Questioning the axioms
[Originally published in Indian Express, Jan 21, 2016 ] There are three ideas in the West about Law that are taken as axioms. The first: all societies are founded on…
Read moreAn Indian view on Derrida and post-modernists
Check Balu’s piece on Derrida’s the force of law.
Read moreChristian Attitudes and The Rule of Law as the Mechanism of Secularization
1. So far, our answers have always taken this form: in the moment of secularization, the formal structures or cognitive schemes of Christianity are diffused accordingly as they lose their specific doctrinal content.…
Read moreNormative Assumptions, Discriminations, and Caste Discriminations
1. I was invited by some Sadhus from Swami Narayan Temple (BAPS) to visit the temple and have a discussion with them. Because they practice very strict Brahmacharya (eight types…
Read moreColonial Consciousness and Victorian Morality
1. You suggest that calling Apsaras as “prostitutes in the court of Indra” is an extreme statement. Of course, you would be right if you mean that the English word…
Read moreNormativity as ‘parasitic’ behavior
We need to tackle the following issues properly if we want to get a handle on normativity and its relation to a configuration of learning. 1.1. Normativity cannot be the…
Read moreNormative Ethics II
Whenever I discuss the absence of normative ethics in India, people, especially Indians, get agitated. They hear me say that India has no ethics. Consequently, they want to show that…
Read moreComparative Anthropology and Moral Domains. An Essay on Selfless Morality and the Moral Self—S.N.Balagangadhara
[Published in Cultural Dynamics 1 (1): 98–128] A Disquieting Suggestion Arthur Danto, the well-known American philosopher, prefaced a book he wrote in the 70’s on oriental thought and moral philosophy titled Mysticism and…
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