The Philosophy of Life (Volume VI)

The series entitled Facets of Recent Indian Philosophy is a collection of addresses delivered by eminent philosophers as General Presidents in the annual sessions of the Indian Philosophical Congress. Initially conceived to be published in three volumes, and the idea having been accomplished, the proposition transgressed itself and this fourth volume symbolises the transcending finale of the venture. Now all the available Presidential addresses till date have been included in the series. They have been arranged thematically as below: Volume 1: The Metaphysics of the Spirit; Volume 2: Indian Philosophy and History; Volume 3: Problems of Indian Philosophy; Volume 4: The Philosophy of Life. The first three volumes contain seventeen addresses each. The last one has twenty-one entries, including a couple of addresses of Sectional Presidents, one Endowment Lecture and one paper submitted to a section. The addresses included in these deal with some of the major and perennial problems of philosophy in general and of Indian philosophy in particular. Thus, problems of ego, fear, sorrow, violence, peace, freedom, time and the like, have received focal attention. Some of the addresses discuss temporal and social issues, such as unity in diversity, dogmatism, ecology and the malady of the age. Viewed together, they evince a philosopher’s concern with eternal, as well as immediate, problems and their eagerness to solve them by making sincere and effective efforts. These volumes will undoubtedly prove to be very useful to researches and students of contemporary Indian philosophy as they give a good idea of the direction in which twentieth-century Indian philosophy has been moving since the mid-thirties.