Divine rider on elephant. c. 1760, Kota, Rajasthan. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Accn. No. 1976-15-1.
Vocabulary
Each week we will discuss certain key terms. Make sure to note these terms and familiarize yourself with their meanings as you read and as we discuss them in class.
| sense | Self | indriya |
| sensorium | Other | pratyakṣa |
| epistemology | alterity | pramāṇa |
| ontology | subject | kalpaṇā |
| object | viṣaya |
Session 01: What is a sense? What is a sensorium?
In the first class session (Tue March 30) we will discuss the nature of sense and the potentials (including potential pitfalls) of various ways of understanding the senses. The important thing to remember is that whenever we encounter difference—whether it be cultural, temporal, racial, gender, or of another kind—we are most often using multiple senses to orient ourselves to that difference and navigate that encounter.
The first reading for the course, Andrew Rotter’s essay “Empires of the Senses: How Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching Shaped Imperial Encounters,” will give us a sense of how the various senses have shaped civilizational encounters over the past several centuries. In a certain sense, Rotter’s article warns us of the dangers of an unconsidered or un-reflexive approach to thinking about sensory (and thus cultural) difference. Yet in a broader sense as well, it makes us aware of the ways in which we are always ‘thinking through’ our senses whenever we try to think about differences between human beings (not to mention differences between human and non-human beings).
Session 02: Orders of sense and sensory regimes.
In the second class session (Thu April 1) we will explore the ways in which ancient and medieval thinkers in the Indian subcontinent theorized sensory perception. How much of what we see, hear, touch, smell, taste, etcetera is an unmediated experience of something that is ‘out there’ (in other words, beyond our bodies) and how much of it is a mental abstraction? We will think about the linguistic construction of the senses and talk a little bit about why taste has often been a privileged sense in the theorization of art, music, and literature.
To help orient us we will read a chapter from Richard King’s Introduction to Indian Philosophy. “Chapter 7, Perception: Do we see things as they are?” will take you on a quick rollercoaster ride through debates on perception in Indian philosophy. Don’t worry about assimilating all of the details on your first read; instead, try to grasp the broad outlines of the debates: what are the major concepts and questions that occupied Hindu and Buddhist philosophers when it came to perception?
Please view the ‘lecture’ video on Canvas/Panopto before class on Thursday: in the video I discuss the major parties and theories mentioned in King’s chapter, speak to Professor Daniel Arnold of the Divinity School about medieval debates on perception in South Asia, and try to distinguish snakes from ropes.
Learn more by taking these courses at UChicago:
- Introduction to Indian Philosophy I and II (Arnold, Kapstein, Venkatkrishnan, and Ollett) SALC/RLST 30201/30302.
- Tibet: Culture, Art, and History (Ngodup) SALC 20902.
- Tibetan Buddhism (Wedemeyer) HREL 35200 SALC 39001
- Sanskrit (Tubb, Cox, Ollett) SANS 10100, etc.
- Tibetan (Ngodup) TBTN 10100, etc.