This book on Ethics draws upon the words of wisdom found in the Mahabharata, following the spirit of Bernard Williams’ proposal that we look for inspiration for the modern-day ethical understanding in the ideas of the past. In elucidating the literary and religious meaning of the Mahabharata, the author probes for the ethical and epistemological truth it contains, in the frame of reference of the uniquely Indian variety of existentialism. In the process he has not only come to an understanding of the principle of morality, along with the relation holding among Satya (Factual Truth), Rta (Truth as Value) and Dharma (Righteousness in Conduct), but has come up with observations that shed fresh light on the analysis of the epic itself. At the end, the reader has a novel idea of the Mahabharata and its relation to the Gita. Dr. Chakravarti is doing for the Indian texts what twentieth-century philosophers have been doing for the pre-Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian texts: reading them as philosophy. The book is thus a contribution to Religious Studies, Indic Studies and Philosophy as such, combining both the western and the Indian varieties, as the latter extend on to the thoughts of Gandhi and Tagore. It links the old Indian wisdom with the modern western, applying the tools of analytical as well as phenomenological styles. The author draws resources from, and occasionally contrasts with, the ideas of Kant, Wittgenstein, Chomsky and Freud. The non-specialist reader who is seeking an understanding of ancient Indian philosophy will also be richly rewarded by the present book in several ways.
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