Relativism, Suffering, and Beyond: Essays in Memory of Bimal K. Matilal.

• Author: Phillips, Stephen H.
• Position: Review

Edited by P. BILIMORIA and J. N. MOHANTY. Delhi: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1997. Pp. 381. $35.

This delectable volume of essays, in tribute to the philosopher/indologist Bimal Matilal, shows that the field, the maidan that Matilal had groomed to invite professional philosophizing on classical Indian thought, is in full bloom. Practically every contribution is superb and a pleasure to read. The array of topics convey Matilal's vision and his response to the classical heritage, his preponderant interest. Doubtless, research will continue for decades principally along these lines. Several pieces are ripe for distribution in graduate philosophy seminars or among indologists eager to know more about the high points of classical philosophy or about how the Indian schools look after modern scrutiny.

There are twenty papers in addition to a biographical essay by J. N. Mohanty that outlines the history of the area that Matilal and others, including Mohanty himself, fenced off and cultivated. The papers discuss or engage Nyaya, Buddhist philosophy - especially the skepticism of Madhyamaka, Advaita Vedanta, and, in the case of Margaret Chatterjee's and Robert Goldman's contributions, ethical values and themes across a broad span of classical and modern Indian civilization. There are also two papers of the highest quality by philosophers who are not India-specialists, Michael Krausz and Martha Nussbaum, papers that are perhaps the best tribute to Matilal since they are directed to general philosophic concerns while being informed by a global sensibility - the one on value relativism or contextualism and the other on emotions as cognitive. Both are major statements, articulate summaries of the author's positions that are elaborated elsewhere, as is, we may note, D. P. Chattopadhyaya's polished reflection on philosophic skepticism, principally classical Indian.

The seven papers on Nyaya are all blue-ribbon. The most ground-breaking is Sibajiban Bhattacharyya's on Gadadhara's theory of the meaning of anaphoric pronouns. In my judgment, Gadadhara's final result is not only weak but in its weakness suggests that Nyaya's unrelenting insistence on ontological correlation is bumping up against bounds that even the greatest skill and ingenuity cannot transcend. To explain the pronouns, Gadadhara is forced to rely on a distinction between a "true qualifier" and "pseudo-qualifier" (visesana vs. upalaksana), a distinction that, I dare say, he would be unable to...