This book is devoted to a unitary argument, but over such a wide range of material that I offer the reader preliminary guidance in this chapter, beginning with an overview.
The next chapter (concluding Part A) presents explanations of the similarity between the earliest philosophy in India and Greece. Part B describes the polytheist reciprocity that, among an elite, was replaced in both cultures by monism. Part C centres on the main factors behind this replacement in India: the individual interiorisation of what I call the cosmic rite of passage, and monetisation. Part D describes the similar factors behind the similar development of ideas in Greece. The conclusion (Part E) summarises and explores the variety of factors behind the new imagining of universe and inner self.
Although Part C focuses mainly on India and Part D mainly on Greece, I have made frequent attempts throughout the book to explain the similarities and differences between the intellectual transformations in the two cultures. Some references to the Greek material in Part C will be fully appreciated only after the analogy between the Greek and the Indian intellectual transformations has become clear in Part D. Possible early misgivings about my position on monetisation as an important factor behind the intellectual transformations are addressed in Part E.
There follows a brief summary of each chapter.
Chapter 2 describes the set of metaphysical ideas that, roughly speaking, arose at about the same time in India and Greece and nowhere else (2§A). For the sake of clarity, right from the start I expose the weaknesses of several kinds of explanation, in particular the widely popular assumption of ‘influence’ (2§C), while also setting out the evidence for the socio-economic transformations that I regard as the most important but relatively neglected factor (2§E).
In Part B, Chapter 3 describes how there is in the earliest texts of both cultures (Rigveda, Homer, Hesiod) a variety of anthropomorphic deities whose goodwill is to be elicited by offerings and praise, against a background combination of pastoralism and agriculture, with no money and very little commerce.
Chapter 4 concerns the construction of the inner self in the Rigveda and in Homer. The comprehensive, bounded inner self with which we are familiar, but which is in fact given to us not by nature but as a construction in some societies but not in others (4§A), is found neither in Homer (4§B) nor in the Rigveda (4§C). Its absence can be correlated with polytheist reciprocity (4§D), whereas its subsequent development (i.e. of atman and psuchē) can be correlated with various kinds of monism, of which there are a very few slight occurrences in the latest section of the Rigveda (4§E). The explanation I will give of these developments requires a preliminary description here of the phenomena of cosmisation (cosmic projection) and interiorisation (introjection) (4§F).
In Part C, Chapter 5 begins with similarities and differences between Vedic and Greek sacrifice, notably the centrality to Greek sacrifice of the communal meal that was absent from Vedic sacrifice (5§A), in which the cycle of nature, the payment of metaphysical debt and the rite of passage to heaven and back each forms a cosmic cycle driven by necessity (5§B). The individualisation of the Vedic sacrifice, along with its interiorisation and automatisation (5§C), cannot be explained without taking into account the factor of monetisation (5§D). Individualisation in India and Greece has different cultural consequences (5§E).
Chapter 6 describes the construction of the unified inner self and its relation to the universe. A movement from diversity (inner, cosmic and political) to wholeness is found in the mythic-ritual complex of both cultures, notably in the strikingly similar myths of Prajapati and Dionysos (6§A). The wholeness of the inner self correlates with the wholeness of the world obtained by sacrifice (6§B). The formation of the unified inner self (atman) as cosmogony is described in the opening of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (6§C). The relation of atman to other candidates for the role of unified inner self, prana and manas, is described (6§D).
Chapter 7 describes a distinctively Indian phenomenon. The participation of individual autocrats (Kshatriyas) in the dialogues of the early Upanishads is associated with new metaphysical doctrines that will be shown to reflect monetisation (7§A). The social power that is interiorised in the construction of the unified inner self is in India (mainly) autocracy, whereas in Greece – where kingship is in decline – it is (mainly) monetary value (7§B).
The first three chapters of Part C have focused on the inner self. The remaining three focus on cosmology.
Chapter 8 describes the development of the various forms of monism (material, personal, mental, abstract) after the Rigveda (8§A). The traditional correspondences, between ritual and what ritual controls, tend to collapse into a single identification, of subject with object (8§B), making for the prominence and coalescence of mental monism and abstract monism in the early Upanishads – under the influence of universal abstract value (8§C). Awareness of the unity of all things (monism) is associated with immortality (8§D). The monistic tendency is illustrated by focus on a single passage (CU 6: 8§E).
Chapter 9 describes the earliest extant Indian beliefs about the afterlife (9§A), which were superseded by the idea of individually accumulated metaphysical merit accompanied by the danger of repeated death (9§C) and develops into the idea of subjection in the hereafter to a repeated cosmic cycle (9§D). All this prefigures the combination of individually accumulated karma with the universal cycle of reincarnation (saṃsāra), from which escape was sought by various forms of renunciation (9§E). An important factor in these developments was the individual accumulation and universal circulation of money (9§F).
Chapter 10 begins with a critique of the best existing attempt (by Obeyesekere) to explain the origins of what I call ethicised indiscriminate reincarnation (EIR) in India and in Greece. But in my view any successful explanation cannot exclude monetisation (10§A), which also contributes to the importance of cyclicality in reincarnation (10§B), and to the advent of the widespread and persistent idea of individually accumulated karma (10§C). This requires reflection on the different roles of kinship in Greece and India (10§D).
In Part D the main focus moves from India to Greece. Chapter 11 compares the interiorisation of the cosmic rite of passage in India (sacrifice) and Greece (mystic initiation) (11§A), identifies the importance of the soul (psuchē) in mystic initiation (11§B), which is interiorised in Herakleitos (12§B), in Parmenides (11§C) and in Plato (11§D). This Greek interiorisation promoted ideas akin to the coalescence of mental with abstract monism promoted by the interiorisation of the cosmic rite of passage in India.
Chapter 12 classifies Greek monism with the same four categories as used for India (12§A), and describes the transition – also found in India – from reciprocity to monism (12§B), which is closely associated with the new inner self (12§C). The element of fire in universe and inner self allows cross-cultural comparison that includes Zoroastrianism and Buddhism (12§D).
Chapter 13 describes the projection (13§A) and interiorisation (introjection) of abstract value. The idea of the comprehensive inner self as constituting a person’s identity is first indicated in the Homeric Achilles’ evaluation, in a crisis of reciprocity, of his psuchē (13§B), which is also the first of many passages in which death is envisaged as an economic transaction (13§C), for instance in Herakleitos, who is also the first to focus on the nature of the living psuchē (13§D) and who also exemplifies the Greek interiorisation of unifying abstract value (13§E).
Chapter 14 describes the opposition within early Greek metaphysics between the ontological privileging of (communal) circulation and of (individually owned) abstract value (14§A). Our three key processes of abstraction, monetisation and ritual are assessed as factors in the production of Parmenidean ‘reason’ (14§B), a combination facilitated by the similarities between money and ritual (14§C), both of which contribute to the Greek doctrine of reincarnation, which was taught in mystic initiation and involved a cosmic projection (cosmisation) of monetised circulation (14§D).
Chapter 15 discusses the various features of the Platonic inner self (soul, psuchē), in particular its interiorisation of controlling abstract value and of the master-slave relationship (15§A). We then take a detour through linguistics, the history of reflexivity in Greek and Sanskrit, to provide independent evidence for our view of monetisation as a factor in the emergence of the unitary inner self (15§B), which is then related to the influence of monetised self-sufficiency on a continuous passage of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (15§C).
In the concluding section (Part E), Chapter 16 emphasises the complex diversity of factors that shaped the Greek and Indian intellectual revolutions (16§A), describes the metaphysical consequences of a variety of perspectives on money (16§B) and accounts for the differences between brahman and the Parmenidean One (16§C). Chapter 17 sets out the historical factors behind the differing conceptions in India and Greece of the interrelation of universe with inner self (17§A) and the absence from Greece of karma (17§B).
