Abda A Study Of Bhartr Hari S Philosophy Of Language

This Book Offers A Study Of Bhartrhari S Vakyapadiya In An Altogether Modern (The Post-Fregean) Perspective On The Philosophy Of Language. Bhartrhari S Analysis Of Language Is Presented Methodically And In Contemporary Philosophical Idiom.

The essays presented in this volume constitute a progression from general considerations related to the ‘etic’ (in the geertzian sense of the word) approach to South Asian cultural productions, to peculiar and detailed investigations of them. Such a sequence is meant to develop a renovated and systemic approach, through which these specific cultural materials should be interpreted: materials not to be read in isolation, nor with an overemphasised concern for cultural relativity. Rather, they should be viewed as meaningful examples of sophisticated intellectual and cultural procedures to be included into a broader comparative discussion, also in order to increase the quality and the depth of such debate.

This volume is the outcome of the international seminar on Bhartrhari: Thought, Language and Reality held in New Delhi on 12-14 December 2003 as part of the centenary celebrations of Motilal Banarasidass. In this seminar, scholars from all over the world presented their interpretations of Bhartrhariês philosophy, some of the light of the modern trends in philosophy and linguistics, others in the backdrop of Indian tradition. This volume contains almost all the papers presented at the seminar along with some other papers invited from scholars who could not participate in the seminar to make it comprehensive. The papers discuss the metaphysics of Bhartrhari and his ideas about questions concerned language and reality. Some of the papers compare Bhartrhari with Western Philosophers and linguists like Wittgenstein, Grice, Searle, Humboldt, Chomsky and Goldbert, thus showing his relevance to problems in contemporary philosophy and linguistics. It is clear that after the initial efforts in the fourth to sixth decades of the twentieth century, Bhartrhari studies have now gained a significant momentum.

This volume is concerned with those parts of Indian pramana theory that Western philosophers would count as logic and philosophy of language. Indian philosophers and linguists were much concerned with philosophical issues having to do with language, especially with theories of meaning, while the Indian logicians developed both a formalized canonical inference schema and a theory of fallacies. The logic of the standard Indian inferential model is deductive, but the premises are arrived at inductively. The later Navya-Nyaya logicians also went on to develop a powerful technical language. This intentional logic of cognitions became the language of all serious discourse in India. The selections in this volume discuss Indian treatments of topics in logic and the philosophy of language, such as the nature of inference, negation, necessity counterfactual reasoning, many-valued logics, theory of meaning, reference and existence, compositionality and contextualism, the sense-reference distinction and the nature of the signification relation.

What can the philosophy of language learn from the classical Indian philosophical tradition? As recently as twenty or thirty years ago this question simply would not have arisen. If a practitioner of analytic philosophy of language of that time had any view of Indian philosophy at all, it was most likely to be the stereotyped picture of a gaggle of navel gazing mystics making vaguely Bradley-esque pronouncements on the oneness of the one that was one once. Much work has been done in the intervening years to overthrow that stereotype. Thanks to the efforts of such scholars as J. N. Mohanty, B. K. Matilal, and Karl Potter, philoso phers working in the analytic tradition have begun to discover something of the range and the rigor of classical Indian work in epistemolgy and metaphysics. Thus for instance, at least some recent discussions of personal identity reflect an awareness that the Indian Buddhist tradition might prove an important source of insights into the ramifications of a reductionist approach to personal identity. In philosophy of language, though, things have not improved all that much. While the old stereotype may no longer prevail among its practitioners, I suspect that they would not view classical Indian philoso phy as an important source of insights into issues in their field. Nor are they to be faulted for this.

This book explores the conviction shared by almost all Indian philosophers regarding the close connection between language and reality. It shows that the main currents of Indian philosophy can be understood as answers to a problem that this conviction entailed.

The Volume Throws Light On Various Issues And Problems In Classical Indian Philosophical Tradition Concerning The Structure Of Language And Meaning, Particularly Referring To The Theories And Philosophies Of Bhartrhari And Nyaya And Purva-Mimamsa Philosophies Of Language. It Also Involves The Contemporary Western Perspective In The Course Of Analysis.