Skip to content
Coordinates of ThoughtHome of Philosophy
Join

Book corner · Intermediate

The Character of Logic in India

Bimal Krishna Matilal · 1998 · Medium (150–350 pages)

4.7 from 3 reviews · 34 views

Logic & argumentIndianNyaya
+ Add to my shelf

Be the first to put it on your shelf.

Discuss this book Review it

What it is

Matilal's last account of Indian logic, unfinished at his death in 1991 and edited for publication by Jonardon Ganeri and Heeraman Tiwari. He argues that logic in India grew out of the practice of public debate, and traces how early discussions of good and bad argument, and of the tricks and faults of disputation, developed into a theory of inference. He follows the Nyāya account of inference and its five-membered argument, the work of the Buddhist logicians Dignāga and Dharmakīrti on what makes a reason a good one, and the long effort to establish pervasion, the universal connection between reason and conclusion on which inference rests. Throughout he compares these ideas with Aristotle and with modern formal logic, while resisting the temptation to force them into Western moulds or to treat them as mere precursors.

Why read it

It is the most direct route for a reader trained in Western philosophy into the way Indian philosophers argued, written by the scholar who did most to bring the two into conversation.

Where to start

Read the opening chapters on debate before the more technical chapters on inference and pervasion.

Talking about Matilal

Reviews

  1. Oskar Nyberg

    This is the book I recommend to colleagues in Lund who think Indian philosophy is all mysticism. It is analytic in spirit without being condescending, and the comparisons with Aristotle are precise. I wish Matilal had lived to finish it.

  2. Arvind Poojary

    Matilal is clear and fair, and he takes the Buddhist logicians as seriously as the Naiyāyikas. As a Cārvāka sympathiser I was looking for the materialists' doubts about inference and found them only in passing, which is not his fault since the book is about logic, not about its critics. Short enough to read in a week.

  3. Vikram Sethi

    I teach mathematics and grew up being told that logic began with Aristotle. This book corrected me without lecturing. The account of how Indian logic came out of real debates, with rules for when an opponent has been defeated, made the five-membered argument make sense to me for the first time. I now use the smoke and fire example in my class on proof.