Nyaya Ethics

I shall give a survey of major developments in Nyaya ethics beginning with the Nyayasutra, the founding work of the Nyaya philosophical school and the Nyayabhasya, the earliest available commentary on the Nyayasutra. I shall also elaborate on the disagreement between Prabhakara ethics and Nyaya ethics and show the latter’s relevance for modern moral discourse with reference to the ethical theories of Aristotle, Kant and Mill and such issues as minority rights and ethical absolutism.

Professor Kisor Kumar Chakrabarti is the President of the Institute for Cross Cultural studies and Academic Exchange.  He is a former Provost and Dean of the faculty and Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Distinguished Scholar in residence of the Davis and Elkins College, the Sarah B. Cochran Professor of Philosophy of the Bethany College and Forrest S. and Jean B. Williams Distinguished Professor of Humanities of the Ferrum College.  He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Calcutta, etc.  He has received the Doctoral Fulbright, the Post-doctoral Fulbright and the Senior Fulbright awards and held fellowships at the University of Pittsburgh, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla, the Australian National University and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.  He has studied classical Sanskrit philosophical texts under the guidance of eminent Hindu pundits for many decades.  He has also studied Greek philosophical texts in the original and taught Greek philosophy, modern philosophy, logic and Indian philosophy in colleges and universities in India and the USA for forty five years.  He has authored seventy eight research papers and articles mainly on the topics of logic, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, Indian philosophy and comparative philosophy.  His books include Definition and Induction, University of Hawaii Press, 1995, Classical Indian Philosophy of Mind, State University of New York Press, 1999, Classical Indian Philosophy of Induction, Rowman and Littlefield, 2010 and Major Doctrines of Hinduism and Buddhism, Magnus Publications, 2012.  He has been a Visiting Professor or invited to give lectures in about a hundred colleges and universities in Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia and the USA.