Jayanta on the Question of God’s Existence (original) (raw)
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Atheistic Arguments in Indian Philosophy
Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion. ‘Atheistic Arguments in Indian Philosophy’ in Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (eds.) Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion, Volume 1, pp. 170-176. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell., 2021
In this encyclopaedia entry I give a summary of the stage that atheistic argumentation had reached in India by the end of the 9th century. Atheistic arguments involved (1) pointing to logical fallacies in the inference(s) that Naiyayikas used to establish the existence of God, and (2) highlighting certain unresolvable difficulties concerning God’s nature.
The Nyāyamañjarī’s Arguments Against the Existence of God: Translation and Commentary
Journal of Hindu Studies , 2023
The treatment of the question of God's existence in Jayanta's Nyāyamañjarī falls into two parts. In the first, an atheist opponent (pūrvapakṣin) argues against God on the grounds that no means of knowledge attest to his existence. It is that part that is translated below. Our translation of the second part (the siddhānta section) is due to be published in a future volume of this same journal. There Jayanta begins to speak in his own Naiyāyika voice, and answers all of the objections that the atheist has articulated in the first part. Jayanta wrote the Nyāyamañjarī at the end of the 9th century in Kashmir. For background information about Jayanta, his life and his works, see Dezső (2005, pp.15-19) and Graheli (2015, pp.3-13). The Nyāyamañjarī is structured according to the 16 topics of discussion (padārtha) listed in Nyāyasūtra 1.1.1. The first two of these are means of knowledge (pramāṇ a) and objects of knowledge (prameya), and the text is heavily weighted towards these two: the first six chapters out of 12 deal with the pramāṇ as, the next three with the prameyas, and the remaining 14 padārthas are squeezed into the final three chapters.
Gods on Earth: Immanence and Transcendence in Indian Ideology and Praxis
‘Gods on Earth: Immanence and Transcendence in Indian Ideology and Praxis.’ The Indian Journal of Anthropology. Inaugural Issue 1(1), pp. 1-20. , 2013
Questions concerning the relative importance to Indian civilisation of the Brahmanadominated model of religious status hierarchy and the royal model of divine kingship and associated hierarchies of state power have been referred to as 'the central conundrum of Indian social ideology'. These two models of hierarchy nonetheless derive from a broader Indian worldview and both shape, and are shaped by, the existential realities of Indian social life and of life in general. They represent an attempt to respond to a 'central conundrum' of human sociality-how to differentiate between the members of a society in terms of status-and a central dilemma of human existence-how to be at once engaged with the world and elevated beyond the ordinary conditions of embodied existence. This paper endeavours to achieve a more unified perspective on Indian kingship and Brahmanism by exploring their relation to the world of social action, and action more generally. Indian civilisation has struggled for millennia with the fundamental existential conflicts of 'being in the world.' Hence what is to be gained from unravelling the products of this struggle is not only a better understanding of Indian culture alone but of human experience in general.
New Perspectives in Indian Philosophy.
While paying tribute to C.F. Andrews, the person who, attracted by Tagore, settled in Shantiniketan, Bhattacharyya alluded to the relentless struggle of Andrews against evil and injustice in any part of the globe. And all these he wanted to do in the name of religion. Following many of his compatriots like Tagore and Gandhi, Andrews sacrificed his life to end man's alienation and the resulting boredom through non-violence. Non-violence is a fight not against the oppressor as human, but against the evil forces that dominate him. The danger with violence is that it might produce a new cycle of oppression by ending the old one. Tagore, of course, brings in the idea of identification to fight all the varieties of alienation. Bhattacharyya does not forget to mention that on some decisions of Gandhi, Andrews had the honesty to dissent. As for Gandhi, religion and politics intermingle, so is with Andrews. Andrews was more of a 'religious politician'. He left Santiniketan as many New Perspectives in Indian Philosophy on the other, in one point they agree. It is that consciousness is no attribute of the self, but is the self itself. In other words, the self is no substance, if substance is to be distinguished from attributes. If, however, by substance one means a permanent standing entity, the pure consciousness of the Sāṃkhya, the Yoga, and the Advaita Vedānta may well be called a substance. For, certainly, as neither an attribute nor an act nor a function, it is a permanent standing entity. Here lies the difference between these philosophers, on the one hand, and Kant, Gentile, and the Vijñānavādi Buddhist, on the other. These latter understand by 'self' pure consciousness as an act; and the Vijñānavādin's ālayavijñāna, though agreeing largely with the Advaita Vedāntin's pure consciousness, is never a standing separate entity, but, even as autonomous, distributes itself among mental states. Some Buddhists deny self altogether, and are content with the series of mental states. Others, mainly of the Vaibhāśika school, do not deny it altogether, but yet take it as wholly indefinite. To the Mādhyamikas, it is neither assertible, nor deniable, nor both assertible and deniable, nor neither of these two. The Nyāya, the Vaiśeṣika, the Mīmāṃsā, the Viśiṣṭādvaita and some other types of Indian philosophy, which are all arranged against the Buddhists in that they admit a standing permanent self as substance, do not, however, equate self with consciousness. The self, according to them, is a substance, to which consciousness belongs either as an attribute or as essence. While the Nyāya and the Vaiśeṣika regard consciousness as an accidental attribute of the self, consciousness or knowledge sometime occurring and sometimes not occurring in the self, for the Viśiṣṭādvaita consciousness is an essential feature of the self-the self never failing to be conscious. And for the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsakas, the self is as much conscious as no conscious, i.e. in part conscious and in part non-conscious. Consciousness and that which has it, are subjective, and so whatever is non-The Mīmāṃsāka themselves do not admit God, though many Dharmaśāstras, and Smṛtis allow it.
Some Philosophical Approaches of Investigations of Indian Theology
Proceedings of the International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Ecological Studies (CESSES 2018), 2018
The main task of this article is to analyze some philosophical approaches proposed by the contemporary scholars of religious hermeneutics and history of Indian Philosophy and Religions. The author tries to ponder and correlate the weak and strong points of each approach. The three approaches, which were elaborated on the base of Religious Hermeneutics and the investigation of Indian religious-philosophical thought, are represented in the works Gerhard Oberhammer (Austria), Francis X. Clooney (USA) and John B. Carman (USA). The article sums up the philosophical outcomes of the theoretical considerations of each scholar.
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 90:4, 2012, 812-815., 2012
Toward an Indian Theodicy (The Problem of Evil)
In: A Companion to The Problem of Evil & Theodicy, eds. Justin McBrayer & Daniel Howard-Snyder. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, pp 306-317, 2013
In the Argument comprising several different “proofs” for the existence and of a Supremely Divine Being, and his nature, within Hindu schools, one finds also responses to the problem of evil – or injustice – and the beginnings of the development of what one could conceivably call Indian Theodicy. The latter theorizing however has not gone without comment and criticisms from other – albeit decidedly non-theistic – schools, notably the Mīmāmṣā (a scholastic Brahmanical system) and especially of the Buddhist and Jain ilks. The theistic solution to the problem of evil – or, more appropriate to the Indian theological context, injustice - is developed mostly in the logical school of Nyāya and the philosophical theology systems of Vedānta. Their respective cosmologies supplemented with or without a decisive teleology appear to be committed to some ontology of divine creation and sustention of the world. An extra ‘N-factor’ is brought into the equation, namely the principle of karma. The apparently beginningless presence of karma that triggers an individual’s actions, both bad and good, it is argued, mitigates the need to find a foundational justification for God’s reticence in intervening in creaturely suffering. The Indian theistic responses overall to the problem of evil or injustice is that God cannot be held morally responsible for the evil in the world because he simply administrates the consequences of the karmically-tracked acts of sentient creatures. The accountability lies elsewhere.