Moral Dilemmas: Insights from Indian Epics, by B. K. Matilal [Excerpt]

I was listening to a podcast episode yesterday from the awesome philosophy series History Of Philosophy In India titled Grand Illusion: Dharma and Deception in the Mahabharata, and it had a pretty interesting moral dilemma which I put forth here in my words:

Suppose you are minding your own business, in peace, and suddenly a group of men come running down your alleyway. Panting, they explain that a group of robbers are in their pursuit, and if you could please divert them in the opposite direction. Without waiting for a reply, they run off. Some minutes later, another group of men comes, and asks you where the people went.

Do you say the truth and tell them the real location of the people? Or do you refuse to divulge anything (which could, in turn, make the robbers probably torture the truth out from you)? Or do you plainly lie?

Bonus: Also what if you aren't sure who the real robbers/good guys are?

I found the premise incredibly fascinating when I first heard it. However, I was unsatisfied with what I remembered about it. I had to find the original source for it. BTW, the Bonus question was my addition (agreed, I'm a noob in Philosophy).




Hence, I am posting the excerpt from aforementioned book by B. K. Matilal, which I feel is incredibly interesting in knowing that the Indian Epics and Texts are also more of philosophical text than purely religious ones unlike Abrahamic religions where almost all text only contain religious discourses.

---

The Mahäbhärata is a unique creation of India, one of its kind which has no equal in world literature. Thanks to the laudable efforts of Peter Brooks, the story, the underlying unique human drama, has been staged in cities like Paris, New York and Glasgow in recent years with great success. Its popularity is no longer restricted to the geographical boundaries of India. It represents a corpus of some 200,000 lines, eight times the size of the IIliad and the Odyssey put together, that has influenced and captivated the minds of almost all Indians for about two millennia.

WHAT IS A MORAL DILEMMA?

Moral dilemmas are, very common in everyday life. Stories inclassical and contemporary literature are full of such cases. Most moral dilemmas seem to remain unresolved in such stories. Very roughly, such dilemmas arise when the agent is committed to two or more moral obligations, but circumstances are such that an obligation to do x cannot be fulfilled without violating an obligation to do y.

A typical case of moral dilemma is presented by Arjuna's question at the beginning of the Bhagavad Gitä. Was Arjuna faced with a genuine moral dilemma? I shall come back to the question later on. Let us take another clear case of moral dilemma in an episode in the Karnaparvan.

Arjuna was faced with a choice between two irreconcilable obligations: promise keeping and avoidance of fratricide. The incident that led to this is the following. On the very day of final encounter between Kama and Arjuna, Yudhisthira fled the battlefield after being painfully humiliated by Krsna in an armed engagement. When Arjuna came to the camp to pay a visit to him and asked what really had happened, Yudhisthira flared up in anger and told Arjuna that all his boastfulness about being the finest archer in the world was a lot of nonsense, because the war was dragging on. He reminded Arjuna that he had claimed to be capable of conquering everybody and thus end the war within a few days. In a rage, he not only insulted Arjuna but also slighted the Gändiva bow, the most precious possession of this valiant warrior. The bow was a gift to Arjuna from Agni, the fire-god. He held it so dear to his heart that he had promised to kill anyone who would ever speak ill of it. Hence Yudhisthira's words put Arjuna in a very difficult situation: either he would have to kill his venerated elder brother or break his promise. When his Ksatriya duty (dharma) made him choose the first alternative, Krsna (his alter ego) appeared. On being asked Arjuna explained: he was obliged to commit fratricide in order to fulfil his obligation to keep his promise. Arjuna had full knowledge of the gravity of the crime he was about to commit but like a mistimed Kantian he had already taken a conflict-free decision to meet the Ksatriya obligation of promise-keeping. A quotation from Kant's Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals (1797) may be relevant here:

"Because . . . duty and obligation are in general concepts that express the objective practical necessity of certain actions and because two mutually opposing rules cannot be necessary at the same time, then if it is a duty to act according to one of them, it is not only not a duty but contrary to duty to act according to the other."

For Kant it seems that the objective rules should form a harmonious whole, a system characterized by consistency, much like a system of true beliefs. The moral conflict, which no doubt arises in the minds of moral agents, cannot, therefore, be genuine. It would be at best a confusion, at worst an illusion. It conflates, according to Kant, a genuine duty with a ground of that duty. Hence, in a so-called dilemma, one horn is a genuine duty, and the other is merely a ground of duty. There may be conflict between grounds but not between duties. Hence, in Kantian ethics, no agent can be forced to violate his duty. This is at least one of the interpretations of Kantian thought. Hence Arjuna might be said to be anticipating the Kantian model.

Krsna, however, was not Kant. When he intercepted and started a discourse with Arjuna, he obviously turned an apparently moral conflict into a genuine moral dilemma. Promise-keeping is, indeed, a strong obligation. Plato is supposed to have described a typical case of dilemma, in which the return of a cache of arms has been promised to a man who, intent on starting mayhem, comes to claim them. Conflict was generated here by two opposing principles, that of promise-keeping and that of benevolence. In fact, promise-keeping is regarded as equivalent to truth-telling. In Sanskrit, promise-keeping is sometimes classed as 'protecting the truth' (satya-raksä). Hence, both in India and the West, the two obligations are invariably connected. There is no cultural relativism here. In Kantian ethics, truth-telling gets the highest priority. Krsna, however, continued to argue that promise-keeping or even truth-telling cannot be an unconditional obligation when it is in conflict with the avoidance of grossly unjust and criminal acts such as patricide or fratricide. Saving an innocent life is also a strong obligation, saving the life of an elder brother would naturally be an equally strong obligation, if not stronger. Hence, in fact, according to Krsna, two almost equally strong obligation or duties are in conflict here.

KRSNA'S STORY TO SUPPORT HIS ARGUMENT

Krsna related a story to illustrate his point. A hermit, Kausika by name, once took a vow of telling the truth throughout his life. One day he faced the following dilemma. Some bandits were chasing several travellers with the intention of killing them. Kausika was sitting nearby at the crossroad. The travellers passed by, and requested him not to show the miscreants which way they had fled. Kausika did not answer. Soon the bandits arrived, and, knowing that the hermit would not lie, asked him about the travellers; and Kausika told the truth. As a result, the travellers were caught and killed. Krsna added that Kausika did not reach heaven after his death (his much-coveted reward) just because of this act of cruelty. Although he abided by his principle of truth-telling throughout his life, it came to no effect. The major point was that, under situational constraints, there might be stronger grounds for rejecting truth-telling as a duty and accepting the stronger duty of saving an innocent life. This encapsulates a very strong moral insight, although it is not Kantian.

For Krsna, dharma is at least sometimes dictated by the constraints or the contingency of the situation (Ävasthika, Mahäbhärata, xii, 36.2). But this is no defence of opportunism. Truth-telling has been extolled as one of the highest virtues in the tradition. We should not have any illusion, despite frequent criticisms to the contrary, that the tradition of the dharmasästras or the religious texts of India underplayed the importance of truth-telling as a virtue and a value. Äpastambha says plainly that every perjurer goes to hell. Thus, there does not seem to be any religious, textual or dharmasästric support for sweeping comments such as 'all Hindoos are compulsive liars' (Lord Curzon). But it must be admitted that excusable untruths were permitted by such writers of dharmasästrasas Gautama and Manu. Thus, perjury to save life was permitted as adharma. Hence Krsna's story is compatible with the general dictum ofdharmasästras (dharma-ethics).

There are several intricate issues of moral philosophy that can be discussed here in connection with this epic story. There are those philosophers who admit the factuality of moral dilemmas and insist that our commitment to consistency would require us to modify the system by reordering priorities or by discarding certain principles. For example, R.M. Flare believes that our moral precept, 'do not lie', can be reformulated in light of wartime experience as 'do not lie except to the enemy in time of war', which will be the more adequate principle and make the system consistent by resolving a conflict situation.

Jean-Paul Sartre gives a striking example of practical conflict where a young man must choose between his patriotic duty to join the French Resistance and his filial obligation to care for his aging mother.

Sartre, like Hare, acknowledges the reality of this conflict, but uses such hard cases as evidence to draw the conclusion that it is useless for a moral agent to form an ordered system of ethical principles and to try to live by it. The agent, according to Sartre, is condemned to be free. Sartre takes man to be condemned, because 'he did not create himself; yet he is free, because 'from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does'. He, therefore, should use his radical liberty, and improvise his choice according to the situation without regret or remorse. In the Mahäbhärata episode, we again see a resonance of the Sartrean advice in Krsna's advice to Arjuna. Krsna said to Arjuna, after relating the story of Kausika, that Arjuna, unlike Kausika, must not regret this failure to keep the promise when the concrete situation would otherwise require him to commit fratricide.

Again, in the Gltä, a Sartrean reading of Krsna is possible, but perhaps we should avoid the temptation. The situation is comparable in respect of the recommendation of the unregretted choice to be reached (mäsucah) but not so, as far as the complete rejection of the search for a consistent ethical system is concerned. Krsna also would not say that humans are condemned to be free.

Let us discuss some details of the Mahäbhärata episode. Krsna emphasized the fact that it is very difficult but not impossible to understand the extremely subtle ways of dharma or duty (dharmänäm gatim, süksmamduranvayam). He also said that even Bhisma or Vidura or Kunti wouldhave been able to resolve the dilemma for Arjuna. To sum up Krsna's argument:

It is true that truth-telling is the highest virtue but there are mitigating circumstances such as destruction of innocent lives and loss of all possessions under which to tell a he may be a duty ('where telling a lie may be as good as "truth" and truth-telling may be as good as lying').

Before telling the story of Kausika, Krsna told another story about an innocent hunter called Baläka. Baläka used to hunt animals to feed his blind parents. He was innocent and simple-hearted. But he had a rare skill. He could hunt an animal even when it was outside the range of his sight, simply by listening to the noise made by the animal drinking water from a river. One day, by chance, he hunted in this manner a ferocious creature called Andha. But as soon as Andha was killed, gods showered flowers from heaven, and the celestial chariot came to fetch Baläka to heaven. Why? For Baläka unknowingly did a great service to the lord's creation, because this Andha had grown up to be a terrible creature who was almost unkillable. Having received a boon from Lord Brahma, he went on killing all the creatures. He was in a way out to destroy all creatures. Although Baläka was unaware of this fact, he was somehow able to kill this evil creature, and thereby obtained his just reward. This story sounds like the case of 'moral luck'. The goodness of a good human life is not always dependent on the things that the moral agent can control. There is 'external contingency' or luck coming to the agent from the word which is not under his control. But this contingency cannot be totally eliminated. Sometimes such contingencies would generate moral dilemmas, for the agent. Baläka was a good person in his own modest way, but external contingencies made his moral reward far greater than what he had dreamt of. By contrast Kausika had a project for life which included the covetable moral reward, heaven, but external contingencies intervened and Kausika was faced with a situation in which he was forced to act. But, according to Krsna's ethical system, he acted stupidly, and chose the alternative that ruined his dream totally. Krsna said that although Kausika wanted to do his duty (dharmakämah), he was unwise (apandita) and a fool (müdha, Mahäbhärata, 8.49.32).

---

This was a small excerpt, and it shows that Indian texts are no less than their western counterparts in discussing philosophical concepts, and it has, for sure, made me very interested in reading and learning about them.