Pūrva paksha (Sanskrit: पूर्वपक्ष), sometimes also transliterated as Poorva paksha, literally means ''former view/position''. It is a tradition in the debates of

Indian Logicians Indian or Indians may refer to: Associated with India * of or related to India ** Indian people ** Indian diaspora ** Languages of India ** Indian English, a dialect of the English language ** Indian cuisine Associated with indigenous peoples o ...

. It involves building a deep familiarity with the opponent's point of view before criticising it, similar to the modern day device of

steelmanning A straw man fallacy (sometimes written as strawman) is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction. One who engages in this fallacy is said ...

. The purva paksha approach has been used by

Adi Shankaracharya Adi Shankara (8th c. CE), also called Adi Shankaracharya (, ), was an Indian Vedic scholar, philosopher and teacher (''acharya'') of Advaita Vedanta. Reliable information on Shankara's actual life is scant, and his true impact lies in hi ...

as well as

Ramanuja Ramanuja ('; Middle Tamil: Rāmāṉujam; Classical Sanskrit: Rāmānuja; 1077 – 1157), also known as Ramanujacharya, was an Indian Hindu philosopher, guru and social reformer. He is one of the most important exponents of the Sri Vaishnavi ...

and later acharyas in their works. In ancient Indian jurisprudence, ''purva paksha'' referred to the complaint, with other parts of a trial consisting of the ''uttar'' (the later), the ''kriyaa'' (trial or investigation by the court), and the ''nirnaya'' (verdict or decision). In his book '' Being Different'' (2011),

Rajiv Malhotra Rajiv Malhotra (born 15 September 1950) is an Indian-born American right-wing Hindutva ideologue and the founder of Infinity Foundation, which focuses on Indic studies, and also funds projects such as Columbia University's project to translat ...

sought to use the ''purva paksha'' approach. Malhotra states that purva paksha According to Shrinivas Tilak, Malhotra's use of purva paksha in ''Being Different'' may be regarded as a kind of "reverse anthropology."Tilak states "The methodological stance of the ''purvapaksha'' in Being Different may be broadly described as a context-sensitive approach to "anthropologize" the Western worldview in a manner akin to what Roy Wagner has called "reverse anthropology" (1981: 31). Tilak states that

References

{{Reflist, 2 Hindu philosophical concepts

See also

References