Deontic Concepts and Their Clash in Mīmāṃsā: Towards an Interpretation

Theoria 87 (3):659-703 (2021)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The article offers an overview of the deontic theory developed by the philosophical school of Mīmāṃsā, which is, and has been since the last centuries BCE, the main source of normative concepts in Sanskrit thought. Thus, the Mīmāṃsā deontics is interesting for any historian of philosophy and constitutes a thought-provoking occasion to rethink deontic concepts, taking advantage of centuries of systematic reflections on these topics. Some comparison with notions currently used in Euro-American normative theories and metaethical principles is offered in order to show possible points of contact and deep divergences. In more detail, after an introduction explaining the methodology and aims of our work, we discuss how Mīmāṃsā authors distinguished and defined some fundamental deontic concepts, such as different types of prescriptions and prohibitions. We then discuss how Mīmāṃsā authors approached the problem of conflicts among commands without jeopardising the validity of the normative text issuing them. In the second part of the article we introduce our formal apparatus, which is construed around the main taxonomic and conceptual distinctions used in the first part. Our formal rendering captures the most important features of the Mīmāṃsā theory and can thus serve as a concise and rigorous presentation of it for scholars working in deontic logic.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 97,119

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-03-23

Downloads
38 (#464,347)

6 months
19 (#218,268)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Matteo Pascucci
Slovak Academy of Sciences
Elisa Freschi
University of Toronto, St. George Campus

References found in this work

A Natural History of Negation.Laurence R. Horn - 1989 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 24 (2):164-168.
A Natural History of Negation.Jon Barwise & Laurence R. Horn - 1991 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 56 (3):1103.
Picking and Choosing.Edna Ullmann-Margalit & Sidney Morgenbesser - 1977 - Social Research: An International Quarterly 44 (4):757-785.

View all 11 references / Add more references