Lecture Me! Nilanjan Das

The Edges of Being: Absence in Sanskrit Philosophy. Professor Nilanjan Das from the Department of Philosophy

Just as we see material objects like chairs and tables, we also seem to see absences—holes in cheese, shadows on the ground. But do absences exist over and above the positive material objects that surround them? In this talk, Professor Das will explore a debate in first-millennium South Asia about the nature and existence of absence (abhāva). Realists about absence maintained that absences exist objectively, while non-realists saw them as mere mental constructs. Among realists, reductionists claimed that absences are reducible to positive entities, such as the surface surrounding a hole. Non-reductionists, by contrast, argued that absences are irreducible. Professor Das focuses on Udayana (10th–11th century), an influential Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosopher, who defended non-reductionist realism. For him, absences like holes and shadows depend on positive entities but are nonetheless irreducibly real—no less so than material objects.