A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
(I have been asked to write a short introduction to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and would like to test it on you, dear readers and fellow bloggers. Any comment or criticism would be more than welcome!) In its full-fledged form, the Viśiṣṭādvaita Continue reading A basic introduction to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta_UPDATED
(The following is my attempt to make sense of Rāmānuja’s conceptions of bhakti. Comments and criticisms are welcome!) To Rāmānuja (traditional dates 1017–1137) are attributed, with more or less certainty, a series of Vedāntic works, namely the Śrī Bhāṣya (henceforth Continue reading Bhakti in Rāmānuja: Continuities and changes of perspective
According to Mīmāṃsā authors, and unlike Nyāya ones, Vedic sentences do not convey the existence of something, but rather that something should be done. This means that the entire Veda is an instrument of knowledge only as regards duties and Continue reading The Mīmāṃsā approach to the sentence meaning as something to be done
I have already argued elsewhere that I am firmly convinced that South Asian philosophers upheld that plants are non-sentient, possibly against a common belief in their sentience.
As part of my attempts to go beyond my confort zone, Wednesday and Thursday last week I enjoyed two days of full immersion in the Analytical Philosophy of Religion. In fact, the conference I was attending was about the ontological Continue reading Analytical Philosophy of Religion with Indian categories
Opponents coming from the Advaita field figure often in Yāmuna’s Ātmasiddhi, which shows that even before Rāmānuja Vaiṣṇava authors were taking seriously the challenge of Advaita. Even more interesting is the way Yāmuna answers to them. Let us see some Continue reading The subject as knower and doer in Yāmuna’s Ātmasiddhi
Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors claim that the whole world is made of the brahman and that everything else is nothing but a qualification of it/Him. This theological content, it will be immediately evident, crashes against the (Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika) idea of a rigidly Continue reading Viśiṣṭādvaita and Nyāya on qualities
Commentaries can be manifold in ancient India. They have different purposes and form, but they all share some characters: they have a given text as their main interlocutor/they are mainly about a given text like with Origene’s commentaries, they are Continue reading Philosophical commentaries in ancient India
What makes a text a “commentary”? The question is naif enough to allow for a complicated answer. First of all, let me note the obvious: There is not a single word for “commentary” in Sanskrit, where one needs to distinguish Continue reading What is a commentary? And how the Nyāyamañjarī and the Seśvaramīmāṃsā do (not) fit the definition UPDATED
Is “nature” a thing out there? Will we find possible translations of it in each language?