Koshy Tharakan

The connection between the metaphysics of the self and ethics is often relegated to the margins in the mainstream philosophies. Be it the empiricists following Hume concerning the gulf between the “is-ought” judgments or contemporary analytic philosophers who agree with G. E. Moore’s notion of the “naturalistic fallacy.” In this article, we focus on the relationship between the metaphysics of the self and its implications for ethics, particularly a bioethical perspective on the mental well-being of human beings in terms of compassion, empathy and love. Such a perspective has the potential of self-transformation by using the tools of Philosophical Counselling in tune with Krishnamurti’s insights and dialogues of Zen Kōans. Can we speak about empathy as a path or empathy as a goal? Also, can we speak about self-compassion and compassion for others as being separated or divided? The response lies beyond dualism, beyond categories that we are used to, that we are trained to see. Through the exploration of Krishnamurti’s insights on thought, memory, knowledge and experience, which show that these are always limited and therefore bring division and conflict, and then Zen Kōans as a dialogue between the master and a disciple(s), where disciple(s) should get freed from the ideas, forms, and all that is created by thought, we arrive at the place where duality ends. And where duality ends, there dwells empathy, love and compassion opening up possibilities for self-transformation through philosophising.

Nors Gandhi įprastai vaizduojamas kaip ekocentrizmo šalininkų, o ypač giliosios ekologijos atstovų, tokių kaip Arne Naessas, įkvėpėjas, Ramachandra Guha teigia, kad Gandhi labiau orientavosi į antropocentrizmą. Vietoj bandymo išsiaiškinti, ar Gandhi buvo gilusis ekologas, šiuo straipsniu siekiama apibrėžti jo filosofinės antropologijos pasekmes antropocenui. Remdamiesi Gandhi Kito – įskaitant nežmogiškąją prigimtį – samprata, Gandhi environmentalizmą siūlome traktuoti tarp ekocentrizmo ir antropocentrizmo kaip silpnąją antropocentrizmo formą, kurią galima interpretuoti kaip „rūpestį“, kurioje yra potencialo rūpesčio etikai. Pasitelkiami Gandhi idealai Swadeshi, Swaraj ir Sarvodaya, kurių kontekste aptariama Gandhi aplinkos filosofijos reikšmė ir jos sąsajos su šiuolaikiniais ekologiškai ir socialiai tvarių visuomenių idealais.

While Gandhi is portrayed as an inspiration for proponents of ecocentrism, specifically Deep Ecologists like Arne Naess, Ramachandra Guha suggests that Gandhi was more concerned with anthropocentrism. Rather than ascertaining whether Gandhi was a Deep Ecologist, this paper aims to determine the implications of his philosophical anthropology for the Anthropocene. Dwelling on Gandhi’s comprehension of the other, including non-human nature, we situate Gandhian environmentalism between ecocentrism and anthropocentrism as a weak form of anthropocentrism that can be interpreted as ‘stewardship’ with the potential for an ethic of care. The Gandhian ideals of Swadeshi, Swaraj, and Sarvodaya are invoked to discuss the significance and alignment of Gandhi’s philosophy of environment to contemporary ideals of ecologically and socially sustainable societies.

The experience of the unheimlich, interpreted by Paul Ricoeur as the sense of otherness in a space, is indescribable in terms of the classic description of home. To generate a new perspective to overcome this “blocked situation,” we reflect on a “heterotopology of home,” i.e., a description of Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia (an “other space”) as a metaphor for home. After considering heterotopia as a fluid concept that allows “displacement” to the new situation of home, a heterotopology of home is described by summarizing and analyzing the multitude of past readings of home as heterotopia through Hilde Heynen’s framework. A reflection on the heterotopology of home reinterprets the experience of the heimlich and understanding of selfhood in relation to the unheimlich, as exemplified through Mariana Ortega’s accounts of “hometactics” and “multiplicitous selves” and Georg Simmel’s notion of “the stranger.” In conclusion, we argue that a Foucauldian heterotopology of home overcomes the blocked situation by transforming the perception of home: the experience of the unheimlich becomes describable in the terms of home as heterotopia. In this process, the instances of heterotopia are extended from “other spaces” to spaces of everyday life, also transforming the previous description of heterotopia.

The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Crisis) marks the culmination of Husserl’s Genetic Phenomenology and the beginning of a new philosophy of science, one that viewed science not as a fact but as a problem that needed philosophical understanding. For Husserl, the crisis of Galilean Science is born out of the severance of its relation to the life-world and the erroneous identification of “Nature” with its constituted mathematical or quantifiable object. In the phenomenological philosophy of science, science is a tradition formed through human praxis, like any other cultural enterprise. Objectivity in scientific praxis is a regulative principle constituted by the consensus of judgements of the scientific community. The continuity of scientific knowledge shows in its unity of propagated transference of meaning, the sedimentation of which is carried through language. Despite the scientific world being ontologically grounded in the life-world, Husserl sought to preserve the autonomy of both worlds. To fully appreciate the implications of Husserl’s contribution to the philosophy of science, this paper identifies the ‘spatial turn’ that Husserl brought in through his “less mathematical, more physical” notion of life-world with the 90° shift in the social studies of science that Latour proposed. The life-world fuses “Nature” and “Society” as one ontological entity that gives rise to science, moving away from a one-dimensional science that kept the ontology of science grounded in one of those poles alone. Despite the limits of Husserlian phenomenological epistemology, Crisis radically departed from positivism, the then-official philosophy of science, embracing historicity and language to broaden our discourse on science and even coming close to certain later developments in Philosophy of Science. Husserl’s meditations on spatiality also urged a transition to the contemporary understanding of space, opening possibilities of dialogue with Foucault.

Many attempts of contemporary philosophers to reduce ‘mind’ to ‘body’ notwithstanding, where the ‘body’ is understood in the Cartesian framework, the continental philosophers in general repeatedly remind us that body has a significance that goes beyond its materiality as a bio-chemical physical substance. In “questioning body,” we wish to take up the philosophical underpinnings of the significance of body as a framework or tool to understand ‘technology’. By doing so, we are able to see the link between technology and body as more than a fortuitous relation. Relying on the writings of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Ihde, the paper attempts to show how a “sense of body,” particularly the notion of “agentive body” as distinguished from the “symbolic body,” hermeneutically evolves from the way in which it is entangled in the technological matrix

Relation of science and religion has been at the centre of many discourses in the past as well as in the recent times. Some of these were meant to refute religious claims in the light of scientific truths about the world, while others took the pain of explaining the essential compatibility between the two. The former subjects religion to the scrutiny of science while the latter reads science in religion or religion in science.Both these attempts are ill-conceived as they conflate the logic of one with the other.In what follows, we attempt to understand the nature of the interaction of these two, science and religion, from a phenomenological perspective. In order to do that, we have to look into the ‘life-world’ (Lebenswelt) that engenders science and houses religious experiences.

Most religious texts and practices warrant the exclusion of women from religious rituals and public spheres during the menstrual flow. This is seemingly at odds with the very idea of ‘Religion’ which binds the human beings with God without any gender and sexual discrimination. The present article attempts to problematize the ascription of negative values on menstruating women prevalent in both Hinduism and Christianity, two major world religions of the East and the West. After briefly stating the patriarchal values that restrict women from participating in religious rituals and shaming them during menstruation as seen from both these religions, the article highlights the alternate feminist perspectives in beliefs that positively value the menstruating bodies. Thus, the notion of profanity is revalued as sacred in these alternate religious perspectives. Drawing from the writings of Mary Douglas, we then examine the connection between the notion of purity/impurity and menstruation and argue that what makes something pure or impure depends upon the archetype the society chooses to represent itself. In itself, nothing is either pure or impure in the sense of having a value or disvalue. This argument is exemplified through a feministic-hermeneutic approach to the religious practices in two major world religions. The article concludes by uncovering the patriarchal values held by religions as the cause of menstrual taboos in religious practices and argues that the notions of purity/impurity and sacred/profane are the results of the valuations made—from a patriarchal or feministic perspective.

Recent discussions on the explanation of action are permeated with two divergent models of explanation, namely causal model and non- causal model. For causalists the notion of explanation is intimately related to that of causation. As Davidson contends, any rudimentary explanation of an event gives its cause. More sophisticated explanations may cite a relevant law in support of a singular causal claim. The non-causalists, on the other hand, hold that when we explain an action we do not ask for the cause, rather we try to understand the action in terms of its meaning. Moreover, they argue that the causal model fails to account for the conceptual priority of human agency. The aim of this paper is to show how Max Weber attempted a synthesis of the two divergent models of explanation in the realm of human actions. The first section of this paper gives an expository account of Weber’s theory of explanation. In the second section an attempt is made to interpret Weber’s thesis so as to assimilate the two divergent models of explanation.

The idea that science explains or ought to explain every phenomenon finds Cartesian dualism of mind and body to be an unsatisfactory thesis. Consequently we have a variety of materialist theories regarding mind and consciousness. In recent times, we come across many philosophers who are committed to the scientific world picture, trying to locate mind within a world that is essentially physical.The central problems these philosophers have to tackle consist of consciousness and mental causation. In what follows we discuss how Husserlian phenomenology responds to this debate.

Comparative philosophy has been subjected to much criticism in the latter half of the last century, though some of these criticisms were appropriate and justified. However, in our present cultural milieu, where traditions and culture transcend their geographical boundaries, seeping through the global network of views and ideas, it seems to be a legitimate enterprise to understand one’s own traditions and culture through the critical lens of the ‘other culture’. It is such cross-cultural understanding that paved the way towards legitimizing “human rights” as a universal discourse. So also, the discourse on “environmental ethics” has gained acceptance in a similar manner across cultures and traditions. The paper attempts at an understanding of “Indian Philosophy” as a theoretical practice by exemplifying the notion of “sādhanā” in the Yoga system of Indian Philosophy through a reading of the notion of ‘phenomenological reduction’ as espoused in the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl. Thus, we reject the claim that philosophy as a pure rational activity was unique to the West as proclaimed in some Eurocentric readings. It is pertinent to recall here that the Sāṅkhya philosophy, which the Yoga system accepts as an allied school of thought was atheistic in its origin and attempted to explain the universe in terms of an evolutionary theory—the “prakṛti pariṇāma vāda”.

With the advent of Postmodernism, the recent discussions in Continental thought has called into question the philosophy of the Subject, particularly the Cartesian “cogito” and the related method of reflection. One of the important ramifications of these questioning of the reflective subject is to do with the phenomenological doctrine of intentionality of consciousness. Recently, David Carr, himself a phenomenologist, has advanced a serious objection to the phenomenological approach to social reality. In what follows, I will be attempting a defence of phenomenology against criticisms like Carr’s.