: Rajendran Chettiarthodi
: Explorations in Indian Philosophy
: D.K. Printworld
: 9788124611296
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Any discourse on Indian philosophy has to be taken out of the box in which it was confined for ages using obsolete methods for evaluating thinking patterns. In the traditional way of analysing Indian philosophy there was an inimical approach to each other between the philosophers and the philologists, and between the Sanskrit tradition-oriented philosophers and modern English/vernacular-based philosophers. This friction is evident in the hesitation of the traditionalists in giving philosophers like Daya Krishna and K.C. Bhattacharyya their due share.
The twelve essays in this volume address many a question about the characteristics of Indian philosophical traditions and Indian-ness. Indian philosophy is essentially not Sanskrit based alone, there is a significant contribution to it from the South Asian languages and English, and the cultures of the subcontinent. It attempts to provide provocative insights in sharing the author's penetrative acumen both in his traditional and modern approaches to South Asian intellectual systems. It therefore addresses the prejudice between the East and the West, and traditional and modern, and the concerns of South Asian diaspora in the Western countries.
As far as this anthology is concerned, the icing on the cake is the Foreword by Dr Mrinal Kaul, who critically analyses the major developments taken place in the realm of Indian philosophy in the last few decades, critically appreciating the contents.

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Comparative Philosophy

Problems and Approaches

Comparative philosophy, which is to be systematically demarcated from comparative studies of culture, language, politics and other human discourses in content and methodology, is regarded as the philosophy of philosophies (Raju 1970: Preface). Its method is comparison; material, philosophical thought; and outcome, a global discourse of philosophical thought cutting across creeds and nations. TheInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes comparative philosophy as “a subfield of philosophy in which philosophers work on problems by intentionally setting into dialogue various sources from across cultural, linguistic, and philosophical streams”. Accordingly, “the ambition and challenge of comparative philosophy are to include all the philosophies of global humanity in its vision of what is constituted by philosophy”. The term cross-cultural philosophy, used as its synonym, gives us an idea of its range and extent. It has the ambitious agenda of being an inclusive discourse comprising and subsuming all philosophical thought of the globe. Yet, however laudable are the aims and objectives of it, there has been some introspection about its achievements and reception from many quarters in the last decades. In 1992, B.K. Matilal confessed that comparative philosophy has had a bad reputation, and the reason for this may be the failure and lack of depth of early comparativists. Comparative philosophy is often spoken of in an apologetic tone by the protagonists and accepted at best with a patronizing manner by the mainstream philosophers who are not simply interested in cross-cultural dialogues. For that matter, even comparative literature which has made global inroads has been charged as lacking in methodology. But before laying blame squarely on the incompetence of the protagonists of comparative philosophy, I would like to point out that the situation is far more complex and that there are very many reasons for the retarded state of comparative studies in philosophy though I would also like to add that things are changing for the better more than two decades after Matilal had made his critical remark. One of the reasons for the alleged failure on the part of earlier comparativists to take off in a big way is the deep-rooted prejudices regarding alien philosophies held by otherwise eminent philosophers who were either unwilling or incapable of looking at other thought systems with an open mind. It will be important to review early attempts to find out the assumptions, methodology, reception and limitations of earlier attempts to have a proper historical and critical perspective.

Earlier attempts in comparative philosophy had lofty aims like producing unity of meaning and purpose of life with reference to