Nyaya Theory of Knowledge

Author(s): S C Chateerjee
Publisher: University of Calcutta

Page 29

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NYAYA TETEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
self. Without this luminous light of knowledge we lose the ground of all rational practice and intelligent activity. It is on the basis of knowledge of some kind that all living beings deal with other objects of the surrounding world. Hence knowledge (buddhi) is regarded as the ground of what may be called the behaviour or conduct of a living being. A living creature behaves differently in relation to different objects because it somehow knows them to be different. Then we are told more definitely that knowledge is that kind of awareness which is meant when, by intiospection, one says 'I am knowing.' This means that knowledge is intellection as distinguished from affection and volition. Something different is meant by the phrase 'I am knowing,' from what is meant by saying 'I am desiring or willing or doing something, or sindply being pleased or displeased with it.' Although knowledge is distinguishable, it is not separable, from feeling and volition. In knowledge the knower does not passively allow himself to be impressed by external objects and end by baving mental copies of those objects. According to the Nyāya, the self is not a mere aggregate or series of conscious phenomena, which is only acted on and determined by sense-impressions, but has no power to react on and determine them. This materialistic and sensationalist theory of the self is rejected by the Nyāya. On the other hand, it conceives the self as a conscious agent which receives impressions of sense, knows external objects through them and acts upon things according to its subjective purposes. Knowledge is a cognitive fact by which we have an apprehension or understanding of objects. But it is bound up with certain affective elements, namely, the feelings of pleasure and displeasure, according as the known objects are pleasurable or painful. Through such feelings knowledge leads to certain conations, viz. desire, aversion
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TS and TD, P 32