The impact of multichannel electronic media is assuming a varied effect on the India population as there is a vast cultural and social diversity in the country. While metropolitans had already been influenced by Western culture, the suburbs and rural areas were relatively free from it. This segment of Indian society, ingrained with orthodox values, was not ready for the invasion by Western culture, which is being propa gated by the multichannel electronic media.

With the advent of logical positivism metaphysics has faced a challenge of sheer survival. This book brings forth, for the first time, an Indian defence of metaphysics against the onslaught of the positivist movement. The way Strawson, Davidson, Putnam and others have tried to encounter the anti-metaphysical move cannot be treated as a genuine defence of metaphysics. It is by analyzing the nature, meaning, purposeand relevance of metaphysics from Indian perspective that the contemporary Indian philosophers have explored a greater possibility (...) of defending metaphysics. For a consolidated,systematic and critical presentation of this uppermost philosophical issue, this volume contains the writings of T.R.V. Murti, K.D. Bhattacharya, Yashdeva Shalya, Y. Masih, G.C. Pandey, A.K Chatterjee, D.N. Dwivedi and other contemporary eminent Indian scholars. -/- This work is Peer Reviewed in Darshanik Traimasika, Year 54, volume IV, October- December 2009 by Prof. R.P. Pandey, Philosophy Department, Raipur University. 2. Peer Reviewed in JICPR, Volume XXVII, No. 2, April- June 2011 by Prof. Bijoy Barua, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT, Delhi. (shrink)

The present work, "Indian Philosophers of the Recent Past" , reflects and deliberates over recent Indian scholarship in philosophy. It is to get the present and future generations of philosopher-scholars acquainted with the rich Indian philosophical heritage. This is going to deepen our insights into the nature of philosophical consciousness and into the act of philosophizing. It makes an attempt to analyse the philosophies of outstanding philosophers such as K.C. Bhattacharyya, S. Radhakrishnan, R.D. Ranade, A.C. Mukerji, T.R.V. Murti, N.K. Devraja, (...) J.L. Mehta, J.N. Mohanty, Daya Krishna and S.L. Pandey. The post-Independent Indian philosophy is said to have unique tendencies and trends; some of them can be easily identified as existentialist and phenomenological, idealistic, realistic, humanistic, linguistic and analytico-philosophical comparative philosophy and Indian defence of metaphysics. The volume is unique in its conceptual clarity, lucid expression, systematic presentation and critical exposition of the subject matter. It is undoubtedly a valuable contribution for the seekers of Indian philosophical system which should evoke keen interest among scholars and students of philosophy. (shrink)

Originally published in 1963, this classic book is a rethinking of the history of Western political philosophy. Charles N. R. McCoy contrasts classical-medieval principles against the "hypotheses" at the root of modern liberalism and modern conservativism. In Part I, "The Classical Christian Tradition from Plato to Aquinas," the author lays the foundation for a philosophical "structure" capable of producing "constitutional liberty." Part II, "The Modern Theory of Politics from Machiavelli to Marx," attempts to show, beginning with Machiavelli, the reversal and (...) destruction of the pre-modern "structure" postulated in Part I. McCoy stresses the great contributions of Aristotle to political thought found in his more familiar Ethics and Politics, but also includes key insights drawn from Metaphysics and Physics. These contributions are developed and perfected, McCoy argues, by Augustine and Aquinas. Two other important features include McCoy's epistemological insights into Plato's work that will be new to many readers and the author's juxtaposition of traditional natural law with "the modernized theory of natural law." The modern account of autonomous natural law, in McCoy's view, helps explain the totalitarian direction of key aspects of modern political thought. This classic volume on the origins of modern philosophical thought remains a standard in the field. (shrink)

For close to forty years now T.M. Scanlon has been one of the most important contributors to moral and political philosophy in the Anglo-American world. Through both his writing and his teaching, he has played a central role in shaping the questions with which research in moral and political philosophy now grapples. Reasons and Recognition brings together fourteen new papers on an array of topics from the many areas to which Scanlon has made path-breaking contributions, each of which develops a (...) distinctive and independent position while critically engaging with central themes from Scanlon's own work in the area. Contributors include well-known senior figures in moral and political philosophy as well as important younger scholars whose work is just beginning to gain wider recognition. Taken together, these papers make evident the scope and lasting interest of Scanlon's contributions to moral and political philosophy while contributing to a deeper understanding of the issues addressed in his work. (shrink)

Post-globalization trends have left many people with a sense of insecurity—on both the economic and the employment fronts. Business re-engineering, downsizing, lay-offs, excessive consumerism and greed have altered the rules of the business game. Skewed attention to mere economic criteria in many business organizations, even at the cost of societal and environmental factors, is leading to a sense of hollowness, ‘something missing’, in the organization and its employees. People are making every attempt to discover this ‘missing component’ in their lives, (...) with particular reference to their work lives. This ‘missing component’ is referred to as ‘spirit at work’ in management literature. Bringing in spirit at work has become a matter of priority for many business organizations, in their drives for sustained success. Spirit at work is about care, compassion, integrity, and about attempting to live one’s values at the workplace. It is about employees who are passionate and energized by their work, who find meaning and purpose and pursue excellence in their work, and who feel that they can express their complete selves at work. It is about individuals and organizations that see work as an opportunity to grow and to contribute to society in a meaningful way. Spirit at work can be better understood by gaining clarity about the key aspects that constitute this concept. This article reviews the extant litera-ture on spirit at work, highlights the key dimensions of spirit at work, and elaborates on each of them. A number of Indian scholars like S.K. Chakraborty, Subhash Sharma, M.B. Athreya, Panduranga Bhatta and others have proposed an Indian perspective of spirit at work and have elaborated on it since a decade and a half. This article extends the Indian perspective further, based on Indian psychophilosophy, and establishes its comprehensive and inclusive nature that enables incorporation of most of the key dimensions of spirit at work as identified in literature. (shrink)

At the end of Republic VI. Socrates compares the Good with the sun as a cause both of existence and intelligibility. Afterwards, when he continues and expands this comparison, the symbolism becomes so complex that the interpretation of almost every part of it is in dispute. We start with the contrast of light and darkness; to this is next added the contrast of image and original, and also of up and down along a vertical line; in the allegory of the (...) Cave these three sets of contrasted terms are worked in together so as to explain the effect on the soul of the intellectual education by which we are converted from what is dark and imitative and ascend finally to knowledge of the Good. (shrink)

The Republic represents the good life as some sort of harmony or composition between the different interests of which the threefold nature of the soul makes it capable. The rational factor, τ λολιστικν, not only chooses which impulses shall be satisfied and which rejected but is credited also with impulses of its own, such as the desire for knowledge, to the importance of which the Republic testifies by various strands of argument. But in Plato's attempt to prove the goodness of (...) this mixed life he may be thought to have relied too much on arguments about its pleasantness. If he had really meant from the first to prove against Thrasymachus that the just life is more prolific in pleasure1 than the unjust, he would have had to undertake the task of proving a necessary connection between just activities and pleasant states of feeling which could scarcely exist unless feelings were under the control of the will. If this had been his intention, the whole weight of the argument would rest on the two comparatively short passages in Book IX in which he makes first a dubious appeal to experience and then, by an equally dubious piece of metaphysics, attempts to reinforce his ethical conclusion by denying the reality of such pleasures as might tend to throw doubt on it. (shrink)

At the end of Republic VI. Socrates compares the Good with the sun as a cause both of existence and intelligibility. Afterwards, when he continues and expands this comparison, the symbolism becomes so complex that the interpretation of almost every part of it is in dispute. We start with the contrast of light and darkness; to this is next added the contrast of image and original, and also of up and down along a vertical line; in the allegory of the (...) Cave these three sets of contrasted terms are worked in together so as to explain the effect on the soul of the intellectual education by which we are converted from what is dark and imitative and ascend finally to knowledge of the Good. (shrink)

In Professor Ferguson's renewed study of these similes he has introduced a very detailed and careful analysis of Plato's analogies in order to explain and support his interpretation. He has also attacked the view which I put forward in 1932, and I should like to say something in defence of that view, not in any polemical spirit, but from a perhaps too obstinate belief that my reading of the passage does rest on solid foundations. I will not attempt any comprehensive (...) discussion of Professor Ferguson's theories, either in their earlier or their present form, but merely try to indicate what seems to me the real issue between us. (shrink)

In this paper I am merely analysing the meaning of Phaedo 99–107 without discussing either its historical significance or its value as a contribution to the logic of science. The paper attempts in fact to be little more than a paraphrase of the Greek, which aims only at accuracy of statement, but I am adding in the third section a note on the relation of this passage to the discussion of method in Republic VI, mainly in order to minimize its (...) relevance. The first section of the paper deals with the linguistic analysis of the text, the second, very sketchily, with the general doctrine. (shrink)