Analogy in Indian and Western Philosophical Thought (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science)

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This book is unusual in many respects. It was written by a prolific author whose tragic untimely death did not allow to finish this and many other of his undertakings. It was assembled from numerous excerpts, notes, and fragments according to his initial plans. Zilberman� s legacy still awaits its true discovery and this book is a second installment to it after The Birth of Meaning in Hindu Thought (Kluwer, 1988). Zilberman ��s treatment of analogy is unique in its approach, scope, and universality for Western philosophical thought. Constantly compared to eastern and especially classical Indian interpretations, analogy is presented by Zilberman as an important and in many ways primary method of philosophizing or philosophy-building. Due to its universality, this method can be also applied in linguistics, logic, social analysis, as well as historical and anthropological research. These applications are integral part of Zilberman� s book. A prophetic leap to largely uncharted territories, this book could be of considerable interest for experts and novices in the field of analogy alike.

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Analogy in Indian and Western Philosophical Thought (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science) Review

I have to admit I was very disappointed with this text, but in part because I was so excited about it. My own academic research is currently focused on analogy, and as someone who studies South Asian/Sanskrit and contemporary Western/analytic philosophy, I was very hopeful that this could serve as an important academic resource for me. Unfortunately, it will not. This text does not in any way represent a cohesive treatment of analogy in either the Western or South Asian ("Indian") traditions, and instead offers a series of "academic vignettes" reconstructed by the editors from the late Dr. Zilberman's notes that are more illustrative of this individual's musings and informed reflections on the subject rather that a substantial contribution to the field.

Many of the chapters in the text are much more what I would call scholarly reflections rather than scholarship, for example "The Indian Type of Cultural Tradition" and "Writing and Tradition." As reflections, they are valuable in stimulating thoughts on the subject, but they lack the content and clear delineation of an argument supported by textual evidence to serve as an academic resource for those continuing to work within this albeit limited space of analogy and comparative philosophy. There are other chapters that do a bit more than reflect, but unfortunately they suffer from the fact that they were put together from the deceased author's notes and as such are often seriously undeveloped. They tend to be short, but pithy, and often times represent little more than an initial engagement with an idea (for example, "Revelation of Mechanism of Tradition in a Form of Grammatical Paradigms of Indian Logic," pages 143-164).

Having said that, the chapter "Analogy in Navya-Nyaya" (pages 56-110) does represent a serious engagement with analogy within this philosophical tradition (although it does not address Western uses of analogy). The chapter represents largely an explication of the concept of jati within the sphere of knowledge (not to be confused the the jatis, or vocational-based castes; jati means, basically, "group"). In the sphere of knowledge and reasoning, jati represents "something of the kind," and in Zilberman's treatment he compiles essentially a list of valid "kinds" or jatis from the Nyaya texts from Gautama to Gangesa. Each of these are illustrated by an example disputation. While this can be helpful, it essentially represents a list of rules about proper reasoning that those who have encountered Indian manuals of debate will be familiar with. There is no substantial analysis of analogy outside of this illustrated list. As such, it provides a quite bare secondary source on fairly accessible texts, particularly given that English translations of these texts are becoming more available (e.g, Stephen Phillips, et. al., Epistemology of Perception: Gangesa's Tattvacintamani (Treasury of the Indic Sciences); however, I am not aware of an English translation of the later chapters of the Tattvacintamani. One only need to do a search to find numerous English translations of the Nyaaya Sutra).

Because of these shortcomings and the prohibitive cost of this text, I cannot recommend its purchase by individuals and only tentatively for institutions. As someone whose own research is particularly centered on "Analogy in the Indian and Western Tradition," I did not find it overly informative, nor did I think a generalist of South Asian philosophy or analogy would find it to be a particularly helpful or critical text.

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