Chinthanaya & Modernity

"The Catholic God was different from the God Yehowa, though almost all the Catholics and the Christians would not agree with me. The Catholic God was somewhat like the Vedic Brahaman in its Thrimoorthi. It is said that God Vishnu, one of the forms of Brahman, visited the human world from time to time, as a human being, and Krishna, Rama and even Buddha are considered to be human forms (avatars) of God Vishnu."

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by Prof. Nalin de Silva

(February 20, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is unfortunate that many people do not know that the term "Jathika Chinthanaya" has evolved from a mere idea without a definite concept into a concept that surpasses the concept of a "paradigm" formulated in the sixties by Thomas Kuhn. The important concept is "chinthanaya" and "Jathika Chinthanaya" means the "Chinthanaya" of a nation by which originally the chinthanaya of the Sinhalas was meant. In the early writings one could find references not to an existing Jathika Chinthanaya but a Jathika Chinthanaya that had to be "dawned" (uda karaliya yuthu Jathika Chinthanaya). In this Jathika Chinthanaya Marxism was to be the leading ideology as such and when it was said that Marxism was not a substitute for Jathika Chinthanaya it was not in the sense that Marxism was a theory formulated in a different Chinthanaya. In the early days the idea of Jathika Chinthanaya was very wooly and many people continue to have those wooly ideas when they think of Jathika Chinthanaya.

However within a short period the concept of Chinthanaya was formulated, especially with reference to Judaic Chinthanaya. "Mage Lokaya" which was published in 1986 had already mentioned that western science was based in the Judaic tradition. (In 1986 we were considering not only science but arts as relative knowledge. In fact in "Mage Lokaya" itself there are references to arts being more relative than the sciences.) However, tradition was not a good term and very soon the term Judaic Chinthanaya was coined to describe what had been referred to as Judaic tradition. The characteristics of the Judaic Chinthanaya had been formulated by the time the second edition of "Mage Lokaya" was published and soon it was realised that "Chinthanaya" was a deeper concept than the "paradigm" of Kuhn. A paradigm shift could occur without a change in the "Chinthanaya". Einstein with his theory of relativity made a "paradigm shift" within the dominant Chinthanaya in the western society. Today we refer to the dominant Chinthanaya in the west as the "Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya". (GJC Chinthanaya).

There has been some reference to "Jathika Chinthanaya" in reference to postmodernism. Now this is another misconception among some people who have studied neither "Jathika Chinthanaya" nor postmodernism in depth. Though postmodernism had been discussed in the sixties in the west that concept was introduced in Sri Lanka by a group of young imitators following in the former imitating tradition of the University of Ceylon, but outside the university system, only after the eighties, by which time the concept of Chinthanaya had been formulated. Jathika Chinthanaya has nothing to do with postmodernism though some people might find superficial parallels between them.

Armed with the concept of "Chinthanaya" we have been able to understand that, in fact, there is no postmodernism as such. Though Habermas who is a critic of postmodernism is also of the same view needless to say that he does not use the concept of Chinthanaya when he concludes that modernity is still an unfinished project. As far as we are concerned modernity is a result of the GJC Chinthanaya which is still the dominant Chinthanaya in the west. Postmodernism could be viewed as a set of not very clear ideas arising in western humanities as a result of the paradigm shifts introduced with the formulations of Relativity and Quantum Physics in the early part of the twentieth century. Western Physics is the leading science in the western system and concepts and theories created in that subject find their way in to the other disciplines after a lapse of about thirty years. The debates on the interpretation of Quantum Physics mainly centered around Bohr and Einstein in the thirties gradually influenced the humanities and social sciences in the sixties that was trying to understand the post war situation and the American domination in world affairs. (It cannot be said that those in the other disciplines understand these concepts the way western Physicists understand them. A recent article by my friend Prof. Carlo Fonseka where he refers to theoretical possibilities of an object that travels into the future, travelling into the past is a case in point.) The electronic revolution that took place as an outcome of the war had enhanced the growth of Capitalism, and the atomisation of the society had increased. It was clear that Marxism was no answer to the problems posed by the development of capitalism and the student uprisings in France and other places in 1968 and after, marked the beginning of the end for Marxism as the collapse of the Soviet system was to show later. Postmodernism in a way tells us that there is no political solution (a term we in Sri Lanka are familiar with) to the problems of the society on a mass scale, as exemplified by the refusal of grand narratives by the postmodernists, and that instead we should concentrate on local and partial problems. The centres of power have been identified at various places including home where the husband dominates and Foucault was instrumental in shifting political theory from one main centre, namely the state, to number of centres. However, in spite of postmodernist ideas the state continues increasingly to dominate the society and politics, and we have come to a stage where even the so-called non governmental organisations are controlled by the governments in the west. An NGO assisting feminism today is very much different from a "Mahila Samithi" that existed about fifty years ago and it is unfortunate that the modern "mahilas" are bonded to western money unlike their grandmothers in the fifties.

Before we understand what postmodernism is we should know something about modernism and modernity. While we reject that there is a phase called postmodernity we accept that there is a body of knowledge that can be called postmodernism. The postmodernists are those who subscribe to postmodernism and they try to explain a non existing phase in the evolution of the society which they call postmodernity. Modernity as a phenomenon or a phase in the evolution of the western society came into existence in the fifteenth century, according to what is known as the "Jathika Chinthanaya" school, though some westerners would say that modernity began in the eighteenth century with the so-called age of enlightenment. As far as we are concerned enlightenment is a result of modernity which has evolved over the last five hundred years or so.

What happened in the fifteenth century in Europe was a change in the Chinthanaya. Until then it was the Catholic Chinthanaya that dominated the European society. What was the necessity for the change in the Chinthanaya? We are of the view that it was the knowledge that went from the East, especially Bharat and China that forced the Europeans to change their Chinthanaya. The process has been described in a series of articles to "Vidusara" and what is given here is only a brief summary. The Catholic Chinthanaya was concrete unlike the Judaic Chinthanaya that was mainly abstract. The difference between the two Chinthanayas is exemplified by the way the God is formulated within them. In Judaic Chinthanaya God Yehowa is abstract and nobody could visualise him/her or some other entity. No statues of God Yehowa could be constructed and all that the people were told was that the man was created in the image of the God. In any event it was only the image and there was no way to extrapolate and visualise the object that gave to the image.

The Catholic God was different from the God Yehowa, though almost all the Catholics and the Christians would not agree with me. The Catholic God was somewhat like the Vedic Brahaman in its Thrimoorthi. It is said that God Vishnu, one of the forms of Brahman, visited the human world from time to time, as a human being, and Krishna, Rama and even Buddha are considered to be human forms (avatars) of God Vishnu. Once born as a human, God Vishnu behaved not very much different from a human and the Vedics had a concrete God whom they could visulaise. The Catholic God unlike God Yehowa came to this world as Christ, and as Christ the God was not very much different from another human being, reminding one the avatars Krishna and Rama. The Catholics thus have a God whom they could visualise in the form of Christ, with the mother Mary occupying a very significant place within the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Chinthanaya that became the dominant Chinthanaya in Europe especially after the third century was not a fertile ground as far as abstract thinking was concerned. As in the case of Vedic Chinthanaya the logic of the Catholic Chinthanaya was the three valued logic where A could be ~A simultaneously. The Christ was God himself and the son of God at the same time. This was in contradiction with the two valued Aristotelian logic and the Catholic scholars would have had a tough time reconciling the two logics as the Aristotelian logic was the logic of the knowledge that was inherited from the Greeks. The logic of the Greek Chinthanaya was that of Aristotle according to which A is different from ~A.

The Vedics unlike the Catholics were fond of abstract theories and concepts, though they were not as abstract as those that were created within the Judaic Chinthanaya, and were at home with Karmic Theory as an explanation for the reincarnation of "saththva". One could say that the Karmic Theory was not abstract and the Rishis and others who had developed their minds to such an extent, could "see" the "saththva" being reincarnated due to their "karma". This is a debatable point but it is clear that those who were not Rishis and others who had developed their minds, were prepared to accept them as abstract theories.

The knowledge that the Bharaths had created was abstract as far as the Europeans were concerned as they had no Rishis who could "visualise" them. Now it is known that the heliocentric motion of the earth was knowledge among the Bharaths before it was revealed to the world, meaning of course the western world, (when the westerners refer to the world it should be remembered that they refer to the western world though they never qualify their statements). When such knowledge reached the western world that was dominated by the Catholic Chinthanaya that was not abstract as the Judaic Chinthanaya, there was no way of absorbing that knowledge without a change of the Chinthanaya. However, they had to break away from other attitudes to life also in the process (a Chinthanaya consists not only of a logic but of attitudes. an epistemology and an ontology etc.) and the collective and holistic ideas of Catholicism were the first casualties. The so-called renaissance was really a movement away from the Catholic Chinthanaya though the people would not have realised it then.

(Professor Nalin de Silva is a Sri Lankan theoretical physicist, philosopher and a political analyst. He is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka.)