Arindam Chakrabarti

After getting a BA and MA in Philosophy from Presidency College (now University) Kolkata, Arindam Chakrabarti earned a D.Phil from Oxford University, in 1982, under the supervision of Sir Peter Strawson and Sir Michael Dummett. Philosophy of language and logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and Indian philosophies are his major areas of specialization. Since 2007, he has been teaching and publishing in Aesthetics and Moral Psychology. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Edinburgh, UK, the Sanskrit University in Tirupati, India, at Trinity College Cambridge, at the National Institute of Advanced Study, Bangalore, India, and at Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He has taught at the University of Calcutta, The Asiatic Society of Bengal, University College London, UK, University of Washington Seattle, USA, Delhi University and for 26 years at University of Hawaii Manoa,, where he was the receipent of a 3 year Templeton Grant. USA. Between 2018 and 2020 he was the Nirmal and Augustina Mattoo Chair Professor of Indic Thought and Culture at the Philosophy department of Stony Brook University, New York.

In his teaching and research Professor Chakrabarti has been trying to combine analytic, classical Indian (especially Nyāya, Buddhist and Kashmir Shaivism) and continental philosophies. Besides more than 100 papers in refereed journals and anthologies, his major publications include his book on negative existentials and fictional discourse “Denying Existence”, an introduction to 20th century Western epistemology in Sanskrit, and 7 books of philosophical essays in Bangla, the latest on the philosophy of food and clothing. His co-edited volumes include Knowing from Words (with B.K.Matilal), Universals, Concepts and Qualities (with P.F. Strawson), Apoha: Buddhist Nominalism (with Mark Siderits and Tom Tillemans), and Mahabharata Now (with Sibaji Bandyopadhyay). The Eastern Philosophy of Consciousness and the Humanities Project (EPOCH Project) with its focus areas on imagination, concepts and emotion, has recently taken off under his direction. His latest large monograph “Realisms Interlinked: Objects, Subjects and Other Subjects” published by Bloomsbury London came out in 2019. He is currently working on finishing “The Book of Questions: Analytical Introduction to Indian Philosophies” (under contract with Penguin India) and a book on Moral Psychology of Emotions.