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HUGH NICHOLSONAPOLOGETICS AND PHILOSOPHY IN MAN. D. ANA MISRASBRAHMASIDDHIPRELIMINARY REMARKS: THE POLITICAL DIMENSION OF THE PROBLEM
OF UNIVERSALSThe positions defended in philosophical debate often have as much
to do with defining the identity of a philosophical school or religious
community as they do with offering a solution to a philosophical
problem. This is especially true of the problem of universals, a topic
whose emergence as the central topic of philosophical discussion tends to
coincide with the appearance of scholastic rivalry in both the Western and
Indian philosophical traditions. In the European Middle Ages, various
factions the Augustinian Platonists and the Aristotelian Realists, and
later, the Realists and the Nominalists distinguished themselves through
their respective positions on this deeply ambiguous and controversial
issue. In India also the great schools of classical Indian philosophy
could be defined partly on the basis of their various views on the
ontological status of universals. This Indian debate was transplantedin Tibet, where it served as a medium for the major sects of Tibetan
Buddhism to express and accentuate differences that were, at bottom,
political in nature.1The interest in the problem of universals during periods of philosophical factionalism is probably not accidental. The issue is profoundly
aporetic, stubbornly defying a satisfactory, agreed-upon solution. Thanks
to its inconclusiveness the problem of universals allows for the enduring
coexistence of competing identity-sustaining positions. One even
wonders whether, in the absence of a concern with articulating philosophical differences, the problem of universals holds much philosophical
interest in the way it is traditionally formulated. As Aristotles example
demonstrates, philosophical reflection undertaken in a scientific spirit,
that is, relatively unconcerned with expressing political differences,
reveals the inadequacy of the categories of universality and particularity
for describing being or for explaining the acquisition of knowledge.2
One suspects that the convenience of the abstract schema of the universal
and the particular for the expression of philosophical differences blindsJournal of Indian Philosophy 30: 575596, 2002
c[circlecopyrt]2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands..576 HUGH NICHOLSONphilosophers preoccupied with self-definition to the inherent limitations
of these categories.This political aspect of the discussions centered on the problem of
universals explains the all to familiar tendency of these discussions to
caricature opposing views and to resort to specious lines of argument to
defend their own....