Contrary Thinking Selected Essays of Daya Krishna

by Krishna, Daya; Bhushan, Nalini; Garfield, Jay L.; Raveh, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9780199795550
• ISBN10: 019979555X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-09-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Daya Krishna (1924-2007) was easily the most creative and original Indian philosopher of the second half of the 20th century. His thought and philosophical energy dominated academic Indian philosophy and determined the nature of the engagement of Indian philosophy with Western philosophy during that period. He passed away recently, leaving behind an enormous corpus of published work on a wide range of philosophical topics, as well as a great deal of incomplete, nearly-complete and complete-but-as-yet-unpublished work. Daya Krishna's thought and publications address a broad range of philosophical issues, including issues of global philosophical importance that transcend considerations of particular traditions; issues particular to Indian philosophy; and issues at the intersection of Indian and Western philosophy, especially questions about the philosophy of language and ontology that emerge in the context of his Samvada project that brought together Western philosophers and Nyaya pandits to discuss questions in the philosophy of language and metaphysics. The volume editors have organized the volume as a set of ten couplets and triplets. Each draws together papers from different periods in Daya Krishna's life: some take different approaches to the same problem or text; in some cases, the second paper references and takes issue with arguments developed in the first; in still others, Daya Krishna addresses very different topics, but using the same distinctive philosophical methodology. Each set is introduced by one of the editors. These couplets are framed by two of Daya Krishna's finest metaphilosophical essays, one that introduces his approach, and one that draws some of his grand morals about the discipline. Daya Krishna's daughter, Professor Shail Mayaram of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies contributes a preface, and Professor Arindam Chakrabarti, a longtime colleague of Daya Krisha and a collaborator on some of his most important philosophical ventures has written the introduction.

Author Biography

Nalini Bhushan is Professor of Philosophy, Smith College

Jay L. Garfield is Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy, Smith College and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy and several other books with Oxford University Press

Daniel Raveh is Lecturer in Philosophy, Tel-Aviv University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface, Shail Mayalam
Introduction, Arindam Chakrabarti
I. Entrée
1. Thinking vs. Thought: Strategies for Conceptual Creativity

II. Thinking about Thinking
2. Thinking Creatively about the Creative Act
3. Thinking with Causality about Causality
III.Samvad
4. Comparative Philosophy: What it is and what it ought to be
5. Apoha and Samavaya in Kantian Perspective
6. Is Tattvam Asi the Same Type of Identity Statement as The Morning Star is the Evening Star?
IV.Vaidalya
7. Rasa: The Bane of Indian Aesthetics
8. Substance: The Bane of Philosophy
V. Negation
9. Negation - Can Philosophy ever recover from it?
10. Some Problems regarding thinking about Abhava
VI. Knowledge
11. Knowledge: Whose is it? What is it? And why has it to be true?
12. Definition, Deception and the Enterprise of Knowledge
VII. Truth
13. Madness, Reason and Truth
14. Illusion, Hallucination and the problem of Truth
15. Reality, Imagination and Truth
VIII. Indian Philosophical Reflections
16. Shockproof, Evidence-proof, Argument-proof World of Sampradayika
Scholarship of Indian Philosophy
17. Can the Analysis of Adhyasa Ever Lead to an Advaitic Conclusion?
IX. Sruti
18. Is the doctrine of Arthavada compatible with the idea of Sruti?
19. The Mimamsaka versus the Yajñika: some further problems in the interpretation of Sruti
X. Veda
20. Rg Veda: The Mantra, the Sukta and the Mandala or The Rsi, the Devata, the Chanda--
The Structure of the Text and the Problems regarding it
21. The Vedic Corpus and the two Sutra-Texts, concerned with it; The Mimamsa Sutra
and the Brahma Sutra
XI. Transgressions
22. Did the Gopis Really Love Krishna?
23. An Alleged Anecdote Revisited: Sankara in the King's Body
XII. Free Thinking
24. Freeing Philosophy from the 'Prison-House' of 'I-Centricity'
25. Freedom, Reason, Ethics and Aesthetics
Envoi
26. Eros, Nomos, Logos

Index