Jacques Derrida held that globalization has resulted in worldlessness. The problem is how to work out of its ethnocentric and logocentric cults of power and positioning. Derrida coined the nonword/non-concept “trace” to deconstruct the metaphysics of presence and to assert the universalizing potential of pre-logical heterogeneities, necessary for undermining the binary structure of reasoning. This paper argues that his focus on saving the honor of reason relates across time to Gangesa’s counterfactual reasoning and Bartŗhari’s treatment of Brahman as the eternal word. Given this universalized context, overcoming worldlessness requires reasoning reasonably, not categorically. Reason, Derrida says, must be reasoned with.

Jacques Derrida’s use of “non-concepts” such as the trace and différance shifts the practice of philosophy away from the presuppositions of Western metaphysics, which he sought to deconstruct. This essay contends that this inspires a dialogue with ancient India’s skeptical tradition that flourished from Carvaka to Pyrrho. Following Heidegger’s question of being, Derrida’s deconstruction rethought time, consciousness, perception, etc., in ways that give it a secure footing in ancient skepticism’s usage of epochē, nominalism, etc., to steer between the extremes of nihilism and teleological overdetermination. In both, the meaning of being has to be understood through the “play of the trace,” not the reverse.

This article deals with the pros and cons of the Mādhva-Vaiṣṇava tradition of Hinduism. On the pros sideMadhva’s interpretations of the 3rd question of Naciketas to Yama in the KaṭhaUpaniṣad as well as his interpretation of the statement tattvamasi as atattvamasi in the ChāndogyaUpaniṣad are unique. On the cons side flaws are pointed out on the much marveled concept of viśeṣa the doctrine of the gradation of the gods and the Viṣṇusahasranāma.

Morality is traditionally understood as comprised of two components: justice and mercy. The first component, justice, the universal component of the form, is frequently seen as foundational for any moral system . which poses a challenge of explaining the second component, mercy, the particular component of content. Kantian ethics provides an example of this approach. After formulating his universalist theory of ethics in the Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals and further developing it in the Critique of practical reason, he attempts to use it in order to establish the morality of mercy in the Metaphysics of morals. Yet can universal morality of justice necessitate particular ethics of mercy? Using the example of competitive games, the relations between the ethics of justice and that of mercy are demonstrated, and it is shown that the former does not lead to the latter. Moreover, the universality of the rules of moral behavior can serve as a form for blatant brutality. Analyzing the characteristics of particular morality, we can conclude that physical humanity of the moral object, perceived as such by the subject, is a required condition for mercy. Removal of object.s humanity is a necessary step toward an ethical system that allows cruelty . a system that can still be based on universal moral rules. Bhagavad Gîtâ, on the other hand, can be seen as an example of combining nî?kâmakarma, the formal, universal ethics of desireless action, with a variety of particular motivations originating in the nature and social context of the moral agent.

Are human rights negotiable? Jacques Derrida argued that it is necessary to negotiate the nonnegotiable to save the nonnegotiable. This paper defends this claim while arguing for what Calvin Schrag called an ethics of the fitting response and finding such a response in Amartya Sen’s realization-focused comparative approach to justice. For Derrida, the aporetic character of urgency produces decisions which must be made outside the institutional limits of decision theory. That calls for a deconstruction of the axiomatics of rights in institutional settings. It also makes urgent the need for a deinstitutionalized ethics undeceived by the challenge of making judgments in aporias. Using Ted Honderich’s humanism as counterfoil, the argument moves through Derrida’s concept of "contradictory coherence" to Schrag’s transverse rationality, which thinks with deconstruction in order to think against its negative outcomes. The paper ends by suggesting that Schrag's communicative praxeology forges an ethics compatible with Sen’s threshold conditions to determine rights through freedoms.

In the Nyaya-Vaisesika view universals are eternal and objectively real often perceptible common characters that are independent of the particulars and inseparably inherent in the latter in the sense that the latter as long as they exist remain related to the universal. Such common characters should not be confused with Platonic Ideas that are perfect exemplars graspable only by reason. It is argued that without objective common characters it is hard to account for the distinction between natural classes such as man, horse, etc. that are independent of human convention and conventional classes such as lawyers, cooks, etc. Universals are also needed to provide objective basis for causal connections whereby only things of a certain kind produce other things of a specific kind. There are universals for generic terms such as man or horse, for qualities such as color or smell, for relations such as spatial proximity, for motion such as contraction, etc. But no universal is admissible if any restrictive condition such as not leading to a vici11ous infinite regress is violated.

In the view of Alexander Space-Time or Pure Motion is the basic stuff of the universe, for it is Space-Time or Pure Motion that remains if one thinks out all that can be excluded through a rigorous act of abstraction short of annihilation. Alexander subscribes to the doctrine of emergent evolution and holds that the empirical world in all its ascending levels emerges out of the primal background of Space-Time. The first ascending level of emergence is that of matter with primary qualities; the next ascending level is that of secondary qualities; life emerges in the next ascending level and mind emerges in the next ascending level. Reductive materialism must be rejected, for each new quality emerging in the ascending level is irreducible to the previous level and there is always an explanatory gap between the previous level and the ascending level. The highest of the empirical qualities known to us is mind or consciousness; there is an empirical quality which is to succeed the distinctive empirical quality of our level, that new empirical quality is God or deity. We cannot tell what the nature of deity is; but we can be certain that it is not mere mind or spirit, for no new emergent quality can be reduced to the previous level. Rather deity is what mind or spirit deserves in the ascending order.

Largely unnoticed in textbook accounts of classical Indian philosophic schools is Nyāya's advocacy of yoga and its alliance with teachings of the Yoga-sūtra. Yoga and Nyāya differ sharply in how nature is viewed, its components and causal laws. But on the side of subjectivity, purusa and atman, there is more convergence than difference. The two world views have distinct theories of action, cognition, and the body, but concerning the subject or self himself or herself, including God or the īsvara (and argumentation so directed), the conceptions advanced are surprisingly similar. Moreover, the traditions converge in the commen taries of the tenth-century philosopher Vācaspati Miśra who often shows influence from one or the other direction in his Yoga-sūtra and Nyāya-sūtra commentaries. The key bridge ideas are expressed in the Nyāya-sūtra literature under a substantial and remarkable stretch of sutras in the fourth chapter devoted to yoga practice and liberating self knowledge: NyS 4.2.38-51. Among other jewels, here we find an implicit assimilation of philosophic debate as a yoga practice.

Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja were not solely textists; nor were they merely existential metaphysicians; nor were they a combination of both. Rather, their epistemologies involve a sixfold use of vitally important sacred and secular pramāṇa-s as instruments in orchestrated fashion where symphonies of their respective ontologies are given to their listeners. With the two Vedāntins, no pramāṇa is in every case the lead instrument. Rather, they employ any of the six as lead instrument at various times, depending on the pedagogic and/or apologetic context, while the others support the melody played by the lead. The result for both teachers is a melodic epistemological opposed-to-the-other composition characterized by careful thought and use of the six pramāṇa-s, all with the goal of defending their respective traditions of Vedānta as the truth of the matter at hand—knowledge of Brahman.