The Instability of Reason

In premodern south Asia, epistemology (prama?asastra)--the study of knowledge and the methods of acquiring it--was rarely construed as a purely theoretical enterprise. It was a discipline intended to serve practical purposes. This approach to epistemology is found in the philosophical tradition called Nyaya. The defenders of this tradition, the Naiyayikas, took Nyaya to be a science of rational inquiry that could assist practitioners of other sciences like economics and government in realizing their distinctive practical aims. These thinkers were committed to Nyaya rationalism: the view that rational inquiry can help us discover all practically important truths about ourselves and the world. Though this view was popular in premodern South Asia, it wasn't without its critics. In this monograph, Nilanjan Das focuses on one such critic of Nyaya rationalism: Srihar?a (12th century CE). Srihar?a agreed with the Naiyayikas that liberation (mok?a or apavarga), i.e., complete freedom from suffering, is the highest aim of human existence, and that we can achieve it by discovering the truth about the self and its relation to the world. But he rejected the claim that rational inquiry can help us discover that truth. This monograph examines how Srihar?a defends his anti-rationalist stance against Nyaya epistemologists in his only surviving philosophical work, A Confection of Refutation (Kha??anakha??akhadya). Srihar&#x 1E63;a's criticisms of Nyaya epistemology were significant. On the one hand, they paved the way for theoretical innovations in Nyaya and Vedanta through figures like Citsukha, Ga?gesa Upadhyaya, Sa?kara Misra and Raghunatha Siroma?i. On the other, they reveal the defects of a more general approach to philosophy: an approach that seeks to describe the nature of theoretically interesting categories--like knowledge and causation--by laying down reductive analyses of the corresponding concepts. Srihar?a argues that any attempt to offer such conceptual analyses is doomed to fail. Here, this monograph shows, Srihar?a anticipates the view of contemporary epistemologists, like Timothy Williamson, who have expressed similar pessimism about the project of analysing knowledge and recommended a form of 'knowledge-first' epistemology.