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Padārtha is a Sanskrit word for "categories" in Vaisheshika and Nyaya schools of Indian philosophy. [1] [2]
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Padārtha is a Sanskrit word for "categories" in Vaisheshika and Nyaya schools of Indian philosophy. [1] [2]
The term padārtha is a portmanteau of pada, "word" and artha, "meaning" or "referent", and so the term padārtha indicates "the meaning or referent of words". [3]
Almost all of India's philosophical systems accept liberation as life's ultimate goal; it is the summum bonum . Each philosophy prescribes the means to that end independently. According to Aksapada Gautama, liberation can be attained by true knowledge of the categories or padārthas. [4] According to the Vaisheshika school, all things that exist, which can be conceptualized, and that can be named are padārthas, the objects of experience.
According to Vaisheshika, padārtha or objects of experience can be divided as bhāva (real existence) and abhāva (non-existence). The bhāva padārthas are of six types, while abhāva was added later. [3] These are:
Nyāya metaphysics recognizes sixteen padārthas, the second of which, called prameya, includes the six (or seven) categories of the Vaiśeṣika school. [5] They are:
Padārthas are distinct from the categories of Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel. According to Aristotle, categories are logical classification of predicates; Kant states that categories are only patterns of understanding, while Hegel’s categories are dynamic stages in the development of thought. The Vaiśeṣika categories are a metaphysical classification of all knowable objects.
Aristotle accepts ten categories:
The Vaiśeṣikas instead place the concepts of time and place under substance; relation under quality; inherence, quantity and property under quality. Passivity is considered the opposite of activity. Akṣapāda Gautama enumerates sixteen padārthas. [6]
In ontology, the theory of categories concerns itself with the categories of being: the highest genera or kinds of entities. To investigate the categories of being, or simply categories, is to determine the most fundamental and the broadest classes of entities. A distinction between such categories, in making the categories or applying them, is called an ontological distinction. Various systems of categories have been proposed, they often include categories for substances, properties, relations, states of affairs or events. A representative question within the theory of categories might articulate itself, for example, in a query like, "Are universals prior to particulars?"
The problem of universals is an ancient question from metaphysics that has inspired a range of philosophical topics and disputes: "Should the properties an object has in common with other objects, such as color and shape, be considered to exist beyond those objects? And if a property exists separately from objects, what is the nature of that existence?"
Substance theory, or substance–attribute theory, is an ontological theory positing that objects are constituted each by a substance and properties borne by the substance but distinct from it. In this role, a substance can be referred to as a substratum or a thing-in-itself. Substances are particulars that are ontologically independent: they are able to exist all by themselves. Another defining feature often attributed to substances is their ability to undergo changes. Changes involve something existing before, during and after the change. They can be described in terms of a persisting substance gaining or losing properties. Attributes or properties, on the other hand, are entities that can be exemplified by substances. Properties characterize their bearers; they express what their bearer is like.
Nyāya, literally meaning "justice", "rules", "method" or "judgment", is one of the six orthodox (Āstika) schools of Hindu philosophy. Nyāya's most significant contributions to Indian philosophy were systematic development of the theory of logic, methodology, and its treatises on epistemology.
Vaisheshika is one of the six schools of Hindu philosophy from ancient India. In its early stages, 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.
Kaṇāda, also known as Ulūka, Kashyapa, Kaṇabhaksha, Kaṇabhuj was an ancient Indian natural scientist and philosopher who founded the Vaisheshika school of Indian philosophy that also represents the earliest Indian physics.
Guṇa is a concept in Hinduism, which can be translated as "quality, peculiarity, attribute, property".
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.
The Categories is a text from Aristotle's Organon that enumerates all the possible kinds of things that can be the subject or the predicate of a proposition. They are "perhaps the single most heavily discussed of all Aristotelian notions". The work is brief enough to be divided not into books, as is usual with Aristotle's works, but into fifteen chapters.
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 Chandahsutra of Pingala and 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.
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.
Pramana literally means "proof" and "means of knowledge". In Indian philosophies, pramana are the means which can lead to knowledge, and serve as one of the core concepts in Indian epistemology. It has been one of the key, much debated fields of study in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism since ancient times. It is a theory of knowledge, and encompasses one or more reliable and valid means by which human beings gain accurate, true knowledge. The focus of pramana is how correct knowledge can be acquired, how one knows, how one does not know, and to what extent knowledge pertinent about someone or something can be acquired.
Atomism is a natural philosophy proposing that the physical universe is composed of fundamental indivisible components known as atoms.
Vaiśeṣika Sūtra, also called Kanada sutra, is an ancient Sanskrit text at the foundation of the Vaisheshika school of Hindu philosophy. The sutra was authored by the Hindu sage Kanada, also known as Kashyapa. According to some scholars, he flourished before the advent of Buddhism because the Vaiśeṣika Sūtra makes no mention of Buddhism or Buddhist doctrines; however, the details of Kanada's life are uncertain, and the Vaiśeṣika Sūtra was likely compiled sometime between 6th and 2nd century BCE, and finalized in the currently existing version before the start of the common era.
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.
Abhava means non-existence, negation, nothing or absence. It is the negative of Bhava which means being, becoming, existing or appearance.
The Fifth Chapter of the Vaisheshika Sutras of Kanada deals with the notion of action and the connected concept of effort; and also deals with the various special phenomenon of nature to the supersensible force, called Adrishta.
Praśastapāda was an ancient Indian philosopher. He wrote the Padārtha-dharma-saṅgraha and a commentary, titled Praśastapāda Bhāṣya, on the Vaisheshika Sutras of Kanada ; both texts are comprehensive books in physics. In these texts Prashastapada discusses the properties of motion. Ganganath Jha had translated Praśastapāda Bhāṣya which was published in 1916. Prashasta or Praśasta means praised or praiseworthy, lauded or laudable, commended or commendable or eulogized.