
Schools of philosophy that should be better known (in the West) - andrelaszlo
https://granta.com/10-schools-of-philosophy/
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jaldhar
It’s nitpicking time. I’ll only address the Indian ones because that’s what
I’m familiar with.

1\. Madhyamaka. Can it really be said that it is not well known in the West?
It is the basis of Tibetan Buddhism which is pretty popular. Perhaps “pop”
Buddhism doesn’t go into all the details but I’ve met plenty of Westerners who
at least know who Nagarjuna was and usually much more than that.

2\. Charvaka. A few days ago here in HN I wrote about a theory that the
charvakas may not have been the anti-religious radicals of popular belief. Be
that as it may, Madhavacharya was not a “14th century Charvaka philosopher.”
He was an Advaita Vedantin who after becoming a monk became the Abbot of the
premier centre of Advaitic thought, the Shringeri Matha and wrote many
classics of that philosophy. In his Sarvadarshanasamgraha (“Compendium of all
Schools of Thought”) the first (and lowest) place is given to a description of
the Charvakas but they had already gone extinct by that time so unlike the
other schools, Madhava’s description is not based on primary sources.

3\. Nyaya. It should be noted that Nyaya is also “intimately connected to
religion.” Nyaya says that Ishvara (God) is the Prime Mover of the universe
who has set the atoms which make up matter (a theory of Nyaya’s sister
Vaisheshika school.) into motion. Specifically the Vedas are the source of the
true religion because the testimony of an apta (expert) is valid knowledge and
Ishvara the most expert of them all is the author of the Vedas. Udayana
mentioned in the article wrote a treatise called Kusumanjali which offers many
cosmological and ontological arguments for the existence of God. Navya (“neo”)
Nyaya is perhaps more interesting from a philosophical view. It is a 15th
century onwards combination and progression of the older Nyaya and Vaisheshika
schools that concentrated on valid means of knowledge. It anticipates many of
the ideas of the formal logic that developed in the West from the 19th century
onwards.

4\. Jainism. I think Jains would be miffed to learn they borrowed concepts
from the Buddhist canon. In fact both Buddhism and Jainism developed at the
same time and in the same geographical region. It would be fairer IMO to say
both borrowed from stock cultural tropes and folk parables.

Sorry this is the Internet. I have to be pedantic — it’s the law. But I did
actually enjoy the article.

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andrelaszlo
You don't seem pedantic to me. Thanks for the additional information!

