Philosophers of language and linguists need to be wary of generalizing from too small a sample of natural languages. They also need to be wary of neglecting possible insights from philosophical traditions that have focused on natural languages other than the most familiar Western ones. Take, for example, classical Indian philosophy, where philosophical concerns with language were very much involved with the early development of Sanskrit linguistics. Indian philosophers and linguists frequently discussed more general issues about semantics, often in ways (...) that are both similar to and interestingly different from Western philosophers.One such issue is the problem of sentential unity: what is the relation of our understanding of the meaning of a sentence to our understanding of the meaning of the words that compose it? If words have meanings, why is the meaning of a sentence not just the meaning of the words that compose it? A challenging Indian response is that of the grammarian and philosopher Bhartṛhari (fifth-century), who advocated for a kind of sentence-holism according to which words are unreal and sentence-meaning is primary. (shrink)

본고는 인도 산스크리트 문법학 전통을 대표하는 철학자인 바르뜨르하리(Bhartṛhari, 450-510 CE)의 대표작 『문장과 단어에 관한 책』(Vākyapadīya)의 제 1장 「브라흐만에 관한 챕터」(Brahmakaṇḍa)에 나타난 ‘말’(śabda 혹은 vāc) 개념을 분석하고 해당 개념의 인식론적, 존재론적 함의를 세 가지 측면에서 살펴본다. 바르뜨르하리에게 있어 ‘말’이란 의식적･무의식적인 정신적 활동을 관통하는 원리이다. 그는 말이 가진 세 가지 층위를 구분한 후 그것이 단순히 물리적인 실체로서 구체화된 음성에 국한된 것이 아니라 인간 인식 전반을 꿰뚫고 있다고 주장한다. 하지만 그의 ‘말’ 개념은 인식 주체를 규율하는 기제를 넘어선다. 그는 ‘말’을 구체적으로 ‘베다’와 등치시키며 베다로부터 (...) 모든 사물이 창조되었다는 브라흐마나(Brāhmaṇa)군의 텍스트에 보이는 사고방식을 적용하여 모든 사물이 ‘말’의 힘에 의해 산출된 것이라 주장한다. 이와 같이 인식의 주체와 객체 모두를 ‘말’의 원리로 환원시킨 후, 바르뜨르하리는 인식 주체와 객체가 관계 맺는 방식인 인간의 지식체계 역시 태초의 ‘말’인 ‘베다’로부터 기인하기에 인도의 모든—비-베다 혹은 반-베다적 전통을 포함한—종교적 그리고 철학적 학문 전통은 베다로 구체화된 ‘말’이라는 공통의 기원을 가지고 있다는 세계관을 도출한다. (shrink)

The distinct function of ātmanepada in Sanskrit language remains a sort of linguist mystery in Sanskrit studies. In this article, I analyze the larger implications and subliminal meaning of ātmanepada by moving beyond the realm of linguistics, which has been the dominant approach, and entering the territory of philosophy and, more specifically, the purportful approach of traditional Indian philosophy of language represented by Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya. Bhartṛhari’s analytical procedure seeks to unveil the ontological interdependence that binds together the constituent elements of (...) linguistic sentences, understood as modal appearances of the ever present foundational ground of the world/word—Brahman as Vāc. This is our referential guide to the semantic reconstruction of ātmanepada’s teleology. (shrink)

This dissertation is a study of modern Indian philosophy. It examines three engaging articulations of the Advaitic notion of liberating knowledge or brahmajñāna provided by three prominent Indian philosophers of the twentieth century, namely, Badrīnāth Śukla (1898-1988), Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (1875-1949), and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975). Particular attention is paid to the existing relation between their distinctive conceptualisations of liberating knowledge and the doxastic attitudes that these authors professed towards the Sanskrit intellectual past of South Asia and the presence of the Western (...) Other. In the main, it argues that the profound differences to be found, on the one hand, in Śukla’s elucidation of this key Advaitic notion and, on the other, in Bhattacharyya’s and Radhakrishnan’s take on the same, betray their commitment to two radically different doxastic attitudes. Classifying these into (a) non-dialogical and (b) dialogical in relation to the Western Other as well as into (c) exegetic and (d) hermeneutic in relation to the Sanskrit intellectual past of South Asia, it contends that, in comparison to the conceptual scheme and the parameters of intelligibility that shaped and underpinned the precolonial Advaitic discourse on brahmajñāna in Sanskrit, there is a certain kind of epistemic discontinuity in the dialogical cum hermeneutic stance taken by Bhattacharyya and Radhakrishnan that is not to be found in the non-dialogical cum exegetic engagement enacted by Śukla. It suggests that this particular sort of discontinuity, absent as it is from Śukla’s elucidation of the process of knowing Brahman, reflects the far-reaching commitment of Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan to appropriate the precolonial Advaitic notion of liberating knowledge hermeneutically and to conceptualise it in the face of Western modernity, that is, rendering it meaningful in terms and within the parameters of intelligibility of the Western Other in order to contest what they took to be a troublesome predicament of Western modernity. By examining their ways of engaging with the Advaitic notion of liberating knowledge, this dissertation contributes to the on-going debate about the nature and the driving forces of modern Indian philosophy. (shrink)