The Phaedo’s intense preoccupation with the notions of self-liberation and self-transcendence in the face of death is strikingly reminiscent of Hindu and Buddhist philosophies. It is therefore not surprising that comparative philosophers have shown great interest in comparing this particular Platonic work to various South Asian texts: The Phaedo has been compared to the philosophy underlying yoga and Patanjali, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta, the canonical account of the Buddha’s final days. Of particular relevance is the Katha Upanishad, which shares with the Phaedo enough common features, both textual and structural and thematic, for a comparative analysis to be fruitful. These striking resemblances enable me to bring important dissimilarities in the dialogical processes into focus— dissimilarities which have much to convey to us philosophically. These dissimilarities demonstrate that although the two traditions engaged in transformative ideas and practices that centered on the liberation of the soul, there is still a substantial difference between the nature of the philosophy celebrated by the Greeks and the mystical thought developed by the Upanishadic sages.

Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja were not solely textists; nor were they merely existential metaphysicians; nor were they a combination of both. Rather, their epistemologies involve a sixfold use of vitally important sacred and secular pramāṇa-s as instruments in orchestrated fashion where symphonies of their respective ontologies are given to their listeners. With the two Vedāntins, no pramāṇa is in every case the lead instrument. Rather, they employ any of the six as lead instrument at various times, depending on the pedagogic and/or apologetic context, while the others support the melody played by the lead. The result for both teachers is a melodic epistemological opposed-to-the-other composition characterized by careful thought and use of the six pramāṇa-s, all with the goal of defending their respective traditions of Vedānta as the truth of the matter at hand—knowledge of Brahman.

This paper is historical and is devoted to an old controversy in the Indian philosophical tradition with the Vedantins (and others) holding that cognitive states are self-revealing and the Nyaya taking the opposite position. I have summarized the major Vedantin arguments for their viewpoint and offered a critique from the Nyaya perspective. This throws light on a major philosophical controversy in the Indian tradition, a controversy that has not been studied in-depth in the Western tradition. Notably the problem of induction, a major problem in contemporary epistemology, has been studied in-depth in the Western tradition since its introduction by David Hume in the 18th century but the said problem has been studied deeply in Indian tradition for centuries earlier. I have argued in my Classical Indian Philosophy of Induction (2010) that the older Indian contribution on this problem is fully relevant for the very best that contemporary philosophers have offered on this. I hope that this paper will draw the attention of contemporary Western epistemologists who would get involved in this critically important epistemological debate and address a lacuna in the Western tradition.

Jacques Derrida’s use of “non-concepts” such as the trace and différance shifts the practice of philosophy away from the presuppositions of Western metaphysics, which he sought to deconstruct. This essay contends that this inspires a dialogue with ancient India’s skeptical tradition that flourished from Carvaka to Pyrrho. Following Heidegger’s question of being, Derrida’s deconstruction rethought time, consciousness, perception, etc., in ways that give it a secure footing in ancient skepticism’s usage of epochē, nominalism, etc., to steer between the extremes of nihilism and teleological overdetermination. In both, the meaning of being has to be understood through the “play of the trace,” not the reverse.

We typically think of globalization as a modern phenomenon, but globalization in more modest forms occurs much earlier in history. The spread of Greek culture into the Mediterranean and later Europe is one case. The Indianization of Southeast Asia is another, and we can learn from these earlier cases. Just as modern globalization is a mixed economic and cultural phenomenon, so was the Indianization of Indonesia. In this paper I will examine the intersection of trade, religion and art as Indian culture enters Indonesia in the early centuries of the first millennia.

The spiritual philosophies of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the Bengali poet and Nobel Prize winner of Literature in 1913, and Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974), Italian psychiatrist and founder of psychosynthesis, are remarkably similar in their fundamental understanding of the relationship between the Infinite Self and the personal self. Tagore and Assagioli met in 1926 during Tagore’s visit to Italy.  Both were universalists and humanists, emphasizing action as well as contemplation as essential elements to uniting our finite selves with the Infinite. Despite their diverse cultural inheritances, each one experienced a similar evolutionary process in the formation of their visionary understanding of the transcendental personality of humankind.  

Jacques Derrida held that globalization has resulted in worldlessness. The problem is how to work out of its ethnocentric and logocentric cults of power and positioning. Derrida coined the nonword/non-concept “trace” to deconstruct the metaphysics of presence and to assert the universalizing potential of pre-logical heterogeneities, necessary for undermining the binary structure of reasoning. This paper argues that his focus on saving the honor of reason relates across time to Gangesa’s counterfactual reasoning and Bartŗhari’s treatment of Brahman as the eternal word. Given this universalized context, overcoming worldlessness requires reasoning reasonably, not categorically. Reason, Derrida says, must be reasoned with.

Michael Powell's "Black Narcissus" (1947) suggests an individualist path, an alternative to progressive diversity as well as cultural resistance to globalization. While the Anglican nuns largely fail because their ideals prevent expression of their needs and desires, Dip Rai is a young non-binary Indian assimilating British values into his own culture as he finds both love and purpose.

What traits characterize the Finnish Core Curriculum’s approach to globalization? To answer this question, we examine the value base of both the previous and the current curriculum, paying attention to the shift between them. To map the traits, we adopt a two-fold understanding of globalization as something that both enriches and impoverishes cultures and create two perspectives (framings) that view globalization from these extremes. We find out that the aim expressed in the value base has shifted from educating the learner on the diversity of the domestic culture to educating them on intercultural communication skills, paving the way to a supranational culture.