Indian Birthplace of Philosophy: Reflections on V. Eltschinger and I. Ratié’s Book “What is Indian Philosophy?”

Abstract

The publication of a scholarly work by French Indologists Vincent Eltschinger and Isabelle Ratié raises significant methodological questions in contemporary historical-philosophical research. Using Indian philosophical traditions as a counterargument to the dominant Western theory of “monogenesis”, which attributes the origin of philosophy exclusively to Ancient Greece (the “Greek miracle”), they convincingly defend the idea of philosophical “polygenesis”. Through Indian dialectical practices and disputational traditions, the authors trace the emergence of rational systems of argumentation beyond religious dogmas, thereby providing substantial evidence for the independent development of philosophy outside the Hellenistic context. The article notes the importance of the authors’ preference for the presentation of the topics of debate in In - dian philosophy over the purely doxographic approach of many Western and Indian historiographies. The authors’ attention to the socio-historical context of the development of Indian philosophical polemics, the emphasis on the empirical orientation of Indian epistemology, and the specificity of the Indian model of scientific thinking based on linguistic analysis developed in the Panini grammatical tradition (5th–4th centuries B.C.) seem particularly significant. However, some of the book’s theses raise questions. First, the exclusion of dogmatic and apologetic discourse from the field of “Indian philosophy”, although the presence of apologetic discourse in medieval Western thought does not prevent the authors from considering it philosophical. Second, I. Bronkhors’s hypothesis about Hellenistic influence (through Gandhara) on the formation of discursive analytical Buddhist practices in the schools of Sarvastivada, with which the authors agree, requires better reconciliation with the idea of “polygenesis”. Overall, the book is viewed as a significant and original contribution to understanding the Indian philosophical tradition, helping to overcome Eurocentrism in philosophy.