Nyāya, literally meaning "justice", "rules", "method" or "judgment", is one of the six orthodox (Āstika) schools of Hindu philosophy that affirm the Vedas. Nyāya's most significant contributions to Indian philosophy were systematic development of the theory of logic, methodology, and its treatises on epistemology.
Eastern philosophy or Asian philosophy includes the various philosophies that originated in East and South Asia, including Chinese philosophy, Japanese philosophy, Korean philosophy, and Vietnamese philosophy; which are dominant in East Asia, and Indian philosophy, which are dominant in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, and Mongolia.
Hindu philosophy or Vedic philosophy is the set of Indian philosophical systems that developed in tandem with the religion of Hinduism during the iron and classical ages of India. In Indian tradition, the word used for philosophy is Darshana(Sanskrit: दर्शन; meaning: "viewpoint or perspective"), from the Sanskrit root दृश meaning 'to see, to experience'.
Vaisheshika is one of the six schools of Hindu philosophy from ancient India. In its early stages, the Vaiśeṣika was an independent philosophy with its own metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, and soteriology. Over time, the Vaiśeṣika system became similar in its philosophical procedures, ethical conclusions and soteriology to the Nyāya school of Hinduism, but retained its difference in epistemology and metaphysics.
Indian philosophy consists of philosophical traditions of the Indian subcontinent. A traditional Hindu classification divides āstika and nāstika schools of philosophy, depending on one of three alternate criteria: whether it believes the Vedas as a valid source of knowledge; whether the school believes in the premises of Brahman and Atman; and whether the school believes in afterlife and Devas.
Early modern philosophy The early modern era of philosophy was a progressive movement of Western thought, exploring through theories and discourse such topics as mind and matter, is a period in the history of philosophy that overlaps with the beginning of the period known as modern philosophy. It succeeded in the medieval era of philosophy. Early modern philosophy is usually thought to have occurred between the 16th and 18th centuries, though some philosophers and historians may put this period slightly earlier. During this time, influential philosophers included Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Kant, all of whom contributed to the current understanding of philosophy.
Gaṅgeśa was an Indian philosopher, logician and mathematician from the kingdom of Mithila. He established the Navya-Nyāya school. His Tattvachintāmaṇi, also known as Pramāṇacintāmaṇi, is the basic text for all later developments. The logicians of this school were primarily interested in defining their terms and concepts related to non-binary logical categories.
Dignāga was an Indian Buddhist scholar and one of the Buddhist founders of Indian logic. Dignāga's work laid the groundwork for the development of deductive logic in India and created the first system of Buddhist logic and epistemology (Pramana).
The Nyāya Sūtras is an ancient Indian Sanskrit text composed by Akṣapāda Gautama, and the foundational text of the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy. The date when the text was composed, and the biography of its author is unknown, but variously estimated between 6th-century BCE and 2nd-century CE. The text may have been composed by more than one author, over a period of time. The text consists of five books, with two chapters in each book, with a cumulative total of 528 aphoristic sutras, about rules of reason, logic, epistemology and metaphysics.
The development of Indian logic dates back to the anviksiki of Medhatithi Gautama ; the Sanskrit grammar rules of Pāṇini ; the Vaisheshika school's analysis of atomism ; the analysis of inference by Gotama, founder of the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy; and the tetralemma of Nagarjuna.
Bimal Krishna Matilal was an eminent philosopher whose writings presented the Indian philosophical tradition as a comprehensive system of logic incorporating most issues addressed by themes in Western philosophy. Born in Calcutta, he lived and worked in Calcutta, Harvard, Toronto and Oxford. From 1977 to 1991, he served as the Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics at the University of Oxford.
The Navya-Nyāya or Neo-Logicaldarśana of Indian logic and Indian philosophy was founded in the 13th century CE by the philosopher Gangeśa Upādhyāya of Mithila and continued by Raghunatha Siromani of Nabadwipa in Bengal. It was a development of the classical Nyāya darśana. Other influences on Navya-Nyāya were the work of earlier philosophers Vācaspati Miśra and Udayana. It remained active in India through to the 18th century.
Udayana, also known as Udayanācārya, was an Indian philosopher and logician of the tenth century of the Nyaya school who attempted to devise a rational theology to prove the existence of God using logic and counter the attack on the existence of God at the hands of Buddhist philosophers such as Dharmakīrti, Jñānaśrī and against the Indian school of materialism (Chārvaka). He is considered to be the most important philosopher of the Nyāya tradition.
Buddhist logico-epistemology is a term used in Western scholarship to describe Buddhist systems of pramāṇa and hetu-vidya. While the term may refer to various Buddhist systems and views on reasoning and epistemology, it is most often used to refer to the work of the "Epistemological school", i.e. the school of Dignaga and Dharmakirti which developed from the 5th through 7th centuries and remained the main system of Buddhist reasoning until the decline of Buddhism in India.
Yashovijaya, a seventeenth-century Jain philosopher-monk, was a notable Indian philosopher and logician. He was a thinker, prolific writer and commentator who had a strong and lasting influence on Jainism. He was a disciple of Muni Nayavijaya in the lineage of Jain monk Hiravijaya who influenced the Mughal Emperor Akbar to give up eating meat. He is also known as Yashovijayji with honorifics like Mahopadhyaya or Upadhyaya or Gani.
Arindam Chakrabarti is, currently, a visiting professor of philosophy at Ashoka University, India. He is, also, a professor of philosophy at Stony Brook University, where he has been since 2018. Prior to moving to Stony Brook, Chakrabarti taught at the University of Hawaii, where he was the director of the EPOCH Project.
Padārtha is a Sanskrit word for "categories" in Vaisheshika and Nyaya schools of Indian philosophy.
Ratnakīrti was an Indian Buddhist philosopher of the Yogācāra and epistemological (pramāṇavāda) schools who wrote on logic, philosophy of mind and epistemology. Ratnakīrti studied at the Vikramaśīla monastery in modern-day Bihar. He was a pupil of Jñānaśrīmitra, and Ratnakīrti refers to Jñānaśrīmitra in his work as his guru with phrases such as yad āhur guravaḥ.
There was, for a considerable period of time, a very lively and extensively practiced tradition of formal debates in ancient India. These debates were conducted, sometimes with royal patronage, to examine various religious, philosophical, moral and doctrinal issues. The corpus of knowledge on conducting a successful debate was referred to as vādavidyā and several manuals dealing with this discipline had been produced. It was from these debates that the Indian tradition of logic and allied investigations were evolved and developed. The antiquity of this tradition can be traced even to pre-Buddhist period. For example, Brhadaranyaka Upsanisad, a pre-Buddhist text, has references to King Janaka as not only organizing and patronizing debates between the sages and priests but also as participating in such debates. Women also used to participate in these debates. Gargi was a woman scholar who used to participate in the debates in King Janaka's court.
Pakṣilasvāmin Vātsyāyana was an Indian philosopher, commentator and logician of the Nyaya School. He is the author of the Commentary, "Nyāya", the first full commentary on the Nyāya-sūtra of Gautama, which is itself the foundational text of the school of philosophy called "Nyāya".
