A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
[Cross-posted at Love of All Wisdom.] I was honoured to see Elisa Freschi’s post reviewing my recent article on Śāntideva’s metaphysics and ethics. I have a lot to say about both the post itself and the comment threads that followed Continue reading Reading the deconstruction of the body
Rajiv Malhotra, whose criticisms of scholarship on India will be familiar to many on this blog, has been accused by Richard Fox Young of plagiarism in his recent book Indra’s Net. Examples of the problematic passages are publicly available. Many Continue reading Petition regarding plagiarism
My friend Stephen Harris recently posted an interesting article on the question of whether Śāntideva’s ethics is “overdemanding”. I appreciate the article’s methodological approach. It engages Śāntideva’s ethics with the categories of analytical moral philosophy while moving beyond the relatively Continue reading Does Śāntideva’s theory make demands?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about two excellent books on very different topics, both of which I’ve written about at Love of All Wisdom before: Andrew Nicholson’s Unifying Hinduism, and Brian Tierney’s The Idea of Natural Rights. The idea Continue reading The blurry boundary between premodern and modern
On the Indian Philosophy Blog, commenter Anthony S asked an important and difficult question: what are good resources for thinking through Indian political philosophy? . I’m interested not so much in comparative philosophy as comparative political thought/theory, specifically in terms Continue reading Is there Indian political philosophy?
A while ago I referred to Śāntideva’s thought as “ethics without morality” – a deliberately provocative formulation based on Shyam Ranganathan’s eccentric definition of morality as that which conduces to anger. (I don’t agree with Shyam’s definition myself, but putting Continue reading Goodness as preventing suffering
One of the key debates in Indian philosophy is what counts as a pramāṇa: an instrument of knowledge, a “reliable warrant”, a means of knowledge reliable enough that one can be reasonably confident to take its conclusions as true. What Continue reading Śabda and the sciences
My discussion with Justin Whitaker continues after my last post, which was a response to his original post about trans* inclusiveness in Buddhism. There followed a discussion back and forth between Justin and myself. The discussion has moved away from Continue reading On justice and activism in Pali Buddhism
Jonardon Ganeri has recently posted an online blueprint for an “Institute for Cosmopolitan Philosophy in a Culturally Polycentric World”. He suggests an institute with autonomy from the traditional academy’s disciplinary and area-studies boundaries, structured as a network spanning different cultural Continue reading Towards an Institute for Cosmopolitan Philosophy
On his American Buddhist Perspective blog, my friend Justin Whitaker recently posted an interesting interview on the experience of trans* people in American Buddhism. Justin uses “trans*” as a shorthand for “transgender”, “transsexual”, “transvestite” and similar terms – to denote Continue reading Trans* inclusiveness as an innovation to Buddhism