Ana Funes

Although coming from two very different paths, both Kant and Patañjali present similar strategies to refute the skeptic argument that denies the real and independent existence of physical objects. This essay examines both strategies through the reconstruction of Kant’s and Patañjali’s twofold refutation of idealism: one based on the perceptual distinction between the real and the illusory, and the other one based on the ontological necessity of a permanent external object to understand change. I argue that the second strategy is philosophically stronger due to its phenomenological recognition of the body as a grounding point, and that this is possible only on account of an anti-realist conception of time. Both Kant and Patañjali utilize a similar line of realist argumentation while diverging in the type of realism that they each hold.

Like many other discussions regarding the nature of self-awareness in Classical Indian philosophical traditions, the commentators of Patañjali’s Yogaśāstra deployed the metaphor of light or luminosity to defend the position that consciousness is self-reflexive. In this paper I discuss the way the commentarial tradition of Classical Yoga misinterpreted Patañjali’s notion of self-reflexivity and articulate his account of self-awareness based on Vyāsa’s preferred metaphor of space (ākāśa). I also show how Patañjali´s notion of self-awareness could be understood in terms of “spaciousness” by using Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception and Dan Zahavi’s studies on the first-person perspective.