Vladimir K. Shokhin

Vladimir K. Shokhin is the head of the philosophy of religion department in Institiute of Philosophy in Moscow. He published 15 books in Russian and numerous papers, along them in English and other languages. Ancient and medieval Indian philosophy is his basic area, his first dissertation (1981) dealt with the early Samkhya and Buddhism and he published numerous translations from Sanskrit and Pali originals. He also works on philosophical theology, and even a trilogy dealing with it was completed  in 2022. His other interests lie in the fields of axiology and practical philosophy. Comparative philosophy remains one of his favorite topics throughout all other studies.  



 

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Issue: 12:3 (The forty sixth issue)

The author enters an already old dispute, that is, whether a countеrpart of the notion of philosophy could be encountered in the traditional India, upholds the view that the term ānvīkṣikī (lit. “investigation”) was nearest to it and traces its meaning along the texts on dharma, politics, poetics and philosophy properly. Two main avenues to the understanding of philosophy’s vocations in India have been paved in the Mānavadharmaśāstra, along with the commentaries thereon and by Kamandaki, the author of the Nītisāra (as the knowledge of Ātman) and in the Arthaśāstra and the Nyāya texts composed by Vātsyāyana and Uddyotakara (as a metascience helping the other branches of knowledge bear their fruits). Therefore philosophy in India as well was regarded as the duality of ideological and methodological constituents, while the emphasis on analytic practice in the definitions of ānvīkṣikī (Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy as a practice is also referred to in this context) paves a good promise for comparative philosophy.