Book has a problem dealing with indian philosophy!

Listening to it now!Just finished the chapter on mediveal philosophy which was amazing. Book has a huge problem dealing with indian philosphy. For example, the entire positioning of Buddha's ideas being against all the ideas of that time seems ridiculous! As anybody who knows anything about upnishads and their teachings as well as as various schools of thought would agree that Buddha's views are mainly against the Mimansakas of that time. We are still not sure if mimansaka's views were followed by the masses! In any case Mimansakas were atheists as far as their views on god are concerned. They believed that mere rituals/mantras were sufficient to get desired effect. Surprisingly many of the ideas propounded by Buddha seem to be present in sankhya as well as yoga, both being the highly respected philosophies of buddha's time! There are factual inaccuracies as well, it is mentioned in the book that Arthur Schopenhauer was influenced by Buddhism whereas in his " The world as will and idea" , Schopenhauer himself claimed to be influenced by upnishadic thought aka vedanta! This is a simple fact that can be verified very easily.
In the medieval philosophy chapter talking about sufism and completely ignoring much older texts of Ramanujacharya that led to Bhakti movement in india and influenced great seers like Kabir is simply not unignorable!
Furthermore,not including yoga, sankhya, vaisheshik philosophy of atomism,indian materialism followed by Charvakas as well as mathematical contribution of indians while discussing philosphy, simply goes on to show ignorance of the western world about India.

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8 people found this helpful

A big empty book

The book is well organised; but the good things end there. The major flaw is in the selection and weightage given to individual philosophers: the author has marginalised eastern philosophy and focused on western philosophy (which is still ok) but strangely stressed it where it doesn’t excel. Most of the advancement in almost all areas of our physical life is the result of the great importance which the western world has given in the ‘external’ world viz science, technology, politics etc. But for stressing on the mankind’s effort to explore the mind one should get the help of eastern philosophers. ( I am not meaning psychology which might be an excellent approach but it’s science and not philosophy). Strangely the book focuses in it’s big part, exactly in this area, but through the brains of the western philosophers. In this area, if eastern philosophy is an extremely delicious dish, western philosophy is not even a pack of the necessary ingredients needed to cook that dish, but only a very impractical recipe. It’s not possible to travel from India to Australia by the train; you will not reach your destination; you will only roam around your starting point. The author has chosen the wrong vehicle to explore a good destination. If he wanted still to stress on western philosophers, he should have chosen more persons who excels in other areas of philosophy just like he has selected Karl Marx. Good that he touched Rumi and Buddha but it composes only a minute part of this big book and fails overall in making it a book which conveys something.

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