Argumentative Discourse in the Culture of Ancient India

Kryuchkova Svetlana ORCID: 0000-0002-9213-8503 Doctor of Philosophy Professor, Department of Humanities, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation 125167, Russia, g. Moscow, Leningradskii prospekt, 51/1 svetlana.kryuchkova2015@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Kryuchkova Elena Vyacheslavovna ORCID: 0000-0002-5988-7326 PhD in Economics Associate Professor, Department of Economics and Enterprise Management, Moscow State Technological University "STANKIN" 108052, Russia, Moscow, Bolshaya Pochtovaya str., 18/20, sq. bldg.16, sq.16 kryuchkova_e@mail.ru

Introduction

Argumentative tradition exists in many cultures, starting from Antiquity, where it originated in polemical practices, during which masters of oratory found the most effective methods of persuasive communicative influence. Since then, it has gone through a long history, rich in ups and downs. The revival of interest in the argumentative heritage of ancient thinkers occurred in the middle of the twentieth century and is associated with the appearance of the treatise "New Rhetoric" (H. Perelman and L. Olbrecht-Tytek), in which more adequate pragmatic assessments of natural language reasoning were put forward to replace the formal logical criteria for the consistency of argumentation than in symbolic logic. real disputes and discussions.

Since the middle of the last century, the scientific community has been debating the status of the theory of argumentation. Most often in modern works devoted to argumentative discourse, the traditional "rhetorical dimension of argumentation" dominates ^{[1, p.455]}. However, by the end of the XX – beginning of the XXI centuries, a number of disciplinary autonomous approaches appeared, focusing not only on the logical component (albeit in a relaxed form as in the "informal logic" of R. Johnson and A. Blair), but also on other sides of argumentative discourse: communicative, psychological, linguistic, cognitive, etc. This actualizes the task of creating a theory of argumentation that involves considering the phenomenon of persuasive speech in the unity of all its sides, i.e. exactly as it was in ancient times. Thus, a new appeal to the historical tradition of studying the phenomenon of argumentation is due to the fact that persuasion strategies in the oratory of Ancient Greece, China and India organically combined both rhetorical, logical, and psychological components of persuasion.

 Today, in the situation of the emergence of media practices that create new ways to achieve a "rational-pragmatic consensus" (K.-O. Apel) on controversial issues, the argumentative ideas of the ancients are not just in demand, but also seem capable of setting new semantic guidelines, especially given the fact that a generally valid theory of argumentation has not yet been created that combines such components of critical thinking as justification and persuasion into a single whole ^{[2, p.15]}. And in this context, the growing academic (and not only) interest in the religious and philosophical teachings of the Ancient East is understandable ^{[3, p.8]}. At the same time, in a situation of fascination with Eastern metaphysics and Indian styles of thinking, one should beware of unreasonable expectations when, for example, some natural scientists "try to find methods of solving modern scientific problems in them and enrich their heuristics at their expense (Buddhism is especially popular in this sense)" ^{[4, p.131]}.

However, if the classical heritage of ancient Greek agonal disputational practice, based on classical rationality and based on the Aristotelian logical tradition, has a rich research literature, then descriptions of the original argumentative heritage of the Ancient East, its strategies and intuitions, arguments to transpersonal and mystical experience, contain many gaps that can be filled with the help of a modern methodological arsenal, including philosophical comparative studies, hermeneutics, a systematic approach. This will allow for a "new synthesis" that will not only contribute to the modern dialogue of cultures, but also, according to the South Korean philosopher Ersu Kim, will be able to replace the Western cultural synthesis, which "previously seemed self-evident and attractive, but which has now ceased to be a reliable guide to the prosperity of mankind" ^{[5, p.431]}.

The subject of this article is the ancient Indian argumentative discourse, which still remains an insufficiently studied area, despite the long-standing indological tradition in our country (the works of F.I. Shcherbatsky, V. P. Vasiliev, O. O. Rosenberg, G. M. Bongard-Levin, A. O. Makovelsky, etc.) and the works of modern researchers (V. K. Shokhin, V. L. Lysenko, M. T. Stepanyants, N. A. Kanaeva, E. L. Zabolotnykh, A.A.Bazarov, etc.). At the same time, it should be noted that there are few publications devoted to logical and epistemological problems, which is explained, first of all, by the "genetic autonomy of Indian thought from the Mediterranean cultural and civilizational hearth". ^{[6, p.6]}, the oral tradition of disputational practice, the mystical orientation of participants in public discussions, as well as a small number of sources describing the ancient Indian "science of disputes" (anvikshiki, brahmodya) and the difficulties of isolating argumentative issues from praman-vada – the "science of right thinking", which is a "complex conglomerate of concepts, constructions and methods" ^{[7, p.355]} of a logical-epistemological nature. The difficulty for comparative analysis is also the task of correlating the categorical apparatus of European philosophical thinking and the rather "amorphous" conceptual apparatus of the Indian religious and philosophical tradition, which "had completely different antecedents" ^{[8, p.364]}, very different not only in their logical and semantic structures of the world, but also in the ways of reasoning about it.

 Indian culture has created its own "codes", which makes it difficult to translate and understand significant texts belonging to different authors and different currents of thought, which "need to be read into, picking up the keys to them" ^{[9, pp.5-6]}. Thus, syncretism can be considered a characteristic feature of the Indian style of reasoning and argumentation. "Indian philosophy, historians S. Chatterjee and D. Datta, – considers various problems of metaphysics, ethics, logic, psychology, and the theory of knowledge, but she does not consider them separately" ^{[10, p.10]}.

Ancient Indian dispute in the "Shraman period"

In the "Shraman period" (V century BC), public disputes on religious and philosophical topics between religious and philosophical schools, independent ascetic preachers (shramans) and the leaders of the Brahman clans (gotr) were especially active. The high social status of the institute of public dispute is asserted: "The right of eloquence and logical proof was so indisputable in India," noted the famous orientalist V. Vasiliev in this regard, "that no one could evade a challenge to a dispute." In the course of such disputes, there was not only a dialogical approbation of the comments of sacred texts, but also the development of argumentative ideas and tactical techniques. The formation of a polemical culture took place first within the brahminical environment and in intra-school discussions on ritual issues, and then in inter-school theoretical disputes on ideological issues, for example, between Brahmins and non-Brahmins, where there was not only criticism of opposing doctrines, but also forms of rational (without relying on the authority of "sacred knowledge") substantiation of alternative models of the world order. In these disputes, the art of polemics was honed, restrictive procedural rules were created, effective argumentative techniques were developed, the most important among which was the art of asking questions to ideological rivals ^{[11, pp.53-55]}. At the same time, a certain normative core was crystallized, the methodological apparatus was being formed, the conceptualization of key concepts and their systematization (analytics) were underway. All this actualized the task of educating adherents of the doctrine and training converts. An example is the priestly schools of the Erists and the Brahminical lokayata, as well as many schools attached to Buddhist monasteries.

The first theory of argumentation, based on logical connections, arose with the appearance of the fundamental texts of various religious and philosophical systems (darshan), which were built using a special method of consideration - bidirectionality (simultaneous justification of one's own position and criticism of opponents): before putting forward one's thesis, it is necessary to establish the opponent's point of view (purvapaksha), then to give its refutation (khandana) and only then to state as a conclusion his point of view (sidhanta) ^{[10, p.11]}. Usually, argumentation theory is characterized by first putting forward a thesis, and then its justification and then a conclusion. The question of the need to include the thesis in the conclusion in the ancient Indian tradition was debatable, it was solved in different ways by Nyaists and Buddhists who gave appropriate arguments, which was due, according to researchers, to the lag of the logical theory of the former from the latter ^{[12, p.94]}. Despite the difference in argumentative schemes, their premise was common - pluralism and tolerance of some philosophical and religious schools in relation to others. It is significant that despite the recognition of the greater importance of the factor of the preacher's conviction over his mastery of technical techniques, the participants in the disputes gradually begin to take care of the presence of a common basis or, in modern terms, a "field of argumentation", both with potential adherents and opponents, and in the absence of the latter, use the technique of a "fictional opponent", which contributed to the development of argumentation ideas.

Significant was the appearance and widespread dissemination of special polemical texts for the service of debates (samgraha), a kind of training manuals, often written in the form of a mentor-student dialogue. Such guides were supposed to help master the basic categorical and conceptual apparatus of the tradition and logical-rhetorical techniques used in disputes with representatives of other schools. They also described various aspects of the dispute from substantive to psychological (for example, ways to win the favor of the audience). They also contained prescriptive normative reasoning schemes and sets of exemplary dialectical techniques that make up the art of persuasion. The description of the latter can be found already in the famous epic "Mahabharata", where the metaphysical load of the ancient Indian argumentative discourse was fully manifested, which grew out of the recognition of the plurality of points of view, each of which had the right to exist, and the close connection with logical-epistemological and moral problems.

Argumentative canon of the Nyaya school

The first attempt to systematically describe the techniques of dispute management belongs to    Medhatithi  Gautama ("Nyaya Sutra). Nyaya is one of the few philosophical systems (darshan), where in the foreground was not so much ontological as logical–epistemological problems, with the caveat that the knowledge sought was intended to lead "to the absolute and permanent cessation of suffering" ^{[13, p. 120]}.  Pramana-vada included a description of the requirements for correct thinking as a necessary condition for entering the path of liberation. The nyaya dispute theory will later become the basis, a model for navya-nyaya (the founder of Ganges) and a source of explicit and implicit borrowing for other schools and at the same time an object of criticism from opponents, primarily Buddhists, especially the later ones – Dignagi, Dharmakirti and Dharmottara (VI-VII centuries AD).

The argumentative ideas (canon) of nyaya are described most accurately from methodological positions by Vatsyayana ("Nyaya-bhashya") ^{[14, p.134]}. The list includes: 1) pramana (sources of reliable knowledge); 2) prameya (objects of reliable knowledge); 3) sansha (doubt); 4) prayojana (goal); 5) drishtanta (example); 6) siddhanta (doctrines); 7) avayava (members of syllogism); 8) tarka (reflection); 9) nirnaya (confirmation of truth); 10) vada (discussion); 11) jalpa (sophistry); 12) vitanda (eristics); 13)  hetvabhasa (pseudo-arguments); 14) chhala (language tricks); 15) jati (pseudo-answers); 16) nigrahasthana (reasons for defeat in a dispute) ^{[11, p.176]}. These principles, which is typical of Ancient Indian thought in general and classifications in particular, have a very heterogeneous character. Only the categories under the numbers belong to the theory of argumentation proper, numbers 4, 6, 7, as well as from 10 to 12, and from 14 to 16 inclusive, the remaining ones are rather logical and epistemological in nature and act as contextual keys ^{[15, p.374]}.

The central category is the seventh (avayava), which denotes the actual proof in the form of a five-term syllogism, often compared with the three-term syllogism of Aristotle, including: thesis ("there is fire on the hill"), foundation ("because it smokes"), example ("as in the hearth"), application ("the hill smokes, and this cannot but be accompanied by fire") and conclusion ("therefore, there is fire on this hill").

Thus, nyaya focused on the logical aspect of argumentation, combining the actual proof of the thesis and its refutation, while not denying the importance of the rhetorical and psychological aspects, as evidenced by the presence of such categories as tarka (rules for refuting hypotheses), and nirnaya (elimination of doubt by consensus based on the recognition of the superiority of a position). The latter category significantly echoes the fourth stage of the modern concept of "critical discussion" developed by the Belgian school of pragma-dialectics. An important contribution to the development of the theory of argumentation was also the description and analysis of such types of argumentation as: wada – a genuine normative discussion; jalpa, a sophistic dispute without rules; vitanda – the worst kind of dispute in which opponents do not state their own positions, but only criticize (often aggressively) each other.

Thus, the Nyaiki developed the first normative theory of argumentation, which acted as a model for other religious and philosophical schools. And although not all the principles of the canon were presented even in intra-school training discussions, but in theoretical treatises devoted to disputational art, they were described in a systematic way, and their categorical hierarchy was presented at a fairly high methodological level.

The Early Buddhist doctrine of the adornment and shortcomings of speech

Buddhism played an equally important role in the development of argumentative issues. Many of the basic texts of this school not only reproduce the order of the dispute borrowed from the Nyaiks, but also creatively develop their logical-epistemological and argumentative heritage, which includes as a mandatory requirement the simultaneous justification of their own doctrine and refutation of the teachings of ideological opponents. This unity of proof and refutation, which became one of the key topos of normative theories of argumentation in the prelogical period, made it very difficult to falsify the doctrine from the outside ^[6].

One of the earliest forms of argumentation theory can also be considered the early Buddhist doctrine of the adornment and shortcomings of speech, which is a theoretical reflection on oratory. It describes the types of speeches that are ranked in the following order: "speech in itself", "beautiful speech", "speech of disputes", "correct speech" (dharma – consistent with Buddhist teaching), "bad speech" (not consistent with the teaching). Each of the types can be presented in both "good" and "bad" versions. For the theory of argumentation, the most important is the description of the "speech of disputes", because here there is a communicative situation, and the subjects leading the discussion, and the requirement of having different positions on one subject, as a necessary condition of the dispute. 

The ornaments of speech were: perfect knowledge (of the Buddhist canon and the teachings of opponents) and perfect form – simple, coherent, natural, expressive. Accordingly, the argumentator must have such advantages as intelligence, good memory and diction. He must also be quick-witted, seasoned, able to maintain composure and quick reactions in conditions of polemical communication, as well as bold in defending his position. Early Buddhists paid special attention to a circumstance important for effective argumentation (the purpose of which is persuasion), namely: the authority of the argumentator. Only a creative person capable of emotional, intellectual and spiritual concentration can arouse the trust of listeners and willingness to accept what they are invited to accept, but most importantly, he must know his system well. And in this requirement, Buddhists are close both with Plato, who believed that only those who know the truth can hold a good speech, and with Aristotle, who claimed that what is well-founded convinces the best.

The shortcomings of the speech were related both to the personality of the speaker and to the speeches themselves. The latter are presented in the form of several categories: the first is the recognition of the correctness of the opponent's thesis or his mistake, the second is the avoidance of continuing the dispute, the third is represented by a set of 9 varieties of "bad" speeches, including "dark speech", "violent speech", "disorderly speech", "speech expressed at random", "meaningless speech", as well as "disproportionate speech", i.e. too long or vice versa, etc. ^{[16, pp.20-21]}. Thus, the theoretical understanding of the art of argumentation by early Buddhists, despite the presence of a number of productive logical-argumentative ideas, was an empirical generalization of polemical practices, as well as a set of psychological and rhetorical requirements imposed on the speaker. And as in any art, rhetorical, logical and psychological techniques were intertwined in a syncretic way, which was reflected in the descriptive nature and lack of proper consistency in the branched structure of random classifications with many headings and subheadings allocated for various reasons.

At the same time, the presence of a broad disputational practice in the culture gave impetus to the identification and study of such independent and significant methodological tools for winning a dispute as examples, questions and tricks. So already in the five-term syllogism of nyai, the example played the role of a separate member, and the general rule, which was usually illustrated by an example, was included in the latter and had a subordinate character ^{[17, p.77]}. In early Buddhism, we find detailed and branched classifications of examples into groups (for various reasons): confirming ("by similarity") and refuting ("by dissimilarity"). And if today examples in logic, due to their inductive nature, act as an auxiliary element, then in the ancient East they played an independent and very significant role in argumentation. So in Ancient China, the late Moists in the treatise "Mobian" (chapter "Small choice") formulated "Seven methods" of arguing about the true and untrue, where the fourth method is an analogy of examples (bi) ^{[18, pp.189-192]}. Also in the Western tradition, Aristotle paid attention to the convincing possibilities of even a single psychological example, because it looks like a testimony, which means it inspires the confidence of listeners, especially if used at the end of a speech. This was reflected in the structure of ancient Greek chria (rhetorical speech, often training), which allowed one to reasonably present one's opinion, which included a sentence, reason, opposite, similarity, example, testimony and conclusion ^{[19, pp.184-185]}. And although in Ancient India the relation of a single example to a general thesis is different than that of a Stagirite, in the ancient Buddhist invariant model of proof (thesis, foundation, example, uniformity, heterogeneity, direct perception, conclusion, authority) also, as in the five-term syllogism nyai, examples act as an independent and mandatory element ^{[20, pp.40-41]}. As for the role of questions and tricks in argumentative discourse, they will be the subject of special study in the works of the founder of Buddhist and medieval Indian logic Dignaga, the creator of a systematic theory of argumentation or polemics, which received the name "tarka-vada" in Buddhism - "the doctrine of conducting public debates".

"Indian Aristotle" and his followers

If the early Nyaiki were the first teachers of logical argumentation, then the Buddhist Dignaga, due to his fame gained in public debates, nicknamed the "winner of the universe" ^{[18, p.87]}, and considered the "Indian Aristotle" is the pinnacle in the development of logical-argumentative ideas. Modern logicians, exploring the concepts of inference using the method of philosophical comparative studies, often analyze its logical ideas in comparison with Aristotelian syllogistics.

Dignaga was engaged not only in analyzing the nature of syllogism (rules of terms and relations between them) and the theory of names, but also developed a systematic and original theory of logical errors, rules of conduct in a dispute and organizational and procedural norms. At the heart of the concept of argumentative normativity developed by him (the treatise "Analysis of the sources of true knowledge")  there was a distinction between two types of conclusions – the syllogism "for oneself" ("speech for oneself"), sometimes wrongly, as shown by E.L. Zabolotnykh, identified with the Aristotelian enigma (due to the fact that he missed the premise) ^{[21, p.275]}, and the syllogism "for others" ("speech for others"), having the form of a complete conclusion, in which (and this is important for the audience's perception) a general judgment (a big premise in the Aristotelian tradition of syllogism on the first figure) should be formulated at the very beginning. But, as in the Western tradition, the feeling of the bulkiness of the design pushed for the need to simplify it, resulting in two truncated modes in which examples were used ("by similarity" and "by dissimilarity"). The syllogism "for others" was also the subject of analysis by the followers of Diganaga – Dharmakirti and Dharmottara, who did not limit themselves to considering only evidence in argumentative discourse, but also investigated the reverse procedure – refutation ^[22].  At the same time, they, like their teacher, were considered not with the help of a formal apparatus that allows abstracting from the content of statements, as in the Western tradition, but on the contrary, i.e. on the basis of the practice of meaningful reasoning, which was important for the development of argumentative ideas. 

Another important contribution to the development of the theory of argumentation was the classification of logical errors created by the "three D" (E. L. Zabolotnykh), as well as a systematized register of polemical techniques and tricks. Continuing the tradition started by the Nyaya school, Dignaga compiled a new consolidated list of 34 errors divided into 4 large groups: thesis errors, foundation errors, example errors and refutation errors, which in the Western European tradition, starting with Aristotle and ending with representatives of modern approaches to the construction of argumentation theory (informal logic, pragma-dialectics, neoritorics, formal dialectics, etc.), traditionally pass through the subject "department" of the theory of argumentation. The Dignaga list was clarified by Dharmakirti and Drachmottara: a number of errors in the formulation of the thesis were added to it, logical errors of the basis were analyzed in more detail ("false", "indefinite" and "reverse" grounds were highlighted), and errors in examples were described ("by similarity" and "by dissimilarity").

The Buddhist theory of argumentation existed as a section within the praman-vada – a single logical-epistemological teaching, the understanding of knowledge in which was very different from the ancient "rationality", where the process of cognition was focused on conquering the world and settling a person in it. In India, knowledge ("Veda") was "taken beyond the limits of human thinking into the realm of the transcendent" ^{[23, p.16]}. Because of this, as well as other features of the cultural context, the content of the Buddhist theory of argumentation was extremely heterogeneous: in addition to syllogistic argumentation, which was based on logical proof, it included ontological assumptions, descriptions of different types of argumentation, lists of examples, classifications of logical and argumentative errors, as well as a psychological aspect concerning behavior disputants and their personal characteristics. An important place was also occupied by the problems of choosing the topic of the dispute and organizational and procedural issues related to the conduct of the dispute, determining the place and time of its holding. It is significant that interest in the regulatory rules is also observed among modern researchers, for example, representatives of the pragmatic-dialectical approach to the construction of the theory of argumentation, who try to take into account the communicative and pragmatic aspect as fully as possible in their model of "critical discussion" ^[24].

If in intra-school disputes with like-minded Buddhists tried to comply with the theoretical principles and argumentation requirements developed by them, which was possible because the participants adhered to a single doctrine, then in interfaith polemics with their ideological opponents, for example, representatives of the Nyaya school or Jains, they easily deviated from the declared norms. Here the goal was to win or attract new supporters, so an aggressive type of dispute was practiced and a wider set of polemical means was used (for example, the technique of "loud silence", "pseudo-arguments", etc.), many of which were "forbidden" in nature and very much resembled the tricks of the Greek sophists. Sophistic practice was widespread in ancient India during the "Shraman period", an example is the activity of the so-called "slippery eels" (Brahman skeptics), famous for their ability to avoid answers to difficult (metaphysical) questions of opponents. In this they were helped by the logical-rhetorical game chatushkotika ("four–top"), which occupies a special place in the culture of Indian disputes, a specific methodological technique that requires consideration of all possible alternatives to solving the issue under consideration.

The institution of the ancient Indian dispute with the destruction of traditional society fell into decline, the canons and norms of argumentation soon turned out to be unclaimed and gradually fell out of the sphere of research attention, giving way to problems of a purely logical nature – the conclusion and its structure by the VII century AD.

Conclusion

The reception of the doctrines of dispute and public speech that arose in ancient times, both in the West and in the East, and having, despite various ontological antecedents, a similar normative core, invariant conceptual schemes and categorical apparatus, allows us to regard them as the first theories of argumentation containing significant methodological potential for modern researchers focused today, mainly on the development of certain aspects of argumentative discourse: logical, rhetorical, psychological, linguistic, pragmatic, cognitive, etc. At the same time, the appeal to the heritage of the ancients, in our opinion, can stimulate theoretical searches in the direction of syncretism when creating the foundations of a generally valid theory of argumentation. Such searches are very relevant in the situation of pluralism of different cultures, leading to the intensification of communications, during which the pragmatic need for new standards of polemical interaction is acutely realized. Therefore, it is hardly possible to agree with those researchers who note that Indian philosophy only asserts, but does not prove, that it is entirely positive, and not reasoned" ^{[8, p.10]}. And it is also absolutely categorically impossible to accept the statement that "the Indian and Chinese traditions ... did not develop and did not develop rhetoric" due to the fact that "public oratory was absent in these cultures" ^{[25, p.34]}.