Category Archives: books/articles
Da allora siempre me he empeñado a respetar a tutti gli uomini […] porque en ellos se refleja la imagen misma de Dios. Con lo cual si no se socorre a quien sufre, a quien patisce la injusticia, a quien se muere de hambre, a quien es más debil, […] no se commete solo un pecado de omissione, sino que lo mucho más grave de blasfemia.
La rivoluzione della luna (Andrea Camilleri)
(Palermo: Sellerio, 2013)
The Yoga in Transformation Conference 1 (Maas and Wujastyk)
This conference aimed at bridging the gap between yoga practicioners and yoga researchers, providing the former “convenient access to information on high-level research”. Did it really fulfil this task?
32nd DOT in Münster: a thought-provoking experience
The 32nd DOT (Deutscher Orientalisten Tag, i.e., Assembly of the German Orientalists) took place from the 23rd to the 27th September in Münster (W). It was surely the biggest DOT ever and its 1,300 participants made it a bigger event than many (most, I would say) World Sanskrit Conferences. Was it also more interesting than them?
Orality and definitive texts
Although Sanskritists know that the Veda was and is memorized in a way as to preserve all its features, it is hard not to think of oral texts as open texts. Especially performed texts tend to be conceived as texts which are open to modifications at each performance, whereas writing (and even more printing) tends to be hold responsible for the canonization of a single text. Reality is, thanks God, always more complex than theories about it.
Is peer-review the best way to get crap published?
If you are interested in the debate, read this post.
The post discusses the key topic of whether peer-review is really the best solution for controlling the quality of research. It seems that reviewers tend to express more often negative judgements in the case of broad theories they have objections to, rather than in the case of minor assessments. The result is the “triviality that many continental philosophers associate with analytic philosophy”. Are you among them? And how do you review articles?
How to justify Testimony? Indian and Western views
Concerning the Epistemology of Testimony, one can first distinguish between reductionists (claiming that Testimony is just a subset of Inference) and anti-reductionists (claiming that Testimony is a distinct instrument of knowledge). In India and in the West, we have reductionists (David Hume, Elisabeth Fricker, Buddhist Pramāṇavāda, Vaiśeṣika) and anti-reductionists (Thomas Reid, Jennifer Lackey, Arindam Chakrabarti, Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā).
Interestingly, however, in the West reductionists insist on the need for testimony to be grounded on something else (e.g., on the reliability of the speaker), whereas anti-reductionists claim that we have a “presumptive right” to accept testimony, so that it “is a source of justification in its own right” (Gelfert 2010).
Is the Veda the body of God? (Yoshimizu 2007–II part)
How can one interpret a Vedic passage by saying that a certain meaning was not “intended” (vivakṣita), while still thinking that the Veda has no personal author?
The Mīmāṃsā cannot renounce the idea that the Veda has no personal author (apauruṣeyatva): its whole theory about the Veda’s validity depends on this principle. However, Kumārila needs also to explain in which sense one can decide whether an interpretation of the Veda is right or not on the basis of whether it is intended (vivakṣita). How can one speak of intention if there is no author?
Plurality of subjects in Mīmāṃsā: Kiyotaka Yoshimizu 2007
Is the plurality of subjects compatible with the idea of a Vedāntic kind of liberation (in which there seems to be no distinction among different souls)? And can there be an absolute brahman if there are still distinct subjects?
Sanderson is always an incredibly fascinating speaker. In this conference he discusses the dialectics of Śaivism and “orthodox Hinduism”: It is not only the case that Śaiva authors tried to be accepted as “orthodox Hindūs” and “orthodox Hindūs” tried to block them. By contrast, on both sides there were trends towards assimilation and resistance to these trends.
(Full disclosure: I have discussed a similar case of a complex dialectical relationship —this time between Pāñcarātra Vaiṣṇava theology and “orthodox Hindūism”— in an article to be published in the proceedings of IIGRS 4).