"No other work treating Indian philosophy on a comparable scale contains the illuminating comparisons between doctrines of Indian schools and the thought of Western philosophy ranging from Plato to Sartre and Wittgenstein...It will, moreover, contribute to the understanding of Western philosophy by Indian thinkers and vice versa...Raju has an intimate acquaintance with a remarkable range of Western thinkers and this distinguishes his work from most of what has gone before...Raju, moreover, is himself a critical thinker and consequently, although he has (...) written a history, he treats the ideas and doctrines in a philosophical mode and his assessments of positions are often original and illuminating." -- John E. Smith, Clark Professor of Philosophy, Yale University "Purpose: To deal with Indian philosophy in a fashion reflecting the way the best German historians of philosophy deal with Western philosophy...The book is remarkable for its comprehensiveness in combination with extensive critical discussions...Raju's book...is more critical than Radhakrishnan's and more philosophical than Dasgupta's. Radhakrishnan's comments are far less philosophically sophisticated and interesting than Raju's....a monument to a senior Indian philosopher's lifelong study and thoughtful critical consideration of the great classical systems of his tradition." -- Karl H. Potter, Professor of Philosophy, University of Washington "Raju's credentials are impeccable. He is one of the few scholars in the world who could presume to write a major work on Indian thought. Accordingly, his knowledge of the Indian schools is accurate and impressive. To the extent that one of his intentions is to cast those schools in terms which make them more intelligible to western readers, his work measures up very well." -- Harold H. Oliver, Professor of Philosophy, Boston University. (shrink)

Those philosophers who gave a negative answer to all four questions were called "eel-wrigglers" by the Buddhists. It was impossible to fix their position either for approval or for rejection. They would criticize any view, positive or negative, but would not themselves hold any. And it was difficult for a serious person to enter into any controversy with them.

The aim of this paper is not to enter into a detailed discussion of the nature of the Absolute and the Individual, but to show that on the Hegelian conception of the Absolute the individual self is not saved. Hegel is fond of reiterating that his Absolute is not a bare one, but a one in many, an organic whole, a perfect and harmonious system of an infinite number of individual selves. The individual, as in Spinoza and Schelling, does not (...) lose itself in the Absolute. The latter is not a lion's den into which all animals enter but from which none returns, not a mere darkness in which all cows are black, but a system of different individuals. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical activity in India is influenced not only by India's traditional philosophy but also by Western Philosophy. One of the results of the introduction, by Macaulay, of the Western system of education into India is the popularization of the study of Western Philosophy, and Indians took to it quite enthusiastically. Sanscrit philosophical texts were at first regarded as sacred, and Europeans could have no access to them. But in time, the prejudice abated, and Sanscrit texts began to be translated (...) into English. At the beginning, the motives behind Western interest in Indian Philosophy were mainly of two kinds: the rulers wanted to understand the culture and religions of the ruled in order to govern them without hurting their religious sentiments, and thus with the least friction; and secondly. Christian missionaries wanted converts and studied the religions and philosophies of the latter in order to find out defects in them and uphold the superiority of Christianity. But whatever be the motives and however biased the scholarship in the beginning, genuine academical interest in the philosophical literature of India came to be evinced, thanks to the work of men like Max Müller, Deussen, Rhys Davids, etc., and vast stores of Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina philosophical literature were unearthed not only in India but also outside. It should, however, be said that academical philosophers of the West did not take serious interest in Indian Philosophy as such; and not a single Indian philosophical concept has entered till now the discussions of Western technical philosophy, Schopenhauer was an exception: he made serious use of the concept of Maya. (shrink)

A subject such as the present one, covering as it does most of the philosophies of the East and West, is so encompassing that one can mention all the philosophers seriously concerned with it only with difficulty. The issues deriving from our subject are also numerous; and every earnest philosopher who attempts to understand Being and its relations to Becoming and Essence faces one of the most complex of philosophic problems. Unless one is satisfied with dictionary meanings of these terms, (...) one is taken, as it were, beyond thought or at least to the limits of thought. Even if one understands Being, Becoming, and Essence through the familiar formula that x becomes y through the act of Becoming by incorporating some Essence, one finds oneself perplexed in attempting to relate the formula to our common experiences. (shrink)

SS RAMA RAO PAPPU PROFESSOR PT RAJU: EVOLUTION OF HIS PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT "In India (PT Raju) represents and is really the original initiator of, ...

I welcome the invitation of Eugene Freeman to contribute a paper on the subject of self, giving my own views. I have been devoted to comparative philosophy all my life, and I am naturally greatly influenced by Indian and Western thought. But I should warn both the Indian and Western readers against equating my views in their entirety with any of the past philosophies. It is also not possible to given an exhaustive theory of the self in a paper of (...) the present size. What is not given here may place my view in a wrong light and the reader may draw wrong conclusions. (shrink)