Ghanshamdas Rattanmal Malkani, a Sindhi Kshatriya, was born in 1892 at Hyderabad Sind, and educated at Karachi, where his principal philosophy teacher was T. L. Vaswami. When the Indian Institute of Philosophy was founded in 1916, he was one of the six original fellows chosen to attend it. He soon became its permanent director and, except for two years at Cambridge University, has been there ever since. Since 1926 he has also been editor of the Philosophical Quarterly, which under him (...) has become India's leading philosophical journal. (shrink)

T. R. V. Murti is a Tamil Brahmin. He was born at Madras in 1902, and educated at Trichinopoly Christian College, which he left before graduating to commence five years of Congress Party work. He was in jail five months. In 1925 he came to Benares, where he studied the Sanskrit classics with pandits and gurus. He then completed his undergraduate course at Benares Hindu University, receiving his A.B. and M.A. together in 1929. From 1929 to 1936 he was a (...) fellow at the Indian Institute of Philosophy at Amalner. Here he came under the influence of Professor K. C. Bhattacharya, and was considered to be, among the philosophers at Amalner, the one who best understood the Professor's teaching. In 1936 he returned to Benares Hindu University for advanced study, and later was appointed Sayaji Rao Gaekwad Professor of Indian Civilization and Culture. He has been there since, except for three years on leave as professor of philosophy at Colombo and one year as Spalding Professor of Oriental Religions at Oxford. (shrink)

Krishna Chandra Bhattacharya, a Bengali Brahmin, was born in 1875 at Serampore near Calcutta, one of eight children of an impoverished clerk Educated at Presidency College in Calcutta, he studied under B. N. Seal, who had revived the study of Indian philosophy. He was a brilliant student clearly destined for an academic career, but his unwillingness to appease British administrators prevented his obtaining an appointment commensurate with his ability, and he held a variety of teaching and administrative positions in government (...) colleges. When he reached the retirement age of 55, he was principal of small Hoogly College. After retirement, however, he became professor in the Calcutta post-graduate department, spent two years at the Indian Institute of Philosophy at Amalner, and finally became George V Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calcutta. After final retirement in 1938 he lived at Serampore, reading little because of failing sight, but writing a great deal and discussing philosophy with his sons and his many visitors until his death in 1949. (shrink)

Gaudapada is usually supposed to have lived about 500 A.D. His Karika or Agamasastra, a short work of 215 verses, combines the conciseness of a sutra with the clarity of a commentary, thus avoiding both the unintelligibility characteristic of the Hindu sutras and the interminability characteristic of the commentaries. In the first of the four chapters, which is a commentary on, and usually considered part of, the Mandukya Upanishad, the appearance of the Self in the "three states" of waking and (...) dreaming and sleeping is contrasted with its true being in the "fourth state" beyond duality, various theories of creation are rejected, and the meaning of the mystic syllable Aum is explained. In the second chapter subjectivism is defended, with its consequence that the objects of waking experience, which constitute the world, are no more real than fairyland or the objects of dreams; really there is no creation and no destruction of things, no bondage and no liberation of the Self. In the third chapter the apparent plurality of selves is compared with the apparent plurality of spaces defined by various containers; just as there is only one real Space, so there is only one real Self; the "highest truth" is that "nothing is born." In the final chapter consciousness is compared to a firebrand, which seems to produce various figures when whirled around, though it does not really produce anything; so consciousness seems to produce various objects when agitated, but when calm it is just the Self. (shrink)

According to the Platonic philosophy of love, a thing is to be loved because it is beautiful and insofar as it is beautiful. Since Beauty is the radiance of the Good, a thing is to be loved, ultimately, because and insofar as it is good. The entity which is best and therefore most beautiful and therefore most lovable is the Good itself, or God. The Good alone deserves our final and unconditioned love. And since the only characteristic of things which (...) makes them good is their participation in the Good, when we love things it is really the Good in them which we are loving, and so we can say that the Good is the only object of love. But since all things do participate in the Good, all things are lovable. They participate in it, however, in varying degrees, and so they are to be loved more or less, depending on their goodness. This doctrine leads immediately to mysticism. Corresponding to the dialectic path of the intellect there is an anagogic path of love, leading from the least of things, which is least lovable, up to God, who is absolutely lovable, and in loving whom our love comes to rest. To the extent that Christianity is Platonism this Platonic philosophy of love permeates Christian thought and especially Christian mysticism. But to the extent that Christianity differs from and transcends Platonism this is not the Christian philosophy of love. (shrink)