About

Lawrence J. McCrea received his Ph.D. in South Asian Languages & Civilizations from the University of Chicago in 1998 and his B.A. from Cornell University in 1989 through the Cornell College Scholar Program. His most recent book project, "The Teleology of Poetics in Medieval Kashmir," published in the Harvard Oriental Series in Spring 2009, explores the conceptual revolution in Sanskrit poetic theory initiated by the ninth-century Kashmiri scholar Anandavardhana. McCrea argues that Anandavardhana's significant innovation was the application of a teleological approach to literary analysis, imported from scriptural hermeneutics (Mimamsa), which transformed the understanding of poetic texts. His research focuses on the intersection of Indian philosophy, poetics, and literary theory, particularly within the context of medieval Kashmir. As a professor at Cornell University, he teaches courses on Indian philosophy, Sanskrit language, and Asian studies, contributing to the academic exploration of South Asian literary and philosophical traditions.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Literature
• Philosophy
• Art
• Ethnology
• History
• Epistemology
• Aesthetics
• Gender studies
• Social psychology
• Linguistics
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Jñānaśrīmitra

  2022-06-22 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Ratnakīrti was a Buddhist scholar active in the monastery of Vikramaśīla during the first half of the eleventh century CE. His surviving philosophical works are mostly concise and analytic summaries of those of his teacher, Jñānaśrīmitra. Ratnakīrti’s works cover several key areas of Buddhist thought. In one set of treatises, he seeks to establish the possibility of the type of omniscience that a buddha is thought to require and to disprove the possibility of any kind of god that might be considered the maker of the world. In a second group of texts, Ratnakīrti defends his ontological theory that all real things must be momentary by demonstrating that momentariness is a necessary condition for anything to be a cause, employing refined logical instruments in the process. In the field of epistemology, Ratnakīrti devotes special attention to the analysis of the everyday external world as it is known in conceptual cognition. He then develops his final standpoint, a radical form of idealism and solipsism that nevertheless seeks to be compatible with everyday experience.

  PublisherDOI

• Celibate Seducer: Vedānta Deśika’s Domestication of Kṛṣṇa’s Sexuality in the Yādavābhyudaya

  International Journal of Hindu Studies · 2022 · 1 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Literature
  • Philosophy
  PublisherDOI

• Abbreviations

  2021-10-07

  otherSenior author

  Subject Hinduism Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

  PublisherDOI

• Copyright Page

  2021-10-07

  otherSenior author

  Extract Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2021 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form

  PublisherDOI

• Dedication

  2021-10-07

  book-chapterSenior author

  Subject Hinduism Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

  PublisherDOI

• Chapter Six The Lord of Glory and the Lord of Men

  SUNY Press eBooks · 2021-05-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• First Words, Last Words

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2021 · 3 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Literature
  • Philosophy

  Abstract First Words, Last Words charts an intense “pamphlet war” that took place in sixteenth-century South India. The book explores this controversy as a case study in the dynamics of innovation in early modern India, a time of great intellectual innovation. This debate took place within the traditional discourses of Vedic hermeneutics, or Mīmāṃsā, and its increasingly influential sibling discipline of Vedānta, and its proponents among the leading intellectuals and public figures of the period. At the heart of this dispute lies the role of sequence in the cognitive processing of textual information, especially of a scriptural nature. Vyāsatīrtha and his grand-pupil Vijayīndratīrtha, writers belonging to the camp of Dualist Vedānta, purported to uphold the radical view of their founding father, Madhva, who believed, against a long tradition of Mīmāṃsā interpreters, that the closing portion of a scriptural passage should govern the interpretation of its opening. By contrast, the Nondualist Appayya Dīkṣita ostensibly defended this tradition’s preference for the opening. But, as the book shows, the debaters gradually converged on a profoundly novel hermeneutic-cognitive theory in which sequence played little role, if any. In fact, they knowingly broke new ground and only postured as traditionalists. First Words, Last Words explores the nature of theoretical innovation in this debate and sets it against the background of comparative examples from other major scriptural interpretive traditions. The book briefly surveys the use of sequence in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic hermeneutics and also seeks out parallel cases of covert innovation in these traditions.

  PublisherDOI

• Kumārila on the Role of Implicature in Sentence-Signification

  2020-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Justification, Credibility and Truth: Sucaritamiśra on Kumārilaʼs Intrinsic Validity

  Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens · 2019-01-01 · 20 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Aus dem Inhalt: ELI FRANCO – KARIN PREISENDANZ Preface SHŌRYŪ KATSURA The Mode of Argumentation in the Fangbian xin lun / *Upāyahṛdaya SHINYA MORIYAMA On dharmisvarūpaviparītasādhana HORST LASIC Dignāga on a Famous SāṠkhya Definition of Inference ERNST STEINKELLNER Miszellen zur erkenntnistheoretisch-logischen Schule des Buddhismus XII: anupalabdhi as pramāṇāntara – Īśvarasena is the Opponent in TattvasaṠgraha 1693-1694. With an Edition of TattvasaṠgraha 1691-1697 and the Pañjikā JOHN TABER Dharmakīrti, svataḥ prāmāṇyam, and Awakening LAWRENCE MCCREA Justification, Credibility and Truth: Sucaritamiśra on Kumārilaʼs Intrinsic Validity ELI FRANCO Xuanzang’s Silence and Dharmakīrti’s Dates MINGJUN TANG Materials for the Study of Xuanzang’s Inference of Consciousness-only (wei shi bi liang 唯識比量) JAKUB ZAMORSKI On Chinese Interpretations of the Distinction Between Two Types of Negation in Indian Buddhist Logic

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “Resonance” and Its Reverberations: Two Cultures in Indian Epistemology of Aesthetic Meaning

  2016-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Yigal Bronner

  8 shared

• Whitney Cox

  Oxford University Press (United Kingdom)

  3 shared

• Parimal G. Patil

  Harvard University Press

  3 shared