Advaita Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Outline of Indian Non-Realism

by Ram-Prasad,Chakravarthi

• ISBN13: 9780700716043
• ISBN10: 0700716041
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-10-28
• Publisher: RoutledgeCurzon

Summary

Based on original translations of passages from the works of three major thinkers of the classical Indian school of Advaita (Sankara, Vacaspati and Sri Harsa), but addressing issues found in Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein and contemporary analytic philosophers, this book argues for a philosophical position it calls 'non-realism'. This is the view that an independent, external world must be assumed if the features of cognition are to be explained, but that it cannot be proven that there is such a world, independently of an appeal to cognition itself. This position is constructed against idealist denials of externality, realist arguments for an independent world and the sceptical denial of the coherence of cognition.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Preface	x
Chronology of philosophers	xi
Introduction	1	(24)
SECTION I: SANKARA: EXTERNALITY
Sankara and the philosophical framework of Advaita	25	(13)
Sankara, Vasubandhu and the idealist use of dreaming	38	(42)
Sankara, dreaming and non-realism	80	(15)
SECTION II: VACASPATI: DETERMINACY
Vacaspati on anirvacaniyatva	95	(38)
SECTION III: SRI HARSA: EXISTENCE
Knowledge and Existence	133	(29)
The non-realist critique of Existence	162	(51)
Discursive Appendix: Reading Sri Harsa through 20th-century anti-sceptical naturalism	201	(12)
SECTION IV: APPLYING NON-REALISM
Causal connections, cognition and regularity: comparativist remarks on David Hume and Sri Harsa	213	(23)
Immediacy and the direct theory of perception: problems from Sri Harsa	236	(26)
Bibliography	262	(5)
Index	267