Anthropology means critical scrutiny—an interview with Stephan Kloos

I should have met Stephan Kloos because we both work at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, but in fact we met at a common friend’s party and only later realised we had seen each other quite often before in the Academy. After that, I started having a look at his work. Departing from his wonderful website, all his work is dedicated to the anthropology of Tibetan medicine, especially of Tibetan medicine in exile. Kloos 2013, for instance, investigates on how it ended up being recognised, in India, in the West and in the Tibetan community as a “medical system” and how this concept involves a strategy and the self-construction of a new “Tibetan” identity —once the Tibetan identity could no longer be determined on a geographical basis— as related to Buddhist ethics, i.e., to one’s altruistic attitude towards the others.

जैनदर्शने किम् “प्रत्यक्षम्” इति ?

प्रचीनजैनदर्शने प्रमाणे द्विविधे, प्रत्यक्षम् परोक्षं च ।
प्रत्यक्षमित्युक्ते किम् ? अन्यदर्शनेषु इन्द्रियसम्यज्ज्ञानमिति । केषुचिद् योगिप्रत्यक्षं स्वसंवेदनं मनसाप्रत्यक्षमपि प्रत्यक्षेऽङ्गीक्रियन्ते । जैनदर्शने

Scripture, authority and reason —About a new book edited by Vincent Eltschinger and Helmut Krasser

How do reason and authority interact and trace each other’s boundaries? Which one is the first to be allowed to delimit its territory and, by means of that, also the other one’s one?

Women of Philosophy —A database

Are you a woman researching in the field of Philosophy? Are you a man who is sensitive to the problem of inclusion? Please feel free to submit the profile of women working on philosophy (Indian Philosophy is included under the heading “Asian Philosophy”…) to this new database. The same database is also already a very valuable resource for locating scholars to invite to conferences, volumes and the like.

Habilitation in Italy (results)

You can read here the results regarding the Italian “Habilitation” process. Unlike in other parts of the world, the Habilitation has been introduced in Italy only in 2012 and it is twofold:

you can find here the results of those who submitted their work in order to be judged worthy of becoming Associate Professor (e.g., Maria Piera Candotti, Claudio Cicuzza, Marco Franceschini, Cristina Pecchia, Tiziana Pontillo and many others, including myself)

and here the results of those who submitted their works in order to be judged worthy of becoming Full Professor (e.g., Fabrizia Baldissera, Anna Filigenzi, Giacomella Orofino, Alberto Pelissero, Francesco Sferra, Federico Squarcini and many others).

You might also know that the whole process has led to controversial opinions. Comments?

Before “Classical Indian Philosophy”: the influence of the Sāṅkhya logic UPDATED

We discussed already on this blog about how our conception of “classical Indian philosophy” is contingent and historically determined. For instance, if you were to ask me what “classical Indian philosophy” for me means, I would at first answer with “debate between Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā and Buddhist Pramāṇavāda”. However, as soon as one throws a closer look at the texts, one sees how this balance was precarious and how the debate had different protagonists at different times.