Teaching Epistemology Through Indian Śāstras – Comparison with The Epistemology of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-477-8_18How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Epistemology; Indian Philosophy; Greek Philosophy; Education

Abstract

Indian darṣana śāstras (philosophical treatises) are largely seen as religious texts. The sacred texts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism are primarily used to teach the doctrines of the respective faiths. However, significant parts of these texts can be used quite effectively to teach a variety of non-religious subjects in a very insightful and practical way. In this paper, we demonstrate very clearly that epistemology (i.e., the theory of knowledge, which is a branch of philosophy) can be taught quite effectively through our Śāstras. To establish our argument, we take up the ideas on epistemology advocated by three Greek philosophers – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Thereafter, we identify specific equivalent concepts and sources from Indian philosophical texts, and show that these can be used with equal or better effect to teach the same concepts. We have limited our research to epistemology and to comparison with only three Greek philosophers, in view of limitations of time and length of the paper. However, our conclusion would apply equally well to imparting education on other branches of philosophy, and also to teach the ideas propounded by other famous western philosophers. Thus, this paper clearly establishes that philosophy as a non-religious academic discipline can be taught using Indian Knowledge Systems, in accordance with the objective of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. We only need to create suitable study materials and books, and implement the same in our educational institutions.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - R. Harish
AU  - G. V. Muralidhara
AU  - Shweta Jain
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/11/10
TI  - Teaching Epistemology Through Indian Śāstras – Comparison with The Epistemology of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference, Anubhuti: Revitalizing Indian Knowledge Systems for the Modern World (ICIKS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 267
EP  - 282
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-477-8_18
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-477-8_18
ID  - Harish2025
ER  -