Philosophical Traditions of India: An Appraisal

by Raffaele Torella

India's progressive emergence on the world stage, in terms unimaginable just a few decades ago, obliges us to reconsider its image as nurtured by the West for over two thousand years: a prestigious image maybe, but also greatly reductive, as the privileged home of occult knowledge, ecstasy and asceticism, or - quite the opposite - of fabulous riches and voluptuous pleasures. Rather than getting to know India, the West has preferred to dream of it: one result has been that Indian thought, albeit unanimously celebrated as the seat of the highest wisdom, has not been granted even the smallest place on the great stage of the history of philosophy.