Fwd: NDPR Victor A. van Bijlert Nyāya Sūtra—On Philosophical Method: Sanskrit Text, Translation, and Commentary

[Doug Mounce]

John,

This review was interesting for the reviewer's comment on knowledge. I don't think any Lonergan scholars are pursuing comparative studies in Indian philosophy, but this one was interesting for the different methodological processes.  

" Knowing just the rudiments of the Nyāya theory, an analytically trained philosopher would, let me stress, likely pair “valid cognition” with anumāna, “inference.” But that is only one of the “knowledge sources,” pramāṇa, that the Nyāya-sūtra identifies (not to mention the volumes on this point in later Naiyāyika writing): perception, inference, analogy, and testimony are exclusively the sources of knowledge. The Nyāya-sūtra and ensuing tradition pay close attention to the nature of all four of these critters (processes) and in overview to the knowledge they generate as well as to the importance of their citation in critical inquiry (vāda) and debate, whether friendly or against historical opponents such as Buddhists and Mīmāṃsakas. “Valid cognition”—in other words, knowledge—can be the result of any one of the four. And, by the way, perception is more important than inference for how we come to know what we know, according to Nyāya. Each of the other three pramāṇa depend in one way or another on perception"

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https://staff.washington.edu/mounce/

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Subject: NDPR Victor A. van Bijlert Nyāya Sūtra—On Philosophical Method: Sanskrit Text, Translation, and Commentary
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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2025.07.1 View this Review Online   View Other NDPR Reviews

Victor A. van Bijlert, Nyāya Sūtra—On Philosophical Method: Sanskrit Text, Translation, and Commentary, Routledge, 2024, 251pp., $180.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781032758381.

Reviewed by Stephen H. Phillips, Professor Emeritus, The University of Texas at Austin

Within ancient and classical Indian literature, sūtra texts are comprised of aphoristic statements that together frame a subject matter and present core tenets. The Nyāya-sūtra (c. 150 ce) presents the philosophy and methods of nyāya, “critical reasoning,” along with a well-developed epistemology and an ontology borrowed mainly from the Vaiśesika school, whose sūtras predate Nyāya’s by perhaps a century. This translation and commentary by van Bijlert is excellent within the restrictions the author imposes: not to look beyond, chronologically, the terse sūtras themselves along with precursors in pre-Nyāya literature, to determine what they mean. That is, van Bijlert professes not to...

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