Is Mind or Language the Fundamental Locus of Intentionality?
Thoughts on Framing a Buddhist-Mimamsaka Debate Dan Arnold Sheldon Pollock’s justly influential works have evinced a recurrent concern with the status of Sastra — more particularly, with the extent to which characteristically Mimamsaka positions have informed a conception of sastra according to which contingent traditions of knowledge are “naturalized,” becoming “in essence a practical discourse of power.” In developing these ideas, Prof. Pollock has occasionally noted that the Buddhist tradition represented perhaps the most notable challenge to the Mimamsaka conceptions here in play, the Buddhists having developed “what may best be viewed as a desire to renaturalize the world.” I would like to honor Prof. Pollock’s achievements by suggesting some terms in which Buddhist-Mimamsaka debates can be broadly but usefully characterized — and in so doing, add some complexity to the various ways in which “naturalism” may here be a relevant category. I will argue, then, that the debate between
