Conceptualizing Categories: Texts and Context in Indian Philosophy

This collection is a Festschrift that engages the life-long scholarship of a leading figure in contemporary Indian philosophy, ShashiPrabha Kumar. In particular, this book focuses on the system of Vaiśeṣika, one of the earliest schools of Indian philosophy that competes with Aristotle’s physics for a schemata of categories of all that exists. This edited volume brings together a unique array of philosophers and Sanskritists from around the world, each covering some aspect of the scholarly forays of Professor ShashiPrabha Kumar and her fifty years of experience and writing within the field. The contributors make critical use of categories that arise in the Upaniṣads and the Vaiśeṣika in charting the fabric of the universe, and examining the concepts of atoms, matter, mind, consciousness, self, cognitive states and absence. This text appeals to interdisciplinary students and researchers working at the cross-roads of philosophy, religion, and Hindu studies.