Kumārila's Defence of Realism
Elisa FreschiFor the Buddhist logicians “perception” (pratyakṣa) is tantamount to “immediate awareness of a particular”, including also awareness of pain/pleasure, self-awareness, and the Buddha’s immediate awareness of the Four Noble Truths etc. Even in this latter case, maintain the Buddhists, the requisites of immediateness and non-conceptualisation are satisfied, for the pure mind of the awaken Buddha “sees” the Four Noble Truths, the Law of Karma etc. as they are, without superimposing conceptualisations on them. Kumārila replies that the common-sense understanding of pratyakṣa is “sense perception”, and this itself excludes the Buddha’s (intellectual) awareness from its sphere. Philosophers — argues Kumārila — have no right to interfere with the common usage of a word unless cogent arguments force them to do so. obviously enough, according to Kumārila, Diṅnāga’s arguments are not cogent, since they violate common sense on the basis of a theory that contradicts ordinary usages and beliefs and lies beyond any possible demonstration. Unlike Diṅnāga, Kumārila believes that we first perceive a non-conceptual “something” (the perception’s content cannot be verbalised as it is non-conceptual) and immediately afterthat, say, “a cow”. Although the latter is already conceptualised and can therefore be verbalised, it is still a perception, since it arises without interruption out of a contact of the sense faculty with its object (on the contrary, the judgement “it was a cow” occurring after one turned her eyes to something else, is not to be considered a perception). Later on, the sensorial datum “a cow” may become part of a complex judgement, such as the inference of a herdsman next to it etc.
