The United States has always been a relentlessly pragmatic place, which doesn’t leave it much room for philosophy. Watching three Republican presidential candidates all take pot-shots at philosophy on the same night was only the most vivid recent example. But it’s not just right-wingers. Today Helen De Cruz discussed a recent article from socialist former philosopher Nathan J. Robinson that wonders whether we should do philosophy at all – whether, in fact, we have an obligation not to do philosophy. He claims, “I definitely feel, though, that I couldn’t have justified spending a career as an a ..read more

Kalidas Bhattacharyya. New Perspectives in Indian Philosophy [Ed. Nirmalya Narayan Chakraborty]. X+435pp., index. The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, 2023. ₹ 600.00 (paperback). The New Perspectives in Indian Philosophy (henceforth NPIP) edited by Chakraborty is a scholarly collection of philosophical lectures delivered by Kalidas Bhattacharyya (1911-1984) at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture during last two decades of his life. Bhattacharyya continued the philosophical legacy of his father, the notable modern Indian philosopher, Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya (1875-1949) b ..read more

As part of an international collaboration, three of us (Muzaffar Ali, Savitribai phule Pune University: Richa Shukla, IIT Bhubaneswar; Mansi Rathour, OP Jindal Global University) will be co-editing a volume, Women in Indian Thought: Ancient, Modern and Contemporary. The main idea behind co-editing this volume is to discuss and bring to the fore previously neglected voices of Indian women thinkers and philosophers. We invite interested scholars and academicians to contribute an intellectual biography of any neglected or lesser-known Indian women thinkers/philosophers for the volume. However, yo ..read more

A message from Malcolm Keating (Smith College): Blog readers might be interested in this call for papers on resemblance, which is open to all philosophical traditions. Papers on sādṛśya, upamāna, etc. are welcome. Call for papers: special issue on resemblance in the Asian Journal of Philosophy Guest editors: Ben Blumson (NUS, Singapore), Malcolm Keating (Smith College, USA) The nature of similarity (or resemblance) and our epistemic access to it have been important topics in both contemporary philosophy and historical traditions, including, for example, Indian and Medieval European philosophic ..read more

The following are a few random notes on permissions which have not (yet) found a place in an article. 1. A colleague wondered whether the command my co-authors and I have been discussing in several articles on Mīmāṃsā and called the “better-not permission” can be meaningfully described as permission at all. In fact, the term `permission’ in Euro-American philosophy or in Deontic Logic is strongly polysemic, covering, among others, acts that are not normed as well as acts that were previously prohibited and are permitted, and even rights. Philosophers of the Mīmāṃsā school, by contrast, adopt t ..read more

Binod Kumar Choudhary & Debajyoti Gangopadhyay, Editors. Nalanda Dialogue Series – Volume 1 – Prolegomena to Intercultural Dialogue: Modern Engagement with Indian Knowledge Tradition. Xvi + 273 pp., index. Nava Nalanda Mahavihara, 2022. ₹780 (paperback). The Nalanda Dialogue Series is a collection of dialogues between various scholars of the humanities, sciences and those trained in the “traditional knowledge” of India. The goal of the dialogues is to foster a better understanding of each among both the modern western scientific and philosophical paradigms and the Indian tradition. I think ..read more

The Indian Philosophy Blog began on 2 January 2014; we have now been up for a full ten years – with over 800 posts up by now, exploring Indian philosophy from many different angles, and nearly a thousand current subscribers. From the start, the IPB has always been a group effort. Thank you to all the contributors who have posted here and left comments. Thank you to Elisa Freschi and Ethan Mills for being co-managers of the blog now, and to Matthew Dasti and Malcolm Keating for playing that role in the past. Thanks also to John Leen for creating a robust backup plan for the site (in case someth ..read more

The past few years have taught me the wisdom in Daoist-influenced traditions of sudden liberation: in a certain way we can improve ourselves by not improving ourselves, through an acceptance of everything, including ourselves, in the present moment. Yet I had had good reason to be frustrated earlier with such traditions – for their rhetoric sometimes implies that that present-moment acceptance is easy, which it is not. It was a long and painful lesson for me learning how hard it is to be good. That made me a longtime advocate of what East Asian Buddhists would call the gradual path, but I incr ..read more

I started thinking about rights while working on permissions, because some deontic logicians think that permissions need to be also independent of prohibitions, in order to ground rights. Now, as I argued elsewhere, Mīmāṃsā permissions are always exceptions to previous negative obligations or prohibitions, so what happens to rights? There is not a directly correspondent concept (how could there be one, given how historically loaded ‘right’ is?), but an interesting parallel is adhikāra. How does this work? Let me look, to begin with, at the discussion in the apaśūdrādhikaraṇa by Rāmānuja. The ..read more

One of the things that helped me realize the need for self-improvement by not-self-improvement was regular practice with the excellent Headspace meditation app, created by a former Tibetan monk named Andy Puddicombe. Headspace is at the epicenter of “McMindfulness”: the app normally charges for access but I get it for free as a work wellness benefit, and this arrangement has made Puddicombe millions of dollars. In turn, the app is a big reason I defend McMindfulness – especially through John Dunne’s hugely helpful distinction between “classical” and “nondual” mindfulness. That is to say: the c ..read more