Tradition
Indian
Indian philosophy is the thought of the Indian subcontinent, including the Vedanta, Nyaya, Mimamsa, Samkhya, Jain, Buddhist and Carvaka schools.
It begins with the Upanishads, in which sages such as Yājñavalkya and Uddālaka Āruṇi asked about the self and reality, and grew into classical schools (darshanas) that debated knowledge, logic, language and liberation. Key figures include Mahavira, Adi Shankara, Rāmānuja, Madhva, Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, Udayana and Gangesa, with Bharata and Abhinavagupta on aesthetic experience (rasa). Modern thinkers include Rabindranath Tagore, B. R. Ambedkar and Matilal. Buddhist thinkers also have their own page. It answers questions on the sources of knowledge (2.2), inference, the self, causation, language and beauty.
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Why does tax feel like theft to some of my clients and not to others?
Two of my tax clients run nearly identical businesses: same size, same bracket, similar families. Every April one of them tells me, only half joking, that the government is robbing him. The other says, with no irony, that tax is the membership…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal5 replies -
Can Kant’s rule against treating others merely as means be stretched to cover animals?
I work on wetlands, and in a project meeting last month we argued about whether the birds of a lake have any claim against being drained out of their habitat, or whether only the people who enjoy them do. A colleague, a…
Started by Anand Kurup5 replies -
Monks take the great vows, I take the small ones: is a graded ethic a cop-out?
Jain ethics has five vows: non-harm, truthfulness, not stealing, sexual restraint and non-possession. Monks and nuns take them as the great vows, absolutely. Laypeople like me take them as the small vows, in a limited form suited to a householder's life. So…
Started by Hetal Shah5 replies -
Where do I start if I want philosophy beyond the European canon, not just Plato?
My students find it obvious that a river can be a person, and I'm trying to understand why so much of Western philosophy finds it strange, and what tikanga might say to philosophy in return. But when I look for a place…
Started by Aroha Tipene5 replies -
Once you know how a food was produced, you cannot honestly taste it the same way
I grew up Jain, which means I have strong views on honey, onions and root vegetables, and I think every week about animal testing. So this is not a neutral thesis for me, but I want to argue it on terms anyone…
Started by Hetal Shah6 replies -
Testimony as an information channel: Nyāya’s śabda next to Dretske
I've been reading Dretske for a seminar alongside the Nyāya Sūtra, and I think they illuminate each other on testimony in a way neither does alone. Nyāya counts four means of knowing (pramāṇa): perception, inference, comparison, and śabda, word or testimony. The…
Started by Meera Kulkarni3 replies -
Diogenes and the naked Jain monk are not doing the same thing
When I read about Diogenes, people kept saying he was like our Digambara monks: no possessions, no shame about the body, indifferent to comfort. There's even a historical thread: a writer called Onesicritus, said to have been a pupil of Diogenes, went…
Started by Hetal Shah4 replies -
I know I shouldn’t shout at drivers who cut me off, and I still do. How is that possible?
When someone cuts in front of my bus at a stop, I shout. I know it does nothing. I know it is bad for my heart, bad for the passengers, and that the other driver cannot hear me. I have decided, many…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies -
How does rasa theory compare with Aristotle’s catharsis?
I studied rasa theory in my literature classes and Aristotle's Poetics in a single comparative class. My professor said they're answering the same question: why do we enjoy art that shows painful emotions? But I'm not sure. Can someone explain what rasa…
Started by Kavya Menon4 replies -
Langar, the Shabbat table and Confucius’s sauce: what does eating together do?
The langar, where I help out at our gurdwara in Surrey, goes back to Guru Nanak and was made central by the gurus who followed: a free kitchen where everyone, whatever their caste, faith or status, sits on the floor in the…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal6 replies -
Kirat karni: is honest work a form of worship, or is that just a nice story about work?
This question follows me from the office to the langar. Guru Nanak's teaching is often summed up in three practices: naam japna, remembering the divine Name; kirat karni, earning by honest work; and vand chakna, sharing what you have. There's a story…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal5 replies -
Rasa and catharsis: is tasting an emotion the same as purging it?
I grew up with rasa theory the way some people grow up with grammar. Recently I read Aristotle's Poetics for a class and was told that catharsis is "the Greek version of rasa". I don't think it is, and I want to…
Started by Kavya Menon4 replies -
The Nyaya five-membered syllogism versus Aristotle’s three
I've recently started comparing two traditions of logic. The Nyāya inference for others (parārthānumāna) has five members: Thesis (pratijñā): the hill has fire. Reason (hetu): because it has smoke. Example (udāharaṇa): wherever there is smoke, there is fire, as in a kitchen.…
Started by Vikram Sethi4 replies -
“Not necessarily” versus “necessarily not”: can someone explain the difference with an everyday example?
My older child, who is nine, has started catching me out on words. Yesterday I said "it won't necessarily rain at the picnic". She said, "So it necessarily won't rain?" I said no, that's different. She said, "How?" and I realised I…
Started by Thamarai Raman4 replies -
Why does Cora Diamond say we don’t eat our dead, and what does that have to do with animals?
My son, who is eight, asked me last week whether the cat knows it is a cat, and then whether it is wrong to eat chicken if the chicken does not know it is a chicken. I did not have a good…
Started by Thamarai Raman4 replies -
Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste as political philosophy
In 1936 B. R. Ambedkar was invited to give the presidential address at the annual conference of the Jat-Pat-Todak Mandal, an anti-caste Hindu reform group in Lahore. When the organisers saw the text, they asked him to remove parts, he refused, and…
Started by Deepa Kartha4 replies -
Jayarāśi and the Cārvāka skeptics: India’s most radical doubters
The Cārvāka or Lokāyata school is usually summarised as Indian materialism: only perception is a valid means of knowledge, there's no afterlife, enjoy life while it lasts. Most of what we know comes from their opponents' summaries. But one genuine Lokāyata text…
Started by Meera Kulkarni4 replies -
Can I keep Stoic advice and leave Stoic determinism behind?
The first line of Epictetus's Handbook changed how I work: some things are up to us and some are not, and suffering comes from confusing the two. But I've just learned that Stoic ethics isn't separable from Stoic physics in the way…
Started by Rohan Desai5 replies -
Shankara’s rope and snake: what kind of “unreality” is maya?
The most famous image in Advaita Vedanta: at dusk a man sees a rope and takes it for a snake. He is frightened, he may even run. When a lamp is brought, the snake vanishes, and he sees that there was only…
Started by Arjun Iyer5 replies -
Giving a river legal personhood is the right idea, not a legal gimmick
I teach at a Māori-language school in Rotorua. Since the Whanganui River was recognised in law as a person, Te Awa Tupua, in 2017, my students have found the idea completely obvious, and I've been surprised by how many adults outside our…
Started by Aroha Tipene5 replies -
Can a baby or an animal have a right if it cannot claim it? Interest theory versus will theory
I think about the ethics of drug trials on animals more than most of our customers would like. Someone at a talk recently said there are two main theories of what a right is: the "will" theory and the "interest" theory, and…
Started by Hetal Shah3 replies -
The Jains were right: a beginningless universe has no need of a creator
I grew up Jain in Ahmedabad and work the front counter of my family's pharmacy. Jain cosmology says the universe (loka) is uncreated and eternal. Time turns in great cycles of ascending and descending half-cycles, the utsarpiṇī and avasarpiṇī, and ages of…
Started by Hetal Shah6 replies -
Reading group: the first book of the Nyāya Sūtra with Vātsyāyana’s commentary
The Nyāya Sūtra, traditionally attributed to Gautama Akṣapāda and dated around the second century CE in its current form, is the root text of the school that made Indian logic and debate into a system. About three centuries later Vātsyāyana wrote the…
Started by Vikram Sethi6 replies -
If many traditions claim revelation and they disagree, can revelation be a reliable way of knowing?
I do tax returns during the week and seva at our gurdwara at weekends, and something from a philosophy reading has been bothering me while I wash dishes after langar. The reading set out an objection to revelation as a source of…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal5 replies -
One night at the delivery bed, tested against five traditions’ answers to what makes an act right
Three weeks ago a mother I was sitting with delivered a baby who was clearly unwell. The doctor had been called and was twenty minutes away. The mother, exhausted, held my hand and asked: “Is my baby all right?” I did not…
Started by Farhana Akter5 replies -
If striving can never be satisfied, can any life be meaningful? A cellist reads Schopenhauer
I came to philosophy through Schopenhauer on music, and stayed out of a kind of dread. His picture is that we are expressions of a blind will that strives without end. Every satisfied desire gives way to a new one, and in…
Started by Moon Ha-eun5 replies -
Natural, necessary and empty desires: running a small winery by Epicurus’s sorting
I make small-batch wine in the Adelaide Hills. The irony of an Epicurean in the wine trade isn't lost on me, but I've found his sorting of desires the most useful bit of ancient philosophy I've ever read. In the Letter to…
Started by Bec Doyle4 replies -
Wine shows hand out medals. Can someone be wrong about what tastes good?
This question pays my bills. Twice a year I sit at a regional wine show with three other judges and we give medals. Every year someone at the cellar door tells me taste is subjective and my medals are just my opinion…
Started by Bec Doyle6 replies -
Is the ban on riba about bad outcomes, or about the form a transaction may take?
Many of my clients in Surrey are Muslim. Several of them won't take a conventional loan. One explained that it's not because the interest rate is too high; it's that a guaranteed return on money lent is wrong in itself, whatever the…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal4 replies -
Syādvāda is not a seven-valued logic, and treating it as one loses the point
I grew up Jain, so I've been hearing about anekāntavāda since before I could read. Lately I keep seeing syādvāda described online as "the ancient Indian seven-valued logic", usually in the same breath as fuzzy logic. I'd like to explain why that…
Started by Hetal Shah5 replies