First published in 2001. The five volumes of this series collect together some of the most significant modern contributions to the study of Indian philosophy. Volume 2: Logic and Philosophy of Language is concerned with those parts of Indian pramd-a theory that Western philosophers would count as logic and philosophy of language. Indian philosophers and linguists were much concerned with philosophical issues to do with language, especially with theories of meaning, while the Indian logicia...

In the second edition of this groundbreaking text in non-Western philosophy, fifteen experts introduce some of the great philosophical traditions in the world. The dozen essays collected here unveil exciting, sophisticated philosophical traditions that are too often neglected in the western world. The contributors include the leading scholars in their fields, but they write for students coming to these concepts for the first time. Building on revisions and updates to the original essays on...

*SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*'There to fill the Sapiens-size hole in your life' ObserverIn this groundbreaking global overview of philosophy, Julian Baggini travels the world to provide a wide-ranging map of human thought.One of the great unexplained wonders of human history is that written philosophy flowered entirely separately in China, India and Ancient Greece at more or less the s...

In The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism, Tariq Ramadan embarks on a journey to uncover the profound truths that bind us together.In a world so full of different beliefs and viewpoints, how can we find peace in our shared humanity?Acclaimed thinker and philosopher Tariq Ramadan explores universal ideas such as love, respect, truth and tolerance, and examines questions such as how can men and women relate to each other? What is...

Every birth brings with it pain, suffering and death. Are life's joys and pleasures worth its costs? This book examines a set of perspectives - religious, philosophical, and literary - which find human existence deeply flawed and unacceptable. Its modern expression by philosophers Benatar and Zapffe as anti-natalism needs to be taken seriously in our choice whether to procreate or not.

Spoken by eighty million people in South Asia and a diaspora that stretches across the globe, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother tongue for so many speakers. David Shulman presents a comprehensive cultural history of Tamil—language, literature, and civilization—emphasizing how Tamil speakers and poets have understood the unique features of their language over its long history. Impetuous, musical, whimsical, in constant ...

Randall Collins traces the movement of philosophical thought in ancient Greece, China, Japan, India, the medieval Islamic and Jewish world, medieval Christendom, and modern Europe. What emerges from this history is a social theory of intellectual change, one that avoids both the reduction of ideas to the influences of society at large and the purely contingent local construction of meanings. Instead, Collins focuses on the social locations where sophisticated ideas are formed: the patterns...

Polytheisms may well be the world’s most undervalued cultural resource. From the dawn of history until quite recently, the default religious orientation on the planet was to recognize an open-ended plurality of unique divinities that manifest in every realm of natural and social life. By hosting a plurality of Gods, polytheistic civilizations exhibit maximum diversity in maximum solidarity each one is a multiverse. Polytheism has been at the heart of the most ancient and resilient civiliza...

A modern take on this age-old branch of philosophyA much-needed introductory level book on this widely studied subject.Isaac Asimov said that "whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse." Such quandaries are the bread and butter of philosophy of religion. Questioning why evil exists, whether God could create a stone he couldn’t lift, and if the wonder of life suggests a Creator, this fascinating branch of philosophy is ...

World Philosophies presents in one volume a superb introduction to all the world’s major philosophical and religious traditions. Covering all corners of the globe, Ninian Smart’s work offers a comprehensive and global philosophical and religious picture.In this revised and expanded second edition, a team of distinguished scholars, assembled by the editor Oliver Leaman, have brought Ninian Smart’s masterpiece up to date for the twenty-first century. Chapters have been revis...

The vast majority of books on Buddhism describe the Buddha using the word enlightened, rather than awakened. This bias has resulted in Buddhism becoming generally perceived as the eponymous religion of enlightenment.Beyond Enlightenment is a sophisticated study of some of the underlying assumptions involved in the study of Buddhism (especially, but not exclusively, in the West). It investigates the tendency of most scholars to ground their study of Buddhism in these partic...

Arguing that intellectual movements, such as deconstruction, postsecular theory, and political theology, have different implications for cultures and societies that live with the debilitating effects of past imperialisms, Arvind Mandair unsettles the politics of knowledge construction in which the category of "religion" continues to be central. Through a case study of Sikhism, he launches an extended critique of religion as a cultural universal. At the same time, he presents a portrait of ...