Deontic Concepts and Their Clash in Mīmāṃsā : Towards an Interpretation

Elisa Freschi, Matteo Pascucci
2021 Theoria  
The article offers an overview of the deontic theory developed by the philosophical school of Mīm aṃs a, which is, and has been since the last centuries BCE, the main source of normative concepts in Sanskrit thought. Thus, the Mīm aṃs a deontics is interesting for any historian of philosophy and constitutes a thought-provoking occasion to rethink deontic concepts, taking advantage of centuries of systematic reflections on these topics. Some comparison with notions currently used in
more » ... normative theories and metaethical principles is offered in order to show possible points of contact and deep divergences. In more detail, after an introduction explaining the methodology and aims of our work, we discuss how Mīm aṃs a authors distinguished and defined some fundamental deontic concepts, such as different types of prescriptions and prohibitions. We then discuss how Mīm aṃs a authors approached the problem of conflicts among commands without jeopardising the validity of the normative text issuing them. In the second part of the article we introduce our formal apparatus, which is construed around the main taxonomic and conceptual distinctions used in the first part. Our formal rendering captures the most important features of the Mīm aṃs a theory and can thus serve as a concise and rigorous presentation of it for scholars working in deontic logic.
doi:10.1111/theo.12307 fatcat:hzkkdvnn3bbr3m6dvllnimekzy