Abstract
Analytic philosophers have, since the pioneering work of B.K. Matilal, emphasized the contributions of Nyāya philosophers to what contemporary philosophy considers epistemology. More recently, scholarly work demonstrates the relevance of their ideas to argumentation theory, an interdisciplinary area of study drawing on epistemology as well as logic, rhetoric, and linguistics. This paper shows how early Nyāya theorizing about argumentation, from Vātsyāyana to Jayanta Bhaṭṭa, can fruitfully be juxtaposed with the pragma-dialectic approach to argumentation pioneered by Frans van Eemeren. I illustrate the implications of this analysis with a case study from Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s satirical play, Much Ado about Religion (Āgamaḍambara).
Highlights
As (Kataoka 2006) showed, he diverged from the tradition by arguing that Nyāya’s role was primarily a defensive one, providing argumentative and epistemic tools for removing doubts about Vedic authority, rather than being a unique way of knowing the objects listed in NS 1.1.1
In the pragma-dialectic approach, we find a narrower analysis of the ways in which, as Todeschini said, the “debater fails to contribute as required”
While Saṅkars.an.a seems to be an ardent defender of the Vedas and would be a candidate for a truth-seeking debate practitioner, from what I have argued, he is more a vaitan.d.ika, a “wrangler”, and perhaps even motivated more by a concern with victory than defense of the truth
Summary
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