Categorisation in Indian Philosophy

Jessica Frazier is a Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent. She is the author of Reality, Religion and Passion: Indian and Western Approaches in Gadamer and Gosvami and author/editor of The Continuum Companion to Hindu Studies, as well as the founding and managing editor of The Journal of Hindu Studies.

Contents: Foreword: remarks on the philosophical use of categories, Gavin Flood; Introduction: the importance of ’thinking inside the box’, Jessica Frazier; Vyākaraṇa: Bhāva as the ultimate category, Eivind Kahrs; Nyāya: pramāṇa (knowledge-generators) as natural kinds, Stephen Phillips; Sāṃkhya: the analysis of experience in classical sāṃkhya, Mikel Burley; Vedānta: metaphors for the category of existence, Jessica Frazier; Early vaiÅ›eá¹£ika: the concept of categories in vaiÅ›eá¹£ika philosophy, Shashiprabha Kumar; Later vaiÅ›eá¹£ika: the ’seven category ontology’ reaffirmed, Jonardon Ganeri; Madhyamaka: conventional categories in madhyamaka philosophy, Jan Westerhoff; Jainism: from ontology to taxonomy in the jaina colonisation of the universe, W. J. Johnson; Historical perspectives: the origin of categories in Indian philosophy, Johannes Bronkhorst; The order of things: the goals and categories of categorisation in India, Jessica Frazier; Bibliography; Appendices; Index.