Abstract

While Yoga (also called Bhakti, “devotion”) is a comprehensive philosophy, it is importantly an ancient and basic ethical theory, unique to South Asia (what is commonly called the Indian tradition). It is not a variant of virtue ethics, consequentialism and deontology, but is an additional kind of moral theory. And in its literary articulation, in dialog and story (such as the Mahābhārata and the Upaniṣads), it has a long history of criticizing teleological ethical theories, including – and especially – consequentialism. It is a radically procedural ethical theory, does not require the Good to elucidate the Right, and provides a critical response to all three alternatives. The main obstacle to understanding Yoga is methodological. It pertains to how we can understand philosophical options that we do not necessarily agree with, and which are novel relative to our background assumptions and beliefs. Without methodological clarity, we will be doomed to understand alternatives in terms of familiar options. Yoga's metaethics provides us the tools necessary to engage in this research. In addition, it also sets out a unique normative (ideal) ethical theory and a non-ideal practice that is now the foundation of decolonial practices of direct action.