This book engages in a dialogue with Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (K.C. Bhattacharyya, KCB, 1875–1949) and opens a vista to contemporary Indian philosophy. KCB is one of the founding fathers of contemporary Indian philosophy, a distinct genre of philosophy that draws both on classical Indian philosophical sources and on Western materials, old and new. His work offers both a new and different reading of classical Indian texts, and a unique commentary of Kant and Hegel. The book (re)introduces KCB’s philosophy, identifies the novelty of his thinking, and highlights different dimensions of his oeuvre, with special emphasis on freedom as a concept and striving, extending from the metaphysical to the political or the postcolonial. Our contributors aim to decipher KCB’s distinct vocabulary (demand, feeling, alternation). They revisit his discussion of Rasa aesthetics, spotlight the place of the body in his phenomenological inquiry toward “the subject as freedom”, situate him between classics (Abhinavagupta) and thinkers inspired by his thought (Daya Krishna), and discuss his lectures on Sāṃkhya and Yoga rather than projecting KCB as usual solely as a Vedānta scholar. Finally, the contributors seek to clarify if and how KCB’s philosophical work is relevant to the discourse today, from the problem of other minds to freedoms in the social and political spheres. This book will be of interest to academics studying Indian and comparative philosophy, philosophy of language and mind, phenomenology without borders, and political and postcolonial philosophy.

This collection of essays provides the specialist, and also the layman interested in philosophy, with examples of the best philosophical work being done in India today. Indologists and Sanskrit scholars have for generations had access to Indian expositions of ancient texts. Rather less has been known about what is being done in fields of recent and current interest. Indian philosophers today are part of a worldwide community of scholars as concerned with technical logical problems, with analysis and phenomenology, as philosophers anywhere else and this is what this book reflects. It also shows the younger philosophers, many of whom have studied outside India, engaged in the cut and thrust of contemporary debate. Indian philosophers have the advantage of not having been swept off their feet by any one of the movements in contemporary philosophy. But they are alive to them all and have their own contribution to make to on-going discussions. The reader will find treatments of the mind-body problem, the nature of moral language, the experience of nothingness in Buddhism and Existentialism, and an analysis of aesthetic experience, to mention only a few of the chapters in this lively book.

The book includes essay which are all written by philosophers of or about forty -five years of age. They fall into two main groups: those in which the writer devotes himself chiefly to the exposition of the great Vedic tradition as he has apprehended it and made it the basis of his own life’s work; and those in which the writer, while on the whole remining true to the spirit of that tradition, has sought to give new interpretations of it, either by instituting comparisons of it with the Western doctrines most closely allied to it or by treating of modern problems in a way which, though suggested by what he has learned from the West, is yet stamped with the mark of his own racial sympathy. Western readers will naturally find the latter group more attractive; but this volume will have failed of its purpose if it does not give them some sense of the truth that underlies even the essays with which, owing to the presuppositions ion which these are founded, they find themselves least in sympathy.

Contemporary Indian Philosophy has arisen in awareness of the need to reconcile the forces of tradition with those of modernity. It is not merely repetitive. There is, in it, a definite attempt to construct a system. It develops under the conviction that the basic aim of Philosophy is to cultivate a world-view. This requires an awareness of the existential condition of life as also the con-sciousness of life s ulti-mate ideal, viz., redem-ption, not only of the individual, but of the total human race. It emphasises the ultimacy of spiritual values; yet it demonstrates that the roots of spiritual life lie in conditions that are essentially existential. The present study seeks to highlight these aspects of Contemporary Indian Philosophy. It is an attempt to rethink, in an academic manner, the thoughts of the contemporary thinkers, Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Krishna Chandra Bhattacharya, S. Radhakrishnan, and Mohammad Iqbal. Different aspects of their thoughts have been systematised, categorised and placed under suitable philosophical heads in this work.

Nyāya Sūtra offers a new English translation of the text ascribed to Akṣapāda, an Indian philosopher who lived around the beginning of the Common Era. The translation is accompanied by the original Sanskrit text and an original commentary. The commentary explains every sūtra separately and identifies the sources of the Nyāya Sūtra. It analyses the way older ideas on epistemology, logic, and soteriology were presented as a new coherent system of thought. The book puts forward the main goal of the Nyāya Sūtra: to define what it considered the basic tenets of a soteriology and how the goal of this soteriology could be reached by rationally applying epistemological and logical methods to finding out the truth. In turn, this truth was thought to lead to the ultimate soteriological goal of freedom from suffering. Showing the coherence of the text and its ultimate goal being soteriological, the new commentary also discusses many scholarly issues regarding the Nyāya Sūtra and its position in the history of Indian philosophy. This book will be of interest to researchers studying Indian philosophy, world philosophies, epistemology, logic, philosophical method, art of debate, soteriology, rationalism, spirituality, Hinduism, Indian religions, and religious studies.

This volume traces the impact of colonialism and Western philosophy on the dialogical structure of Indian thought and highlights the general tendency in contemporary Indian philosophy to avoid direct dialogue as opposed to the rich and elaborate debates that formed the pivot of the classical Indian tradition. It defines three possible areas of debate: between Swami Vivekanand and Mahatama Gandhi; V.D. Savarkar and Mahatama Gandhi; and Sri Aurobindo and Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya—on state and pre-modern society, religion and politics, and science and spiritualism respectively. This book will be of considerable interest not only to students and scholars of Indian philosophy and religious studies but to scholars of politics and sociology as well.

This book presents a fascinating examination of modern Indian philosophical thought from the margins. It considers the subject from two perspectives – how it has been understood beyond India and how Indian thinkers have treated Western ideas in the context of Indian society. The book discusses the concepts of the self, the other and the border that underline various debates on modernity. In this framework, it proposes the notion of the other as an enabler in taking cue from the lives of Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. It focusses on the nature and compulsions of the colonised self, and its response to the body of unfamiliar and sometimes oppressive ideas. The study traces these themes with allusion to the works of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon and Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya and the Bhagavad Gita. The author exposes the limitations in existing theories of self, the incompatibility between the slavery of self and svaraj in ideas, how the premodern village intersects modern city and democracy, the radical challenges that confront society with its accumulated social evils, inequality, hierarchy and the need for reform and non-violence. This engaging work will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Indian philosophy, social and political philosophy, Indian political theory, postcolonialism and South Asian studies.

It Has Been Rightly Said That Only A True Philosopher May Give A Practical Shape To Education. Philosophy And Education Go Hand In Hand. Education Depends On Philosophy For Its Guidance While Philosophy Depends On Education For Its Own Formulation. Teaching Methods Are Very Much Concerned With The Philosophy Of Education The Teacher Holds. The Philosophical Systems Of Education Govern The Teacher S Attitude To The Method Of Teaching. With A View To Comprehend The Close Relationship Of Philosophy And Education And Their Great Significance In The Modern Times, The Present Book Philosophy Of Education Has Been Written.The Book Aims At Presenting The Western Isms Of Philosophy As Well As Indian Philosophy Of Education Beginning From The Vedas To The Contemporary Philosophies. It Elucidates The Philosophical Issues And Attempts To Draw The Philosophical Implications Of Every Isms . Invaluable Viewpoints On Education Of Eminent Educators Like Rousseau, Russell, Swami Dayanand, Annie Besant, M.K. Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore And Many Others, And The Influence Of Their Philosophies Have Been Studied In Depth. It Acquaints The Readers With The Varied Aims And Ideals Of Education, Methods And Principles Of Teaching, Role And Influence Of Teachers As Propounded By The Great Philosophers.Written In A Simple Language And Lucid Style, The Book Is Expected To Serve As An Ideal Textbook On The Subject. It Will Prove Indispensable For The Students And Teachers Of Education. Question Bank At The End Of The Book Is An Added Advantage Provided To The Students Which Would Prove Helpful In Preparation For Examination. Even The General Readers Will Find This Book Worth-Reading.

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.