Perspektivismus und Kritik

This book explores the pluralistic epistemological model of a tenth-century South Asian philosopher and emphasizes the vital role of critique for establishing pluralism on rational grounds. The focus of the book is a text section from the Sanskrit work Satyasasanapariksa, in which the Jaina scholar Vidyanandin discusses tenets of the Vaisesika, a brahminical philosophical tradition. Vidyanandin refutes the Vaisesika tenets by way of a systematic deconstruction of a key concept in the Vaisesika ontological system, namely, the concept of inherence (samavaya). In the first part of the book, Vidyanandin’s uncompromising criticism of the Vaisesika is taken as an example for philosophical approaches to competing world views and examined in the context of the classical Jaina theory of manifoldness (anekantavada). Through the systematic differentiation of several forms of perspectivism it is shown that Vidyanandin’s edifice of thought offers a narrow path between relativism and dogmatism: It represents a form of epistemic pluralism, in which the identification of erroneous epistemic alternatives plays a crucial role for the establishment of valid epistemic alternatives. The second and third parts of the book contain a critical text and an extensively annotated translation of the text selection from the Satyasasanapariksa. Vidyanandin’s arguments are examined against the backdrop of closely related passages from other Sanskrit works of the classical and medieval periods. The methodical analysis of these passages and the determination of their place in the argumentation’s structure allow for the identification of different layers of the text’s composition and reveal Vidyanandin’s specific contribution in a discourse that spanned centuries.