[INDOLOGY] "Psychological complexity" of Sanskrit language/literature

Sun Aug 23 16:08:07 UTC 2020

Forthcoming:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-bloomsbury-research-handbook-of-emotions-in-classical-indian-philosophy-9781350167773/
Sorry about the exorbitant price, which is for libraries. Their strategy with the previous books in this series is to then issue a paperback in a couple of years, where the price goes down to about $30.
Best wishes,
Ram

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad
Fellow of the British Academy
Distinguished Professor of Comparative Philosophy and Religion
Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion
Lancaster University
U.K.

From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of Gleb Sharygin via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
Reply to: Gleb Sharygin <gleb.sharygin at gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, 23 August 2020 at 16:08
To: Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com>
Cc: Indology <indology at list.indology.info>
Subject: [External] Re: [INDOLOGY] "Psychological complexity" of Sanskrit language/literature

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Dear Professor Wujastyk,

Thank you very much for drawing my attention to these publications.

I don't quite agree with Tuske on many points, and I can tell a lot about how these "philosophical" traditions welcome and promote the cultivation of positive feelings and emotions, such as infinite selfless love, compassion, contentedness, tranquil joy etc (contra his thesis that they seek to eradicate "emotions"), but, regardless of that, the very last sentence of his paper strikes me the most, as my question was about the very language of the tradition:

"However, any comparison must be sensitive to the difficulties in translating the concepts involved".

This is exactly what I am talking about: how we are supposed to understand the texts, if we can not even translate them adequately, find the right words...

Kind regards,
Gleb Sharygin

Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] "Psychological complexity" of Sanskrit language/literature
Just for the record, there is some theorization of the topic of emotion in Indian cultural history, but not nearly enough.
·  Bilimoria, P. and Wenta, A., eds. (2014) Emotions in Indian Thought-systems. New Delhi: Routledge.
·  Pollock, S. (2016) A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics, Historical Sourcebooks in Classical Indian Thought. New York: Columbia University Press.
·  Tuske, J. (2011) “The Concept of Emotion in Classical Indian Philosophy,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University, pp. 1–30. Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/concept-emotion-india/<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fplato.stanford.edu%2Farchives%2Fspr2011%2Fentries%2Fconcept-emotion-india%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cc.ram-prasad%40lancaster.ac.uk%7C44cf9fcf851b49ba6bb908d8477673b5%7C9c9bcd11977a4e9ca9a0bc734090164a%7C0%7C1%7C637337921357897177&sdata=6Dns%2BTZT1Mz5grJG32a28qLQCCaHkjcVgnHWakiYxqo%3D&reserved=0>.
Tuske's conclusions are cogent and compelling, I think, but perhaps challenging for people coming to this for the first time.

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