What is it about?
This article is a contribution to the emerging paradigm of intercultural philosophy as a way of Life (PWL). In the main, I argue that the ultimate goal of the philosophical discourse fleshed out by the Bengali philosopher Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (1875-1949) in his influential "The Subject as Freedom" (1930) is not theoretical but transformative. I argue that Bhattacharyya's philosophical discourse was fashioned after the Vedāntic manana and conceived, consequently, as a necessary means to gaining non-conceptual insight of subjectivity as freedom from objectivity.
Featured Image
Photo by Sandip Karangiya on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This article shows that the notion of philosophy as a way of life was not a prerogative of classical Greco-Roman culture. It shows that at least some key feature of PWL were well-known in classical and modern Indian philosophy.
Perspectives
I hope this article will inspire scholars to engage with intercultural PWL, exploring sources from Indian and other World philosophies.
Pawel Odyniec
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Philosophy as a Way of Life around the Globe: the Case of Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (1875–1949), October 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004739147_008.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Rethinking Advaita Within the Colonial Predicament: The 'Confrontative' Philosophy of Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (1875-1949)
Odyniec, P. Rethinking Advaita Within the Colonial Predicament: the ‘Confrontative’ Philosophy of K. C. Bhattacharyya (1875–1949). SOPHIA 57, 405–424 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0678-1
Engaging Advaita: Conceptualising Liberating Knowledge in the Face of Western Modernity
This book is a study of modern Indian philosophy. It examines three engaging articulations of the Advaitic notion of liberating knowledge or brahmajñāna provided by three prominent Indian philosophers of the twentieth century, namely, Badrīnāth Śukla (1898-1988), Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (1875-1949), and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975). Particular attention is paid to the existing relation between their distinctive conceptualisations of liberating knowledge and the doxastic attitudes that these authors professed towards the Sanskrit intellectual past of South Asia and the presence of the Western Other. By examining their ways of engaging with the Advaitic notion of liberating knowledge, this dissertation contributes to the on-going debate about the nature and the driving forces of modern Indian philosophy
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
