Presentation Type
Paper
Department
Christian Studies
Location
Berry-Peeples Bible Building Room 126
Description
Despite agreeing that the ancient religious body of text called the Vedas are authoritative, individual schools of philosophies in Hinduism are ambiguous, and no singular philosophical doctrine adheres different schools of thought. The six major schools of Hindu philosophy are Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṅkhya, Yoga, Pūrvamīmāṃsā and Vedānta (Ranganathan n.d.). Each of these schools of philosophy are quite complex and diverse with each school holding a unique perspective in their focus. The Nyaya school of philosophy was founded in 100 A.D. by the sage Gautama and focuses on logic, epistemology, and debate (Ganeri, 2023). Nyāya asserts the validity of the Vedas through arguments from analogy and testimony. Additionally, arguments from analogy allowed philosophers to advance theology. The Nyāya tradition made the argument asserting God's existence based on the premises that all created things resemble artifacts, and just as every artifact has a creator, the entire creation must have a creator (Ranganathan n.d.). This can be put another way, just as an artist creates a sculpture from a slab of stone, so too does God create the universe. The Vaisesika school of philosophy was founded in 100 B.C. by the ascetic Kaṇāḍa and dealt mainly with metaphysics and ontology, the nature of being (Ganeri, 2023). While the Nyāya system was predominantly preoccupied with argumentation, the Vaiśeṣika system was focused mostly on metaphysics (Ranganathan n.d.). This philosophy declared that comprehensive understanding involves the awareness of six fundamental categories. The Vaiśeṣika scholars asserted that knowledge of these categories serves to illuminate the nature of reality and dispel the ignorance hindering the effects of dharma. In this way, the Vaiśeṣika system becomes a moral virtue for its proponents, leading to the ultimate good of mokṣa (Ranganathan n.d.). In their early histories, these two schools were independent of one another, however, as time progressed, they became interlaced in their philosophy. Both systems embrace common-sense realism and ontological pluralism. They believe that the world was created from material atoms guided by divine will and share an understanding of causation and liberation (Chatterjee 2011). Due to these similarities of beliefs, the schools combined to form the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophy in the 11th or 12th century (Ganeri, 2023). The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophy is incredibly complex and diverse, covering metaphysics, philosophical psychology, the human and divine self, causation, knowledge, perception, concepts, sense-object relations, logical theory, testimony, and semantics (Ganeri, 2023). The most prominent, and most important aspect of the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophy relating to the extermination of ignorance is metaphysics, the division of philosophy concerned with the fundamental nature of reality, including ontology, cosmology, and epistemology (Merriam-Webster n.d.).
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The Nyaya-Vaisesika Philosophy of Categories
Berry-Peeples Bible Building Room 126
Despite agreeing that the ancient religious body of text called the Vedas are authoritative, individual schools of philosophies in Hinduism are ambiguous, and no singular philosophical doctrine adheres different schools of thought. The six major schools of Hindu philosophy are Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṅkhya, Yoga, Pūrvamīmāṃsā and Vedānta (Ranganathan n.d.). Each of these schools of philosophy are quite complex and diverse with each school holding a unique perspective in their focus. The Nyaya school of philosophy was founded in 100 A.D. by the sage Gautama and focuses on logic, epistemology, and debate (Ganeri, 2023). Nyāya asserts the validity of the Vedas through arguments from analogy and testimony. Additionally, arguments from analogy allowed philosophers to advance theology. The Nyāya tradition made the argument asserting God's existence based on the premises that all created things resemble artifacts, and just as every artifact has a creator, the entire creation must have a creator (Ranganathan n.d.). This can be put another way, just as an artist creates a sculpture from a slab of stone, so too does God create the universe. The Vaisesika school of philosophy was founded in 100 B.C. by the ascetic Kaṇāḍa and dealt mainly with metaphysics and ontology, the nature of being (Ganeri, 2023). While the Nyāya system was predominantly preoccupied with argumentation, the Vaiśeṣika system was focused mostly on metaphysics (Ranganathan n.d.). This philosophy declared that comprehensive understanding involves the awareness of six fundamental categories. The Vaiśeṣika scholars asserted that knowledge of these categories serves to illuminate the nature of reality and dispel the ignorance hindering the effects of dharma. In this way, the Vaiśeṣika system becomes a moral virtue for its proponents, leading to the ultimate good of mokṣa (Ranganathan n.d.). In their early histories, these two schools were independent of one another, however, as time progressed, they became interlaced in their philosophy. Both systems embrace common-sense realism and ontological pluralism. They believe that the world was created from material atoms guided by divine will and share an understanding of causation and liberation (Chatterjee 2011). Due to these similarities of beliefs, the schools combined to form the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophy in the 11th or 12th century (Ganeri, 2023). The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophy is incredibly complex and diverse, covering metaphysics, philosophical psychology, the human and divine self, causation, knowledge, perception, concepts, sense-object relations, logical theory, testimony, and semantics (Ganeri, 2023). The most prominent, and most important aspect of the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophy relating to the extermination of ignorance is metaphysics, the division of philosophy concerned with the fundamental nature of reality, including ontology, cosmology, and epistemology (Merriam-Webster n.d.).
Comments
This paper was created in partial fulfillment for the World Religions course taught by Dr. Barbara Pemberton.