Daya Krishna on Apoha

Abstract

In this paper, I argue, by spelling out what apoha is all about, that Daya Krishna’s version of apoha in Kantian perspective amounts to a variance. I take a contrary position to what Daya Krishna has argued. It would be imprecise to look at apoha from Kantian perspective, for Kant’s is about propositions and judgment where, in fact, categories play a major role. Apoha is a theory of semantics where there is a commitment to particulars, with an outright rejection of the “fictitious” universal, which gives a cognitive justification of the process of conception formation. Hence, if what I have understood on apoha is correct, I wonder whether the theory of apoha is much more than what Daya Krishna unravels in the light of Kantian enterprise. Though there is a similarity in the intellectual enterprise on apoha of Buddhist logicians and infinite of Kant, they stand apart as the Buddhist apoha is apropos a theory of meaning.