Roy Tzohar | Tel Aviv University (original) (raw)

Books by Roy Tzohar

Winner of the 2018 Toshihide Numata Book Award, 2018

Buddhist philosophy is fundamentally ambivalent toward language. Language is paradoxically seen a... more Buddhist philosophy is fundamentally ambivalent toward language. Language is paradoxically seen as both obstructive and necessary for liberation. This bookdelves into the ingenious response to this tension from the Yogacara school of Indian Buddhism: that all language-use is metaphorical. Exploring the profound implications of this claim, the book makes the case for viewing the Yogacara account as a full-fledged theory of meaning, one that is not merely linguistic, but also applicable both in the world as well as in texts.
Despite the overwhelming visibility of figurative language in Buddhist philosophical texts, this is the first sustained and systematic attempt to present an indigenous Buddhist theory of metaphor. By grounding the Yogacara pan-metaphorical claim in a broader intellectual context, of both Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools, the book uncovers an intense philosophical conversation about metaphor and language that reaches across sectarian lines. This analysis radically reframes the Yogacara controversy with the Madhyamaka school of philosophy, sheds light on the Yogacara application of particular metaphors, and explicates the school's unique understanding of experience.

For the book's Toshihide Numata Award presentation and Symposium (with Robert Sharf, Jonardon Ganeri, Catharine Prueitt, and Evan Thompson):
https://buddhiststudies.berkeley.edu/news/2018-toshihide-numata-book-award-presentation-and-symposium-%E2%80%98meaning-world-and-texts%E2%80%99-thoughts

Maria Heim, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad & Roy Tzohar (eds.), 2021

Drawing on a rich variety of Indian texts across multiple traditions, including Vedanta, Buddhist... more Drawing on a rich variety of Indian texts across multiple traditions, including Vedanta, Buddhist, Yoga and Jain, this collection explores how emotional experience is framed, evoked and theorized in order to offer compelling insights into human subjectivity. Rather than approaching emotion through the prism of Western theory, a team of leading Indian philosophers showcase the unique literary texture, philosophical reflections and theoretical paradigms that classical Indian sources provide in their own right. From solitude in the Saundarananda and psychosomatic theories of disease in the Yogavasistha to female lament in Greek, Sinhala Buddhist and Sanskrit epic tales, their chapters reveal the range and diversity of the phenomena encompassing the English term 'emotion'. In doing so, they contribute towards a more cosmopolitan, comparative and pluralistic conception of human experience. Adopting a broad phenomenological methodology, this handbook reframes debates on emotion within classical Indian thought and is an invaluable resource for researchers and students seeking to understand the field beyond the Western tradition.

Selected Papers by Roy Tzohar

Journal of Buddhist philosophy (SUNY Press), 2023

“Separation/disassociation from what is dear is suffering . . . ” declares the first noble truth ... more “Separation/disassociation from what is dear is suffering . . . ” declares the first noble truth of suffering, in a statement that is overwhelming in its decisiveness and scope, encompassing both the severance of ties to loved ones and the discontinuity of any attempt to hold on to what is pleasant or liked. However, in first-millennium Indian Sanskrit classical lore, Buddhist not excepted, separation comes to mean and convey much more—in terms of emotional phenomena—than just suffering. It is understood in terms of diverse and sometimes excluding emotional phenomena, which are experienced under different (and sometimes contrastive) contexts. In Sanskrit belletristic literature and aesthetics, where lovers’ experience of “love in separation” is listed under the rubric of the erotic emotion, separation comes with its own particular sub-moods, typical landscapes, and associated practices, all of which are extended also under virahabhakti to the religious realm and the highly aestheticized relations with the divine. And in the case of philosophical texts and themes connected with Śramaṇic ideology, Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike, a sense of doom regarding one’s impending demise and the inevitable separation from all that is dear becomes a dominant mood, and carries with it normative and moral prescriptions, a theorization of action, and a particular kind of perceptual salience.
These various outlooks on separation, however, are not unrelated, and often both come into play within the confines of a single work. This is especially true in the case of the Buddhist belletristic poetical works (mahākāvya) of Aśvaghoṣa (second century CE ), Life of the Buddha
(Buddhacarita, BC) and Beautiful Nanda (Saundarananda, SN), in which separation—and here I refer primarily to the term viprayoga in both its concrete sense as the separation from loved ones and its broader existential sense—features as a central theme. Exploring the range of meanings and dynamic use of the term within Aśvaghoṣa’s SN, the first part of this article provides a brief theoretical framework with which to approach Aśvaghoṣa’s understanding of separation and its relation to the emotions. In this regard, I argue that separation, more than just an umbrella term for a cluster of associated feelings and emotions, serves as a unique emotional context—prescribing specific kinds of perceptual and moral saliency, practices and regimes of the self—under which emotional phenomena become meaningful. As such, its analysis may also contribute to the ongoing scholarly discussion about the adequacy of using the very category of emotion in the context of Buddhist literature. Drawing on this framework and focusing on Aśvaghoṣa’s BC, the second part of the article turns to deal specifically with the role he allocates in the work to philosophical moral arguments regarding separation. Through analysis of the workings of a particular recurrent argument that I will call “the argument from separation,” I argue that, in addition to its role in justifying Buddhist ideology, it functions in Aśvaghoṣa’s BC primarily as a self-therapy of the emotions.

In Schafer, Dagmar, and Glenn Most (eds.) Thinking in Many Tongues. Forms of Plurilingualism in Traditional Eurasian Scholarship. A Reader. Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Leiden, The Netherlands: E.J. Brill. Forthcoming.BRILL eBooks, Apr 7, 2023

The text excerpts at hand are taken from the Descent into Laṅkā Scripture (Laṅkāvatārasūtra), a ... more The text excerpts at hand are taken from the Descent into Laṅkā Scripture
(Laṅkāvatārasūtra), a Buddhist Mahāyāna scripture from around the third to
fifth century ce, written mostly in prose form as a dialogue between the Buddha and his disciple, Mahāmati. The excerpts are a selection of verses from the tenth chapter of the text, which, grouped together, provide a narrative of sorts of how language develops from the pre-embryonic stage, through gestation, and finally to its manifestation as linguistic behavior. Pivotal in this account is the notion of speech
as stemming from vikalpa—conceptual discrimination—which is seen as responsible
not just for manifest discursive thought and behavior, but also for deeper epistemic distinctions and fundamental concept formation. Under this account, our experience, which is initially an undifferentiated causal mental flux, necessarily passes through certain conceptual filters. At the most fundamental level of our (subliminal) mental activity, this manifests in a basic discrimination that separates all experience into the categories of a subjective aspect (a grasper) and an objective aspect (what is grasped). This first and most basic distinction is the original sin, so to speak, after which many other conceptual categories are imposed on our otherwise undifferentiated experience so as to organize it into meaningful units. Eventually these
manifest—shaped by habit and convention—in overt linguistic activity and
communication.

In Schafer, Dagmar; Most, Glenn, and Marten Saarela Most (eds.) Thinking in Many Tongues. Forms of Plurilingualism in Traditional Eurasian Scholarship. A Reader. , Apr 7, 2023

Buddhist Etymologies from First-Millennium India and China: Works by Vasubandhu, Sthiramati, and ... more Buddhist Etymologies from First-Millennium India and China: Works by Vasubandhu, Sthiramati, and Paramārtha (excerpts).” Forthcoming.

Edelglass, William; McClintock, Sara, and Pierre-Julien Harter (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, London: Routledge., Jun 22, 2022

Sthiramati (circa sixth century CE) was an Indian Buddhist scholar of the Yogācāra, best known fo... more Sthiramati (circa sixth century CE) was an Indian Buddhist scholar of the Yogācāra, best known for his extensive commentaries on some of the most important treatises of this tradition. What often goes less noticed, however, is his role in the very creation of that tradition, a function of his particular position within the school’s textual development.2 Relative to previous thinkers like Asaṅga and Vasubandhu, Sthiramati operated under a much more defined notion of the Yogācāra as a distinct school, or at least a more defined textual tradition; accordingly, his interpretive challenge – and contribution – consisted in synthesizing a varied textual corpus into a coherent and consistent worldview, adding to it in the process some original and strikingly innovative insights.
In this chapter, we seek to provide the necessary background to his writings and life and to present a brief survey and evaluation of his philosophical contributions and their significance. The first section, authored by Jowita Kramer, presents the state of current research on what is known regarding his life, dates, and authorship and aims to point out some common philosophical and stylistic traits among the works ascribed to him by providing a comparative and systematic consideration of his intertextual realm. The concluding section, authored by Roy Tzohar, shows Sthiramati as an individual thinker by examining, as a case study, his lengthy comments on the opening verse of Vasubandhu’s Treatise in Thirty Verses (Triṃśikā), highlighting their innovativeness and unique contribution to Yogācāra thought.

Philosophy East and West, 2020

This essay seeks to explain the somewhat paradoxical Yogācāra Buddhist view of the possibility o... more This essay seeks to explain the somewhat paradoxical Yogācāra Buddhist
view of the possibility of non-conceptual language use (under what is called
‘subsequent awareness’, tatpṛs.ṭhalabdhajñāna). The essay unpacks the school’s
understanding of non-conceptuality, drawing extensively on contemporary
non-conceptualist theory, as well as on conceptualist accounts that are referred
to here as “inclusivist.” It is argued that the inclusivists’ proposal that we view
conceptual articulation itself as a form of practical-skillful action presents some intriguing affi nities (but also important disaffi nities) with the Yogācāra
conception of language use, and takes us some way toward understanding
what a concept is for a Yogācāra Buddhist.

Heim, Maria; Chakravarthi, Ram-Prasad, and Roy Tzohar (eds.), Emotions in Classical Indian Thought. Bloomsbury Research Handbooks in Asian Philosophy series. London: Bloomsbury Academic., 2021

How did first millennia Indian Buddhists understand the emotions? What are the theoretical resour... more How did first millennia Indian Buddhists understand the emotions? What are the theoretical resources, methodologies and vocabularies they used to account for emotive phenomena, and how do these relate, if at all, to contemporary philosophy of the emotions? This essay focuses, as a case study, on the notion of ascetic solitude (viveka) presented by the Buddhist thinker and poet Aśvaghoṣa’s (second century CE) in his poetical work the Saundarananda. Approaching Aśvaghoṣa’s work as a lens through which to examine the broader Buddhist philosophical conception of the emotions, it is demonstrated that solitude, far from being conceived as a physical withdrawal from the world (into an interior subjective space), is seen as a mode of engagement with the world, a dynamic and transformative experiential process. This understanding, it is argued, is set within a broader Buddhist philosophical conception of emotions primarily in terms of a shifting evaluative perceptual content. Within the Saundarananda, emotions are akin to “ways of seeing”—a matter of perceptual modes and patterns of salience and what they experientially pick and leave out. Outlining some of the features of this theory that are distinctively Buddhist, this essay join the scholarly critique of the practice of applying readymade contemporary emotive categories to the study of Indian Buddhist texts, and advocate the need to account for these texts as much as possible in their own terms.

Buddhist Philosophy of Consciousness, 2020

According to the early Indian Yogācāra, following the attainment of non-conceptual cognition (ni... more According to the early Indian Yogācāra, following the attainment of non-conceptual
cognition (nirvikalpajñāna) the Bodhisattva attains another kind of insight – the “cog-
nition obtained subsequent to it” (tatpṛṣṭhalabdhanirvikalpajṇāna). This cognition
appears to involve a unique kind of conceptual activity, very different from the ordi-
nary one, which allows one to remain and operate effectively within Samsara. In the
Triṃśikā-bhāṣya Sthiramati correlates this cognition to the understanding of the De-
pendent nature as the causal interconnectedness of all essenceless phenomena; and
the Mahāyānasaṃgraha and its commentaries present intriguing descriptions of what
such knowledge entails in terms of the Yogic perception of the external world. Examin-
ing these texts as well as passages from other Yogācāra treatises, the paper will unpack
the phenomenological and conceptual aspects of the School’s conception of the “cog-
nition obtained subsequent to it,” exploring its relevancy to contemporary philosophi-
cal discussion of qualia; its implications for the adequacy of the shared/private distinc-
tion with respect to experience and for the understanding of perception given the
possibility of non-conceptual experiences

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

This chapter presents a working definition of metaphor (Upacāra) on the basis of the common featu... more This chapter presents a working definition of metaphor (Upacāra) on the basis of the common features that underlie its understanding by the various Indian schools of thought. In particular, it examines the understanding of metaphor in the early works of the Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya schools, which address the issue as part of their broader discussion of the denotation of nouns. The discussion establishes that while these schools’ theories of meaning share much of their basic understandings of the mechanism of metaphor, their interpretations can be seen as archetypes of the two poles of Indian thinking about figurative language—as buttressing or undermining ordinary language use, respectively. These two approaches, as we will see, recur as a leitmotif in the works of other schools of thought.

Oxford University Press eBooks, May 24, 2018

Having presented the role of upacāra in Asaṅga’s critique of an essentialist theory of meaning, t... more Having presented the role of upacāra in Asaṅga’s critique of an essentialist theory of meaning, this chapter now turns to examine additional aspects of the concept of metaphor as it appears in other Yogācāra-related Buddhist sources. Concluding the book’s survey of the Buddhist context of the Yogācāra, the text explores the possible ways in which a wide variety of Buddhist sources—including Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakoṣabhāṣya (and Sthiramati’s commentary on these sections), the Yogācāra-related Laṅkāvatārasūtra (LAS), and Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya (PS)—contributed to Sthiramati’s full-fledged theory of metaphor. Here, the reconstruction of the context of the Yogācāra understanding of metaphor becomes more specific, tracing not only the broad common presuppositions underlying figurative usage, but also the possibility of a more concrete intertextual exchange that helped shape Sthiramati’s claims—some of them highly innovative—on this topic.

Oxford University Press, 2018

This chapter turns to the understanding of metaphor in the school of grammatical analysis, focusi... more This chapter turns to the understanding of metaphor in the school of grammatical analysis, focusing on Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya (VP), along with its commentaries, and examining its relevance to later Buddhist formulations on the topic. The discussion focuses on Bhaṛthari’s argument for the figurative existence of all the referents of words, as well as his analogy between metaphor and perceptual illusion. It argues that Bhartṛhari lays the foundation for a sophisticated, pragmatic account of both linguistic and perceptual meanings that allow a relationship of correspondence between language and phenomena—without assuming externalism. This perspective is shown to provide important context for the understanding of subsequent Yogācāra arguments about metaphor.

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

This chapter explores the broader epistemic ramifications of the Yogācāra theory of meaning and m... more This chapter explores the broader epistemic ramifications of the Yogācāra theory of meaning and metaphor. It points out features that this theory shares with contemporary analytical causal theories of reference—especially the solution that they offer to the problem of incommensurability. The text presents the Yogācāra understanding of this problem, notably in Sthiramati’s Triṃśikābhāṣya (TriṃśBh) and Asaṅga’s Mahāyānasaṃgraha (MS), and examines how Sthiramati’s figurative theory of meaning addresses it. The conclusion points out deep structural affinities between the Yogācāra understanding of linguistic meaning and its understanding of experience, particularly of intersubjective experiences of the external word. This allows an identification and articulation of several fundamental themes that run through Yogācāra thought in general, and through the school’s conception of meaning in particular, implying a broadly conceived theory of meaning that is not merely linguistic, but also per...

Sophia, 2016

The paper deals with the early Yogācāra strategies for explaining intersubjective agreement unde... more The paper deals with the early Yogācāra strategies for explaining intersubjective
agreement under a ‘mere representations’ view. Examining Vasubandhu,
Asaṅga, and Sthiramati’s use of the example of intersubjective agreement among the
hungry ghosts (pretas), it is demonstrated that in contrast to the way in which it was
often interpreted by contemporary scholars, this example in fact served these Yogācāra
thinkers to perform an ironic inversion of the realist premise—showing that intersubjective
agreement not only does not require the existence of mind-independent objects
but is in fact incompatible with their existence. By delineating the phenomenological
complexity underlying this account, the paper then proceeds to unpack the emergent
Yogācāra account of intersubjectivity, its implications on the understanding of being,
the life-world, and alterity, arguing that it proposes a radical revision of the way we
conceive of the ‘shared’ and ‘private’ distinction in respect to experiences, both
ordinarily and philosophically.

Journal of Indian Philosophy

Digital copies of this work may be made and distributed provided no change is made and no alterat... more Digital copies of this work may be made and distributed provided no change is made and no alteration is made to the content. Reproduction in any other format, with the exception of a single copy for private study, requires the written permission of the author.

The Buddhist approach to testimony (āptavāda, āptāgama) as a valid means of cognition (pramāṇa) i... more The Buddhist approach to testimony (āptavāda, āptāgama) as a valid means of cognition (pramāṇa) is far from univocal and involves an intricate and often also ambivalent attitude toward scriptural authority. The paper focuses on several early Yogācāra Buddhist thinkers who accepted testimony as a reliable epistemic warrant, and offers an account of the sophisticated and highly reflective manner in which they approached the issue of scriptural meaning and authority. For this purpose, the paper first outlines the theoretical framework for considering scripture presented by the early Yogācāra philosopher Vasubandhu's Vyākhyāyukti, focusing especially on his discussion of the criteria for canonicity and its implications for a system of hermeneutics based on the uncovering of authorial intent. The paper then examines in turn the way in which this framework and its internal tensions were worked out in the writings of Sthiramati (circa 6 th century CE) and especially in his Madhyāntavib...

Winner of the 2018 Toshihide Numata Book Award, 2018

Maria Heim, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad & Roy Tzohar (eds.), 2021

Journal of Buddhist philosophy (SUNY Press), 2023

In Schafer, Dagmar; Most, Glenn, and Marten Saarela Most (eds.) Thinking in Many Tongues. Forms of Plurilingualism in Traditional Eurasian Scholarship. A Reader. , Apr 7, 2023

Edelglass, William; McClintock, Sara, and Pierre-Julien Harter (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, London: Routledge., Jun 22, 2022

Philosophy East and West, 2020

Heim, Maria; Chakravarthi, Ram-Prasad, and Roy Tzohar (eds.), Emotions in Classical Indian Thought. Bloomsbury Research Handbooks in Asian Philosophy series. London: Bloomsbury Academic., 2021

Buddhist Philosophy of Consciousness, 2020

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

Oxford University Press eBooks, May 24, 2018

Oxford University Press, 2018

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

Sophia, 2016

Journal of Indian Philosophy

Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2017

Can the early Yogācāra be said to present a systematic theory of meaning? The paper argues that S... more Can the early Yogācāra be said to present a systematic theory of meaning? The paper argues that Sthiramati’s bhāṣya on Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikā (Treatise in Thirty Verses), in which he argues that all language-use is metaphorical, indeed amounts to such a theory, both because of the text’s engagement with the wider Indian philosophical conversation about reference and meaning and by virtue of the questions it addresses and its motivations. Through a translation and analysis of key sections of Sthiramati’s commentary I present the main features of this theory of meaning and discuss the ways in which it is distinct from Vasubandhu’s ideas. I demonstrate how this theory of meaning enabled Sthiramati to present a unique understanding of discourse that distinguishes between varying levels of truth within the conventional realm. This understanding sat well with the Yogācāra soteriological and theoretical needs, and most importantly, enabled him to establish the meaningfulness of the school’s own metaphysical discourse. Securing this meaningfulness was especially important to Sthiramati in meeting the challenge posed by the radical conventionalism of the Mādhyamaka, and his response as I interpret it suggests that one of the main disputes between the early Yogācāra with the Mādhyamaka, at least as reflected in the Triṃśikā-bhāṣya, in fact turns on linguistic rather than ontological issues.

Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets, 2000