A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
Scholars of Sanskrit (as well as ancient Greek, classical Tamil, Chinese…) are familiar with translations oscillating between the following two extremes: A translation which closely follows the original and is chiefly meant as an aid to understand the Sanskrit text Continue reading Reflections on the translation of SM 1
At the beginning of Love of All Wisdom’s tenth-anniversary post, I wrote: “In the span of the history of philosophy, ten years is the blink of an eye. In the span of the blogosphere, however, ten years is an eternity.” Continue reading Whither blogging?
When one studies Indian philosophy, or Asian philosophy in general, one is always faced with its other: a philosophical tradition with origins to the west of India, which, after the history of colonialism and modernity, is in the background of Continue reading Why the West is a real thing
Paul Fuller’s thoughtful and well researched new introduction to Engaged Buddhism cites my Disengaged Buddhism article together with an article I hadn’t heard of before, Victor Temprano’s 2013 “Defining engaged Buddhism” (Buddhist Studies Review 30.2). (Fuller has very kind words Continue reading There are bad Buddhists and false Buddhist claims
To paraphrase a contemporary philosopher: ‘examples stick around in philosophy in a way they don’t in other fields such as linguistics.’ There is some truth to this. I cannot imagine a philosopher today who doesn’t know Frege’s famous problem: ‘the Continue reading Puzzles in Sanskrit Philosophy
Jay Garfield, Bryan Van Norden, and most of my colleagues here on the Indian Philosophy Blog are shamelessly committing massive acts of cultural appropriation. Perhaps I am too. And that’s a wonderful thing.
Sumana Roy, a professor of literature at Ashoka University near Delhi, wrote a wonderful recent essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education identifying significant problems with the way Indian literature is taught, in both American and Indian universities. In American Continue reading Literature as representation and rasa
A while ago I was contacted by an academic publisher asking me to review a new introductory textbook on philosophy of religion. I didn’t do so, even though the publisher offered me a stipend. The main reason was just that Continue reading On “philosophy of religion”
The world picture of the Buddhist Pali Canon is a mythical world picture. The world is made up of 31 planes of existence, divided into a formless realm, a fine material realm and a sensory realm. In the formless realm Continue reading Bultmann for Buddhists
Evan Thompson’s critique of my eudaimonistic and probabilistic approach to karma has two prongs: that it is not really karma, and that it doesn’t work on its own terms. I addressed the first criticism last time. Now I’d like to Continue reading Is the eudaimonist proposition true?