Elisa Freschi

Study of Indology and Tibetology and study of Philosophy in Rome. PhD in South Asian Studies. Elisa Freschi has worked on topics of Indian Philosophy (especially Mīmāṃsā and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta) and more in general on comparative philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, deontic logic and on the re-use of texts in Indian śāstra (about which she has edited a volume, published as two special issues of the Journal of Indian Philosophy). She is a convinced upholder of reading Sanskrit philosophical texts within their history and understanding them through a philosophical approach.

Elisa Freschi started working at the institute on September 1, 2012, with a Lise Meitner project on Epistemology of Sacred Texts in Vedāntadeśika's Seśvaramīmāṃsā. The project, at the conjunction of theology and philosophy, focused on Vedāntadeśika, the systematiser of Rāmānuja's Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, and on his contribution to Mīmāṃsā. How could a Vaiṣṇava write from the point of view of a system which looks atheist and speaks of the Sacred Texts as instruments of knowledge, insofar as they have no author (not even a divine one)?

At the end of the Lise Meitner project, she worked at the TU with Agata Ciabattoni, Björn Lellmann and Francesco Genco at the formalisation of Mīmāṃsā's deontic logic. The first results of their efforts can be read in this article (target public: Indologists and philosophers) and in this one (target public: logicians or Indologists with a background in logic). A joint project on the formalisation of Mīmāṃsā deontic logic funded by the WWTF started in May 2017.

Since March 2015 she is back at the institute with an Elise Richter project on the topic of aikaśāstrya in Veṅkaṭanātha, aiming at the assessment of Veṅkaṭanātha's (re-)construction of what is now known as Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. During the project, the existing editions of the Seśvaramīmāṃsā will be improved through the use of further manuscripts.

Since March 2017 she works also at the University of Vienna (Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies).

Since May 2017 she is also co-Principal Investigator of the WWTF project Reasoning tools for deontic logic and applications to Indian sacred texts (for more information, see here

Quelle: ÖAW