Should he actively engage in pressure group activities because he sympathizes with their views?

• Should he actively participate in party politics?

• Or should he endeavour only to promote the public good and uphold the high standards of public office?

How to deal with ethical dilemmas in public administration

Fundamental principles or criteria that can provide guidance in dealing with ethical dilemmas in public administration are:

• Principle of democratic legitimacy and accountability of public bureaucracy and administration.

• Rule of law and the principle of legality, whereby law and only law should govern theadministration,

• Principle of meritocracy, professional integrity, autonomy and capacity of the administrative apparatus of the state and

• Principle of responsiveness and responsibility of administration to civil society.

v Ethical Concerns & Dilemmas in Private Institutions

• Ethics regimes, ethics reforms, codes of conduct, codes of ethics, and ethics rules were not originally developed with the private sector in mind. With the onset of the process of 'Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization' (LPG) since the early nineties, the approach and attitude towards business has changed dramatically. With LPG, after more than a decade of this millennium, there are clear directions

i.e. gone are the days when 'standards' were centred on only the material aspects of the product. Issues related to value, ethics and human rights are among the most important concerns for industry now.

• Business ethics is defined as, "It's coming to know what it right or wrong in the workplace and doing what's right

— this is in regard to effects of products/services and in relationships with stakeholders." In this era of globalization, companies have new opportunities, but these also facing new restrictions, e.g. With better information base, customer concern has become increasingly focused on the ethical, environmental, and labour standards of companies by complaining about human rights violations, and in some cases, boycotting products and companies that are allegedly not respecting basic ethical. These ethical violations involve issues concerning child labour, employee harassment and abuse as well. Customers' rising ethical concerns have rapidly and radically reshaped the environment in which companies operate. To bring industry in harmony with the present context requires Code of Ethics. There is thus a need to develop structure for facilitating adoption of code of ethics by Indian industry and for promoting ethical business practices. Developing a code of Corporate Ethics in line with international best practices is an imperative need for us as a Nation and its industry too, so that we can be in tune with latest global practices and standards.

Ethical concerns and dilemmas within Organizations

Business ethics is about every individual in the organization acting ethically, about creating an ethically sound working environment within the organization and about modelling ethical behaviour by leadership at all levels.

For a company's ethics policy to be successfully implemented, it is essential that:

• The code of ethics is clearly communicated to employees.

• Employees are formally trained in it.

• They are told how to deal with ethical challenges.

• The code is implemented strongly.

• The code is contemporary.

• The company leadership adheres to the highest ethical standards. Though the ethical dilemmas faced by certain companies may be specific to their industry or company, other types of ethical issues are common to all types of companies. Handling ethical decisions with wisdom is very important for these businesses, so as maintain their sustainability and viability. Some of the dilemma include-

Health and Safety

• One area of ethical consideration for employers is how to balance expense control with the health and safety interests of employees.

• Manufacturing plants and other workplaces where employees use dangerous equipment or engage in physically demanding work should have strong safety standards that not only meet State's requirements, but that also make eliminating accidents a priority.

• Even standard office workplaces pose health risks to employees who are asked to sit or stand all day.

• However, certain organizations opt to cut corners on safety controls, equipment and training to save money. This is both unethical and potentially damaging in the long run.

Technology

• Advancements in technology and the growth of the Internet in present era, have produced a slew of ethical dilemmas for companies.

• Company leaders have to balance the privacy and freedom of workers while also maintaining standards that require that company technology use is for legitimate business purposes.

• Certain companies go so far as to monitor all online use and email communication from employee computers and work accounts.

• A company may have this right, but its leaders need to understand the potential concern about privacy and autonomy among employees.

Transparency

• Companies should operate with openness and transparency. For large and small businesses, transparency includes communicating messages, including marketing messages, that aren't open to misinterpretation and that clearly represent the intentions of the company and its messages.

• Being caught in a lie or avoiding full disclosure may cause irreparable harm to small businesses.

Fair Working Conditions

• Companies are generally expected to provide fair working conditions for their employees in the business environment, but being responsible with employee treatment typically means; higher labour costs and resource utilization.

• Fair pay and benefits for work are more obvious elements of a fair workplace.

• Another important element is provision of a non-discriminatory work environment, which again may have costs involved for diversity management and training.

Corruption

• Corruption is one of the main ethical challenges facing business people and organisations. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

• CSR has assumed significant importance in the age of globalization and expanding markets.

• There is an increasing realization that corporations are created by the society and that they must give back by serving the society and not merely by making profit from it.

• Corporations that shirk responsibilities towards the society are viewed as 'not ethically-driven' by the society at large and also by the international business community.

Challenges in implementing Business Ethics in an Organization

There are several people related and process-related implementation challenges an organization must tackle in establishing and reinforcing these ethical norms.

People Implementation Challenges

• Establishing ethical norms and enforcing ethical behaviour requires considerable investment of time, resources, and an unremitting effort on the part of leadership of the organization.

• Career and job performance are two factors that most people in an organization fear jeopardizing. This produces strong pressures to choose the less difficult unethical option rather than the relatively more difficult ethical option in a given situation.

• When an employee faces an ethical or legal issue, he is generally unwilling to seek help inside the organization on policy guidelines or laws. This happens for a variety of reasons including sensitivity of the issue at hand. This often results in the individual making mistakes. Such reticence results in the ethics and compliance programme becoming merely a statement of good intentions.

• Employees are often unwilling to report an observed misconduct or legal violation due to fear of personnel reasons or retaliation or being alienated in the event that their identity gets exposed. The developing unethical risk or problem could get aggravated and reach a point where it is too late for any corrective action.

• Raising every individual employee's awareness to ethical and iegal issues can be a key challenge. Making every employee familiar with legal and ethical dimensions that govern his job does not happen naturally and can occur only if there is intense organizational commitment to ethics.

• Very few companies embody values consistent with those that the employee hopes to live by. This forces the employee to reluctantly adapt himself to the culture of the particular company. Otherwise, his only option would be to change the job with no guarantee that the new job would be any better on the ethics front.

• It is not easy to determine the ethical 'DNA' of employees at the time of their joining the company. Reference checks can help, but most of them tend to be formalities and usually do not reveal any past history of unethical behaviour.

v Process Implementation Challenges

• Ethics codes can at best serve as a guide post. They cannot provide comprehensively a rule for every situation or specific advice for every gray area that an employee would possibly encounter in his job. This could sometimes put people in a dilemma about what are acceptable and unacceptable behaviour patterns.

• Employees sometimes view the ethics programme as superficial, either put in place to respond to external pressures or to protect top management from blame or for external publicity purposes. Such perceptions make the organization more prone to unethical behaviour, lead to lower awareness of ethical issues among employees, with employees being less likely to seek advice from within the organization when confronted with an ethical dilemma.

• A lack of trust by employees about internal processes such as those pertaining to whistle blowing discourages them from bringing ethical and legal violations to the notice of the management, thus weakening the ethics programme.

• If an employee operates outside the organization's ethical system, and such behaviour is not detected and appropriately punished, it gets communicated to and often emulated by other employees and stakeholders. This results in the employees collectively undermining the credibility of the organization's commitment to ethics.

• Enforcement of ethics poses special challenges in situations involving decentralized operations. There is little possibility for direct supervision of such employees, making it a challenge to ensure that these employees conform to the company's stated ethical standards.

• Keeping the code of ethics updated and contemporary is a challenge. To continue to be relevant, the ethics code must evolve with the changing standards of the legal and societal as well as organizational frameworks in dealing with ethical issues.

• Designing ethics codes and compliance measures for companies that are global in scope can be extremely challenging. Standards of ethical conduct may work well in the company's home country but may fail in other countries due to differing norms and laws, different regulations, cultural differences, different ethical standards, and different ways of handling unethical behaviour.

• Given the pressures to grow the top and bottom lines in most corporations, adherence to ethics is often seen as needless distraction with no immediate pay-off. This orientation must change if ethics should take centre-stage in an organization's functioning.

• The key challenge for the leadership in organizations is to address cynicism, establish the need for ethical functioning of the company, and present a road map to achieve this despite widespread systemic hindrances.

Ethical concerns and dilemmas for a Non-profit Organization

Non-profit organizations also experience similar type of unethical practices as are faced by the for-profit sector. At the same time, there are a number of ethical issues that continually plague the non- profit industry, leading to fraud and financial abuse. Unaddressed misconduct in nonprofits leads to an erosion of public confidence, which puts the funding capabilities of those groups in jeopardy.

Accountability

• Non-profit organizations enjoy a number of tax incentives. A vast number of NGOs lack effective strategic plans to use their funding in the best manner. As a result, programs are not as successful as they could be if the organization applied more diligence to it; budgeting practices.

Conflicts of Interest

• When board members use their positions for personal gain, a conflic of interest arises and puts the NGOs in a tenuous position.

• Giving preferential treatment or lucrative contracts to major donors creates conflicts of interest in a large number of NGOs.

• A lack of transparency is common in the non-profit industry, allowing organizations to easily cover up contracts and services provided to those with personal relationships held by officers of the non-profit their employees and family members.

Salaries and Perks

• When a non-profit leader earns an exorbitant salary, it raises ethical concerns, especially when the non-profit organisations are underfunded.

Fraud

• Nonprofits commonly lack the budget to bring in an outside auditor to review the group's funds on a regular basis, which creates a lack of oversight to catch financial fraud and abuse of funds.

• When the board or in-house accounting department is in charge of auditing the books with no outside assistance, it's easy to overlook or fraudulently change numbers to support the ongoing negligence or outright theft of public funds.

Tax Evasion

• Tax evasion is a critical ethical issue continually facing the Internal Revenue Service. Nonprofits by law must pay taxes on income they receive to support purchases or services not related to their core purpose.

Raising and supporting non-stated issues

• Many a times, non-profit groups use their status to illegally promote political issues, act in ways that are inconsistent with their stated purpose.

CHAPTER- 8

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: AN OVERVIEW

The concept of governance originates from 'Kubemau', a Greek word. It means, to steer or to rule or to discipline. Corporate governance refers to corporate discipline. The activities and actors of the corporations must contribute toward discipline, dignity and decorum of the organizations. Corporate governance denotes a structural framework that ensures a healthy and competitive company with provisions of self-cleaning and appraisal by following strategies that focus on transparency, innovation and social orientation.

According to the Confederation of Indian Industry (Cll), corporate governance deals with the laws, procedures, practices that determine a company's ability to take informed managerial decisions vis-a-vis its claimants, the shareholders, creditors, customers, employees and the state. It has been observed that corporate governance is the way a company manages its business that is accountable and responsible to its owners or shareholders, suppliers, creditors, customers and local community. Corporate governance, as per another view, focuses on the systems and processes to protect stakeholders' interests.

The Cadbury Committee defines the concept of corporate governance as, 'the system by which companies are directed and controlled, thus, placing the board of directors of a company at the centre of the governance system'. Maximizing the shareholders' value in a legal and ethical manner is the symbol of good corporate governance. According to the Cadbury Committee, the three pillars of corporate governance are: nomination committee, remuneration committee and audit committee. These committees have to perform various functions as directed. In Germany, the corporate governance system has a two- tier board structure; the supervisory board (SB) and the executive board (EB). In Japan, corporate governance emphasizes on the growth and market share of the organization. The US corporate governance structure is stipulated by the legal system. The contents of the established corporate laws in each state are the same, containing a general committee of stakeholders and a board of directors. The stakeholders are the supreme rulers of corporate governance because they have the power to appoint and dismiss members of the board of directors.

Corporate governance is gradually becoming an important part of the public and private sector; and also of a sound system of governance. There is a need for corporate governance to practice ethics and values; create confidence among the stakeholders; improve operational efficiency of the business; protect the rights of the shareholders; provide protection to financial and other lending institutions; strengthen the board of directors; provide autonomy and responsibility to the board of directors; and create wealth and economic value.

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: A CONCEPTUAL VIEW

Good governance goes beyond common sense. It is a key part of the contract that underpins economic growth in a market economy and public faith in that system . A governance structure is a set of organizational management systems for a corporation's normal operation as an independent legal body (Heiting, 1996). The governance structure of any enterprise comprises the owners, shareholders and the board of directors. While in the corporate sector, there is a clear-cut separation of ownership and control roles, in the public or state-owned enterprises, both the activities fall under the domain of the government, which is the majority shareholder. It is a fallacy to assume that corporate governance is important or holds good especially for private sector, as it contributes towards enhancing the image and profitability of the enterprise. It is also essential for balanced growth and sustenance of any enterprise.

The standing of an enterprise in the market, and the way it is governed assumes importance for all stakeholders. Corporate governance is the core of the market system of competitive enterprise. Until recently, the concept of corporate governance used to mainly refer to the more technical issues of how organizations were set up and how they managed their governing boards and related committees. Now, as a result of closer public scrutiny of the private sector, corporate governance is usually being extended to encompass the ways in which organizations deal with shareholder and stakeholder interests in the decision-making process.

Corporate governance encompasses a set of procedures, systems and processes for the effective governance of the enterprise accountable to all shareholders. The internal mechanisms for corporate governance comprise shareholders, boards of directors, managers, and various stakeholders.

The external framework constitutes effective regulatory mechanisms, financial institutions and other competitors. The concept of corporate governance is quite wide, which includes various issues relating to the internal organization, power structure, and inter-relationships amongst the various stakeholders of the enterprise. Corporate governance needs to be distinguished from corporate management. The latter is primarily concerned with strategic decisions to realize the enterprise's objectives. Governance is wider in nature and focuses more on supervision, monitoring and evaluation to ensure that appropriate management is effected. Governance has two basic components: performance and accountability. The performance of the enterprise both in qualitative and quantitative terms becomes necessary, as the stakeholders expect enhanced value for their investment in the enterprise. Accountability calls for transparency, good system of internal control and monitoring of the activities of the enterprise. Good governance incorporating the principles of transparency and accountability into the management structure, enhances the credibility of the enterprise in the market. Certain core principles such as fairness, accountability, responsibility and transparency guide the corporate governance framework. It includes the policies and procedures adopted by a company in achieving its objectives in relation to its shareholders, employees, customers and suppliers, regulatory authorities and community at large. In a normative sense, it prescribes a code of corporate conduct in relation to all, the stakeholders, external and internal.

The management model in enterprises all along has been one in which the top echelons have been responsible for decision-making. The involvement of other stakeholders in this process has been negligible. Now, a change in scenario is visible with boards of management, shareholders, other stakeholders like customers, financial institutions, suppliers cooperating in the task of decision-making. The emphasis, presently, is being laid on corporate democracy seeking the involvement of three critical players, boards of directors, management and stakeholders. A board, needs the help of the management to arrive at the best possible decisions, while the key stakeholders should be able to provide feedback to the board on the company's policies and decisions.

v CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

Crisis in administration has always been a stimulant for reforms. Corporate governance reforms earlier also were prompted by company failures in the UK and USA. Each crisis or major corporate failure; often resulting from incompetence, fraud and abuse has been met by new elements of an improved system of corporate governance. Through this process of continuous change, industrial countries have established in the government and the private sector, a complex mosaic of Jaws, regulations and institutions for enhancing implementation capacity. The objective is not to shackle corporations but rather to balance the promotion of enterprise with greater accountability. The systematic enforcement of laws and regulations has created a culture of compliance that has shaped business culture and the management ethos of firms, spurring them to improve as a means of attracting human and financial resources on the best possible terms.

Corporate governance has assumed importance for private as well as government owned enterprises. Prior to 1990s, especially in developing countries like India, corporate governance functioned more in an administrative framework. The functioning of private enterprises was subject to suspicion and mistrust. A closed economy, a sheltered market, limited needs and access to global business/trade, lack of competitive spirit, a regulatory framework that enjoined mere observance of rules and regulations rather than realization of broader corporate objectives had marked the contours of corporate governance for well over 40 years (The Hindu, 1997). The change in the scenario in India can be seen in assigning a key role to corporate governance. Growing government disinvestments and increasing thrust on privatization, in the changed role as the custodian of economy, trade, business and industry demanded greater responsibility in promoting private investment and the investor's confidence. The role of the state as the investor has been fast diminishing and it is now only a facilitator and formulator of policies.

The genesis for the emphasis on corporate governance dates back to the Committee on Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance in UK, headed by Sir Adrian Cadbury, set up by the Financial Reporting Council of the London Stock Exchange. It was the first group to draft a corporate governance code. The Cadbury Committee defined corporate governance as the system by which companies are directed and controlled. The board of directors is responsible for the governance of the companies. The shareholders' role in governance is to appoint the directors and the auditors and to satisfy themselves that an appropriate governance structure is in place. The Committee elucidated the finer aspects of corporate governance and recommended that all major investment/disinvestment proposals, changes in

financial and marketing structure, important appointments, etc. should be under the board's domain. Its recommendations include: i) Separation of positions of chairperson and chief executive, ii) Appointment of independent non-executive directors on the board, iii) Constitution of audit committee consisting of at least three nonexecutive directors,

iv) Provision for a nomination committee to make board appointments,

v) Pay of executive directors to be subject to the recommendations of the executive committee, and

(vi) Non-executive directors on the board should not be related to those in management.

In 1994, a similar attempt at improving the area of corporate governance in South Africa led to a Committee been set up by the Institute of Directors headed by Meriyn King. It recommended that: (i) The boards should be balanced between executive and nonexecutive directors, (ii) Roles of chairperson and chief executive officer should be split, and in the absence of a split, there should be at least two non- executive directors, (iii) Director's report should incorporate statements on their responsibilities, (iv) Shareholders should properly use the meeting by asking questions on the accounts for which forms should be provided in the annual reports, and (v) Corporates should have an effective internal audit function and establish an audit committee with written terms of reference from the board (ibid).

In India, the interest that was evinced in instituting corporate governance framework has gathered momentum since 1991 with the Structural Adjustment and Stabilization Programme (SA & SP). In the light of privatization moves, ineffective functioning of certain private enterprises and their lack of concern and accountability towards small investors, has brought to fore the need to institute a clear corporate governance framework. The increasing interest in corporate governance is primarily a product of four factors. Pirst, the assertion of rights by the shareholders. Second, the significant presence of foreign institutional investors who are demanding greater professionalism in the management of Indian corporates. Third, there is awareness on the part of lending institutions, which are now being subjected to rigorous accounting norms, particularly with regard to income recognition and provisions against non- performing loans due to which they are giving much more emphasis to good and efficient corporate governance. Fourth, there is the integration of India with the world economy, which demands that Indian industry should play the game by a standard set of international rules, rather than continue their anachronistic practices The Confederation of Indian Industry (CM), in 1997 brought out the Code of Desirable Corporate Governance, which is considered to be the first of its kind on corporate governance. It outlined a code, the provisions of which include several suggestions to improve the performance of board of directors, a greater role for non-executive directors and audit committee.

The Disinvestment Commission in its Report on Corporate Governance and Autonomy noted that a majority of investors attach considerable importance to the quality of corporate governance in a company and are even willing to pay a premium for better managed companies. It favoured professionalizing the boards of management by involving experts and professionals as non-executive directors in the boards. The Commission felt that the government would need to recognize the role of the legitimate institutions of corporate governance such as the boards and the general body meetings of the shareholders. Hence, there should be a provision for electing directors who would represent the shareholders in minority in the undertaking. The election of employee representatives on the boards should be introduced in proportion to the extent of employee shareholding (Disinvestment Commission, 1997). In 1998-99, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) constituted a committee to suggest a code of corporate governance headed by Kumaramangalam Birla. The report was approved in 2000 and all listed companies are now expected to implement the provisions. It laid down the objective of corporate governance as the enhancement of long-term shareholder value while protecting the interests of other stakeholders.

This underscores a widespread public and hence political interest in reinforcing corporate governance practices. Such concerns become even more pertinent in an international context where full benefits of free capital flows will be realized only if there is a mutual understanding on the basic elements of good corporate governance. These are the concerns that triggered and nurtured the discussions on corporate governance in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in 1998 leading to the development of 'OECD Principles of Corporate Governance'. These principles that have received the OECD ministerial backing, form the basis of a true global standard in corporate governance. Recognizing the fact that there cannot be any single model of good corporate governance, these principles serve as guidelines for raising the standards of corporate governance:

The Rigts of Shareholders: This envisages the shareholders exercising their rights to receive relevant information about the enterprise, participate in decisions affecting the enterprise and have a share in the profits of the enterprise.

Equitable Treatment of Shareholders: This implies equal treatment to be meted out to shareholders of the same category. The board members and managers need to disclose any material interest they have in any transaction of the enterprises.

Role of Stakeholders in Corporate Governance: The corporate governance framework needs to recognize the legal rights of the stakeholders and encourage active cooperation in decision-making leading to effective performance of the enterprise.

Disclosure and Transparency: This is a key principle of corporate governance framework, which calls for suitable provisions for disclosure of information about the enterprise, which includes information on governance structure, constitution of committees, boards of directors, and their remuneration.

The Responsibilities of the Board of Directors: The board of directors is a key instrument of the corporate governance and their accountability to the enterprise and shareholders is essential. The governance framework needs to specify the responsibilities of the board in providing strategic direction to the enterprise, and ensuring monitoring and accountability to the stakeholders.

These principles are based upon the experiences from national initiatives in member countries, and the OECD Business Sector Advisory Group on Corporate Governance. Since there cannot be a single model of good corporate governance, these principles enable governments to evaluate and improve the existing legal, institutional and regulatory framework for corporate governance in their respective countries. OECD considers corporate governance as one that specifies the distribution of rights and responsibilities among different participants in the corporation such as the board members, managers, shareholders and other stakeholders, and spells out the rules and procedures for making decisions on corporate affairs. By doing this, it also provides the structure through which the company objectives are set and the means of attaining those objectives and monitoring performance are determined.

The basic aim of all these global efforts is to professionalize the management of enterprise, enhance board performance through inclusion of professional independent directors, provide for adequate disclosures to the shareholders and adherence to ethical practices. Effective corporate governance reduces risk, stimulates performance, improves access to capital markets, enhances the marketability of goods and services, improves leadership, and demonstrates transparency and social accountability. An effective corporate governance framework is needed to facilitate the enterprise to:

• Strive towards efficient use of resources, which in turn promotes economic development.

• Ensure compliance of the needed regulatory requirements, laws and regulations.

• Create confidence among the stakeholders.

• Promote shareholder activism. The investor has a key role in the present governance system. The faith and trust of the investor can be secured through information dissemination, participation and transparency in activities of enterprise; and

• Establish board of management's accountability to the enterprise, stakeholders and society at large.

v PATTERNS OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: A GLOBAL VIEW

A global perspective of the governance structure of the enterprises brings forth three distinct models. These are: (a) American, (b) German, and (c) Japanese. The key participants in all the three models comprise the shareholders, board of directors and managers.

American Model: This is generally referred to as an 'outsider' control model. The shareholders exercise their prerogative of electing the directors. Though the shareholders are assigned a supreme position in their powers to appoint and dismiss the directors, being numerous, they do not exercise direct control on the management of the enterprise. It is the board of directors, which carries out the corporate operations through the various committees and chief executive officer (CEO). The board exercises monitoring and supervisory role over the management. Under such a governance structure, board activism is assuming increasing proportion where a board monitors and controls the conduct of the management. In fact, it is not rare for a board of directors to dismiss a CEO for a poor performance on the basis of assessment of management operations, as it happened in major American companies like the General Motors, IBM, Kodak, etc. where their CEOs were dismissed during 1992-93. Also the Apple Computer did the same in 1996-97 (Masami, 2000).

German Model: This model differs in certain distinct features from the American structure. This governance framework has a general committee and a board of directors. The monitoring role is exercised by the auditor's committee and the board of directors is entrusted with the operational functions. The German governance structure is based on the distinct separation of functions of supervision and management. An important role is assigned to the auditors' committee, which has representatives of stockholders and labour.

Japanese Model: The Japanese corporate governance is a characteristically internal-oriented closed-loop structure with high presence of corporate/institutional stockholders and declining power of the main banks and labour unions. The board of directors is responsible for operational and management activities. The board is generally considered to be an extension of management, which is not exercising its function of timely monitoring of activities. The corporate governance in Japan is said to represent the interests of companies and employees rather than shareholders.

These internal and external features have come together in different ways to create a range of corporate governance systems that reflect specific market structures, legal systems, traditions, regulations, and cultural and societal values. The system may vary with country and sector and even within the same corporation over time, but they affect the agility, efficiency and profitability of all corporations, private, publicly held and state-owned . There cannot be any one model of corporate governance that suits any country. Corporate governance system in each country has its own different characteristics depending on historical and cultural conditions. Therefore, it is neither possible nor advisable to simply adopt a system (ibid.). Any framework of governance needs to take the local realities and challenges into purview. Irrespective of certain variations in the framework, a corporate governance framework tends to encompass certain key components:

• Shareholders elect directors who represent them.

• Directors vote on key matters and adopt the majority decisions.

• Decisions are made in a transparent manner so that shareholders and others can hold directors accountable.

• The company adopts accounting standards to generate the information necessary for directors, investors and other stakeholders to make decisions.

• The company's policies and practices adhere to applicable national, state and local laws.

v CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: KEY CONCERNS

A corporate governance framework to be effective needs to focus on certain key processes which include:

• Constitution of a board comprising potential directors representing different stakeholders to provide the necessary leadership to the enterprise;

• Empowering the board with clear-cut functions and requisite autonomy;

• Ensuring transparency of activities and accountability; and

• Formulating appropriate criteria and processes for appraisal of board performance.

To ensure the effective implementation of corporate governance framework, certain key concerns need to be given due emphasis. The central concerns of corporate governance framework include: Leadership, Accountability, Boardroom Appraisal, Developing the Boards, and Code of Ethics.

Leadership

Leadership is a vital component of corporate governance framework. The higher levels of management are expected to provide strategic direction to the enterprise instead of concentrating on routine managerial tasks. Vision- led boards are the need of the hour. Governance requires top echelons to demonstrate the requisite leadership that can balance the entrepreneurial enthusiasm, technology influx, needs of the market within the prevalent systems and changing values. This encompasses providing direction to the enterprise, designing strategies of innovation, organization restructuring/redesigning, strategic management, stakeholder management, evaluation, and monitoring of performance. A visionary leadership, enables an enterprise to absorb the shifts and advances in market and technology and forge a growing set of strategic alliances and partnerships. The challenges facing the leaders include:

• Leading organizations in an environment of dwindling resources and increased demand for quality service, sustainable development and retention of skills for organizational continuity;

• Cultivating a performance management culture with emphasis on results;

• Upholding good governance despite a hostile and ever- changing environment;

• Instituting effective staff retention strategies amid a change fatigue syndrome; and

• Keeping pace with advances in information technology and work force renewal.

Accountability

Broadly speaking, corporate governance is considered to be an effective instrument of accountability of an enterprise to the society. The basis of good corporate governance rests on the trust and confidence between the enterprise and other stakeholders. Accountability is a key requirement that assigns significance to responsibility for carrying out laid down mandates, which is important in situations involving public trust. This can be ensured through increased transparency in decision-making, improved quality of disclosure of information, periodic monitoring through audit, sound system of financial reporting and review. Mere dissemination of information does not ensure accountability. Transparency and free flow of information to the stakeholders are needed.

In the USA, presently, there is a shift in perspective from shareholder to stakeholder accountability. The thinking is that the board decisions and actions need to be judged on the criteria that go beyond financial performance to include impact on human capital and communities. Magna International, a large Canadian manufacturing firm has adopted a corporate constitution that 'protects and promotes the interests of all its stakeholders' specifying, for example, the profits that will go to taxes and reinvestment (55%), shareholder dividends (20%), employee equity and profit sharing (10%), management profit participation (6%), research and development (7%), and social responsibility (2%). This has been an innovative stakeholder Constitution.

Proper disclosure of information relating to performance of enterprise to the stakeholders is one of the key facets of fostering accountability. With the release of its 2002 Sustainable Reporting Guidelines, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) provides a flexible mechanism for such enhanced reporting, offering a detailed methodology for performance disclosure. Companies that use the guidelines will report on a broad array of issues, including corporate governance, financial flows from the company to the community where it operates, including taxes, payments, salaries, etc., materials and energy use; and carbon emission and biodiversity. The reports also cover labour practices and human rights, bribery and corruption policies (White, 2002).

Boardroom, Appraisal

This is; one of the key concerns of corporate governance. It relates to assessing how far and how effectively the board has carried out its functions and also to ensure that the structure and practice of governance is in the best interests of the enterprise and its various stakeholders. The premise of effective corporate governance commences with questioning the effectiveness of the institution of the board of directors (Mishra, 1998). It enables the board as a whole and the directors individually to reflect upon their actions. Boardroom appraisal facilitates learning from the past to be able to do better in the future. Boardroom self-evaluation schemes under which the competence of the directors is reviewed annually by fellow board members are making rapid headway in the USA. The Washington D.C. based National Association of Corporate Directors sets out five elements for discussion; personal characteristics, core competencies, independence, level of commitment; and team and company consideration. A convention is developing where directors are clearly told that re-nomination is not automatic and that a poor evaluation will lead to a request for resignation.

Developing the Boards

Sound governance requires acceptable best boards of management, which are a source of leadership and strength to the enterprise. The complexities in the functions of the directors of

the board are leading to the issue of 'development of board members' for better board membership. It is being emphasized that the directors should possess the relevant industry, company, functional area and governance expertise. The directors should reflect a mix of backgrounds and perspective. All directors should receive detailed orientation and continuing education to assure that they achieve and maintain the necessary level of expertise (Corporate Governance Centre, 2002). In the UK, and the USA, professional associations are taking a lead in laying down guidelines for directors on good boardroom practice.

Peter Chapman, senior Vice President and Chief Counsel for Corporate Governance of Pension and Financial Services Provider in the US commented on the major areas that are in the need of reform. Education of directors is one of the areas. Not all individuals are qualified to be directors in today's market place simply because they are asked to serve. In certain companies, recently, the Audit committees' directors had to meet the standards of financial literacy— literally, that is the ability to understand a financial statement. Compensation committee directors often do not take a proactive role on behalf of the company because they lack an understanding of issues and do not hire independent consultants when needed.

Code of Ethics

Ethics is the positive as well as the soft side of ensuring high standards in the process of corporate governance. Whereas good controls and systems are necessary for good governance, they are not sufficient enough. Sufficiency arises only when sensitivity to ethics is institutionalized and imbibed into the organizational culture (Reddy, 1998). Governance aims to make the enterprise accountable to various stakeholders with concern for ethics and values. The Cadbury Committee in the UK has been instrumental in evolving a code of ethics known as the Code of Best Practice' to achieve standards of corporate behaviour. The code is based on principles of openness, integrity and accountability. This code in Britain is directed to the listed companies, which are expected to state whether they are complying with the code and give reasons for non-compliance. This aims at enabling the shareholders to gauge where the companies, in which they have invested, stand with respect to the code.

Intellectual and financial integrity are considered to be the key factors for bringing professionalism in corporate governance. Evolving a code of ethics and adherence to it signifies the beginning of the process of cleansing of an enterprise. Corporate governance is not merely about enacting legislation. It is about establishing a climate of trust and confidence through oversight. Ethical business behaviour and fairness cannot be simply legislated into being. Strengthening corporate governance is fundamentally a political process in which the government and the private sector have to join hands (Iskander, 2002). There is a need for evolving a multifaceted, and multipronged strategy for implementation of corporate governance framework.

IMPLEMENTATION OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE REFORMS: SOME ISSUES

Any country, while developing and implementing corporate governance framework, needs to first assess its strengths and weaknesses, create and strengthen necessary laws and institutions; and properly sequence the reforms. Some of the basic issues that need to be taken into view include:

• Developing competitive markets through measures such as appropriate competitive legislation, promoting foreign direct investments subject to suitable restrictions, and evolving norms for fair trade practices.

• Strengthening the judicial, legal, regulatory institutions for effective enforcement of laws.

• Establishing suitable mechanism for ensuring transparency of operations of enterprises through appropriate disclosure of financial and non-financial operations.

• Building human capacities and capabilities to discharge the tasks of governance.

Lessening resistance to reforms, especially disclosure of information through dialogue and networking between the enterprise and all concerned stakeholders.A suitable combination of regulatory and voluntary actions can foster the implementation of corporate governance reforms. This calls for appropriate action on the part of the government, private sector, media and community as such. It needs constant interaction and exchange of information. For instance, in the USA, the Business Week recently did an indepth analysis of several enterprises from the perspective of effectiveness of the board. They listed the best and the worst boards as well as the boards that showed maximum improvement and those that needed to work (Business Week, Oct. 2002).

The World Bank is also fostering efforts to broaden the debate on corporate governance beyond the OECD countries to include the developing and transition economies. It calls for a participatory process involving all the major stakeholders in the design and implementation of a comprehensive reform strategy. The World Bank and OECD intend to sponsor the Global Corporate Governance Forum, which will mobilize local and international public and private sector expertise and resources, to help countries develop their own programmes and institutions.

Contemporary crisis-ridden scenario throws up challenges and offers opportunities for governments and the private sector to change the behaviour and the rules of the game. While reforms are most often initiated in the wake of a crisis, they should not be viewed in the context of a short-term anti- crisis package. The concept of corporate governance will take a concerted effort in building consensus and sharing experience, expertise, and resources among all players. Above all, the private sector must see that implementing reforms is in its own best interest. Likewise, reform of the public sector is central to an active partnership. Because reforms are likely to yield results only over the medium to long-run, sustainability and comprehensiveness in design, and staying in power during implementation are critical (Iskander, op. cit.). But while details and principles may be strengthened on paper, they will serve little purpose without a political commitment to abide by them. The aim is to reinforce the contracts of trust that drive our market democracies. The governments as custodians must take a lead in ensuring that these contracts are not only understood, but honoured too (Witherell, 2002). The erstwhile command and control culture must give place to a culture of adherence, compliance and enforcement.

The credibility and trustworthiness of an enterprise—public or private, is assuming importance in the changing economic scenario. Issues like effective and transparent decision- making, disclosure of information, participation of key stakeholders, innovation, entrepreneurship, adherence to social obligations, and regulatory norms are gaining supremacy. The responsibility of instituting an appropriate governance framework within a market economy vests only with the government. Hence, strong political will is needed for reforms. Inlndia, we have not developed a typical framework of corporate governance as in the West. Efforts need to be made to develop an appropriate model, which keeps the steering function of governance at arms length from the management function, ensures professionalization, strives towards enhancing the shareholder's value; and promotes healthy development of an enterprise, be it public or private. In India, some progress in this direction has been made, but many more earnest efforts to achieve these objectives are urgently needed.

CHAPTER-9

PROBITY IN GOVERNANCE: CONCEPT OF PUBLIC SERVICE

• Probity in governance is an essential and vital requirement for an efficient and effective system of governance and for socio-economic development.

• It refers to complete honesty, truthfulness and reliability. In normative usage transparency and probity mean openness without deceit, secrecy, shadiness and virtues of good stewardship, accountability and trust.

• Probity in public life include the standards that society expects those elected or appointed to public office to observe and maintain in the conduct of the public affairs to which they have been entrusted.

• These standards safeguard the nation from corruption by politicians and public officials who have been given almost unrestricted access to public resources together with the power to take decisions that impact on the lives of everyone and the nation as a whole.

• It follows that those in positions of power can use these positions to take decisions that are solely in the public interest or they can use them to benefit themselves, friends, and in the case of politicians, their party supporters to the exclusion of others.

• An important requisite for ensuring probity in governance is absence of corruption.

• The other requirements are effective laws, rules and regulations governing every aspect of public life and, more important, an effective and fair implementation of those laws, etc.

• A proper, fair and effective enforcement of law is a peculiar feature of discipline but unfortunately in our country, this discipline is disappearing fast from public life and without discipline, no real progress is possible.

• This discipline relates to both public and private morality along with a sense of honesty; however it's an irony that the high position in our society is marked with the ease with which he/she can ignore the laws and regulations.

• Although some legislative measures have been taken to ensure probity in governance, but it is also true that instilling a sense of discipline among the citizens is more the function of the society, its leaders, political parties and public figures and less a matter which can be legislated upon.

• In this context, Ex Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech also throws light on the present situation of probity being followed in public life.

v Probity in public service

• Probity in its literal meaning has been defined as "the quality or condition of having strong moral principles; integrity, good character honesty, decency".

• It is the act of adhering to the highest principles and ideals rather than avoiding corrupt or dishonest conduct only. It balances serviceto the community against the self-interest of individuals.

• Unlike the private sector, the public sector is accountable to thepublic and subject to audit and political scrutiny. Consequently, standards of acceptable conduct cannot be compromised.

• As a result, public sector needs to demonstrate probity in all its dealings.

• Probity Principles- There is no standard list of probity principles however they generally include:

1. Accountability - Organizations and public servants have an obligation to explain or account for the way duties are performed and resources expended. Accountability involves aligning decision- making processes with the appropriate delegated authority and being responsible for past and expected performance.

2. Transparency - This is the willingness to open an organization and its processes to scrutiny and possible criticism, enabling all stakeholders to have confidence in the outcome. It may involve providing reasons for decisions, along with relevant information to stakeholders. Transparent processes minimize the opportunity for and risk of, fraud and corruption.

3. Impartiality - Individuals and organizations interacting with public are entitled to expect impartial treatment at every stage of the process. If they do not believe the process is honest, fair and impartial, or that a form of bias is acting against them, it could damage the reputation of the public services.

4. Confidentiality - Transparency and accountability needs to be balanced against privacy and confidentiality considerations. Confidential material must be stored in a manner that protects the rights, interests and reputation of all involved.

5. Conflict of interest - This is where the public duty and private interests of public servants may be in conflict; resulting in their personal interest improperly influencing their official duties and responsibilities. Conflicts of interest must be disclosed so procedures can be implemented to manage them effectively and mitigate the impacts.

6. Right of public comment- Generally, employees in public services have the same rights of free speech and independence in the conduct of their private affairs as other members of the public. However, they should ensure that their contribution to any public debate or discussion on such matters maintains the direction appropriate at the position they hold and is compatible with the need to maintain a politically neutral public service.

• All public servants need to conduct themselves in accordance with high standards of behavior to the extent that this may reflect on their or the entity's reputation.

• In particular, public servants need to be trustworthy in the handling of public funds. They have to demonstrate-

a) Probity in handling assets and resources entrusted to them;

b) Care in safeguarding property, assets and confidential information to ensure they are not stolen, abused or damaged;

c) Proper observance of the entity's rules and procedures, particularly when accounting for finances;

d) Economy to avoid waste and extravagance; and

e) Personal honesty in claiming expenses and ensuring that official assets and resources are not used for private advantage.

v Probity in public sector

• Public sector projects (whether delivered by public sector organizations themselves or done in collaboration with private sectors) need to demonstrate probity in all their stages.

• Features like best value for public money; impartiality and fairness; conflicts of interest and accountability etc. should be taken into account throughout all stages of the process by the probity auditors.

• Probity in a project should result in-

i. Avoidance of corrupt practices.

ii. Improvements in public sector integrity through organizational and attitudinal change,

iii. Reassurance to the community and those wishing to do business with the public sector, that the process and outcome can be trusted,

iv. Provision of an objective and independent view on the fairness of the process.

v. The avoidance of conflicts of interest problems

vi. Minimization of potential for litigation.

Lack of probity and Corruption

• The absence of integrity and probity in public life is manifested in corruption which is a worldwide phenomenon.

• Corruption, as defined by the World Bank, is the use of public office for private profit.

• Corruption in any system or society depends on three factors. The first is the set of individual's sense of values, the second is the set of social values which are accepted by the society as a whole and third, the system of governance or administration.

• Root of corruption lies perhaps in the extreme attachment of people to their families and nepotism is natural in this situation.

• A person in an office feels that he should earn enough not only for himself and his lifetime but also for his next generations as well.

• Equally important also is psychological factor which expresses itself in the belief that power is never demonstrated in a society unless it is misused.

• Spreading cult of consumerism also leads to corruption. The electronic media have had a tremendous impact in creating a desire in the mind of everyone to have the best of the consumer goods even at the beginning of life.

• Social cause like dowry system also promotes corruption.

• Ever increasing pressure in a competitive society, education pressure and corruption in the education sector is another social factor contributing to corruption in our system.

• There are so many cases of scams in recent past also which points to an increase of corruption in higher bureaucracy and elected political functionaries, often in collusion or in nexus with criminal elements.

• Corruption is rampant in administration of welfare schemes, public distribution system, police, public departments and several other sectors where people come into contact daily with administration.

• Corruption at lower levels takes the form of speed money for expediting approvals or providing legitimate services, or bribes for twisting rules.

• A matter of grave concern is the vertical integrity of corruption at various levels of government between officials and politicians and the inability of top functionaries to check the prevalent and growth of corruption.

• Thus, Corruption in public life has emerged as a part of the malaise of black money and erosion of the moral fibre of Indian society.

• The adverse impact of corruption on the economy and public administration in terms of waste, distorted resource allocation, reduced revenues, unfavourable perceptions of foreign investors etc is quite obvious.

• In this context, there is an urgent need to tackle corruption and the increasing erosion of moral values in public life.

v Ways to ensure probity in public life

• Level of probity in public life depends individual values, social values and system. At system level, strategy to ensure probity may include-

a) Simplification of rules and regulations.

b) Transparency and empowerment of public.

c) Effecting punishment of guilty.

• Weak and undeveloped systems of checks and balances like a strong and independent media as well as civil society groups with the capacity to investigate, challenge and call to account those in positions of power lead to failure of probity in public services.

• Leaders who are corrupt exploit these weaknesses to the fullest to enrich themselves and those closest to them at the expense of the country.

• There is widespread concern in India about the scale, spread and consequences of corruption.

• Following steps can be considered for investigation and prosecuting quickly all cases of corruption and misconduct of officials at all levels and for ensuring swift and exemplary punishment of the guilty.

1. Elimination of corruption in public services should address preventive,

surveillance and deterrent punishment, and deal mercilessly with the nexus of officials with criminal elements and corruptible political functionaries.

2. Rules and legal provisions should be amended to enable immediate and exemplary prosecution and removal of corrupt officials without resource to any political protection. The Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 and other related laws need to be reviewed with an effective role assured for the Central and State Vigilance Commissions. There is also a need for enforcing section 5 of the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, 1988.

3. There should be no scope in the rules for any interference in prompt prosecution and punishment of corrupt public servants, and permission for such prosecution should be given within a prescribed period to investigating agencies like the CBI.

4. The investigating agencies and vigilance machinery should be strengthened by provision of adequate staff, powers, resources and independence accompanied by proper accountability for results.

5. It is further necessary to amend the relevant service rules to enable the review of integrity and efficiency of officials at any stage during their career and to provide for premature retirement of officers of doubtful integrity in public interest.

6. The existing procedures for departmental enquiries and vigilance proceedings for Central and State Government employees should be revamped so as to ensure their speedy completion and it mayinclude:

a) Prescribing firm time limits for all the stages from preliminary investigation to issue of charge sheet, to actual enquiry and the issue of final orders of punishment;

b) Ensuring adequate number of full time or part time inquiry officers, and providing them with adequate incentive and training;

c) Suspending or transferring to non-sensitive posts those personnel who are being prosecuted or proceeded against departmentally on charges of corruption;

d) Making a careful distinction between petty procedural irregularities and substantive misconduct.

7. Attachment and forfeiture of properties acquired by public servants by corrupt or illegal means through provision modelled on Forfeiture of Property Act, 1976.

8. Areas of discretion available to various levels of administration should be curtailed to the minimum, along with steps to prevent their arbitrary use.

9. Objective and transparent criteria for the transfer and promotion of officials in order to insulate them from political influence in action taken according to law and in public interest.

10. Strengthening role and powers of audit in the identification of financial and procedural irregularities to be followed by investigation for possible corruption.

11. Strengthening the 'watch dog' role of the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India and his establishment which will involve (i) wider powers for audit, (ii) prompt publication and discussion of audit reports, (iii) follow up by the vigilance machinery of financial irregularities brought to light by audit, and (iv) provision for audit based on references from citizens and investigative reports in the media.

12. Close networking of different agencies like lokpal/lokayukta, CBI/ CVO, Income Tax authorities, Enforcement Directorate and CAG in terms of sharing of information and intelligence and co-ordinated investigations.

13. Encouraging adoption of code of ethics not only by civil servants but also all public functionaries, media, professionals, and the corporate sector based on constitutional principles and moral values.

14. Appropriate self-policing arrangements should be developed by independent authorities and professions such as the judiciary, lawyers, doctors, media persons, chartered accountants, architects and contractors.

These measures, once adopted, would need to be widely publicized to instil public confidence, both in the probity of all political and administrative functionaries and in prosecution of the corrupt without exception.

PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH ETHICAL ACCOUNTABILITY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Accountability and ethics are closely related. Effective accountability helps the achievement of ethical standards in the governance system.

Massive Expansion of Bureaucracy

• In a vast country like India, the role of public administration has been increasing. The numbers of public personnel as well as the agencies they work for have gone up so much that it is difficult for the political executive or the legislature to exercise effective control over them.

Full-Time Status

• Most public administrators are full-time, while outsiders cannot devote equal amount of time in overseeing their activities like legislators, judiciary, Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

• Even the media have relatively less time to keep a watch over the actions of administrators.

Special Expertise and Information

• Public administrators are often experts in their specific area of functioning and it is difficult for any outside agency to surpass them in their areas of specialisation.

• Moreover, they generate and control crucial information that may be difficult to be accessed or even comprehended by law regulators, much less by the common citizens.

Lack of Coordination

• The number of agencies to ensure probity in public administration has also been increasing continually. E.g. Central Bureau of Investigation, Central Vigilance Commission, State LokAyuktas, State Vigilance Bodies and Anti-Corruption Departments etc. coexist but effective coordination among them is still missing.

• There are lacunae in the working of the vigilance machinery and absence of harmony among these agencies.

Excessive Security of tenure

• Most countries grant protections to civil servants. Besides, there are no punishments prescribed for non- performance or for low productivity. E.g. Article 311 of the Indian Constitution makes it almost impossible to remove a civil servant.

• A sense of over-security pervades the personnel system and the inquiry system is so dilatory that it is devoid of any fear.

Misinterpretation of Role and Obligation

• Civil servants, over a period of time, get used to defining their role and responsibilities in a parochial manner that is either self-centered, group-centred or organisation-centred and neglect people-centric approach.

• There are hardly any countervailing forces for the prevention or correction of a parochial interpretation of public interest by the administrative personnel. As a result, both ethics and accountability suffer. Orthodox Loyalty

• It is customary in the Indian society to show respect to the superior and to refrain from criticism of one's boss in a public organisation. Any voice against the superiors is considered as an act of insubordination. In such a cultural climate, even the honest and conscientious employees do not speak out against unethical practices of their peers and seniors.

• Undue compassion occasionally shown to the subordinates on their errors of omission and commission also strengthen the wrong practices.

Insufficiency of Ethical Codes

• The conduct rules for civil servants emphasise upon the norms of good conduct. Some of these rules have remained unchanged since long and now appear to be outdated.

Employees' Unions

• Another impediment in the way of enforcing discipline and codes of conduct is the tendency of employees' unions to resist the managerial action against their members even when they have blatantly violated ethical norms. Coirupiion

• Corruption is the abuse of official authority for personal gains. It is betrayal of public trust for protecting private interests.

• Politicians and administrators are generally in nexus with each other in perpetuating corruption.

• Citizens thus become the victims of immorality in governance. Subversion

• Certain government servants, working in sensitive organisations like ordinance factories, nuclear energy establishments and defence forces, may pass on critical secrets to enemies in exchange for pecuniary benefits or for the sale of extra-territorial loyalty.

Suggested Solutions

To tackle all these challenges, solutions have to be found out. Few options can be tried like-

Ethical training: Among these first and foremost option is training. Training should that is imparted after a person enters the administrative service.

• First is the induction training comprising foundational, institutional and field training organised soon after an administrator's career starts.

• The second is in-service training that is imparted throughout the service career in the form of refresher courses, orientation programmes, seminars and conferences.

• The third is on-the job training that is subtly provided by job performance and observation.

Systematic initiatives must be taken to make ethics an integral and prominent part of induction as well as in-service training.

Principled and honest superiors and members of the peer group are bound to promote morality in the conduct of a government servant. Anticipating specific threats to ethics standards and integrity in the public sector

• Attention needs to be paid to systemic threats that could weaken adherence to core public sector ethics values, and commitment to good governance, and to preparing the necessary political and management responses

• effective laws which require civil servants to give reasons for their official decisions

• 'whistleblower' protection law to protect appropriate 'public interest disclosures' of wrongdoing by officials

• ethics audits to identify risks to the integrity of the most important processes (for example financial management, tendering, recruitment and promotion, dismissal and discipline);

Media's role as watchdog

• In an open society, media can play an important role in highlighting unethical practices in the governance system.

• In India, national newspapers have performed like active watchdogs over public affairs. Vernacular press has also acted responsibly in this respect.

• The best part is that the government, the legislature and even the judiciary have started taking note of such reports and even action on most occasions has been initiated.

CHAPTER- 10 WORK CULTURE & SERVICE DELIVERY

• Work culture means work related activities, and meanings attached to such activities in the framework of norms

and values, are generally contextualized in an organization.

• An organization has its boundaries, goals and objectives, technology, managerial practices, material and human resources as well as constraints. Its employees have skills, knowledge, needs and expectations.

• These two sets of factors - organizational and individual - interact and over time establish roles, norms and values pertaining to work.

• Work culture impacts the administrative efficiencies as well as business activities.

• A decade ago, the work culture in India had a vast difference as compared to rest of the world, especially western countries.

• But, now there is a paradigm shift due to enormous growth of MNC's in IT sector India, BPO's etc. The advent of globalization made business enterprises and employees to work across the borders, thus providing exposure to cross cultural working environment to both the organizations and employees. This eliminated the huge gap between the work culture of India and other countries to some extent.

• However, in fields other than IT and Government sectors of India the work culture differs a lot from that of other countries.

Theories related to work culture

• The concept of work culture has been, examined by different theorists. Some of them are:

a) A. Pettigrew (1979) identifies "work culture as the system of personally and collectively accepted meanings of work, operating for a given group at a given time'.

b) According to Peters and Waterman (1982): "Work culture is defined as a system of 'shared values', which results in high performance in organizations".

c) N.K.Singh (1985) says that: "The work culture is the prevalent and common patterns of feeling and behaviour in an organization".

d) J.B.P. Sinha (1990) labels work culture as the totality of the various levels of interacting forces around the focal concern of work".

• Work culture is a consequence in an organization formed by a set of values and beliefs, carried forward from long time and has substantial impact in the behaviour, quality, and quantity of work done by the employee in an organization.

• A good work environment addresses the culture of the group and the humanity of the individual. It also acknowledges that some habitat needs are universal.

v Administrative work culture in India

• Administrative culture comprises values, beliefs, attitudes, etc., concerning administrative action and behaviour.

• It connotes the mode and style of functioning of officials.

• Administration is culture-bound. It is shaped by the setting or the environment in which it operates.

• Administration impacts political system as it helps in formulation of governmental programmes and policies. The administrators provide different types of data, information, expertise, suggestions, feedback etc., to the ministers on the basis of which realistic programmes and policies are formulated by them.

• Administration can also influence economy by contributing to the formulation of various economic programmes and policies. Further, if administration is efficient and effective, development and growth will take place and thus, overall economy will be impacted positively. Social maladies like casteism, nepotism, favouritism, corruption etc. may influence administrators. Similarly, administration can also influence social environment by contributing to the formulation of policies for mitigating social evils.

• Administrative work culture has become a deciding factor as it is an instrument or weapon of the government to operationalise programmes and policies meant for all-round development of the country.

• The target of administrative culture is public bureaucracy. It is a cohesive, well-organised and compact group with a network of continuing interactions.

Public perception of Indian bureaucracy

• A study done by Transparency International in India in 2005 found that more than 50% of the people had first- hand experience of paying a bribe or using influence to get a job done in a public office.

• India is still one of the most difficult places for doing business as evident from World Bank's report where India was ranked a dismal 142 among the 189 countries surveyed for the latest (2015) "Ease of Doing Business" report, down two places from its position last year.

• The Second Administrative Reforms Commission's 12th report states that bureaucracy in India is generally perceived to be 'unresponsive, insensitive and corrupt', and a common complaint against it pertains to excessive red tape.

• The report further states 'the system often suffers from problems of excessive centralisation and policies, and action plans are far removed from the needs of the citizens.

• This results in a mismatch between what is required and what is being provided'. The end result is that officers perceive themselves as dispensing favours to citizens rather than serving them, and given the abject poverty and illiteracy, a culture of exaggerated deference to authority has become the norm.

• Over the last two decades, liberalisation has improved the climate for investment in India, but it is often said that the biggest frustration for potential investors in India is the bureaucracy.

Recommendations

• Reforms are must for the revitalisation of the Indian bureaucratic system and to break the vicious circle of inefficiency of the system.

• Various committees have been set up for recommending measures to make the bureaucracy accountable and deliver as per the national agenda. The suggestions given by these comprise-

• Innovative mechanisms like a state commission independent of government for appointing bureaucrats could be implemented.

• Technocrats and specialists need to be appointed at various levels of the bureaucratic system. Many technocrats/specialists have pioneered major reforms in India e.g. The green revolution, major breakthroughs in the areas of nuclear science, space, telecoms and economic reforms were piloted by technocrats and specialists.

• The performance of the public service system must be appraised, leadership and teamwork improved and a culture of continuous improvement promoted.

• The values of probity and political independence need to be combined with newer qualities of leadership, excellence, openness, accountability, productivity and dynamism.

• The excessive concern with procedures must be replaced by a focus on results. To improve the levels of responsiveness, commitment, awareness and accountability for bureaucracy, there should be emphasis on innovative training methodology, concentrating on human values instead of merely on skills.

• There should be an effective vigilance mechanism to root out the practice of corruption.

• Inefficiencies in bureaucracy can be resolved through the enabling power of technology. Appropriate incentives for improved transparency and control of corruption could be provided.

v Indian Work Culture and Business

• The business culture of India is a reflection of the various norms and standards followed by its people. Indians have various cultural yardsticks, which extend to their business culture too.

• Thus, it is important that a person visiting the country has some basic idea regarding the business ethics and customs followed here.

• Having a good grasp on Indian business culture will ensure the success in maintaining a well- earned affinity with business counterparts.

• The 'namaste' forms an important part of Indian etiquette and is generally used while greeting and saying good- bye. However, educated Indian men and women, who are acquainted with western customs, prefer shaking hands.

• Culturally and as a mark of politeness, Indians have difficulty in saying no, This could be a stumbling block in negotiations and in closing contracts.

• The notion of time, time management, punctuality is still an anathema in India. It is more to do with the mindset and ingrained in the Indian culture. It would not be surprising if meetings are postponed, re- scheduled, cancelled or organized at a very short notice.

• The proficiency over the English language for the average middle class is commendable. Official communication-letter faxes, emails are generally received without any hitch, but it would be prudent to cross check if the transmission has reached the receiver.

• Bureaucratic hurdles and a laidback approach to work in the government circles could result in delays in processing, overload of paperwork and a general lack of confidence in the system. Therefore immense patience is very much necessary for any business transaction in India.

• In India, Companies follow the hierarchical system and decision making is usually from the top to bottom. It could at times be time consuming, International companies show respect to this.

• The lack of infrastructure and inadequate supply chain management can also act as bottleneck for foreign investment.

• There are certain challenges that are being faced by Indian offshore teams working abroad- language barrier, hierarchy in Indian organisations, indirect communication style, time orientation, hard work vis-a-vis smart work etc.

Indian Work Culture in comparison to other Countries

• There are differences between Indian work environment and American work environment which relate to differences in working hours, work- life balance, relationship between Boss and subordinates, performance appraisals, accepting changes etc.

• In the US, the work environment is professional and causal as well. People prefer to dress casually (unless the company policy states otherwise), work schedules are flexible and overall the work atmosphere is informal.

• The office environment is informal, and there is no apparent hierarchy between managers and their subordinates. Employees are treated as equals and independent views are welcomed.

• American work culture involves a lot of meetings. These meetings need not deal with big decisions, but are more like discussions, and are centered on analyzing, planning and reviewing of a project. Opinions and ideas are shared and objections are made.

• Working hours are flexible as far as IT companies are concerned. Results matter more than anything; you must be able to deliver the result.

• Americans are very time conscious. They believe in the principles of time-management. They come to office early and leave on time. You will rarely find them working late hours, or on weekends. They plan their weekends ahead of time and value their privacy.

• Meetings are an integral part of corporate work culture in America. Meetings are usually started exactly on time.

• Most part people tend to allot around 30 min for their lunch time. Typically, people go out for a quick lunch, or bring in their lunch box from home. Some of them prefer to eat at desk to save lunch time and do parallel work or do something else.

• Generally, Americans are very polite, friendly and helpful, but have less tolerance for people who interfere in their private lives.

• In all the Western countries people strictly adhere to the time. On the contrary, in India, people do not adhere to the timings. No doubt, they work for long hours approximately for 10- 12hrs a day and sometimes even on weekends, but take long tea breaks and lunch breaks. They are not very imperative on deadlines and keep negotiating for extension of timeline. Some times scheduled meetings are canceled, due to absence of some key persons.

• One more major difference is the work-life balance. In Western work-culture, they give more value to the time spent for their personal life. They do not carry the workplace pressures or stress to home. Eventually work is a part of their life, but not the life itself.

• Most of the Indians think workplace as an opportunity to build their future and put forth extensive efforts to climb the corporate ladder and earn monetary benefits. They work day and night beyond limits, which results in losing work-life balance. This also makes them encounter a lot of pressure ,as the demands at work place and family are almost opposite. There may be a greater sense of ownership of work in Indians and they value work more than that of personal life.

• The relationship between the boss and subordinates is believed to be more formal and hierarchical in India. People in power openly display their ranks according to which importance is given. Employees are not supposed to expect clear guidance from the managers and they are often not assigned with important work. Subordinates are expected to take the blame for things that go wrong. The relationship between boss and subordinate is rarely close/personal. In general company meetings only few people dominate, even though their decisions are wrong. However, it may vary from company to company.

• In Indian work-culture, people do not accept change easily; lot of resistance is encountered in order to implement change. In western work-culture, people are adaptive and conductive to change implementation.

v Challenges faced by Indians working abroad

• Developing global cultural competency is one of the most challenging aspects of working globally.

• Managing the myriad work and management styles that companies face across geographies, businesses, functions and projects can be daunting.

• What is effective in one culture may be ineffective, or even inappropriate, in other cultures. In addition, multicultural diversity at home is now the rule, rather than the exception. Challenges include-

1. Mindset about Management Hierarchy- In American business culture, rank and title aren't as important as they are in India. The expectation is that subordinates will speak up, offer suggestions, push back and take initiative rather than just do what they're told. Decisions tend to be less top-down, authority is more delegated, and managers expect team members to take responsibility and assume ownership of results.

2. Attitudes towards Appointments and Deadlines- For Americans, strict adherence to time commitments is seen as a basic principle of professionalism and courteous behavior. The more flexible and open-ended approach to time of Indian business culture can create unfavorable impressions on business counterparts.

3. Meaning of Agreements and Commitments- Americans have a preference for clear, detailed agreements and are uneasy with vague expressions of general commitment. In business interactions, commitments are taken literally and seriously. Indian business culture tends to view agreements more flexibly as intentions and guidelines for future action.

4. Results vs. Process Orientation- In Indian business culture, following the rules and implementing correct processes is highly valued, but in American business culture, it's all about results.

5. Directness- Especially in Addressing disagreements, The American style of communication is characteristically direct and expectation is that questions will get answered with a clear "yes" or "no," and that disagreements will be dealt with openly and straightforwardly, in a "tell it like it is" manner. Indians and people from other cultures that tend to avoid conflict and loss of face often find it hard to say "no" or raise problematic issues effectively with their counterparts.

Work culture is important for the growth of a company, in turn the growth of a country depends on the companies. There exist many differences, pros, and cons in work culture of any country. We have to pick and adapt the best practices of work culture around the globe and implement them in our organizations. Changes in the work culture can sometimes bring in a much larger all-round benefit than resistance to such changes. The contribution from the Trade Unions is also required for creating an environment that encourages linking of rewards to labour with productivity improvement in a more flexible structure of the firms that deliver such services. Research studies on issues relating to improvement in labour productivity should be given more emphasis where the labour representatives, employers and the Governments at States and Centre can mutually interact and make useful contributions by guiding research focussed at labour productivity.

QUALITY OF SERVICE DELIVERY

• Improving service delivery for citizens is one of the focus areas to reform the public sector.

• Changes occurring in the economic and social environment-including technological change in the way information is disseminated and accessed in the public domain-have had a tremendous impact at every level of society.

• The expectations and demands of citizens vis-a-vis state-provided services have undergone a transformation.

• Citizens are more aware of their rights and are more vocal in demanding those rights. The state, on the other hand, has to contend with growing constraints on its financial resources from a shrinking economic space, following the paradigm shift in its role since the 1980s.

• Delivery of public services raises key issues of access, quality, sustainability and affordability.

• Delivering better services to more and more people, i.e., improving quality and access, has become a key objective of public sector reform.

• New approaches to designing improved service delivery systems are a major part of public sector reform initiatives throughout the world.

Need to improve public services

• Most often, there is no universal coverage of essential services.

• Citizens are not fully informed and aware of their rights, and public services are not delivered in an equitable, efficient and transparent manner.

• Services are inadequate, poor in quality, difficult to access and often unaffordable for large sections of the population.

• The expansion in coverage of existing services and the ever-increasing demands for a new set of services over citizens' life cycles makes service delivery a long-term process.

• Economic changes occurring within countries and globally are leading to more competitive markets for goods and services and consequently greater uncertainty about livelihoods. This will lead to greater dependence on the state for economic security, with implications for public service delivery.

• The emphasis on citizen-centered governance is another factor influencing current approaches to public service delivery.

• As societies adapt to the fast-changing reality and citizens have greater expectations and demands from the state, the whole framework of service delivery is being looked at from a different perspective.

Key Issues in Service Delivery

• Service delivery is essentially about a committed state fulfilling its responsibilities towards its citizens' needs for essential services.

• In this context, the key issues in service delivery that have emerged relate to: (i) the state as the best provider of basic services—e.g., water, sanitation, education, health services—to citizens; (ii) the cost- effective pricing of services to ensure access and sustainability; and (iii) the importance of decentralization as the best option for improved service delivery to citizens.

a) State as service provider

• State' status as the best provider of basic services depends upon country-specific and service-specific requirements.

• There is a broad consensus that the state is the best provider of a wide range of basic services. This is especially true of "public goods", which the private sector cannot provide as it will be unable to capture all the externalities of such provision.

• Again, the state excels in the case of positive externalities and economies of scale. In a scenario, where universal access to certain services—e.g., water, education and health—is a matter of right and cannot be made to depend on the ability to pay. For these reasons, when service delivery has to have a pro-poor focus, the traditional centralized public sector may be the most appropriate delivery system.

• However, the private sector is a major player in service delivery in many countries and is gaining ground in areas such as health, education and housing.

• In recent years, alternative models of public-private participation (PPP), based on viability and sustainability, have been developed with a growing role for non-state players. The form of public-private collaboration varies, with different forms of sub-contracting and outsourcing of services.

• Thus, the range of options is from government monopoly in the supply of services at one end to privatization based on total transfer of responsibility for service delivery. The state can provide, finance and/or regulate services to citizens.

• The country-specific context influences the choice of model and the extent of private sector involvement. There are several dimensions to this choice: the political, social, economic and cultural environment on the one hand: and the institutional, business and technological environment on the other.

• Therefore, with regard to development goals, the state needs to play a proactive role in vital sectors like public health and basic education; the private sector can provide other services within a framework of effective state regulation.

• Though some degree of privatization of services is gnining momentum in several developing countries, the state will continue to play a significant role, as privatization is not the answer in all situations. The policy challenge is to find the right balance that will produce the best outcomes for citizens.

b) Pricing of services

• Delivery of public services raises key issues of access, quality, sustainability and affordability. How services are priced is critical to citizens' perceptions of service delivery.

• The fiscal implications of delivering widely-accessed, low-cost, high-quality services in a sustainable manner are a serious constraint on the state as service provider in most countries.

• Since most public services involve public goods, there are no clear pricing criteria for their delivery.

• The state has to balance desired outcomes—wider access, high quality of services, equity and cost- effectiveness—with the financial resources available and then prioritize service areas.

• If public services are targeted mainly at those sections that cannol afford to pay market prices, the equity principle of delivery will necessitate an element of subsidization for providing services at partial or nil cost.

• Ensuring effective service delivery in the face of rising fiscal constraints is one of the central challenges facing most countries.

c) Decentralization

• The shift to a more decentralized framework of service delivery, with an emphasis on local-level initiatives, is one of the most important developments in service delivery management in recent times.

• Decentralization—in political, administrative and financial terms— can lead to improved outcomes as a result of according higher priority to local needs, better participation and involvement of user groups, and greater accountability and responsiveness on the part of service providers.

• This has the potential to transform service delivery in significant ways. However, certain conditions are necessary for decentralization to be an effective strategy to improve service delivery: adequate finances at the local level; benefits not captured by local elites; and strong bargaining power.

• In 1992, India enacted the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts to devolve political, administrative and fiscal powers to the lower tiers of government.

• This has legally paved the way for improved service delivery with greater citizen participation and accountability of service providers at the local level.

v New Approaches and Initiatives

• As public sector reform gains momentum, new approaches are being adopted to improve service delivery. As populations have increased, the quality of services provided has come down.

• Therefore, need of the hour is to restructure, improve and modernize service delivery systems.

• The new initiatives have come about mainly in response to the pressures from citizens, progress in information technology and the range of options now available for delivering effective services tocitizens.

• Perspectives on the rights of citizens and the responsibilities of service providers are changing in the direction of more high-quality and cost-effective services.

• New models of public-private collaboration and a greater number of local-level initiatives are seen as the best options for improving service delivery. These include-

a) The Citizen Report Card initiative was started in Bangalore in 1994. Public sector agencies were rated by citizens with regard to the delivery of services in terms of public satisfaction, corruption and responsiveness.

b) A key document for effective service delivery is a Citizen's Charter with clearly stated objectives. Citizens' charters need to specify: the responsibilities of service providers, quantifiable service standards, compensation to users (in case of non-performance in service delivery) and instant redressal mechanisms.

c) e-Governance- Modernization of service delivery through electronic modes of access and delivery is also one of the most important means to improve quality of service delivery.

• E-Governance portals have to be designed in a way that it is integrated with different government department applications and provide access to the citizen and businesses.

• This will help the citizen in reducing their waiting time at the department counter and at the same time will help them in using the services outside of their working hours.

• This will also provide transparent, efficient, and secured delivery of service.

• As these services are integrated through the portal, the citizen and businesses can track the status of their service request and get all the information required to avail the service.

• The portal also allows the citizen and businesses to perform the transactions in a secured manner. In this way, the e-Governance portal increases the quality of service provided by the government departments in both central and state level.

• While designing the public service delivery system, adequate security measures are required for the servers and databases.

• Examples of e-govemance in Indian states-

i. e - Sewa- Andhra Pradesh government has launched a twin project for the two cities Hyderabad and Secandrabad. In 2001, the project was re-launched as an improved version and christened as e-Sewa.

ii. City civic centre (e- cityj-This project was started at Ahmadabad Municipal Corporation to facilitate better performance of the delivery of municipal services.

iii. Bhoomi -The government of Karnataka, embarked upon a project "Bhoomi" in 2002, under which the entire land records in Karnataka were to be computerised and made open to public.

• FRIENDS- FRIENDS or "Fast, Reliable, Instant and Efficient network for disbursement of services" was started in 2000 in Thiruvananthpuram. The friends centre, or Janasevanakendram functions as a single counter to remit utility bill payments, submit applications, seek information on government programmes and schemes, and provide access to other specialty services. Later on FRIENDS was launched in the remaining 13 district headquarters in 2001.

v. Gyandoot- It was initiated in January 2000 in the Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh. Gyandoot is a low cost, self- sustainable, and community-owned rural intranet system (Soochnalaya) that caters to the specific needs of village communities in the district.

vi. E-suvidha- Government of Uttar Pradesh has decided to create and develop an electronic bridge between the common citizen and the government departments and constituted the state smart city project unit (e-suvidha). Citizens can avail any service from any of the e-suvidha service centres across any counter without any jurisdictional limit.

vii. Lokmitra-The Common Service Centre named "LOKMITRA" scheme has been launched by Government of Himachal Pradesh to provide the benefits of Information Technology to general public especially living in distant rural areas of the State.

viii. SETU- Government of Maharashtra, to ensure time bound service delivery to citizens, has initiated the program to set up citizen facilitation centres known as Integrated Citizen Facilitation Centres (SETU).

ix. E-DishaCentres-Common services centers (CSC) under "E-DISHA" scheme in Haryana have been set up throughout the state as single window services delivery point for government, business and citizen services.

d) National e-Governance Plan (NeGP)-e-Governance in India has steadily evolved from computerization of Government Departments to initiatives that encapsulate the finer points of Governance, such as citizen centricity, service orientation and transparency.

• Under NeGP, a massive countrywide infrastructure reaching down to the remotest of villages is evolving, and large-scale digitization of records is taking place to enable easy, reliable access over the internet.

• Government approved the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), comprising of 27 Mission Mode Projects and 8 components, in 2006. In 2011, 4 projects - Health, Education, PDS and Posts were introduced to make the list of 27 MMPs to 31 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs).

• The major core infrastructure components are State Data Centres (SDCs), State Wide Area Networks (S.W.A.N), Common Services Centres (CSCs) and middleware gateways i.e National e-Governance

Service Delivery Gateway (NSDG), State e-Governance Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG), and Mobile e-Governance Service Delivery Gateway (MSDG).

• New initiatives include a framework for authentication, viz. e-Pramaan and G-l cloud, an initiative which will ensure benefits of cloud computing for e-Governance projects.

e) Mobile Dewces-Mobile applications are enhancing the effectiveness of the E-governance in terms of better delivery of services.

• Now mobile phones are in reach of common man. Desired information can be accessed using such inexpensive mobile devices is a boon to common man provided it is cost effective and serving the need.

• Public service should be made available on nominal charges or it should be the part of the transaction one is making like SMS alert in financial transaction with banks.

• Mobile applications can be accessed through laptop, palmtop, PDA devices, mobile phones, and SMS alerts or any other mobile devices. Applications should be light weight in terms of bandwidth usages.

• Only small piece of relevant information should be allowed when access is made through mobile devices.

• Authenticated mobile numbers should be the part of the user information for existing E-governance or citizen centric applications.

• The status of the transaction should be send as an alert as E-mail or SMS proactively or on demand.

• Such systems are already in place in case of Banks and Railways.

f) Sevottam model - The 'Seven Step Model for Citizen Centricity' has been documented by Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances, Government of India in 2011, under the name "SEVOTTAM", meaning UttamSeva, or service delivery excellence.

• This has been developed with the overarching objective of improving the quality of public service delivery in the country. The model has three components.

• The first component of the model requires effective charter implementation thereby opening up a channel for receiving citizens' inputs into the way in which organizations determine service delivery requirements.

• The second component of the model, 'Public Grievance Redress¹ requires a good grievance redress system operating in a manner that leaves the citizen more satisfied with how the organization responds to complaints/grievances, irrespective of the final decision

• The third component 'Excellence in Service Delivery', postulates that an organization can have an excellent performance in service delivery only if it is managing the key ingredients for good service delivery well, and building its own capacity to continuously improve delivery.

• The ability of such an assessment model in influencing service delivery quality will be a function of how tightly improvement actions are linked to assessment results.

g) Right to Public Services legislation in India comprises statutory laws which guarantee time bound delivery of services for various public services rendered by the Government to citizen and provides mechanism for punishing the errant public servant who is deficient in providing the service stipulated under the statute.

• Right to Service legislation are meant to reduce corruption among the government officials and to increase transparency and public accountability.

• Bihar became the first state in India to enact Right to Service Act. Several other states like Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Haryana and Jharkhand have introduced similar legislations.

h) Direct Benefit Transfer- National Committee on Direct Cash Transfer decided to roll out Direct Benefit Transfer from 1 January 2013 in 43 identified districts. The purpose of Direct Benefits Transfer is to ensure that benefits go to individuals' bank accounts electronically, minimising tiers involved in fund flow thereby reducing delay in payment, ensuring accurate targeting of the beneficiary and curbing pilferage and duplication.

CHAPTER-11 CASE STUDY

CASE-1

You are the captain of one of the city's fire stations. The fire station is in serious need of repairs as a critical portion of the station has become weak, causing it to become unstable. A tropical storm has blown across the city, causing heavy damage and flooding. The area in and around the city has been declared a disaster area and both state and entral disaster officials are assessing damage for emergency relief. The fire chief has advised central and state officials that the damage to he station was caused by the storm. Prior to relief officials arriving to assess the damage at the station, the fire chief calls you to advise you of their impending arrival and tells you to inform the relief officials that he damage is result of the storm.

Although this is not stated, annual evaluations are due next month and the chief is known to use the evaluations to reward loyalty and punish those who do not follow his wishes. Due to a previous illness n the family, you are very dependent on his annual evaluation to keep your salary up with inflation.

Question: What would you do in such a situation? Some options are given below. Evaluate the merits and demerits of each of these options and finally suggest what course of action you would like to take, giving reasons. (200 words)

1: Follow the advice of the Chief and do as he has instructed 2: Be honest and inform the relief officials of the actual facts 3: Report sick on the day of the arrival of relief officials, thereby avoiding the issue completely

CASE- 2

You are a teacher at a District Senior Secondary School, and in ono of your classes, a student has received very poor midterm marks This student is an athlete and has had to miss classes because of practice and participation. The student has brought laurels to tho school and district. The student's achievements were lauded by the DM in the Republic Day function of the district. The student had special permission to miss classes. But now with poor marks, the school coach informs you that the student will not be able to get sports scholarship which would enable her to go to college and pursue her academic and sports career. The coach requests you to be lenient in marking her in your courses, so that she maintains a decent average. In fact the coach pleads with you to be considerate.

Question: What are the ethical issues involved in the case? What are the courses of action available to you? What would be your chosen course of action? (200 words)

CASE- 3

In a Corporation Hotel, there were increasing problems between the hotel management and staff. To begin with, thefts were occurring in the rooms of those staying in the hotel. Loose change, jewelry, clothes and other items were disappearing from rooms. After consulting with hotel security, management determined that the cleaning stall was the only group that could possibly be perpetrating the thefts. At the same time, it was noted that employees were taking longer and longer breaks, without noting this on time cards. In addition, mysterious long distance phone charges were appearing on office telephones after business hours. After some thought, it was decided that cameras would be installed on the premises of the hotel. These cameras would be installed in hotel hallways, offices, elevators, break rooms and employee locker rooms, where employees changed before going on and off their shifts.

Employees recognised that management needed to protect the assets of its guests as well as the hotel's assets in terms of lost work time and long distance phone bills. However, they were very upset about the installation of cameras in their changing rooms.

Question:

1: What are the ethical issues involved the above case? (100 words) 2: Is the management's decision to install cameras justified? Give Reasons (100 words)

CASE- 4

Mr. Bimal Chatterjee was posted as Assistant Financial Adviser and Accounts Officer,Guwahati, after clearing the prestigious All-India Civil Services Examinations. One of hismany responsibilities was to pass the contractual bills for all trans-shipments done on theentire North East Frontier Railway (NEF Railway). His office passed the bills of alltrans-shipments of the NEF Railway including the Bongaigaon station. Bongaigaon was thelargest trans-shipment point of the Indian Railways, where different commodities like coal, food grains, fertilizers, otc. were trans-shipped from 54-Ton broad gauge wagons to 18 lonmeter gauge wagons, as well as reverse transfers from meter gauge lo broad gauge wagons. A politically well-connected labour contractor was doing the trans-shipment. This contract alone involved a monthly labour payment of about Rs. 35 lakhs. The trans- shipment being carried out at Bongaigaon was improper contributing to significant loss of potential earnings for the railways.The carrying capacity of a broad-gauge wagon and a meter-gauge are 54 and 18 tonnesrespectively. lo avoid wasteful utilization of meter-gauge wagons, one of the contractconditions provided that the contents of a broad-gauge wagon are to be trans-shipped into 3 meter-gauge wagons. It was further specified in the contract that in case the contractor uses excess number of wagons, 10% of his claim would be deducted as a penalty.

Bimal discovered that the contents of every broad gauge wagon were being trans-shipped into 4 instead of 3 meter gauge wagons, Thus for every broad gauge wagon trans-shipped, one extra meter gauge wagon was being used. To make matters worse, no penalty was lining imposed on the contractor for the simple reason that Assistant seperating Manager (AOM), Bongaigaon was regularly certifying on each bill that the extra wagons were being used as per the directions ui administration. As a result, 844 excess wagons were being used each month without fetching a single rupee for the Railways. The pnicnlial revenue loss due to non-availability of these wagons, based on their usage for coal transportation, would be Rs. 44 lakhs every month. Bimal‘s predecessor told him that this was being done to save contractor's labor cost. Trans-shipping 54 tonnes of coal in 3 meter gauge wagons required more effort and time than Trans-shipping them in 4 meter gauge wagons. Further, the contract conditions stipulated that if the trans-shipment was not completed within the allowed time, the contractor was liable to pay demurrage charges. Ignoring the remarks of AOM, Bongaigaon, who had certified the bills for payment, Bimal ordered deduction of 10% of one of the monthly bills of the contractor. The value of the bill was about Rs. 10 lacs. Simultaneously, Bimal wrote a letter to the AOM informing him about the imposition of penalty, and asked him to furnish a clear and valid explanation, justifying the reasons for using excess wagons. Predictably, the AOM did not reply to his letter. Earlier, Bimal had briefed his superior, Mr. Jagdish Hazarika, the Deputy Financial Adviser and Chief Accounts Officer (Dy. FA &CAO) about the irregularity and his decision to impose thepenalty. Jagdish did not show any interest in the case.

Next, Bimal went to AlipurDwar, the divisional headquarters, as Bongaigaon came underjurisdiction of this office. Bimal explained the irregularity to the Sr. Divisional FinanceManager, Mr. Thomas Jacob, who was seen as an upright officer. He gave Bimal a patienthearing and promised to do something about the case. From AlipurDwar, Bimal went back to Maligaon, where the headquarters of the North East Frontier Railway was located. There, he briefed some of the good officers in the Finance department about the irregularity that he detected. Since the issue did not concern them directly, they all just listened to what Bimal had to say but did not offer any concrete solution. While raising this issue at various quarters, Bimal realized that the indifference of many of the officers, with whom he raised the issue, was because of the fact that in bureaucracy, everybody has his/her share of problems and meddling into jurisdictions of other officers is normally not done.By this time, the next set of bills came for payment, totaling to Rs. 35 lacs. Bimal promptlyordered withholding of the entire set of bills relating to the contract in question. The contractor dispatched one of his representatives to meet Bimal with the request to pass hisbills. Bimal felt that if he passed these bills, nobody would ever bother about the issue and the Railways would continue to lose money. He suspected that there could be some vestedinterest at play and unless the issue was confronted head-on, these vested interests wouldcontinue to have their hold on the system. Bimal was also clear that from his perspective, there was no motive for personal gain and that he was trying to get to the bottom of the issue, with only the interest of the organization in mind.

Next day, Mr. Jagdish summoned Bimal to his office. Mr. Jagdish informed Bimal that thecontractor had approached the General Manager of North East Frontier Railway, who hadgiven immediate orders to pass the bills. Further, Mr. Jagdish told Bimal that the FA & CAO,Mr. Jayaram was also upset and the only option available with them was to immediately make the payment. Mr. Jagdish recorded on the file that the matter should be taken up with the AlipurDwar division. He also instructed

immediate release of all withheld payments. Bimal was very frustrated, as he felt that all his efforts were in vain. Another month passed and nobody seemed to be bothered about the significant and needless waste. His frustration increased with each passing month.

Other bills that came from the contractor over the next few months had also to be routinely passed, based on the implicit orders of Bimal's superiors.

Questions:

1: What were the reasons for Bimal's growing frustrations? (50 words) 2:

What are the courses of action available to Bimal? (100 words)

3: What ethical issues can you notice in the above case? (100 words)

CASE- 5

Afterfinishing your B. Tech. you have been working for ABC Engineering for nearly a year, but now you have decided to go back to school to get your MBA. You discussed with Mr. Sharma, your superior, going back to school as preparation for a move into management, so Mr. Sharma was not surprised when you gave your two week notice. Mr. Sharma told you that you had done a great job for the firm and that you should keep them in mind when you finish your education. You assure Mr. Sharma that you will have to complete the projects you have been working on in the remaining two weeks.

Mr. Sharma said that according to his records, you had accumulated 12 days of sick leave. Although the firm did not pay sick leave unless an employee was actually sick, Mr. Sharma told you to acquaint Geetha with where you were on each of your projects and to call in sick each morning for the next two weeks. Mr. Sharma said he would cover for you if there were any questions. You went home that evening thinking about Mr. Sharma's offer. Question: What would you do and why? (200 words)

CASE- 6

The following situation occurred in a police organisation whose primary function was to advise Police Reserve Units and Home Guard Units. The advisors assigned to the organisation spent approximately four days each week visiting client units. Travel expenses were reimbursed based on vouchers filed by the advisor after each trip. By regulation, expenses were limited to those actually incurred on the specific trip covered by the voucher. However there was a maximum daily limit that varied with the city that was visited, so that one might have a daily limit of 2500 rupees in one city and 5000 rupees in another city.

The situation involved two officers of equal rank. They were assigned to the same team and often travelled together. For Mr. Sharma, rules were rules and he believed it was one's duty to follow them to the letter. Mr. Pandey considered himself to be a loyal and law abiding citizen, but he saw no harm in following the spirit of law rather than the letter if it was to his advantage to do so and no significant harm would come to anyone.

Mr. Sharma's travel vouchers were always precisely accurate. If the limit for a city was 3000 rupees and his expenses were 2200, he would file for 2200 only. This meant that over the long run, he was reimbursed for less than his actual travel expenses, because in some cities the daily limit was too low to cover the actual travel expenses. It also meant that to minimize losses, Mr. Sharma often stayed at hotels that were located far away from the client unit because they charged less than hotels that were located nearby. This of course, consumed additional travel time and reduced the time Mr. Sharma could actually spend with his client.

Mr. Pandey's approach was different. He always documented expenses that came close to the maximum daily amount permitted for the particular city he was visiting. Sometimes he inflated meal costs to bring hos expenses up to the limit. Also, he routinely stayed at hotels that were next to the client unit so that he could spend the maximum amount of time with them. His justification for these actions was that the police did not expect its officers to have to pay for work related travel expenses out of their pockets. He argued that it was acceptable to exaggerate the expenses in high limit areas to make up for expenses from other trips that could not be reimbursed because of lower daily limits elsewhere. He believed that the most important objective was to get the job done.

After one trip together, Mr. Sharma filed a criminal complaint against Mr. Pandey alleging that the latter had defrauded the government by filing travel vouchers for amounts greater than actual expense. Mr. Pandey was outraged by this attack as he did not consider himself to have done anything wrong. He

had not tried to make a profit from his trips. He just insured that he did not lose any money on the "low limit" trips.

Question

1: What are the ethical issues involved in the above case? (100 words) Question 2: Do you think Mr. Pandey's outrage was justified? (100 words)

Question 3: What could be the emotional fall out in the above case? (50 words)

CASE- 7

Assume you are the city manager of a financially strapped municipality and find yourself working uncharacteristically late one night in your office. The offices are empty and quiet and as you are leaving, you notice a sliver of light coming from the door of the new budget director, Susan. You decide to stop in and praise her for her excellent report in which she discovered errors that will save the city millions of dollars, projecting for the first time in many years a budget surplus. As you approach her office, you can see through the few inches the door is open that Susan is in a delicate position with Gary, the assistant city manager. City employment policy strictly forbids such relations.

Your code of ethics requires you to enforce this policy, yet at the same time you do not want to lose either or both of these valuable employees. It would be difficult, if not impossible; to bring in someone else with their experience and credentials for the amount of money the city is able to pay. Question:

1: What are the ethical issues involved?

2: What options are available to you and after exploring the merits and demerits of each action, select an appropriate option. (250 words)

CASE- 8

The hospital were Mrs. Sharma was employed has a firm policy for dealing with employees who are caught taking hospital property from premises. Whether it is kitchen help taking home leftover food, central supply workers taking home worn-out scrub-suits, or nurses taking home medical supplies, the consequences have unfailingly been the same: immediate dismissal of employee. This same hospital has a very lenient attitude toward the Doctors on staff and their actions and desires. The doctors are catered to in grand fashion because they, of course, supply the hospital with patients.

One Sunday evening Mrs. Sharma was alone in the nurses' station on the unit where she was assigned. Everyone else was one a short dinner break. Dr. Pandey, who was a prominent internist and the attending physician for almost half of the patients on Mrs. Sharma's unit at any given time, suddenly appeared with a large shopping bag and asked if he could see Mrs. Sharma in the storage room where supplies are kept. Once in the room, Dr. Pandey proceeded to tell Mrs. Sharma that his mother was ill and incontinent, his wife was upset about the mess his mother's bedroom. And he had to get some control over the situation for the night until the next morning when he would see about hiring a home health nurse for his mother. Dr. Pandey asked for a catheter, several packs of mattress pads, and all the adult diapers in the room. Although she hesitated, Mrs. Sharma filled the shopping bag for him. When he finished, he said that he appreciated her understanding and kindness and that he and his family were indebted for her help. The entire interaction lasted 10 minutes, Mrs. Sharma felt that Dr. Pandey used her to steal the supplies he needed for his mother from the hospital. He acted on the assumption, Mrs. Sharma felt, that she would not object to his taking supplies from the storage room for personal use and that she would not alter their usual physician nurse relationship, in which she was to be the willing assistant to him when he visited his patients on the unit.

Mrs. Sharma was stuck in a no-win situation; when there was a discord between a physician and nurse at this hospital and the physician chose to complain, the nurse often found herself without a job or with a lesser position than she previously occupied. She was not sure how the hospital administration would see the issue. She knew that the supplies would be inventoried against what had been used and an unexplained shortage would show up. The dilemma left Mrs. Sharma wanting to do the right thing and having no clue as to what that was. She felt she had done something dishonest but did not see any alternative. Question:

1: What are the ethical issues involved in the above case? (100 words) 2: What options are available to Mrs. Sharma and what option would you suggest her? (150 words)

CASE- 9

You are a psychologist who has on two separate occasions treated Geetha. Geetha was raised by her aunt and uncle since her parents died when she was a year old. When she was sixteen, her uncle died and she suffered a reactive depression. After six months of psychotherapy.

she successfully recovered from the loss and went on to finish high school, then went away to college. A few years later her aunt died and she returned to you for few sessions. She has expressed some interest in reviewing her records in regard to her prior treatment. In your file is a developmental history given by Geetha's aunt and uncle when she was sixteen, which reveals the information, still unknown to Geetha that her mother was shot to death by her father, who later committed suicide.

Question: Discuss the ethical issues involved and after analysing the available options, what would be your course of action? (200 words)

CASE-10

In April 2000, Mr.RanjitBawa, an officer of the Xanadu Police Service (XPS), was posted as Police Superintendent (PS) for the Kanishka District, which is an important district in thefrontier state in the country of Xanadu. The district headquarters of Kanishka was located atPohari, a town with a population of about 200,000 people, made up of about 60% Hindus andthe remaining 40% Muslims. From time to time, various anti-social elements instigated differences between these two communities, making maintenance of law and order quitechallenging for the police force.The Hindus claimed that a monument called "Chaubara" under the jurisdiction ofArchaeological Survey of Xanadu (ASX) was a temple, which the Mughal Rulers took overand converted into a Mosque. Due to the historical disputes over the monument, successiveGovemments at the State and Central level evolved a formula whereby the monument wouldbe kept open for two hours on every Friday between 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. to enable the Muslimcommunity to offer their Friday afternoon prayers. Additionally, once in a year i.e., onVijayadashami day (which typically falls in October of each year), the monument would be kept open for the Hindus to offer their prayers. For the rest of the time, the Monument wouldbe kept locked by the ASX.The district had encountered various incidents of communal violence in the past. Each year on June 23rd, the Hindu community in Pohari would take out a procession from the largest temple in the town to the riverbank adjoining the town. Managing this event was a big challenge for the police every year. During 1993, some miscreants and anti-social elements took advantage of the procession to vent their frustrations, which resulted in widespread loss of life and property.

Another incidence of violence occurred after the festival ol Vijayadashami in 1999. Somehotheads in the Hindu community fell that if the Chaubara was being opened every Friday fortwo hours lo enable the Muslims to offer prayers, there was no reason why then communityshould not have an access to the Chaubara on a weekly basis. Therefore, two weeks after Vijayadashami they unilaterally decided to make a large procession and descended toChaubara to offer their prayer. The state police and the General of Police (GC) camped atPohari to handle any eventuality during the planned force of entry into Chaubara. As the crowdtried to enter the Chaubara, tho police prevented them. The crowd went on rampage burning ado/on police vehicles in different parts of the town. The atmosphere of true in Poharibetween the two communities became so vitiated that it took almost two months for thesituation to return to normalcy. Ranjit Bawa realized that he had three major handicaps to reckon with. Firstly, the Magistrateof District (MD) Mr. Babbar Singh was likely to indulge in one up-manship game wheneverpossible. Secondly, the district had an extortionist, Adil Khan, who terrorized the district through sheer muscle-power, using his various henchmen. Thirdly, the police force wastotally demoralized owing to poor leadership in the past. Additionally, the hot-

heads of boththe religious groups felt that they could call the shots, since the administration was relativelyweak over the last two years.

As the police force became demoralized, the politicians sensed a rift between the civiladministration and the police force in the district. The politicians started interfering with thenormal functioning of the government officials and tried to have their way in many littleways. In this manner over a period of time, mutual nexus between the government officialsand the politicians increased, further resulting in reduced effectiveness of the police force.

Question: Keeping the above realities in mind, what leadership advice would you give to Mr. Bawa which would enable him perform effectively. (200 words)

CASE 11

You are a contractual social worker working for State government's welfare department. After a thorough investigation, you decide that Mohan Kumar is submitting fraudulent forms and is not entitled to any welfare benefits. You cut off Mohan's payments. He appeals against your decision and it is reversed. Outraged, you ask your superior for an explanation. You are informed by the superior's personal assistant that your judgment about Mohan is probably correct, but the unfavorable publicity about the department and its welfare programme that would result in by cutting Mohan's benefits is not acceptable. You are not happy about the fraud and you feel your superior is condoning the fraud. You think of quitting but you need this job and you think about going to your superior's boss.

Question: What are the options available to you? Evaluate each of these options and choose the option which you would adopt, giving reasons. (200 words)

CASE- 12

Wayne Davidson is a software engineer in the aerospace division of Occidental Engineering, a large engineering firm. For the past two years he has been working as a test engineer for Operation Safe Skies, a project to build a prototype of the next generation air traffic control system. This project, which is funded by a contract from the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), is a very important one for Occidental. With all the cutbacks in defense spending, the aerospace division has been losing business. The Safe Skies project has provided much needed business, and could lead to a much larger contract if successful. Mindful of its strategic importance, the company had bid very aggressively lor the original contract. In fact they had "low-balled" it, bidding less than it would take to do the work properly. They felt that was the only way they could beat out their competitors, who were just as hungry lor the work. Because of their somewhat shaky financial position, the company was not willing to take a loss on the project, so the project has been underfunded and understaffed. Nevertheless those working on the project have made a heroic effort, working eighteen hour days seven days a week to meet the deadline, because they know how much it means to the company, not to mention their own jobs. They are now very close to success.

A version of the prototype has been completed and turned over to Wayne for testing. He has run extensive simulations on it and found that it works as it should except for one little problem. When there are too many aircraft in the system, it will sometimes lose track of one or more of them. The "forgotten" aircraft will simply disappear from the screen, there will be no trace of it anywhere, and it will be ignored by all of the collision avoidance and other safety tests. Wayne has been working with the software designers to identify the cause of the problem, and they have traced it to a subtle error in memory allocation and reuse. They are confident that they can fix it, but it will take a month or more to do the redesign, coding and testing.

Wayne meets with his boss, Deborah Shepherd, the project manager, to discuss the implications. She tells him that what he is asking for is impossible. The contract requires that the company deliver a fully certified, working version of the software in three days for system integration and test. The

government has developed a new, get-tough policy on missed deadlines and cost overruns, and Occidental is afraid that if they miss this deadline, the government will make an example of them. They would be subject to fines and the loss of the remainder of the prototype contract; and they might not be allowed to bid on the contract for the full system. This would have a devastating effect on the aerospace division, resulting in thousands of lost jobs.

They consider whether they can do a quick patch to the software before turning it over, but Wayne adamantly refuses to release any code that has not been tested thoroughly. There is always a chance that the patch would interact with some other part of the program to create a new bug.

"Then we'll have to deliver the software as is," Deborah says. "I can't jeopardize this project or the jobs of my people by missing that deadline."

"We can't do that!" exclaims Wayne. "That's like delivering a car with defective brakes."

"Don't worry," Deborah reassures him. "We have contacts in the FAA, so we know their testing plans. They will do a lot of simulations to make sure the software works with the hardware and has all the functionality in the specs. Then they will do live tests, but only at a small airport, with a backup system active at all times. There is no way they will overload the system in any of this. After that they will have some change requests. Even if they don't, we can give them an updated version of the program. We can slip the bug fix in there They will never see the problem. Even if they do, we can claim it was a random occurrence that would not necessarily show up in our tests The important thing is no one is in any danger."

"Maybe they won't find the bug, but I know it's there. I would he lying if I said the system passed all the necessary tests. I can't do thai Anyway, it would be illegal and unprofessional."

"You can certify that it is safe, because it is, the way they are goimi to use it."

Question: Will you agree with Shepard's argument and sign or you will not certify till you are sure of its safety? (200 words)

CASE-13

While serving as Associate Provost for international progra.ns of my university, I received a couple of visitors from Iran who were interested in establishing a relationship between their institutions and ours. It was common practice for visitors to bring small gifts and for our office to present them with small gifts, such as pens or letter openers. These guests presented me with a larger gift, a Persian carpet. I was uncomfortable accepting a gift that I estimated to be worth at least 25,000 rupees, so I checked with our university attorney. I was told that state law prohibited our receiving gifts worth more than 2500 rupees, either personally or on behalf of our office, if the gift appeared to be given in exchange for anticipated benefit. Since the gift appeared to be worth more than 2500 rupees and given with the intent of facilitating the intended inter-institutional agreement, I decided I needed to return it to our visitors. When I attempted to do so, they refused to take it back, saying it would be culturally "insulting" for them to do so. After a long consideration I accepted the gift in the interest of relations and cultural sensitivity. After accepting I wrote a formal letter informing the University's legal department about the gift and in response I was issued a show cause notice.

Question: How would you defend your position? (200 words)

CASE-14

The design supervisor for a state water project is told by one of her engineers that the initial specifications for one section of water main must be changed. It has been discovered that the soil in that area contains toxic wastes which corrode steel pipe and will eventually enter the water supply. Consequently, only concrete jacketed pipe is safe for the area. The supervisor agrees that the initial design represents public health hazard and must be changed. Both go to inform the project chief of this necessary change. Upon hearing them out, the chief says that it is too late to incorporate these changes due to significantly higher costs and time delays which would be required to complete the design phase. After leaving the chief's office, the supervisor tells the engineer that they have no other choice but to proceed with the initial specifications. But the engineer decides to go public with the hazards of corroded steel pipe.

Question: Do you think the engineer's going public is justified? (200 words)

CASE 15

The State owned Government Shipping Corporation's main office recently went online. All employees were networked. They have access to the internet and are now capable of communicating easily through e-mail. Upper management personnel have memos and updates routinely sent to them. It is up to them to pass these memos and updates on to the employees they supervise. Occasionally employees pass on jokes that they have received from friends or downloaded from the internet. You have recently received several jokes in various postings. These jokes all have as their punch line a caricature of a particular ethnic group. You identify yourself as part of this ethnic group and you find the jokes insulting. The first time, it did not bother you much, because you felt like one person had not exercised good judgment in passing on a joke. But now these types of jokes are found humorous by several of those in your company, you are beginning to take offense. What do you do and why? (200 words)