Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

to substantiate their claim not only on the basis of external
reasoning, but an internal ethic informed by public
accountability, a historicization of dalit reality, and tolerance
towards internal intellectual dissent” (Guru 2001: 38).
While a critic or a movement takes a political side,
he/she has to connect with as well as keep an appropriate
distance from the beliefs and values of the people whose life
is the object of his/her criticism. This gives rise to another
related problem of relation between social criticism and
internal traditions of a society. The question would be: is it
necessary to take the traditions of a society seriously so as to
make social criticism a worthwhile engagement? In other
words, whether to take people’s cultural and traditional
practices as the starting point of our inquiry or reject them
merely as opinion of those whose life itself is in urgent need of
deliverance.
If the critics seek fervour through arguments using the
traditional beliefs as standards then it must be ensured that
the evaluation of tradition involves a movement towards
deeper and more objective level. Then only criticism will lead
the critics through a thorough imaginative exploration of
alternative views and subsequently towards the modification
of their unconsidered positions. However “this modification, if it
takes place, will take place not as an imposition from without,
but as a discovery about which, among that person’s own
values, are the deepest and the most central. This is selfdiscovery
and discovery of one’s own traditions” (Nussbaum
and Sen 1987: 24).
Accepting the idea of social criticism as a collective
reflection on collective life takes into consideration the reality
of collective life, of common values and a shared tradition.
Though difficult, it is a significant task of a social critic to
respond, within the tradition, to a new social experience and
order. It is to be noted here that the sources of this criticism
are not always totally internal to the traditions. They usually
emerge out of a global interpermeation of traditions and
civilizational dialogues. This process of mutual interpenetration
becomes imperative for societies to evaluate critically and
emerge out of the unjust social arrangements and move
towards good life.
In this perspective it becomes easy to situate the critical
agenda of some prominent Indian social critics and reformers
such as Swami Vivekanand, Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo
and others. They were looking for an approach to social
criticism which has double-edged nature. It would
simultaneously be a critique of imperialism and of Indian
civilization – culture and tradition – in a radical way. The
sources of their criticism were not merely internal to Indian
tradition but were also influenced by the emancipatory
traditions of the west. In other words, it was a dialectic
between the Indian spiritual tradition and the western agenda
of modernity.
Another important aspect is that the dialogue between
tradition and critique may not always be a smooth one. If
tradition fails in upholding the basic humanitarian values of
justice, equality and human dignity for its members then it
needs to be thrown away. Situations like these demand an
audacious social criticism which can break away from the
traditional and create new ones for the sake of these values.
The emergence of heterodox systems like Buddhism and
Jainism, challenging the very foundation of the Vedic tradition
becomes very relevant against the backdrop of Indian
intellectual history. In this context, breaking away from the
tradition of Vedic texts remained the only possibility to reestablish
the values. The need of the time was to break away
from the dead letters to the living world. The dalit movements
have also mostly called for giving up the words of the Vedas
Social Criticism through Internal and Intercultural Dialogues- Vikram Singh Sirola
and the Shastras, which were worshipped as sacred words in
the Hindu tradition, and to abandon them in favour of
contemporary interpretation of life. Even Gandhi’s
interpolations for reinterpretation of certain portion of these
texts which support caste practices, were rejected.
This leads to another problem of social criticism, i.e.,
the critic turning a blind eye towards the ‘form of life’ to which
he or she belongs. As social criticism involves taking a
hypothetical attitude to one’s culture, society and conception
of self, it is quite challenging for critics to overcome this
blindness. Jürgen Habermas recognises it when he says
“individuals who have been socialized cannot take a
hypothetical attitude to the form of life and the personal lifehistory
that have shaped their own identity” (Habermas 1990:
104). But it doesn’t mean that this blindness cannot be
surmounted. In compliance with the Western critical tradition, it
is possible through rational deliberation on that ‘form of life’.
Habermas would call it discourse ethics. According to him, the
participant in such a discourse will not find the relevance of
‘experiential context of his life’ for very long. So he will be open
to question the normativeness of the existing social
institutions. In his words: “Under the unrelenting moralizing
gaze of participants in discourse… familiar institutions can be
transformed into so many instances of problematic justice”
(Habermas 1990: 108). This reaffirms our faith in the ability of
rationality to arrive at an integration of life. But it is to be noted
here that valorising the collective identities alone can lead to
suppression of creative variations within a collective. Hence,
there is a need to widen this discourse to accommodate and
respond to this paradox.
Self criticism in this respect is the foundation of social
criticism. As a mode of critical engagement, it is also meant to
enable others to be critical of themselves. It seeks to
interrogate the life that one is leading with respect to others
making it imperative for any social critique to reflect whether
the desired transformation in institutions and society in his /
her critical agenda is also at work in his / her own life.
A good social criticism demands a critic to take a
hypothetical attitude to one’s society and overcome one’s
blindness towards its culture and tradition. But this process of
withdrawal from the society has to be accompanied by a
process of returning back to it in order to join the common
enterprise. In new light, critics make use of the educatability
and the creativity of the people to lead them to a new life
which is based on self-realized, transformed values, thereby
transforming and reconstructing the society. It is precisely the
task of social reconstruction to improve the ethical
conventions that govern social life. One cannot overlook the
transformational significance of social criticism. However, it is
always possible that the critic can get the things wrong.
Walzer, I believe, is fully justified when he says “a good social
criticism is as rare as good poetry or good philosophy” (Walzer
1988: 58).
References
Beteille, Andre 1980 Ideology and Intellectuals, Delhi: Oxford
University Press
Guru Gopal 2001 “Politics of Representation”, Seminar, Delhi, 37-
44
Habermas Jurgen Moral Consciousness and Communicative
Action, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990
Nussbaum M.C and Sen A 1987 “Internal Criticism and the Indian
Rationalist Traditions.” Helsinki: WIDER Working Paper
Walzer Michael 1988 “Interpretation and Social Criticism”, S.M.
McCurin, (ed.) The Tenner Lectures on Human Values, Utah: Univ.
of Utah and Cambridge Press
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