Category Archives: books/articles
What is involved in a religious identity? On the Introduction of Leach 2012
What are the Pāñcarātras? Is there anything like a uniform Pāñcarātra Canon and/or Theology? Or are these texts only part of a constellation which has been made consistent by its later interpreters?
Are there harmless periodisations? On Oetke 2013
(I beg again your pardon for the lack of diacritics)
The fore-last essay (called Classification and Periodization of Indian Philosophical Traditions: Some Conceptual and Theoretical Aspects) in Franco’s Periodization and Historiography of Indian Philosophy, by Claus Oetke, raises very general issues, departing from the problematic definition of “Indian philosophy”, in which both noun and adjective should be better assessed (does not “Indian” philosophy include also authors who were active in Burma or Tibet?
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?
Investigatio semper reformanda
Should we try to periodise Indian philosophy or shall we give up any attempt, since each one will be criticised and is in some respect flawed? Periodisation, as recently highlighted by Julius Lipner, is a form of classification and as such also a form of controlling (Lipner 2013).
Here is the link for the newest edition of the Philosophers’ Carnival. If you agree that it should include also the perspectives and stimuli of other points of view (e.g., of Indian philosophy), make a point to submit proposals for the next one!
Remember the time when I was complaining about the absence of a platform for discussions among scholars philosophically interested in India? Now we (meaning: myself, Amod Lele and a group of interesting friends and colleagues, based throughout Europe and in the US) launched one! Ideally, this should work as a forum where ideas can be discussed and shared. We also hope that it will increase the chances for Indian philosophy to become part of the intellectual discours of philosophy throughout the (academic) world.
Hope you will join the discussion!
Impossible task? Matthew Dasti did an attempt. Leave your own paragraph here or at the post (and be sure to read the interesting comments there!).
Is there really a single author of the Yogasūtra and Yogabhāṣya?
The idea that the Yogasūtra (henceforth YS) and the Yogabhāṣya (henceforth YBh) are not two distinct texts has been discussed for the first way in a systematic way by Johannes Bronkhorst in 1985 (“Patañjali and the Yoga Sūtras”, Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik). Philipp Maas in his published PhD thesis (Maas 2006) examined it again and Philipp Maas in his contribution to Eli Franco’s Periodization and Historiography of Indian Philosophy (2013) dealt with it again in greater detail.
This is a very interesting Carnival, which lists posts I either knew and liked or discovered through it and liked even more. I am very grateful for being mentioned (not because of this blog, though, but because of this post on Free Will in heaven) although I did not even submit my post. Even more interesting is the mention of Matthew Dasti’s post on “Indian Philosophy in One Paragraph”. Thanks Kenny Pearce!