Category Archives: Sanskrit Philosophy
Before “Classical Indian Philosophy”: the influence of the Sāṅkhya logic UPDATED
We discussed already on this blog about how our conception of “classical Indian philosophy” is contingent and historically determined. For instance, if you were to ask me what “classical Indian philosophy” for me means, I would at first answer with “debate between Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā and Buddhist Pramāṇavāda”. However, as soon as one throws a closer look at the texts, one sees how this balance was precarious and how the debate had different protagonists at different times.
A theist caught in the paradoxes of free will
Can a theist believe in God’s omniscience&omnipotence and in free will? I have argued in other posts that one can think in a compatibilist way (because God wants to be freely loved) and that this entails that no punishment/ban from God’s presence can be eternal. Here I would like to test it in the case of Vedānta Deśika/Veṅkaṭanātha, a Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntin who also wrote Mīmāṃsā works.
From a Mīmāṃsā standpoint, free will is a fundamental presupposal, since Vedic prescriptions are in a dialectical relation with one’s desire (rāga): one always decides on the basis of the one or the other. That rāga itself might lie beyond one’s free will is an idea never discussed by Mīmāṃsā authors, possibly because they are interested in the phenomenology of free will and not in its ontology.
Can the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta point of view agree with this perspective? On the one hand, one might think that the omnipotency of God as conceived by Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors leads back to the initial problem. On the other, according to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta human beings are nothing but specifications (viśeṣas) of the only existing reality, God Himself. In some forms of Vaiṣṇavism (e.g., in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism), God can freely choose to self-delude Himself as part of His play (līlā). Thus, the child-Kṛṣṇa can willfully forget His omnipotence in order to enjoy His mother’s protection.
Can one conceive the freedom enjoyed by human beings also as a case of self-delimitation?
Further thoughts on free will in Indian Philosophy can be read here.
Impossible task? Matthew Dasti did an attempt. Leave your own paragraph here or at the post (and be sure to read the interesting comments there!).
Do we need to waste our time proving that unicorns do not exist?
Do we need to prove that unicorns, tooth fairies, hobbits and so on do not exist? The question is not just funny, insofar as an upholder of the existence of ghosts and the like could easily claim that —strictly speaking— there is no evidence of their non-existence. In Indian epistemology, this amounts to saying that there are no bādhakas ‘invalidating cognitions’ telling us that the existence of ghosts, etc. is invalid.
Is there really a single author of the Yogasūtra and Yogabhāṣya?
The idea that the Yogasūtra (henceforth YS) and the Yogabhāṣya (henceforth YBh) are not two distinct texts has been discussed for the first way in a systematic way by Johannes Bronkhorst in 1985 (“Patañjali and the Yoga Sūtras”, Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik). Philipp Maas in his published PhD thesis (Maas 2006) examined it again and Philipp Maas in his contribution to Eli Franco’s Periodization and Historiography of Indian Philosophy (2013) dealt with it again in greater detail.
किं स्वतः परतो वा प्रामाण्यम्?
किं प्रामाण्यं स्वतः, परतो वा उत्पद्यते, ज्ञायते च ?
सांख्यानां प्रामाण्याप्रामाण्यौ उभौ स्वतः । नैयायिकानां वैशेषिकानां च प्रामाण्याप्रामाण्यौ उभौ परतः । बौद्धप्रमाणवादिनां प्रामाण्यं परतः, अप्रमाण्यं तु स्वतः । मीमांसकानां तु प्रामाण्यं स्वतः, अप्रमाण्यं च परतः । इति चत्वारः पक्षाः ।
Let us organise more Saṃvādas! An Interview with Mrinal Kaul
I met Mrinal Kaul for the first time in December 2012, when he attended the Coffee Break Meeting on textual reuse in Indian Philosophical texts. Since then, I tried to have him collaborate to many of my projects, but always failed, since he is already very busy with incredibly many others. You can read his blog here and find out something more about him on his Academia page. Once you have done this, add much more Sanskrit than you would believe, imagine a smiling, funny face and you will still have only a vague idea of him.
Do you wish you had a job instead of Christmas presents? Check here!
The Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old Dominion University (Norfolk, Virginia, USA) looks for a faculty member specializing in Asian Philosophy.
How many Saṅkarṣa Kāṇḍas are there?
While I have not yet been able to reach a copy of the text of the Saṅkarṣa Kāṇḍa (henceforth SK, about which see this post) with Devasvāmin’s commentary (edited in 1965), I am still weighing different evidences about it. It seems now clear to me that:
Are you a woman researching in the field of Philosophy? Are you a man who is sensitive to the problem of inclusion? Please feel free to submit the profile of women working on philosophy (Indian Philosophy is included under the heading “Asian Philosophy”…) to this new database. The same database is also already a very valuable resource for locating scholars to invite to conferences, volumes and the like.