Nyāya
A philosophy that first wants to know how we know: logic and debate raised into a path to liberation.
c. 150 – c. 1650 · living tradition
Nyāya ("rule", "reasoning") is one of the six orthodox systems of Indian philosophy, founded on the Nyāya-sūtra attributed to (around the second century). A school of logic and theory of knowledge, it lists the (), codifies inference and the rules of debate, and defends a robust realism against Buddhists and sceptics. Its great commentators, from to , engaged for a thousand years in a sustained, closely argued controversy with and , and Nyāya eventually merged with its sister school, . In the fourteenth century founded "new Nyāya" (Navya-Nyāya), whose extremely precise technical language became the common idiom of Indian scholasticism; the period recorded here runs to that school's last great masters in the seventeenth century. Nyāya draws the interest of analytic philosophy today for its logic and epistemology.
We know, even if we do not always know that we know: the validity of a cognition is recognized by its fruits.
The self is not a flux of states: without an abiding subject, one could neither remember nor desire.
Universals are seen: to perceive a cow is also to perceive what makes it a cow.
Justification
Against , who asks what validates the themselves, Nyāya replies that a means of knowledge need not be validated in advance in order to work: just as a lamp shows objects without requiring another lamp to be seen, it first produces a cognition, and its reliability can then be checked by another means, without infinite regress. Nyāya thus distinguishes the production of a cognition, its validity, which consists in grasping the object as it is, and the recognition of that validity, which is not self-evident (, ): it is established after the fact, notably by the success of the action it guides. Hence an anti-sceptical realism that nonetheless allows for error and correction.
Nyāya-sūtra, II.1.8-20, with Vātsyāyana's commentary · Gaṅgeśa, Tattvacintāmaṇi, book I (section on validity)
Justification
When we see a cow, we also perceive "cowness" (gotva), a real, eternal present in each of its individuals. Nyāya thereby opposes the Buddhist theory of (), on which the word "cow" designates only what is not non-cow: for Nyāya, universals are perceived, not constructed.
Nyāya-sūtra, II.2.58-69 · Uddyotakara, Nyāyavārttika
Justification
A cognition is true when it grasps a thing as it is: it ascribes to the object a property the object really has. Correspondence defines truth; the success of action serves only to recognize it, hence the minor share of pragmatism.
Gaṅgeśa, Tattvacintāmaṇi, book I (section on validity)
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Justification
Perception is the primary means of knowledge, on which the others depend. Inference rests on (: smoke always accompanied by fire). Nyāya does not derive it from a mere enumeration of cases: it requires observing joint presence and joint absence, ruling out the () that could vitiate the link, and the help of hypothetical reasoning (). It is a knowledge that starts from experience, not from innate truths.
Nyāya-sūtra, I.1.3-5 · Gaṅgeśa, Tattvacintāmaṇi, book II (inference)
Justification
Against the Buddhist doctrine of no-self, Nyāya holds that the () is a permanent substance, distinct from the body and from mental states. The main argument is from recognition: whoever desires what they saw yesterday must be the same subject who saw it, otherwise memory and desire would be inexplicable. devoted a whole treatise to refuting the Buddhists on this point.
Nyāya-sūtra, I.1.10 and III.1 · Udayana, Ātmatattvaviveka (Discernment of the Reality of the Self)
Justification
Muted in the Nyāya-sūtra, theism became a developed doctrine of later Nyāya and of the tradition, which made it the theistic school par excellence of Indian philosophy: seeks to establish the existence of a Lord (Īśvara), the intelligent maker of the world, against the and Buddhists who deny it. The central argument is from effects: the earth, being a product, presupposes an agent who produces it. Hence a clearly theistic value, though short of the extreme.
Nyāya-sūtra, IV.1.19-21 · Udayana, Nyāyakusumāñjali, V.1
Lineages
See on the friezeAll lineages↑ Influences received
- Reacts againstBuddhismFor a thousand years Nyāya engaged in a sustained controversy with the logicians of Buddhism, Dignāga and Dharmakīrti: against no-self it defends a substantial self; against the theory of exclusion (apoha), real unive…Read
- Reacts againstMadhyamakaNyāya defends the means of knowledge against the Madhyamaka objection: they establish themselves, as a lamp lights itself in lighting up objects, and denying all valid knowledge undermines the denial itself.Read
↓ Influence exerted
- challenged byMadhyamakaNāgārjuna turns the demand for grounding back on Nyāya: if the means of knowledge validate everything, what validates them?Read