1 00:00:10,390 --> 00:00:16,730 Hello and welcome to the Open Africa and South Asia Peacemakers series. 2 00:00:16,730 --> 00:00:27,730 Please join us to let me think about the subthemes African and South Asian nation of our public policy Genoese. 3 00:00:27,730 --> 00:00:32,530 We want to 10 to 20, 21 together. 4 00:00:32,530 --> 00:00:43,300 The students begin to enquire about tuition and studied in your American philosophical institutions while investigating students in a way, 5 00:00:43,300 --> 00:00:47,740 our traditions and philosophies and beyond. 6 00:00:47,740 --> 00:00:55,900 We intend to participate, ameliorating deficits in representation with resources required to transform our minds. 7 00:00:55,900 --> 00:01:06,340 Homosexual's sketched out at. My name is. 8 00:01:06,340 --> 00:01:14,410 And today I'll be talking to Jonathan iJet and I are often on television specials with the Journal about their experiences of studying, 9 00:01:14,410 --> 00:01:25,630 I think a lot, Jonathan. Each student at King's College London, working on the 17th century philosophical autobiography from Ethiopia, 10 00:01:25,630 --> 00:01:27,800 exploring Ethiopian literature and history, 11 00:01:27,800 --> 00:01:35,740 fighting Oriental scholarship and the shadow of Empire, Giese Philology and varieties of philosophical rationalism and critique. 12 00:01:35,740 --> 00:01:42,160 Honokaa is a Masters student at Oxford University who works on Buddhist philosophy. 13 00:01:42,160 --> 00:01:52,240 Thank you for being here. I thought that we could just get started with questions about, like, 14 00:01:52,240 --> 00:02:07,310 how your first introduction to doing any sort of Western philosophy, but also specifically Africa and South Asian philosophy. 15 00:02:07,310 --> 00:02:15,260 Oh, so young, I think for me, getting into the South Asian philosophy sort of happens simultaneously with getting into philosophy, 16 00:02:15,260 --> 00:02:17,370 I think maybe for other people it tends to be different. 17 00:02:17,370 --> 00:02:26,600 But I, I think well, maybe that's not this kind of goes back to a point where my memories are kind of blurred. 18 00:02:26,600 --> 00:02:31,520 But I was kind of interested in philosophical thinking, I think, when I was quite young. 19 00:02:31,520 --> 00:02:35,930 And then when I was 15, my religious studies teacher gave me a book on Buddhism, 20 00:02:35,930 --> 00:02:41,190 Buddhism, plain and simple, by Steve Hegan, and that felt just like this lights on. 21 00:02:41,190 --> 00:02:47,400 I don't think I ever had a particular draw to South Asian philosophy before that. 22 00:02:47,400 --> 00:02:51,800 I think the things that I was interested in with these broader philosophical question, 23 00:02:51,800 --> 00:02:58,490 but Buddhism just felt like it had this these answers to questions that I didn't really know I had. 24 00:02:58,490 --> 00:03:06,670 But they were really pertinent to me. And I felt like I really just felt I encountered something that. 25 00:03:06,670 --> 00:03:14,410 Made sense in a way that nothing else did. It really felt I remember like sitting there and thinking I found the meaning of life now and I'm only 15. 26 00:03:14,410 --> 00:03:21,590 Wow. I'm very lucky. So so since then, I kind of just took on an interest in Buddhism in particular. 27 00:03:21,590 --> 00:03:28,060 And it was always quite a personal, kind of practical kind of spiritual interest. 28 00:03:28,060 --> 00:03:35,080 But I also had this mind that was interested in philosophical issues. And I did classics at school. 29 00:03:35,080 --> 00:03:39,170 I did Latin and Greek. So I was generally in the world of philosophy. 30 00:03:39,170 --> 00:03:44,950 I had this kind of spiritual interest in Buddhism, my personal interest. And so those two things sort of combined. 31 00:03:44,950 --> 00:03:50,920 And I ended up going like the kind of obvious thing to do was to study theology and religion. 32 00:03:50,920 --> 00:03:56,890 So I ended up doing that. And then my focus is in that sort of took me to I think I was always more interested in the kind 33 00:03:56,890 --> 00:04:01,420 of philosophical aspects of theology than this once and then because of my interest in Buddhism, 34 00:04:01,420 --> 00:04:09,550 Indian philosophy as well. Let me. Yeah, well, I mean, if I may, 35 00:04:09,550 --> 00:04:14,740 one was a bit of a natural sort of marrying together of an interest in Buddhism and an interest in 36 00:04:14,740 --> 00:04:20,440 philosophy minor certainly via the more sort of circuitous route in that I studied philosophy for, 37 00:04:20,440 --> 00:04:24,160 I think eight years that university six, six, 38 00:04:24,160 --> 00:04:33,910 six or seven years at university before ever really coming across Afrikaner philosophy is even a sort of a possibility of something to study for. 39 00:04:33,910 --> 00:04:38,050 My my background in philosophy is much more sort of a traditional analytic 40 00:04:38,050 --> 00:04:42,400 background who has been interested in taking classes in the history of philosophy. 41 00:04:42,400 --> 00:04:46,540 But of course, the history philosophy tends to be the history of the particular tradition 42 00:04:46,540 --> 00:04:51,160 that kind of culminates in the analytic academic philosophy that's done today. 43 00:04:51,160 --> 00:04:58,840 And the first possibilities are really hard to do in the so-called non Western philosophies within on a year abroad in Paris, 44 00:04:58,840 --> 00:05:05,020 where there were classes on Indian philosophy, Arabic language, philosophy, Chinese philosophy, 45 00:05:05,020 --> 00:05:10,420 and this was really a sort of a bit of an eye opener to the different ways that things could be studied. 46 00:05:10,420 --> 00:05:16,420 One of the things I was really impressed with was that there was always the insistence on if you're wanting to understand the philosophy, 47 00:05:16,420 --> 00:05:17,890 you're going to need to know the languages. 48 00:05:17,890 --> 00:05:25,330 One of the things I always didn't particularly like about the analytic approach as the sort of insistence that we're getting a universal truth, 49 00:05:25,330 --> 00:05:30,640 but we're doing it by analysing the semantics of one particular language on the edge of the world, 50 00:05:30,640 --> 00:05:36,950 or maybe a set of two or three languages or in this little corner of the European Peninsula on the edge of the world. 51 00:05:36,950 --> 00:05:43,090 And it always seemed to me that without you know, if you take a serious philosophical interest in language, 52 00:05:43,090 --> 00:05:47,170 you should probably take a serious philosophical interest in as many languages as possible. 53 00:05:47,170 --> 00:05:53,380 So coming and coming sort of back to back to back to philosophy in the UK, 54 00:05:53,380 --> 00:05:57,730 I tried to sort of pick up ways of doing philosophy and in some different languages. 55 00:05:57,730 --> 00:06:04,420 And this interest sort of let me down trying to just explore as many different philosophies 56 00:06:04,420 --> 00:06:07,900 from as many different parts of the world in many different languages as possible. 57 00:06:07,900 --> 00:06:14,470 And so when I came across the writing of this, this text called that at the very yakob in an article, 58 00:06:14,470 --> 00:06:19,420 and I was fascinated that there was a text that no one seemed to have heard about before, 59 00:06:19,420 --> 00:06:28,840 written in an African language that seemed to be offering a lot of the same ideas and the same sort of general 60 00:06:28,840 --> 00:06:35,140 philosophical outlook that generally gets called modern philosophy exactly the same time as Descartes was writing it. 61 00:06:35,140 --> 00:06:41,290 And really it was going down this this very yakob rabbit hole, the question of its authorship, 62 00:06:41,290 --> 00:06:53,020 the question of other philosophical antecedents in Africa in the general meta philosophical questions that get raised by Afrikaner philosophy that, 63 00:06:53,020 --> 00:06:58,400 yeah, I'm essentially just still in that rabbit hole that opening the zodiac opened up. 64 00:06:58,400 --> 00:07:00,910 So that's how I got here. 65 00:07:00,910 --> 00:07:10,780 Well, I guess that just sort of touches on my next question and what your current research interests are and what you're working on at the moment. 66 00:07:10,780 --> 00:07:15,940 Yeah, if you want to keep going. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. 67 00:07:15,940 --> 00:07:22,060 So so my my doctoral research at the moment focuses on this, this text, the YAKOB, 68 00:07:22,060 --> 00:07:26,530 which as you mentioned in the in the introduction, is this kind of philosophical autobiography. 69 00:07:26,530 --> 00:07:34,570 So it's written in the first person from the perspective of a 17th century Ethiopian priest named Zarah Yakob, 70 00:07:34,570 --> 00:07:39,250 who's educated in the traditional Ethiopian education system, 71 00:07:39,250 --> 00:07:45,400 comes into contact with foreign ideas for the first time with the Jesuit priest who are at the core of 72 00:07:45,400 --> 00:07:52,780 the Ethiopian king at the time and in the sort of ensuing sort of civil strife that goes on at the time. 73 00:07:52,780 --> 00:08:02,440 He's is forced to flee, takes refuge in a cave where he sits down to meditate and composes this this philosophical work. 74 00:08:02,440 --> 00:08:13,390 And as I said, with sort of being contemporary with Descartes Piscatella method, a lot of people have thought that this is the foundation, 75 00:08:13,390 --> 00:08:17,560 this is an equivalent foundational work of modern philosophy, 76 00:08:17,560 --> 00:08:24,280 which evidently would change quite a lot of what we tend to think about in terms of the history and development of modern philosophy. 77 00:08:24,280 --> 00:08:25,600 I know that in recent times as well. 78 00:08:25,600 --> 00:08:35,000 Jonathan Canary's done some really interesting work on, you know, thinking about what modern world philosophy would mean in a South Asian context. 79 00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:41,590 One of the sort of point to my research, particularly interested in exploring, is the idea of global modern philosophy. 80 00:08:41,590 --> 00:08:46,120 So whether we might think about the text that it talks about in the lost age 81 00:08:46,120 --> 00:08:53,410 of reason and that Yacob and perhaps the works of Chinese thinkers like me, 82 00:08:53,410 --> 00:09:01,300 as well as those responding to similar sort of distinctively modern predicaments in, you know, not unconnected sort of way. 83 00:09:01,300 --> 00:09:08,000 So one of the sort of approaches for thinking about. Is what we call connected history, philosophy, 84 00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:16,700 and the sort of the main orientation of my research is figuring out what kind of a methodology we 85 00:09:16,700 --> 00:09:22,550 might need rooted in an analysis of the sort of particular material circumstances that are in common 86 00:09:22,550 --> 00:09:27,980 that these thinkers from different parts of the world and how that might help us think about all of 87 00:09:27,980 --> 00:09:36,140 these things together and how we might therefore try and write a truly global history of philosophy. 88 00:09:36,140 --> 00:09:43,010 I suppose that's actually a secondary. And the first one is to figure out whether the text is actually written by a 17th century Ethiopian or not, 89 00:09:43,010 --> 00:09:49,460 because that was a famous claim made by a 20th century scholar of Ethiopian literature that in fact, 90 00:09:49,460 --> 00:09:56,000 far from being the work of this very Yakob writing from a cave in 17th century TIKRAI, 91 00:09:56,000 --> 00:10:02,960 the text was actually fabricated by a 19th century Ethiopian Italian monk. 92 00:10:02,960 --> 00:10:06,020 And so, yeah, the first question, I suppose, 93 00:10:06,020 --> 00:10:13,550 is figuring out the authenticity debate and some of the sort of cultural political underpinnings of that debate over the last 94 00:10:13,550 --> 00:10:23,750 hundred years and then sort of trying to try to use that to think about this global global historiography of philosophy. 95 00:10:23,750 --> 00:10:32,490 Pretty 24 at. I guess the question is that, OK, I'm just I'm curious about one thing that you just said. 96 00:10:32,490 --> 00:10:43,940 Yeah. This whole thing about. Maternity and paternity being something that a kind of category that we can use across different worldviews, 97 00:10:43,940 --> 00:10:51,470 different places in space and time is interesting, is something that I've come across specifically in the Islamic world, as I did before, 98 00:10:51,470 --> 00:10:56,540 the influence of the West or as the influence of the West was was growing in the Islamic world. 99 00:10:56,540 --> 00:11:03,710 There were Sufi thinkers, particular Sufi thinkers, who were coming up with some of the ideas and instead it with modernity, 100 00:11:03,710 --> 00:11:09,860 I think in particular kind of a reformulation of traditional thought and moving away from tradition, 101 00:11:09,860 --> 00:11:12,860 the authority of individualism, 102 00:11:12,860 --> 00:11:19,520 so that your idea about modernity being something that was rising in different places at a similar time is interesting. 103 00:11:19,520 --> 00:11:28,700 Do you see that as a product of Western colonial influence in these respective places or happening apart from that? 104 00:11:28,700 --> 00:11:32,600 Yeah, so, I mean, this is a really interesting, really interesting sort of question. 105 00:11:32,600 --> 00:11:39,710 I think the the direction that I'm most interested in pushing the argument is one that doesn't emphasise 106 00:11:39,710 --> 00:11:47,130 the primacy or the hegemony of of of Western forces in constituting this kind of this kind of modernity, 107 00:11:47,130 --> 00:11:51,980 but that we think about these things as being a kind of globally constituted sort of system. 108 00:11:51,980 --> 00:11:58,580 So, of course, the sort of increasing in global travel and trade that you get from sort of, you know, 40, 109 00:11:58,580 --> 00:12:04,630 90 turbin and the sort of Portuguese Portuguese exploration's onwards is one of the major catalysts. 110 00:12:04,630 --> 00:12:08,660 So what we're thinking about the similar material conditions that we get and lots of places, 111 00:12:08,660 --> 00:12:11,750 one of the things that are similar is that different groups of people are being thrown 112 00:12:11,750 --> 00:12:17,840 into contact kind of for the first time is that they are forced to argue with you, 113 00:12:17,840 --> 00:12:23,240 argue with these European scholars and sort of think about his ideas in response to that. 114 00:12:23,240 --> 00:12:31,640 But we also have cases like with the Macala daughter who comes up with this kind of syncretic workwise. 115 00:12:31,640 --> 00:12:38,730 So he he's the heir to the throne, but he's very interested in various forms of Sufism and with and with Hinduism. 116 00:12:38,730 --> 00:12:45,860 So he interviews pundit's as a European artist, philosopher Francois Barnier at his core. 117 00:12:45,860 --> 00:12:53,990 And they're all sort of exchanging these ideas in a way that's certainly not fundamentally driven by European colonialism. 118 00:12:53,990 --> 00:13:02,540 You know, the European Jews there is you know, he's a guest of a vastly more powerful ruler than exists anywhere on the European continent. 119 00:13:02,540 --> 00:13:08,120 And he's one voice amongst many in these conversations, certainly not a dominant one. 120 00:13:08,120 --> 00:13:14,570 And so I think it's it's it's sort of thinking about modernity or enlightenment, 121 00:13:14,570 --> 00:13:19,940 maybe as the sort of intellectual sort of counterpart to that as being something which is. 122 00:13:19,940 --> 00:13:25,460 Yeah, jointly formed by by different people in different parts of the world at this stage. 123 00:13:25,460 --> 00:13:32,780 Although obviously the sort of the further you go on, the more that gets dominated by one particular view of what modernity and what enlightenment 124 00:13:32,780 --> 00:13:40,730 supposed to be to the point that people forget that there were any other alternatives at all. 125 00:13:40,730 --> 00:13:47,150 The idea of liberating materialistic formed Western particularism, but then still keeping it as a countercultural category. 126 00:13:47,150 --> 00:13:51,170 Yeah, it's fascinating. And it's yeah. And it's it's one of these things. 127 00:13:51,170 --> 00:13:58,310 It's very much a work in progress. I mean, you have to sort of decide and define what you take these important factors to be. 128 00:13:58,310 --> 00:14:04,770 For me, the thing that I'm most interested in when it comes to modernity or to the idea of enlightenment, 129 00:14:04,770 --> 00:14:10,160 thinking about what that might mean in different capacities instead of sort of taking the definition of enlightenment, 130 00:14:10,160 --> 00:14:20,440 like we might get an essay as, you know, the power to think for oneself or is, you know, X, Y or Z, we have, you know, enlightenments. 131 00:14:20,440 --> 00:14:24,050 To me, what's interesting is just any kind of intellectual critique in the service of an 132 00:14:24,050 --> 00:14:29,480 emancipatory politics and a sort of intellectual critique of a system that gives us, 133 00:14:29,480 --> 00:14:33,730 um. Yeah. A way of thinking about making human beings freer. 134 00:14:33,730 --> 00:14:37,280 Um, but it's absolutely fascinating. 135 00:14:37,280 --> 00:14:44,270 I also imagine that, you know, it's almost the worst of both worlds in the sense that you get pushback from historians as well. 136 00:14:44,270 --> 00:14:50,960 Yes, exactly. Exactly. As long as you're pissing off both sides, you can feel confident enough that you're doing it right. 137 00:14:50,960 --> 00:14:58,190 Well. I'm do you tell us what were you working on at the moment? 138 00:14:58,190 --> 00:15:00,980 So I'm doing a master's in study of religion. 139 00:15:00,980 --> 00:15:08,290 So the message itself is structured so that people can come in and study non Christian religions of whatever they want to. 140 00:15:08,290 --> 00:15:16,250 I'm focussing on South Asian religions to Buddhism and Hinduism in particular. So I've done two extended essays. 141 00:15:16,250 --> 00:15:26,300 One on my first one was on The Hindu Thinker, this 9th century Indian thinker Gupta, who lived in Kashmir. 142 00:15:26,300 --> 00:15:36,620 And he is is a Kashmiri shivah. So he inherits this kind of particular religious tradition that's based on these tantric texts and has an idealist, 143 00:15:36,620 --> 00:15:42,320 an idealist philosophy that has a kind of particular understanding of consciousness, vibration. 144 00:15:42,320 --> 00:15:47,870 So I was working on in him the relationship between reason and ritual. 145 00:15:47,870 --> 00:15:58,340 So if you read his text, he says that he says that the highest yoga, the high school practise is Turky. 146 00:15:58,340 --> 00:16:01,790 And so then you might be led to the conclusion that he's some sort of rationalist, 147 00:16:01,790 --> 00:16:08,820 I think from kind of particular modern Western interpreter blends with easy to start thinking that he's a rationalist in some way. 148 00:16:08,820 --> 00:16:14,690 And I have particular people sort of do have that interpretation. And by rationalist, I mean that liberation, 149 00:16:14,690 --> 00:16:21,230 that spiritual life is constituted by the kind of particular rational formulations that if you 150 00:16:21,230 --> 00:16:24,920 read his texts and his and you you look at the bits where he's describing what torture is, 151 00:16:24,920 --> 00:16:28,880 he's like, are you can intensify Durka by practising yoga, by doing ritual. 152 00:16:28,880 --> 00:16:33,170 So clearly has very different understanding of the target and becomes this word 153 00:16:33,170 --> 00:16:38,000 that has a semantic range that covers both what we would think of as reason, but also ritual and yoga. 154 00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:46,280 So this kind of essay was trying to deal with what reason might look like in in his thought as a whole, kind of dealing with ritual practise. 155 00:16:46,280 --> 00:16:48,320 And it's a whole aesthetic theory. 156 00:16:48,320 --> 00:16:57,090 So how ritual then becomes this particular type of aesthetic experience where your rational conclusions gain a kind of experiential dimension? 157 00:16:57,090 --> 00:17:01,770 And so this the broader sort of theme, I think, that wants to a lot of these different projects is, 158 00:17:01,770 --> 00:17:07,070 is the relationship between spiritual life and philosophy like philosophy, a spiritual practise? 159 00:17:07,070 --> 00:17:13,920 Then I did another essay on Buddhism, Buddhist philosophy, Mahayana philosophy, 160 00:17:13,920 --> 00:17:22,680 and that was dealing with and the seeming contradiction between what I call Katsof at apophatic approaches to reality. 161 00:17:22,680 --> 00:17:32,130 So some Buddhist texts and sutras and philosophical works will say that there is absolutely nothing that has intrinsic nature that is substantial, 162 00:17:32,130 --> 00:17:38,730 that exists independently of the human mind. And then other texts will say that, no, there is lots of things that insubstantial, 163 00:17:38,730 --> 00:17:45,150 but there is a fundamental ground reality that Buddha mind the Buddha on the grounds everything. 164 00:17:45,150 --> 00:17:49,260 So these two things seem really connected and they seem to be in tension. 165 00:17:49,260 --> 00:17:57,590 But I was trying to sort of reconcile the two in that they both have these self-referential paradoxes that come in in their thinking. 166 00:17:57,590 --> 00:18:05,890 So and the classic one is like this statement is alive and it's in its seeming self self-contradictory statement. 167 00:18:05,890 --> 00:18:11,830 And so in the apophatic instance, you have these and these statements, 168 00:18:11,830 --> 00:18:16,750 like all all views or views on the world, are insubstantial, including this view. 169 00:18:16,750 --> 00:18:18,580 So it seems to be self-contradictory. 170 00:18:18,580 --> 00:18:27,250 But in the case of Outguns, you say that, well, all words fall short of the ultimate reality, of course, including these very words that have spoken. 171 00:18:27,250 --> 00:18:35,080 So these paradoxes, although they allege these two schools and they contradict these paradoxes, are coming back. 172 00:18:35,080 --> 00:18:40,930 And I was trying to make a conclusion about how these paradoxes can be indicative of the way in which these philosophies 173 00:18:40,930 --> 00:18:47,200 are a form of spiritual practise and that their aims ultimately not at achieving a kind of subtle philosophical position, 174 00:18:47,200 --> 00:18:56,390 but the sort of religiously situated in the fact that that means the methodologies of cultivating a kind of. 175 00:18:56,390 --> 00:19:02,840 Relationship to our thoughts, experience beyond conceptuality, nonconsumption experience. 176 00:19:02,840 --> 00:19:04,490 So, yeah, those those are two themes. 177 00:19:04,490 --> 00:19:10,640 And now I now I'm working in a communist state too much because I'm in the process of working on this Buddhist Taxco. 178 00:19:10,640 --> 00:19:16,890 Nobody ever taught us 9th century Sanskrit Buddhist poem and philosophical phenomenology. 179 00:19:16,890 --> 00:19:21,470 So we saw quite a lot of policy and trying to do a comparative reading in order to 180 00:19:21,470 --> 00:19:25,460 sort of try and bring out the fact that this text isn't because this text I mean, 181 00:19:25,460 --> 00:19:35,990 maybe you could talk about this, but these texts are often read as kind of the object that indicative of the belief systems of other people out there, 182 00:19:35,990 --> 00:19:44,360 these Buddhist people who existed long time ago. But I think reading it with philosophical phenomenology is interesting because although 183 00:19:44,360 --> 00:19:49,280 the comparative project is for it's a minefield and that's an interesting issue. 184 00:19:49,280 --> 00:19:51,890 But doing that kind of reading allows them, 185 00:19:51,890 --> 00:19:58,470 I think kind of brings the text to life as a as a text talking about human life and structures of human life 186 00:19:58,470 --> 00:20:07,490 on the deepest level so that you can then maybe both of you could talk a bit more about the sources actually, 187 00:20:07,490 --> 00:20:13,040 and maybe language, but also like other sort of I guess like, you know, 188 00:20:13,040 --> 00:20:22,780 diaries that you just have to cross to be able to do this kind of work with, especially when it comes to Western philosophy. 189 00:20:22,780 --> 00:20:30,850 If you'd be happy to continue, I'd like to hear about this, the languages of those texts and in Sanskrit or the Buddhist philosophy in Sanskrit. 190 00:20:30,850 --> 00:20:39,880 So I think so Buddhism starts in party, which is a language very related to Sanskrit. 191 00:20:39,880 --> 00:20:47,200 What I think scholars, early Buddhism text anybody. And then you have the Mahayana tradition that develops. 192 00:20:47,200 --> 00:20:52,510 And most of the philosophy that's done in Mahayana, in India, in South Asia, which is what I focus on, 193 00:20:52,510 --> 00:20:57,790 is in Sanskrit and in my moves to China and East Asia and so takes on those languages. 194 00:20:57,790 --> 00:21:08,920 But all of the text and sources that I've worked for in Sanskrit, so, yeah, it's Sanskrit is beautiful and ridiculously difficult language. 195 00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:12,910 I was lucky enough to study a little bit of it in first year when it came. 196 00:21:12,910 --> 00:21:16,270 I'm part of the theology degree. The undergraduate theology degree. 197 00:21:16,270 --> 00:21:23,890 Oxford means that in your first year you studied scripture language so you could do Sanskrit, but you could do Vulgate Latza and you can do Gleek. 198 00:21:23,890 --> 00:21:29,770 You can do poly, you can do Arabic. So you have a kind of choice depending on what sort of religious focus you wanted to. 199 00:21:29,770 --> 00:21:36,280 And I did Sanskrit, which is really good fun. But then by the time at the end of that year, you sort of start getting to terms with the language. 200 00:21:36,280 --> 00:21:42,230 And the way the course is structured is that you have to drop it. There's no formal way of continuing your teaching. 201 00:21:42,230 --> 00:21:44,350 So are informal ways. And you can go to lectures. 202 00:21:44,350 --> 00:21:54,310 And I I went to Nepal for two summers after my first year to study Sanskrit in a sort of more traditional South Asian context. 203 00:21:54,310 --> 00:22:02,740 But yeah, I still don't have coming up with the language that I could sort of open the text in Sanskrit and read it. 204 00:22:02,740 --> 00:22:05,020 I think that that's many years in the future. 205 00:22:05,020 --> 00:22:15,100 But what what I can do is with the text in translation, have a look at the Sanskrit and get a sense of the text individual language. 206 00:22:15,100 --> 00:22:19,630 So it is it is a it's about some of these texts and translated. 207 00:22:19,630 --> 00:22:30,880 So when I was working with the time, which is his big magnum opus somewhere, we were kind of like his tomatillos is not translated yet. 208 00:22:30,880 --> 00:22:36,670 There are I think there is one I you to call a devotional translations. 209 00:22:36,670 --> 00:22:41,230 It went done in South Asia and modern South Asian University. 210 00:22:41,230 --> 00:22:50,550 But I think that doesn't mean I wasn't able to access it, but I was sort of told that it doesn't have the kind of academic rigour. 211 00:22:50,550 --> 00:22:52,600 At least that was what was implied. 212 00:22:52,600 --> 00:23:00,790 So I was I was looking at some of the smaller works and the way that scholars would quote him in their secondary sources. 213 00:23:00,790 --> 00:23:06,530 So the language is a bit of a barrier. Yeah. And. 214 00:23:06,530 --> 00:23:10,850 Yes, that's, I guess, how I can with my sources, if that's how this is interesting, 215 00:23:10,850 --> 00:23:14,690 isn't it, that even, you know, even when I'm in the same position as you, 216 00:23:14,690 --> 00:23:22,880 I can't I'm not yet in a position where I can just pick up the hat at this area and read it, read it off the page without any problems. 217 00:23:22,880 --> 00:23:27,620 But it's interesting that you sort of notice and it may be maybe more with philosophical texts 218 00:23:27,620 --> 00:23:33,050 than with some of the other things that you can study in a language like apply or whatever else. 219 00:23:33,050 --> 00:23:37,370 There's so much that you can get off of short word lists off of things like when you were 220 00:23:37,370 --> 00:23:40,970 mentioning earlier these sort of interesting differences between reason and ritual. 221 00:23:40,970 --> 00:23:44,990 I can't remember the sentence correct term to use, but, you know, drawing out the fact that, 222 00:23:44,990 --> 00:23:48,170 ah, well, this time, which can be habitually translated as reason, 223 00:23:48,170 --> 00:23:55,510 is obviously not exactly the same as a reason in the sense that we mean in the sense that a reason is not 224 00:23:55,510 --> 00:24:02,480 what reason is going to be largely similar in French fries or in whichever other sort of European language. 225 00:24:02,480 --> 00:24:11,990 But I mean, to take that example with with with the one that I'm working on and so that the this area is as you as it is, is in girls. 226 00:24:11,990 --> 00:24:18,350 Girls is also a dead language. And then it's not spoken of as a mother tongue by anyone anymore. 227 00:24:18,350 --> 00:24:24,560 It's still the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church that's closely related to the modern Semitic languages. 228 00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:30,490 And what is the Hebrew and Arabic? But. 229 00:24:30,490 --> 00:24:35,530 So, yeah, the example of reason, as you said earlier, in in girs the term, which is translated most often, 230 00:24:35,530 --> 00:24:40,960 is reason as a faculty of reason, because we have the same thing here, as you mentioned earlier with with your thinker, 231 00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:45,940 that people like to call him a rationalist and whether we can make sense of 232 00:24:45,940 --> 00:24:49,690 calling somebody a rationalist when the term they're using has less importantly, 233 00:24:49,690 --> 00:24:50,800 different semantic feel. 234 00:24:50,800 --> 00:25:01,140 So in the case of girls in this area, the word he uses is LUB, which literally is the heart and the heart in most Semitic languages, 235 00:25:01,140 --> 00:25:06,130 I think in Hebrew and Arabic, who is seen as the seat of the intellect in the seat of Reesa, 236 00:25:06,130 --> 00:25:11,370 quite as opposed to the sort of general use of heart in European languages, which, as you know, 237 00:25:11,370 --> 00:25:15,880 you Kuzio you all your heart over your head or something, which is, you know, emotion of reason. 238 00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:23,590 And you think that obviously that kind of distinction between emotional thought and rational thought is not really going to hold up in quite 239 00:25:23,590 --> 00:25:31,240 the same way when we've got this completely different metaphor for the place that's meant to be the seat of reason and even just sort of, 240 00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:38,680 you know, having pointing out these sort of small, subtle differences in a single philosophical term, 241 00:25:38,680 --> 00:25:47,170 which you might find difficult to read in the overall sentence, already gives you a huge amount of philosophical material to work with. 242 00:25:47,170 --> 00:25:52,300 Right. We already have some very different ideas about when people are making certain claims about, you know, 243 00:25:52,300 --> 00:25:57,100 reason that they're actually saying something really very different than what we might be initially thinking of. 244 00:25:57,100 --> 00:26:02,920 Something that might seem quite familiar to us is actually expressing something really very different or vice versa. 245 00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:10,780 And I think the first thing that that's really important for is cautioning against really sort of superficial parallels, 246 00:26:10,780 --> 00:26:13,930 because there's often the sort of attempt when you have this kind of comparative work, 247 00:26:13,930 --> 00:26:20,830 the you know, we're reading through some really interesting Sanskrit text and we think, oh, my God, here's the here's the Indian montane. 248 00:26:20,830 --> 00:26:23,680 Right. It's just the same as saying one tiny thing. 249 00:26:23,680 --> 00:26:28,690 Or we come across, you know, the Ethiopian carped, which is the thing that everyone wants to say physically. 250 00:26:28,690 --> 00:26:38,590 But we come across, you know, the the Mayan Plato or something like that, and these temptations to sort of draw these analogies based on, 251 00:26:38,590 --> 00:26:43,870 you know, what might not be a particularly rigorous kind of translation, just the fact that, you know, we have this word reason here. 252 00:26:43,870 --> 00:26:49,750 We have this word reason here. I think yeah, I think that knowing knowing the languages, 253 00:26:49,750 --> 00:26:56,770 even if it's not necessarily to the point that you can sort of skim read them and remember them off by heart, 254 00:26:56,770 --> 00:27:01,270 is is no one really important for sort of cautioning against some of the obvious mistakes that can 255 00:27:01,270 --> 00:27:11,340 be made in comparative philosophy and just an incredibly rewarding philosophical thought itself? 256 00:27:11,340 --> 00:27:11,850 It's funny, 257 00:27:11,850 --> 00:27:22,260 it kind of reminds me yesterday I was reading a book by a guy called Talk and it was on it's a work on the project of comparative philosophy, 258 00:27:22,260 --> 00:27:25,800 in particular with the interpretation of an Indian philosopher. 259 00:27:25,800 --> 00:27:31,620 And he's talking about how if you look at the history of the West interpretation, Nagarjuna, it's this kind of process of Stainer verses. 260 00:27:31,620 --> 00:27:37,320 And I like that in the 19th century that they have a sense of what nihilism might be in a God. 261 00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:45,150 It's placed in the box of nihilism. And then they say, no, he's in the country and now he's you know, he's an analytical magician. 262 00:27:45,150 --> 00:27:48,730 He in and now it's about Valenstein. I was all about Vacanti. 263 00:27:48,730 --> 00:27:55,950 Think about this and that. The very incapacities deconstructionist. So, yeah, it's so easy, as you say, 264 00:27:55,950 --> 00:28:03,870 with superficial translations when the languages aren't known in full depth and richness to place it in a 265 00:28:03,870 --> 00:28:10,260 box that you've already kind of come to terms with that you're you're trying to see in your own tradition. 266 00:28:10,260 --> 00:28:13,020 Yeah. So the language is fundamentally important. 267 00:28:13,020 --> 00:28:18,900 I think a lot of the the comparative philosophies that I've looked at when it comes to methodology emphasised 268 00:28:18,900 --> 00:28:24,480 repeatedly that the language learning the language have a good kind of philological awareness is foundational. 269 00:28:24,480 --> 00:28:28,890 But even, you know, and that's that's a huge task for a lot of people. 270 00:28:28,890 --> 00:28:33,570 And I think that's perhaps the tricky thing about this issue. 271 00:28:33,570 --> 00:28:38,520 And this question is that like Sanskrit, you know, you talk to pundits say at least 10 years, 272 00:28:38,520 --> 00:28:44,490 at least 10 years of full time Sanskrit, that then, you know, the language is inconceivable. 273 00:28:44,490 --> 00:28:54,080 So I think what this discussion is highlighted is that you can get a lot out of just reading the English translation along sides, you know, 274 00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:59,190 a kind of awareness of the Sanskrit terms that have been translated and maybe having the 275 00:28:59,190 --> 00:29:03,420 text in transliteration next to you so that you can see what words have been translated, 276 00:29:03,420 --> 00:29:11,100 as well as when you can come across these observations, as we have done of of wild Turkey has been translated as reason here, 277 00:29:11,100 --> 00:29:14,220 but it's also being used in another context where might not be translated, as we said. 278 00:29:14,220 --> 00:29:20,980 So if I if I didn't know that, then I would have a very different image of what the person is saying. 279 00:29:20,980 --> 00:29:32,710 I think you can do a lot with that method beyond language, and you find other difficulties working with sources, 280 00:29:32,710 --> 00:29:37,870 both in terms of having the access to archives or having access to, 281 00:29:37,870 --> 00:29:43,900 like, you know, rigorous, like, you know, good digital copies of sources or sort of have to, 282 00:29:43,900 --> 00:29:49,570 like, piece it together from, like, various texts which caught the materials at length and. 283 00:29:49,570 --> 00:29:56,860 Yeah, well, in the last year, it hasn't been particularly easy to access anything and anything at all. 284 00:29:56,860 --> 00:30:02,440 I mean, with with with the text that I work on the. 285 00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:09,370 There's there's not a huge there's not a huge range of different and places to sort of find them, 286 00:30:09,370 --> 00:30:16,510 there's nothing really in the way of proper scholarly attention to be for the hypothetical that there were two editions, 287 00:30:16,510 --> 00:30:21,850 I think, in 1995 and 1997 with translations into Russian and Latin. 288 00:30:21,850 --> 00:30:25,570 And then there was nothing useful. Yeah, yeah. 289 00:30:25,570 --> 00:30:31,510 If in 1937, people are still using Latin as a scholarly language, 290 00:30:31,510 --> 00:30:37,600 but it wasn't until 1974 that there was a critical addition and translated into English and there hasn't been one since. 291 00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:40,630 I mean, my girl's teacher now is working on another translation. 292 00:30:40,630 --> 00:30:43,990 And that's that's another point based on the thing we were saying about translations earlier, 293 00:30:43,990 --> 00:30:50,500 one of the most useful things you can do, especially when you sort of have a grasp on the language, 294 00:30:50,500 --> 00:30:55,780 but not a complete fluency, whether it is to compare different translations, different translation choices, 295 00:30:55,780 --> 00:31:00,820 the sort of alternative ways that people can have for thinking them through. 296 00:31:00,820 --> 00:31:07,510 And in particular, when you know something about the translation, the translators and that kind of lens that they're bringing to work on things. 297 00:31:07,510 --> 00:31:14,440 So the first guy to translate that into English is a Canadian Jesuit, implored Sumner, 298 00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:19,240 who said that at one point that he was I think he lived in Ethiopia for 50 or 60 years, 299 00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:25,810 was fluent in multiple contemporary Ethiopian because he said it was a Canadian by birth in Ethiopia by choice. 300 00:31:25,810 --> 00:31:35,440 And he sort of wrote this five volume work of of Ethiopian philosophy, some of the translations of really early texts in girls, 301 00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:41,680 which themselves arose out of translations from Arabic or Greek, then that's a very Yakup himself, 302 00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:47,800 which is sort of the critical edition of came up with some strong argument in favour of its authenticity and 303 00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:57,010 then also collected a series of sort of creation myths and proverbs of the Oromo people of southern Ethiopia. 304 00:31:57,010 --> 00:32:03,310 And he you know, he was he was a philosophically trained Jesuit scholar. 305 00:32:03,310 --> 00:32:05,890 He was very interested in Descartes philosophy. 306 00:32:05,890 --> 00:32:11,830 And you can tell when he's doing these translations that he has that the analogy in mind to the whole time. 307 00:32:11,830 --> 00:32:13,960 There's lots of talk of the natural light, 308 00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:22,810 of the faculties of reason of of struggling to think of too many other other specific analogies at the moment, 309 00:32:22,810 --> 00:32:28,360 that you can really see that on the basis of this connexion that he's he's already drawn. 310 00:32:28,360 --> 00:32:32,800 We have a particular kind of translation and that the new translation done by someone who 311 00:32:32,800 --> 00:32:38,620 is not philosophically trained but has much more of a background in Christian literature, 312 00:32:38,620 --> 00:32:45,580 is translating a lot of those things much more philosophically, neutrally, such that we don't have the natural light or the faculty of reason. 313 00:32:45,580 --> 00:32:52,900 We simply have the God given intelligence or something like that when he's talking about it, which is, you know. 314 00:32:52,900 --> 00:32:58,510 If you were to get these two taxed and try and do a philosophical analysis just of the English translation, 315 00:32:58,510 --> 00:33:03,970 you would inevitably come to two very different conclusions based on these two different text, 316 00:33:03,970 --> 00:33:07,390 based on the sort of presuppositions that we have gone through. 317 00:33:07,390 --> 00:33:15,730 So one of one of the sort of big projects that I think needs to happen before serious comparative work can be done for for this text than other 318 00:33:15,730 --> 00:33:24,220 ones is to sort of come up with something of a glossary or a lexicon of philosophical terms and the sort of range of text in the semantic field. 319 00:33:24,220 --> 00:33:37,240 Some explanation, some examples. If this sort of comparative work is going to be more than general speculations of all reason, a natural. 320 00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:44,650 Yeah, I think this is when you're looking at non European Western philosophy, it's going to be very different. 321 00:33:44,650 --> 00:33:50,890 This is the kind of lucky thing about what it's when it comes to the stuff that I look at. 322 00:33:50,890 --> 00:34:01,210 I think Buddhist philosophy has been been studied for centuries now, and especially with modern Western interpreters and a couple of people. 323 00:34:01,210 --> 00:34:07,990 Oxford, there is a kind of growing sort of quite deep understanding awareness of these 324 00:34:07,990 --> 00:34:13,990 philological issues and the importance of of translation and process of making processes. 325 00:34:13,990 --> 00:34:20,530 That's one thing that does exist and it comes to Buddhist philosophy, Buddhist philosophy. 326 00:34:20,530 --> 00:34:23,860 So I'm quite lucky in the especially the text that I'm working on the moment. 327 00:34:23,860 --> 00:34:31,000 The to tell you what, the Torah is a very popular text in a text that's been translated multiple times for multiple languages. 328 00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:39,100 And so so I have sort of the resources that for for the Buddhist philosophy that I'm looking at on the Kashmiri side, 329 00:34:39,100 --> 00:34:45,970 on the side of the translations, as I've been saying, far more sparse. 330 00:34:45,970 --> 00:34:54,790 And so, yeah, it's a process that's happening. And the people, the people approaching it, it's a mix. 331 00:34:54,790 --> 00:35:04,180 It's sort of similar in a similar way to watching this one, saying that as philosophers coming out it a couple there's one guy called David Lawrence. 332 00:35:04,180 --> 00:35:10,240 He's a I think a British trained quantitate. 333 00:35:10,240 --> 00:35:12,550 He's trained in the continental tradition. 334 00:35:12,550 --> 00:35:21,160 And he's really looking at it from the lens of a particular kind of Jesuit thought and transcendental argument. 335 00:35:21,160 --> 00:35:30,910 And he does a lot of comparisons with the thought of going on as the Jesuit priest, I think called John Depute. 336 00:35:30,910 --> 00:35:37,330 Interestingly, a Jesuit priest used as the sort of Jesuit Christian reading of these tantric ritual, which often involve like a load of sex. 337 00:35:37,330 --> 00:35:48,910 And so it's quite funny that that interest and but then there's also the bit that big guy at the moment is working on Kashmiri Texcoco, 338 00:35:48,910 --> 00:35:54,490 Alexis Anderson. So he's very much a Sanskrit scholar, philologists. 339 00:35:54,490 --> 00:35:59,350 So these these perspectives are growing and you can sort of see it. I think there's more interest. 340 00:35:59,350 --> 00:36:07,360 There's a lot more interest recently in Kashmir particular. So there's a growing body of scholarship and different translations rising. 341 00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:14,850 But, yes, it's a work in progress. The only other thing that I would I would maybe add to that is that I think that 342 00:36:14,850 --> 00:36:18,960 sort of contrast is really interesting in the case of Sanscrit philosophy. 343 00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:21,600 We obviously have this incredibly long, 344 00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:30,840 incredibly deep and rich tradition of writings that are obviously recognisable to even the most parochial Western philosopher whose philosophy. 345 00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:33,660 You know, you have systems and rules of inductive logic. 346 00:36:33,660 --> 00:36:40,650 Some of them might be couched in ideas of ritual that might seem a little bit distasteful to scientifically minded Western philosophers. 347 00:36:40,650 --> 00:36:45,210 But ultimately, these things are quite obviously philosophy. 348 00:36:45,210 --> 00:36:52,220 Whereas in the Ethiopian and the African case, we have apart from the fact that very yakob. 349 00:36:52,220 --> 00:36:59,810 We have to be sort of ready to look at things as maybe being philosophical, which are obviously so so in the case of the Chapati, 350 00:36:59,810 --> 00:37:03,500 you know, there's a kind of rationalism, there's a kind of theodicy and cosmological argument. 351 00:37:03,500 --> 00:37:08,300 But that's that's one of the few tax like that, I mean, in sub-Saharan Africa. 352 00:37:08,300 --> 00:37:09,140 You also obviously have that. 353 00:37:09,140 --> 00:37:16,820 You have the Arabic and the Jummy language manuscripts of Timbuktu, which are continuations of broader philosophy in the Islamic world. 354 00:37:16,820 --> 00:37:23,780 But if we're willing to look far for other things, many African philosophers have, you know, 355 00:37:23,780 --> 00:37:28,100 been forced to come up with and think of very different approaches to subject 356 00:37:28,100 --> 00:37:33,650 material and source texts such that in many cases these might not be written text. 357 00:37:33,650 --> 00:37:38,270 How do we try and extract philosophy or something like that from a from an oral tradition? 358 00:37:38,270 --> 00:37:42,770 And this is really why I think one of the most interesting philosophical questions that comes 359 00:37:42,770 --> 00:37:50,400 out of this is that when we don't have exactly the same kinds of kinds of written text, 360 00:37:50,400 --> 00:37:58,910 what we don't have things that are so obviously recognisable to us as philosophy, what's our method of trying to get philosophical ideas? 361 00:37:58,910 --> 00:38:03,080 And, you know, I think that well, not only am I convinced that that's the case, 362 00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:08,060 I think there are many cases where you can read philosophers and they have shown how this kind of extraction can work so well. 363 00:38:08,060 --> 00:38:15,020 If someone like Henry Aruca or Frederick or cheering with Yambo, who do what's called sage philosophy, 364 00:38:15,020 --> 00:38:22,130 where you go to they were based in Kenya, where you go to, you know, some some of the villages and you find, 365 00:38:22,130 --> 00:38:27,530 you know, an elder of the village who doesn't speak a European language, has an encounter with education, 366 00:38:27,530 --> 00:38:36,050 and you sit down and interview them in the original language in Luo or in or call you or Kumbo or other language. 367 00:38:36,050 --> 00:38:44,180 And you take the thought of this individual thinker to be representative of a kind of philosophy of of the individual thinker. 368 00:38:44,180 --> 00:38:46,790 There are other methods of, you know, you take the like I said, 369 00:38:46,790 --> 00:38:53,840 would you take the proverbs or the creation myths or the religious text and you extract the philosophy from that, 370 00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:59,060 which is the approach to something called ethno philosophy. Know this is characteristic of the whole group of people. 371 00:38:59,060 --> 00:39:02,310 That's really the thing that the sage philosophers are trying to push back against. 372 00:39:02,310 --> 00:39:07,140 There's no sense in which all Bantu peoples could be said to share the same political system. 373 00:39:07,140 --> 00:39:12,710 That doesn't make any sense. Philosophy is something which is essentially critical and, you know, 374 00:39:12,710 --> 00:39:18,410 detached from that in some way that we need to go and interview the individual thinkers and see how they criticise the sort of, 375 00:39:18,410 --> 00:39:26,630 you know, the way things are habitually done. And just to sort of give one last example, coming back to the language question, 376 00:39:26,630 --> 00:39:31,010 one of the other roots that was taken by a Rwandan philosopher, Alexis Kagame, 377 00:39:31,010 --> 00:39:37,520 is to do an analysis of the structure of the language of Rwanda, Bantu languages, 378 00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:46,520 and to say that we can derive again and ethno philosophical bullet replies to a group of people simply from the structure of that language. 379 00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:53,630 You know, the particular type of you know, the tent structure is going to give us something of a philosophy of time. 380 00:39:53,630 --> 00:39:57,770 Understanding how subject and project are used together in a sentence is going 381 00:39:57,770 --> 00:40:01,370 to give us something of an idea of the underlying ontology of that language. 382 00:40:01,370 --> 00:40:06,620 And I just think it's one of the things that's most fruitful for thinking about, 383 00:40:06,620 --> 00:40:13,370 for even people who may not think that they're sort of interested in the content of some of these works of African philosophy. 384 00:40:13,370 --> 00:40:19,670 People who might not be able to recognise their own philosophical interest in that is to think about these questions of, 385 00:40:19,670 --> 00:40:23,870 you know, what forms of philosophy take, how can we how can we get out of there? 386 00:40:23,870 --> 00:40:30,170 Not just for her, for that from Justin Smith, which says that you've got philosophy, which is, you know, 387 00:40:30,170 --> 00:40:35,990 in the or of culture, we have this sort of, you know, gold or iron ore mixed in with all of the other rocks. 388 00:40:35,990 --> 00:40:41,600 It's not so easily separable, as, you know, academic philosophy with articles and, you know, 389 00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:49,730 not that bullet points and stuff, but the different kinds of extraction work can help help us to get the. 390 00:40:49,730 --> 00:40:55,660 I think that's what was said, I think. Yeah, this. 391 00:40:55,660 --> 00:40:59,890 I mean, yeah, I think sort of relating back to the South Asian context that I'm familiar with, 392 00:40:59,890 --> 00:41:07,480 it's interesting that the issues you talk about, it's interesting that they're very different in this case as well. 393 00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:12,610 I mean, I personally, I'm very interested in the question of like what becomes philosophy, 394 00:41:12,610 --> 00:41:20,060 what kind of writing is counted as philosophical interest that is highly disputed in the case of a classical South Asian philosophy as well? 395 00:41:20,060 --> 00:41:23,740 You know, the big thing that happens, I mean, in the case of philosophy, 396 00:41:23,740 --> 00:41:28,990 I'm sure it happens elsewhere in other anonymous philosophy, whether it's philosophy or religion. 397 00:41:28,990 --> 00:41:37,630 And this particular separation that has occurred in the history of the Western Academy has coloured the way that we look at these things. 398 00:41:37,630 --> 00:41:41,650 And so then you can get you know, you can get dogmatist. 399 00:41:41,650 --> 00:41:52,510 The concerns about epistemology that that's taken is somehow kind of, you know, religious as its fundamental association, Buddhism. 400 00:41:52,510 --> 00:41:59,320 And then you have Descartes arguments for the existence of God, all of, you know, enlightenment philosophy, 401 00:41:59,320 --> 00:42:05,650 all of the whole kind of tradition of US philosophy and its religious situation. 402 00:42:05,650 --> 00:42:10,210 So, you know, you have this divide. And, yeah, I think it's interesting. 403 00:42:10,210 --> 00:42:15,910 I mean, it's it is it colours the way the text that we take as philosophy. 404 00:42:15,910 --> 00:42:19,700 But I think for me, it's also interesting in the you know, 405 00:42:19,700 --> 00:42:26,980 it might show as well if we if we expand maybe our view of what philosophy is and take in some of these texts that might, 406 00:42:26,980 --> 00:42:31,000 you know, actually seem like religion, 407 00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:41,260 it can maybe transform our understanding of what philosophy is for us and maybe sort of it brings to light how kind of particularise and it becomes. 408 00:42:41,260 --> 00:42:48,310 And yeah, I think it relates to sort of my broad interests in the way that philosophy can be integrated into a form of spirituality, 409 00:42:48,310 --> 00:42:52,030 how we could conceive of philosophy and it's pulled away. 410 00:42:52,030 --> 00:43:01,690 That has more to do with human transformation and changing individual lives and changing society and the way that we see each other, 411 00:43:01,690 --> 00:43:08,030 which is a complaint that I think all of us like working at BP and people watching this podcast, what we have with. 412 00:43:08,030 --> 00:43:15,380 With philosophy also looking outside of your way of thinking about that question, I think there's also I mean, 413 00:43:15,380 --> 00:43:19,280 what Jonathan was saying in terms of Indian philosophy and, you know, 414 00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:23,990 certain forms of Indian philosophy know still recognisable in the West philosophy, 415 00:43:23,990 --> 00:43:30,320 but there are forms of Indian philosophy which are not like, you know, I mean, indigenous types of philosophy are like folk, 416 00:43:30,320 --> 00:43:35,360 religious cultures, you know, that I'm familiar with and because of my cultural context. 417 00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:40,490 But, you know, I wonder how much of that know. 418 00:43:40,490 --> 00:43:44,960 I mean, I do I do think that there's something to be said about that, you know, when you don't even know, 419 00:43:44,960 --> 00:43:50,600 like the sort of highest, most prominent way of doing, say, like in philosophy in the West. 420 00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:58,610 And you're trying to introduce that project. You know, it's difficult to like bring in all of the other forms and obviously to, you know, 421 00:43:58,610 --> 00:44:06,470 like a subcontinent with so many years of history and continued work of philosophy. 422 00:44:06,470 --> 00:44:17,910 Yeah, I imagine that there's like a lot still to do in the field, but I guess that's a cause for optimism. 423 00:44:17,910 --> 00:44:18,930 It doesn't feel, in a way, 424 00:44:18,930 --> 00:44:26,100 that sort of studying maybe it's not something that I've done a huge amount that can imagine if you're trying to write something, 425 00:44:26,100 --> 00:44:29,730 you know, it's going to be so you're going to be flooded with all these other writings 426 00:44:29,730 --> 00:44:32,730 of other people who've really gone down a very similar line that you have. 427 00:44:32,730 --> 00:44:36,790 But if you're doing comparative work, you're looking at texts that people haven't translated yet. 428 00:44:36,790 --> 00:44:43,880 It's a fun exercise. Yeah, I really think so. 429 00:44:43,880 --> 00:44:48,840 Oh, I just get out. Well, I mean, really, like we've talked about this throughout the podcast, 430 00:44:48,840 --> 00:44:54,060 but maybe you could like talk about your experiences of studying like non Western philosophy in like 431 00:44:54,060 --> 00:45:00,810 a formal way in Western institutions and speak to sort of the project of diversifying philosophy, 432 00:45:00,810 --> 00:45:07,020 not only philosophy happening everywhere else, but like really this idea of like decolonising the curriculum or. 433 00:45:07,020 --> 00:45:15,090 Yeah, yeah. Well, that's that's actually one of the points about diversifying and decolonising was one of the ones that I was just about to make. 434 00:45:15,090 --> 00:45:20,580 So I guess I'll say that and then can can mention something about the sort of the context of it, 435 00:45:20,580 --> 00:45:27,630 because I think that's of studying these things is very relevant. So I mean, with with what I was saying about, you know, 436 00:45:27,630 --> 00:45:35,310 there's there's both the the interest of studying philosophy from other parts of the world simply because people 437 00:45:35,310 --> 00:45:40,410 from different parts of the world have come up with different ideas and exciting new ones in different languages, 438 00:45:40,410 --> 00:45:44,220 in different forms. And that's going to be intrinsically interesting anyway. 439 00:45:44,220 --> 00:45:51,870 And if we want to teach the most interesting and wide ranging and profound range of things, we should include all of those stuff, too. 440 00:45:51,870 --> 00:45:59,010 But I feel like if what if if our conception of diversifying philosophy is simply adding different 441 00:45:59,010 --> 00:46:07,260 names and different languages to a list of things that are already broadly recognisable as philosophy, 442 00:46:07,260 --> 00:46:14,220 then we've missed something of an opportunity. We haven't diversified as much as we can do in the sense that I think what some of the things that 443 00:46:14,220 --> 00:46:19,480 these texts asking are they ask about this borderline between religious texts and philosophical ones, 444 00:46:19,480 --> 00:46:25,170 ask whether that's really such an easily defined one and whether we should think about our conception as philosophers, 445 00:46:25,170 --> 00:46:28,560 including the latter, as well as the forbearers, some of them or no. 446 00:46:28,560 --> 00:46:36,210 Or whether some kind of scientific writings should be included or should know or whether some, you know, 447 00:46:36,210 --> 00:46:43,050 mystical or historical reflections that Virge into philosophical territory might be included in a broader conception of it. 448 00:46:43,050 --> 00:46:47,190 So I think it's not only the case that by studying on Western philosophies, 449 00:46:47,190 --> 00:46:51,510 we can find other things that conform to our pre-existing idea philosophy to include in it. 450 00:46:51,510 --> 00:46:56,010 But in encountering these alternatives, we're coming up with a new idea of it anyway. 451 00:46:56,010 --> 00:47:01,140 We're rethinking what the canons meant to look like. Let's also think about what philosophy in general. 452 00:47:01,140 --> 00:47:11,640 Well, with that and that, I think would be a good thing for philosophy, and that would be something that would be good for the academy more generally, 453 00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:15,930 because at the moment we do have this kind of situation where I don't know if you 454 00:47:15,930 --> 00:47:21,120 mentioned you in a philosophy department or are you in a sort of theology or. 455 00:47:21,120 --> 00:47:27,090 Yeah, so exactly. You're studying stuff, which is obviously philosophy in the theology department. 456 00:47:27,090 --> 00:47:34,440 I'm studying stuff. I mean, it's obviously philosophy with an intellectual historian and a comparative literature department. 457 00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:44,040 And many other people end up in all sorts of different different parts of the academy to try and do this work and. 458 00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:53,550 You can understand why, you know, things things have ended up in this way, different disciplines have sort of, you know, got their particular, 459 00:47:53,550 --> 00:48:01,020 you know, institutional definitions, and especially when universities are having such a terrible time as they are at the moment. 460 00:48:01,020 --> 00:48:03,810 And they're all trying to sort of throw their little funding pots for themselves. 461 00:48:03,810 --> 00:48:09,930 If you need to have a very strong, rigorous definition and not allow anything that doesn't in the challenges that. 462 00:48:09,930 --> 00:48:14,790 But it seems to me that especially given a lot of the stuff that we were saying about linguistic 463 00:48:14,790 --> 00:48:19,140 backgrounds with historical backgrounds being really important for doing this sort of work, 464 00:48:19,140 --> 00:48:22,470 it's got to be essentially interdisciplinary in some ways. 465 00:48:22,470 --> 00:48:30,660 Right. You can't just be sort of doing your part to come close with with a little bit of logic and maybe the mathematics along the side. 466 00:48:30,660 --> 00:48:38,130 You need to you know, you need you need to really brought in the range of stuff that you're interested in and studying. 467 00:48:38,130 --> 00:48:43,320 And I just say that I think I think that philosophy departments are going to have to move in that direction, 468 00:48:43,320 --> 00:48:51,220 number one, of offering more, you know, a wider range of historical philosophies and of. 469 00:48:51,220 --> 00:48:54,620 Engaging with these sorts of questions that, you know, 470 00:48:54,620 --> 00:49:04,910 with existential and political social questions rather than necessarily the sort of core topics at the moment. 471 00:49:04,910 --> 00:49:09,530 If that if they're to have if they're to have much of a future and so the only thing I'd say somebody 472 00:49:09,530 --> 00:49:13,790 who might be thinking about whether to do that or not is if you are interested in this stuff, 473 00:49:13,790 --> 00:49:17,780 just do it. Do it in whichever department happens to be offering that stuff at the moment. 474 00:49:17,780 --> 00:49:21,710 If you need to go to an Indian studies one, if you need to go to a comparative literature department, 475 00:49:21,710 --> 00:49:25,610 go where someone will help you with the languages, go where you'll get a good supervisor. 476 00:49:25,610 --> 00:49:33,710 Because by the time you finished your day, the particular hot topic in analytic metaphysics will probably have gone and passed. 477 00:49:33,710 --> 00:49:38,960 But I think departments are simply moving in the direction of having to accommodate the sort of work. 478 00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:48,530 So if you're if you're interested in it, just the. I also think that it's really come down to a question of how you do philosophy and, 479 00:49:48,530 --> 00:49:54,050 you know, the kind of things we take for given while doing on Western philosophy, like contextualising or like, you know, 480 00:49:54,050 --> 00:50:01,250 things sort of like or at least like a sort of appreciation of like a linguistic barrier or attempting to start context. 481 00:50:01,250 --> 00:50:04,400 If we did that in the sort of traditional Western philosophies, 482 00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:11,330 that would only enrich our understanding of these philosophies that we think we know so well. 483 00:50:11,330 --> 00:50:19,010 So, yeah, yeah. I think analytic philosophy is kind of famous for things like silencing the history in its own kind of particularity, 484 00:50:19,010 --> 00:50:27,400 in its broader historical context. So so, yeah, I think, you know, this whole incident, this time interdisciplinary, 485 00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:38,270 I think it's sort of kind of sums up the direction that these departments and the way that we need to be thinking, whether they need to go. 486 00:50:38,270 --> 00:50:44,610 Yeah, I mean, I think I have I've been quite lucky in that in the theology department in Oxford, 487 00:50:44,610 --> 00:50:48,410 there are a couple of people who really take Southasian philosophy seriously as philosophy. 488 00:50:48,410 --> 00:50:54,290 I could imagine that if I was in a different university with different department, I would have to study these things as philosophy. 489 00:50:54,290 --> 00:51:00,560 And the people who had more historical kind of theological interests, 490 00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:07,010 who were sort of more on the kind of Buddhist studies, religious studies kind of side of the department. 491 00:51:07,010 --> 00:51:10,160 But I've been lucky enough to study and the people like Jessica Fraser, 492 00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:17,960 government flood of people in particular, who really that work really is about taking somebody's philosophy, 493 00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:26,360 having as much of the theological awareness as they can, but then putting it into conversation with modern philosophy and seeing it as philosophy, 494 00:51:26,360 --> 00:51:31,010 the way that we treat modern Western philosophical texts. 495 00:51:31,010 --> 00:51:37,210 So it's been nice to have that in the theology department, but. 496 00:51:37,210 --> 00:51:41,860 Yeah, just thinking about how the departments separated in the way that they are. 497 00:51:41,860 --> 00:51:51,940 I mean, it's it's I remember one of my tutors saying in a talk that she gave and she could envision a future Oxford, 498 00:51:51,940 --> 00:51:55,690 where there wasn't a theology faculty and philosophy faculty. 499 00:51:55,690 --> 00:52:03,160 There was just a philosophy faculty as a faculty in which these things were studied together in relation to each other. 500 00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:10,510 And so that would then necessarily incorporate historical, linguistic, theological thinking, as well as philosophical thinking. 501 00:52:10,510 --> 00:52:16,730 In the Atlantic tradition, Oxford's philosophy department is is constituted by. 502 00:52:16,730 --> 00:52:21,790 But it would just be this general umbrella of studying the way that people 503 00:52:21,790 --> 00:52:27,350 have made sense of the world and its kind of Buddhist in its broadest sense. 504 00:52:27,350 --> 00:52:29,380 And I would see that as a very positive thing. 505 00:52:29,380 --> 00:52:35,270 I think if I could imagine a practical and sort of future direction having a philosophy department, I mean, 506 00:52:35,270 --> 00:52:47,210 in I'm not sure about colleges and universities and logistics, but yeah, that kind of way of thinking, I think it's useful. 507 00:52:47,210 --> 00:52:57,620 Well, I guess we'll end with some reading recommendations or any other advice for students interested in these, you know, reading recommendations, 508 00:52:57,620 --> 00:53:06,180 books, articles, podcast, or just like philosophers, contemporary and old, we've just opened up new ways of thinking for you. 509 00:53:06,180 --> 00:53:16,940 And they don't have to be like, you know, from your traditions. That can be just anyone that you just enjoy the work that they do. 510 00:53:16,940 --> 00:53:21,710 OK, like I put you guys on the spot. So, yeah, 511 00:53:21,710 --> 00:53:27,710 that's I'll just list of some of the first things that come to mind if you're if you're interested in some of the 512 00:53:27,710 --> 00:53:34,130 sort of meta philosophical questions that I was mentioning mind about different styles and approaches to philosophy. 513 00:53:34,130 --> 00:53:38,910 The very best thing you can read on that is Souleyman Persuasions. 514 00:53:38,910 --> 00:53:44,510 Think of The Scholars, which is a book about the methodologies of philosophy in Africa, 515 00:53:44,510 --> 00:53:53,540 putting a particular emphasis on the written traditions which are often overlooked in discussions of philosophy and philosophy. 516 00:53:53,540 --> 00:53:56,780 Anything, anything by Solomon Agendas is fantastic, 517 00:53:56,780 --> 00:54:02,960 so that's that's all heartily recommended when it comes to the matter to the Ethiopian philosopher. 518 00:54:02,960 --> 00:54:10,130 I was just talking about there are some scholars that Addis Ababa University who are doing really interesting work on this, 519 00:54:10,130 --> 00:54:15,770 including Opinion Markkanen and Faisal Maroochy. Both of them will be speaking up. 520 00:54:15,770 --> 00:54:23,060 Shameless plug. By the way, A to Z very Yakup conference which will be in Oxford next year. 521 00:54:23,060 --> 00:54:31,610 That's plenty of plenty of thinkers in Peter Adamson from the History Philosophy podcast that I imagine everyone will have heard of is fantastic. 522 00:54:31,610 --> 00:54:37,700 Justin Smith, who I know that phrase about the philosophy in the war of culture and who writes incredibly 523 00:54:37,700 --> 00:54:42,710 interestingly about these different methodologies and ways of getting philosophy. 524 00:54:42,710 --> 00:54:46,380 His book, The Philosopher and Six Types, is. 525 00:54:46,380 --> 00:54:57,080 We heartily, heartily, heartily recommend it and yeah, that we read the terror itself, it's very sure it's very cool. 526 00:54:57,080 --> 00:55:06,660 No longer has to pluming on their own. 527 00:55:06,660 --> 00:55:14,340 Yeah, it's a good question. It's a hard question I can sort of mention as of the things that come to mind. 528 00:55:14,340 --> 00:55:19,680 Well, one thing I've been reading somewhere, maybe not. 529 00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:25,770 It's Stephen Batchelor's alone with us, along with others, an existential approach to Buddhism. 530 00:55:25,770 --> 00:55:30,090 I think he was a monk in Tibet and in Korea for many years. 531 00:55:30,090 --> 00:55:35,200 And so he has a really kind of firsthand insider's perspective on Buddhist practise. 532 00:55:35,200 --> 00:55:41,090 But then he puts it into the terms of Western existentialist phenomenologists. 533 00:55:41,090 --> 00:55:44,040 So it really kind of covers the foundations of Buddhism. 534 00:55:44,040 --> 00:55:50,940 And he does what I'm really interested in doing, which is having a really faithful understanding of these traditions, 535 00:55:50,940 --> 00:55:55,470 but putting it in language that kind of expands the scope of people who can understand 536 00:55:55,470 --> 00:56:02,010 it and might also reveal aspects of that tradition that if you only go to translations, 537 00:56:02,010 --> 00:56:09,360 you might miss. And so I think that's a great book. In the Buddhist ideas. 538 00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:16,200 A guy called Carbon Hoso, he has a book called The Centre of the Sky, it's a massive tome on philosophy. 539 00:56:16,200 --> 00:56:21,750 He, too, is a practitioner of someone in Tibetan culture tradition. 540 00:56:21,750 --> 00:56:26,790 And that's a really fantastic book on the yamaka, really sort of quite readable. 541 00:56:26,790 --> 00:56:30,210 He goes into the practical implications how to do meditation, 542 00:56:30,210 --> 00:56:38,640 gives you kind of instruction in some of the forms of meditation to really bridge this gap between philosophy, religion and spirituality. 543 00:56:38,640 --> 00:56:43,830 And then on the Hinduism side, there's people like Jessica Frazier, one of my duties, 544 00:56:43,830 --> 00:56:53,680 as we call him the world views, as Nestande should be a one shot and Heidegger's phenomenology of the village life. 545 00:56:53,680 --> 00:57:00,150 Those are great. That's a great essay. A great book. She is really interested in treating Hindu philosophy as philosophy. 546 00:57:00,150 --> 00:57:07,710 And then The Hindu World, whose book has a really interesting opening section on philosophical methodology and philosophy, 547 00:57:07,710 --> 00:57:13,080 talks about how many to question. She's a big supporter of Gadamer. 548 00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:19,500 And still there's these Haspiel caramelised German musician. 549 00:57:19,500 --> 00:57:29,430 So she has interesting perspectives on methodology. And then there's also people like Chakravarti Rampersad has a book, and I forget the name of that. 550 00:57:29,430 --> 00:57:35,040 But I'm sure if you type his name in, you'll find it is Janardan Canary. 551 00:57:35,040 --> 00:57:43,240 I had a very fascinating essay on Janah philosophy, and I think it's called Epistemic Pluralism From Systems to Stances. 552 00:57:43,240 --> 00:57:50,820 That's a really fascinating, really kind of analytically written essay that brings in Atlanta philosophy as philosophers, 553 00:57:50,820 --> 00:57:57,510 but uses philosophy as its foundation on. So, yeah, those are things that I can think of. 554 00:57:57,510 --> 00:58:02,880 I'm sure this time much more and they are really great people, doing really great work in this field. 555 00:58:02,880 --> 00:58:12,420 So. So, yeah, keep exploring and learn Sanskrit. Oh, yeah. 556 00:58:12,420 --> 00:58:16,650 Well, thank you so much for the recommendations and thank you so much for being here 557 00:58:16,650 --> 00:58:21,990 today and speaking to all of these different issues and questions and yeah. 558 00:58:21,990 --> 00:58:27,340 Giving us a good idea of your experiences. Thanks. 559 00:58:27,340 --> 00:58:44,470 Thanks very much for having us. Thank you for making room the possibility of strengthening our to create and full consideration. 560 00:58:44,470 --> 00:58:54,670 Many thanks to the entire media to talk about what those teams will are crying with you and your next. 561 00:58:54,670 --> 00:59:10,093 Possibly the next and. See you then.