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 do so many love poems in my languages prefer separation to union?
I'm new to formal philosophy, so please be patient with how I put this. I translate between Malayalam and English, and I keep noticing that the love poems people treasure most are poems of separation. Kālidāsa's Meghadūta, where an exiled yakṣa sends…
Started by Kavya MenonAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Vātsyāyana says inquiry works neither on the unknown nor on the settled, only on the doubtful. Is that a rule for seminars too?
I've been translating the opening of Vātsyāyana's commentary on the Nyāya Sūtra for a study circle, and one sentence keeps stopping me. Reasoning, he says, does not operate on something wholly unknown, nor on something already settled, but on something in doubt.…
Started by Meera KulkarniReply first (no replies yet) -
Is rest something you have to earn? Aristotle, the Gita and the Sabbath give three answers
I've had some months away from work, and the strangest part is not the free time. It's the feeling that I owe someone an explanation for it. Rest feels like a loan. Three texts I keep carrying around, which seem to disagree:…
Started by Rohan DesaiReply first (no replies yet) -
Yājñavalkya
Yājñavalkya is a Vedic sage who appears as a leading teacher in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, debating at the court of…
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Udayana
Udayana was a philosopher of the Nyāya school from Mithilā, often regarded as the last great figure of the older Nyāya before the rise…
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Uddālaka Āruṇi
Uddālaka Āruṇi is a Vedic teacher who appears in the early Upaniṣads, most famously in the sixth chapter of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, where he…
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Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda, born Narendranath Datta in Calcutta, was a Hindu monk and the leading disciple of Ramakrishna. His addresses at the World's Parliament of…
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Sriharsa
Śrīharṣa was a twelfth-century Advaita Vedānta philosopher and poet, traditionally associated with the court at Kanauj. In his dialectical work, The Sweets of Refutation,…
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Sankuka
Śaṅkuka was a Sanskrit theorist of drama, probably from Kashmir and active around the ninth century, who wrote a commentary on Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra that…
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Prabhākara
Prabhākara was a Mīmāṃsā philosopher, active around the seventh century CE, whose commentary on Śabara's commentary to the Mīmāṃsā Sūtra founded one of the…
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Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, composer, novelist and thinker, and in 1913 the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. He…
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Radhakrishnan
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was an Indian philosopher and statesman who taught at Mysore, Calcutta and Oxford, where he held the Spalding chair of Eastern Religions…
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Raghunātha Śiromaṇi
Raghunātha Śiromaṇi was a logician and metaphysician of Navadvīpa in Bengal and one of the most original thinkers of the Navya-Nyāya (New Nyāya) school.…
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Rāmānuja
Rāmānuja was a South Indian theologian and philosopher, active at Kanchipuram and above all at the temple centre of Srirangam, and the principal systematiser…
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Matilal
Bimal Krishna Matilal was an Indian philosopher, trained in Sanskrit learning in Calcutta and at Harvard, who held the Spalding Professorship of Eastern Religions…
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Mohanty
Jitendra Nath Mohanty was an Indian philosopher, educated in Calcutta and at Göttingen, who taught in India and then for many years in the…
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Kumārila Bhaṭṭa
Kumārila Bhaṭṭa was an Indian philosopher of the Mīmāṃsā school, active around the seventh century, whose commentaries on Śabara's commentary on the Mīmāṃsā Sūtra…
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Madhva
Madhva was a South Indian philosopher and theologian, based at Udupi in present-day Karnataka, who founded the Dvaita (dualist) school of Vedānta. Writing commentaries…
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Mahavira
Mahāvīra, born Vardhamāna, is revered in Jainism as the twenty-fourth and last tīrthaṅkara of the present age. He taught in the Ganges plain in…
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Gangesa
Gangesa was an Indian logician and epistemologist from Mithila, active around the fourteenth century, whose Tattvacintamani founded the 'new' school of Nyaya, Navya-Nyaya. Organised…
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Gautama (Akṣapāda)
Akṣapāda Gautama is the figure to whom tradition attributes the Nyaya Sutra, the founding text of the Nyaya school of Indian logic and epistemology.…
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Aurobindo
Aurobindo Ghose was an Indian philosopher, poet and yogi, educated in England at Cambridge, who worked in Baroda and was active in the nationalist…
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B. R. Ambedkar
B. R. Ambedkar was an Indian jurist, economist, social reformer and political philosopher, born into a community treated as untouchable. He studied at Columbia…
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Bharata
Bharata is the attributed author of the Nāṭyaśāstra, a Sanskrit treatise on drama, dance and music usually dated to between about 200 BCE and…
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Bhartrhari
Bhartṛhari was an Indian grammarian and philosopher of language of around the fifth century CE. In the Vākyapadīya he argued that the sentence and…
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Bhatta Lollata
Bhaṭṭa Lollaṭa was a Kashmiri commentator on Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra, probably of the ninth century. His own writings are lost, and his views are known…
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Bhatta Nayaka
Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka was a Kashmiri theorist of aesthetics, probably of the tenth century, whose work is lost and known through quotations and criticism by…
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Abhinavagupta
Abhinavagupta was a Kashmiri philosopher, aesthetician and theologian active around the year 1000, a central figure of Kashmir Shaiva thought. His commentaries on Bharata's…
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Ajita Kesakambali
Ajita Kesakambali was a wandering teacher in north India, a contemporary of the Buddha, named for the hair blanket he reportedly wore. No writings…
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“But what if it was you?” Trying Hare’s universalisability test on my children
My two children are eight and eleven, and they argue about fairness constantly, mostly over the last piece of anything. Last week I read about R. M. Hare's prescriptivism in an introductory book, and I decided to try it at home. As…
Started by Thamarai RamanReply first (no replies yet)