Preliminaries

As its title suggests, this book is an introduction to Indian philosophy (or more specifically, classical Indian philosophy) – one of the world's great philosophical traditions. But while it aims to be an introduction to classical Indian philosophy suitable for the philosophically curious, it does not aim to be an introduction to philosophy. Instead the expected typical audience will include undergraduates who have taken at least a first course in philosophy, graduate students in philosophy seeking to broaden their philosophical horizons, and interested general readers with some prior background in philosophy.

In philosophy there are two common ways of structuring an introductory work. One approach is to structure the exposition chronologically; the other approach is to structure it thematically. This book strongly favours the thematic approach: each of the seven succeeding chapters is devoted to a particular philosophical topic discussed extensively by the classical Indian philosophers.

Chapter 1 ‘Value’ deals with Indian views about ethics, about which there were both major commonalities and some significant differences. Chapter 2 ‘Knowledge’ deals with some of the epistemological concerns central to classical Indian philosophy. Chapter 3 ‘Reasoning’ focuses on Indian ‘logic’, broadly conceived. Chapter 4 ‘Word’ deals with Indian philosophy of language. Chapter 5 ‘World’ focuses on metaphysics: specifically, the matter of which fundamental entities make up the world and how causation holds them together. Chapter 6 ‘Self’ deals with Indian theories of the self. Chapter 7 ‘Ultimates’ deals with philosophy of religion, especially the variety of differing conceptions of a maximally great being to be found in the Indian tradition.

This thematic organization permits the book to be used in at least two different ways. A reader wanting a moderately comprehensive overview of Indian philosophy should definitely read it straight through. But a reader wanting instead only a sense of Indian contributions to a particular philosophical theme – say, the nature of knowledge, or the metaphysics of the self – can just turn to the relevant chapter (and then follow this up with the suggested readings at the end of it).

Similarly, this whole book – appropriately supplemented with translations from the Sanskrit primary sources – could be used as the text for an introductory survey course on Indian philosophy; or particular chapters (plus readings) could be used either for more advanced courses on selected topics in Indian philosophy, …