The review discusses the philosophical contributions of Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, a significant figure in Indian philosophy, focusing on his epistemological and linguistic insights. His work, particularly the Ślokavārttika, has had a lasting influence on various fields, including hermeneutics, poetics, and jurisprudence.
Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, a Brahmanical proponent of the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā school, was a highly influential thinker in Indian philosophy. His work primarily focused on interpreting the Vedas and their ritual performances. His contributions in epistemology and philosophy of language were significant, and his arguments against Buddhist rivals were particularly impactful. The Ślokavārttika, a critical commentary in verse, is one of his most notable works, introducing the doctrine of svataḥ prāmāṇya, which asserts that reliable ways of knowing must be accepted as intrinsically truth-conducive. This doctrine has been influential in various fields and represents a sophisticated development of common-sense realist intuitions. Kumārila's thought has had a lasting influence on Indian philosophy, particularly in the areas of hermeneutics, poetics, and jurisprudence.
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Kumārila’s significant philosophical contributions concern the full of issues that follow from Mīmāṃsā’s constitutive focus, which is on interpreting the corpus of texts (the “Vedas”) that enjoin the ritual performances of Vedic religion.
Kumārila’s thought was decisively influential, as well, for the Advaita Vedānta of Śaṅkara (eighth century; see Uskokov 2022), and his works would have lasting influence for Indian theorists of hermeneutics, poetics, and jurisprudence, among other fields.
Kumārila’s epistemology, although it is often characterized uncharitably based on its dove-tailing with logically independent claims about the authority of the Vedas, represents a sophisticated development of common-sense realist intuitions, which he leverages in ways that would be familiar to students of Thomas Reid and the “reformed epistemologists” (such as William Alston and Nicholas Wolsterstorff) who take their bearings from Reid.