The self and the good

In the opening chapter of Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor notes that it is not possible to get clear about the 'modern identity' - about the human agent, person, or self - "without some further understanding of how our pictures of the good have evolved. Selfhood and the good, or in another way selfhood and morality, turn out to be inextricably intertwined themes." (Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996] 3)

But there is another obstacle to this task:

Much contemporary moral philosophy, particularly but not only in the English-speaking world, has given such a narrow focus to morality that some of the crucial connections I want to draw here are incomprehensible in its terms. This moral philosophy has tended to focus on what it is right to do rather than on what it is good to be, on defining the content of obligation rather than the nature of the good life; and it has no conceptual place left for a notion of the good as the object of our love and allegiance.... (3)

As I begin to teach Moral Theology to the FMA novices here in Nashik, relying on notes that I had made 20 years ago, I realize how very true this is: the whole approach of my notes - derived from theology classes at Kristu Jyoti College? - is a focus on the moral act rather than on the nature of the good life.... And that was the focus also of Azzopardi's Ethics in JDV...

So is Taylor making common cause with MacIntyre, at least on this point?

And what might be the position of Giuseppe Abba, a much neglected figure in contemporary virtue ethics, not even finding mention in the current article on the topic in the Wikipedia?

Knowledge of self in Purva Mimamsa

For Prabhakara the self is not self-luminous, since it is not revealed in deep sleep. But every consciousness is self-consciousness [and is therefore self-luminous]. In every cognition the self is revealed as the subject of that cognition (cf. triputi-pratyaksa-vada) and never as its object. But cognition is passing; hence the self is not always revealed.

For Bhatta, as for N.V., self-knowledge is a later cognition; first comes object-consciousness. N.V. holds that the self is revealed through an introspection (anuvyavasaya) of the latter. Consciousness is never self-luminous but is inferred from the cognizedness of the object. Thus inferred, it reveals its subject as ego and we have a self-cognition in which the subject knows itself as the object of this cognition. "Against the majority of Indian thinkers who hold that the subject is never known as object, B. maintains that there is no contradiction in the self knowing himself as that object which is the subject of cognition." (Guidelines 223)

Purva Mimamsa idea of atman

There are a plurality of atmans.

Each atman is an eternal, omnipresent, ubiquitous, infinite substance which is the substratum of consciousness.

The atman is a real knower, active agent and passive enjoyer / sufferer (jnatr, kartr, bhoktr). The body is the locus of his experiences, the senses the instruments of experience, and the internal feelings and external things are the objects of his experience.

Consciousness is not the essence of the self. Prabhakara, like N.V., conceives it as an accidental static guna of the atman. The atman is by essence jada, unconscious, and, insofar as moksa is admitted, it means the isolation of the atman from all gunas, and hence also from consciousness and bliss. !!

For Bhatta, consciousness is not a static guna but a modal change (parinama) of the self. it is therefore a dynamic modification, a passing from potency to act. The atman is not simply unconscious, but unconscious-conscious (cid-acid-rupa or jada-bodh-atmaka), namely, characterized by the potency to know which belongs to his very nature (jnana-sakti-svabhava). In moksa, the self is divested of all his qualities and modes, including cognition and bliss, but remains, as in deep sleep, endowed with potential consciousness. (De Smet, Guidelines 223)

Self-knowledge in Purva Mimamsa

In the section on The Nature of True Knowledge, De Smet begins by saying:

Knowledge as such is always an immediate awareness, but of what? (Guidelines p. 220)

Once again, there seems to be a confusion here between knowledge (pratyaksa, presumably, also from what follows) and consciousness.

He goes on to outline Prabhakara's tri-puti-pratyaksa-vada. For P, knowledge is not eternal but is a self-luminous (svaprakasa) event wich arises and vanishes as a moment in the cognitive process. [Very good.] It is always a triple revelation: it reveals itself (svasamvitti of jnana); the knowable as its object (visaya-vitti of jneya); and the knower as 'I' (aham-vitti of jnatr). Thus it has simultaneously three terms.

The note that follows is interesting:

Note that the self is not self-luminous but known only in cognition and not in its absence as in deep sleep. Dream cognition, though derived only from memory, is of the same general type. To hold, like the N. Vaisesikas, that knowledge is known through another cognition would lead to infinite regress... (Guidelines 220)

K. Bhatta's theory is called jnatata-vada, because he holds, in contrast to P., that the only immediate datum in cognition is the cognizedness (jnatata) or illuminedness (prakatya) of the object., i.e. the object as cognized. Both the act/process of knowing and the knowing ego have to be inferred.

De Smet's judgment:

Prabhakara's theory seems to be closer to the fact. But he fails to distinguish the implicit (awareness of the ego and the knower) and the explicit (awareness of the object as known) in the immediate content of cognition which he erroneously considers as totally explicit. Hence, Bhatta wants to correct him but for the same reason he reduces the immediate to the explicit and thinks that the implicit is not immediate but mediate and inferable only. (Guidelines p. 221)