Language, Meaning, and Use in Indian Philosophy

Reviews / Votes

The brilliance of Dr Keating's work lies in the fact that his book, at present the only book length exposition of Bhatt's life and work, is accessible to the lay reader interested in linguistics and philosophy, despite the extremely complex subject matter it deals with. * Swarajya * In this superb volume, Malcolm Keating has given us a clear window into classical indian theories of figurative speech and the philosophy of language. He shows us that and how sophisticated Indian debates regarding figurative speech can inform contemporary theories of meaning as well. This is a philosophically and philologically precise monograph that should be read not only by anyone interested in Indian literary theory and Indian philosophy of language, but by anybody who cares about meaning and metaphor, and how cross-cultural philosophy can improve our understanding of these phenomena. -- Jay L Garfield, Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities, Smith College and the Harvard Divinity School, USA Language, Meaning, and Use in Indian Philosophy is a wonderfully clear introduction to and translation of Mukula Bha??a's work on poetics and linguistic philosophy. Malcolm Keating has translated this work with non-Sanskritists in mind, and this book will be of great use not only to specialists in Indian philosophy, but also to readers interested in issues in comparative aesthetics and linguistics. In the final sections of the book, Keating skillfully draws on contemporary theories of semantics and metaphor to show how Mukula's approach can enrich and broaden our discussions of how language generates meaning. -- Andrew J. Nicholson, Associate Professor, Stony Brook University, USA