So You Want to Teach Some Indian Philosophy?

In a previous post Peter Adamson predicted that non-European philosophies are destined to enter the mainstream of the philosophical profession. He highlighted three avenues of progress. One is that departments will hire more experts, people who know the relevant languages, have studied the histories and cultural contexts, and can offer high-level graduate training in the subject. Another is that non-experts will, thanks to the availability of ever better texts in translation, begin to offer courses in non-European philosophies, such courses serving perfectly adequately in introducing students to a wide range of profoundly inspiring and fascinating ideas. The third avenue, and the one that his post and this one are intended to encourage, is that materials from non-European philosophies will find a place within the curricula of thematically organised courses. A person offering a course on scepticism, for example, might find themselves wanting to bring in ideas from a range of non-European epistemologists, rather than represent the subject as being something only European. If the case can be made even for allegedly “core” subjects like epistemology, metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of language, it’s even more persuasive to make it for moral philosophy, aesthetics, and political philosophy. What we offer, in Peter’s earlier post about Islamic philosophy and in my post about Indian philosophy, are suggestions of primary and secondary literature, accessible to any tutor who wants to bring a greater range of voices to the table than is currently typical.

Before I get to my recommendations for Indian readings, let me take a moment to address a few of the objections that tend to come up. The one I hear most often (let me call it the Single Intellectual Community Objection) runs something like this: “I like my course to follow through a single progression of ideas that comes from a single group of philosophers directly responding to each other. To introduce voices from outside this enclosed conversation would be ad hoc and disruptive.” My answer to this is that there are many sorts of conversation to be had, and it’s part of the job of a philosopher to facilitate them. It would be somewhat sad if the only people one could have a stimulating conversation with were one’s immediate acquaintances and friends. The way a conversation can emerge, through tentative searching for a common reference point, or sharing different perspectives, with complete strangers, is very rewarding and often very stimulating to the flow of one’s own thought. I also think that disruptiveness can be a virtue, not a vice, if what is being disrupted is a complacent reinforcement of a received way of thinking. Wasn’t this, after all one part of Aristotle’s point about endoxa: that understanding a wide range of earlier wisdom opens up problem spaces, directions for possible solutions, and methodologies that would be unavailable to us merely thinking on our own (thanks to Matthew Dasti for this point).

Another objection I often get to hear is that, as a department, it is simply not a priority to employ people who want to embrace non-European philosophy in their teaching, because teaching needs prioritise specialist appointments elsewhere. This is the Limited Resources Objection: “we’d love to have people who want to dedicate part of their teaching time to non-European philosophy but other needs take priority”. My answer to this is that what the teaching needs of a department are is dependent on how the curriculum has been shaped. Sooner or later, under the weight of student demand, for instance, or in response to widening understandings of what philosophy as a discipline is about and what its obligations are, philosophy curricula will need to be restructured so as to be more expansive. And then, even if a department doesn’t want to hire experts, it will want to reach out to people who have a desire and willingness to incorporate non-European materials.

The last objection I want to mention here is this one: “One can’t possibly teach a non-European philosophy on the basis of translations alone. One must be fully competent in the source languages. Otherwise one is going to misrepresent the ideas.” This is the Expert or Bust Objection. It’s the view of a purist who thinks that only an expert in a field is qualified to teach it at any level. Peter already answered this one, noting that it is just not how teaching works in any philosophy department today. A trained philosopher can certainly offer a course in a subject outside their specialist field of research, and in small departments this is a requirement on having a job at all. I’d also add that there are now, as perhaps wasn’t the case in the past, suites of really excellent teaching materials, in the form of handbooks, encyclopedia entries, anthologies, and so on, available to any lecturer who wants to inject some non-European philosophy into their syllabus. Among such resources I’ll flag up for this post the set of entries on concepts and figures in Indian and Buddhist philosophy in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy.

Let me echo Peter’s final thought and say that if anyone wants advice on teaching Indian philosophy, or assistance in getting hold of the suggested literature, please do get in touch and I will do my best to help: jonardon.ganeri@nyu.edu or jonardon@gmail.com.

Philosophy of language

The study of language was of absolute centrality to the Sanskrit intellectuals, beginning with Pāṇini’s famous grammar and going on to very detailed and sophisticated analysis of a range of linguistic phenomena. Indians have had a lot of interesting things to say about literal meaning, including an extended debate over the relative priority of word-meaning or sentence-meaning:

Primary: K. T. Pandurangi (trans.), Prakaraṇa-pañcikā of Śālikanātha (Delhi, 2011), 348-391.

Secondary: B. K. Matilal and P. K. Sen, “The Context Principle and Some Indian Controversies over Meaning,” Mind  97 (1988), 73–97.

Buddhist philosophers reject a referential analysis of meaning, instead arguing that literal meaning is always a matter of exclusion (apoha):

Primary: O. Pind, Dignāga’s Philosophy of Language (PhD thesis, Vienna, 2009: http://othes.univie.ac.at/8283/), Part II.

Secondary: M. Siderits, T. Tillemans, and A. Chakrabarti (eds), Apoha: Buddhist Nominalism and Human Cognition (New York, 2011), esp. chapters 1 and 13.

The discussion of non-literal meaning, including metaphor and metonymy, is probably where Indian sources can most readily fill lacuna in typical philosophy of language syllabi. How language works in poetry and other branches of literature, including its aesthetic effect (rasa; see aesthetics  section below), is one very large thread, as is the question about whether the non-literal use of language depends upon, or is autonomous from, its literal use:

Primary: M. Keating, Language, Meaning and Use in Indian Philosophy (London, 2019), Part II. A translation of Mukula Bhaṭṭa’s Fundamentals of Communicative Function, with analysis and comparison to contemporary theory.

Secondary: R. Tzohar, A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor (Oxford, 2018), chapters 1 and 5. K. K. Raja, Indian Theories of Meaning (Adyar, 1963), chapter 6.

There is an important exploration of deontic language among Mīmāṃsā philosophers, who analyse the logical form of prescriptions (“You should do x if you want y”) and query whether the descriptive or the prescriptive is semantically primary:

Primary: E. Freschi, Duty, Language and Exegesis in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā (Leiden, 2012), 95–104.

Secondary: E. Freschi, “The Deontic Nature of Language in the Mīmāṃsā School,” in A. Graheli (ed), The Bloomsbury Research Handbook on Indian Philosophy of Language (London, 2019).

Logic

Uninfluenced by Aristotle Indian logicians develop several fascinating non-Aristotelian approaches to logic. The early Nyāya thinkers worked out a case-based, or possibly non-monotonic, account of inference;

Primary: J. Ganeri (ed), Indian Logic: A Reader (Routledge, 2001).

Secondary: J. Ganeri, “Indian Logic,” in D. M. Gabbay and J. Woods (eds), Handbook of the History of Logic, Volume 1 (Holland, 2004), 1-23.

The Buddhist philosopher Dignāga and his followers meanwhile transformed the logic with their new theory of a triple condition on the logical adequacy of a set of premises:

Primary: B. Gillon and M. Love, “Indian Logic Revisited: Nyāyapraveśa Reviewed,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 8 (1980), 349–382.

Secondary:  B. K. Matilal, The Character of Logic in India (Albany, 1988), chapters 4 and 5.

Later Nyāya thinkers introduce a sophisticated property-location analysis of quantified and negative statements, which was itself challenged and refined:

Primary: M. C. Nyāyaratna, Brief Notes on the Modern Nyāya System of Philosophy and its Technical Terms (in Sanskrit), trans. E. Guhe (Shanghai, 2014). M. Gangopadhyay, Indian Logic in its Sources (Delhi, 1984).

Secondary: D. H. Ingalls, Materials for the Study of Navya-Nyāya Logic (Cambridge, Mass., 1951).  B. K. Matilal, The Character of Logic in India, chapter 7.

Meanwhile the Jainas go their own way with a thorough analysis of what seems to be a 7-valued system to handle the logic of disagreement:

Primary: Vādi Devasūri, Pramāṇa-naya-tatvālokālaṃkāra, ed. and trans. H. S. Bhattacharya (Bombay, 1967), chapter 5.

Secondary: J. Ganeri, “Jaina Logic and the Philosophical Basis of Pluralism,” History and Philosophy of Logic 23 (2002), 267–281. M-H. Gorisse, “Logic in the Tradition of Prabhācandra,” in J. Ganeri (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy (New York, 2017), 486–506.

Epistemology

The canonical statement of standard epistemology in Sanskrit (the pramāṇa theory) is to be found in Vātsyāyana’s preface to his commentary on the first verse of Nyāya-sūtra:

Primary: The Nyāya-sūtra: Selections with Early Commentaries, trans. M. Dasti and S. Phillips (Cambridge, Mass., 2017), 14-17.

Secondary: S. Phillips, Epistemology in Classical India: The Knowledge Sources of the Nyāya School (London, 2012), 17-32. J. Ganeri, The Lost Age of Reason (Oxford, 2011), 122–127.

The Mādhyamika philosopher Nāgārjuna produced a beautiful early critique of this epistemology, and in the course of so doing set out the case for scepticism. That case was later further extended by Jayarāśi and Śrīharṣa:

Primary: Nāgārjuna, The Dispeller of Disputes, trans. J. Westerhoff (Oxford, 2010), 65-93.

Secondary: E. Mills, Three Pillars of Scepticism in Classical India: Nāgārjuna, Jayarāśi and Śrīharṣa (Lanham, 2018). N. Das, “Śrīharṣa,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2018 edn.), ed. E. Zalta.

There is an extended Buddhist analysis of the content of perceptual experience, and an argument that non-conceptual perception alone grounds knowledge. Two tried-and-trusted texts always work well in classroom discussion:

Primary: Vasubandhu, Twenty Verses (Vimśatikā). M. Kapstein (trans.), Reason’s Traces (Boston, Mass., 2001), 197–204. Contains a famous “dream” argument, an apparent defence of idealism, and a discussion of the composition of material objects.

Secondary: M. Kapstein, Reason’s Traces (Boston, Mass., 2001), 181–204. J. Gold, “Vasubandhu”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

Primary: Dignāga, Investigation of the Percept (Ālambana-parīkṣā). D. Duckworth et al., Dignāga’s Investigation of the Percept (Oxford, 2016), 38–47. This text works especially well after students have first been introduced to standard arguments from illusion and hallucination.

Secondary: J. Westerhoff, The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy (Oxford, 2018), 220–225.

The view that non-conceptual perception alone grounds knowledge receives a careful critique in the hands of Mīmāṃsaka philosopher Kumārila:

Primary: Kumārila, Pratyakṣa-pariccheda of Ślokavārttika. J. Taber (trans.), A Hindu Critique of Buddhist Epistemology: Kumārila on Perception (London, 2012), 44–148.

Among other specific topics, the analysis of doubt, perceptual error, and the epistemology of testimony are areas where the Nyāya tradition has a distinctive contribution to make:

Primary: The Nyāya-sūtra: Selections with Early Commentaries, trans. M. Dasti and S. Phillips (Cambridge, Mass., 2017), chapters 1 and 2.

Secondary: M. Dasti, “Parasitism and Disjunctivism in Nyāya Epistemology.” Philosophy East and West 62 (2012), 1-15. A. Chakrabarti, “Telling as Letting Know” in B. Matilal, and A. Chakrabarti (eds), Knowing from Words (Dordrecht, 1994), 99-124.

Metaphysics

Vaiśeṣika philosophers brought forward an intriguing six-category ontology, later extended to seven with the introduction of absence as a category in its own right. It makes for an interesting classroom experiment to contrast this with Aristotelian and modern categorial ontologies:

Primary: The Vaiśeṣika-sūtra, translated in A. Thakur, Origin and Development of the Vaiśeṣika System (Delhi: 2003). G. Jha (trans), The Praśastapādabhāṣya with the Nyāyakandalī of Śrīdhara (Benares, 1916), with translations of Praśastapāda’s treatise and a philosophically very rich commentary.

Secondary: J. Ganeri, The Lost Age of Reason (Oxford, 2011), 165–180.

Nāgārjuna’s approach to metaphysics is quite different, and he seemingly defends a radical non-foundationalist metaphysics. His Verses on the Middle Way is one of the most brilliant texts in the whole Indian tradition, and is a root text for Tibetan Buddhism, perplexing at first for students, but also highly rewarding:

Primary: Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, trans. M. Siderits and S. Katsura (Cambridge, Mass., 2013), chapter 1.

Secondary: J. Westerhoff, “Nāgārjuna on Emptiness: A Comprehensive Critique of Foundationalism,” J. Ganeri (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy (New York, 2017), 93–119.

Another Buddhist thinker, Vasubandhu, argues instead for reductionism, for a metaphysics of fundamental constituent elements (dharma), which are perhaps akin to tropes. He is most famous for his analysis of persons into these elements (see below).

Primary: Vasubandhu, Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam, trans. L. Poussin and L. Pruden (Berkeley, 1990).

Secondary: J. Westerhoff, The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy (Oxford, 2018), 35–83.

Philosophy of mind

The fascinating denial of the self by a succession of Buddhist philosophers makes for great classroom conversation, and ties up directly at many levels with contemporary discussions of selfhood, subjectivity and personal identity. An important topic is Vasubandhu’s attempt to reduce persons to streams of conscious moments in the final chapter of his Abhidharmakośabhāṣya:

Primary: J. Duerlinger, Indian Buddhist Theories of Persons: Vasubandhu’s Refutation of the Theory of a Self (Routledge, 2003), 71–120.

Secondary: M. Siderits, Buddhism as Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), 32–68, 105–137.

Another interesting discussion is Dignāga’s attempt to argue by reductio that all conscious events are reflexively self-aware. The argumentation here is brisk and analytic, and very good in class:

Primary: M. Hattori, Dignāga on Perception (Cambridge MA., 1968), chapter 1.

Secondary: E. Thompson, “Self, No-Self? Memory and Reflexive Awareness,” in M. Siderits, E. Thompson and D. Zahavi (eds), Self, No-Self? Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological and Indian Traditions (Oxford, 2013), 157–175.

Nyāya philosophers develop several lines of argument to defend the self, including that mental properties must have an owner, and that the cross-modal integration of perceptions requires there to be a common locus of integration:

Primary: The Nyāya-sūtra: Selections with Early Commentaries, trans. M. Dasti and S. Phillips (Cambridge, Mass., 2017), 74–94.

Secondary: J. Ganeri, The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness and the First-Person Stance (Oxford, 2012), Part IV.

Other topics where there are wonderful Indian discussions include memory, attention, the emotions, phenomenal consciousness, dualism, the mind-body problem, and process theories of self.

Ethics

There is an interesting vein of ethical thinking in the epics, especially the Mahābhārata, where several moral dilemmas are discussed and the idea of moral particularism explored:

Primary: J.D. Smith (trans.), The Mahābhārata (London: 2009), a partial English translation with summary of the untranslated sections. The Clay Sanskrit Library and the University of Chicago are slowly producing complete multi-volume translations.

Secondary: B.K. Matilal, “Moral Dilemmas: Insights from Indian Epics,” in his Epics and Ethics (Oxford, 2002), 19-35. V. Dalmiya, “Care and Epistemic Justice: Some Insights from the Mahābhārata,” in A. Chakrabarti and Sibaji Bandhopadhyay (eds), Mahābhārata Now: Narration, Aesthetics, Ethics (Delhi, 2014), 115–131. P. Sen, “Moral Doubts, Moral Dilemmas and Situational Ethics in the Mahābhārata,” ibid., 153–202.

Most famous is the dilemma Arjuna confronts at the beginning of the Bhagavad-gītā. Kṛṣṇa advises him, but is Kṛṣṇa’s council from the standpoint of a deontologist or a consequentialist?

Primary: G. Thompson (trans.), The Bhagavad-gītā: A New Translation (New York, 2008).

Secondary: S. Sreekumar, “An Analysis of Consequentialism and Deontology in the Normative Ethics of the Bhagavadgītā,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, 40 (2012), 277–315.

Buddhist ethics is a rapidly expanding field, overlapping with classical ethical theory in the west in interesting ways but also having its own distinctive nature. There are many good teaching materials in this area:

Secondary: R. Hayes, “Ten Philosophical Questions to Ask about Buddhism,” accessible talks first given at Leiden University, 2009, which work very well in class. The important new D. Cozort and J. M. Shields (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics (Oxford, 2018) contains survey essays by many of the leading people in the field.

Sub-themes include the idea of philosophy as medicinal, altruism, the shape of a moral life,  the issue of free will, human and animal rights, and the virtues. Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life contains a meta-ethics and a provocative approach towards altruism:

Primary: Śāntideva, The Bodhicaryāvatāra, trans. K. Crosby and A. Skilton (Oxford, 2008), chapter 8, verses 90–119. Prajñākaramati’s commentary on this passage is translated by M. Siderits and C. Goodman, Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness (Oxford, 2015), 241–248.

Secondary: J. Garfield, “What is it Like to Be a Bodhisattva? Moral Phenomenology in Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 33 (2010), 333–357.  C. Goodman, “Śāntideva’s Impartialist Ethics,” in J. Ganeri (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy (New York, 2017), 327–343.

The ethical theory of the Jainas has proved to be especially influential, their ideas about non-violence adopted by Mahatma Gandhi. Jaina views about suicide are noteworthy too. Either could easily be included in an ethics course.

Primary: Ācārāṅga-sūtra, Book 1. H. Jacobi (trans.) Jaina Sūtras, Part I (Oxford, 1884), 2–18, 36-39. And on suicide: 71–8.

Secondary: C. Chapple, Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions (Albany: 1993). M. M. Kumar, “ Introduction,” in M. M. Kumar, N. Tatia and M. Dulharaj (trans.), Ācārāṅga-bhāṣyam (Ladnun, 2001).

Aesthetics and Philosophy of literature

The notion of an aesthetic response (rasa) to poetry preoccupied Indian thinkers throughout the history of the tradition. Pollock’s volume of translations makes it possible, for the first time, to see how this notion evolved:

Primary: S. Pollock, A Rasa Reader (Columbia, 2016).

Secondary: A. Chakrabarti (ed), The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art (London, 2016). The editor’s introduction can be used to guide an appropriate selection of texts from the Reader. Seminal early 20th century essays are reprinted in N. Bhushan and J. Garfield (eds.), Indian Philosophy in English: From Renaissance to Independence (Oxford, 2011), 115–230.

If a tutor feels adventurous and wants to teach a text that is a great work of literature with rich philosophical content, there are at least two good options:

Primary: Jayanta Bhaṭṭa, Āgama-ḍambara, trans. C. Dezcő, Much Ado About Religion (New York, 2005). A young graduate of Vedic studies embarks on a campaign against the belief systems of Buddhism and Jainism, the play satirising the place of doctrine in the regal politics of the day.

Primary: Yoga-vāsiṣṭha, trans. Swami Venkatesananda, The Concise Yoga-vāsiṣṭha (Albany, 1985). Wisdom imparted by the sage Vasiṣtha to his protégé Lord Rāma in the form of sixty-four interwoven tales exploring the tenuous  distinction between dream and reality.

Secondary: C. Chapple and A. Chakrabarti (eds), Engaged Emancipation: Mind, Morals and Make-Believe (Albany, 2016). W. Doniger, Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities (Chicago, 1984). F. Chenet, “The Nature of Idealism in the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha,” in J. Ganeri (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy (New York, 2017), 469–485.

Philosophy of religion

It is often a surprise to students to discover that there are strong currents of atheism in the  Indian tradition. Cārvāka materialists, Buddhists, and indeed thinkers in many of the Hindu schools, present intriguing arguments in defence of atheism:

Primary/Secondary: R. Hayes, “Principled Atheism in the Buddhist Scholastic Tradition,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 16 (1998), 5–28. A. Nicholson, “Hindu Disproofs of God,” in J. Ganeri (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy (New York, 2017), 598–621. R. Bhattacharya, “Atheism in India,” in S. Bullivant and M. Ruse (eds), The Cambridge History of Atheism (New York, 2020).

Naturally, there are also arguments in defence of divinity, often, however, divinity as differently conceived. A carefully argued rational theology emerges in the commentaries of the Nyāya school, the the locus classicus being Udayana’s treatise, the Nyāya-kusumāñjali:

Primary:  G. Chemparathy, An Indian Rational Theology: Introduction to Udayana’s Nyāyakusumāñjali (Vienna, 1972).

Secondary: A. Chakrabarti, “From the Fabric to the Weaver,” in R. Perrett (ed.), Indian Philosophy of Religion (Dordrecht, 1989), 21–34.

Introducing theory from a Vedāntic perspective will certainly require more of the tutor, who will need to spend time contextualising the discussion and introducing students to Hindu scriptural tradition. Yet it can be rewarding to do so, because the argumentation is often subtle:

Primary: J. A. B. van Buitenen (trans), Rāmānuja’s Vedārthasaṅgraha (Pune, 1956).

Secondary: E. Lott, Vedāntic Approaches to God (London, 1980), C. Ram-Prasad,  Divine Self, Human Self (London, 2013).

Political philosophy

There are ancient Indian resources, from the edicts of the Buddhist emperor Aśoka to the Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya.

Primary/Secondary: P. Olivelle, King, Governance and Law in Ancient India: Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra (Oxford, 2013).

This is also a good place to introduce the ideas of more contemporary Indian thinkers, especially those who were involved in India’s struggle for Independence in the second part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century.

Primary: M. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (Ahmedabad, 1938).  Seminal essays by Tagore, Aurobindo, K. C. Bhattacharya, and others are reprinted in N. Bhushan and J. Garfield (eds.), Indian Philosophy in English: From Renaissance to Independence (Oxford, 2011), 21–113.

Secondary: A. S. Rathore and S. Mohapatra (eds.), Indian Political Thought (London, 2010).

Stand-alone texts

It can be greatly rewarding to devote an entire course to the careful reading of a single text. Indians were, of course, famous for writing commentaries, and commentaries on commentaries, and so on, but there are several texts which are fairly easy to read as autonomous works of philosophy. I have sometimes taught a self-contained course based entirely on the Nyāya-sūtra of Gautama, on the Compendium about Epistemology (Pramāṇa-samuccaya) of Dignāga, or on the Manual of Reason (Tarka-saṃgraha) of Annambhaṭṭa. Other good options are Nāgārjuna’s Verses on the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā) and Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life (Bodhicarāvatāra). For each of these texts there is a relevant entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Primary: The Nyāya-sūtra: Selections with Early Commentaries, trans. M. Dasti and S. Phillips (Cambridge, Mass., 2017). This may if necessary be supplemented with M. Gangopadhaya (trans.), Gautama’s Nyāya-sūtra (Calcutta, 1982). And the earlier, 1967, edition of Gangopadhyaya’s translation includes an exquisite elucidation by Phanibhūṣaṇa Tarkavāgīśa, translated from Bengali.

Secondary: S. Phillips, “Epistemology in Classical Indian Philosophy”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

Primary: (PS I:) M. Hattori, Dignāga on Perception (Cambridge MA: 1968), 21–71; (PS II & V:) R. Hayes, Dignāga on the Interpretation of Signs (Dordrecht, 1988), 231–299; (PS IV:) O. Pind, Dignāga’s Philosophy of Language (PhD thesis, Vienna, 2009: http://othes.univie.ac.at/8283/), Part II.

Secondary: T. Tillemans, “Dharmakīrti”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed).

Primary: Annambhaṭṭa, Tarkasaṃgrahadīpikā on Tarkasaṃgraha, edited and translated by G. Bhattacharya (Calcutta, 1983). The best translation of this popular 17th century teaching text.

Secondary: J. Ganeri, “Analytic Philosophy in Early Modern India”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), E. Zalta (ed.). This is, in effect, a commentary on the Tarkasaṃgraha.

Primary: Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, trans. M. Siderits and S. Katsura (Somerville, 2013).

Secondary: J. Westerhoff, “Nāgārjuna”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

Primary: Śāntideva, The Bodhicaryāvatāra, trans. K. Crosby and A. Skilton (Oxford, 2008).

Secondary: C. Goodman, “Śāntideva”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

So what is my advice to anyone tempted to add a little Indian or Islamic philosophy to their syllabus? My advice is: Just do it!   

*Many thanks to Shalini Sinha, Nic Bommarito, Elisa Freschi, Nilanjan Das and Peter Adamson for their advice.

© Jonardon Ganeri, 2018

Image: S. H. Raza, Prakṛti Puruṣa (2006), acrylic on canvas, courtesy of The Raza Foundation-Gorbio.

Jonardon Ganeri

Jonardon Ganeri is the Bimal. K. Matilal Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is a philosopher whose work draws on a variety of philosophical traditions to construct new positions in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. His books include Attention, Not Self(2017), a study of early Buddhist theories of attention;  The Concealed Art of the Soul(2012), an analysis of the idea of a search for one’s true self; Virtual Subjects, Fugitive Selves(2020), an analysis of Fernando Pessoa’s philosophy of self; and Inwardness: An Outsiders’ Guide (2021), a review of the concept of inwardness in literature, film, poetry, and philosophy across cultures. He joined the Fellowship of the British Academy in 2015, and won the Infosys Prize in the Humanities the same year, the only philosopher to do so.