Abstract

The world is a comprehensive concept of the area of external experience in which all objects appear as external to our consciousness. It is also the area of becoming, transience and disappearance, resp. of birth, life and death (physiology, philosophical physics, cosmology). The being itself, on the contrary, is conceived as what is and does not become (ontology, metaphysics). Philosophy investigates what is object of our cognition, but also what should be the object of our activity (ethics, practical philosophy). Philosophy can try to understand the nature of consciousness and reason from the experience of the world, or it can try to assess the truth or the appearance of the world that we experience from the assessment of our cognitive faculties (epistemology). Both approaches have been confirmed in India and West in different periods. Some examples will be considered and compared.