The “Pramana across Asia” panel has been opened by Eli Franco, its convener, with the following hope: “In some years, through stimuli such as this panel, we will speak of Indo-Sinic Buddhism, just like we speak of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism”.
Category Archives: Philosophy
Second day at the IABS: Sakai on example in Dignaga, Dharmakirti and Arcata
Yesterday I missed all talks taking place during my panel, but today I could reconver at least one of them,
Second day at the IABS: The Section on Pramāṇavāda
I am not completely convinced by the reasons behind the partition in panels and sections here, nonetheless, I heard two interesting papers readers might also find intriguing:
When Sacred Texts prescribe violence…
Are you allowed to perform a malefic sacrifice? If you are, then it seems like the Veda contradicts itself, since elsewhere it prohibits violence. If you are not, why not, given that such sacrifices are prescribed in the Veda?
One God, one Śāstra — A panel for the WSC 2015
One God, one śāstra: philosophical developments towards and within Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta between Nāthamuni and Veṅkaṭanātha
In the case of the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta school, one has the advantage of having some basic historical elements to judge about the development of the theological and philosophical thought of the school. We have, in fact, at least some historical data about the time, place and personality of key figures such as Yāmuna, Rāmānuja and Veṅkaṭanātha and a good amount of works from them has survived and can be accessed. Some attempts have been made (e.g., by Oberhammer, Neevel, Mesquita) to offer a general interpretation of this early development, but many problems have remained open, and not only because of the lack of materials (regarding, e.g., Śrīvatsaṅka Miśra, Nāthamuni, important parts of Yāmuna’s work, etc.).
This panels aims at joining scholars working on the early Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, and making them discuss the development of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta from its forerunners to a full-fledged philosophical and theological phenomenon. Possible leit-motivs in the analysis of this development can be topics such as (the list does not aim to be exhaustive):
- the increasing importance of the topic of aikaśāstrya, possibly paralleling the emphasis on the existence of just one God
- the adaptation of other schools to one’s theistic approach (from Nyāya and Yoga in the case of Nāthamuni to Uttara Mīmāṃsā in the case of Rāmānuja, to Pūrva Mīmāṃsā and again Nyāya for Veṅkaṭanātha)
Organisers: Elisa Freschi, Marcus Schmücker
Participants at July the 1st 2014: Francis X. Clooney, Elisa Freschi, Robert Leach, Halina Marlewicz, Erin McCann, Lawrence McCrea, Srilata Raman, Marion Rastelli, Marcus Schmücker
If you are interested in participating, or in knowing further details, please drop a comment here or send a line at my email address (my name dot my surname at gmail dot com).
The 16th World Sanskrit Conference will take place from the 28th of June to the 2nd of July in Bangkok. Further infos can be found here.
My collective projects for 2015
Even if we are friends or pen friends or acquaintances, I will not be able to reach you with all my next Call for Papers. Please do not feel offended. I hold a blog exactly in order to reach out to the small community of people working philosophically on South Asian texts.
Finally an interesting blog-post saying some basic things about the relation between philosophy and physics, explaining that “being useful” is not tantamount to “being useful to my current calculations” and that, accordingly, many physicists criticising philosophy are just misunderstanding their target.
I would have added something more regarding the epistemology of the issue, but for that have a look at the interesting comments (e.g., one says that philosophy is useful for asking questions, but lousy for answering them…).
Studio of Fedele Fischetti
Yes, with Michael Dummett’s death the “linguistic turn” in analytic philosophy has come to an end.
Yes, the new dominant trend is the move towards neurosciences, which are used to deal with issues in philosophy of mind, (cognitive) linguistics, (cognitive) semantics, morality, etc.
A reader on “Indian Philosophy”?
Shall we try to write/edit readers with Sanskrit philosophical materials? Yes, by all means. Everything is better than neglect. However
I should have noticed it before, but here am I. At the link above you can read a thought-inspiring blog entry by Helen De Cruz reporting Elizabeth Fricker’s arguments on how we rely on the “testimony” of GPS, googlesearch and so on and have lost the skill to read maps, sum up numbers and so on. This is closely related to a further problem I have dealt with in the past, namely whether thermometers, GPS devices and other tools can be said to be testimony-bearers. You can read more about this controversy at this post (and in the article it refers to).