The Mīmāṃsā school of Indian philosophy started as an atheist school since its first extant text, Jaimini’s Mīmāṃsā Sūtra. At a certain point in its history, however, it reinterpreted its atheist arguments as aiming only at a certain conception of god(s). In other words, it reinterpreted its atheism as being not a global atheism, but a form of local atheism, denying a certain specific form of god(s) and not any form whatsoever.
Tag Archives: Rāmānujācārya
Taisei Shida’s review of Duty, language and exegesis in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā
This post is part of a series dedicated to a discussion of the reviews of my book Duty, language and exegesis in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā. For more details on the series, see here. For the first post of the series, see here. As already hinted at, I welcome comments and criticism.
Among the various reviews, Taisei Shida’s one is surely the most precise. He
Andrew Ollett’s Review of Duty, Language and Exegesis in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā
Reviews on Duty, Language and Exegesis in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā: Many thanks and some notes —UPDATED
Most of my long-term readers have had enough of my discussions of Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā, of its late exponent Rāmānujācārya, and of its theories about deontic logic, philosophy of language and hermeneutics. They may also know already about my book dedicated to these topics. More recent readers can read about it here.
You can also read reviews of my book by the following scholars:
- by Taisei Shida on Vol. 31 of Nagoya Studies in Indian Culture and Buddhism. Saṃbhāṣā (2014), pp. 84-87.
- by Andrew Ollett on Vol. 65.2 of Philosophy East and West (2015), pp. 632–636 (see here)
- by Gavin Flood on Vol. 8.3 of Journal of Hindu Studies (2015), pp. 326–328, (the beginning is accessible here)
- by Hugo David on the vol. 99 of BEFEO (2012-13), pp. 395-408 (you can read the beginning here)
I am extremely grateful to the reviewers (I could not have hoped for better ones!) for their careful and stimulating analyses and for their praising my attempts to make the text as understandable as possible and to locate sources and parallels in the apparatus. In fact, as a small token of gratitude for the time they spent on my book, I will dedicate a post to each one of their reviews, where I discuss their corrections and suggestions. The first one in this series will appear next Friday.
Again on circumstances and desires
According to Mīmāṃsā authors, prescriptions do not apply sic et simpliciter to anyone. They apply to a selected group of addressees, who are identified through a nimitta ‘condition’. Accordingly, the standard form of a prescription is:
(A) The one who is desirous of heaven [substitute ‘heaven’ with any other goal] should sacrifice with the Darśapūrṇamāsa [substitute ‘DPM’ with any other goal].
On the Indian lack of distinction between linguistic and external reality
In his contribution to a recent symposium (Does Asia think differently? –Symposium zu Ehre Ernst Steinkellners), as well as in many other publications of him (e.g., Langage et Réalité: sur un épisode de la pensée indienne, 1999), Johannes Bronkhorst answered that yes, there is a substantial difference between “our” thought and the Indian one, in so far as the latter does not distinguish between purely linguistic problems and genuine ones.