Vishwa Adluri

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Vishwa Adluri is a scholar of Western and Indian philosophy, a professor at Hunter College of City College of New York [1] and a faculty member at the Hindu University of America. He is known for his work on ancient Indian and Greek philosophy and the modern reception of ancient philosophy. [2] He is also noted for his critiques of the Western tradition of Indology. [3]

Contents

Education

Adluri holds a PhD in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research, a PhD in Indology from the Marburg University, and a PhD in Sanskrit from Deccan College. [2]

Adluri studied personally under Reiner Schürmann, and credits him as a major influence on his work. [4]

Scholarship

Greek philosophy

Adluri approaches ancient Greek philosophy, especially Parmenides and Plato, as a meditation on mortal existence rather than on timeless metaphysics. In his book Parmenides, Plato and Mortal Philosophy: Return from Transcendence, he draws on Heidegger, Schürmann, Nietzsche, Arendt and related twentieth-century critiques of metaphysical abstraction to read Parmenides' poetry as a reflection on the mortal thumos , bound to birth and death, as it aspires to transcendence but ultimately must return to finite, “radically individual” existence. Adluri argues that Socratic mortality and singularity overshadow purely metaphysical interpretations of the soul’s ascent, challenging Derridean deconstruction and emphasizing the embodied, finite human at the center of Greek thought. [5]

Indology

Much of Adluri's work has focused on textual criticism of the Mahābhārata, arguing for a reading of the text that focuses on its literary, philosophical, and spiritual integrity as opposed to Orientalist approaches that view it primarily as a disjointed or incomplete historical record. [6] He argues that German scholarship in particular takes a Eurocentric approach to evaluating ancient Indian texts. He brings evidence for latent Protestant biases in Western scholarship, arguing that much of this work fails to understand the nature of Indian knowledge systems. Adluri argues that the apparent scientific objectivity of much modern scholarship on ancient Indian texts veils structural biases. [7]

Reception

Adluri's criticism of what he calls "German Indology" has elicited mixed responses. The supervisory committee for his PhD thesis at the University of Marburg initially did not approve his dissertation defense, which was highly critical of the German tradition of Indology and linked it to Nazism. After protest by Adluri, the university reconstituted the committee without any German Indologists and he was conferred a PhD despite criticisms of the reconstitution by his supervisor, Michael Hahn. [8] [9]

In 2011, Hans Harder, Angelika Malinar and Thomas Oberlies, published an editorial for Zeitschrift für Indologie und Südasienstudien on combating "discrimination, racism and sexism", where they argued that Adluri engaged in polemics against multiple German scholars under the justification of probing the ideological orientations of their scholarship. [9] Jürgen Hanneder mounted a detailed critique of Adluri's scholarship the same year. [9]

Adluri's work The Nay Science: A History of German Indology [8] was heavily critiqued by scholars such as Eli Franco, Jürgen Hanneder, and Bharani Kollipara. [8] [10] Others, such Eric Kurlander and Nicholas A. Germana praised the book, with Garry W. Trompf praising it as an "extraordinary work". [11] [12] [13]

Selected works

Awards and honors

Adluri received the Indian Council for Cultural Relations Distinguished Indologist award in 2019. [14]

References

  1. ↑ "Faculty". Hunter College. 2024-07-31.
  2. 1 2 "Vishwa Adluri – Indian Knowledge Systems".
  3. ↑ Vishwa, Adluri (26 July 2017). "Open conversation with Vishwa Adluri, Indologist and philosopher" (Interview). Interviewed by Rahul Pandita.
  4. ↑ "Remembering Reiner Schurmann – ELLOPOS".
  5. ↑ "Review of: Parmenides, Plato, and Mortal Philosophy: Return from Transcendence. Continuum studies in ancient philosophy". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. ISSN   1055-7660.
  6. ↑ "Mahabharata & Modern Scholarship: An Interview With Dr. Vishwa Adluri". Indiafacts. 2020-08-08.
  7. ↑ Aronstein, Adam-Jason (2017-08-07). "Against Occidentalism: A Conversation with Alice Crary and Vishwa Adluri on "The Nay Science"".
  8. 1 2 3 Franco, Eli (2016-07-12). "The Nay Science. A History of German Indology, by Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee". South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. doi:10.1080/00856401.2016.1207281. ISSN   0085-6401.
  9. 1 2 3 Hanneder, Jürgen (2011). "Pretence and Prejudice" (PDF). Indologica Taurinensia. 37: 123–137.
  10. ↑ Kollipara, Bharani (July 2016). "Tradition and Discipline: How should one read ancient Indian texts?" . Modern Asian Studies. 50 (4): 1327–1402. doi:10.1017/S0026749X16000081. ISSN   0026-749X.
  11. ↑ Trompf, Garry W. (2016-01-26). "Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee, The Nay Science: A History of German Indology" . History of Religions. 55 (3): 374–376. doi:10.1086/684419. ISSN   0018-2710.
  12. ↑ Kurlander, Eric (2015). "Review of Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee, The Nay Science: A History of German Indology". Central European History. 48 (3): 432–434. ISSN   0008-9389.
  13. ↑ Germana, Nicholas A. (June 2015). "Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee. The Nay Science: A History of German Indology". The American Historical Review. 120 (3): 1132–1133. doi:10.1093/ahr/120.3.1132. ISSN   1937-5239.
  14. ↑ @theindpanorama (2022-07-01). "Dr. Vishwa P Adluri and Shri Rajiv Malhotra conferred the ICCR Distinguished Indologist Award". The Indian Panorama.
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