You can read here the list of the 20 semifinalists of the 3quarksdaily prize (see also here) for the best philosophical post of the last year. For a quick summary regarding non-Western philosophy:
Category Archives: methodology
A chart of the “History of Eastern Philosophy”
Most readers will have already noted this chart of “Eastern Philosophy” at Superscholar.
Now, I have already commented about it at DailyNous, but the staff of Superscholars has written to me twice to advertise the map, so that I feel compelled to repeat my comment and some further ones here. I would also like to ask readers: Do you think these maps have some use at all? If so, for whom? Beginners or Advanced scholars?
Daya Krishna’s “Creative Encounters with Texts”
Daya Krishna was an Indian philosopher, a rationalist and iconoclast, who constantly tried to question and scrutinise acquired “truths”. The main place for such investigations was for him a saṃvāda ‘dialogue’. That’s why he also strived to organise structured saṃvāda inviting scholars from different traditions to debate about a specific problem. The minutes of such dialogues have been published in Saṃvāda and Bhakti.
Where to publish a book on Sanskrit (or) Philosophy?
Where should one publish one’s book? What are advantages and disadvantages of each venue? I will start sharing my views and would be glad to read yours (PLEASE NOTE that I cannot be exhaustive and in this sense I depend on my readers —suggest further venues or important points, if you deem them relevant).
Please remember that I am speaking about young authors (well-known ones will not need me).
You are not too busy, just disorganized
Let us face it: We do not work in optimal work conditions. The ones of us who work in the US or in a US-similar system are always under pressure in order to find a job (whatsoever), then to find a tenured-track position, then to have their tenure confirmed and then to have enough articles per year. The ones of us who work in Europe or in a Europe-similar system are constantly precarious, spend their lives applying for projects and have to overcommit to many projects in order to survive.
A non-funded project on deontic logic —And some general notes on peer-reviewing projects
Some months ago, departing from Decemeber 2013, I started working on a fascinating project, the formalisation of the deontic logic of some Mīmāṃsā authors (Kumārila, Prabhākara and Maṇḍana). Given that I am not an expert on formal logic, the project has been conceived together with some colleagues working on formal logic and on the IT tools for automating it. After some preliminary work, we submitted a project within the “Mathematics and…” call of the WWTF. The other principal investigator was Agata Ciabattoni and the other collaborators were Björn Lellmann and Ekaterina Lebedeva. Agata and Björn would have been working with me on selecting the logical rules from the relevant Sanskrit texts, translating them in formal logical language and developing automated deduction methods to reason about them.
Ekaterina, as a linguist and an expert of the intersection of language and logic, would have taken care of the fact that our translations of Sanskrit passages into logical rules did not entail logical ambiguities.
EAAA conference in Olomouc
I just came back from Olomouc, where I attended the first conference of the European Association of Asian Art and Archaeology. It was my first conference entirely dedicated to Art and I found out some interesting things:
I am often inclined to think that some battles have been won and that people will, like Brian Leiter notes, ignore Indian philosophy, but probably also feel they should not. Then, sometimes I am brought back to reality, in this case by the introduction of an otherwise interesting book about the function of images in Christian theology. The blurb says that
“None other among the great religions has ever had a comparably deep relation to the images of God as the Christian faith […]”
(Nessuna delle grandi religioni ha intrattenuto con l’immagine un rapporto così stretto come quella cristiana, fede in un Dio trascendente e incarnato, eterno e storico, che, per questo e da subito si è posta come essenziale la domanda su come e dove vedere il «Dio invisibile».)
None, really? What about the so-called Hinduism? What about the importance of the localisation of deities in a precise icon in which God is not only re-presented, but actually present? Could not we stop using comparison to enhance the value of what we are doing? Could not we start saying that “Christian faith has had a deep relation to the images of God” without claiming what we do not know?
IABS, IDhC, etc.: which paper did you like more? UPDATED FOR THE THIRD TIME with further papers
UPDATE: I received further new suggestions per email or personally. You can add yours in the comments below.
I cannot help but enjoying papers dealing with Mīmāṃsā (especially if from a philosophical viewpoint, as it happened during the last IABS), they are just more interesting to me, but I asked friends and colleagues to forget about their personal interests and to tell me which papers of the IABS and IDhC they enjoyed more and why. The following ones are the results I collected.
…you can read what works for me at the Warp, Weft and Way blog. Don’t forget to comment, here or there, about what works for you.