Publication announcement

[Himal Trikha]

Dear list members,

I am happy to announce the publication of my book:

Perspektivismus und Kritik. Der epistemische Pluralismus der Jainas
angesichts der Polemik gegen das Vaiśeṣika in Vidyānandins
Satyaśāsanaparīkṣā. (Publications of the De Nobili Research Library 36).
Vienna 2012. 401 pages.

The abstract with a link to the table of contents is given below. Two
published English articles rendering two chapters of the German book can
be accessed in their preprint version here:
http://oeaw.academia.edu/HimalTrikha/Papers

The book can be ordered at the publisher's website for 28 Euros (excluding
postage): www.istb.univie.ac.at/sdn

With kind regards,

Himal Trikha
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Dr. Himal Trikha
Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia
Austrian Academy of Sciences
Apostelgasse 23
A-1030 Vienna, Austria
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ABSTRACT

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
Satyaśāsanaparīkṣā, in which the Jaina scholar Vidyānandin discusses
tenets of the Vaiśeṣika, a brahminical philosophical tradition.
Vidyānandin refutes the Vaiśeṣika tenets by way of a systematic
deconstruction of a key concept in the Vaiśeṣika ontological system,
namely, the concept of inherence (samavāya).
In the first part of the book, Vidyānandin’s uncompromising criticism of
the Vaiśeṣika is taken as an example for philosophical approaches to
competing world views and examined in the context of the classical Jaina
theory of manifoldness (anekāntavāda). Through the systematic
differentiation of several forms of perspectivism it is shown that
Vidyānandin’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
Satyaśāsanaparīkṣā. Vidyānandin’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 Vidyānandin’s specific contribution in a discourse that spanned
centuries.

Table of contents and extracts:
http://www.istb.univie.ac.at/sdn_misc/pdf/other_material/36_Trikha_Extracts.pdf