Peter Adamson - Classical Indian Philosophy: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Volume 5

This book wasnt supposed to exist. When the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps was launched as a podcast series, which became the basis of this series of books, the intention was to begin with ancient Greek thought and cover its reception in later European history as well as the Islamic world. This is the project embodied by the four books published so far, on Classical Philosophy, Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds, Philosophy in the Islamic World, and Medieval Philosophy. But as a number of listeners to the podcast rightly pointed out, this version of the project was too narrow. How can a series claim to cover philosophy without any gaps without dealing with India and China? The book you are holding in your hands (or the book you are reading on a screen) represents a step towards a more genuinely comprehensive history of philosophy. The aim is now to cover philosophy in all historical periods and in all cultures. Its an ambition that will presumably never be realized fully. But in hopes of coming as close as possible the series original author, Peter Adamson, is joining forces with several collaborators who will bring expertise on philosophical traditions from around the world.

Writing a truly global history of philosophy means dealing with a wide range of cultures that did not use the originally Greek word philosophy or produce texts that can easily be categorized as philosophical works. To include, say, African oral traditions within epistemology, philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind, but well also be looking at texts devoted to ethics, metaphysics, and more.

Not infrequently, well be coming across ideas within these various departments of philosophy that resonate with European thought. This is rather reassuring. The fact that thinkers of India wound up independently exploring some of the same options familiar questions.

Before moving on to the rest of the book, we owe you a few warnings. Despite the without any gaps slogan, it will not offer exactly the same kind of coverage found in other installments of the series. For instance, the recently published volume devoted to medieval philosophy looks at a larger number of figures and texts, and more or less in chronological order. Here, we instead organize the discussion mostly in terms of schools, not as a thinker-by-thinker or generation-by-generation narrative. This makes sense given the nature of the material, and not only because dating figures and texts is often difficult. Authors often felt strong allegiance to one movement and opposed others, and foundational texts typically need to be read together with later commentaries to make them comprehensible. In this respect our approach is more like the one taken with Hellenistic philosophy in an earlier volume.

We also need to be modest about the extent to which our discussion in this book really does avoid gaps. We are covering a vast chronological and intellectual terrain here, and aim to provide readers with a philosophically informed guide to that terrain, rather than

As in other volumes of the series, we do adhere to the without any gaps approach by touching on a broader range of topics and treatises than youll find in other introductions to the topic. Thus we will be tackling such diverse themes as Sanskrit grammar, attitudes towards gender, yurvedic medicine, cosmological conceptions of time, Tantric ritual, and classical Indian theater. (In pursuing the last two themes, we venture into chronologically later figures than those covered in the rest of the book, which is why these two chapters have been placed in the final section.) In part we cast a wider net simply in order to take up issues of intrinsic philosophical interest, but these chapters are also intended to show how ideas found in more strictly philosophical texts penetrated throughout Indian society. More generally, we hope that readers will come away from the book with an appreciation of the place of philosophy within Indian history, as well as the place of Indian culture within the history of philosophy.