Praamaanya, Prakaasha & PK's parrhesia

The theory of Prakaasha deals with how we can know what is in our consciousness as well what portion of that consciousness constitutes 'knowledge' falsifiable or otherwise. The related theory of Praamaanya inquires into the origin and apprehension of the truth of that knowledge. Svatah (lit 'from inside')-Praamaanya theorists agree that that truth of an item of knowledge has the same origin and is apprehended simultaneous with that knowledge- a strange doctrine, prima facie, since knowledge may be ab ovo speculative, oneiric, or, indeed, florid and figurative in a manner essentially fugitive from Truth, though some later event, experiment or external authority may reveal it to be purely alethic.
One workaround, that of the Prabhakara, is to make Truth a purely instrumental criteria. What works is 'true', what doesn't is 'error'. However, the desirable property of not relying on Memory but independently manifesting its object, or apprehending something not apprehended before, which is sought for Praamaanya, is lost thereby. Two methods- one Platonic, the other Occassionalist- exist to repair this lacuna and, as a practical matter, we are welcome to tune into the Sufi-Bhakti synthesis from any point on the spectrum thus defined.
Another approach, that of the Bhattas, is to consider 'jnaatataa' (knownness) as an imperceptible activity of an inferential type operating on something otherwise subliminal and not the subject of Praamaanyaa theory.However, this raises in acute form the question as to how such 'knownness' could be 'svatah'- i.e. arise at the same time and from the same cause as that which it qualifies? We may think we mistake a rope for a snake till the snake bites us. Apprehension and the truth of apprehension surely can't be simultaneous? Once way round this is to simply recast Knowledge claims as being of a Bayesian, Statistical nature. To do so, however, is to encourage us to consider ourselves citizens of a Multiverse. Suddenly, the Yoga-Vashista gains salience. We are the Bhikshu who dreamed he was a King who dreamed he was an Apsara who dreamed she was a doe in the forest who dreamed she bit off Walt Disney's head for killing Bambi's mum. All woke from their dream to find they were all each other. At this point, Yeats goes and sits at the feet of Mohini Chatterjee or some other such Chatter-box and starts translating the Gita. We can quit reading him and go order a round of Guinness with a Jameson chaser.
My own ancestral Vedantism, however, re-opens the question of how empirical truth can be 'svatograhya'- i.e. apprehended as such intrinsically and at the same time as cognized. The workaround here is facile. The subject is always false or sublatable in a long series asymptotically approaching her own 'true' self itself qualified as the 'sakshi' or unimpeachable witness.

Let us take an everyday example. I walk into the bar at the local Hilton and have a few pints. I see a young chap who went to Modern School on Barakhamba Road and go over to ask which year he matriculated. His initial hesitancy is removed when I explain that I'm an alumnus of St. Columba's and, in my day, our two schools enjoyed a friendly rivalry. On hearing my surname he becomes friendly and goes off to get me a drink leaving me with his lovely lady wife who, it turns out, is a fellow Tambram.
I am astonished when I hear that she too attended Modern School, though she quickly explains she met her older husband at Wharton.
I say to her 'Akka (elder sister) why you are telling me such a shameless lie? From his face, I could immediately tell your husband attended Modern School. It is a scientific fact that people who go to Modern have penis like physiognomy. Your face, on the other hand, is beautiful. Why you are punching and slapping me? OMG, how did nice lady like you learn such filthy type Tamil abuse words!'
Anyway, I went and hid behind her husband who was a U.P bhaiyya some twenty years younger than myself. He said 'Darling, please don't hit this fellow with your naked hand. Everyone knows St. Columba's boys have their arse where face should be. Chee, chee- kindly go and wash with dettol!'

Anyway, we have a couple of drinks while lady is in the powder room. I say 'Yaar, Shahrukh Khan is from St. Columba's. Shehkar Kapoor went to Modern.' 'How do you think Shah Rukh got his start?' he shoots back. 'After Kapoor Sahib was finished with him, Shah Rukh's features became almost human.'
Suddenly I realized that this brawny U.P bhaiyya, with the characteristic penis like face of a Modern School alumnus, was gazing upon my moon like visage in a lascivious and lustful fashion. Where was his wife when I needed her? Just I giggled nervously, paid for the drinks, and quietly slipped away.

Pop Quiz
Q 1. The author gained two types of knowledge simultaneously- viz. that a person had a penis like face and that he must have attended Modern School, Barakhamba road.  Is this a valid instance of 'svatograhya' empirical knowledge?
a) Yes. Having penis like face is an intrinsic property of Modern School alumni. Apprehending a penis like face was the origin and also the truth maker for the knowledge that the dickhead in question was indeed from Modern School.
b) No. His wife also attended Modern School. She did not have penis like face. Thus the truth-maker for 'x attended Modern School' can't be  'svatah-praamaanya', i.e. intrinsically provided and must therefore be, if at all, 'paratah-praamaanya'- i.e. arising from an external authority, experiment or event.
c) The question is framed in an impredicative manner and is therefore undecidable. The truthmaker for 'x is a valid instance of 'svatograhya empirical knowledge' can not itself be empirical because svatograhya is intrinsically self-referential. Nor can it be otherwise for that begs the question.
d) Of course it is completely valid! Abishek Bacchan went to Modern.  Just look at that horrible thing growing out of his neck. Enough to scare anybody straight. Even Karan Johar.

This is a picture of Aamir Khan before he worked with Abhishek in Dhoom 3.

This is him now.

Case closed. Q.E.D

Siddhanta

Shankaracharya of Dwarka has condemned the movie PK. Was it because Aamir spoke out openly (parrhesia) against fraud perpetrated in the name of Religion? Not at all. The Shanakaracharya, jailed during Quit India, has never condoned fraud of any type because it destroys the Nation.
Still, it may be that Aamir relied upon some paratah-praamaanya argument or authority inadmissible for a Vedantin.
 Having watched the movie, I am the 'sakshi' - that too PK- possessing 'svatograhya' empirical knowledge that such is not the case.

Acharyajee possesses not just Praamaanya shakti- ratocinative power- but also intuition of underlying Prakaasha truth. Yet it is not decent to mention the fact that there are hordes of these Modern School alumni with huge penis like faces roaming around. Acharyajee shows great 'upaya kausalya'- tact in instruction- such that by condemning the effect he warns against the truly too-horrible-for-words cause- viz. deleterious consequences of spending any lengthy period of time in proximity to Abhishek's horribly throbbing phallus of a physiognomy.
Bacchan Sahib should have sent his son to Nainital. How much grief we would have all been spared, say what you like the boy can act, had he done so!

The paradox of parrhesia

Parrhesia.

A Greek word. 

Following Foucault, its modish meaning is- 'Speak Truth to Power.'

How can we have a Just Society if ordinary people can't speak freely and openly to the High and Mighty and that too with no more substantial defense against retribution than the conscious knowledge of having spoken the truth?

What could be simpler than that?

Surely, it is mischievous nonsense to suggest that Parrhesia, the plainest type of speech, could not just harbor but be founded upon a paradox?

Indeed, what is with this modern obsession with aporias and paradoxes and logical fallacies and other such clever-too-clever word games?

Isn't it a fact that where Paradoxes most lushly flourish- as in the prose of Oscar Wilde, G.B.Shaw, G.K Chesterton- something has gone wrong with Society? It has become decadent. Wilde's mother, like Chesterton's mother, was a 'Radical'. Both women were against the injustices perpetrated by the Ruling Class. They demanded things like Freedom for Ireland, Equal rights for Women and the Working Class and an end to the Aristocracy of Vested Interest's perpetual program of wasteful Wars abroad and repressive Retrenchment at home.

Wilde may have caught the contagion of lapidary antinomy from his tutor at Trinity College, Dublin, J.P Mahaffy - arch-apologist for the Primrose League, but under the influence of his Mother, the redoubtable Irish Nationalist, 'Speranza', Oscar smote his old mentor hip and thigh- but then lost himself and was lost to his mother's cause, walking the Primrose path of paradox.

Chesterton's case was worse. He could have been a Christian. He should have been a Christian. Indeed, in all probability, he would have been a Christian if his immodest method of converting to Christianity hadn't turned him into a raging Anti Semite.

Dr. Bill Oddie disagrees. He thinks  Chesterton, now a nominee for Sainthood, was pro Jewish and cites the following passage, which Chesterton wrote after his return from a visit to Palestine in 1919- '…if the Jew cannot be at ease in Zion [a reference to Amos 6:1: "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion”] we can never again persuade ourselves that he is at ease out of Zion. We can only salute as it passes that restless and mysterious figure, knowing at last that there must be in him something mystical as well as mysterious; that whether in the sense of the sorrows of Christ or of the sorrows of Cain, he must pass by, for he belongs to God.'- i.e. the Jew is a homo sacer, too lowly even to be killed, whose primal sin relates to having once enjoyed wealth in Zion.

Incidentally, back in 1919, the Establishment view was that the Arabs would slaughter the Jews but not before having some fun with them first.

I live about halfway between the house where Chesterton was born and that in which Oscar Wilde welcomed his sons into the world. In between, where once were slums, all is salubrious because Socialism, it seems, so long as it is content to not, too stridently, call itself so, Socialism works. One way it works is by providing work for even worthless scum like me.

Is that the paradox of Parrhesia I wanted to talk about in this blogpost?

Perhaps.

I'd have to reason it out...

Just tried.

Fuck it.

Could we get back to something I genuinely excel at- like Anti-Semitism?

The Jews said to Christ, 'speak plainly- speak with parrhesia-  are you the Messiah?'

The problem here is that the word Messiah means different things to different people. Indeed, Zephanaiah 3.8 and 3.9 indicate that it is only after the dies irae, the day of wrath, when God chastens all the nations with His jealous fire, only then will God purify human speech such that all may call upon the name of the Lord and serve Him with one accord.

But that dies irae has not come to pass.

So, what is happening here?

Are the Jews, though appearing to speak with parrhesia, actually laying a parrhesiac trap for our Lord?

Or is this the Gospel's parallel to the Quranic episode where the Jews say 'Ra'ina'?

To say yes, we must believe that the Jews were acting in bad faith.

They didn't believe Christ could be the Messiah.

But where is the proof of this?

Had Christ said, 'Yes. I'm the Messiah. I command you to rise up against the Romans.' might not those  same Pharisees have followed Christ though it cost them their lives? The fact is, the Pharisees- like Josephus- did rise up and were all but annihilated.

From the philosophical point of view, the Jews are demanding  from Christ a univocal answer to an equivocal question. This would be illicit, it would be bad faith, if Christ were not a Rabbi. But Christ was a Rabbi. He knew every word of the Bible- all of which possess literal truth with regard to the Unseen. Indeed, how could any text have a metaphorical meaning with respect to that which is beyond our ken? A beautiful orchard garden- pardes- can be a metaphor for Paradise because we have all seen a garden. Paradise, we have not seen. It can't be a metaphor for anything. God is not a person like any person we know. His commandments can't be metaphors for the commandments of some human person. 

Christ, answering the Jews, can only do so with parrhesia if he uses the language of the Bible, because he has knowledge regarding the unseen which ordinary mortals lack. This seems paradoxical. Surely to speak with parrhesia can't mean speaking of that which we can not, as mortals, know? 

However, perhaps, Christ resolves this paradox by speaking of something which, as an 'emergent' on mortal discourse, could exceed without breaking the mortal net of words.

Notice the phrase he uses, in answering the Jews, comes from Psalm 82.6

Psalm 82

A psalm of Asaph.

1 God presides in the great assembly;
    he renders judgment among the “gods”:

2 “How long will you[a] defend the unjust
    and show partiality to the wicked?[b]
3 Defend the weak and the fatherless;
    uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
    deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

5 “The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing.
    They walk about in darkness;
    all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

6 “I said, ‘You are “gods”;
    you are all sons of the Most High.’
7 But you will die like mere mortals;
    you will fall like every other ruler.”

8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
    for all the Nations are your inheritance.

Parrhesia's drunken helot

Edit- I am adding notes to this because of a comment.

Stage, Parrhesia's drunken helot, upon Heaven a heist

Fex Urbis, Lex Orbis, by the blood of Christ!

Piss on their Symposia should Paideia sing

The Sufi Saqi is not Plato's King

Notes
1) Parrhesia is to speak openly, to say everything without troubling too much about being polite or polishing one's rhetoric. Plato's last book, 'the Laws', features an Athenian stranger- who might even be Socrates resurrected- who is invited to speak 'with parrheisa' by his interlocutors both of whom claim a special relationship of friendship with Athens.
The Spartan is a 'proxenos' of Athens- i.e. his family had provided lodgings for Athenian plenipotentiaries and had acted as a sort of Honorary Consul for it. The Cretan was descended from a Priest and Oracle who had prophesied favorably concerning Athens' fate in the Persian wars. Thus both were entitled to plain speaking from the Athenian, since their affections were already engaged on his side.
The Athenian makes a somewhat strange argument- viz. that drinking may be a good thing even though all evidence is to the contrary. Indeed, the Spartans would deliberately get a helot (i.e. a member of the slave caste) drunk so as to exhibit him to their young adolescents as a dire warning against the evils of intemperance. The Athenian, however. argues that provided the Symposium (drinking session) is ruled by a judicious 'King'- who determines how much water to mix in the wine and who acts as Master of Ceremonies- then, Smyposia become an extension, or indeed a consummation, of 'paideia' (Education)- in particular, training in Music fructifies into a schooling in Philosophy such that human beings become fitted to themselves dialectically arrive at Laws which are a mimesis of those by which Heaven is ruled.

Bearing this in mind, the phrase 'Parrhesia's drunken helot' means that type of 'saying everything' (Foucault would call it 'speaking Truth to Power) which a member of the oppressed or otherwise despised caste, might be guilty of and which those with Power might, not just tolerate, but actively elicit, so as to serve the instrumental purpose of providing an awful example and warning to their own young people of what happens to members of the despised caste, condignly deprived of paideia, by reason of congenital defect, who nevertheless gain access to, or are forced to partake of,  the peculiar elixir of the Symposium which, like the Soma of the Arya, is the Sun and Moon in the mouths of the Entitled, but which immediately becomes Rahu & Ketu- the decapitated demons of the Solar and Lunar eclipse- upon the tongues of those heavily burdened, whose Lebenswelt, it is the Enlightened Economics of the Elite, to render consubstantial with Hell.

2) Heist- Wikipedia says 'A heist is a robbery from an institution such as a bank or a museum, or any robbery in which there is a large haul of loot.'
The first line asks the 'drunken helot' who is in the grip of Parrhesia to stage a heist upon Heaven. Prometheus, it is said, stole fire from Heaven. It was a calculated move. Prometheus means 'fore-thought'. But how can the drunken helot have 'fore-thought'? Surely, he is impulsive- Epimethean- he has what Hoppe calls 'low time preference'- he does not think, he does not plan, he accepts Pandora as a gift from the Gods.

But, Pandora's great gift was doubt- Pyrrhonism- including a cussed skepticism regarding the 'beautiful and good'  'Paideia' of the elite.

When a poet uses a word as the end rhyme of his opening line, then we naturally expect to see other words with the same rhyme later on. In this case, we may expect to see 'Geist'- Spirit- which has a special meaning in the Hegel's dialectical system. Essentially, what we have here is the notion that at any given moment in Time, only some people- those with an Entitlement to the correct Hegelian Paideia, by reason of belonging to, or possessing an unreasoning proclivity for, some privileged topos and ethne- can participate in the Universal Geist which is a sort of asymptotic limit of what can be rightly thought and felt at that moment in Absolute Time.

3) Fex Urbis Lex Orbis- 
Wikipedia says Fex urbis lex orbis is a Latin saying, meaning "Dregs [classical Latin faex] of the city, law of the world", that is, the lowest class of citizens determines how the world works.

First written by St. Jerome,^{[citation needed]} the phrase is often erroneously attributed to Victor Hugo, who quotes it ironically at the beginning of Volume V of Les Misérables while advising one to be careful in labeling social groups:^[1]

the beggars were the making of Holland; the populace saved Rome more than once; and the rabble followed Jesus Christ.

There is no thinker who has not at times contemplated the magnificences of the lower classes.

It was of this rabble that St. Jerome was thinking, no doubt, and of all these poor people and of all these vagabonds and of all these miserable people whence sprang the apostles and the martyrs, when he uttered this mysterious saying: "Fex urbis, lex orbis," — the dregs of the city, the law of the earth.

4) Blood of Christ. 
Wine is turned into the blood of Christ during the Christian ceremony of  Mass. Similarly, the communion wafer (a type of unleavened bread) is turned into his flesh by the miracle of Transubstantiation. Both are consumed by the devout. This ceremony binds the Christians together and fosters fellow feeling and the desire to work together for the uplift of all.
The early Christians had to hide in the catacombs but were hunted down and flung to the lions. Yet this 'rabble' prevailed over the might of Cesar. 
I may mention, Christ was asked by the Jews to speak with 'parrhesia' and reveal if he was the Messiah. Had Christ not spoken openly (the same point could be made of the Sufi, Mansur al Hallaj) he would have been safe and honored.
One could say that the Blood of Christ, which buys redemption, was only caused to flow by the parrhesia of this 'son of a carpenter'.

5) Symposium- originally this meant a convivial drinking party rather than an academic seminar. Plato's 'Symposium' was read by the Ikhwan e Safa- i.e. the intellectuals of the Abbasid dynasty who were also patronized by the Barmicides family.
 In connection with Aristophanes' fable of the sexes, a hadith of the Prophet was mentioned and this became one of the foundations of the Sufi doctrine re. Ri'jat & Tanasukh- i.e. something similar to metempsychosis.
The Sufi Symposium, unlike Plato's, did not feature wine or a 'King' who regulated it's distribution. It did not become an extension or consummation of worldly 'Paideia'. On the contrary, it included the dervish- the poor man, the beggar, the crazy fellow- and it was presided over by the Saqi (Wine pourer) of the Unseen. The Sufi khanqah is the opposite of the Credentialist Academy. Sufi wisdom is apophatic not sophistical.