Spring Senior Seminars in Indian Philosophy

This term our discussions explored the basis for realist confidence in the reliability of our knowledge, distinctive strategies for questioning the core concepts that underpin philosophical debate, the nature of special experiences of ‘relishing’ when we are unique attuned to the qualitative character of the experience itself, and the mysterious relation between existence as it lies outside of worldly reality, and mathematics as some more fundamental framework.

Dr Jack Beaulieu: Udayana on Familiar Epistemic Situations. The notion of familiar epistemic situations (abhyāsadaśā) serves an important set of theoretical roles in Nyāya. Authors such as Vācaspati appeal to the notion of familiarity to solve a regress problem that traces back to Nāgārjuna, while authors like Udayana and Gaṅgeśa understand unfamiliar epistemic situations (anabhyāsadaśā) to constitute cases in which, intuitively, one is not in a position to learn that one learned. This talk explores Udayana’s remarks on this distinction in his Pariśuddhi, one of the few systematic Nyāya accounts available.

Jacob Parkinson: Relishing In-Itself and For-Itself: A Problem of Interpretation in Abhinavagupta. In his monumental Abhinavabhāratī, Abhinavagupta adopts, from Bhaṭṭa‐Nāyaka, a crucial distinction between two modes of relishing (āsvāda): the relishing of aestheticized emotions (rasāsvāda) and the relishing of the Absolute (brahmāsvāda). Rasāsvāda denotes a transfigured emotional experience elicited through poetry, theatre, and the arts—a form of enjoyment mediated by the objects of an artistic presentation. In contrast, brahmāsvāda refers to an unmediated, immediate relishing of brahman, the ultimate ground of being. The distinction continues to pose interpretive challenges regarding the relationship between Abhinavagupta’s aesthetics and his Tantric philosophy; exploring how these two forms of relishing converge and diverge, this presentation highlights broader implications for Abhinavagupta’s work as a whole.

Riccardo Paccagnella: Do Debates Have Prerequisites?  This talk will explore Śrīharṣa’s first refutation in his Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya, a seminal work in Indian philosophy that in a very Nāgārjuna-like fashion rejects in toto not only the definitions of the most central philosophical concepts of the time (12th c.), such as pramā or pramāṇa, but also the very possibility of defining such concepts. This refutation aims to discredit the widely spread idea that debaters need to have already accepted the means of valid knowledge to undertake a debate.

Anthony Ruda: Another Look at Alokākāśa. This talk examines the “non-world space” of Jaina ontology in the context of gaṇitānuyoga (mathematical discipline as a vehicle toward liberation). Identifying Pythagorean, Platonic and Advaitic analogues, in the spirit of anekāntavāda (many-sidedness), this talk aims to show how various conceptions of reality may mutually illuminate each other.