Indian Philosophy and History (Volume II)

Indian Philosophy and History is a collection of addresses delivered by eminent Indian philosophers as General Presidents in the annual sessions of the Indian Philosophical Congress since its inception in 1925. The need to collect the available addresses was felt several years ago. Most of them could be obtained. Excluding a few, they have now been arranged thematically in three volumes containing seventeen addresses each: Volume 1: The Metaphysics of the Spirit, Volume 2: Indian Philosophy and History, Volume 3: Problems of Indian Philosophy. The present volume contains addresses related to Indian philosophy and history. Philosophy, for the majority of Indian thinkers, is the search for Truth. It is a critical reflection on the nature of Knowledge, which is not different from Truth. Philosophy, further, is not an isolated venture. It is closely related with history, religion and science. History as human adventure is the life-breath of philosophy. An underplay of challenge and response is found in both the disciplines. The insights into unrecorded history equip us to meet challenges and to overcome crises. Religion provides rich content for such insights. Science, on its part, makes observations of tangibles and pushes us to comprehend non-tangibles. This book will undoubtedly prove to be very useful to researchers and students of contemporary Indian philosophy. It will also give a fairly good idea of the direction in which the twentieth-century Indian philosophy has been moving since the mid-thirties.