Shaj Mohan

Mohan completed his early education in Thiruvananthapuram and studied philosophy at St. Stephen's College, Delhi where he taught for some time.[13][14] He has academic degrees in economics and philosophy.[3][15] He has written philosophical essays against the rise of Hindu nationalism in The Indian Express[16], Mediapart[17], Outlook, La Croix[18], The Wire, Le Monde[19] and Libération.[20]

Shaj Mohan has published in the areas of metaphysics, reason, nature[21], secrecy, philosophy of technology[22], and philosophy of politics.[23][24][25] His work combines the formalism and argumentation of analytic philosophy with the intuitive exegetical style of continental philosophy. Mohan is credited with having "created a new voice in philosophy" but "one can't help hear in it the voice of prophesy".[13] Mohan said that it is possible to practice philosophy without anchoring it to any tradition[26]. Mohan said the practice of philosophy is seen as dangerous for "the decadent components of the present" and that invites danger to the philosopher. He said "The danger of philosophy comes through the erotic relation with the future, and what can be called ‘the eternal’, which constitutes the being of the philosopher".[13] In a conversation with Barbara Cassin Mohan said that the concept of voice in philosophy is made possible by the fundamental freedom of the question "what do you think?".[27] He argued that reason has an important role in philosophy in spite of the criticisms of it in the 20th century. Reason exceeds mechanical thinking as it has a relation to "the obscure".[28]

Mohan wrote the book Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Anti-politics published by Bloomsbury Academic, UK[29] with the philosopher Divya Dwivedi. Jean-Luc Nancy wrote the foreword to Gandhi and Philosophy and described the originality this work in terms of the relation shown by it between truth and suffering. Dwivedi and Mohan stated it as "in direct proportion to the exposure [of Truth] there is suffering, and in direct proportion to un-truth there is liveable life".[30] Nancy wrote that this work creates the new beginning for philosophy following the end of metaphysics,

"This is how this book comes to our attention and contributes to orient us, if I may say so, toward a thought, and even a world, neither humanist nor reduced to suffering in the name of Truth. In the terms of this work: neither metaphysics nor hypophysics."[10]

Gandhi and Philosophy: On Theological Anti-politics

M. K. Gandhi in 1909

According to Jean-Luc Nancy Gandhi and Philosophy leads to a new orientation outside of the theological, metaphysical and nihilistic tendencies in philosophy. Bernard Stiegler said that this work "give us to reconsider the history of nihilism in the eschatological contemporaneity and shows its ultimate limits" and offers a new path.[12][11] Gandhi and Philosophy calls this new beginning the anastasis of philosophy.[31] Robert Bernasconi said that the inventiveness and the constructivism behind the concept of ana-stasis, or the overcoming of stasis, has a relation to the project of re-beginning of philosophy by Heidegger.[32]

Gandhi and Philosophy proposed that parallel to the metaphysical tendency in philosophy there is hypophysics. Hypophysics is defined as "a conception of nature as value". Mohan said "This non-philosophical system, which we call hypophysics, is necessarily interesting for philosophy. "[4] The distance from nature that human beings and natural objects come to have through the effects of technology lessens their value, or brings them closer to evil. Gandhi's concept of passive force or nonviolence is an implication of his hypophysical commitment to nature.[33]

The philosophical direction outside of metaphysics and hypophysics is created through the invention of a new conceptual order. It is meant to enable philosophy to step outside the regime of sign, signifier, and text.[31][4] The Book Review said that the philosophical project of Gandhi and Philosophy is to create new evaluative categories, "the authors, in engaging with Gandhi's thought, create their categories, at once descriptive and evaluative" while pointing to the difficulty given by the rigour of a "A seminal if difficult read for those with an appetite for philosophy".[34] Some of these conceptual inventions have been noted to have come from mathematics and biology.

"The authors invent new formal concepts out of the sciences and mathematics. They engage closely and argumentatively with important thinkers including the biologist Jacques Monod, philosopher Foucault, mathematician Hermann Weyl, anthropologist Pierre Clastres and the burlesque artist Dita Von Teese."[31]

The Indian Express found that one of these inventions is Scalology. Scalology is the practice of using a scale, such as speed or size, to measure the moral state of a political or social system. Gandhi used the scale of speed to measure moral values because for him transporting oneself by foot would be more virtuous compared to taking a train which is effectively treating "slow" as good and "quick" as evil.[35]

The constructionist tendency of Gandhi and Philosophy places it between the dominant philosophical styles of continental philosophy and analytical philosophy.[31] The conclusion of Gandhi and Philosophy emphasizes the construction of a new dimension in philosophy.

"Anastasis is the obscure beginning which would gather the occidental and the oriental to make of them a chrysalis and set off the imagos born with their own spans and skies; these skies and the imagos set against them will refuse to trade in orientations; and these skies will be invisible to the departed souls of Hegel who sought mercury in the darkest nights."[36]

Mohan's work on Gandhi was criticised from the point of view methodological and stylistic difficulty. Robert Bernasconi noted that Gandhi and Philosophy is a difficult book and it is "not a book that you will understand at first reading".[32] The difficulty due to the constructivist style was noted by other authors as well.[34][31] Tridip Suhrud pointed to the "opacity" of style in The Hindu and explained it as the effect of "reflections on language".[37] Gandhi and Philosophy was criticised from the point of view of the recent mounting criticisms of Gandhi in India and internationally. It was said that Gandhi and Philosophy might be exalting Gandhi while being very critical of him at the same time. The ambiguous approach to Gandhi was described in one of the commentaries in The Indian Express as "Mohan and Dwivedi have done a masterful job of avoiding the binary fork – hagiography or vituperation – as much of Gandhi and hagiography comes from a need to spiritualise Gandhi".[35] Economic and Political Weekly pointed to Mohan and Dwivedi's participation in the paradigm of "western philosophy", especially when Gandhi's goal was to create an alternative to Eurocentrism. EPW said that her work may be of interest only to continental philosophy as she does not participate in Indic discourses.[38] In The Indian Express Aakash Joshi commented on the negative implications of Gandhi and Philosophy and said that through this book "Gandhi can be seen as a nihilist – someone who even decries sex for reproduction and would like human society to wither away." Joshi stressed that this point of view is opposed to "secularism of a particular kind, freedom from colonial concepts, caste without violence".[4]

• The Resurrection of Philosophy Biographical essay on Shaj Mohan and Divya Dwivedi at The Wire.
• Coronavirus and Philosophers Compendium of articles by Giorgio Agamben, Divya Dwivedi, Roberto Esposito, Shaj Mohan, Jean-Luc Nancy and others.