The panel we propose, Crossing Lines: Theories of Knowledge in Practice, brings together scholars of Indian and Chinese religious and philosophical traditions to explore how knowledge has been theorized and how theories have been applied. Our panel aims to create bridges and dialogue between diverse traditions and, across time, to look for patterns, divergences, and overlaps in bases of knowledge, construction of truth, and systematised practices between India and China. The panel includes papers on Jain, Nondual Śaiva, Confucian, Daoist, and Hindu epistemologies.
Classical philosophy in Jainism develops along two main textual traditions, one stemming from the Tattvārthasūtra, a Sanskrit work attributed to Umāsvāti (350-400); and the other from a group of works composed in Jain Śaurasenī and attributed to Kundakunda (from early 4th c. CE to 8th c. CE). In both cases, the seminal works are manuals of soteriology within which correct knowledge and, from this, the characterization of methods to acquire it, has a determining position. This talk aims, first, at clarifying some aspects of this centrality of knowledge in Jainism and, second, at assessing how this affects their theories of knowledge, by focusing on Kundakunda's seminal Samayasāra(SSā), Essence of the Self. I will especially focus on how it is possible to know the nature of a self which operates only in its own realm and is radically distinct from karmic matter, whose effects only we can measure.
The presentation explores Abhinavagupta's account of the move from knowing through emotion in everyday experience to knowing an emotion directly through aesthetic experience. For Abhinava, emotions are some of the subject-side factors that shape what objects of experience appear and how they're further conceptualized. In aesthetic experience, the latent impressions for core human emotions may be triggered in a way that moves beyond an individual's normal restrictions on how they see their world. When this happens, the emotion may be savored directly, as an object of human experience, rather than as a factor shaping how a different object manifests. This savoring is not an abstraction that moves away from embodied human experience, but rather carves more deeply into what it means to be human than our ordinary experiences normally afford.
In my paper, I will first sketch Rabindranath Tagore’s (1861-1941) epistemic stance and then relate it to his vision for making a new public in colonial India. Unlike publications that relate Tagore’s critique of nationalism to his cosmopolitan views, my paper will attempt to illustrate how this critique emanates from his rejection of some contemporary epistemic projects.
Many commentaries have been written on the “butterfly dream” from the Zhuangzi. They consider it from various theoretical and practical angles. This paper continues in this spirit by reflecting on how the “butterfly dream” can help us to live more flourishing lives via its engendering, ironically, both perspectival doubt and perspectival confidence, as well as more fluid shifts between the two. In section one, I clarify what is meant by both “doubt” and “confidence” along with several ways in which they can be directed towards their relevant targets: entire perspectives (rather than merely individual propositions or sets of propositions). In section two, I then explore how the “butterfly dream” can be read as inviting readers to use both thought and feeling to shift between perspectives more fluidly, in part by focusing their attention on what might be termed “fit” rather than “truth” or “accuracy”, and why these explorations are significant.
Knowledge (zhi ) often appears in early Confucian texts as a positive state for which we should strive. Some early Confucian texts suggest that other states are more valuable than knowledge, which value is primarily instrumental. Other passages suggest that knowledge is valuable in itself, and most curiously, there are certain passages in which knowledge appears as potentially harmful. Looking specifically to three major early Confucian texts, the Lunyu (Analects) of Confucius, the Mengzi, and the Xunzi, I argue early Confucians take knowledge to be a state the goodness that is qualified due to the possibility of different forms of knowledge, corresponding to greater or lesser ability, understanding, and associated skill. This marks knowledge as a fundamentally different kind of state than virtues such as filiality (xiao 孝), which early Confucians understand as unqualifiedly good, even if not alone sufficient for the achievement of full moral development.