A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
Cross-posted at Love of All Wisdom. Andrew Ollett has recently taken up the point I made earlier this year that Buddhist ethics, in distinction from modern analytical ethics, is not primarily concerned with decision procedure. He identifies Indian non-analytic approaches Continue reading Decision and capacity, philosophical and historical
On Sunday I was reading Sundarapāṇḍya’s Nītidviṣaṣṭika, an interesting collection of āryā verses on the subject of nīti (something like: how to act in the world), and later on caught up (very belatedly) on part of the debate occasioned by Continue reading Nīti and the two ways of “using” texts
Opponents coming from the Advaita field figure often in Yāmuna’s Ātmasiddhi, which shows that even before Rāmānuja Vaiṣṇava authors were taking seriously the challenge of Advaita. Even more interesting is the way Yāmuna answers to them. Let us see some Continue reading The subject as knower and doer in Yāmuna’s Ātmasiddhi
Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors claim that the whole world is made of the brahman and that everything else is nothing but a qualification of it/Him. This theological content, it will be immediately evident, crashes against the (Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika) idea of a rigidly Continue reading Viśiṣṭādvaita and Nyāya on qualities
Last week there was a call from political science professor Nicholas Tampio to narrowly define philosophy as a discipline responding either directly to Plato’s Republic or at least part of a self-consciously Socratic-Platonic tradition of inquiry. I recommend reading Tampio’s essay, “Not Continue reading Where is Philosophy?: A Response to Nicholas Tampio
[Cross-posted at Love of All Wisdom.] Does it matter whether something is or isn’t Buddhist? Or whether it is “distinctively” Buddhist? I was asked these related questions in two blog discussions from last year, both involving Justin Whitaker. Justin raised Continue reading Does it matter what we call Buddhist?
As a result of a recent conversation with Roy Perrett, I had a question. (Incidentally, many of you will know, but some may not, that Roy Perrett’s ‘Introduction to Indian Philosophy’, Cambridge University Press, has been out since the beginning of Continue reading dravya and avayavin in Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika
An important historical shift in Indian aesthetics is from concern with the character as the locus of emotional responses (anubhāvas) to the spectator or “audience” as the locus. Andrew Ollett provides a concise reflection on that shift. In his Ten Continue reading Andrew Ollett’s remarks on the location of affective responses
At the beginning of the month, there was an interdisciplinary conference in Kanazawa, Japan–the International Conference on Ethno-Epistemology – Culture, Language, and Methodology. Jonardon Ganeri gave a keynote presentation, “Pluralism about Epistemic Cultures” and Anand Vaidya, along with Purushottama Billimoria, gave Continue reading Epistemology and Comparative Philosophy in Confluence and the APA Blog
Dear readers of the Indian Philosophy Blog, I am delighted to share with all of you that we have been able to establish a Centre for Religious Studies (CRS) in Manipal University. As the coordinator of this centre I look Continue reading News from Manipal University (a guest post by Mrinal Kaul)