Affirmative action as a state policy is one of the powerful ways of empowering the underprivileged in the society. While such a policy is aimed at lifting the economic and social condition of the underprivileged, this comes with acts that are discriminatory and exclusionary. Yet these acts are termed as positive discrimination. Certain sections of the society are excluded from having access to economic resources and opportunities, while these privileges are earmarked for another section of the society considered marginalized and (...) underprivileged. This is being done guided by the principle of distributive justice. While the principle carries sound moral basis, conceptualizing the deprived and mode of empowerment varies with states and society, thus throws up several challenges. Indian experience draws challenges of negotiating the dual presence of individual and collective in the theorizing—idea of empowerment is directed to an individual, but the identity of the individual is based on his/her social identity. The dual challenge of uplifting a caste/community through empowering an individual belonging to the group has raised several questions in terms of achieving the goal of distributive justice. While the principle of distributive justice aims at empowering the least privileged within an underprivileged group/community, this has not been an easy task. After seventy years of reservation policy a lot more initiative is still called for. There is perhaps need for deeper philosophical deliberation on the nature of empowerment, distributive justice, and the underlying moral foundations. Meaningful policy intervention must be built on well thought out theoretical deliberations. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy, various attempts have been made in relation to placing our minds or mental states in the natural world or nature. In this context, there is a clear divide between naturalism and anti-naturalism, materialism and immaterialism, etc. Driven by the influence of naturalistic turn in philosophy and scientism, many philosophers have tried to put forth various naturalistic accounts of the relationship between mind and natural world. However, many of these accounts are naturalistic based on the modern scientific conception (...) of nature which has been hailed as the dominating conception of nature. John McDowell in his magnum opus Mind and World, while criticizing modern scientific account of the relationship between mind and world, has not resorted back to anti-naturalism. Instead, he has tried to give us certain clues to develop an account of an alternative form of naturalism which is at the same time radically different from both scientific naturalism and mysterious anti-naturalism. In this paper, I will try to search for an alternative naturalism following McDowell and examine to what extent this account is tenable. In this context, we shall discuss various approaches to understand the relation between reason/normativity (which is one of the significant constituting elements of our mind) and natural world. (shrink)

What we understand by nationalism is the idea of supporting one’s country, people, culture and sovereignty of the nation. It believes in self-rule, with an objective to maintain the national unity and solidarity. It also encourages pride in national achievements and is closely linked with patriotism. One who dedicates his life to promoting the above objectives for the glory of his nation is considered as a nationalist. Swami Vivekananda who has dedicated his short, but meaningful life for the upliftment of (...) his fellow country-men and worked hard for the freedom of his motherland from political, religious, economic and cultural bondage, for which he can rightly be called an epitome of nationalism or a true nationalist. In this article, I shall focus on his dedications and contributions for his nation and human race at large and justify him to be called a true nationalist. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a close comparative reading of a creation myth from chapter 1 of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad, which opens with the startling statement “ātmaivedam agra āsīt”, “in the beginning there was the self (ātman)”. I read this classical text with Śaṅkara, its foremost commentator, in dialogue with an ensemble of Indologists (Wilhelm Halbfass, Greg Bailey and Frederick Smith) and theorists (Walter Benjamin, Ramchandra Gandhi and Hélène Cixous), and vis-à-vis, the creation myth narrated in chapter 1 of the Book (...) of Genesis. My aim is to decipher the intrinsic relation between identity, difference and diversity underlying the Upaniṣadic myth, and the ambivalent relationship (fear and desire) between self and other depicted here. The Upaniṣad presents a narrative of “the self first”, and implied is the aspiration to retrieve and rediscover this first self, the ātman, which precedes and encompasses everything else. I challenge this narrative drawing on Mukund Lath’s paper (J World Philos 4:6–23, 2003/2018). According to Lath, being is becoming, and change is a precondition of identity-formation. Identity, he argues, does not only accommodate but also invites change and plurality. Identity for Lath is a matter of creation, not restoration. It is pregnant with the future, not obsessed with premordiality. Lath’s unique case study for his counter-Upaniṣadic discussion of identity and self is classical Indian music, rāga music. (shrink)

Āsakti has its roots in the ancient Indian knowledge system. It precipitates the concept of attachment in the Indian perspective. The following paper explores the psychological perspective of āsakti from the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita while maintaining its philosophical purpose and nature. Āsakti hinders the path of self-realization; hence, from the psycho-philosophical lens, its inquiry with scientific understanding is important for spiritual growth. Āsakti can be understood as a river with five tributaries. Each tributary branches out of the river as an (...) independent water body, but has its traces though in the river. Āsakti is a combination of Rāga (approach), Dveṣa (aversion) and Ahaṁkāra (ego focus), is related to the operation of Triguṇa, moving from āsakti to anāsakti brings peace, happiness and health. In its unregulated form, āsakti leads to intellectual, mental and spiritual decay. Its control and regulation leads to anāsakti, spiritual growth, liberation from bondages and surrenderance to the supreme power. (shrink)

The date of Ādi Śaṅkarācārya has been one of the unsolved problems of Indian Philosophy. He is generally accepted to have lived from 788 to 820 CE and is thus assigned from the end of the eighth century to the beginning of the ninth century. So far scholars who have worked on this problem have consulted his hagiographies and his works to determine his date. However, they have not studied the date of Ādi Śaṅkarācārya by placing him in the context (...) of the development of religion in South India. Nor have they consulted South Indian sources, especially Tamiḻ texts, to see if there are any references to his philosophy. In this paper, I study the problem of the date of Ādi Śaṅkarācārya by consulting Tamiḻ sources and the hitherto less consulted epic Śivarahasya. I also connect his date with the emergence of Śaivism as a popular religion in South India. Based on my study, I place Ādi Śaṅkarācārya in the fifth century BCE and as a result, I emphasize the importance of redating Hindu scriptures, especially the Vedas, as Ādi Śaṅkarācārya is the earliest commentator. (shrink)

Sri Aurobindo is one of the most prominent figures in the Indian Philosophy of twentieth century and yet we barely find any mention of his work in the philosophy circles. He has written extensively on metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics. Sri Aurobindo’s work is all-encompassing and carries marks of a deep yogic insight into both the individual self (with all its parts and their integrated working) and the universe that ultimately shares a relation of identity with the individual in secret. He (...) talks about a world-process that contains evolution qualified with involution. It is one of the most unique features of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy. He deals with the questions of ignorance also in the most satisfying way. Sri Aurobindo has an integral vision that sees everything in the movement of one and develops the methods and practices of Integral Yoga. In his yogic vision, he not only tries to solve the problems of humanity but also attempts to make a very bold move of transforming the whole earthly existence into a divine existence through one large stride. The epistemological discussion we find in his work is deeply connected with his metaphysics. He articulates the limits and extents of reason and senses and attempts to surpass them. Sri Aurobindo is not an armchair philosopher; he attempts to salvage the human condition by empowering humanity to consciously guide the march of human evolution towards a divine future. The boldness of his vision, the originality of his philosophical work is spectacular. In this paper, I will discuss his World-process, i.e. the evolution qualified with involution. I will also discuss the epistemological foundation of his philosophy, cosmology and integral yoga psychology. For the sake of clarity in understanding, the paper is divided into five major sections starting with an introduction. Integralism is a central idea in Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy and I have tried to do justice with it throughout this paper. In the end, the paper attempts to deals with three main themes—cosmology, integral yoga psychology and integral experience. All these three themes shall bring out—The integral experience of Sri Aurobindo is deeply intertwined with his cosmology and yogic psychology and shall not be seen in isolation. Integral experience of reality is also intertwined and works in tandem with his Integral Yoga. There is a yogic exploration of oneness between the self and world that informs and shapes both his philosophical and yogic endeavors. The rationale behind undertaking this study is to question whether the observations of the physical world from the standpoint of yogic experience could suggest some new theoretical framework for the metaphysical ontology of the world. Taking perspectives from the states of consciousness described by Sri Aurobindo may furnish us with a deeper understanding of the material and metaphysical character of physical categories, such as matter, energy, force, space, and time. This paper however is an introductory overview of Aurobindo’s relevance for cosmology, psychology and integral experience which provides a philosophical framework to reinterpret and arrive at a synthetic metaphysics. (shrink)

In the Buddhist tradition, there is an expansive collection of texts that explore the topic of ethics, addressing moral questions concerning the right and wrong behaviors, virtues, vices, and so forth. However, when examining the main texts of this tradition, we find an absence of a structured moral philosophy that systematically and critically analyzes moral values and principles. Therefore, Buddhist scholars have responded in different ways to the perplexing situation in which Buddhism largely lacks an explicit theory in moral philosophy. (...) Some scholars argue that we should read Buddhist moral teachings as one of the contemporary ethical theories, such as consequentialism or virtue ethics. Damien Keown is one of the scholars who claims that “virtue ethics” is the best way to understand Buddhist ethics. This paper analyzes and critiques Damien Kewon’s reading of Buddhist moral teachings as Virtue ethics. I argue that such interpretation poses problems, primarily because it may overlook key aspects of Buddhist beliefs deemed inconsequential to contemporary ethical debates, and secondly, it could result in the imposition of non-authentic Buddhist ideas on Buddhist ethics. (shrink)

Proponents of Veritism believe that truth is the sole non-instrumental epistemic good. This view is often taken to entail that all truths should be of equal epistemic value. Hence, it is put under stress by the presence of trivial truths: truths to which we attach relatively little or no epistemic value. Pritchard, in the defense of Veritism, has tried to argue that the best way to understand the implications of Veritism is to think in terms of how an intellectually virtuous (...) inquirer would pursue truth. Furthermore, he thinks that such an inquirer would prefer weighty truths and set aside trivial ones. As such, he thinks that our epistemic disregard for trivial truths is just to be expected given Veritism. We argue that Pritchard’s defense of Veritism fails, and the problem of trivial truths remains a significant challenge for Veritism. (shrink)

In Seeing Things as They Are (Searle 2015), Searle developed a direct realist’s theory of perception. According to direct realism, physical objects are directly and immediately perceived. Searle claims that Berkeley’s theory of perception goes against direct realism. For Searle, Berkeley’s theory suggests that only subjective experiences (ideas) are directly and immediately perceived, not physical objects. Contrary to Searle, G. S. Pappas claims that Berkeley’s theory of perception is consistent with the view that physical objects are immediately perceivable (Pappas 1982; (...) Pappas 1987). Given the conflicting interpretations of Berkeley’s theory of perception, this paper attempts to defend Searle’s position on Berkeley’s theory of perception. It refutes Pappas’ interpretation by arguing that he is inconsistent with Berkeley’s theses of ontological phenomenalism and heterogeneity thesis. (shrink)

This paper offers a descriptive account of the transition in evolutionary ethics with reference to some major works from ethics, sociobiology, moral psychology, and primatology. The causes and nature of the transition are discussed by making a distinction between traditional and recent trends in evolutionary ethics enabling us to understand the significance of contemporary evolutionary ethics. The study is gradually directed toward a crucial question of ethics that is the place of reason in morality and what evolutionary ethics implies for (...) Kantian ethics in the question of reason. Many advocates of evolutionary ethics and evolutionary moral psychology claim that reason plays no role or plays a very insignificant role in morality. Such assertion often leads to a rejection of Kantian ethics in particular and cognitivism in general. In this backdrop, the scope of reconciling evolutionary ethics with Kantian ethics as proposed by Frederick Rauscher is analyzed. This paper is thus an attempt to expose the significance of evolutionary ethics with reference to the relation of reason and morality. (shrink)

Contemporary poststructural and hermeneutical theories emphasize the prereflective opacity of the self and the consequent inarticulateness concerning the deep prereflective layers (‘prejudices’) of self-understanding. Some of such ontologically significant prejudices, some hermeneutical views hold, are inescapable and so the self cannot reflectively refuse or overcome them. This paper proposes the Hegelian notion of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology as the restless, unreflective–reflective negation of its own nothingness or contingent, open givenness as an alternative that both accepts the hermeneutical insight concerning the (...) deep prereflective layers of self-understanding and rejects the inescapability of ontologically significant ‘prejudices’. Hegelian self-consciousness is minimally reflective, even though it is intertwined with its prereflective, ritualistic basis and its historical situatedness. The paper depicts the reflective dimension of the prereflectively grounded Hegelian self by explicating the meaning of the Phenomenology’s conception of Bildung as ‘cultural participation’. The self that is continuously remade through its dialectical relation (cultural participation) to the social substance or Spirit is minimally reflective in the sense that it sees itself reflected or externalized in the world of its engagement, and because it inserts its own conception upon the world by participating in it. This reconceptualization of the dialectic between self and social substance, thus, escapes overemphasizing the prereflective layers of the self’s hermeneutical background without falling back on the Cartesian deworlded self of reflection and thought. (shrink)

This paper focuses on one of the major controversies of collective action, i.e. Shared Agency. The objective of my paper is to explain the relevance of Shared Agency in the Theory of Collective Action where I have dealt with questions like—Is it possible to consider one as an agent or as the same agent when she performs in a shared action? How can we talk of shared agency, even when an action is being performed by different individuals in a group (...) or of a group? Where is the notion of “agency” located in a shared action? Based on the seminal paper, “Shared Intention” by Michael Bratman, my objective here is to present and analyse the notion of shared agency in terms of meshing sub-plans and the impossibility of reducing the agency displayed in a shared action to a mere summation of intentions of individual agents, where the essence of shared agency lies in cooperation. (shrink)

Among the means of valid cognition, the one which appears first in every enumeration, which was considered as being the basis of all other means of knowledge and which was considered as a legitimate method of knowledge by all schools of Indian thought is perception (pratyakṣa). With regard to perception, we can naturally expect such questions as ‘what is it to perceive’ or ‘what do we mean when we say that something is perceived’. It is generally believed that the philosophical (...) theories of perceptions are really theories about what we mean by ordinary perceptual statements. In considering our knowledge about the external world, the philosopher tends to consider the way in which perception can and does provide us with the knowledge and the nature, extent and certainty of knowledge it provides us with. It is a well acknowledged fact that perception is the fundamental source of knowledge. In Buddhist epistemology, a systematic discussion on perception is found in the writings of Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya with vṛitti, who belongs to Yogācāra school of Buddhism of Mahayana tradition. An attempt has been made in this paper to explain and examine critically the first chapter of Pramāṇasamuccaya with vṛitti, i.e., perception with special reference to Non-Buddhist schools, namely Nyāyayikas, Vaiśeṣikas, Sāṁkhyans and Mīmāṁsakas. To explain it, the paper has been divided into three sections. Section I deals with Dignāga’s theory of perception and examination of non-Buddhist school's theory of perception, section II deals with Dignāga’s examination of nature of Perception with reference to non-Buddhists schools and section III deals with conclusion. (shrink)

Ideas such as “I am born a labor, poor, a hereditary syphilitic/unhandy” are ones that people tend to resort to as excuses when they feel as if the odds of life are stacked against them and characterized it either “fate” or punishment. In every life situation, an individual finds a choice. In the contemporary world, human life faces boundary situations (COVID) and messy lived experiences such as paralysis, which have different consequences for different people. However, life seems more difficult for (...) the less fortunate to escape their predicament and enjoy a better life. The presence of difficult human conditions in the world brings some serious questions concerning our fate, facticity, situation, and freedom into a sharp focus. In this connection, the paper attempts to rethink Sartre’s idea of absolute freedom in the context of situations that Sartre characterizes as facticity. Since Sartre affirms that humanity encounters certain restrictions on the road of freedom he also claims that freedom alone may change the situation of an individual. The study, however, tries to explore how an individual enjoys freedom despite certain restrictions and limitations and explain how both of these points of view are valid. The work, however, interprets Sartre’s idea of absolute freedom in terms of existential counseling to transcend facticity and break the barriers that prevent people from living a free, authentic, and worthwhile life. (shrink)

In this paper, we will discuss solipsism and the limits of experience in the light of Wittgenstein’s TLP. One cannot draw the limits of experience without bringing in the notion of the experiencer. That is to say, the notion of self is very relevant to the discussion on the limits of experience. Solipsism means that ‘I’ is the only reality, and what I experience is all that I could know. We will focus on solipsism from two points of view, the (...) empirical point of view and the transcendental point of view. The empirical approach to solipsism makes the self as a matter of its experience. However, from the transcendental point of view, the transcendental or metaphysical self becomes the transcendental ground of our experiences. In the second section, we will discuss the relationship between solipsism and realism. Then how the self is related to the world will be discussed in the third section. For Wittgenstein, the self ‘I' is neither causally nor logically related to the world. This self is the metaphysical subject, and it is the limit of the world. In the fourth section, we will discuss the importance of the limit-self. The limit-self is not the matter or object of experience; rather, it is the ground of our world's experience. For Wittgenstein, it is not an item of the world; rather, it is the limit of the world. The limit-self cannot be described in language, and thus it is beyond our language. It is the limit of our language and also the limit of the world. Then, we will critically analyze the limit of experience, and the metaphysical self is placed on the limit of experience. This self is the non-solipsistic self. (shrink)

Ian Shapiro proposes a representative government that bases its understanding of truth on mature enlightenment philosophy. He examines various enlightenment and anti-enlightenment theories to substantiate his arguments in favour of verifiability as the criterion for defining truth. Contending such a concept of truth he specifies that it is possible only within a representative democracy as it can systematically undermine socially built readymade systems. To examine Shapiro’s fallibilist approach to truth, this paper critically analyses his concept of truth-telling for legitimizing a (...) government and contrasts it with Plato’s explanation of truth-telling. It argues that Shapiro’s procedural mechanisms that override social background presuppose uniform rationality backed by power systems. (shrink)

The complexity and fluidity of emotions in the epic of Mahābhārata present before us an interesting case for delving into the phenomenology of emotions. In the rationalist tradition of Kant, emotions are considered as an impediment to moral discernment. The rationalist account of emotions considers it as an animal instinct which needs to be controlled through the exercise of Reason. The paper problematizes the rationalist interpretation of emotions mainly on two counts. First, it ignores the evaluative content of the emotions (...) and considers it as a non-cognitive element. Second, it also overlooks the productive role of various emotions like guilt, shame, remorse in moral deliberation. The paper critically analyzes the episode of Yudhiṣṭhira’s grief in Śānti Parva and argues that the grief of Yudhiṣṭhira cannot be explained as personal loss. Rather, Yudhiṣṭhira’s grief should be understood as a case of moral conflict where a moral agent finds it difficult to justify his moral choices. Yudhiṣṭhira’s analysis of the futility of war and the condemnation of violence should be understood as the evaluative perspective offered by his emotions. The phenomenological analysis of Yudhiṣṭhira’s grief allows us to understand the significance of emotions in constituting the moral perspective on any conflicting situation. Hence, emotions cannot be relegated to the domain of irrationality rather they become the site where the truth unveils itself. (shrink)