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The Birth of Meaning in Hindu Thought PDF

385 Pages·1988·11.73 MB·English
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THE BIRTH OF MEANING IN HINDU THOUGHT BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editor ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University Editorial Advisory Board ADOLF GRUNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKY, Baruch College of the City University of New York VOLUME 102 DA VID B. ZILBERMAN DAVID B. ZILBERMAN THE BIRTH OF MEANING IN HINDU THOUGHT Edited by ROBERT S. COHEN D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY A MEMBER OFTHE KLUWER ACADEMICPUBUSHERSGROUP DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LANCASTER /TOKYO Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zilberman, David B., 1938- The birth of meaning in Hindu thought. (Boston studies in the philosophy of science; v. 102) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Philosophy, Hindu. I. Cohen, Robert S. II. Title. III. Series. Q174.B67 vol. 102 [BI31] 001'.01 s 87-26317 ISBN -13:978-94-010-7141-3 e-ISBN-13 :978-94-009-1431-5 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-1431-5 Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland. Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Assinippi Park, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland. All Rights Reserved © 1988 by D. Reidel Publishing Company Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL NOTE xi xiii PREFACE INTRODUCTION xvii CHAPTER I / Hindu Systems of Thought as Epistentic Dis ciplines 1 I. The Science of Philosophies 1 IT. The Mechanism of Organization 9 ITI. The Structural Design 19 IV. Para-Methodology 33 V. Modality and Modalization 36 A. Deontic Modalization 42 B. Apodictic Modalization 42 C. Hypothetical Modalization 43 VI. The Self-Developing Culture and Text 43 VIT. Six Epistentic Disciplines Unfolding Into One Another 48 VIII. Modal Sentiotics and the Categories of Philosophical Thinking 54 IX. Six Entries into the World of Philosophical Reflections 56 X. Summa Philosophiae 69 CHAPTER II / The Birth of 'Meaning': A Systematic Genealogy of Indian Semantics 71 I. Segregation of Meaning and Language 71 II. The ~gveda in the Making: A Meaningful Activity With out 'Meaning' 79 III. The Nirukta: A Knot of Semantic and Etymological Problems 88 IV. Piif}ini: Separating and Interconnecting Language and Logic 117 V. The Individual and the Universal in Language and Knowledge 133 vii Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER III / Dialectics in Kant and in the Nyaya-Sutra: Toward the History of the Formation of Formal Logical Trumkillg 141 CHAPTER IV / The Canonical Self ill the World of Knowledge: A Note on Nyaya Gnoseology 180 CHAPTER V / Revelation ill Advaita Vedanta as an Experiment in the Semantic Destruction of Language 218 I. Theoretical Basis of the Possibility of Coming to Know Brahman (Paryaya) 225 II. Intuitive Basis of the Possibility of Comffig to Know Brahman (Prayojana) 228 III. Paryaya of the First Stage of Reflection from the Structure of the Text to the Nature of Brahman: The Theory of False Attribution and its Sublation (Transcendence) 230 IV. Prayojana of the First Stage of Reflection: The Intuition of False Attribution and its Sublation (Transcendence) 232 V. Paryaya of the Second Stage of Reflection: The Theory of Brahman Shown in a Metaphoric Occurrence (Lakfjal}a- vritti) 234 VI. Prayojana of the Second Stage of Reflection: Intuition of Brahman Shown by the Method of Metamorphic Defini- tion 238 VII. Language Inappropriateness Exposed and Brahman Demonstrated by the Netivada Method: The Theory of Intuition (Paryiiya) 240 VIII. Prayojana of the Vedic Realization by the Netivada Method: The Intuition of a Theory 242 CHAPTER vI/Is The Bodhisattva a Skeptic? On the Tri- chotomyof 'Indicative', 'Recollective', and 'Collective' Signs 247 CHAPTER VII / Hindu Values and Buddhism: An Exemplary Discourse 263 I. Methodological 263 II. Theoretical 281 Il.l. The Miiniifnsa Normology 288 TABLE OF CONTENTS ix CHAPTER VIII / Understanding Cultural Traditions Through Types of Thinking 299 I. Level of Absolute Reality 308 II. Level of Phenomenation 308 III. Level of Absolute Irreality 309 CHAPTER IX / The Family of Hindu 'Visions' as Cultural Entities 330 Notes and References 350 Bibliography: Selected Works of David Zilberman 361 Index 367 EDITORIAL NOTE David Zilberman returned to Boston in the Fall of 1975, and we re sumed our brief friendship which began two years earlier when he was based in New York City. He came often to our Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, quietly but passionately commenting, dis puting, clarifying, instructing. Quite clearly, he was appreciated as im mensely learned, intelligent, and wise. And he was a splendid lecturer, at once lucid, gentle, and rigorous. I recall his thoughtful and original lecture on 'Spinoza and Marx', to my undergraduate course on the phi losophy of Marxism, and his masterful talk on Hindu epistemologies to our Colloquium. These were his normal qualities as teacher, tutor, cor respondent, conversationalist. .. perhaps as dreamer too. We suggested that he prepare a book of his epistemological studies in Indian thought, and he plunged into an expansion of the Colloquium lecture; this book is the fulfillment of that effort, not too far, we hope, from what he would have wanted. Now we may also hope that his pa pers in our archive will be read by others, that his former students will recover their notes on his courses of lectures (and some will perhaps find their tape recordings of those lectures), that his letters to new and old friends will be cherished, and that memories will be set down for others to read. We will welcome all contributions of such materials for our Zilberman Collection. He worked so beautifully and so rapidly, in English as in Russian. Not furiously but yet there was an outpouring, a flood, from a deep and powerful source within him; he had no time to let pass by, he seemed almost to be living as though he sensed there was a deadline soon. Rus sian, Jew, Hindu rationalist and mystic, scientist, philosopher, human ist. .. Zilberman was a man of our time who reached far beyond. He was a sweet genius. Bos/on University ROBERTS. COHEN Center for Philosophy of Science January 1988 xi PREFACE In his letter to B. K. Matilal, dated February 20, 1977, the author of this book wrote about his work on Advaita-Vedanta: " ... It was not to present Advaita in the light of current problems of the logic of scientific discovery and modern philosophy of language ... but just the contrary. I do not believe that any 'logic without metaphysics' or 'philosophy of language without thinking' is possible." This passage alone may serve as the clue to Zilberman's understanding and mode of explaining that specific and highly original approach to (not 'of'!) philosophy that he himself nicknamed modal. Four points would seem to me to be most essential here. First, a philosophy cannot have 'anything un-thinking' as its object of investigation. Language, to Zilberman, is not a phenomenon of con sciousness but a spontaneously working natural mechanism (like, for instance, 'mind' to some Buddhist philosophers). It may, of course, be come used for and by consciousness; consciousness may see itself, so to speak, in language, but only secondarily, only as in one of its modifica tions, derivations or modalities. That is why to Zilberman linguistics - as to Kant psychology - cannot and must not figure as the primary ground for any philosophical investigation. Second, since the more thinking is an object, the more usable it is as an actual or potential object of philosophical investigation, the most natural object of philosophy would then be philosophy itself or, say, a philosophy, or the philosophies. This, according to Zilberman, is his own task, and the focus of his own philosophical thinking. And the task is neither epistemological nor historico-philosophical, but merely methodological for, as he wrote to me in March 1976, "I have em ployed my thought in a certain way to investigate how various different philosophies (not philosophers!) employed theirs to establish the prin ciples of organisation of their own thinking activity with respect not only to thinking, but behaviour and culture in general." Third, since, while dealing in our philosophical investigation with a xiii

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In his letter to B. K. Matilal, dated February 20, 1977, the author of this book wrote about his work on Advaita-Vedanta: " ... It was not to present Advaita in the light of current problems of the logic of scientific discovery and modern philosophy of language ... but just the contrary. I do not be
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