Minds Without Fear: Philosophy in the Indian Renaissance

by Nalini Bhushan, Jay L. Garfield

Overview

Minds Without Fear is an intellectual and cultural history of India during the period of British occupation. It demonstrates that this was a period of renaissance in India in which philosophy—both in the public sphere and in the Indian universities—played a central role in the emergence of a distinctively Indian modernity. This is also a history of Indian philosophy. It demonstrates how the development of a secular philosophical voice facilitated the construction of modern Indian society and the consolidation of the nationalist movement. Authors Nalini Bhushan and Jay Garfield explore the complex role of the English language in philosophical and nationalist discourse, demonstrating both the anxieties that surrounded English, and the processes that normalized it as an Indian vernacular and academic language.

Garfield and Bhushan attend to both Hindu and Muslim philosophers, to public and academic intellectuals, to artists and art critics, and to national identity and nation-building. Also explored is the complex interactions between Indian and European thought during this period, including the role of missionary teachers and the influence of foreign universities in the evolution of Indian philosophy. This pattern of interaction, although often disparaged as "inauthentic" is continuous with the cosmopolitanism that has always characterized the intellectual life of India, and that the philosophy articulated during this period is a worthy continuation of the Indian philosophical tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190457594
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/27/2017
Series:	The Oxford History of Philosophy
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Bhushan: Professor of Philosophy, Smith CollegeGarfield: Silbert Professor of Philosophy and the Humanities, Smith College. Until 2016 he is Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at Yale-NUS College, Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore and recurrent visiting professor of philosophy at Yale University

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction

1. The Tragedy of Indian Philosophy
2. Looking Backward: Reason, Cosmopolitan Consciousness and the Emergence of Indian Modernity
3. The Company and the Crown: Macaulay's India?
4. On the Very Idea of a Renaissance
5. Reform Movements: From Universality to Secularity in the Brahmo and Arya Samaj
6. India Imagined: Contested Narratives of National Identity
7. Anticipating India's Future: Varieties of Nationalism
8. Theorizing Svaraj: Politics and the Academy
9. The Cambridge Connection: Idealism, Modernity and the Circulation of Ideas
10. Maya vs Lila: From Sankaracarya to Einstein
11. The Question of Subjectivity: Neo-Vednta in Academic Philosophy
12. Indian Ways of Seeing: The Centrality of Aesthetics
13. The Triumph of Indian Philosophy: Thinking through the Renaissance

References

Editorial Reviews

"Bhushan and Garfield's book is an extremely valuable record of a community of philosophers that has fallen sadly into obscurity, and of the philosophical contributions of figures that are more often discussed in non-philosophical contexts—figures such as Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore, and Vivekenanda." — Evan Clarke, Philosophy in Review

"This remarkable volume should put to rest, once and for all, the false but still prevalent notion that colonial and post-colonial India witnessed a stark decline in original philosophical thought. The authors reveal a scintillating world of sophisticated philosophical works produced over the last two centuries or more— works that embody, on the one hand, strong continuities with the classical and medieval past and with the great Sanskrit traditions, particularly in aesthetics and epistemology, and, on the other hand, a creative engagement with philosophical currents rooted in modern Western thought. Far from washing away the residues of a moribund Indian metaphysics, nineteenth- and twentieth-century European philosophy is shown to have generated highly original rethinking of classical themes and notions. This book is a joy to read." —David Shulman, Hebrew University

From the Publisher