[Advaita-l] shaDdarhana and other unorthodox schools

Sylvain elisabeth-sylvain at sympatico.ca
Fri Jan 19 07:28:11 CST 2007


S. Jayanarayanan wrote :
After all, if it is such a widely prevalent view, surely he
can cite at least 5 independently published sources!

       *

For those who read French, this article is very interesting :
http://philo.pourtous.free.fr/Articles/Julien/les_frontieres_de_la_philosophie.htm


Sylvain

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "S Jayanarayanan" <sjayana at yahoo.com>
To: <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2007 9:14 PM
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] shaDdarhana and other unorthodox schools


> --- Abhilash Shastry <abhilash.shastry at yahoo.co.in> wrote:
>
>>
>> Sri Ram Garib wrote:
>>
>> > There is in fact a dominant view among philosophers
>> > that questions whether India has produced any
>> > philosophy at all!
>>
>> This is outrageous! AFAIK Indian Philosophy has earned
>> great admiration the world over. It is only some
>> mischievous hindu haters who hold such views.
>>
>
> I too would like to know Ram Garib's source for stating that there
> exists such a "dominant" view -- what is the reference for his tall
> claim? After all, if it is such a widely prevalent view, surely he
> can cite at least 5 independently published sources!
>
> There *may* be a *minority* view, but even that is disputable. One
> would have to assume that it is Ram's own personal view, flawed
> though it may be.
>
> It is quite meaningless to level the charge of "conformism" to Indian
> philosophers alone. The vast number of Western philosophers generally
> write in the context of a particular "tradition". There is the
> "Classical tradition" that begins with the ancient Greek philosophers
> -- Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Then there is the "Cartesian
> tradition" that was founded by Descartes and based on his writings.
> Modern Western philosophy is split into the "Analytic tradition"
> among the English-speaking countries, as opposed to the "Continental
> tradition" in Germany and France. There are a number of Western
> philosophers who do not specifically claim to follow a "tradition",
> but that they belong to a particular tradition is implicit in their
> writings. It is absolutely true that there is more *individualism* in
> the writings of Western philosophers, but that is all. One cannot
> dismiss a person's writings as being non-philosophical just because
> he conforms to a tradition.
>
> Besides, it is quite new to me that Western philosophers say that
> India has not produced any philosophy. Here are some reasons to
> suppose that the exact opposite is true:
>
> 1) Two important Western philosophers of the medieval era spoke
> freely about the influence of Indian philosophy on their writings --
> Schopenhauer and Voltaire.
>
> 2) Karl Jaspers, arguably one of the most important Western
> philosophers of the 20th century, has written on more than one
> occasion about Indian *philosophy*.
>
> 3) Will Durant, one of the greatest popularizers of philosophy,
> writes in the preface of his immensely famous book "The Story of
> Philosophy", about the most serious deficiency in the book:
>
> "The worst sin of all -- though the critics do not seem to have
> noticed it -- was the omission of Chinese and Hindu philosophy. Even
> a "story" of philosophy that begins with Socrates, and has nothing to
> say about Lao-tze and Confucius, Mencius and Chwang-tze, Buddha and
> Shankara, is provincially incomplete."
>
> Regards,
> Kartik
>
>
>
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