- Jonardon Ganeri
- |
+3
New York University, College of Arts and Science, Global ProfessorSOAS University of London, School of History, Religions and Philosophies, Professorial Research AssociateNew York University, NYU Abu Dhabi, Arts and HumanitiesKing's College London, Philosophy, Visiting Professor | My research interests are in self, attention, consciousness, the epistemology of inquiry, the idea of philosophy as a practice and its relationship with literature, early modernity in South Asia, intellectual affinities between India, Greece and China, and Buddhist philosophy of mind. I advocate an expanded role for cross-cultural methodologies in philosophical research, together with enhanced cultural diversity in the philosophical curriculum. I am a Fellow of the British Academy, recipient of the 2015 Infosys Prize in the Humanities, and was named one of India's "50 Open Minds", 2016.
Supervisors: Bimal Krishna Matilal, John Campbell, Mark Sainsbury, Christopher Peacocke, and Sibajiban Bhattacharyya
Supervisors: Bimal Krishna Matilal, John Campbell, Mark Sainsbury, Christopher Peacocke, and Sibajiban Bhattacharyya
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Jonardon Ganeri presents a radically revised account of mind in which attention, not self, explai... more Jonardon Ganeri presents a radically revised account of mind in which attention, not self, explains the experiential and normative situatedness of human beings in the world. Attention consists in an organisation of awareness and action at the centre of which there is neither a practical will nor a phenomenological witness. Attention performs two roles in experience, a selective role of placing and a focal role of access. Attention improves our epistemic standing, because it is in the nature of attention to settle on what is real and to shun what is not real. When attention is informed by expertise, it is sufficient for knowledge. That gives attention a reach beyond the perceptual: for attention is a determinable whose determinates include the episodic memory from which our narrative identities are made, the empathy for others that situates us in a social world, and the introspection that makes us self-aware. Empathy is other-directed attention, placed on you and focused on your states of mind; it is akin to listening. Empathetic attention is central to a range of experiences that constitutively require a contrast between oneself and others, all of which involve an awareness of oneself as the object of another's attention. An analysis of attention as mental action gainsays authorial conceptions of self, because it is the nature of intending itself, effortful attention in action, to settle on what to do and to shun what not to do. In ethics, a conception of persons as beings with a characteristic capacity for attention offers hope for resolution in the conflict between individualism and impersonalism.
Attention, Not Self is a contribution to a growing body of work that studies the nature of mind from a place at the crossroads of three disciplines: philosophy in the analytical and phenomenological traditions, contemporary cognitive science and empirical work in cognitive psychology, and Buddhist theoretical literature.
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The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy tells the story of philosophy in India through a serie... more
The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy tells the story of philosophy in India through a series of exceptional individual acts of philosophical virtuosity. It brings together forty leading international scholars to record the diverse figures, movements, and approaches that constitute philosophy in the geographical region of the Indian subcontinent, a region sometimes nowadays designated South Asia. The volume aims to be ecumenical, drawing from different locales, languages, and literary cultures, inclusive of dissenters, heretics and sceptics, of philosophical ideas in thinkers not themselves primarily philosophers, and reflecting India's north-western borders with the Persianate and Arabic worlds, its north-eastern boundaries with Tibet, Nepal, Ladakh and China, as well as the southern and eastern shores that afford maritime links with the lands of Theravda Buddhism. Indian Philosophy has been written in many languages, including Pali, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Persian, Kannada, Punjabi, Hindi, Tibetan, Arabic and Assamese. From the time of the British colonial occupation, it has also been written in English. It spans philosophy of law, logic, politics, environment and society, but is most strongly associated with wide-ranging discussions in the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology and metaphysics (how we know and what is there to be known), ethics, metaethics and aesthetics, and metaphilosophy. The reach of Indian ideas has been vast, both historically and geographically, and it has been and continues to be a major influence in world philosophy. In the breadth as well as the depth of its philosophical investigation, in the sheer bulk of surviving texts and in the diffusion of its ideas, the philosophical heritage of India easily stands comparison with that of China, Greece, the Latin west, or the Islamic world.
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This is a book about the self, self-consciousness, and subjectivity. Clearly we are animal creatu... more This is a book about the self, self-consciousness, and subjectivity. Clearly we are animal creatures, with animal bodies and animal desires and appetites. Equally clearly, we are conscious beings with interiority, able to think of ourselves as ourselves. Two influential depictions of our humanity have increasingly come to seem unworkable: the scientistic picture, that we are nothing but especially complex networks of neural firings; and the Abrahamic picture, that we are immaterial souls associated with but separable from our animal bodies. Do the Indians, who thought long and hard about the question of what it is to be a human being, have any alternative advice? I believe so. The answer I will offer arises out of my reflection upon their discussion, but is not the view of any single participant within it. My proposal will draw from Buddhist analyses of subjectivity and self-consciousness, and on other Indian theories of emergence, subconscious mechanisms, embodiment, and the emotions. What will gradually emerge from this exercise in conceptual retrieval from historical sources is a philosophical explanation of the compatibility of naturalism with the first-person stance, within the parameters of a new conception of self. Selves, embodied subjects of consciousness, come into view from the standpoint of a liberal naturalism.
"Ganeri's book is truly impressive in its scope and sophistication. Even if one is not enamored of the idea of selves that are distinct from persons—as I am not—one will flnd this book a creative contribution to the discussion of persons. Although I lack the competence to judge Ganeri's interpretation of Indian texts, I highly recommend this book for its rich discussion as well as its complex account of the self. Ganeri's holistic, nonscientistic, and nonreductive approach to our mental lives will be highly congenial to those who appreciate the richness of mental life, including its flrst-personal aspects."
—Lynne Rudder Baker, Review of Metaphysics 2013
"Ganeri manages the amazing feat of writing for two different audiences at once. One is Western-trained philosophers looking for answers to the puzzling questions the various properties of the self. They will find a thorough and sophisticated discussion that at the same time introduces them to a stunning set of intellectual gems from India's philosophical history. The second audience consists of scholars working on Ancient Indian materials dealing with the relation of body, mind, and self. Even though the discussion is going to be considerably more hard-going for this audience, they will find new insights into ways of thinking about the Ancient Indian discussion and the interrelation between various philosophical traditions on almost every page. The ease with which Ganeri manages to keep both audiences on board without sacrificing either philosophical sophistication, or distorting the nuances of the historical discussion by broad- brush generalizations found in less accomplished works on cross-cultural philosophical debates is nothing less than astonishing. It is no exaggeration to say that this book marks the beginning of a completely new phase in the study of Indian philosophy, one in which a firm grasp of the historical material forms the basis for going beyond pure exegesis, opening up the way for doing philosophy with ancient sources."
—Jan Westerhoff, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2013
"Emergence is but one of the many important issues tackled in a book whose scope extends over a large range of philosophical puzzles about the self. There are intriguing taxonomies of theories of the mind, ancient and modern, and an abundance of critical discus- sion, including an acute critique of the Buddhist view of the self. Both because of the clarity of its grasp of the contemporary landscape in analytic philosophy of mind, and because of the special slant given by the author’s knowledge of Indian philosophy, the work has a lot to offer. While it would be unrealistic to expect from this (or perhaps any) book definitive solutions to the intractable problems of mind and body, Ganeri’s understanding of what it means to ap- proach these problems from a broadly naturalist perspective seems to me to be a good deal more nuanced, and more philosophically in- teresting, than much of the contemporary literature in the philosophy of mind."
—John Cottingham, Philosophy, 2013
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This book deals with a fascinating episode in the history of philosophy, one from which those who... more This book deals with a fascinating episode in the history of philosophy, one from which those who are interested in the nature of modernity and its global origins have a great deal to learn. I believe that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a remarkable project began to take shape in the Sanskritic philosophical world. Early modernity in India consists in the formation of a new philosophical self, one which makes it possible meaningfully to conceive of oneself as engaging the ancient and the alien in conversation. The ancient texts are now not thought of as authorities to which one must defer, but regarded as the source of insight in the company of which one pursues the quest for truth. This new attitude implies a change in the conception of one’s duties towards the past. Having reconstructed the historical intellectual context in detail, and after developing a suitable methodological framework, I review work on the concept of inquiry, the nature of evidence, the self, the nature of the categories, mathematics, realism, and a new language for philosophy. A study of early modern philosophy in India has much to teach us today—about the nature of modernity as such, about the reform of educational institutions and its relationship to creative research, and about cosmopolitan identities in circumstances of globalisation. Readers may also want to consult my essay "Philosophical Modernities: Polycentricity and Early Modernity in India" (Philosophy, 2014).
"Jonardon Ganeri's book is a treasure trove of new insights and fascinating figures that leaves this reader craving much more. He weaves a rich tapestry where ideas come to life, reinvigorating our understanding of Indian philosophy and the important lessons it can teach us today. The book is refreshing and exciting . . . Anyone interested in learning about early modern Indian philosophy will have the best work I know of on the subject in their hands. And those interested more in the philosophical issues than in comparing traditions will also profit greatly. . . a fascinating view of Indian philosophy and how its insights have genuine relevance for contemporary debates. I could not recommend it more highly"
—Thom Brooks, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2012
“Jonardon Ganeri’s The Lost Age of Reason … is a book that Indologists and students of Indian philosophy cannot afford to ignore” —Andrew Nicholson, Journal of the American Oriental Society 2013.
“[The Lost Age of Reason] is packed with attention to unjustly neglected philosophers, fluent translation of difficult texts, excellent exegesis and a challenging historical argument. This is a volume that deserves to be taken seriously by a broad readership in philosophy […] This volume is highly recommended to Western and to Indian philosophers.”
—Jay L. Garfield, The Philosophical Quarterly 2013.
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The mistakes we make about ourselves result in our deepest sufferings. Philosophy, meant to be a ... more The mistakes we make about ourselves result in our deepest sufferings. Philosophy, meant to be a remedy for our souls’ affliction, claims to offer both a diagnosis and a cure. I look to ancient India, where Buddhists and Hindus alike grapple with this fundamental human quest for peace of mind. For Indian thinkers, a philosophical treatise about the self is meant not only to lay out the truth, but also to embed itself in a process of study and contemplation that will lead eventually to self-transformation. By combining attention to philosophical content with sensitivity to skilfully crafted literary form, I try to deepen and enrich our appreciation of some of the greatest intellectual works in history. My survey includes the Upaniṣads, the Buddha’s discourses, the epic Mahābhārata, and the philosopher Candrakīrti, whose work was later to become foundational in Tibetan Buddhism. I show how the figures of the Buddha, the sage, and the epic hero mediate the reader’s relationship with the text. I go on to reveal that many contemporary theories of selfhood are not only anticipated but developed to an extraordinary degree of sophistication in these works, and that there are other ideas about the self found here which modern philosophers have not yet begun to explore. In the Appendices, I begin to disclose some of the paths along which Indian ideas about the self have migrated throughout history to the West.
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My aim in this book is to analyse India’s contribution to the study of reason. I seek to discover... more My aim in this book is to analyse India’s contribution to the study of reason. I seek to discover the active rational principles driving Indian theory, and to use this as a vehicle for disclosing a fabric of conceptual relations in their thinking about language, mind, and the normative. The book is based on courses I have taught and has been used successfully as a textbook for modules on Indian Philosophy within Philosophy curricula in the US and Britain. Unlike other books, I focus on the arguments rather than on merely surveying doctrine.
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Words have powers, as do the people who understand them. A word has the power to stand in for or ... more Words have powers, as do the people who understand them. A word has the power to stand in for or take the place of a thing. Vibrations in the air, or ink marks on paper, manage somehow to act as substitutes for people and places, planets and atoms, thoughts and feelings. It is to this extraordinary function that the Sanskrit term for ‘meaning’ calls attention: ßakti - the power or capacity of a word to stand for an object. People who understand words have powers as well; most remarkably, the capacity to acquire knowledge about people, places, planets and so on, just by hearing noises or seeing marks. This too is a power, just as surely as is the power to see or remember or reason. It is the power to receive knowledge from the testimony of others. It is not all that surprising that these two powers, the semantic power of a word and the epistemic power of a hearer or reader, should be connected; but it was the singular achievement of the Indian philosophers of language to analyse the nature of that connection in far greater depth than anyone had done so before.
The study of language, indeed, occupies a position of immense significance in India’s intellectual history. Many centuries before the emergence of organised philosophical schools, sophisticated linguistic techniques including rule-based grammars and quasi-empirical methods of investigation were being developed in order to explore the structure of the Sanskrit language. Påˆini’s 4th century BC grammar, which the linguist Leonard Bloomfield famously described as ‘one of the greatest monuments of human intelligence’ (1933: 11), proved an impressive model for later grammarians and philosophers of language.
Two principal claims will inform the theory of meaning whose contours are to be developed. The first is that the central function of a word is to stand for an object, and hence that the meaning of a word is to be identified with the object for which it stands. The Indian literature in general exhibits from a very early stage a preference for a ‘realist’ or ‘direct referential’ approach to meaning. This is in marked contrast to the western literature, in which that approach has only recently become widely respectable2. Attention to the indexical nature of many expressions led Indian philosophers to draw a distinction between two notions of meaning: the reference of an expression on any occasion of its use (padårtha), and a constant, unvarying meaning element, variously thought of as the ‘basis’ for the use (prav®tti-nimitta) of the term, as the delimitor of its scope (ßakyatåvacchedaka), or simply as what remains constant across contexts (anugama).
In Gadådhara’s general semantic theory, three levels of meaning are distinguished. Expressions have first a reference or denotation (ßakya), which is the object or event for which the expression stands. Second, expressions are associated with a property the Naiyåyikas call the ßakyatåvacchedaka or prav®ttinimitta, a delimiting property whose function is to distinguish the
actual reference from objects of other types. Gadådhara identifies this with the cognitive mode (vi∑ayatåvacchedaka) under which the reference is discriminated in an understander’s thought. The third level of meaning is what Gadådhara calls the anugama, a constant or invariant element in the meaning of the expression. This level has importance with respect to indexical expressions, expressions which have a different reference in different contexts. Since an indexical is not an ambiguous term, there must be a component in its meaning which remains constant across contexts. In the case of the word ‘now’, for example, the component is the rule that ‘now’ always refers to the time at which the speaker performs the utterance.
Another idea to inform the Navya-Nyåya account is that a language is primarily a device for the reception of knowledge. The Naiyåyikas develop an epistemology based upon the doctrine that epistemological agents are endowed with capacities or faculties for the acquisition of knowledge, pramåˆas. The perceptual and the inferential faculties are the paradigmatic examples. Just how such faculties are to be characterized is a difficult question, but it seems that they are processes whose non-defective function is the production of true beliefs. Beliefs produced by such a process, in the absence of defeating conditions, carry epistemic warrant. The extension of this idea to language motivates the claim that to be linguistically competent is itself to be endowed with a faculty the exercise of which leads to the acquisition of knowledge, knowledge gleaned from the testimony of others. From its earliest time, the Nyåya study language as essentially a device for the reception of knowledge from others.
The Navya-Nyåya philosophers of language, indeed, construct a taxonomy of referring expressions based on what is involved in discriminating the reference of a term. Having introduced modes of thought into the theory of meaning, they are able to give a new account of two important types of expression which earlier writers had little or no success in explaining: theoretical names and anaphoric uses of pronouns. I will look at the meaning of these terms in the final two chapters of the book.
This is a completely revised and rewritten version of my earlier book, Semantic Powers.
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A companion volume to Jonardon Ganeri’s popular textbook, Philosophy in Classical India: The Prop... more A companion volume to Jonardon Ganeri’s popular textbook, Philosophy in Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason, this new book surveys in a lively and accessible style the nature of practical and public reason in India. It provides what is missing in Amartya Sen’s widely admired The Argumentative Indian: detailed discussion of the thinkers—dissenters and heretics, as well as mainstream voices—whose astonishing ideas so enrich contemporary discussion.
“Taking Amartya Sen’s claim about India’s long traditions of debate and tolerance of diversity as his starting point, this engaging and thought-provoking book explores a number of specific examples of argumentation and public reasoning in traditional Indian sources. Yet unlike Sen, who provides few details and who concentrates mainly on political figures, Ganeri’s approach is far more rigorous, examining a wide variety of sources, including: Nyāya texts on logic, philosophical narratives in the Upaniṣads, Nikāyas, and the Mahābhārata, and Śabara’s commentary on the Mīmāṃsā Sūtra. Throughout, Ganeri highlights the ways Indian sources make reasoned arguments, linking pre-modern examples of public and practical reason to current debates about politics and identity in India. One of Ganeri’s central arguments is that India’s religious traditions can sustain secular and democratic ideals: ‘It is a mistake to think that secularism in the public sphere demands that participants revoke conceptions of the good grounded in religious affiliation.’ Such claims have much to offer recent debates about secularism and the role of religion in the public sphere.”
- Brian Black, Religious Studies Review, Sept. 2013
“Recent philosophical writings on the subject of identity, though often focused on distant parts of the globe, have failed to tap the philosophical traditions outside the West in the analyses they provide. This ambitious book admirably overcomes that limitation and locates in the tradition of Indian philosophy a basis for the idea that our identities are not given to us, but are rationally chosen. Its range of historical references—from Manu to Matilal—is impressive and presented with confidence and verve. It will add rigor, detail and historical depth to a concept that still remains relatively undisciplined in its deployment in the study of politics and culture.”
- Akeel Bilgrami, Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University, US
“The first in-depth treatment of India’s argumentative philosophical and religious traditions in a work of social and political theory.”
- Emily Coolidge Toker, LSE Review of Books, April 2012"
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Readers Related Papers MentionsView ImpactJonardon Ganeri presents a radically revised account of mind in which attention, not self, explai... more Jonardon Ganeri presents a radically revised account of mind in which attention, not self, explains the experiential and normative situatedness of human beings in the world. Attention consists in an organisation of awareness and action at the centre of which there is neither a practical will nor a phenomenological witness. Attention performs two roles in experience, a selective role of placing and a focal role of access. Attention improves our epistemic standing, because it is in the nature of attention to settle on what is real and to shun what is not real. When attention is informed by expertise, it is sufficient for knowledge. That gives attention a reach beyond the perceptual: for attention is a determinable whose determinates include the episodic memory from which our narrative identities are made, the empathy for others that situates us in a social world, and the introspection that makes us self-aware. Empathy is other-directed attention, placed on you and focused on your states of mind; it is akin to listening. Empathetic attention is central to a range of experiences that constitutively require a contrast between oneself and others, all of which involve an awareness of oneself as the object of another's attention. An analysis of attention as mental action gainsays authorial conceptions of self, because it is the nature of intending itself, effortful attention in action, to settle on what to do and to shun what not to do. In ethics, a conception of persons as beings with a characteristic capacity for attention offers hope for resolution in the conflict between individualism and impersonalism.
Attention, Not Self is a contribution to a growing body of work that studies the nature of mind from a place at the crossroads of three disciplines: philosophy in the analytical and phenomenological traditions, contemporary cognitive science and empirical work in cognitive psychology, and Buddhist theoretical literature.
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The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy tells the story of philosophy in India through a serie... more
The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy tells the story of philosophy in India through a series of exceptional individual acts of philosophical virtuosity. It brings together forty leading international scholars to record the diverse figures, movements, and approaches that constitute philosophy in the geographical region of the Indian subcontinent, a region sometimes nowadays designated South Asia. The volume aims to be ecumenical, drawing from different locales, languages, and literary cultures, inclusive of dissenters, heretics and sceptics, of philosophical ideas in thinkers not themselves primarily philosophers, and reflecting India's north-western borders with the Persianate and Arabic worlds, its north-eastern boundaries with Tibet, Nepal, Ladakh and China, as well as the southern and eastern shores that afford maritime links with the lands of Theravda Buddhism. Indian Philosophy has been written in many languages, including Pali, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Persian, Kannada, Punjabi, Hindi, Tibetan, Arabic and Assamese. From the time of the British colonial occupation, it has also been written in English. It spans philosophy of law, logic, politics, environment and society, but is most strongly associated with wide-ranging discussions in the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology and metaphysics (how we know and what is there to be known), ethics, metaethics and aesthetics, and metaphilosophy. The reach of Indian ideas has been vast, both historically and geographically, and it has been and continues to be a major influence in world philosophy. In the breadth as well as the depth of its philosophical investigation, in the sheer bulk of surviving texts and in the diffusion of its ideas, the philosophical heritage of India easily stands comparison with that of China, Greece, the Latin west, or the Islamic world.
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Readers Related Papers MentionsView ImpactThis is a book about the self, self-consciousness, and subjectivity. Clearly we are animal creatu... more This is a book about the self, self-consciousness, and subjectivity. Clearly we are animal creatures, with animal bodies and animal desires and appetites. Equally clearly, we are conscious beings with interiority, able to think of ourselves as ourselves. Two influential depictions of our humanity have increasingly come to seem unworkable: the scientistic picture, that we are nothing but especially complex networks of neural firings; and the Abrahamic picture, that we are immaterial souls associated with but separable from our animal bodies. Do the Indians, who thought long and hard about the question of what it is to be a human being, have any alternative advice? I believe so. The answer I will offer arises out of my reflection upon their discussion, but is not the view of any single participant within it. My proposal will draw from Buddhist analyses of subjectivity and self-consciousness, and on other Indian theories of emergence, subconscious mechanisms, embodiment, and the emotions. What will gradually emerge from this exercise in conceptual retrieval from historical sources is a philosophical explanation of the compatibility of naturalism with the first-person stance, within the parameters of a new conception of self. Selves, embodied subjects of consciousness, come into view from the standpoint of a liberal naturalism.
"Ganeri's book is truly impressive in its scope and sophistication. Even if one is not enamored of the idea of selves that are distinct from persons—as I am not—one will flnd this book a creative contribution to the discussion of persons. Although I lack the competence to judge Ganeri's interpretation of Indian texts, I highly recommend this book for its rich discussion as well as its complex account of the self. Ganeri's holistic, nonscientistic, and nonreductive approach to our mental lives will be highly congenial to those who appreciate the richness of mental life, including its flrst-personal aspects."
—Lynne Rudder Baker, Review of Metaphysics 2013
"Ganeri manages the amazing feat of writing for two different audiences at once. One is Western-trained philosophers looking for answers to the puzzling questions the various properties of the self. They will find a thorough and sophisticated discussion that at the same time introduces them to a stunning set of intellectual gems from India's philosophical history. The second audience consists of scholars working on Ancient Indian materials dealing with the relation of body, mind, and self. Even though the discussion is going to be considerably more hard-going for this audience, they will find new insights into ways of thinking about the Ancient Indian discussion and the interrelation between various philosophical traditions on almost every page. The ease with which Ganeri manages to keep both audiences on board without sacrificing either philosophical sophistication, or distorting the nuances of the historical discussion by broad- brush generalizations found in less accomplished works on cross-cultural philosophical debates is nothing less than astonishing. It is no exaggeration to say that this book marks the beginning of a completely new phase in the study of Indian philosophy, one in which a firm grasp of the historical material forms the basis for going beyond pure exegesis, opening up the way for doing philosophy with ancient sources."
—Jan Westerhoff, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2013
"Emergence is but one of the many important issues tackled in a book whose scope extends over a large range of philosophical puzzles about the self. There are intriguing taxonomies of theories of the mind, ancient and modern, and an abundance of critical discus- sion, including an acute critique of the Buddhist view of the self. Both because of the clarity of its grasp of the contemporary landscape in analytic philosophy of mind, and because of the special slant given by the author’s knowledge of Indian philosophy, the work has a lot to offer. While it would be unrealistic to expect from this (or perhaps any) book definitive solutions to the intractable problems of mind and body, Ganeri’s understanding of what it means to ap- proach these problems from a broadly naturalist perspective seems to me to be a good deal more nuanced, and more philosophically in- teresting, than much of the contemporary literature in the philosophy of mind."
—John Cottingham, Philosophy, 2013
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Readers Related Papers MentionsView ImpactThis book deals with a fascinating episode in the history of philosophy, one from which those who... more This book deals with a fascinating episode in the history of philosophy, one from which those who are interested in the nature of modernity and its global origins have a great deal to learn. I believe that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a remarkable project began to take shape in the Sanskritic philosophical world. Early modernity in India consists in the formation of a new philosophical self, one which makes it possible meaningfully to conceive of oneself as engaging the ancient and the alien in conversation. The ancient texts are now not thought of as authorities to which one must defer, but regarded as the source of insight in the company of which one pursues the quest for truth. This new attitude implies a change in the conception of one’s duties towards the past. Having reconstructed the historical intellectual context in detail, and after developing a suitable methodological framework, I review work on the concept of inquiry, the nature of evidence, the self, the nature of the categories, mathematics, realism, and a new language for philosophy. A study of early modern philosophy in India has much to teach us today—about the nature of modernity as such, about the reform of educational institutions and its relationship to creative research, and about cosmopolitan identities in circumstances of globalisation. Readers may also want to consult my essay "Philosophical Modernities: Polycentricity and Early Modernity in India" (Philosophy, 2014).
"Jonardon Ganeri's book is a treasure trove of new insights and fascinating figures that leaves this reader craving much more. He weaves a rich tapestry where ideas come to life, reinvigorating our understanding of Indian philosophy and the important lessons it can teach us today. The book is refreshing and exciting . . . Anyone interested in learning about early modern Indian philosophy will have the best work I know of on the subject in their hands. And those interested more in the philosophical issues than in comparing traditions will also profit greatly. . . a fascinating view of Indian philosophy and how its insights have genuine relevance for contemporary debates. I could not recommend it more highly"
—Thom Brooks, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2012
“Jonardon Ganeri’s The Lost Age of Reason … is a book that Indologists and students of Indian philosophy cannot afford to ignore” —Andrew Nicholson, Journal of the American Oriental Society 2013.
“[The Lost Age of Reason] is packed with attention to unjustly neglected philosophers, fluent translation of difficult texts, excellent exegesis and a challenging historical argument. This is a volume that deserves to be taken seriously by a broad readership in philosophy […] This volume is highly recommended to Western and to Indian philosophers.”
—Jay L. Garfield, The Philosophical Quarterly 2013.
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Readers Related Papers MentionsView ImpactThe mistakes we make about ourselves result in our deepest sufferings. Philosophy, meant to be a ... more The mistakes we make about ourselves result in our deepest sufferings. Philosophy, meant to be a remedy for our souls’ affliction, claims to offer both a diagnosis and a cure. I look to ancient India, where Buddhists and Hindus alike grapple with this fundamental human quest for peace of mind. For Indian thinkers, a philosophical treatise about the self is meant not only to lay out the truth, but also to embed itself in a process of study and contemplation that will lead eventually to self-transformation. By combining attention to philosophical content with sensitivity to skilfully crafted literary form, I try to deepen and enrich our appreciation of some of the greatest intellectual works in history. My survey includes the Upaniṣads, the Buddha’s discourses, the epic Mahābhārata, and the philosopher Candrakīrti, whose work was later to become foundational in Tibetan Buddhism. I show how the figures of the Buddha, the sage, and the epic hero mediate the reader’s relationship with the text. I go on to reveal that many contemporary theories of selfhood are not only anticipated but developed to an extraordinary degree of sophistication in these works, and that there are other ideas about the self found here which modern philosophers have not yet begun to explore. In the Appendices, I begin to disclose some of the paths along which Indian ideas about the self have migrated throughout history to the West.
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Readers Related Papers MentionsView ImpactMy aim in this book is to analyse India’s contribution to the study of reason. I seek to discover... more My aim in this book is to analyse India’s contribution to the study of reason. I seek to discover the active rational principles driving Indian theory, and to use this as a vehicle for disclosing a fabric of conceptual relations in their thinking about language, mind, and the normative. The book is based on courses I have taught and has been used successfully as a textbook for modules on Indian Philosophy within Philosophy curricula in the US and Britain. Unlike other books, I focus on the arguments rather than on merely surveying doctrine.
Views PaperRank
Readers Related Papers MentionsView ImpactWords have powers, as do the people who understand them. A word has the power to stand in for or ... more Words have powers, as do the people who understand them. A word has the power to stand in for or take the place of a thing. Vibrations in the air, or ink marks on paper, manage somehow to act as substitutes for people and places, planets and atoms, thoughts and feelings. It is to this extraordinary function that the Sanskrit term for ‘meaning’ calls attention: ßakti - the power or capacity of a word to stand for an object. People who understand words have powers as well; most remarkably, the capacity to acquire knowledge about people, places, planets and so on, just by hearing noises or seeing marks. This too is a power, just as surely as is the power to see or remember or reason. It is the power to receive knowledge from the testimony of others. It is not all that surprising that these two powers, the semantic power of a word and the epistemic power of a hearer or reader, should be connected; but it was the singular achievement of the Indian philosophers of language to analyse the nature of that connection in far greater depth than anyone had done so before.
The study of language, indeed, occupies a position of immense significance in India’s intellectual history. Many centuries before the emergence of organised philosophical schools, sophisticated linguistic techniques including rule-based grammars and quasi-empirical methods of investigation were being developed in order to explore the structure of the Sanskrit language. Påˆini’s 4th century BC grammar, which the linguist Leonard Bloomfield famously described as ‘one of the greatest monuments of human intelligence’ (1933: 11), proved an impressive model for later grammarians and philosophers of language.
Two principal claims will inform the theory of meaning whose contours are to be developed. The first is that the central function of a word is to stand for an object, and hence that the meaning of a word is to be identified with the object for which it stands. The Indian literature in general exhibits from a very early stage a preference for a ‘realist’ or ‘direct referential’ approach to meaning. This is in marked contrast to the western literature, in which that approach has only recently become widely respectable2. Attention to the indexical nature of many expressions led Indian philosophers to draw a distinction between two notions of meaning: the reference of an expression on any occasion of its use (padårtha), and a constant, unvarying meaning element, variously thought of as the ‘basis’ for the use (prav®tti-nimitta) of the term, as the delimitor of its scope (ßakyatåvacchedaka), or simply as what remains constant across contexts (anugama).
In Gadådhara’s general semantic theory, three levels of meaning are distinguished. Expressions have first a reference or denotation (ßakya), which is the object or event for which the expression stands. Second, expressions are associated with a property the Naiyåyikas call the ßakyatåvacchedaka or prav®ttinimitta, a delimiting property whose function is to distinguish the
actual reference from objects of other types. Gadådhara identifies this with the cognitive mode (vi∑ayatåvacchedaka) under which the reference is discriminated in an understander’s thought. The third level of meaning is what Gadådhara calls the anugama, a constant or invariant element in the meaning of the expression. This level has importance with respect to indexical expressions, expressions which have a different reference in different contexts. Since an indexical is not an ambiguous term, there must be a component in its meaning which remains constant across contexts. In the case of the word ‘now’, for example, the component is the rule that ‘now’ always refers to the time at which the speaker performs the utterance.
Another idea to inform the Navya-Nyåya account is that a language is primarily a device for the reception of knowledge. The Naiyåyikas develop an epistemology based upon the doctrine that epistemological agents are endowed with capacities or faculties for the acquisition of knowledge, pramåˆas. The perceptual and the inferential faculties are the paradigmatic examples. Just how such faculties are to be characterized is a difficult question, but it seems that they are processes whose non-defective function is the production of true beliefs. Beliefs produced by such a process, in the absence of defeating conditions, carry epistemic warrant. The extension of this idea to language motivates the claim that to be linguistically competent is itself to be endowed with a faculty the exercise of which leads to the acquisition of knowledge, knowledge gleaned from the testimony of others. From its earliest time, the Nyåya study language as essentially a device for the reception of knowledge from others.
The Navya-Nyåya philosophers of language, indeed, construct a taxonomy of referring expressions based on what is involved in discriminating the reference of a term. Having introduced modes of thought into the theory of meaning, they are able to give a new account of two important types of expression which earlier writers had little or no success in explaining: theoretical names and anaphoric uses of pronouns. I will look at the meaning of these terms in the final two chapters of the book.
This is a completely revised and rewritten version of my earlier book, Semantic Powers.
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Readers Related Papers MentionsView ImpactA companion volume to Jonardon Ganeri’s popular textbook, Philosophy in Classical India: The Prop... more A companion volume to Jonardon Ganeri’s popular textbook, Philosophy in Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason, this new book surveys in a lively and accessible style the nature of practical and public reason in India. It provides what is missing in Amartya Sen’s widely admired The Argumentative Indian: detailed discussion of the thinkers—dissenters and heretics, as well as mainstream voices—whose astonishing ideas so enrich contemporary discussion.
“Taking Amartya Sen’s claim about India’s long traditions of debate and tolerance of diversity as his starting point, this engaging and thought-provoking book explores a number of specific examples of argumentation and public reasoning in traditional Indian sources. Yet unlike Sen, who provides few details and who concentrates mainly on political figures, Ganeri’s approach is far more rigorous, examining a wide variety of sources, including: Nyāya texts on logic, philosophical narratives in the Upaniṣads, Nikāyas, and the Mahābhārata, and Śabara’s commentary on the Mīmāṃsā Sūtra. Throughout, Ganeri highlights the ways Indian sources make reasoned arguments, linking pre-modern examples of public and practical reason to current debates about politics and identity in India. One of Ganeri’s central arguments is that India’s religious traditions can sustain secular and democratic ideals: ‘It is a mistake to think that secularism in the public sphere demands that participants revoke conceptions of the good grounded in religious affiliation.’ Such claims have much to offer recent debates about secularism and the role of religion in the public sphere.”
- Brian Black, Religious Studies Review, Sept. 2013
“Recent philosophical writings on the subject of identity, though often focused on distant parts of the globe, have failed to tap the philosophical traditions outside the West in the analyses they provide. This ambitious book admirably overcomes that limitation and locates in the tradition of Indian philosophy a basis for the idea that our identities are not given to us, but are rationally chosen. Its range of historical references—from Manu to Matilal—is impressive and presented with confidence and verve. It will add rigor, detail and historical depth to a concept that still remains relatively undisciplined in its deployment in the study of politics and culture.”
- Akeel Bilgrami, Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University, US
“The first in-depth treatment of India’s argumentative philosophical and religious traditions in a work of social and political theory.”
- Emily Coolidge Toker, LSE Review of Books, April 2012"
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What Makes a Philosopher Great? Thirteen Arguments for Twelve Philosophers, ed. Stephen Hetherington, 2018
This paper makes a case for calling the fifth century Buddhist philosopher Buddhaghosa one of the... more This paper makes a case for calling the fifth century Buddhist philosopher Buddhaghosa one of the greats of philosophy. A fuller case is made in my book Attention, Not Self (OUP 2018).
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Epistemology for the Rest of the World (OUP 2018), edited by Masaharu Mizumoto, Stephen Stich, and Eric McCready, 2018
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Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy, 2017
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The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy
The brilliant philosopher Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (1875–1949) powerfully argued for freedom ... more The brilliant philosopher Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (1875–1949) powerfully argued for freedom from the intellectual slavery brought by colonial occupation of India. He called on philosophers to show reverence for the classical Indian philosophical traditions. Yet reverence for him was not a nativist, uncritical return to the past but an attitude combining aesthetic sympathy for the living fabric of a philosophical outlook with openness to enrichment from metaphors from without. For him this formed the basis of an Indian notion of the classical that provincialized European classicism. The chapter argues that Bhattacharyya develops a powerful alternative idea to gloomy traditionalism and radical modernism: that of an immersive cosmopolitanism, which explains why he took such a keen interest both in Indian aesthetics and in the pluralist Jaina theory of standpoints, combined with detailed interpretations of several Indian philosophical systems and Indian commentaries on Kant, all in the service of a theory of subjective freedom.
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The Oxford History of Hinduism: A New History of Dharma (OUP) ed. Patrick Olivelle and Don Davis, 2017
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Philosophical Studies, 2017
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The Upaniṣads, edited by Signe Cohen
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Hindu and Buddhist Ideas in Dialogue, 2012
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement(Cambridge University Press), Jul 2014
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Migrating Texts and Traditions, 2013
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Supported by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and organized by the Philosophy Depar... more Supported by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and organized by the Philosophy Department of United Arab Emirates University in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Beijing), the first UAEU Global Philosophy Symposium represents a meeting of Western (ancient Greek, Analytic, Continental), Middle-Eastern (Arabic, Islamic, Persian), and Eastern (Indian, Chinese, Japanese) philosophical traditions. The symposium thematises a historical process effectively described by Prof. Jonardon Ganeri: “the world of academic philosophy is now entering a new age”, characterized by the “appreciation of the value of world philosophies”, and “the philosophical pluralism”. As a result, philosophy is leaving “behind a centre-periphery mode of production” and is “becoming again polycentric: thephilosophical world is returning to a plural and diverse network of productive sites”. In an age of migration of peoples of traditions, globalization of ideas, and de-colonization of the intellectual discourse, having already developed awareness, but not fear, of the challenges posed by cultural relativism and thecollapse of historical grand narratives, philosophy must embrace its richdiversity.Ourmeeting aims to begin anexploration of this new polycentric scenario, tocartography the methodological and speculative options offered by different comparative and cosmopolitan approaches, emphasizing their autonomy and specific mode of authenticity.
The symposium will offer two panel discussions about:
1) Multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism in the Arab world. The global mission of the UAE and the role of philosophy.
2) Happiness and the good life in Western, Middle-eastern, and Eastern philosophical traditions.
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A workshop on global philosophical perspectives towards attention, organised under the auspices o... more A workshop on global philosophical perspectives towards attention, organised under the auspices of the NYU Virtues of Attention Project, led by Jonardon Ganeri
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Chiang Mai University 23 August 2017 12:30–15:00
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For Surendranatha Dasgupta and his contemporaries in late colonial and early post-colonial India,... more For Surendranatha Dasgupta and his contemporaries in late colonial and early post-colonial India, the “impossible meeting” of East and West was not an abstract puzzle in the theory of interculturalism but a challenge to find an authentic interpretation of lived experience. What does authenticity consist in for a thinker as much rooted in two life-worlds, and as much thereby alienated from either? In the philosophical and non-philosophical writings of S. Dasgupta, K.C. Bhattacharya, S. Radhakrishnan, and others, questions of selfhood and subjectivity became, for good reason, dominant preoccupations. I will speak about their explorations of the phenomenology of interjacency and its relationship to the search for authenticity.
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What do we have in mind when we think of a self? How is the self related to consciousness? Is it ... more What do we have in mind when we think of a self? How is the self related to consciousness? Is it possible to have a self without consciousness or, otherwise, a consciousness without a self? Can self-consciousness provide direct evidence for the existence of a self? Or, rather, does the often alleged nonexistence of the self imply the nonexistence also of consciousness as well as its deceptive character? The aim of this conference is to tackle the issue of the relationship between consciousness and the self, as well as of their existence, from a variety of philosophical and cultural intellectual traditions. The time has come to go beyond the sweeping generalizations (e.g. East vs. West) that have plagued attempts to understand culturally embedded views of the self, and instead provide a nuanced picture of how different traditions can provide a more fruitful dialogue concerning the relationship between self and consciousness, as well as the concrete implications of either their existence and nonexistence.
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An interview with the magazine Current Science
http://www.currentscience.ac.in
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The new philosophies of the 21st century will be cross-cultural philosophies. The self-critical m... more The new philosophies of the 21st century will be cross-cultural philosophies. The self-critical meeting of cultures will be the driving force behind new forms of philosophical creativity, the newness of thought that arises out of the movement between different ways of attending to the world. New institutional infrastructures are needed, ones in which the distinctive sorts of philosophical innovation that a cross-cultural and cosmopolitan outlook enables are actively cultivated and enhanced.
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