Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

SR No.: 011115
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: S C Chateerjee
Publisher: University of Calcutta
Publication Year: 1939
Total Pages: 440
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

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NYAYA THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
consciousness as cause and effect, means and result of the process of knowledge. But it is absurd to speak of the same thing as the subject and the object, the knower and the known.'
The force of the Naiyāyika's objection against the Yogācāra view of pramāņa lies in its insistence on a fundamental difference between knowledge or consciousness and its object. Knowledge as manifestation presupposes some object that is manifested by it. As against all idealism the modern realists of the West point out that experience or percipi presupposes existence or esse. For the Naiyāyikas experience or knowledge presupposes some object which may be mental or physical, existent or non-existent. Hence it is meaningless to speak of knowledge as self-manifestation, i.e. a manifestation of itself as object and by itself as subject.
4. Nyāya criticism of the Mimāmsā and Sāmkhya views
In the Bhātta Mīmāṁsā, pramā or true knowledge is defined as primary and original knowledge (anadhigata). Hence pramāṇa is that which gives us new knowledge, i.e. a true cognition of objects of which we have had no knowledge in the past. Every case of knowledge, if it is to be of any value, should be original in character. It implies a new step, by which we advance from the known to what is not yet known. Real knowledge is a synthetic process adding new contents to the old stock of knowledge. Pramāņi is the means of acquiring knowledge, and so must lead to the acquisition of such knowledge as is not yet attained but is still to be acquired. If the objects are already known, there can be no necessity of acquiring a knowledge of them. The method of knowledge, therefore, must be concerned in knowing what has not been previously
1 NVT., p. 21; NM., p. 16.