Every year, when I introduce Indian philosophy to my students, I deal with the problem of the alleged absence of ethics from it. I basically deal with this absence in multiple ways:

• First, and more important, I point out that “philosophy” is not a natural type. There is no binding reason why something should a priori belong to philosophy and, in fact, historically, different texts have been considered philosophically relevant or not (from the Suttanikāya to the Presocratics, from St. Augustin to Levinas, from Nietzsche to Th. Bernhard and G. Leopardi). Hence, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a philosophical tradition developing more, say, philosophy of language and less, say, ethics, or vice versa. That we think that there are “core” disciplines within philosophy is only the result of specific historical circumstances.
• Then, there have been some specific attempts to locate the place of ethics in Indian thought outside of “philosophy”. Shyam Ranganathan has spoken therefore of its presence in bhakti and has accordingly reinterpreted most of what we would call “religion” in India. Similarly, Amod Lele has frequently discussed ethical issues in Buddhist thinkers and observed that it is weird that these discussions are excluded from “philosophy” stricto sensu. Last, recently Muzaffar Ali has shown that the way debates took place in Indian philosophy allows one to reconstruct ethic reflections about one’s engagement with the Other.
• Among these attempts to individuate the place for ethics in Indian thought, a specific paragraph needs to be dedicated to B.K. Matilal’s well known volume “Ethics and Epics”, in which he individuates such place in the Epics.

No. 3 allows me to introduce a talk by Chakravarti Ram-Prasad which perfectly exemplifies the topic. The talk deals with several ethical challenges, such as gender equality, and looks at the Mahābhārata. We see how these issues are, perhaps not solved, but certainly enacted by characters within this epics. In his contribution to In Dialogue with Classical Indian Traditions (Routledge, forthcoming), Ram-Prasad similarly looks at the Mahābhārata way of looking at the issue of speciesism and how it lets a snake speak for himself. In both cases, there is an intriguing similarity with what Richard Rorty’s described as the ethical advantage of literature over philosophy, namely its ability to let the protagonists speak for themselves. One does not discuss in theory the advantage of being open to equality among animal species, but listens to a snake’s plea against unfair treatment.