Category Archives: blog

Posted on

Missing comments on this blog

Maciej St. Zięba was kind enough to inform me that several of his comments had never been published on this blog. I checked and they had indeed been blocked (for no reason I can understand, since they included no further links or the like) by my spam filter.

The spam filter, however, also deletes all spam messages after a few days, so that I have no idea about how often this could have happened to other readers.
Should this have happened to you as well, please let me know, so that I can “save” them and include your address among the safe ones.

Thanks for your help!

Posted on

Squarcini on the authorship of the Yogasūtra

As most readers will know, Johannes Bronkhorst (1985) and Philipp Maas (2006, 2013, see also this post) have recently cast doubt on the traditional idea that the Yogasūtra has been authored by Patañjali and then commented upon by Vyāsa in the Yogabhāṣya. Some authors (such as Dominik Wujastyk, Jim Mallinson and Jonardon Ganeri, if I am not misunderstanding them) have accepted Maas’ view. Others don’t accept it without offering much explanation (see Shyam Ranganathan’s few lines in his Handbook of Indian Ethics). Federico Squarcini engages in his translation and study of the Yogasūtra in a longer discussion of this view,

Philosophers’ Carnival 155

The 155th Philosophers’ Carnival has recently been published!

For those who are new to the Philosophers’ Carnival: Each month (around the 10th) a different blog hosts the Carnival. The blogger selects interesting blog posts about all topics of philosophy (including the philosopher’s profession), based on her own interests and on what has been submitted here (where you can also find the list of all previous editions of the Carnival). Thus, if you want to see more Sanskrit (etc.) Philosophy featured, be sure to signal interesting blog-posts (either your own ones or someone else’s ones) about it.

Posted on

Group blog on Sanskrit (and) Philosophy

I am firmly convinced that any purpose we might want to achieve within Sanskrit (and) philosophy can only be achieved through a joint effort (alone, we will never be influential enough). Further, working together means more fun:-) This is the foundation of the Coffee Break Project (see here) and I would like it to be the foundation also of a group blog on topics of Sanskrit (and) philosophy. It should work along the lines of other group blogs in the field of (Western) philosophy (see for instance: http://www.newappsblog.com/ or http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/) or of Chinese philosophy, see: http://warpweftandway.com/

Posted on

(Tentative) Monthly planning

As in my previous blog, from now on, I will post:

weekly:

—about job opportunities, Call for papers and the like on Wednesdays

—about books, articles, conference papers and the like on Fridays

—about my own (mostly philosophical, but sometimes also methodological) speculations on Mondays

 

monthly:

—once in a month (last Friday of the month) an interview

—once in a month (last Monday of the month) a post in Sanskrit (mostly about Indian or Western philosophy)

 

Posted on

Elisa Freschi Pro

I am moving to this blog from my previous one, on blogspot.com (here). The symbol of this new blog is a devanāgarī syllable read as pra. This means that, ideally, this should be an improved blog (a “pro” version of the blogspot.com one) while hinting at some of my main interests:

Prabhākara (the fonuder of one of the two main branches of the Mīmāṃsā school of exegesis, about whom you can read more by checking the label Prābhākara in my ancient blog)

pramāṇavāda, i.e., epistemology

Prakaraṇapañcikā, a text by the Prābhākara author Śālikanātha Miśra to whom I am particularly grateful, since he took time to explain Prabhākara’s philosophy for outsiders.

prakaraṇa, a chief concept in author-independent exegesis, i.e., mind the context

If you want to know more about me, read this page.