More than a decade ago, I wrote that I aspired at “making Indian philosophy part of mainstream philosophy”. I still do, but with more far-reaching goals and an evolved methodology. Let me explain: In the past, I focused on recognized areas of philosophy to which Sanskrit philosophy has contributed in a significant manner. Philosophy of language, one of the main realms of philosophy in the Sanskrit cosmopolis, comes to mind, as does epistemology of testimony. I aimed at showing how both fields would benefit from philosophical contributions coming from outside the Euro-American worlds by expanding philosophers’ understanding and interpretations.

Today, however, my scholarly ambitions go further. Rather than simply broaden extant concepts, I work to help readers rethink the core of what makes “philosophy” by looking at what different traditions consider “philosophical”. For instance, ritual is not generally considered worthy of philosophical investigation, even during a time in which philosophy constantly expands to, e.g. “philosophy of biology” and “philosophy of sex”. However, many Sanskrit, Jewish and Chinese authors have spent thousands of years and of pages to think about rituals as complex systems requiring internal consistency and principled justification.
Accordingly, I strive to convince philosophers and readers of the philosophical value of speculations on ritual and on duty as found in the Mīmāṃsā school of Sanskrit philosophy, in the Talmud hermeneutics or around the concept of li in Confucian philosophy, and to therefore establish “philosophy of ritual”. Similarly, within philosophy of religion, I see my work on various sources as contributing especially to the rethinking of central categories that are taken for granted by the field, such as that of the notion of God as an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being and the notion of “atheism” as equivalent to non-religiosity.

Methodologically speaking, I work on primary texts, predominantly in Sanskrit, but also in Maṇipravāḷam, Tamil and Tibetan, and I believe in looking at their history as key to a philosophical engagement with such texts. Without their historical context, texts risk being misunderstood and “domesticated” into something their readers consider more plausible because they are familiar with it. Examining their history, by contrast, helps me preserving their philosophical originality, even when it may be disruptive. One might object that linguistic and cultural competence cannot be a requirement for philosophical work, since otherwise one would need to master “all languages”, which is impossible. My answer to that is my insistence on collaborations. It is unlikely that my knowledge of Japanese or Bantu will ever be enough to read Japanese or Bantu philosophy, but I will remain open to collaborations working on it. I don’t work on 17th c. Mexican culture, but I can collaborate with scholars working on Juana Inés de la Cruz’ epistemology and we can mutually profit from each other’s work.

The last twenty-six months within the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto have made me better aware of the obstacles that prevent many colleagues from using philosophical sources that are not yet “mainstream”, such as the fact that not enough philosophically-informed translations are available, and that not enough work has been done to enucleate the contribution of single philosophers (many colleagues are still under the impression that there were just “schools” of Sanskrit and Chinese philosophy, and that there is a single pre-contemporary Africana philosophy, without individual contributions). I have consequently doubled my efforts as an interpreter of philosophy in both directions.