A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
A reader (Robert Gressis) asked me to give him some advice for a class on philosophy of religion in which he would (admirably) like to insert something more than “the typical western philosophy of religion”. He would be interested in Continue reading Ultimate reality in Hinduism, Buddhism (etc.): Some suggestions for a possible syllabus
Why does a devotee love God? Because He is good, merciful, omniscient…? Or just out of love? This seems to be one of the moot issues between the two currents within the form of Vaiṣṇavism later to be known as Continue reading Loving God for no reason
Patricia Y. Mumme. The Śrīvaiṣṇava Theological Dispute. Maṇavāḷamāmuni and Vedānta Deśika. xviii+320 pp., index. Bangalore: Navbharath Publications, 2000 (1st ed. Madras 1988). 25 USD. The book is a unique contribution to the study of Śrīvaiṣṇavism insofar as it takes into Continue reading Book Review of The Śrīvaiṣṇava Theological Dispute by Patricia Y. Mumme (Reviewed by Elisa Freschi)
The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography. By Richard H. Davis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Pp. x + 243. Hardcover $24.95, ISBN 978-0-691-133996-8. Richard H. Davis’s The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography is a recent offering within Princeton University Press’s series “Lives Continue reading Book Review of The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography, by Richard H. Davis (Reviewed by Matthew R. Dasti)
It is difficult to disentangle the different roots of what is now known as Śrīvaiṣṇavism, since this term is usually the label attributed to the religious counterpart of the philosophical-theological school of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. However, Vaiṣṇavism was apparently an important Continue reading The making of Śrīvaiṣṇavism: A tentative hypothesis about its reconstruction
Recently a few articles (see here, here and here) have raised the issue of whether philosophy of religion is not really little more than Christian apologetics. A straightforward answer would be that it is not, but an output of the Continue reading Call for Papers: Is Theology Comparable? (Rome, September 17–19 2015)
After many years, I am sort of fed up with having to answer the question above, and this is also why I had not read the essay by Barua (bearing the title Is there ‘Philosophy’ in India? An Exercise in Continue reading “Is there Philosophy in India?” and what this question tells us, an essay by Ankur Barua
When, where and how did bhakti become acceptable within the Indian intellectual élites?
Daya Krishna was an Indian philosopher, a rationalist and iconoclast, who constantly tried to question and scrutinise acquired “truths”. The main place for such investigations was for him a saṃvāda ‘dialogue’. That’s why he also strived to organise structured saṃvāda Continue reading Daya Krishna’s “Creative Encounters with Texts”
[Note that this talk was delivered in the presence of the Dalai Lama and a large non-specialist audience, on the specific issue of ‘contemplative studies’ and neuroscience; hence the particular angle of approach. The issues in the main do pertain Continue reading On the possibility and nature of neurophilosophical study of Indic traditions. A Guest Post by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad