elisa freschiother blogs – elisa freschi

What are the most important books in and on South Asian philosophy?

elisa freschi — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 10:59:38 +0000

Just imagine you are asked about the three most important texts in South Asian philosophy and take a minute to imagine your answer. You are also allowed to include texts on South Asian philosophy, if you think they are relevant.

Next, you can compare your answers with those of scholars like Jonardon Ganeri, Maria Heim, Chakravarti Ram-Prasad and Evan Thompson. The guest, Phil Treagus, is a bibliophile and already hosted posts on the most important books on several topics in philosophy, including Chinese philosophy. As a praiseworthy addition, he also invited a young PhD student, Jack Beaulieu.

You are also welcome to add your lists in the comments.

3:AM interviews on South Asian philosophy SECOND UPDATE

elisa freschi — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 13:15:22 +0000

Most readers will already be familiar with the deep and entertaining interviews of the 3:AM Magazine. Here I would like to express my kudos to Richard Marshall and the 3:AM project for their inclusion of scholars working on South Asian philosophy within their interviews.
Unless I missed someone, here is a list of the interviews relevant for South Asian philosophy (broadly conceived):

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, speaking of Materialism in India, here.
Nicolas Bommarito, speaking of Buddhist ethics and how to approach it, here.
William Endelglass, speaking of Buddhism, intercultural philosophy and Levinas, here.
Elisa Freschi, speaking of epistemology, atheism and deontic logic in Mīmāṃsā, here.
Maria Heim, speaking of Buddhaghosa, Buddhist hermeneutics, and emotions, here.
Jonardon Ganeri, speaking of the medicinal model of philosophy, identity and a global history of philosophy, here.
Jay L. Garfield, speaking of Madhayamaka, Tibetan philosophy and comparative philosophy, here.
Malcolm C. Keating, speaking of Indian philosophy of language, here.
Robert Pasnau, speaking of the parochialism in our histories of philosophy (OK, it is not “South Asian philosophy”, but it is still relevant!), here.
Adluri Raghuramaraju, speaking of Ramachandra Gandhi and contemporary Indian philosophy, here.
Evan Thompson, speaking of dreaming, being awake and Advaita Vedānta, here.
Anand Jayprakash Vaidya, speaking of modalities, syllogisms and intercultural philosophy, here.
Jan Westerhoff, speaking of Nāgārjuna and emptiness, here.

Did I miss someone?

UPDATE: Robert Marshall moved all interviews here. The reasons are discussed here. I am grateful to R. Marshall for this important update.

(Thanks to Richard Marshall for the update)

Project on deontic logic in Mīmāṃsā

elisa freschi — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 09:52:33 +0000

Why is it interesting to deal with Mīmāṃsā deontics?

Most deontic theories conflate two different approaches:

—ethics

—deontics

The Mīmāṃsā approach is interesting exactly because it separates the two. In other words, suppose we say that a person O(p) because p is good or because it is God’s will etc. In this case, you are using your ethical (and metaphysical) assumptions to ground the validity of your deontic statements. By contrast, Mīmāṃsā authors analyse deontic statements on their own. Just like they analyse the epistemic validity of statements independently of the authority of their authors, so they analysed the deontic validity of statements independently of a further background.

This does not mean that it is ethically good to bring to poverty all human beings. In fact, if you do that, you are surely transgressing the prohibitions to harm human beings and will get negative consequences (=negative karman) out of it, but you do not need ethical presuppositions to make sense of the Mīmāṃsā theory.

For some news on my newly approved project on deontic logic in Mīmāṃsā, please read its website, here.

What counts as philosophy?

elisa freschi — Wed, 12 Oct 2016 14:46:45 +0000

On the normative disguised as descriptive (SECOND UPDATE)

As a scholar of Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā I am well aware of how the normative is often disguised as descriptive. “It is seven o’ clock” says the mother, but what she means is rather “Get up! You have to go to school”.

Similarly, complex discourses about the nature of philosophy, how it was born, e.g., in Greece or in Plato’s Republic, and how it developed in (Latin), German, (French) and English, are only meant to say “We are not going to welcome colleagues working on things we do not care for in our departments”. Why so? Because as soon as one tries to reason with the authors of the allegedly descriptive statements (as done here by Ethan Mills and here by Amod Lele), one gets answers such as “the universality of philosophy”, “the primacy of logical argumentation”, “the importance of debate”, “the supremacy of reason over tradition” etc. All of them can be easily found at least in some Indian schools. I am not saying that they are not found in African, Chinese, Mesoamerican philosophy, I am just saying that no matter how restrictive your definition of philosophy, Navya Nyāya, etc., will fit in. Conversely, Thomas the Aquinas, Augustine, Nietzsche etc. will end up being excluded by such definitions. Thus, the argument is in fact overtly not descriptive.

Does it mean that we should try to make philosophers accept at least Navya Nyāya etc? Or should we rather uncover the normativity of the discourse and call for a broader definition of the enterprise of philosophy?

UPDATE: An insightful discussion of the same issue, with extensive quotes and critical reflections about them can be read in Malcolm Keating’s blog, here.
Eric Schwitzgebel offers further interesting reflections on the issue in his blog (be sure to check the comments and his accurate replies to the “ignorance justifying ignorance” argument, as well as the labels for the “not really philosophy” and “low quality” arguments).
SECOND UPDATE: “Prof Manners” has an interesting post here explaining that articles trying to say that Confucius is not “philosophical” because philosophy is x, y, z in fact only list “generally desirable and admiration-worthy qualities”.

Podcasts on Indian philosophy: An opportunity to rethink the paradigm?

elisa freschi — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 16:10:34 +0000

Some readers have surely already noted this series of podcasts on Indian philosophy, by Peter Adamson (the historian of Islamic philosophy and Neoplatonism who hosts the series “History of philosophy without any gaps” —which I can not but highly praise and recommend, and which saved me from boredom while collating manuscripts) and Jonardon Ganeri.
The series has several interesting points, among which surely the fact of proposing a new historical paradigm (interested readers may know already the volume edited by Eli Franco on other attempts of periodization of Indian philosophy, see here for my review). They explicitly avoid applying periodizations inherited from European civilisations, and consequently do not speak of “Classical” or “Medieval” Indian philosophy. What do readers think of this idea? And of the podcast in general?

I have myself a few objections (which I signalled in the comment section of each podcast), but am overall very happy that someone is taking Indian philosophy seriously enough while at the same time making it also accessible to lay listeners. In this sense, I cannot but hope that Peter and Jonardon’s attempts are successful.

The series includes also interviews to scholars: Brian Black on the Upaniṣads, Rupert Gethin on Buddhism, Jessica Frazier on “Hinduism” (the quotation marks are mine only), myself on Mīmāṃsā. Further interviews are forthcoming. Criticisms and comments are welcome! (but please avoid commenting on my pronunciation mistakes.)

Should we have more dialogues, or more Asian philosophy?

elisa freschi — Tue, 31 May 2016 21:23:57 +0000

Readers will have surely read the article by Garfield and Van Norden on The Stone concerning the need to either admit more philosophical traditions into the normal syllabi or rename departments as “Institute for the study of Anglo European philosophy” or the like.
However, someone might have missed Amod Lele’s rejoinder, here. He starts arguing that “Western Philosophy” is not as bad a label as it might look like and then concludes saying that the inclusion of Asian Philosophy, etc., in the curricula should be based on its relevance, not on the wish to be more inclusive, e.g., towards Asian American students.
On Academia.edu, Cosimo Zene explains, again in connection with Garfield and Van Norden’s article, speaks in favour of the necessity to study “World Philosophies”.
Following Amod’s arguments, one can, perhaps, decide that a certain philosophical tradition should not be included in the curricula because, unlike Indian philosophy, it is neither “great” nor “entirely distinct”. Cosimo, by contrast, seems to claim that dialog is an end in itself, since it “probes” one’s thoughts as well as on the basis of political and ethical reasons (what else could help us in solving moot political issues, if we are not trained in mutual understanding?).

What do readers think? Do we need more dialogues (with whatever tradition), more space for the great traditions of Indian philosophy, etc., or a little of both?

Expanding the canon part n

elisa freschi — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 08:46:01 +0000

We have discussed several times (see also here and here) about the problem of how Indian philosophers should be part of normal classes on Medieval philosophy, Epistemology, Philosophy of Language, etc. etc. Podcaster and scholar of Neoplatonism and of Falsafa Peter Adamson makes several interesting points on the Blog of the APA, in this post.

At least two points are worth repeating:

You might tell yourself you have covered the important medieval philosophers if you’ve done Anselm, Abelard, Avicenna, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham. That’s an impressive line-up, no doubt. […] But do these big names really have a greater claim on our attention than Eriugena, Hildegard of Bingen, John Buridan, Meister Eckhart, and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi?
My answer would be no. The fact that such authors are not, or not yet, “canonical” has little to do with historical and philosophical merit and much to do with the historiographical priorities and limited perspectives of previous generations. These generations wrote our textbooks, designed the syllabi for courses we took as students, and decided what to edit, study, and translate—and in so doing, shaped out sense of what is too “important” to leave out. In reality, there are simply too many important thinkers in every period to be fit into any undergraduate historical course, in both the historical and philosophical sense of “important.” […] So when we’re exposing students to any period in the history of philosophy, we should not tell ourselves that we only have time to visit the highlights. In fact we should admit that we don’t even have time to do that. […] This realization might be liberating. If we give up on the idea that teaching history of philosophy is about paying a brief visit to the most famous thinkers, that will free us up to prioritize other concerns.
And it would be more than reasonable to insist on including women philosophers and philosophers from non-European traditions. I suspect that many instructors are reluctant to cover such topics, even if they sympathize with the goal, precisely because the authors and texts in question are so unfamiliar. But as I’ve been pleased to discover doing the podcast, there are plenty of translations and there is plenty of secondary literature out there for all but the most abstruse and under-researched topics. […] Thanks to scholars who have been plowing these fields for us, prepping a class session on the Upanishads or al-Farabi is going to be a lot easier than you might think.

What do you think? Should we now be free to leave Thomas the Aquinas out of our classes and to include Pārthasārathi instead?

Should you not know Peter Adamson’s podcasts yet, you are strongly encouraged to check on them. The ones on Indian Philoosphy are here.
(cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy Blog)

Buddhist morality and merciful lies

elisa freschi — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 08:30:28 +0000

Amod Lele recently asked whether there is an emic Buddhist morality or whether this is only a Yavanayāna invention

from http://sebersole.wordpress.com

(i.e., an invention of contemporary Western-trained Buddhists). The question is in itself interesting, but the discussion it triggered is even more, since Jayarava (who blogs here) added the problem of the possible inconsistency of the doctrine of karman if one denies the continuity of the self. That there is a problem cannot be denied: Why should we care about the karman our actions accumulate, if it is not going to affect “us”?

Now, I am tempted to answer that we should care, just like we should care for global warming, although it is not going to affect us. We should start thinking altruistically about future human beings and their well-being. Similarly, if I were a 5th c. Buddhist, I would want to avoid accumulating bad karman, since this would lead to bad consequences, although not for me (since I do not exist). Incidentally, one might add that I do not care for the consequences of global warming on future generations just because I am deluded and think of them a substantial selves very much different from my self. Once I realise that there is no continuity in what I consider to be my self, I will probably cease seeing the discontinuity as so sharf. Jayarava replied to the above point by saying that this would not motivate anyone to be moral —in fact, global warning does not seem to motivate most people to act for the benefit of other people in the future. I agree that it does not motivate normal (i.e., deluded) people, who only act for the sake of their non-existent self, but I think that it could motivate people who have undertaken the Buddhist path and are becoming aware of the reality of anātmatā. I agree with Jayarava that normal people will need to think of karman as something regarding themselves and that in this sense there are two parallel narratives in Buddhist texts (one about anātmatā and one about morality—which presupposes an enduring self). However, as someone who methodologically tries to make as much sense as possible of the texts she reads, I feel compelled to try to find a possible way to avoid the contradiction —and the global warning parallel comes to my mind as a suitable one.

However, another commenter, Jim Wilton, takes a different line of defense, namely, he says that the idea of a permanent self as a support for the continuity of karman is a sort of a merciful lie, needed for us, deluded people, although its falsity is clear to the Bodhisattva who utters it. Jayarava replies that he does not want a patronalising Bodhisattva treat him like a child. This is an interesting (and appealing —at least to me) reaction. Thus, I wonder:

Does the doctrine of upāyakaśalya imply or at least justify merciful lies?

When did alaṅkāraśāstra become “philosophical”? And what does this mean?

elisa freschi — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 08:31:36 +0000

You can read some interesting thoughts by Andrew Ollett (and myself in the comments) on the Indian Philosophy Blog.

Basic bibliography for Bhaṭṭa Jayanta

elisa freschi — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 10:21:37 +0000

Suppose you want to undertake the study of Indian Philosophy and you want to read primary sources? Where should you start? I argued (in my contribution to Open Pages in South Asian Studies) that Bhaṭṭa Jayanta is a great starting point,

Because he is a philosopher
Because he deals with texts of other schools and thus aims at being understandable
Because he is a talented writer

But what should you read in order to better understand Jayanta?

Graheli 2012 (OA on JIPh) gives you a comprehensive overview of the manuscript sources. Graheli 2011 (RSO) and his forthcoming book further elaborate on which manuscripts and editions you can rely upon.
Kei Kataoka has published (mostly alone, but in a few cases together with other scholars, such as Alex Watson and myself) an impressive list of editions, (English and Japanese) translations and studies on various parts of the Nyāyamañjarī. You can find them all listed on his blog. Most of them can also be downloaded from there.
Jonardon Ganeri has dedicated various articles (see, e.g., Ganeri 1996 on JIPh) on the issue of meaning in the Nyāyamañjarī.*
Similarly, P.K. Sen dedicated several interesting essays to the philosophy of language of Jayanta, see especially Sen 2005 and, if you can read Bengali, his 2008 translation of the fifth book.
For a historical overview on Jayanta, you can read Slaje 1986 and the introduction of Dezső 2005 (Clay Sanskrit Library), which is an enjoyable translation of a philosophical drama by Jayanta.
Should you be able to read Gujaratī, Nagin Shah’s translation of the Nyāyamañjarī is the best one, so far (in my opinion) (Shah 1975–1992). English readers can get some sense of it through Shah’s book-long study (1992–1997).

*By the way, should you need some foundations on Indian theories of language, you can think of reading Chakrabarti’s short Introduction to this topic (JIPh 1989) and then Matilal and Sen 1988.