THE PSEUDO INTELLECTUAL AGENTS OF COLONIALISM - II
Dr. Sumathy has said in her so called reply that she never said that she knew anything about classical/valued logics. I never said that she did not know anything about classical/valued logics. In fact I never used the term valued logics. What does she mean by valued logics? It is clear that she does not know anything about different logics. However pseudo intellectuals in Sri Lanka have a habit of giving the impression to the others that they know certain things by mere name dropping. She talks of formal logic without knowing the abc of that logic. There are no pluralist logics as such. A logic is a system of logic that uses certain "rules". In the name of a pluralist logic one cannot use the rules of one system of logic with the rules of another system. One uses a given logical system to arrive at conclusions, deductions, inferences etc. If the rules of different systems are mixed in the name of a pluralist logic, one would only have an "accaru" or a pickle. When one arrives at such a situation it is referred to as an "anaganilla" in Sinhala.
Next we come to the third statement by her, I have referred to earlier. She says "Discursive operations of p and ~ p OR p or ~ p are truth giving and truth taking choices that reside in moments of political agency; action." In what sense do these "rules" become discursive operations? Dr. Sumathy uses jargon in order to hide her ignorance. Foucault did not use the term discourse to include these "rules". Foucault referred to discourses on something or the other. Though I do not agree with Foucault's concept of a discourse he has to be saved from those who uses his terms without much understanding. If Dr. Sumathy referred to a discourse on Aristotelian logic, I would have recognised some sense in the statement. In any event p and ~ p is not valid in Aristotelian logic and the two "rules" are valid together in three valued and four valued logics. Then Dr. Sumathy refers to truth giving and truth taking. It is clear from the rest of the so called reply and her previous letter to the editor she believes in truth. She is not talking of relative truths or "sammuthi sacca" and neither the deconstructionists talk of relative truths. They may talk of relativities but the relativity itself is taken to be an absolute. When Derrida deconstructs he deconstructs onething to construct something else. Deconstructionsits would expose the hierarchy in the binary oppositions but what is not realised by them is that the exposition itself is a construction or "sankhara" according to the philosophy of constructive relativism (nirmanathmaka sapekshathavaday) developed in "Mage Lokaya". As I have recently shown in a paper presented at the National Conference on Buddhist Studies deconstruction cannot be compared with "visankhara". Those like Dr. Swaris who attempt to compare deconstruction with "visankhara" have not taken into consideration the difference between social constructions and mental constructions. Neither Dr. Sumathy nor anybody else could avoid construction as long as they continue to have their "egos". I have always maintained that relativism cannot avoid construction and that is the reason for calling the philosophy as espoused in "Mage Lokaya", constructive relativism. I must mention again that even constructive relativism is relative.
Dr. Sumathy following some bankrupt westerners talks of political action. Does the truth reside in political action? She has also said "For me every construct is political whether it is "east", "west" or "Sinhala Buddhist". They all arise out of political positions". As we all know Dr. Sumathy is merely repeating what some westerners have already said with the words Sinhala Buddhist added. In fact that is her only "construction". I do not agree with hollow statements such as these merely because they have been pronounced by westerners. Would Dr. Sumathy say that she believes in this statement not because it is coming from a westerner but since the statement is true? If she says it is true then she believes in an absolute. Otherwise she believes not only in an absolute truth but also in "the truth" that some westerners come out with absolute truth.
Though some constructs may be political, it is wrong to say that every construct is political. This is typical western reductionism that follows from the western Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya. The western intellectuals try to reduce phenomena to some basic principle or theory without making an attempt to understand (construct - sanhkara) the inter connectedness of different phenomena. Karl Marx tried to reduce everything including Politics to Economics but he failed. Now a group of intellectuals in the west attempt to reduce everything including Economics to Politics. Social constructs, that are studied by the deconstructionists are influenced by politics, economics and culture while the mental constructs of individuals are associated not only with the above but with biology and "samsaric" experience as well. This is not an absolutist statement but a "sammuthi sacca" relative not only to Buddhist culture but to Hindu culture as well. Dr. Sumathy is free to reject it under the hegemony of the western Christian culture prevailing in the society including the universities. When a mother loves her children, in general it is not a political construct. Perhaps Dr. Sumathy when she loves her children always takes up a political position. A western post structuralist may say that even motherly instinct is a social construct but that is something that can be stated but not established. Though all the social constructs are initially made by individuals, not all the individual mental constructs are determined by society. Social constructs are certain mental constructs of individuals accepted by sub sets of the society. The society or the sub sets as such do not make any constructs. There are so many mental constructs of individuals, not accepted by the society and a large number of them cannot be considered as social constructs. Some time ago E. O. Wilson espousing his sociobiology attempted to reduce sociology to biology. Some post structuralists, in a way, are only trying to reduce biology and psychology to sociology.
Of course there are social constructs that are political. The construct that there is a scientific method is political as well as cultural. It gives the impression that the western science is superior to other sciences. The one way traffic in knowledge is a political construct. The intellectuals in the east are not supposed to create any new knowledge. Knowledge, whether post structuralism, rhetoricm in reading and literary criticism, or quantum physics, is created in the western centres. The so called critiques of the western systems also originate in the west. While the westerners look at the east through their categories easterners are not allowed to construct knowledge in their cultures. The pseudo intellectual agents of western colonialism in the east are allowed only to imitate the western knowledge and not allowed to absorb western knowledge into their cultures or to create new knowledge. Even if an easterner were to create new knowledge it is not recognised or acknowledged. Knowledge is no knowledge unless it is acknowledged and the right and the power to acknowledge has been made "the burden of the white man".
We now move to the fourth statement by Dr. Sumathy that was mentioned in the beginning of the article. She says "trying to wrest the east out of Shakespeare's "All is well that Ends Well" is a political project. Such a project will necessarily partake in the dichotomy of west/east but only by taking an interested relativistic position". By this statement if she says that dichotomies are unavoidable but they have to be viewed from a relativistic position, I have nothing against that. This is what I have been trying to say from the very beginning, namely that there are dichotomies that are unavoidable, they are only "sammuthi sacca" as the others and we should not try to pretend that dichotomies could be avoided. In particular the Aristotelian logic that accepts the rule "p or ~ p" cannot avoid dichotomies, as it rejects the rule "neither p nor ~ p". This rule is not accepted even within the three valued logic of the early Vedas. It is accepted in Buddhism and also in Advaitha Vedantha. However, this refers to mental constructs of very high order and these constructs could be made in general by those who have achieved a mental stage of very high order. I certainly have not achieved that stage and I can only state this rule without any "feeling" for or "prathyaksha" about it. In any event it is hilarious to see western post structuralists and the like, who reject "neither p nor ~ p" but accept "p or ~ p", talking of avoiding dichotomies.
Dr. Sumathy might get the impression that the above is formal logic and I am only repeating what I have learned from my Mathematics and Physics teachers in the western universities including Peradeniya. The above has nothing to do with western Mathematics or Physics, and I learnt them from "Madhyamakarika" of Nagarjuna Thero, though I do not agree with some of the things stated there. Dr. Sumathy undertaking to "deconstruct" me tries to identify me as western being who "doggedly undertakes to persue" the "most modernist of 'western' disciplines". I do not know what she means by the most modernist of "western disciplines" that I have doggedly undertaken to persue. For her information I must say, as I have said earlier, I do not teach western Mathematics and Physics in the university to propagate those ideas. Though I have to prepare the students for examinations where papers are set according to "western standards", I have some other project also in my mind, and as such I give my students an eastern critique of the philosophy and concepts of the above disciplines and also train them to absorb the knowledge in these fields into Sinhala Buddhist and, yes, to Hindu cultures. I have found that though Newtonian paradigm could not be absorbed into Buddhist and Hindu cultures, certain problems in Physics could be formulated within those cultures. I must also add that about twenty years ago I stopped doing any research in western Mathematics or Physics.
Coming back to the comment on Shakespeare, it is futile to try to wrest the east out of "All is well that ends well". Not only Shakespeare but even Newton, Liebnitz, Mach, Hume, Nietzche and even Derrida and many others have been influenced by the east. However, all these intellectuals have absorbed eastern concepts into the western chinthanaya and those concepts have been "naturalized" in the western system of knowledge. After a concept or theory had been absorbed and "naturalized" it is futile to wrest the "original" culture out of the concept. I am not trying to say that one should not study how concepts in knowledge systems based in one culture have been absorbed into the other cultures. I myself do that in order to see how western concepts could be absorbed into Sinhala Buddhist culture as I am interested in creating knowledge within that culture. However we must realize that once a concept had been absorbed it becomes part of the culture into which it had been absorbed and in the process the original concept is "distorted". Some of the ideas in Quantum Physics and post structuralism could be traced back to eastern cultures. However what appear in those disciplines are not the same as the original ideas. For example the Copenhagen interpretation in quantum physics has been largely influenced by the Chinese Ying Yang philosophy, but as the Copenhagen interpretation is formulated within the western chinthanaya it has all the characteristics of the logic that accepts the rule "p or ~ p". Some ideas of post structuralism could be traced to eastern knowledge systems but as they come through Nietzche and others who had absorbed eastern concepts into the western culture these ideas have been "distorted". For example Nietzche's ideas about causality are based on a unilinear concept of time. When he says that pain is the cause of the pin and not the other way round, as one looks for the pin after one experiences a pain, he depends on the unilinear concept of time. Though Nietzche is supposed to be influenced by Buddhism, this is a far cry from the concept of cyclic time found in general in the Bharat systems and the notion that time is only a "pannatti" in Buddhism.
(To be concluded)
Professor Nalin de Silva
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