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My dear murugappan,

Received your letter! Well you have asked me about epistemology, existentialism, phenomenology, dasein and the need for hermeneutics in saiva siddhantham,in your last  letter.

I shall  will give you the definitions of them and saiva hermeneutics now.

1.Epistemology:

 Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry.

 

2.What is existentialism philosophy?

Existentialism is basically an eastern philosophy and it has its western counterpart. For the past two centuries it has become a dominant theme there . It is more an attitude in the west than a philosophy. I am giving you the brief explanation about it –however inadequate it may be – from Stanford university website. “On the existential view, to understand what a human being is it is not enough to know all the truths that natural science—including the science of psychology—could tell us. The dualist who holds that human beings are composed of independent substances—“mind” and “body”—is no better off in this regard than is the physicalist, who holds that human existence can be adequately explained in terms of the fundamental physical constituents of the universe.

Existentialism does not deny the validity of the basic categories of physics, biology, psychology, and the other sciences (categories such as matter, causality, force, function, organism, development, motivation, and so on). It claims only that human beings cannot be fully understood in terms of them. Nor can such an understanding be gained by supplementing our scientific picture with a moral one. Categories of moral theory such as intention, blame, responsibility, character, duty, virtue, and the like do capture important aspects of the human condition, but neither moral thinking (governed by the norms of the good and the right) nor scientific thinking (governed by the norm of truth) suffices.

 “Existentialism”, therefore, may be defined as the philosophical theory which holds that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to grasp human existence. To approach existentialism in this categorical way may seem to conceal what is often taken to be its “heart” , namely, its character as a gesture of protest against academic philosophy, its anti-system sensibility, its flight from the “iron cage” of reason.

 But while it is true that the major existential philosophers wrote with a passion and urgency rather uncommon in our own time, and while the idea that philosophy cannot be practiced in the disinterested manner of an objective science is indeed central to existentialism, it is equally true that all the themes popularly associated with existentialism—dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom, commitment, nothingness, and so on—find their philosophical significance in the context of the search for a new categorical framework, together with its governing norm”.

3.Dasein:

 You have asked me about the word dasein, I will give you the meaning  of the word dasein as it is given in encyclopedia britanica.

  “Heidegger discarded the very concept of consciousness and proposed a “fundamental ontology” of human being  which he called “the Dasein”. Man as a subject in the world cannot be made the object of sophisticated theoretical conceptions such as “substance” or “cause”; man, furthermore, finds himself....questions are set aside in order to address a variety of concerns pertaining to the “being for which its own being is an issue”—the human subject, which Heidegger calls “Dasein” (literally, “being there”) in order to stress subjectivity’s worldly and existential features. “

4.Phenomenology:

What is phenomenology?

  Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.

The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.

6.Saivism exegesis:

Understanding hidden meanings within saivism!

  "The understanding of Śaivism can only aspire to objectivity if it includes a sincere effort to see how things are in the subjective perception of its practitioners. One has to be able to enter into the spirit of their world, to be with them intimately, to see what they are saying and why they are saying it, to go beneath the surface of their texts. There has to be empathy." - from an interview with A.G.J.S. Sanderson, all souls university London

 

Why interpretation of saivism?

Dr.K.Loganathan, Linguist and Dravidologist ,Malaysia writes,

“Hermeneutic Science appears to be the central methodology that has fashioned  the significant achievements in linguistics,  philosophy, psychology and such other disciplines that constitute the higher culture of the Dravidians, particularly the Tamils.  In the ancient tamil grammar text tholakappiam such effort is made. An attempt must be made to study the literary hermenuetics as is available in Marapiyal, an ancient text appended to Tolkappiyam, trace its origins to the Sumerian times and discuss the important way in which it is similar or dissimilar to the hermeneutic tradition in the West. This historical and comparative study has furnished important new insights into the meaning of “utti”, a key technical term in Dravidian Hermeneutics on the basis of which the interpretations of the great commentators  are criticized. “

 The Malaysian scholar views Sumerian influence in agamas and tamil it is yet to be proved beyond doubt. Most linguists and historians  feel the agama are derivative of the vedas and the tamil civilization’s relationships with indus valley or sumeria are speculative at this time.

Murugappan, these definitions should have clarified the larger picture of hermeneutics and the technical terms related to them. In the following section we shall go to the aspects of unconscious in the western philosophy development.

affectionately,
gandhibabu