Category Archives: Indian Philosophy

Statistics on Asian Philosophy Panels at the 2015 Pacific APA

This last Saturday evening, I was carping to a colleague about the fact that three panels on Chinese philosophy were scheduled simultaneously during the very last time slot of the Group Program of the Pacific APA. Now that the APA has distributed a link to the evaluation survey, I decided to take a look at the actual numbers to see if there is a genuine issue of equity at the conference.

Below are the stats that I got from a first-time run-through of the main and group programs (I’m concerned with Asian philosophy broadly, which I categorized, following the panel titles or society names, as Chinese, Buddhist, Japanese, Comparative, and Martial Arts (didn’t see Indian, alas!)).

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Interpreting an Alien Philosophy: What Works for Me

[Dear readers: I am happy to present the following invited guest post from Dr. Elisa Freschi of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Freschi (BA +MA in Indology and Tibetology, BA in Philosophy, PhD in South Asian Studies) has worked on topics of Classical Indian Philosophy and more in general on comparative philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language and on the re-use of texts in Indian philosophy (about which she has just finished editing a volume). She is a convinced upholder of reading Sanskrit philosophical texts within their history and understanding them through a philosophical approach. She has worked at the Austrian Academy of Sciences since September 1, 2012, with a Lise Meitner project on Epistemology of Sacred Texts in Vedāntadeśika’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā. For more information about her work see here.]

No matter whether one focuses on Classical Chinese philosophy (as probably most readers of this blog) or on Classical Indian philosophy (like myself), one works on something which is different than oneself. I will contend that this feeling is useful also if one focuses on contemporary Chinese, or Indian (or Tibetan and so on) philosophy, or on Classical, Medieval, Modern Western philosophy, since it alerts one to a key factor, namely the difference between oneself and one’s object of study.

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New Book – Nothingness in Asian Philosophy

Nothingness in Asian Philosophy – Routledge 2014

by Douglas Berger (editor) & Jeeloo Liu (editor)

From the Description at Amazon:

“A variety of crucial and still most relevant ideas about nothingness or emptiness have gained profound philosophical prominence in the history and development of a number of South and East Asian traditions—including in Buddhism, Daoism, Neo-Confucianism, Hinduism, Korean philosophy, and the Japanese Kyoto School. These traditions share the insight that in order to explain both the great mysteries and mundane facts about our experience, ideas of “nothingness” must play a primary role.”

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New Series: Critical Overviews in Comparative Philosophy

From the description at the Rowman and Littlefield International website: http://www.rowmaninternational.com/news/critical-overviews-in-comparative-philosophy

The Critical Overviews in Comparative Philosophy series aims to present detailed and inclusive surveys of contemporary research in multiple areas of Asian and Comparative Philosophy. Each volume will outline and engage with the current research within comparative philosophy through the lenses of traditional philosophical areas such as ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and language/logic, offering those outside the fields in question (both scholars and students) an up-to-date picture of the work being done in these areas. This series will cover topics in East Asian and South Asian philosophy, primarily in a comparative context.

Each volume will be a single-authored work presenting, synthesizing, and analyzing recent developments in particular areas within a field of comparative research, as well as offering promising directions for future research, outlining possible objections and solutions, and considering ways the area might be further developed. Continue reading →

New Group Blog of Indian Philosophy Launched

Friend of the blog, Amod Lele, and a group of Indian Philosophy scholars have launched The Indian Philosophy Blog. We welcome it to the comparative philosophy blogosphere!

The list of contributors includes: Douglas Berger, Jason Birch, Daniele Cuneo, Matthew Dasti, Aleix Ruiz Falqués, Elisa Freschi, Elon Goldstein, Stephen Harris, Amod Lele, Ethan Mills, Andrew Ollett, Shyam Ranganathan, Agnieszka Rostalska, Justin Whitaker, and Mike Williams.