History of Philosophy: India, Africana, China

HPI 47 - Jan Westerhoff on Nagarjuna

A discussion with Jan Westerhoff, an expert on the great Buddhist thinker Nāgārjuna.

HPI 46 - No Four Ways About It - Nagarjuna’s Tetralemma

Nāgārjuna’s four-fold argument scheme, the tetralemma (catuṣkoṭi).

HPI 45 - Motion Denied - Nagarjuna on Change

Nāgārjuna applies his emptiness theory to motion, change, and cognition.

HPI 44 - It All Depends - Nagarjuna on Emptiness

Nāgārjuna founds the Madhyāmaka (“middle way”) Buddhist tradition by “relinquishing all views” and arguing that everything is “empty.”

HPI 43 - We Beg to Differ - the Buddhists and Jains

An introduction to philosophical developments in Buddhism and Jainism up to the time of Dignāga in the sixth century AD.

HPI 42 - In Good Taste - The Aesthetics of Rasa

Bharata’s Nāṭya-Śāstra and later works from Kashmir explore the idea of rasa, an emotional response to drama, music, and poetry.

HPI 41 - Monima Chadha on Indian Philosophy of Mind

Monima Chadha takes Peter through Buddhist-Hindu debates over mind and self.

HPI 40 - Mind out of Matter - Materialist Theories of the Self

Pāyasi and the Cārvāka anticipate modern-day theories of mind by arguing that there is no independent soul; rather thought emerges from the body.

HPI 39 - The Wolf’s Footprint - Indian Naturalism

The Cārvāka or Lokāyata tradition rejects the efficacy of ritual and belief in the afterlife, and restricts knowledge to the realm of sense-perception.

HPI 38 - A Day in the Life - Theories of Time

Ancient Indian cosmology and the Vaiśeṣika defense of the reality of time and space.