At the beginning of his chapter on sentence meaning, Kumārila sets the problem of what is the meaning-bearer in the case of a sentence (see this post). Later in the chapter, he will discuss sphoṭa, apoha and then present his abhihitānvayavāda, but first he discusses in general the possibility of a sentence-meaning. There can be no sentence-meaning out of the sum of the word-meanings, since those are instantaneous and cannot connect (kā 6–8). The same applies to their cognitions (kā 9). Further, neither words (pada) nor the concepts evoked by them (tadbuddhi) can really connect, so that a sentence-meaning is stricto sensu impossible.
Woody Allen’s “The Irrational Man” between existentialism and reuse
Woody Allen’s last movie, The Irrational Man (henceforth TIM) keeps on discussing about luck and case, a topic which was at the center of his Match Point (MP). In both movies, the “villains” end up being punished, in a (too) straightforward way in TIM and in a subtler one in MP. Notwithstanding that, one of the strengths of TIM is that the condemnation of the villain is so straightforward, that one is lead to suspect that his punishment only happened by chance and not as a result of justice. If you are interested in the topic and can read Italian, you can read my analysis of MP in the light of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta here.
If you don’t know Italian, you might have missed that the climax scene of TIM is a quotation* of the corresponding climax scene of Il Vedovo, a 1959 movie by Dino Risi, which also elaborates on the topic of trying to organise the perfect murder of an unpleasant person. The main difference lies in the fact that W. Allen sympathises with the prospective murderer (a philosophy professor who dislikes Kant’s Categorical Imperative and is fond of Sartre) much more than D. Risi, whose commedy really has no hero.
*I do not think it is a simple reuse of a convenient device. The similarity is so striking that the director surely intended his public to recognise what he was doing. In this sense, the movie presupposes a public of connaisseurs (along the public of people paying the tickets). I discuss the terminology related to reuse in the Introduction of a forthcoming volume edited by me and Philipp Maas. Its basic ideas can be read here (where “pragmatic reuse” stands for what we later labelled “simple reuse”).
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.
Shilpa Sumant on critical editions and role models
Shilpa Sumant has been so nice to come to Vienna for two lectures and for some additional hours of chatting. For the ones among you who have not yet encountered her work, Shilpa has published important studies and critical editions in the field of the Paippalāda school of the Atharvaveda, but her command of Sanskrit and her activity at the Pune “Encyclopedic Dictionary of Sanskrit on Historical Principles” makes her approach broad and particularly rich in cross-references and unheard-of materials.
Teaching Sanskrit in Kyoto (5 years Post-Doc position)
I received the following ad from Prof. Kiyotaka Yoshimizu. You might remember that this position is presently Somdev Vasudev’s and used to be Diwakar Acharya’s and Werner Knobl’s.
Do we need phonemes to be permanent? —UPDATED
Did Mīmāṃsakas really need to claim that phonemes are permanent (nitya)? Erich Frauwallner argued that the chapter on this topic in the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra (PMS 1.1.6–1.1.23) had been interpolated and most contemporary scholars*** agree that the Mīmāṃsā argumentation only needs the relation between signifier and signified to be fixed (nitya), not also the signifiers.
On the universality of ethics (Rahul Peter Das 2012 and Hindu bioethics)
In a previous post I had discussed the importance of making the discussions on global ethics more inclusive. Now, while reading Rahul Peter Das’ On “Hindu” Bioethics (in Saṁskṛta-sādhutā, the Festschrift for Ashok Aklujkar) I found however a possible objection to this claim. In fact, as Das, shows, not all cultures have elaborated a distinct system of, e.g., bioethics, so that what is presented as “Hindu” or “Buddhist bioethics” is often an arbitrary construction.
Position in “Religion, Nature, and Culture in South Asia” at the University of Virginia
The position may be filled at the assistant (tenure-track) or associate (tenured) rank.
Note also that the Search Committee particularly welcomes applicants with expertise in Hinduism, though the search leaves open the successful candidate’s area of research focus as regards religious tradition, language expertise, and historical period of study.
On table of contents in alphabetic order
I am reading Saṃskṛta-sādhutā, the Festschrift for Ashok Aklujkar, a book which contains many interesting essays on various topics, several of which are dedicated to Grammar. Luckily enough, three of them have been authored by Johannes BRONKHORST, Maria Piera CANDOTTI and George CARDONA and come, therefore, one after the other in the alphabetic order which has been used for determining the sequence of the essays in the book.