A Thing-Oriented Perspective of Ancient Indian Philosophy

Abstract

With the emergence of thing-oriented doctrines in the recent times, there is a gradual shift of attention from human subjects to material objects in the contemporary educational realm. Thing theory and object-oriented ontology, as thing-oriented doctrines, are in equilibrium with their primary concern with things.  Both of them are pertinent to each other in multifarious ways. While thing theory is concerned with the significance of things in relation to literature and culture, object-oriented ontology focuses on the centrality of things in philosophy. The study made by thing-oriented scholars divulges that the worth of corporeal things has been overlooked by humans down the ages. However, there are a few instances here and there wherein things were said to gain some attention. This research paper seeks to make a study of how things were understood in the schools of ancient Indian philosophy, and it looks at the views of those schools on things from a thing-oriented perspective. It explores the general philosophy of the Upanishads concerning the reality of things in the world. It also attempts to identify and elucidate the constructive views on things which could be traced in the doctrines of the philosophical schools of the Nyāya, the Vaisheshika, the Sāṃkhya, the Mīmāṃsā and the Cārvāka. These schools’ realist approach to things is contrasted with the monistic idealism of the schools of the Advaita Vedānta and the Yoga.  The paper also examines how things are undermined and overmined in ancient Indian philosophy.