The Vindication of the World: Essays Engaging with Stephen Phillips

Stephen Phillips has devoted his career to excavating some of the most valuable gems of Indian philosophy and bringing them into conversation with contemporary thought. This volume honors him and follows his lead by continuing his lifelong project: faithfully interpreting Sanskrit texts to think along with their authors about ideas that still perplex us today.

It features ten new essays focusing on epistemology, logic, and metaphysics from outstanding philosophers and scholars of Sanskrit philosophy, with contributions varying in methodology: both historical and cross-cultural. Further, in addition to essays on Nyāya and Advaita Vedānta, it engages with Navya-Nyāya (“new Nyāya”), an important but understudied part of Indian philosophy. Through these investigations, in conversation with Phillips's groundbreaking work, the contributors show the value of cross-cultural engagement for philosophical progress.

The Vindication of the World will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in Indian philosophy, comparative philosophy, and, more generally, epistemology, logic, and metaphysics.

Malcolm Keating is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Smith College, Massachusetts. He is the author of Reason in an Uncertain World: Nyāya Philosophers on Argumentation and Living Well (2024), Classical Sanskrit for Everyone: A Guide for Absolute Beginners (2024), Language, Meaning, and Use in Indian Philosophy: Mukula Bhaṭṭa’s Fundamentals of the Communicative Function (2019), and editor of Controversial Reasoning in Indian Philosophy: Major Texts and Arguments on Arthâpatti (2020).

Matthew R. Dasti is Professor of Philosophy at Bridgewater State University. He is author of Vātsyāyana’s Commentary on the Nyāya-sūtra: A Guide (2023) and, with Stephen Phillips, coauthor of The Nyāya-sūtra: Selections with Early Commentaries (2017) and God and the World’s Arrangement (2021). He is also the co-editor of Free Will, Agency, and Selfhood in Indian Philosophy (2014) and has published numerous articles in scholarly journals.