World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

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growth. From a human viewpoint, whether such a property marks the ontology of transience on earth is a debatable question. Contesting the idea of time's progressing arrow is the notion of a circular time, of ages that repeat. Some thinkers have posited that the temporal experience of "the west" is "progressive," while that of "the east" is "circular." Some have even seen these divergent civilizational ontologies as springing from the character of the predominant religious systems followed in these regions. Abrahamic religions with their eschatological orientation are naturally focused on the inexorable succession of time; while Indic religions, with their emphasis on the experience of something unchanging, have paid less heed to the temporal dimension, seeing it as illusory or repetitive. This may be an over-simplification, but there may be some truth to it. By the time of the Gita, though action is enjoined, its purpose is left vague, as a "holding together of the world" (lokasangraha) and the aim of human realization is indicated as freedom from the cycles of rebirth.
In modern times, the western hegemony of a global world has brought a strong "progressive" orientation to human striving, while at the same time, the misguided emphasis on instrumentality and technological progress has been countered by philosophers questioning any assumption of teleology, particularly to human history. At the head of this counter-progressivist trend, we may see the figure of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and his adaptation from Hindu philosophy, "the eternal recurrence of the Same." However, these two orientations need not be at odds with one another. The Same, which ever repeats in new forms as temporal phenomena, is infinite. In the interpretation given to Nietzsche's phrase by Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), what repeats from moment to moment in the discreteness of phenomena is the infinity of the Same, its infinite possibility of becoming, developing on the basis of the train of history. And if we think of cyclic structures, these may be ever-widening repetitions, spirals unfolding patterns of sameness in progressive expansions.
In our own experience, we find a subjective accounting, the seemingly random accretion of experiences of continuity and rupture, building or integrating consciousness. All around us in nature, we also see the grades of emergence, consciousness struggling to manifest in terms of complexity, self-mastery and world-mastery. However, at the human level, some temporal circumstance of continuity or desire is easy to mistake for such an evolutionary or teleological drift. This can turn into an inexorable determinism sealing human destiny. This is a false identification, which it is necessary to be suspicious of and critical about. On the other hand, to recognize an emergent property of consciousness in the cosmos can empower self-consciousness to transcend its ego limits and aim at cosmicity.
Whether it is called teleology, evolution, or persistence in the journey
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