Tattvacintāmaṇi における言葉の妥当性の根拠と確定方法
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概要
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The theoreticians of the Nyāya school usually accept words ( śabda ) as one of the valid means of true cognition ( pramāṇa ). Their thesis implies that they regard the acquisition of knowledge through scriptures, testimony and so forth, as valid. It is, however, only those words with certain qualifications that can lead us to true cognitions. The issue of what qualifications the valid words must meet has, being related to the issue of the authority of scriptures, often been taken up as a topic of argument since ancient times. In the present paper, I scrutinize the argument on this issue given in the Tatvacintāmaṇi (TC) of Gaṅgeśa (ca. 1325), who is said to have established the system of the modern Nyāya (Navya-Nyāya) school. The TC presents two views regarding the ground of validity of words — the view that the ground of the validity is the trustworthiness of the speaker, and the view that it is the compatibility between the cognition obtained through the words in question and other cognitions. I attempt to draw the answers to the following questions of each of the two views: (1) On what grounds should particular words be regarded as valid? (2) How can we ascertain this validity?// The first view obeys the traditional thesis of the Ny¯aya school that the words of trustworthy people are correct. For those who follow this view, it is important to define what kinds of people are trustworthy. Nyāya theoreticians usually require at least two qualifications of a trustworthy person: (1) He/she has true cognition, and (2) He/she has a wish to tell as he/she cognized, that is, he/she must not be deceptive. The TC also provides a rigorous definition, which can be understood to adopt the same two qualifications and clarify each of them further. Gaṅgeśa, however, emphasizes the impossibility of ascertaining the validity of words by the trustworthiness of the speaker.// The above view is criticized and withdrawn for not being able to explain some specific cases, and then the second view is proposed. In the second view, the ground of validity is ascribed to the listener’s cognition of an attribute called ‘semantic fitness (yogyatā),’ which is defined as the absence of contradicting knowledge, possessed by words. We can ascertain an utterance to be valid on the ground that no cognition contradicting the content of the utterance is known to be true. The TC acknowledges that there are cases where the listener cannot ascertain the utterance to possess the semantic fitness, but Gaṅgeśa admits the suspicion of the existence of the semantic fitness and even its false cognition as the ground of validity.// From a historical perspective, we can assert that the first view is a reproduction of the argument of Udayana (10-11c). The second view also seems to have its sources in Udayana’s discussion, but he does not explicitly describe the semantic fitness as the ground of validity of words. We may attribute the innovation to Gaṅgeśa or some theoretician after Udayana that the central element of the theory of the validity of words shifted from the speaker to the words themselves.
- 2010-03-31