Logical and Ethical Issues

Bimal Krishna Matilal (1935-91) was Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford University from 1977 to 1991. Matilal was an academic of exceptional scholarship and originality and in his untimely death the world lost an outstanding thinker and philosopher. The distinctive feature of this work is that the author was consciously motivated by contemporary historical experience: the frequent conflict between communities which have coalesced around different religious beliefs. ‘If we can discover,’ he wrote in the introduction to this book, ‘the deep structure, so to say, of each great religious tradition, an awareness of the fundamental unity of man may emerge out of this discovery, which would be extremely valuable today, in fact, priceless in a world where we have frequent cases of Moradabad, Middle-East, and Northern Ireland.’ Needless to say, in our world today the agenda so clearly articulated by Matilal remains relevant. Matilal took great care to avoid using technical language as the readers he wished to address are not limited to the circle of professional philosophers. To read this work by one of the finest Indian minds of our times is a rewarding experience. His major publications include the Navya Nyaya Doctrine of Negation; Epistemology, Logic and Grammar in Indian Philosophical Analysis; Logic, Language and Reality and Perception: An Essay on the Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge. Heeraman Tiwari teaches history of ancient Indian ideas and Sanskrit at the centre for historical studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. He has a Ph.D. in Sanskrit from Delhi University and D. Phil in Indian Philosophy from Balliol College, Oxford. He has edited (with Jonardan Ganeri) Bimal Krishna Matilal’s The Character of Logic in India and is currently working on two new books, From the Word to the World and What is Hinduism?