Self and Personal Identity: Vedāntic, Buddhist, Naiyāyika, and Cārvāka Views and Arguments

Stephen Phillips (AB Harvard 1975, PhD Harvard 1982) is a professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin and has been visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Hawaii and Jadavpur University. Author of eleven books, including Aurobindo’s Philosophy of Brahman (1984), Classical Indian Metaphysics (1995, Indian edition 1998), and Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth (2009), he has more recently written Classical Indian Epistemology (2012), which presents classical Indian views in terminology suited for philosophy professionals. With Matthew Dasti he published The Nyāya-sūtra: Selections with Early Commentaries (2017), and with Dasti and Nirmalya Guha a short text, God and the World’s Arrangement: Vedānta and Nyāya Philosophy of Religion (2021). Phillips teamed with N.S. Ramanuja Tatacharya to translate the perception chapter of the monumental fourteenth-century Tattva-cintā-maṇi, “(Wish-fulfilling) Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology,” by Gaṅgeśa (2004, Indian edition 2008). A translation of the entire text, in three volumes has now been published by Bloomsbury (2020). His most recent book is The Metaphysics of Meditation: Sri Aurobindo and Ādi Śaṅkara on the Īśā Upaniṣad (in press, Bloomsbury).