How I Understand Indian Philosophy?

Abstract

The paper attempts to explain Indian philosophy, viewed as an autonomous philosophical tradition, from the civic and cultural context proper to it, the main thesis being that although most Western criteria regarding what the origins of a philosophy should be and what it must look like are inapplicable when it comes to the history of Indian thought, this does not mean that there was no philosophy in India. The author specifies a number of factors that contributed to the rise of philosophy on the Indian soil and determined its originality.