Origins of the "double-truth"

[Steve Farmer]

On recent views in the List on the supposed origins of the
double-truth (see, e.g., two earlier posts from Satya Upadhya and
Bhadraiah Mallampalli, quoted at the end of this note):

Attempts to show that one tradition derived this idea from
another are complicated by the fact that some version of the
double-truth sooner or later showed up in virtually every sacred
or semi-sacred manuscript tradition known. Religious and
philosophical exegetes world-wide recognized (in most cases, if
not all, independently) that if conflicting concepts showed up in
two authoritative texts or traditions, as a last resort the two
sides could be reconciled by distinguishing different "levels" of
reality and redistributing the conflicting concepts to those
respective levels.

The method was used extensively from late ancient to early modern
times in China, India, the Middle East, and Europe to harmonize a
wide spectrum of scholastic conflicts. There really is nothing
special about its use in either Buddhist or Advaitan traditions.
Repeated use of the method globally was one of the most common
forces leading to the kinds of stratifications in reality
associated cross-culturally with scholastic traditions.

In the Middle East and Europe, the double-truth is most often
associated by religious historians with the works ascribed to Ibn
Rushd (Averroës, "The Commentator") or his Latin commentators.
See here Bruno Nardi's numerous studies -- e.g., _Sigieri di
Brabante nel pensiero del Rinascimento italiano_ (Rome, 1945).
See also Etienne Gilson's many discussions of the topic. It is
possible to point to use of the technique by hundreds of other
later Latin scholastics well up into the 16th century CE (e.g.,
Pomponazzi). Despite what Nardi and Gilson say, not all of them,
by any stretch of the imagination, can be labeled "Averroists."
Use of the method was in fact quite widespread in Western
scholastic traditions.

You can find uses of the double-truth for similar reconciliative
purposes in the Three-Treatise (San-lun) School of Chinese
Buddhism. Some nice textual examples can be studied easily here
in de Bary et al., eds., _A Sources of Chinese Tradition_ (1960:
1:293-303) and Fung Yu-lan, _A History of Chinese Philosophy_
(1953: 2:293ff.)

On the double-truth in Vedantic traditions, I personally like
Patricia Y. Mumme, "Haunted by Sankara's Ghost: The Srivaisnava
interpretation of Bhagavad Gita 18:66," in Jeffrey R. Tim, ed.,
_Texts in Contexts: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia_
(Albany, 1992, pp. 69-84). There are, of course, countless
discussions of the so-called double-truth in Sankara, but Mumme's
little essay is ground-breaking in recognizing how important the
repeated use of exegetical strategies like this were for
metaphysical and cosmological developments in Indian thought.
Looking at Sankara and the double-truth, Mumme makes the
perceptive observation (p. 70) that "From an Indian perspective,
an orthodox metaphysical system may be only a by-product of a
proper hermeneutical approach to scripture....Western Indologists
need to divert some attention from the metaphysical carts in
Indian thought in order to give closer scrutiny to the
hermeneutical horses that may be driving them."

What Mumme says about Indian metaphysics in particular can be
claimed about premodern cosmological thinking in general. On this
issue in relation especially to the double-truth, see S. Farmer,
_Syncretism in the West_ (1998 [1999], pp. 61-63; cf. also the
Subject Index there under "double-truth," p. 576. The long-range
implications of the repeated use of methods like this in
manuscript traditions are discussed on pp. 74 ff. of that book.

Conclusion: The so-called double-truth came in countless
premodern forms. It is an error to assign credit or blame for the
concept to a single tradition.

S. Farmer

> >From: Satya Upadhya <satya_upadhya at HOTMAIL.COM>
>
> >--> Further, both the vijnanavadis and the sunyavadis believe in the so
> >called "theory of two truths" which makes a distinction between >the barely
> >emperical or practical point of view ("samvriti satya") >and the ultimate
> >or metaphysical truth ("parmartha satya"). [With >minor terminological
> >modifications, it is submitted that this theory >of "two truths" was
> >surreptiously borrowed by the Advaitists--it is >not present in the
> >Upanisads.]
>
> Kindly check..
>
> http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/upan/up09c.htm
>
> 1. FIFTH ADHYAYA-FIRST BRAHMANA which talks about "the invisible Brahman"
> and "the visible Brahman"
>
> 2. FIFTH ADHYAYA-THIRD BRAHMANA which talks about the word "satyA" being
> made of three syllables.  Two truths "sa" and "ya" and separated by the
> untruth "ti".
>
> Sankara's commentary may explain about the "two truths", but in any case
> they must about the visible/invisible brahmans which is the topic of first
> brahmana.
>
> Regards
> Bhadraiah