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Introduction
- Roy W. Perrett, University of Melbourne
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- An Introduction to Indian Philosophy
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Preliminaries
As its title suggests, this book is an introduction to Indian philosophy (or more specifically, classical Indian philosophy) – one of the world's great philosophical traditions. But while it aims to be an introduction to classical Indian philosophy suitable for the philosophically curious, it does not aim to be an introduction to philosophy. Instead the expected typical audience will include undergraduates who have taken at least a first course in philosophy, graduate students in philosophy seeking to broaden their philosophical horizons, and interested general readers with some prior background in philosophy.
In philosophy there are two common ways of structuring an introductory work. One approach is to structure the exposition chronologically; the other approach is to structure it thematically. This book strongly favours the thematic approach: each of the seven succeeding chapters is devoted to a particular philosophical topic discussed extensively by the classical Indian philosophers.
Chapter 1 ‘Value’ deals with Indian views about ethics, about which there were both major commonalities and some significant differences. Chapter 2 ‘Knowledge’ deals with some of the epistemological concerns central to classical Indian philosophy. Chapter 3 ‘Reasoning’ focuses on Indian ‘logic’, broadly conceived. Chapter 4 ‘Word’ deals with Indian philosophy of language. Chapter 5 ‘World’ focuses on metaphysics: specifically, the matter of which fundamental entities make up the world and how causation holds them together. Chapter 6 ‘Self’ deals with Indian theories of the self. Chapter 7 ‘Ultimates’ deals with philosophy of religion, especially the variety of differing conceptions of a maximally great being to be found in the Indian tradition.
This thematic organization permits the book to be used in at least two different ways. A reader wanting a moderately comprehensive overview of Indian philosophy should definitely read it straight through. But a reader wanting instead only a sense of Indian contributions to a particular philosophical theme – say, the nature of knowledge, or the metaphysics of the self – can just turn to the relevant chapter (and then follow this up with the suggested readings at the end of it).
Similarly, this whole book – appropriately supplemented with translations from the Sanskrit primary sources – could be used as the text for an introductory survey course on Indian philosophy; or particular chapters (plus readings) could be used either for more advanced courses on selected topics in Indian philosophy, …
Frontmatter
- Roy W. Perrett, University of Melbourne
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2 - Knowledge
- Roy W. Perrett, University of Melbourne
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Introduction
Epistemological concerns were explicitly central to classical Indian philosophy. This followed naturally from the fact that the avowed goal of most Indian philosophers was liberation (mokṣa), conceived of as the highest good. Such liberation was deemed worth pursuing because worldly life was widely accepted to be inevitably characterized by suffering (duḥkha). The usual philosophical strategy for finding a route to liberation from suffering involved isolating a crucial causal condition for our entanglement in such suffering and seeking to overturn it. The most popular candidate for such a condition was ignorance (avidyā): we are caught in the cycle of suffering due to our ignorance. Accordingly, eliminating our ignorance through the acquisition of knowledge is the way to liberation.
The beginning of the Nyāyasūtra, for example, provides a characteristic statement of the leading idea here:
Supreme felicity is attained by the knowledge about the true nature of the sixteen categories…Pain, birth, activity, faults [defects] and misapprehension [wrong notion] – on the successive annihilation of these in the reverse order, there follows release.
(Radhakrishnan and Moore 1957: 358)This soteriological premise, with its implied epistemological optimism about the instrumental relations between knowledge and the attainment of the highest good, then naturally generates a number of more technical epistemological questions. Questions like: What is knowledge? What are its sources? What are its objects? How do we fall into error? These sorts of questions deeply engaged Indian philosophers and the competing theories they developed to answer them gave rise to pramāṇavāda, that is, that part of Indian philosophy concerned with the nature and sources of knowledge.
It is worth remarking, however, that although Indian epistemology has an explicit soteriological motivation, much of the detailed technical literature frequently proceeds in a fashion largely independent of this commitment. This is unsurprising since the instrumental view of knowledge can easily be generalized, and indeed explicitly was so generalized. Thus the Buddhist logician Dharmakīrti (ninth century), although personally firmly committed to the soteriological premise, clearly indicates that it is but a special case of a more general feature about knowledge which should motivate the study of epistemology: ‘The attainment of all human ends is preceded by right knowledge and therefore it is here expounded’ (Nyāyabindu 1.1).
The structure of knowledge according to pramāṇa theory
Classical Indian theory of knowledge is centred around pramāṇa theory.
A note on the pronunciation of Sanskrit
- Roy W. Perrett, University of Melbourne
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6 - Self
- Roy W. Perrett, University of Melbourne
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Introduction
The classical Indian philosophers developed highly articulated theories of the self, often claiming a correct understanding of the nature of the self to be a necessary, or sometimes even a sufficient, condition for liberation. Indian theories of the self traditionally divide into two broad classes: those who explain our diachronic and synchronic identity by reference to an enduring substantial self (ātmavādins) and those who deny the existence of such a self, taking instead a ‘modal’ view of reality (anātmavādins). The orthodox Hindu philosophers and the Jainas all take the former view. Hence, though they disagree on the nature and number of such selves, they are all non-reductionists of some sort about our identity. Most Indian Buddhist philosophers (including the Theravādins, the Vaibhāṣikas, the Sautrāntikas, the Yogācārins and the Svātantrika-Mādhyamikas) take the latter view and hence are all plausibly classifiable as reductionists about our identity.
This chapter begins by introducing how the problem of the self arises in accounting for the nature and felt unity of our experiences, both at a time and over time. It then goes on to focus in particular on the dualistic theories of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Sāṃkhya-Yoga, the non-dualism of Advaita Vedānta, and the Buddhist ‘no-self’ theory. Finally, it addresses the issue of the supposed normative implications of these rival Indian theories of the self.
The problem of the self
The problem of the self arose for the ancient Indian philosophers much as it did for Western philosophers. In both traditions one way into the problem is to take the self (ātman) to be whatever it is that is the referent of the term ‘I’ in sentences like ‘I am now conscious’, ‘I cooked this rice’, ‘I remember attending my daughter's wedding’, and so on. Minimally characterized in this way, the existence of the self seems indubitable. Hence the great Advaitin philosopher Śaṃkara (eighth century) claims that denial of the self is just straightforwardly self-refuting, appealing to a sort of cogito argument:
Moreover the existence of Brahman is known on the ground of its being the Self of every one. For every one is conscious of (his) Self, and never thinks ‘I am not’. If the existence of the Self were not known, every one would think ‘I am not’. And this Self (of whose existence all are conscious) is Brahman.
(Brahmasūtrabhāṣyai.1.1)
An Introduction to Indian Philosophy
- Roy W. Perrett
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This wide-ranging introduction to classical Indian philosophy is philosophically rigorous without being too technical for beginners. Through detailed explorations of the full range of Indian philosophical concerns, including some metaphilosophical issues, it provides readers with non-Western perspectives on central areas of philosophy, including epistemology, logic, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of religion. Chapters are structured thematically, with each including suggestions for further reading. This provides readers with an informed overview whilst enabling them to focus on particular topics if needed. Translated Sanskrit texts are accompanied by authorial explanations and contextualisations, giving the reader an understanding of the argumentative context and philosophical style of Indian texts. A detailed glossary and a guide to Sanskrit pronunciation equip readers with the tools needed for reading and understanding Sanskrit terms and names. The book will be an essential resource for both beginners and advanced students of philosophy and Asian studies.
Preface
- Roy W. Perrett, University of Melbourne
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Summary
I would like to thank especially the following persons who have – both through their writings and through conversation or correspondence over the years – significantly shaped the way I think about Indian philosophy: in alphabetical order, they are Arindam Chakrabarti, Eli Franco, Jonardon Ganeri, Jay Garfield, Jitendra Mohanty, Stephen Phillips, Karl Potter, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Jay Shaw, Mark Siderits, John Taber, and Tom Tillemans. Naturally, it should not be inferred that any of them would agree with all of what I have written here.
A very special debt of gratitude is also due to Hilary Gaskin, my editor at Cambridge University Press, who commissioned this book and continued to believe in it – patiently combining the right mix of editorial acumen, encouragement and reproof – over the inordinately lengthy time I took to deliver the final manuscript. Without her efforts this book would certainly not have come into being. Many thanks!
Two other persons’ efforts were also essential in transforming the submitted manuscript into the final book: those of the anonymous clearance reader for Cambridge University Press, who offered a number of valuable suggestions for improvement, and of Rosemary Crawley, Assistant Editor, who skilfully shepherded me through the production process.
In writing this book I have made use of some of my own previously published articles (in varying degrees of revision). Thus the Introduction and Chapter 2 incorporate material from my ‘Truth, Relativism and Western Conceptions of Indian Philosophy’, Asian Philosophy 8, 1998. Chapter 1 includes material from my article ‘Hindu Ethics’ in Hugh LaFollette (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Ethics (Blackwell, 2013). Chapter 3 includes material originally published in ‘The Problem of Induction in Indian Philosophy’, Philosophy East and West 34, 1984. Chapter 4 reuses some material from my ‘Musical Unity and Sentential Unity’, British Journal of Aesthetics 39, 1999. Chapter 5 includes material from ‘The Momentariness of Simples’, Philosophy 79, 2004, and ‘Causation, Indian Theories of’ in Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Routledge, 1998). Chapter 6 draws on ‘Computationality, Mind and Value: The Case of Sāṃkhya-Yoga’, Asian Philosophy 11, 2001, and ‘Personal Identity, Minimalism, and Madhyamaka’, Philosophy East and West 52, 2002. I am grateful to the editors and publishers involved for permission to reprint these materials here. Finally, the book's epigraph is reprinted (with the permission of Wiley) from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (Blackwell, 1980).
1 - Value
- Roy W. Perrett, University of Melbourne
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Introduction
While classical Indian philosophy is incredibly rich in rigorous discussions of topics in epistemology, logic and metaphysics, comparable discussions in the areas of ethics, politics and aesthetics were not as extensive as might have been expected. Certainly, ethics was not a distinct field within Indian philosophy in the manner of pramāṇavāda (the part of Indian philosophy that corresponds roughly to epistemology and logic). Instead, Indian ethical discussions are to be found scattered acoss many works and genres. However, although classical Indian ethics is thus underdeveloped relative to other branches of Indian philosophy, the Indian philosophers did have a good deal to say about the theory of value insofar as they vigorously discussed topics like the ends of life and the relation of virtuous action to those ends. Moreover, there are major commonalities between both the orthodox Hindu and heterodox Buddhist and Jaina philosophers – though there are also some significant differences.
In this chapter we begin by outlining the structure of classical Hindu ethics and its theories of the good and the right. We then consider some arguments for the primacy of the value of liberation, a claim common to both orthodox and heterodox Indian value theorists, before focusing on some of the distinctive features of Buddhist and Jaina ethics. It seems appropriate to begin our introduction to Indian philosophy here because these crucial normative presuppositions underpin so many of the more fully articulated and technical debates in classical Indian epistemology and metaphysics.
The structure of value: the puruṣārthas
The Hindu ethical tradition is complex and by no means monolithic, but arguably the most developed parts of classical Hindu ethics are its theory of the good and its theory of the right. The former is articulated in terms of the puruṣārthas or ends of human life.
A traditional Hindu classification recognizes four classes of values: the puruṣārthas or ends of human life. The most common traditional ordering of these is: dharma, artha, kāma and mokṣa. The first three are sometimes grouped together as the trivarga (‘group of three’); the addition of mokṣa constructs the caturvarga (‘group of four’). Artha is wealth and political power; kāma is sensual pleasure, particularly as associated with sexual and aesthetic experience; dharma is the system of obligations and prohibitions enshrined in the legal and religious texts.
Bibliography
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Glossary
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Index
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5 - World
- Roy W. Perrett, University of Melbourne
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Introduction
The complement to pramāṇa theory is prameya theory. Whereas the pramāṇas are the means of knowledge, the prameyas are the knowables, cognizable entities that constitute the world. With respect to the number and kinds of such entities, there was a very wide variety of opinion among classical Indian philosophers. Moreover, since according to most Indian systems knowledge of reality is at least a necessary condition for liberation, these metaphysical disputes were taken to be of practical as well as theoretical importance.
Ontology is an attempt to answer the question ‘What is there?’ But to answer that question we need to distinguish between two separate, though intertwined, questions: ‘How many entities are there?’ and ‘How many kinds of entities are there?’ In both cases the interesting answers are: ‘One’, ‘Two’, and ‘Many’ (i.e., monism, dualism and pluralism). Note, however, that a position about the number of kinds of entities that exist does not in itself entail any particular position about the number of entities that exist. Nor does a dualism or pluralism about the number of entities itself entail any particular position about the number of kinds of entities.
There were, correspondingly, quite a variety of Indian responses to the question ‘What is there?’, including variants of monism, dualism and pluralism about both entities and kinds. Advaita, for instance, holds that there is numerically only one entity (Brahman/ātman) and that all plurality is illusory. Viśiṣṭādvaita qualifies this monism and maintains that while there exists only one ontologically independent substance (God), there also exist other dependent entities (souls and material entities). Sautrāntika Buddhism, in contrast, holds that there are numerically many entities, but only one kind of thing: momentary particulars (svalakṣaṇas). Yogācāra Buddhism and Cārvāka also agree that there is only one kind of thing, but disagree about whether it is mental or material. Sāṃkhya-Yoga, on the other hand, asserts that reality consists of just two kinds of things but a plurality of entities: many selves (puruṣas) and a single evolving primal matter (prakṛti). Finally, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika is pluralist about both entities and kinds: there are many kinds in the world, though there are only seven basic ontological categories (padārtha).
Underpinning these disagreements about the nature and number of reals are sometimes also important differences of opinion about the criterion of reality. According to the Buddhists, for instance, to be real is to be causally efficacious.
Epigraph
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4 - Word
- Roy W. Perrett, University of Melbourne
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Introduction
Indian philosophical concerns with language were very much connected with the early development of Sanskrit linguistics. Indeed, the Sanskrit grammar of Pāṇini (fifth century bce) became a methodological paradigm for Indian philosophers in a way comparable to that in which Euclid's mathematical Elements became one for Western philosophers (see Staal 1988). Accordingly, some of the concerns of classical Indian philosophy of language are closely wedded to the peculiarities of the Sanskrit language. But Indian philosophers (and linguists) also concerned themselves with more general issues, particularly theories of meaning and the problem of universals. The very different metaphysical commitments of the different Indian philosophers meant that they espoused a wide range of views on topics like reference and existence, the relations between word-meaning and sentence-meaning, literal and metaphorical meaning, common nouns and universals, ineffability and the nature of the signification relation, and identity statements.
In Western philosophy two issues have traditionally been central to the philosophy of language. One is the relation between ourselves and our language; the other is the relation between our language and the world. The former topic is usually called pragmatics and the latter semantics (though the boundaries between the two are often blurred). Very roughly, pragmatics is concerned with the way in which context contributes to meaning, whereas semantics is concerned with the relation between signifiers (like words or sentences) and what they stand for. Indian philosophers addressed both topics, often in ways that are interestingly different from Western philosophers.
Relevant to pragmatics were the theories of linguistic understanding (śābdabodha) developed by the Indian philosophers, which specified the conditions for the understanding of the meaning of a sentence. These included knowledge of the speaker's intention (tātparyajñāna), which was agreed to be of special importance for the comprehension of meaning in cases where the expression used is ambiguous.
With respect to semantics, the Indian philosophers were unanimously direct referentialists about meaning: that is, they all thought of meanings as entities (artha) and identified the meaning of a linguistic expression with the external object denoted by the expression. (In other words, they did not posit sense as a component of the meaning of an expression in addition to its reference.) This general agreement, however, did not preclude vigorous debate about what sort of entity meanings should be identified with: particulars, generic properties, or both together.
3 - Reasoning
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Introduction
Classical Indian pramāṇa theory includes not only what Western philosophers would count as epistemology, but also much that they would count as logic and philosophy of language. This is because almost all Indian philosophers recognized inference (anumāna) as an independent source of knowledge, and many recognized testimony (śabda) as a special kind of word-generated knowledge. This chapter focuses on Indian ‘logic’ (broadly conceived), and the next chapter addresses Indian debates about selected issues in the philosophy of language.
The history of Indian logic can be roughly divided into three periods (Vidyabhusana 1978): the ancient period (650 bce–100 ce), dominated by the Nyāyasūtra and its commentaries; the medieval period (up to 1200 ce), dominated by the Buddhist logicians Dignāga and Dharmakīrti; and the modern period (from 900 ce), dominated by Gaṅgeśa and the school of Navya-Nyāya, or ‘New Logic’.
Since the origins of Indian logic were in the ancient traditions of public debate, there were accordingly two distinct, though intertwined, parts to its development. One part (on which there is a very large literature) is to do with the search for a satisfactory model of inference and the consequent emergence of a formalized canonical inference schema. The other part is more to do with dialectics, and includes a concern with the nature of fallacies (hetvābhāsa). Both parts are evident in Gautama's Nyāyasūtra (second century), the foundational text for the development of ancient Indian logic.
Early Nyāya logic
In what became the most influential part of the Nyāyasūtra, Gautama identifies and systematizes a form of inferential argument used in debate. He defines an inference as having five members: the hypothesis (pratijñā); the ground or reason (hetu); the corroboration (dṛṣṭanta); the application (upanaya); and the conclusion (nigamana).
This account of inference may be seen as a regimentation of a conversation that might occur if two people were standing together looking at a mountain side from which they could see smoke rising. One of the persons involved remarks that there is a fire on the mountain. When asked for his reasoning he replies that he holds that there is a fire on the mountain side because there is smoke. He then appeals to familiar conjunctions of fire and smoke: as in a kitchen. Furthermore, he reminds his friend that one never sees smoke where there is no fire: as, for example, in a lake.
Contents
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7 - Ultimates
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Introduction
Contrary to much popular Western belief, classical Indian philosophy was not indistinguishable from Indian religion – as even a cursory glance at the earlier chapters of this book will demonstrate. But religious concerns did motivate the work of many Indian philosophers (as they did too the work of many of the great Western philosophers), and there surely is something that can be described as ‘Indian philosophy of religion’, that is, ‘philosophy of Indian religions’ (Matilal 1982, Perrett 1989, 2001 (vol. iv)). However, important differences between the major Indian religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism) mean that the shape of Indian philosophy of religion is often significantly different from that of Western philosophy of religion.
One fundamental difference is that theism is not central to all the Indian religions in the way that it is to the major Western religions. While there certainly were classical Indian philosophers who were staunch monotheists (e.g., the Viśiṣṭādvaitins, the Dvaitins, the Śaiva Siddhāntins), overall this was not the dominant trend. In the first place, Buddhism and Jainism are both non-theistic religions. Then, within Hinduism, orthodoxy is determined by an acknowledgement of the authority of the Vedas, not a belief in God. Hence among the orthodox Hindu schools, Sāṃkhya and Mīmāṃsā are both atheistic, Advaita Vedānta is ultimately non-theistic, and Yoga and Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika are minimally theistic in the sense that they allow only significantly attenuated powers to God. Two implications of this for Indian philosophy of religion are evident. First, Indian philosophy of religion is much less centred on philosophical theology than is Western philosophy of religion. Second, even when the Indians engage in philosophical theology, it often has a rather different flavour (see Pereira 1976, Clooney 1993, 1996).
Consider, for instance, Indian discussions of the problem of evil (Herman 1976, Matilal 1982). The theistic problem of evil is how to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent God. Jaina and Buddhist atheists appealed to the existence of evil as an atheological argument, but Indian theists responded by limiting God's powers, holding that even God is constrained by individuals’ karma. Nor did they accept that the existence of evil in the world showed that the world is not God's creation. The world is God's līlā or divine play, a creation with no purpose, and hence something for which God bears no moral responsibility.
List of figures
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The Momentariness of Simples
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Many philosophers have supposed that while most of the objects in our immediate experience are composed of parts, at some point we must come down to those fundamental impartite objects out of which all partite things are composed: the metaphysical simples (usually conceived of as enduring, even eternal, entities). I consider what reason we have to believe that there really are simples, then we also have good reason to believe in their momentariness.
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN INDIA: SOME PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES
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What is the traditional relation of religion to politics in India? Recent scholarly debate has generated at least two divergent answers. According to one view there is a long standing traditional opposition between religion and politics in India because its highest value (moksa) is renunciatory and asocial. According to another view a separation of religion from politics is contrary to Indian ways of thinking and the present currency of such a picture is the product of various colonialist strategies.
I want to address the question from the perspective of classical Indian philosophy. To be able do so, however, I shall also need to utilize some work in Western philosophy. In particular, I need to say something about the crucial terms ‘religion’ and ‘politics’ and their relevance to the classical Indian tradition. My theoretical approach will be influenced by Western philosophy but my historical focus will be on the Sanskrit philosophical tradition. In this sense there are two distinct philosophical perspectives offered here.