Desire and Motivation in Indian Philosophy

Desire and Motivation in Indian Philosophy
Author: Christopher G. Framarin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2009-03-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134043430

Desireless action is typically cited as a criterion of the liberated person in classical Indian texts. Contemporary authors argue with near unanimity that since all action is motivated by desire, desireless action is a contradiction. They conclude that desireless action is action performed without certain desires; other desires are permissible. In this book, the author surveys the contemporary literature on desireless action and argues that the arguments for the standard interpretation are unconvincing. He translates, interprets, and evaluates passages from a number of seminal classical Sanskrit texts, and argues that the doctrine of desireless action should indeed be taken literally, as the advice to act without any desire at all. The author argues that the theories of motivation advanced in these texts are not only consistent, but plausible. This book is the first in-depth analysis of the doctrine of desireless action in Indian philosophy. It serves as a reference to both contemporary and classical literature on the topic, and will be of interest to scholars of Indian philosophy, religion, the Bhagavadgita and Hinduism.

Desire and Motivation in Indian Philosophy

Desire and Motivation in Indian Philosophy
Author: Christopher G. Framarin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2009-03-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134043449

This book advances an original interpretation of the orthodox Indian theories of motivation in light of the Indian prohibition on desire and evaluates its consequences for Indian ethics and soteriology.

The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy

The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy
Author: Jonardon Ganeri
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 841
Release: 2017
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199314624

The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy tells the story of philosophy in India through a series of exceptional individual acts of philosophical virtuosity. It brings together forty leading international scholars to record the diverse figures, movements, and approaches that constitute philosophy in the geographical region of the Indian subcontinent, a region sometimes nowadays designated South Asia. The volume aims to be ecumenical, drawing from different locales, languages, and literary cultures, inclusive of dissenters, heretics and sceptics, of philosophical ideas in thinkers not themselves primarily philosophers, and reflecting India's north-western borders with the Persianate and Arabic worlds, its north-eastern boundaries with Tibet, Nepal, Ladakh and China, as well as the southern and eastern shores that afford maritime links with the lands of Theravda Buddhism. Indian Philosophy has been written in many languages, including Pali, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Persian, Kannada, Punjabi, Hindi, Tibetan, Arabic and Assamese. From the time of the British colonial occupation, it has also been written in English. It spans philosophy of law, logic, politics, environment and society, but is most strongly associated with wide-ranging discussions in the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology and metaphysics (how we know and what is there to be known), ethics, metaethics and aesthetics, and metaphilosophy. The reach of Indian ideas has been vast, both historically and geographically, and it has been and continues to be a major influence in world philosophy. In the breadth as well as the depth of its philosophical investigation, in the sheer bulk of surviving texts and in the diffusion of its ideas, the philosophical heritage of India easily stands comparison with that of China, Greece, the Latin west, or the Islamic world.

Puspika: Tracing Ancient India Through Texts and Traditions

Puspika: Tracing Ancient India Through Texts and Traditions
Author: Giovanni Ciotti
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2014-01-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1782974156

Puspika 2 is the outcome of the second International Indology Graduate Research Symposium and presents the results of recent research by young scholars into pre-modern South Asian cultures with papers covering a variety of topics related to the intellectual traditions of the region. Focusing on textual sources in the languages in which they were composed, different disciplinary perspectives are offered on intellectual history, linguistics, philosophy, literary criticism and religious studies.

Puṣpikā: Tracing Ancient India Through Texts and Traditions

Puṣpikā: Tracing Ancient India Through Texts and Traditions
Author: Giovanni Ciotti
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2014-01-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1782974164

Puspika 2 is the outcome of the second International Indology Graduate Research Symposium and presents the results of recent research by young scholars into pre-modern South Asian cultures with papers covering a variety of topics related to the intellectual traditions of the region. Focusing on textual sources in the languages in which they were composed, different disciplinary perspectives are offered on intellectual history, linguistics, philosophy, literary criticism and religious studies.

Hinduism and Environmental Ethics

Hinduism and Environmental Ethics
Author: Christopher G. Framarin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2014-02-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317918940

This book argues that the standard arguments for and against the claim that certain Hindu texts and traditions attribute direct moral standing to animals and plants are unconvincing. It presents careful, extensive, and original interpretations of passages from the Manusmrti (law), the Mahābhārata (literature), and the Yogasūtra (philosophy), and argues that these texts attribute direct moral standing to animals and plants for at least three reasons: they are sentient, they are alive, and they possess a range of other relevant attributes and abilities. This book is of interest to scholars of Hinduism and the environment, religion and the environment, Hindu and/or Buddhist philosophy more broadly, and environmental ethics.

Handbook of Indian Psychology

Handbook of Indian Psychology
Author: K. Ramakrishna Rao
Publisher: Foundation Books
Total Pages: 676
Release: 2008
Genre: Psychology
ISBN:

Indian psychology is a distinct psychological tradition rooted in the native Indian ethos. It manifests in the multitude of practices prevailing in the Indian subcontinent for centuries. Unlike the mainstream psychology, Indian psychology is not overwhelmingly materialist-reductionist in character. It goes beyond the conventional third-person forms of observation to include the study of first-person phenomena such as subjective experience in its various manifestations and associated cognitive phenomena. It does not exclude the investigation of extraordinary states of consciousness and exceptional human abilities. The quintessence of Indian nature is its synthetic stance that results in a magical bridging of dichotomies such as natural and supernatural, secular and sacred, and transactional and transcendental. The result is a psychology that is practical, positive, holistic and inclusive. The Handbook of Indian Psychology is an attempt to explore the concepts, methods and models of psychology systematically from the above perspective. The Handbook is the result of the collective efforts of more than thirty leading international scholars with interdisciplinary backgrounds. In thirty-one chapters, the authors depict the nuances of classical Indian thought, discuss their relevance to contemporary concerns, and draw out the implications and applications for teaching, research and practice of psychology.

India and Europe

India and Europe
Author: Wilhelm Halbfass
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
Total Pages: 623
Release: 2017-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 8120807367

This book explores the intellectual encounter of India and the West from pre-Alexandrian antiquity until the present. It examines India's role in European philosophical thought, as well as the reception of European philosophy in Indian t

A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy

A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy
Author: Dr. Mahesh Kumar Singh
Publisher: K.K. Publications
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-08-14
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

A CRITICAL SURVEY OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY Indian philosophy distinctly exhibits a spiritual bent. The essence of religion is not dogmatic in India. Here, religion develops as philosophy progressively scales higher planes. Some of the fundamentals expressed in the Indian philosophy and the Western philosophy may be similar. However, Indian philosophy differs from the Western philosophy on several counts. While the Western philosophy deals with metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, ethics etc. separately, Indian philosophy takes a comprehensive view of all these topics. Indian philosophy is distinctive in its application of analytical rigour to metaphysical problems and goes into very precise detail about the nature of reality, the structure and function of the human psyche and how the relationship between the two have important implications for human salvation. Rishis centred philosophy on an assumption that there is a unitary underlying order in the universe which is all pervasive and omniscient. The efforts by various schools were concentrated on explaining this order and the metaphysical entity at its source. The concept of natural law provided a basis for understanding questions of how life on earth should be lived. The sages urged humans to discern this order and to live their lives in accordance with it. This book contains plenty of substance for scholars, but the writing has the verve and clarity to seize and entertain the general reader as well. Contents: • Niskamakarma and Lokasamgraha • Good, Right, Justice • Ethical Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism • Ethical Realism and Intuitionism • The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature • The Existence of Human Rights

A Conceptual-analytic Study of Classical Indian Philosophy of Morals

A Conceptual-analytic Study of Classical Indian Philosophy of Morals
Author: Rajendra Prasad
Publisher: Concept Publishing Company
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2008
Genre: Ethics
ISBN: 9788180695445

Using recontructive ideas available in classical Indian original works, this book makes a departure in the style of modern writings on Indian moral philosophy. It presents Indian ethics, in an objective, secular, and wherever necessary, critical manner as a systematic, down-to-earth, philosophical account of moral values, virtues, rights and obligations. It thereby refutes the claim that Indian philosophy has no ethics as well as the counter-claim that it transcends ethics. It demonstrates that moral living proves that the individual, his society and the world are really real and not only taken to be real for behavioral purposes as the Advaitins hold, the self is amoral being a non-agent, moksa is not a moral value, and the Karmic theory, because of involving belief in rebirth, does not fuarantee that the doer of an action is also the experiencer of its results, contrary to what is commonly held, and Indian ethics can sustain itself even if such notions are dropped. Rajendra Prasad calls Indian ethics organismic because, along with ethical concerns, it also covers issues related to professions, politics, administration, sex, environment, etc. Therefore, in one format it is theoretical and applied, normative and metaethical, humanistic and non-humanistic, etc., of course, within the limits of the then cognitive enquiry.