Ex Oriente lumen naturale rationis: how East and West met

Book review: V.K. Shokhin. Īśvaravāda: Philosophical Theism in India. Research and Texts. Moscow: Direct Media, 2023. 336 pp.

Abstract

The book under review is devoted to īśvaravāda – Indian philosophical theism in the con­text of the polemics between theists and antitheists. The author traces the history of the con­cepts of “theism” and “philosophical theism” in European philosophy and provides a jus­tification for the possibility of applying these concepts to medieval India. The publication examines three versions of īśvaravāda (in classical Yoga, Advaita-Vedānta, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and bhakti-schools of Vedānta), accompanied by translations from Sanskrit sec­tions of texts that present the arguments of Indian theists. The author of the review em­phasizes the relevance of the book for modern philosophical discussions. At the same time, the unjustified limitation of V.K. Shokhin’s use of the astika-nāstika juxtaposition in the context of pan-Indian polemics and some negligence in the use of diacritics in transliterating Sanskrit terms is discussed.