Ontology of relations in Analytical Philosophy of Religion

Wednesday and Thursday there will be a conference entitled Relatio Subsistens in Verona (Italy). I am looking forward for the chance of discussing the Viśiṣṭādvaita concept of apṛthaksiddhatā ‘indissolubility’ between God and knowledge in Analytical terms.

EAAA on reuse in visual arts

As you migh already know, I am leaving tomorrow for Olomouc where I will host on Friday the 26th with Julia Hegewald and Cristina Bignami a panel on reuse in visual arts. Here is the program of our panel:

Title: Re-use at the Borders of South Asia: Himalayas and South India
9-9:30 Elisa FRESCHI “Reuse in Texts and the Arts: The case of Hayagrīva’s Descriptions”
9:30-10 Julia HEGEWALD “The Theory of Re-use as a Method in Art-historical Research”
10-10:30 Gerald KOZICZ “The re-use of the nidhi iconography in the Tibetan context”
10:30-11 Verena WIDORN “The use and re-use of aesthetic concepts in the Himalayan area”
BREAK
11:30-12 Cristina BIGNAMI “The re-use of the iconography of the lion/tiger in the Karṇataka Medieval sovereignty
12-12:30 Tiziana LORENZETTI “Appropriation and re-interpretation of symbolic and architectural elements in the Lingayat religiosity”
12:30-13: Mallica KUMBERA LANDRUS “Sharing and reshaping collective memories in Portuguese Goa”
LUNCH + TOUR etc.
17-17:30 Elena MUCCIARELLI “The Plucking of different flowers: Re-use in Kerala theatrical tradition”
17:30-18 concluding session: DISCUSSION

Should you come to the conference, don’t forget to join the discussion (or to join me for a coffee break).

CfP: Language as a tools for acquiring Knowledge (Atiner conference)

If you have been following this blog or my previous one you will know that I have been looking for chances for cross-cultural philosophy since many years. You will also know that I have been thinking at the Atiner Conference as a good chance to discuss about Indian themes as part of Philosophy tout court and not within the small ghetto of Indian Philosophy for Indologists.

This year, Malcolm C. Keating (University of Texas, Austin) and I will be hosting a panel at the next Atiner conference in Athens, 25–28 May 2015. If you are interested to join, read the following CfP and drop a line either in the comments or at my personal address. (more…)

Comparison and Comparative Method —The sixth Coffee Break Conference: CfP

The Coffee Break Conference began as an attempt to encourage the kind of critical and open-ended discussions that have unfortunately been confined to short coffee breaks at most academic conferences. Coffee Break Conferences give scholars the opportunity to critically discuss their work, especially new work, in an interdisciplinary setting. Discussions at these conferences have tended to focus on scholarly methodology and all types of comparisons: between areas of study, between the approaches of different disciplines, between the concepts and vocabulary of different traditions of scholarship.

The next Coffee Break Conference, to be held in Venice on September 10-12 2015, will directly take up the theme of comparison. In a series of panels, including a conference-wide roundtable session, we will discuss the form that comparison takes in scholarly work, what its advantages and liabilities are, and the philosophical and political issues that comparison raises. Scholars are invited to submit papers to one of the proposed panels, listed below, or to propose a panel on the theme of comparison. Younger scholars are encouraged to participate.

The current plan of the conference, subject to modification, is as follows:

1) Linguistic Selves: Language and Identity in the Premodern World (contact person: Andrew Ollett, andrew.ollett@gmail.com)

2) 1) From cross-cultural comparison to shared epistemic spaces: educating desire in the “medieval” epistemic space (contact person: Marco Lauri, marco.f.lauri@gmail.com)

3) The “Religion” Challenge: Comparative Religious Studies and the Trouble to Transfer Conceptional Terms from Europe to Asia (contact person: Ann-Kathrin Wolff, ann-kathrin.wolf@rub.de; Madlen Krüger, madlen.krueger@rub.de)

4) Is Theology comparable? Comparison applied to “Theology” and “God” (contact person: Elisa Freschi, elisa.freschi@gmail.com)

5) Knowing the unknown: extra-ordinary cognitions in a comparative perspective (contact person: Marco Ferrante, marco.ferrante@oeaw.ac.at)

6) The trans-cultural reshaping of psychoanalysis, or the perks of comparative psychodynamics (contact person: Daniele Cuneo, danielecuneo@hotmail.it)

Further infos on the CBCs in general and on the 2015 edition in particular can be found here: http://asiaticacoffeebreak.wordpress.com/
and here:
http://asiatica.wikispaces.com/2015+on+comparison

(The conference will most probably take place in Rome, September the 17th to 19th 2015.)

Chief of the Organizing Committee: E. Freschi, A. Ollett

IABS: a panel on intertextuality

Did you notice? The program of the IABS conference is now available (you can download it from here). If you are not speaking on Wednesday, you might consider attending our panel on “Originality and the Role of Intertextuality in the Context of Buddhists Texts“.

(more…)

Workshop with Lawrence McCrea

Workshop

Veṅkaṭanātha on malefic sacrifices and dharma

Date: Mon, 18 August, 10am – 5pm, Tue, 19 August, 1pm – 5 pm
Venue: Institut für Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, Seminarraum 1
Apostelgasse 23, 1030 Wien
Organisation: Elisa Freschi (IKGA)

The workshop will be conducted by Larry McCrea.

Topic

The workshop will focus on Veṅkaṭanātha’s (1269–1370) approach to Mīmāṃsā through the works he dedicated to this school, i.e., Seśvaramīmāṃsā, Mīmāṃsāpādukā and, secondarily, Śatadūṣaṇī and Tattvamuktākalāpa.

Veṅkaṭanātha was the foremost systematizer of the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and immensely contributed to its positioning within the Indian philosophical landscape, while still presenting his contribution as doing nothing more than explicating his predecessors’ position. In particular, he chose to introduce the Mīmāṃsā within the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, notwithstanding the fact that the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta is essentially a Vaiṣṇava school, whereas the Mīmāṃsā is usually regarded as atheistic. Veṅkaṭanātha further needed to take into account his predecessors’ (chiefly Yāmuna and Rāmānuja) sceptical standpoint on Mīmāṃsā.

Parallel passages dealing with selected topics in the three texts will be read in the original Sanskrit and analysed, with a particular focus on Veṅkaṭanātha’s innovations in his interpretation of Mīmāṃsā and on his solutions to the problems hinted at above.

Topics to be dealt with

  • artha and anartha within the Veda: The conundrum of malefic sacrifices:Seśvaramīmāṃsā ad Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 1.1.2.
  • Is the Veda the instrument to know dharma? Seśvaramīmāṃsā ad 1.1.2.

Texts to be read and editions used

  • For the Seśvaramīmāṃsā and the Mīmāṃsāpādukā: 1971 edition, Ubhaya Vedānta Granthamālā.

NB: Scans of the relevant texts can be received from Elisa Freschi. Hard copies will be distributed at the beginning of the workshop.

Kiyotaka Yoshimizu on Kumārila, Buddhism and the sources of dharma

On September the 1st, Kiyotaka Yoshimizu will read a paper at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, IKGA (Apostelgasse 23, 1030):

Kumārila’s Criticism of Buddhism as a Religious Movement in his Views on the Sources of dharma

Kiyotaka Yoshimizu on “Semantics or Pragmatics?”

On September the 2nd and the 3rd, Kiyotaka Yoshimizu will be at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Apostelgasse, 23, 1030, ground floor) for a workshop on “Semantics or Pragmatics?”. The workshop wil regard Dignāga’s and Kumārila’s distinction of semantics from pragmatics (an innovation both shared, if compared to Nyāya) and their different solutions to the issue (with Dignāga priviledging semantics and Kumārila focusing on pragmatics).

More in detail,
2.9: apoha in Dignāga (showing his focus on semantics over pragmatics)
3.9: Kumārila’s understanding of the grahakaikatvanyāya as an evidence of his focus on pragmatics

Texts to be read: PS and PSV 41-44; PS and PSV 50a (2.9). TV on 3.1.(7).13-15 (3.9).

References: Kiyotaka Yoshimizu “The Theorem of the Singleness of a Goblet (graha-ekatva-nyāya) : A Mīmāṃsā Analysis of Meaning and Context”, Acta Asiatica 90, 2006.
Kiyotaka Yoshimizu “How to Refer to a Thing by a Word: Another Difference between Dignāga’s and Kumārila’s Theories of Denotation”, in Journal of Indian Philosophy, 39(4-5), 2011.

Pāṇinian week in September with Saroja Bhate, M.P. Candotti, T. Pontillo

You can find here enclosed the provisional programme of the announced “Pāṇinian Week” which will be hosted at the Department of Philology, Literature, and Linguistics of the University of Cagliari (Faculty of Humanities, via Is Mirrionis, 1 – 09123 Cagliari).

We kindly ask to proceed with the registration not later than July 15th, 2014, by signalling the arrival date etc. to Dr. Pontillo (pontillo@unica.it).

I remind that no fee shall be requested but no financial assistance will be provided by the Department to support your travel or accomodation expenses.

Nevertheless, with regard to the accomodation, “Beni Benius” Bed and Breakfast (via Sassari 134, Cagliari) is under agreement with our University. For a Single Room with Bathroom (exclusive use), Breakfast, sheet and bad-towels, cleaning and Internet included, the Tarif is 30 Euros/per Night without breakfast, 35 breakfast included, double room 50/60 Euros, triple 75/65 Euros
http://www.benibenius.com/bb.html
http://www.bbplanet.com/bed-and-breakfast-beni-benius-cagliari_s35221/en/
Manager: Mr. Sergio BOCCHIERI

(Updated) PANINIGRAMMAR-Programme2014

Textual Reuse for Classicists

RETHINKING TEXT REUSE AS DIGITAL CLASSICISTS

DH 2014, Lausanne, 10 July 2014, 09:00-10:30

Amphimax, room 410

Text reuse – the meaningful reiteration of text, usually beyond the simple repetition of common language – is a broad concept that can naturally be understood at different levels and studied in a large variety of contexts. This panel will gather researchers from different projects focussing on text reuse in the field of Digital Classics with the aim of discussing the possible approaches to and understandings of the notion. It will also bring together current efforts and lay the ground for further research.

Conveners:

Aurélien Berra (Université Paris-Ouest & EHESS)

Matteo Romanello (German Archaeological Institute & King’s College London)

Alexandra Trachsel (University of Hamburg)

Invited participants:

Monica Berti (University of Leipzig)

Chris Forstall (University at Buffalo, SUNY)

Annette Geßner (University of Leipzig)

Charlotte Tupman (King’s College London)

For more information and the panel’s programme, please visit this site.