Rethinking South Asian Philosophy

This final episode of Rethinking South Asian Philosophy asks what philosophy looks like when we take caste, gender and lived experience seriously. Host Bhanuraj Kashyap speaks with Dr Supriya Subramani, Dr Swati Arora and Dr Samiksha Goyal about everyday indignities, Dalit feminist thought, Gandhian ideas of truth, and the limits of Anglophone philosophy, in Australia and beyond. Listen now, on your favourite podcast app.

Across South Asia, philosophers have asked two enduring questions: What is consciousness? And what shapes the world we live in? In this episode, Bhanuraj Kashyap speaks with Dr Miri Albahari about enlightenment and the claim that pure consciousness is the ground of reality, and with Dr Yarran Hominh and Dr Supriya Subramani on caste, graded inequality and how our social identities are formed. If you’ve ever wondered how metaphysics meets the everyday, this episode is just for you. Tap to listen.

How does meditation generate psychological benefits, and can deep meditative experiences open new philosophical insight? In this episode, Associate Professor Bronwyn Finnigan (ANU) and Dr Leesa Davis (Deakin) explore Buddhist approaches to meditation, non-dual philosophies, and the aesthetic and contemplative language of Japanese dry gardens. We also talk about the joy of teaching non-Western philosophy to undergraduates and how it can help revive the philosophical imagination in Australian universities.

How do perspectives on the world formed thousands of years ago still shape our worldviews today? In this episode of 'Rethinking South Asian Philosophy', host Bhanuraj Kashyap sits down with Professor Monima Chadha (University of Oxford) and Distinguished Professor Graham Priest (CUNY and University of Melbourne) for a wide-ranging and mind-boggling chat about Ancient Indian philosophy. We discuss the Buddhist denial of the self, how Buddhist philosophy can reshape moral responsibility and some strange puzzles in logic that have captivated philosophers for centuries. Along the way, we also reflect on the barriers that persist between Indian and Western philosophical traditions and share stories about the value of engaging in cross-cultural philosophy. Listen now, only on SBS Spice, wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to 'Rethinking South Asian Philosophy', a journey through the world of philosophy and where South Asian philosophy and philosophers currently stand in this complex academic space. In our opening episode, we sit down with Dr. Bryan Mukandi (UOW), Assoc. Prof. Karen Jones (University of Melbourne), and Dr. Helen Ngo (Deakin University) to discuss with them diversity issues within Australian academic philosophy and why non-Western perspectives our underrepresented in our curriculum. We swap stories about loneliness among minority students, why non-Western philosophy gets overlooked, the financial pressure the University sector is facing, and how exclusion in academic philosophy functions. Beyond all of this, we try to work out what to do to bring about meaningful change. Listen now, only on SBS Spice, wherever you get your podcasts.