Contrary Thinking Selected Essays of Daya Krishna

Daya Krishna (1924-2007) was easily the most creative and original Indian philosopher of the second half of the 20th century. His thought and philosophical energy dominated academic Indian philosophy and determined the nature of the engagement of Indian philosophy with Western philosophy during that period. He passed away recently, leaving behind an enormous corpus of published work on a wide range of philosophical topics, as well as a great deal of incomplete, nearly-complete and complete-but-as-yet-unpublished work. Daya Krishna's thought and publications address a broad range of philosophical issues, including issues of global philosophical importance that transcend considerations of particular traditions; issues particular to Indian philosophy; and issues at the intersection of Indian and Western philosophy, especially questions about the philosophy of language and ontology that emerge in the context of his Samvada project that brought together Western philosophers and Nyaya pandits to discuss questions in the philosophy of language and metaphysics. The volume editors have organized the volume as a set of ten couplets and triplets. Each draws together papers from different periods in Daya Krishna's life: some take different approaches to the same problem or text; in some cases, the second paper references and takes issue with arguments developed in the first; in still others, Daya Krishna addresses very different topics, but using the same distinctive philosophical methodology. Each set is introduced by one of the editors. These couplets are framed by two of Daya Krishna's finest metaphilosophical essays, one that introduces his approach, and one that draws some of his grand morals about the discipline. Daya Krishna's daughter, Professor Shail Mayaram of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies contributes a preface, and Professor Arindam Chakrabarti, a longtime colleague of Daya Krisha and a collaborator on some of his most important philosophical ventures has written the introduction.

Thinking vs. Thought: Strategies for Conceptual Creativity - 1
Thinking Creatively about the Creative Act - 2
Thinking with Causality about Causality - 3
Comparative Philosophy: What it is and what it ought to be - 4
Apoha and Samavaya in Kantian Perspective - 5
Is Tattvam Asi the Same Type of Identity Statement as The Morning Star is the Evening Star? - 6
Rasa: The Bane of Indian Aesthetics - 7
Substance: The Bane of Philosophy - 8
Negation - Can Philosophy ever recover from it? - 9
Some Problems regarding thinking about Abhava - 10
Knowledge: Whose is it? What is it? And why has it to be true? - 11
Definition, Deception and the Enterprise of Knowledge - 12
Madness, Reason and Truth - 13
Illusion, Hallucination and the problem of Truth - 14
Reality, Imagination and Truth - 15
Shockproof, Evidence-proof, Argument-proof World of Sampradayika - 16
Can the Analysis of Adhyasa Ever Lead to an Advaitic Conclusion? - 17
Is the doctrine of Arthavada compatible with the idea of Sruti? - 18
The Mimamsaka versus the Yajñika: some further problems in the interpretation of Sruti - 19
Rg Veda: The Mantra, the Sukta and the Mandala or The Rsi, the Devata, the Chanda-- - 20
The Vedic Corpus and the two Sutra-Texts, concerned with it; The Mimamsa Sutra - 21
Did the Gopis Really Love Krishna? - 22
An Alleged Anecdote Revisited: Sankara in the King's Body - 23
Freeing Philosophy from the 'Prison-House' of 'I-Centricity' - 24
Freedom, Reason, Ethics and Aesthetics - 25
Eros, Nomos, Logos - 26

Nalini Bhushan is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Smith College Jay Garfield is Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy, Smith College and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy and several other books with Oxford University Press Daniel Raveh is Lecturer in Philosophy, Tel-Aviv University