I have been stimulated to write on the notion of Philosophy in the Tamil circles and. I call it Tamil circles only because I am not sure how the situation is in the rest of India.
1. Philosophy, as an attempt of man to seek out Truth-Experiences ( MeyuNarvu) is the same as the practice of Hermeneutic Science which has its own Logic - the Hermeneutic Logic.
The concern is NOT definitions of truth and seeking to justify it but rather that of accessing normally unavailable experiences which also turn out to be truth-experiences. A collection of such truth-experiences and collective understanding that emerges is the Darsana, the Philosophy as such. The construction theories with an array of concepts, deriving various kinds of hypotheses and testing them with experimentation and so forth is ABSENT in this form of science. What we have is accessing the DEPTHS which are there and which agentively determine the shape of the observable. So in such sciences nothing that is NOT there even at the depths is allowed to influence thinking. The whole of thinking is guided only the REAL, some of which may be only at the depths.
2. Such a Darsana, is a metaphysical Vision that sustains a WAY of Life, the Maarkkam or NeRi and hence also the political life. A Darsana cannot help being political for it seeks to fashion and reformulate the whole of EXISTENCE. It also touches the home life as well as the social for a Darsana is a basic VISION that serves to found every facet of human existence, reformulate every human behavior.
3. Now it also turns out as Hermeneutic Sciences , all such darsanas are TEXTUAL in nature and in which they take the WORLD as a whole as a TEXT( or deny it). Thus all darsanas like Lokayata, Buddhism, Jainism, Vedanta and so forth are simply different darsnas but about the SAME object, the World. Each of theses darsanas claim that it is the RIGHT ONE and the rest are false and so forth. So here emerges the CONFLICT of INTERPRETATIONS - each Darsana is an interpretation of the same World but in conflict.
4. To resolve the conflicts different approaches are also taken. The Vedantic traditions fall upon the authority or PiramaNas of the Vedas and Vedanta texts, the Buddhists the Buddha Pitakas , the Jains the Jaina Agamas and so forth. In taking recourse to some scriptures as PiramaNas, they of course abandon that the Darsnas are ultimately INTERPRETIVE of the World-as-Text and hence something that needs to be validated on its own.
5. It is here that we have the Tamil Saiva Siddhanta as a movement that has remained faithful to the initial and true sense of Darsana and which does NOT take recourse to the scriptures by way of establishing the validity of the Darsanas. They take recourse, however, to DECONSTRUCTION as the most important philosophical activity and where the TRUTH is understood as that which cannot be deconstructed and thus put aside, i.e. placed as belonging to Parapakkam and not the Supakkam. Also only Hermeneutic Logic serves as the RATIONAL Principle that guides the whole exercise ( for e.g. Civanjaana Botam and Civanjaana Cittiyar and so forth).
6. I believe that in this way the Tamil Saivites have accomplished long ago what Husserl dreamt only recently - that of making Philosophy as a Rigorous Science.
7. Now there is another dimension to it that is lacking totally in the West. Philosophical exercises as these are placed as Njanattil Njanam , in Tattuva Pirakasam ( 14th cent) i.e. ways of life after Cariyal, Kiriyai, Yoga and so forth. The competence to enter into philosophical discussions has to be preceded by the PRACTICE of rituals Yoga asanas and so forth and where important INSIGHTS are gained in the first place. It is only armed with these metaphysical insights that a person can enter the deconstructive exercises where every darsanas is taken, understood first as to what it is really and later deconstructed, if possible.
Dr Loganathan Krishnan @ Ullaganar
thank u for ur work sir.may god be with u sir.
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