Fourteenth lecture in the series on the "Problem of the Other Minds" by Prof. Milind Wakankar
Buddhodev Ghosh
Dear all,
The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay, welcomes you to the fourteenth lecture in the series on the "Problem of the Other Minds" by Prof. Milind Wakankar on 13th April 2022. More details are below:
Date: 13th April 2022 (Wednesday, 3:30 PM IST)
Title: On Relation
Abstract:
To invoke another mind is to 'relate' to it; it is to draw the encounter with the other mind into the orbit of one's own conceptuality; it is to draw 'the' concept (so to speak) in its otherness into the concept in its return to itself after this encounter. Can relation-as-concept be thought from outside the sphere of (the movement of) the negative? By the same token, this paper tries to think 'relation' from out of historicity (as in the line of thought between Hegel and Heidegger). It does this by hewing close to certain moments in Dharmakīrti and then by backward recourse to Bhartṛhari. In passing the paper addresses some issues raised in recent debates in the study of Kashmir Saivism, and in the recent book on the 'the social' by Guru and Sarukkai; in closing I make reference to Bahina(bai).
About the speaker:
Milind Wakankar teaches literature and philosophy at the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D). A key premise in his work in the last decade has been that concepts need to be related at the level of conceptuality itself, not at the level of cultural difference. This implies that we follow the trail of conceptual transformation in this or that specific corpus: Heidegger, Hegel and before them Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and Spinoza; in the Indic domain, Dharmakīrti and before him Vasubandhu—this would be one way of interjecting ontology 'in its dignity' (as Heidegger says of Hegel's tome on the Science of Logic) into global intellectual history, again beyond mere cultural comparison. Wakankar's 2010 metacritical account of Bhakti (Subalternity and Religion; Routledge) is in a sense perennially at play in this set of inquiries. He is interested especially in the way philosophical systems and political changes (especially in the form of empire) cohere; what specific role 'religion' has to play in this as a specific mode of inward devastation (primary narcissism); what is specific in the metaphorical work of Bhakti in Dnyanadeva, Eknath, Tukaram, Tulsidas, Kabir and so on (how for instance would one bring to bear on this the Buddhist theory of metaphor as in Sthiramati). He is drawn especially to such philosophers as Maitreyanath-Asanga, Udayanacarya and Mandanamisra.
The meeting link will be sent a day before the scheduled date of the talk.
Meeting Host: Dr Mrinal Kaul (mrina...@iitb.ac.in)