RBSE VU Samanya Darshan cheat sheet

Ṛgvedic hymns (c. 1500–1200 BCE) are the earliest layer; the term darśana means 'seeing' and denotes a systematic viewpoint.

Six orthodox (āstika) schools accept Vedic authority: Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Mīmāṃsā, Vedānta.

Heterodox (nāstika) schools rejecting Vedic authority: Cārvāka, Jainism, Buddhism (and early materialist traditions).

Ṛta is the Vedic cosmic order; later abstracted as dharma, the regulating principle of ritual and moral action.

The Ṛgveda 10.129 (Nāsadīya) hymn poses creation as an open question, not a dogmatic answer.

Pūrva-mīmāṃsā concerns itself with dharma and Vedic injunction; Uttara-mīmāṃsā (Vedānta) concerns itself with Brahman.

Śruti (revealed: Vedas, Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas, Upaniṣads) vs smṛti (remembered: epics, Purāṇas, Dharmaśāstra).

The Upaniṣads are the jñāna-kāṇḍa; the Brāhmaṇas are the karma-kāṇḍa of the Vedic corpus.

Brahman is the impersonal ground of reality; ātman is the inner self; the mahāvākya 'tat tvam asi' (Chāndogya) identifies them.

Four mahāvākyas: 'prajñānaṃ brahma' (Aitareya), 'tat tvam asi' (Chāndogya), 'ayam ātmā brahma' (Māṇḍūkya), 'ahaṃ brahmāsmi' (Bṛhadāraṇyaka).

Sat-cit-ānanda (being, consciousness, bliss) is the standard Vedāntic description of Brahman's nature.

Māyā explains the appearance of plurality; avidyā (ignorance) is the individual counterpart that conceals Brahman.

Four states of self in Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad: jāgrat (waking), svapna (dream), suṣupti (deep sleep), turīya (the fourth).

Neti neti ('not this, not this') is the Upaniṣadic method of negation used to indicate Brahman beyond predication.

Karma and rebirth form the background problem; the Upaniṣads seek mokṣa through knowledge (jñāna), not merely ritual.

Śruti is authoritative for the Upaniṣads; reason (tarka) and experience are subordinate but used by commentators.

Cārvāka/Lokāyata is India's materialist school; it accepts only pratyakṣa (perception) as a valid pramāṇa.

It rejects an afterlife, karma, rebirth, and the authority of the Vedas; consciousness is an emergent product of matter.

The four elements (earth, water, fire, air) are held to be the constituents of reality; no fifth element or soul-substance.

Its ethics is often summarized as 'eat, drink, and be merry'-hedonism tied to the denial of post-mortem consequences.

Its epistemology is often called 'sophisticated' in that it accepts inference only when tied to perceived particulars.

Bṛhaspati is the legendary founder; the school survives mainly through hostile summaries by its opponents.

Its critique of inference (vyāpti being unperceivable) prefigures later debates on induction.

The name Lokāyata means 'that which pertains to the ordinary world'.

Jainism's anekāntavāda (many-sidedness) leads to syādvāda (sevenfold predication) and nayavāda (standpoint theory).

Ahiṃsā is Jainism's central ethical principle, applied to all living beings; mahāvratas are the five great vows for monks.

Jainism's two substances: jīva (conscious, many) and ajīva (non-conscious); bondage is due to karma as material particles.

Buddhism's Four Noble Truths: suffering, its arising, its cessation, and the path; the Eightfold Path is the fourth.

Pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination) replaces substance with conditioned arising; anātman (no-self) denies a permanent soul.

The Buddha's three marks: anicca (impermanence), dukkha (unsatisfactoriness), anattā (no-self).

Buddhist schools: Theravāda (Pāli canon), Mahāyāna (Nāgārjuna's Mādhyamaka, Yogācāra), Vajrayāna.

Jainism's kevala-jñāna is omniscience attained by the liberated self; Buddhism's nirvāṇa is the extinguishing of craving.

Nyāya is the school of logic and epistemology; its four pramāṇas: pratyakṣa, anumāna, upamāna, śabda.

Five-membered syllogism (pañcāvayava): pratijñā, hetu, udāharaṇa, upanaya, nigamana.

Fallacies (hetvābhāsa): savyabhicāra (deviating), viruddha (contradictory), satpratipakṣa (counterbalanced), asiddha (unproven), bādhita (falsified).

Vaiśeṣika's seven padārthas: dravya, guṇa, karma, sāmānya, viśeṣa, samavāya, abhāva (abhāva added later).

Vaiśeṣika's nine dravyas: earth, water, fire, air, ether, time, space, self, mind.

Paramāṇu (atom) theory: composite things reduce to indivisible atoms; samavāya is the relation binding wholes to parts.

Īśvara in Nyāya is the efficient cause of the world, argued from adṛṣṭa and from the order of creation.

Nyāya's theory of error is anyathākhyāti: error misplaces a real object, not a wholly unreal one.

Sāṃkhya's dualism: puruṣa (pure consciousness, plural) and prakṛti (primordial matter, one).

Prakṛti's three guṇas: sattva (clarity), rajas (activity), tamas (inertia); their disequilibrium produces the world.

Prakṛti evolves: mahat/buddhi, ahaṃkāra, manas, the five tanmātras, five mahābhūtas, five organs of action, five senses.

Liberation (kaivalya) is the isolation of puruṣa from prakṛti, achieved through discriminative knowledge (viveka).

Yoga's eight limbs: yama, niyama, āsana, prāṇāyāma, pratyāhāra, dhāraṇā, dhyāna, samādhi.

Yoga accepts Īśvara as a special puruṣa, not as creator; Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra is the foundational text.

Citta-vṛtti-nirodha is Patañjali's definition of yoga in YS 1.2.

Kleśas (afflictions): avidyā, asmitā, rāga, dveṣa, abhiniveśa.

Mīmāṃsā is ritual exegesis; its central concern is dharma as Vedic injunction, and it accepts the eternality of the Vedas.

Mīmāṃsā's pramāṇas are pratyakṣa, anumāna, upamāna, śabda, arthāpatti, and (later) anupalabdhi.

Kumārila Bhaṭṭa and Prabhākara are the two Mīmāṃsā sub-schools, differing on error and on the theory of knowledge.

Śaṅkara's Advaita: Brahman alone is real; the world is māyā; jīva is non-different from Brahman; mokṣa is knowledge.

Advaita's two levels of truth: pāramārthika (absolute) and vyāvahārika (empirical); error is anirvacanīya-khyāti.

Rāmānuja's Viśiṣṭādvaita: Brahman is qualified by cit and acit as its body; bhakti and prapatti lead to mokṣa.

Madhva's Dvaita: five real differences (pañcabheda) between God and souls, God and matter, souls and matter, souls, and matter.

Vedānta's prasthāna-trayī: Upaniṣads, Bhagavadgītā, and the Brahma Sūtras.

Presocratics: Thales (water), Anaximander (apeiron), Heraclitus (flux), Parmenides (being), Democritus (atoms).

Plato's theory of Forms: particulars participate in eternal, non-physical Forms; the Form of the Good is highest.

Plato's divided line and allegory of the cave distinguish eikasia, pistis, dianoia, and noēsis.

Aristotle's four causes: material, efficient, formal, final; his ten categories and syllogistic logic.

Aristotle's virtue ethics: eudaimonia via habituation of character; the mean between excess and deficiency.

Hellenistic schools: Stoicism (logos, apatheia), Epicureanism (ataraxia, pleasure as absence of pain), Skepticism (epochē).

Medieval synthesis: Augustine (faith and reason, illumination), Aquinas (five ways, natural law), and the problem of universals.

Ockham's razor and nominalism deny real existence to universals outside the mind.

Rationalism: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz-reason is the primary source of knowledge; innate ideas are affirmed.

Descartes' method of doubt reaches cogito ergo sum; mind–body dualism and the ontological argument for God.

Spinoza's monism: one substance, God or Nature; freedom is knowledge of necessity; conatus is the striving to persist.

Leibniz: monads are windowless simple substances; pre-established harmony; this is the best of all possible worlds.

Empiricism: Locke, Berkeley, Hume-experience is the source of ideas; the mind is a tabula rasa.

Locke's primary vs secondary qualities; Berkeley's esse est percipi denies matter; Hume's fork of relations of ideas vs matters of fact.

Hume: causation is constant conjunction plus custom; the self is a bundle of perceptions; induction lacks rational justification.

Kant's synthesis: synthetic a priori judgments; phenomena vs noumena; categories structure experience.

Knowledge as justified true belief (JTB) is challenged by Gettier cases: justified true belief without knowledge.

Sources of knowledge: perception, reason, memory, testimony, introspection; internalism vs externalism about justification.

Foundationalism vs coherentism: basic beliefs vs mutual support among beliefs.

Rationalism vs empiricism concerns the origin of concepts; nativism vs tabula rasa.

Skepticism: Cartesian doubt, Hume's induction problem, and the regress argument (Agrippa's trilemma).

Truth theories: correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, and deflationary.

A priori vs a posteriori; analytic vs synthetic; necessary vs contingent-standard distinctions.

Reliabilism (Goldman): a belief is justified if produced by a reliable process; virtue epistemology centers on intellectual virtues.

Ontology: what exists; realism vs nominalism about universals; particulars vs properties.

Substance theories: Aristotelian hylomorphism, Cartesian dualism, Spinozistic monism, bundle theory (Hume).

Causation: regularity (Hume), counterfactual (Lewis), powers/dispositional accounts.

Modality: necessity, possibility, contingency; possible worlds semantics for modal logic.

Personal identity: psychological continuity (Locke, Parfit) vs bodily continuity vs soul criterion.

Categorical propositions A, E, I, O; square of opposition: contradictories, contraries, subcontraries, subalterns.

Validity vs soundness: an argument is valid if the conclusion follows from the premises; sound if valid and premises true.

Propositional connectives: negation, conjunction, disjunction, conditional, biconditional; truth tables define them.

Consequentialism judges acts by outcomes; utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill) maximizes aggregate welfare.

Deontology (Kant): act only on maxims universalizable; treat persons as ends, never merely as means.

Virtue ethics (Aristotle, MacIntyre): focus on character traits and practical wisdom (phronesis).

Kant's categorical imperative vs hypothetical imperative; the formula of humanity.

Mill's harm principle: interference with liberty is justified only to prevent harm to others.

Rawls' justice as fairness: veil of ignorance, original position, two principles of justice.

Applied ethics topics: abortion, euthanasia, animal rights, environmental ethics, bioethics, and AI ethics.

Metaethics: moral realism vs anti-realism; cognitivism vs non-cognitivism; emotivism and error theory.

Ṛgvedic hymns (c. 1500–1200 BCE) are the earliest layer; the term darśana means 'seeing' and denotes a systematic viewpoint.

Six orthodox (āstika) schools accept Vedic authority: Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Mīmāṃsā, Vedānta.

Heterodox (nāstika) schools rejecting Vedic authority: Cārvāka, Jainism, Buddhism (and early materialist traditions).

Ṛta is the Vedic cosmic order; later abstracted as dharma, the regulating principle of ritual and moral action.

The Ṛgveda 10.129 (Nāsadīya) hymn poses creation as an open question, not a dogmatic answer.

Pūrva-mīmāṃsā concerns itself with dharma and Vedic injunction; Uttara-mīmāṃsā (Vedānta) concerns itself with Brahman.

Śruti (revealed: Vedas, Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas, Upaniṣads) vs smṛti (remembered: epics, Purāṇas, Dharmaśāstra).

The Upaniṣads are the jñāna-kāṇḍa; the Brāhmaṇas are the karma-kāṇḍa of the Vedic corpus.