Debating the centre : the theory of principal qualificand (mukhyavisesya) in classical Indian philosophy

The theory of language has occupied a special place in the history of Indian thought. Indian philosophers give particular attention to the analysis of the cognition obtained from language, known under the generic name of śābdabodha. This term is used to denote, among other things, the cognition episode of the hearer, the content of which is described in the form of a paraphrase of a sentence represented as a hierarchical structure. Philosophers submit the meaning of the component items of a sentence and their relationship to a thorough examination, and represent the content of the resulting cognition as a paraphrase centred on a meaning element, that is taken as principal qualificand (mukhyaviśesya) which is qualified by the other meaning elements. This analysis is the object of continuous debate over a period of more than a thousand years between the philosophers of the schools of Mimāmsā, Nyāya (mainly in its Navya form) and Vyākarana. While these philosophers are in complete agreement on the idea that the cognition of sentence meaning has a hierarchical structure and share the concept of a single principal qualificand (qualified by other meaning elements), they strongly disagree on the question which meaning element has this role and by which morphological item it is expressed. This disagreement is the central point of their debate and gives rise to competing versions of this theory. The Mïmāmsakas argue that the principal qualificand is what they call bhāvanā ̒bringing into being̒, ̒efficient force̒ or ̒productive operation̒, expressed by the verbal affix, and distinct from the specific procedures signified by the verbal root; the Naiyāyikas generally take it to be the meaning of the word with the first case ending, while the Vaiyākaranas take it to be the operation expressed by the verbal root. All the participants rely on the Pāninian grammar, insofar as the Mimāmsakas and Naiyāyikas do not compose a new grammar of Sanskrit, but use different interpretive strategies in order to justify their views, that are often in overt contradiction with the interpretation of the Pāninian rules accepted by the Vaiyākaranas. In each of the three positions, weakness in one area is compensated by strength in another, and the cumulative force of the total argumentation shows that no position can be declared as correct or overall superior to the others. This book is an attempt to understand this debate, and to show that, to make full sense of the irreconcilable positions of the three schools, one must go beyond linguistic factors and consider the very beginnings of each school's concern with the issue under scrutiny. The texts, and particularly the late texts of each school present very complex versions of the theory, yet the key to understanding why these positions remain irreconcilable seems to lie elsewhere, this in spite of extensive argumentation involving a great deal of linguistic and logical technicalities. Historically, this theory arises in Mimāmsā (with Sabara and Kumārila), then in Nyāya (with Udayana), in a doctrinal and theological context, as a byproduct of the debate over Vedic authority. The Navya-Vaiyākaranas enter this debate last (with Bhattoji Dïksita and Kaunda Bhatta), with the declared aim of refuting the arguments of the Mïmāmsakas and Naiyāyikas by bringing to light the shortcomings in their understanding of Pāninian grammar. The central argument has focused on the capacity of the initial contexts, with the network of issues to which the principal qualificand theory is connected, to render intelligible the presuppositions and aims behind the complex linguistic justification of the classical and late stages of this debate. Reading the debate in this light not only reveals the rationality and internal coherence of each position beyond the linguistic arguments, but makes it possible to understand why the thinkers of the three schools have continued to hold on to three mutually exclusive positions. They are defending not only their version of the principal qualificand theory, but (though not openly acknowledged) the entire network of arguments, linguistic and/or extra-linguistic, to which this theory is connected, as well as the presuppositions and aims underlying these arguments.

Political philosophy, ethnology, and time: a study of the notion of historical handicap

This article starts by identifying the crucial importance of the notion of historical handicap for the present-day social sciences of Latin America. Such notion is not an original invention made by Latinamericanists. On the contrary, I demonstrate that the genealogy of the notion of historical handicap must be sought in the tradition of Western political philosophy. Such genealogy must take into account the way it was integrated into ethnological descriptions. When and how did the Other become the backward, the primitive? While this relation was secondary for ancient Greek thought, theories of historical development became the main source of ethnological categories in the modern era. Interestingly enough, this modern synthesis suited the practical purpose of justifying two successive waves of European imperialistic: the era of discoveries, and 19th century colonialism. The article concludes by raising questions about the present role and application of the social sciences.

Eternal recurrence in a Neo-Kantian context

In this essay, I argue that someone who adopted a falsificationism of the sort that I have attributed to Nietzsche would be attracted to the doctrine of eternal recurrence. For Nietzsche, to think the becoming revealed through the senses means falsifying it through being. But the eternal recurrence offers the possibility of thinking becoming without falsification. I then argue that someone who held Nietzsche's falsificationism would see in human agency a conflict between being and becoming similar to that in empirical judgment. In the light of this conflict only the eternal recurrence would offer the possibility of truly affirming life. I end by discussing how this reading of the eternal recurrence solves a number of puzzles that have bedeviled interpreters.

THE SKEPTICAL CARTESIAN BACKGROUND OF HUME'S "OF THE ACADEMICAL OR SCEPTICAL PHILOSOPHY" (FIRST INQUIRY, SECTION 12)

ABSTRACT In section XII of the First Inquiry, Hume refers to the two Hellenistic schools of skepticism (Academic and Pyrrhonian) to present his own view of skepticism, which, however, depends on the ancient skeptics mainly indirectly. Hume's view of skepticism depends crucially on Descartes and post-Cartesian philosophers such as Pascal, Huet, Foucher and Bayle, who reacted skeptically to major Cartesian doctrines but followed one version or other of Descartes's methodical doubt. Although all these post-Cartesian philosophers are relevant in section XII, I focus on the topics in which Descartes himself-besides his skeptical followers-seems directly relevant. After an introductory section (I) on Julia Annas' and Richard Popkin's views of Hume's relation to, respectively, ancient and modern skepticism, I turn to section XII and examine what Hume calls (II) "consequent skepticism about the senses," (III) "antecedent skepticism," and (IV) "Academic skepticism."

Dialogue in the crisis of representation : realism and antirealism in the context of the conversation between theologians and quantum physicists in Göttingen 1949-1961

The aim of this study is to analyse the content of the interdisciplinary conversations in Göttingen between 1949 and 1961. The task is to compare models for describing reality presented by quantum physicists and theologians. Descriptions of reality indifferent disciplines are conditioned by the development of the concept of reality in philosophy, physics and theology. Our basic problem is stated in the question: How is it possible for the intramental image to match the external object?Cartesian knowledge presupposes clear and distinct ideas in the mind prior to observation resulting in a true correspondence between the observed object and the cogitative observing subject. The Kantian synthesis between rationalism and empiricism emphasises an extended character of representation. The human mind is not a passive receiver of external information, but is actively construing intramental representations of external reality in the epistemological process. Heidegger's aim was to reach a more primordial mode of understanding reality than what is possible in the Cartesian Subject-Object distinction. In Heidegger's philosophy, ontology as being-in-the-world is prior to knowledge concerning being. Ontology can be grasped only in the totality of being (Dasein), not only as an object of reflection and perception. According to Bohr, quantum mechanics introduces an irreducible loss in representation, which classically understood is a deficiency in knowledge. The conflicting aspects (particle and wave pictures) in our comprehension of physical reality, cannot be completely accommodated into an entire and coherent model of reality. What Bohr rejects is not realism, but the classical Einsteinian version of it. By the use of complementary descriptions, Bohr tries to save a fundamentally realistic position. The fundamental question in Barthian theology is the problem of God as an object of theological discourse. Dialectics is Barth¿s way to express knowledge of God avoiding a speculative theology and a human-centred religious self-consciousness. In Barthian theology, the human capacity for knowledge, independently of revelation, is insufficient to comprehend the being of God. Our knowledge of God is real knowledge in revelation and our words are made to correspond with the divine reality in an analogy of faith. The point of the Bultmannian demythologising programme was to claim the real existence of God beyond our faculties. We cannot simply define God as a human ideal of existence or a focus of values. The theological programme of Bultmann emphasised the notion that we can talk meaningfully of God only insofar as we have existential experience of his intervention. Common to all these twentieth century philosophical, physical and theological positions, is a form of anti-Cartesianism. Consequently, in regard to their epistemology, they can be labelled antirealist. This common insight also made it possible to find a common meeting point between the different disciplines. In this study, the different standpoints from all three areas and the conversations in Göttingen are analysed in the frameworkof realism/antirealism. One of the first tasks in the Göttingen conversations was to analyse the nature of the likeness between the complementary structures inquantum physics introduced by Niels Bohr and the dialectical forms in the Barthian doctrine of God. The reaction against epistemological Cartesianism, metaphysics of substance and deterministic description of reality was the common point of departure for theologians and physicists in the Göttingen discussions. In his complementarity, Bohr anticipated the crossing of traditional epistemic boundaries and the generalisation of epistemological strategies by introducing interpretative procedures across various disciplines.

PASSIONS AND EVIL IN KANT'S PHILOSOPHY

In this paper, I aim at relating passions to evil in Kant's philosophy. I begin by explaining the difference between affects and passions in the textAnthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Kant claims that both affects and passions are illnesses of the mind, because both affect and passion hinder the sovereignty of reason. I show that passions are worse than affects for the purpose of pure reason. Second, I relate affects and passions to the degrees of the propensity to evil in theReligion. I analyze the idea of an ethical community as a way to overcome the evil, which goes beyond political and anthropological solutions suggested by Kant.

Of empty thoughts and blind intuitions Kant's answer to McDowell

This paper examines the relation between intuition and concept in Kant in light of John McDowell's neo-Kantian position that intuitions are concept-laden.2 The focus is on Kant's twofold pronouncement that thoughts without content are empty and that intuitions without concepts are blind. I show that intuitions as singular representations are not instances of passive data intake but the result of synthetic unification of the given manifold of the senses by the power of the imagination under the guidance of the understanding. Against McDowell I argue that the amenability of intuitions to conceptual determination is not due some pre-existing, absolute conceptuality of the real but to the "work of the subject."3 On a more programmatic level, this paper seeks to demonstrate the limitations of a selective appropriation of Kant and the philosophical potential of a more comprehensive and thorough consideration of his work. Section 1 addresses the unique balance in Kant's philosophy between the work on particular problems and the orientation toward a systematic whole. Section 2 outlines McDowell's take on the Kantian distinction between intuition and concept in the context of the Kant readings by Sellars and Strawson. Section 3 exposes McDowell's relapse into the Myth of the Given. Section 4 proposes a reading of Kant's theoretical philosophy as an epistemology of metaphysical cognition. Section 5 details Kant's original account of sensible intuition in the Inaugural-Dissertation of 1770. Section 6 presents the transition from the manifold of the senses to the synthesis in the imagination and the unification through the categories in the Critique of pure reason (1781 and 1787). Section 7 addresses Kant's formalism in epistemology and metaphysics.

The demonism of creation in Goethe's philosophy

Goethe's philosophy of creativity revolves around what he called das Dämonische. This essay is not meant as a definition or an explanation of demonic creation, but instead presents a demonic work par excellence, as the term "demonic" is defined by Goethe in the Elegy from Marienbad. The process of the creation of this work, as it is described by Goethe, also represents a strange exorcism, as the entire daemonic creative force of the author is transposed in this lyrical masterpiece of German and universal literature. After writing the Elegy Goethe, it is no longer demonic.

Animal Experience in Kant’s Philosophy

The role of animals in the philosophy of mind is primarily to help understand the human mind by serving as practical examples of cognition that differs from ours either in kind or in degree. Kant regarded animals as beings that only have the faculty of sensibility. By examining what Kant writes about animal experience we gain knowledge concerning the role of sensibility in experience, free from the influence of understanding and reason. I look at Kant’s view of animals in the historical context of alternative views presented by Descartes’ and Hume’s views. Kant’s view can be seen as a counterargument against Descartes’ doctrine of animal machines according to which animals do not have minds and they do not think. I suggest that while it can be argued that some kind of elementary experience could be possible in the physiological level, this only makes sense when it is possible to become conscious of the unconscious sensation, and this requires a mind. A further option is to claim that there is only a difference in degree between human and animal cognitive capacities. This is Hume’s view. I argue that even though Kant’s and Hume’s view on the cognitive capacities of animals seems to depart from each other to a considerable extent, the differences between them diminish when the focus is on the experience these capacities enable. I also briefly discuss the relation of the metaphysics of animal minds to animal ethics.

The Literary relations between La Fontaine and the "Astrée" of Honoré d'Urfé : a dissertation presented to the faculty of the department of philosophy of the university of Pennsylvania in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy / by Walther P. Fischer

Collection : Publications of the University of Pennsylvania ; n° 6