Sexual difference must be recognized in thought and human interactions to enable people to find their real source of jouissance. The Lacanian finding of ‘masculine phallic desire’ and ‘feminine libidinal desire’ in all human beings, irrespective of their biological sex-gender, paved the way for rethinking gender identities. It calls for reforming inter-human relations from the presently predominant utilitarian mode to the one based on love and recognition of the other. Gender is an arbitrary construct to serve the interests of males (...) in finding phallic sexual pleasure, power and recognition in their social life. Assertion of sexual difference and gender multiplicity will enable human beings to find the other human being as their actual desired object, beyond the pleasures offered by wealth, comforts and commodities. (shrink)

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”. (shrink)

This essay traces the origin of feminine thought in poststructuralism, which opens up new vistas of experience that differ from traditional philosophical thinking based on a conceptual grasp of the world. Rather than viewing the feminine as the essence of the woman gender, it is seen here as the experience of a plurality of truths produced in the affectedness of the human body by the world. The representative function of language and methodology in traditional philosophy cannot capture the plurality of (...) truths. Feminine experience is not a prerogative of women philosophers or feminist writers. It is accessible even to male philosophers. Since it is the outcome of the affectedness of the body by phenomena, it is accessible to all human beings, irrespective of their gender identities. The construction of the truth of entities in terms of their universal essence has a significant role in forming masculine and feminine experiences. Masculine experience is produced by the representation of conceptual truth by the self. Feminine is a kind of existence prior to self-formation that is in operation in all humans. The linguistic turn in philosophy created by Nietzsche and Saussure is the main force behind the growth of feminine thinking in poststructuralism. It marks the end of the abstract, concept-based thinking of the masculine sort and the formation of the differential thought of the feminine. (shrink)

Differing from the mainstream notion about deconstruction as a differential reading of texts, the paper views it primarily as a process of subversion of self-identity of a person who faces the ‘alterity’ of the other in a concrete ethical situation. Thus it is seen more as an existential experience of the individual rather than a socio-political process. It seeks a pathway from Derrida’s deconstruction of texts to Emmanuel Levinas’s trial of individuality by the ‘face’ of the other. The face of (...) the other that calls for the ethical responsibility of the ‘I’, challenges his autonomy. As human self-identities are unreal constructs produced by ontology through the integration of multiple experiences of phenomena into a uniform apperception of consciousness, its rupture alone will guarantee a passage to the realm of ‘otherness’. ‘Otherness’ manifested in the deconstruction of self-identity in ethics is viewed as more intense and radical than the subversion of identity that takes place in textual experience. (shrink)

Terror narratives have been characterized by a dialogism where the “normative” I—i.e. the “non-threatening mainstream”—defines and delineates subjects whose identity is centred on their location in the terror network. This is especially so in the case of Asian migrants who settle down in Western countries, as their very identity as Asian locates them at a precarious point in the real or imagined “terror network.” The migrant is no longer the Du, but the Es, imparting an identity to the Ich, where (...) the Ich denotes the “original” citizens of the country. The transactions of the “I” with the “Thou” and the “It” become significant in the context of Asian immigrants in that, for the dominant mainstream, the “terrorist” is an Es/”It” that has gradually marked its transition from the Du/“Thou.” The person of the “terrorist” finds its ontological properties from the gradual movement away from a “Thou” to an “It.” The hitherto unbounded “Thou” is transformed into a definable “It,” by ascribing to her/him a religion, race, colour, nationality and ethnicity. He/she is not confronted, as every “Thou” is, but is rather “experienced” as a source of terror, as an “It.” The paper attempts to explore the transformation of the figure of the “migrant terrorist” from a confronted “Thou” to an “imagined/experienced” “It” through an analysis of New York by Kabir Khan and Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

1. Kō to shi no shisōshi -- 2. Kō to shi no shakai kagaku -- 3. Nihon ni okeru kō to shi -- 4. Ō-Bei ni okeru kō to shi -- 5. Kokka to ningen to kōkyōsei -- 6. Keizai kara mita kōshi mondai -- 7. Chūkan shūdan ga hiraku kōkyōsei -- 8. Kagaku gijutsu to kōkyōsei -- 9. chikyū kankyō to kōkyōsei -- 10. 21-seiki kōkyō tetsugaku no chihei -- 14. Rīdāshippu kara kangaeru kōkyōsei.

This study examines Itō Jinsai’s 伊藤仁斎 (1627–1705) criticisms of the Great Learning (C: Daxue大學 J: Daigaku). Three primary sources are considered: Jinsai’s Shigi sakumon私擬策問 (Personal Essays, 1668); the Daigaku teihon大學定本 (The Definitive Text of the Great Learning, manuscript 1685); and his essay, “Daigaku wa Kōshi no isho ni arazaru no ben” 大學非孔氏之遺書辨 (The Great Learning is not a Writing Confucius Transmitted, 1705), appended to his Gomō jigi語孟字義. The study suggests that Jinsai’s critical inclinations grew from his acceptance of Zhu Xi’s (...) views about the value of doubt for progress in learning. The study also suggests that Jinsai’s thinking on the Great Learning had political implications derived in many respects from Jinsai’s overall approach to philosophizing via analysis of words and their meanings. (shrink)