ABSTRACT
Based on original translations of passages from the works of three major thinkers of the classical Indian school of Advaita (Sankara, Vacaspati and Sri Harsa), but addressing issues found in Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein and contemporary analytic philosophers, this book argues for a philosophical position it calls 'non-realism'. This is the view that an independent, external world must be assumed if the features of cognition are to be explained, but that it cannot be proved that there is such a world, independently of an appeal to cognition itself. This position is constructed against idealist denials of externality, realist arguments for an independent world and the sceptical denial of the coherence of cognition.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |21 pages
Introduction
part Section I|70 pages
Śaṅkara: Externality
chapter 1|13 pages
Śaṅkara and the Philosophical Framework of Advaita
chapter 2|42 pages
Śaṅkara, Vasubandhu and the Idealist use of Dreaming
chapter 3|13 pages
Śaṅkara, Dreaming and Non-Realism
part Section II|38 pages
VāCaspati: Determinacy
chapter 1|36 pages
Vācaspati on Anirvacanīyatva
part Section III|80 pages
Śrī Harṣa: Existence
chapter 1|29 pages
Knowledge and Existence
chapter 2|49 pages
The Non-Realist Critique of Existence
part Section IV|51 pages
Applying Non-Realism