The Nyaya school of philosophical speculation is based on texts known as the Nyaya Sutras, which were written by Aksapada Gautama,
in the second century B.C. The most important contribution made by the
Nyaya school to modern Hindu thought is its methodology. This
methodology is based on a system of logic that has subsequently been adopted by most of the other Indian schools (orthodox or not), much in the same way that western science, religion and philosophy can be said to be largely based on Aristotelian logic.
However, Nyaya differs from Aristotelian logic in that it is not merely logic for its own sake. Its followers believed
that obtaining valid knowledge was the only way to obtain release from
suffering. They therefore took great pains to identify valid sources of
knowledge and to distinguish these from mere false opinions. According
to the Nyaya school, there are exactly four sources of knowledge (pramanas):
perception, inference, comparison and testimony. Knowledge obtained
through each of these can, of course, still be either valid or invalid.
As a result, Nyaya scholars again went to great pains to identify, in
each case, what it took to make knowledge valid,in the process creating
a number of explanatory schemes. In this sense, Nyaya is probably the
closest Indian equivalent to contemporary analytical philosophy.
The Nyaya philosophy's another most important conribution was proving
the existance of God (one Supreme God, called Ishwara), mostly by
logic, in answer to repeated attempts by Buddhists (which is an
atheistic or agnostic philosophy) to disprove the existance of God.
See also
External Links
