Just imagine you are asked about the three most important texts in South Asian philosophy and take a minute to imagine your answer. You are also allowed to include texts on South Asian philosophy, if you think they are relevant.
Next, you can compare your answers with those of scholars like Jonardon Ganeri, Maria Heim, Chakravarti Ram-Prasad and Evan Thompson. The guest, Phil Treagus, is a bibliophile and already hosted posts on the most important books on several topics in philosophy, including Chinese philosophy. As a praiseworthy addition, he also invited a young PhD student, Jack Beaulieu.
You are also welcome to add your lists in the comments.
The version of the question I was sent was, “what are the three most important books on Indian philosophy?” If the question I’d received had been, “what are the three most important texts in South Asian philosophy?”, I would have answered differently. It’s an interesting difference to think about — primary texts in the tradition versus books on it, and where there may be crossover between the two.
Also, given the question I got, I decided to choose books that uses the richness of South Asian philosophy to address issues in contemporary philosophy. A biased criterion, to be sure, but I had to figure out some way to make the choice, and moreover to choose only 3. It was very interesting to see your selections, and everyone else’s, especially since all of you know far more than I do in this area.
well, rather than “more” I would say that everyone has a different expertise, which makes the lists more interesting. However, I hope Phil will consider having a separate list on, say, “Indian epistemology”, “Indian aesthetics”, “Indian philosophy of language” and so on.
Thanks Evan. In fact, when I received the question I was also puzzled, but Phil told me that primary texts were also admitted. That’s why I indicated a text and a contemporary translation-cum-study of it.