Review of "Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Political Theory" Ifrah Anjum PhD Scholar, Islamic University of Science and Technology (Kashmir) Book Review # Aug 2, 2026 Book review of Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Political Theory, edited by Mangesh Kulkarni (Atlantic, 2025) In times where interdisciplinary studies have become the new norm, Dr. Mangesh Kulkarni's book is a gateway into theories of contemporary relevance. The book at first glance appears to be juggling with a lot of ideas, theories and contemporary issues. However, the beauty of the book is the way it maintains coherence while dealing with diversity. Spanning over twelve essays by scholars from varied locations, this book engages with some of the most pressing normative and empirical challenges of late modernity. Throughout the chapters, there is a constant engagement with dominant trajectories of contemporary political thought like questions of justice, citizenship, power, legitimacy, and moral responsibility. It reflects that political theory today must operate in a space of fractured universals and contested norms. Political Theory after Liberal Consensus The fragility of the Liberal Political Theory is recurrent in the course of this book. As Andrew Shorten notes in his book, the liberal approaches to political theory are limiting (Shorten 2012). Being the dominant narrative of the modern times, this theory is shown as inadequate to address the issues of our times. Jayant Lele, among several other contributors in the book, interrogates the liberal consensus that emerged after the Cold War. There is an uneasy coexistence that appears simultaneously with global inequality, imperial violence, and cultural fundamentalism. Lele's criticism of Rawls, Habermas, and Derrida demonstrate the volume's general skepticism towards the liberal theory. As much as these theories tried to assert moral universality, they paid inadequate attention to global power dynamics and political economics. Lele points out that all three of them have ultimately failed to address the problem of structural violence of global capitalism and imperial power. Rawls' political liberalism, Habermas' proceduralism, and Derrida's late political interventions, he suggests, converge in their inability or unwillingness to sustain a robust critique of political economy and religion. For Lele, combining Marxian critique with indigenous and marginalized traditions is a way of challenging the dominant structures. As such, this paves the way for the volume's commitment to theory that is historically grounded, normatively charged, and politically consequential. However, this volume does not simply abandon liberal theory; it subjects liberalism to sustained interrogation which gives the work more depth and keeps it from falling into rigid anti-liberalism. Globalisation: Between Pessimism and Possibility Rohini Hensman argues against understanding globalisation as a single economic ideology. She explains it as a complex and contested process. The chapter highlights the limits of associating globalisation with adjectives like capitalism, imperialism and neo liberalism. Instead, she expresses that globalisation creates new political spaces and institutions that can potentially advance democracy and human rights. For her, the institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and International Criminal Courts (ICC) are treated as contested sites where democratic struggles can unfold. Hensman acknowledges the structural inequalities embedded in global governance and the uneven distribution of its benefits. Yet her insistence on prioritising democracy over sovereignty marks an important departure from statist and nationalist critiques. The essay implicitly challenges political theory to rethink citizenship beyond the nation-state, a theme that recurs in later discussions of feminism and minority rights. Prakash Sarangi deals with the methodological debate within political theory. He examines the public choice theory and evaluates democracy through its lens. This approach applies methods from economics and mathematics to understand political decision making. It focuses on how individual preferences are translated into collective outcomes through voting and institutional rules. The assumption that individuals are rational, self-interested actors is critiqued at the end. It is a narrow view that fails to capture the moral, emotional, and social dimensions of political life. As a result, the chapter presents public choice theory as a useful but at the same time an incomplete tool for understanding democracy. Feminism and the Reconfiguration of Justice and Citizenship I believe this is one of the strongest sections of the book. Lajwanti Chatani engages with Feminist political theory in relation to citizenship and justice. It is a critical engagement with both the liberal and republican traditions of citizenship and reveals the gendered biases and exclusions implicit in these traditions. The feminist approach seeks to not only to include women in the existing traditions but at the same time transform the very conceptual underpinnings of citizenship. Engaging with thinkers like Carole Pateman, Carol Gilligan and Chantal Mouffe, the author highlights the internal debates in the feminist theory. The discussion about the public–private divide, care ethics, and the Wollstonecraft dilemma highlight the struggles of articulating gender justice without either assimilating women into masculinist norms or essentialising difference. Mouffe's reconfiguration of citizenship as an articulatory principle enables the recognition of difference without reducing it to a fixed identity. Furthermore, the redistribution-recognition debate is examined through the lens of Nancy Fraser's scholarship. It further problematises the traditional narrative of justice by characterizing gender and race as two-dimensional expressions of injustice. Fraser's approach resists the binary choice between economic and cultural claims. The collection therefore presents feminism as a critical practice that subverts single-axis narratives of justice and reveals the limitations of moral abstraction. Group Rights and Identity The chapter by Arpita Anant focuses on not limiting the debate of rights to the domestic sphere only. Enriching political studies on groups by incorporating external dimensions, this essay traces how global ideological currents have shaped Muslim political thought in India and thus demonstrates how domestic identity politics are inseparable from global ideological and institutional currents. From pan-Islamism to human rights discourse, transnational influences are shown to interact with local histories in complex ways. The discussion of Indian Muslim responses, from Sir Syed Ahmad Khan's rejection of pan-Islamism to post-independence engagements with human rights discourse, illustrates how external contexts can function as resources rather than threats. This chapter concludes with a refusal of homogeneous Muslim identity arguing its core is local. The significant highlight of the chapter is demonstrating that an enriched co-existence can take place within a liberal nationalistic society. Civil society and the ambiguities of Democratic Action Sanjay Palshikar in his chapter on Civil society does not treat it as a fixed concept, the chapter problematizes the concept asking whether civil society exists independently of the language used to describe it. The problem of civil society is examined through a critical dialogue with Indian political thought. By engaging with the works of Rajini Kothari, Gurpreet Mahajan, Partha Chatterjee, Palshikar demonstrates that civil society is far from a settled or unproblematic category. A notable contribution of this chapter is the critique of rigid binaries between civil society and the state, and between legality and illegality. These binaries, according to the author, fail to capture the complex ways in which collective action actually operates in Postcolonial contexts. This chapter argues that democratic deepening often occurs through collective practices that do not fit neatly into these categories. Rebellion, power and communicative action In the chapter, "Albert Camus' and the politics of friendship", Mangesh Kulkarni takes a distinct philosophical turn. The author, through Camus's notion of rebellion, carves out a philosophically oriented politics of friendship. Camus' rebellion rejects both metaphysical coalition and nihilistic negation and affirms human dignity through resistance to injustice. Although Camus' rebellion was essentially individualistic, it was reworked as affirmation of human dignity and the recognition of limits. He argued for a politics of restraint, dialogue and solidarity. A significant contribution of the chapter is Camus's concept of political friendship which is understood through the lens of weak ontology i.e. the refusal to anchor politics in absolute truths while still preserving moral commitment. In conclusion this concept offers a valuable moral resource for contemporary politics which is capable of accommodating difference without erasing universality. A radical concept of power through the lens of the political is presented in the chapter by Syed A. Sayeed. According to him, to understand the nature of the political dimension of social reality one must engage in 'hermeneutics of suspicion' wherein one can identify the underlying nature of power. For this task he dives into the examination of language that is a primary medium through which dominant groups impose and normalize their perspectives within society. Rather than proposing an alternative political framework, the chapter calls for continuous ethical vigilance against the institutionalisation of power. The importance of this chapter is the way it exposes the hidden mechanisms of domination demanding that political theory critically reflect on its own complicity in sustaining power structures. Deepti Gangavane engages with the discourse ethics of Jurgen Habermas which situates his theory within broader debates on modernity, rationality, and normativity. For Habermas, the questions of justice can be solved through open and rational discussion which is called 'communicative rationality'. He grounds moral validity in the presupposition that everyone affected can agree to them through fair discussion. A criticism of discourse ethics is also presented by the author, particularly its formalism and its reliance on ideal communicative conditions that rarely exist in practice. Real discussions are often shaped by power, inequality, and social position. While conceding that this was not the objective of Habermas, the author argues that a consequence of this position is that free and equal dialogue is difficult to achieve, making the theory incomplete. Bio politics, Knowledge Regimes and State Violence The final section of this book invokes the use of domination that threatens the very core of liberal legality. By challenging the assumption that traditional knowledge is obsolete or unscientific, Kannama Raman in her chapter highlights the contemporary relevance of Traditional Knowledge systems. She situates this debate surrounding intellectual property rights, biopiracy, and state sovereignty. By doing so, she showcases how global capitalism has turned Knowledge into a commodity which subsequently led to the emergence of academic capitalism. The highlight of this chapter is the warning against the nationalist appropriation of traditional knowledge for reactionary purposes. Shardool Thakur applies Agamben's theory of biopolitics to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) making one of the most politically charged interventions in this volume. He conceptualises the North-East as a space of exception highlighting the disjunction between democratic self-image and coercive practice. This essay powerfully demonstrates how states deploy emergency powers to normalise violence. The book concludes with an essay on torture by Clemens and Grigg. Although torture is officially condemned as a human rights violation, still the practices at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib suggest its growing normalisation. It is often dismissed, as the authors say, as the actions of "a few bad apples." The chapter argues that torture undermines freedom of speech, erodes the rule of law, and stands in direct opposition to democratic values. It also deals with psychoanalysis and suggests that the drive to dominate and inflict pain is often denied but persists within political power. Finally, the chapter insists that any acceptance of torture requires a fundamental rethinking of democracy itself. Critical Assessment and Conclusion This edited volume succeeds in accommodating different disciplines and presents a remarkable intervention in thinking on contemporary political questions that demands interdisciplinary inquiry. The book is at its best when it comes to exposing the limitations of the dominant paradigms and forces the reader to ask uncomfortable questions about Justice, Democracy, Power, etc. Its ambition lies less in proposing any new theory but an effort is made to exemplify political theory as a critical practice. However, like any volume it has some limitations. The most important one is that despite positioning itself in the Global South it mostly engages with the scholarship emerging in the western political thought. Indian and non-Western thinkers are engaged only as objects of analysis not as theoretical resources in their own right. Regardless of Lele's call for invoking counter hegemonic traditions, neither his essay nor the ones that follow perform this task. The interdisciplinary nature of this volume is also concerning because the thematic clusters that are identified do not genuinely share an intellectual conversation. Some arguments that should ideally be seen in contestation merely sit easily alongside each other without responding to each other. For example, Hensman's cautious optimism about globalisation should have come in conversation with Raman's critique of global knowledge systems and so on. It reflects that the volume only deals with strong individual themes rather than conceiving the book as a collaborative project that is an outcome of a deliberative practice of engagement. In this regard it charts familiar terrain that is the bane of most edited scholarship that fail to provide unified exploration into themes that though topical and important often do not cohere together. The book has its own sets of exclusions. The feminist theory discussed by Chatani could also have been expanded. This single essay grapples with the entire feminist project. Instances of gendered experiences of state violence, feminist critique of civil society could have been engaged with as the volume deals with such issues. Largely, this volume only focuses on critique of current frameworks rather than offering alternative perspectives. Overall, this volume remains a valuable contribution to political theory scholarship in India. It will be of interest to scholars and advanced students seeking critical, interdisciplinary approaches to the enduring problems of justice, citizenship, and emancipation. Graduate students looking for a serious and critically minded introduction to the major debates in contemporary political theory can also benefit from this book. Readers can expect a thoughtful experience as this book will leave them with more productive doubts than they arrived with. Its limitations are real, but they are also productive; they mark the boundaries of where the project of a genuinely postcolonial and interdisciplinary political theory must still go. Bibliography Shorten, Andrew, ed. Contemporary Political Theory : A Reader. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Review of R. Krishnaswamy's Book Adreeja Sarkar PhD Scholar, Jawaharlal Nehru University Book Review # Jun 2, 2024 Book review of R. Krishnaswamy's book The Call for Recognition: Naturalizing Political Norms (Routledge 2023). In our decision-making procedures, our reasons for actions are ushered by norms, whether they be of the informal kind or in the form of decrees and sanctions. Norms are effective means to acquire and conserve social welfare. Like symbiotic fungi that enable nutrient transfer and ecological restoration, norms are the ties that bind us in a system of social cooperation and collective growth. The relation between norms and agents is thus, a mutual one. Agents in any social group or collective need norms for the proper functioning of the group just as norms require performing agents to coordinate and cooperate so that the overall normative framework of the group can evolve for the better. The relation is also dynamic because in order to evolve together, both norms and behavioural attitudes and actions of agents demand flexibility and openness to change as prerequisites. The structure of norms appears to be (a) heavily influenced by the socio-cultural contexts from which they arise while simultaneously aiming towards (b) a 'transcendence' through the attainment of universalizability. Even though parochial socio-cultural group beliefs may differ in character, there prevails some homogeneity among the contents of specific norms despite differences. There is an everlasting debate regarding whether normativity [1] arises through social agreement (anti-foundationalism) or is it entirely objective in nature (essentialism), i.e., where the truth or 'rightness' of values have an 'essence' (independently) existing out there in the world, free from any subjective preferences. Analyzing the structure of social norms constitutes a critical step in the process of interpreting social justice. If norms are solely anthropological, then they eventually suffer from absolute relativism. Contrarily, if norms are solely objective or universal then justice or fairness becomes a very rigid domain ignoring socio-cultural specificities. The sources of these norms aren't easy to decipher, more so, when one delves into their formation, functionality, purpose and impact in our everyday lives. One also needs to bring into the discussion the concepts of identity, autonomy, intention, motivation, behaviour and action in both individual and collective contexts. Krishnaswamy’s book can be considered as an inquiry into the grounds of normativity involving these aspects. He takes up questions like – what constitutes our social and political norms, how do we understand social agency (in theory and praxis) and how a right political institution can be crucial in enabling the required grounds for these norms. In the process of doing so, he provides a panoramic picture of the traditional and current interpretations of political agency and the interactions between socio-political principles and subjecthood. The book, as he states in his introduction, can be divided into two phases. In the initial chapters, he performs the job of a critic by assessing the various traditions of political theories and citing the incompatibilities or dis-connect existing between their notions of the right political institution and social agency. The latter chapters focus more on constructing a different perspective in viewing norms, social agency and the roles of a political institution. At the heart of his normative framework lies the shaping of our identity as political subjects on the basis of ‘recognition’. Simply put, he provides a recognitional model [2] as a normative ideal in understanding our behaviour as social agents. In a recognitional model, political agency is understood from an inter-subjective perspective as in, how we recognize the other and are recognized by them. To recognize any entity, he states, is to apply a social identity to that entity which further reveals the various relations that the said entity exists in, within a community. We are first and foremost, social beings and any talk on normativity has to take into consideration our existence in relations. However, this model of recognition is not a mere static representation of reality for the author. He considers it to be a dynamic and flexible process where we not only learn how to situate each other socially but also moderate social categories while acknowledging novel experiences individually and collectively. Recognition, to him, acts as a way out of the extremities of subjectivism and objectivism in the analysis of normativity. The normative agency in a recognitional model is a social given. There are no prior conditions that might act as a foundation to what an agent ought to do. In fact, that one is an agent is sufficient enough a reason to consider her as a legitimate subject for (a) dispensing social categories and (b) being the bearer of social norms. Krishnaswamy argues that the need for equal normative status is justified by the mere existence of a 'society' and the existence of people living in the society. Social violence or silencing occurs when any agent is denied their fundamental normative right i.e., the right to participate in any normative discourse within the society. One of his major claims in the book is that only a recognitional political framework, through its non-essentialist, relational ethic can help us arrive at the legitimacy of norms in attaining collective welfare. The method he cites in developing such a recognitional framework is to first situate agency and autonomy as inseparable from the natural and social environments they are based in. Accordingly, he goes on to explain that intentionality/self-realization emerges as a normative quality guided by biological forces. He interprets internalization of laws as the recognition or knowledge that – "the patterns of behavioural change are consequences of other normative rules which dictate how naturalistic laws inform our agency".[3] In the following phase of the analysis, he aims to show that the standards for normative actions are public in nature by virtue of containing shared intentions. Norms become public due to the intentional performance of the individuals of a group and eventually become historical, capable of providing motivational impact over longer periods of time. Regarding the interrelation between normative behaviour and natural dispositions, Krishnaswamy (following anti-essentialist claims) argues that our reasons for actions cannot belong to a different cognitive realm from the actions themselves. Here, he uses the example of learning languages (where one needs to follow rules but a cognitive grasp of the rules prior to speaking doesn’t necessarily help in actually speaking the language) to reiterate that situating norms in a different realm separate from pre-cognitive level of conscious actions would rarely help in comprehending the structure of our normative behaviour. Norms are constructed out of the interpretations and reactions of multiple agents of the collective towards each other and their immediate environment. Social coordination among individuals of a collective arise due to shared intentions.[4] Planning structures of individual agencies form the connecting link between individual and shared agencies. Our capacity for planning agency, as Bratman puts it, is a core capacity that underlies interrelated forms of mind-shaped practical organization: cross-temporal organization of individual agency, shared agency, social rules, and rule-guided organized institutions. One function of our capacity for planning agency is the preference for these forms of practical organization.[5] These planning structures lead to the continuity between individual agency and shared agency. In order to establish the larger aim of his thesis – that rules or norms have to emerge out of people’s natural and social contexts – he points at how intentions while being collective also need to be cognitively 'recognized' by agents. Normative political programmes will always be lacking in their discussions about justice and fairness if they ignore the realities of our practical lives. The far removal from practical predicaments would result in a dissonance between how people cognize they should act and how they actually act in everyday circumstances. According to him, norms are created through collective action by 'joint agreement'. Mutual commitments and obligations arise from the moral grounding that our social and cultural realities provide. Our understanding of moral right or wrong arises from our lived experiences. Practical instances in life almost often inculcate implicit agreements that make joint action towards shared goals possible. This differs from how joint agreement works in social contract frameworks where agreement is required to be individualistic and explicit. Krishnaswamy claims that the fact that we can plan and intend goals is what gives us the capacity to commit. Following Gilbert[6], he argues that collective goals are separate from personal goals, and normative commitments are social in nature. He shows how singularist accounts of intentionality and normative commitments lead to individualist political philosophies. To create a good social and political theory of obligation we ought to begin with exploring how norms are a natural part of our collective existence. He further argues that if norms are public and are generated out of collective behaviour then rules of social action get their power to be obligatory only when they are recognized by all the members of that group. The formal conditions for institutional behaviour is based on collective dispositions, i.e., the recognition of norms along with relevant normative expectations shared by agents. The recognition of norms entails the acceptance of that norm and the readiness to bind ourselves to the norm. Political institutions since they aim to regulate behaviour through collective rules need continual performative reinforcement by the people to whom those rules are directed. It becomes important that institutions then take into consideration the natural social conditions of the people by analyzing pragmatic instances. It is through this that social silencing and injustice can be checked. Political injustice occurs either through coercion or the deliberate or non-deliberate overlooking of contextual differences prevailing in intersubjective recognition. Recognitional ethics requires equal participation of agents as well as institutions in rule formation and enactment. Krishnaswamy quite aptly puts forward one limitation of such a normative framework. While normative reflexivity of agents is a product of inter-personal interactions, interpretation of norms is bound to vary from person to person. Demands for conformity among group members may lead to coercion or ostracization if some members do not conform to the group identity. He holds the opinion that group conformity might not always ensure the absence of discrimination. In order to avoid such cases, political institutions must create safe spaces where silencing and feelings of hurt and discrimination can be conceptually addressed. The book aims to analyze natural social conditions phenomenologically to find solutions to the limitations of the objectivist idea of justice. His stance of political naturalism is a novel interdisciplinary attempt to bridge the gap between objectivist and relativist approaches to social reality and justice. A Few Challenges The author does not, however, draw a very distinct line as to where the 'natural' ends and the 'social' begins in the 'natural social conditions' that he talks about. As such, the sources of normativity or normative agency remain a bit hazy. Intersubjective understanding and knowledge demands detailed analysis of how a recognitional model would define collective intentionality. Whether collective intentionality and group agency are reducible to individual intentions or whether it is the case that one common intention is jointly shared by all the members need to be assessed. The recognitional model has to explain how to bridge the gaps between emotivism and intuitionism when it comes to intersubjective interpretations. (Assuming that a recognitional model implements the concepts of empathy and trust for its functioning, it also needs to be addressed how empathy and trust would function in intersubjective interpretations.) If joint agreements imply individual planning capabilities for forming norms and institutions, what ensures agent A that another agent B would respond likewise? If we base our inter-subjective interpretations on ‘collective intentionality’ while simultaneously retaining intentional capabilities of individual agents, then this would lead to the problem of circularity. How should we then understand the plurality of subjectivity in contexts involving collectives like institutions as well as contexts including random groups? Again, in a country like India, for instance, with diverse inherent contextual features, how should the justification of uniform truths/norms be done? Krishnaswamy’s book initiates interesting arenas for further discussions on the concepts of coordination, agreement and collaboration in dealing with epistemic injustice. His recognitional model takes up a naturalistic approach to social construction. For the model to be seen as an explanation, some clarification about its justification is needed. The Call for Recognition: Naturalizing Political Norms sets up room for interdisciplinary analysis and will be an intriguing read for scholars of law, social and political philosophy, social epistemology, meta-ethics and social ontology. Endnotes [1] Normativity is the capacity to describe any claim as action-guiding in the sense of right/wrong and good/bad. [2] Influenced by Hegelian anti-essentialism. [3] Chapter 6: Socio-Natural Embeddedness, p-123. The Call for Recognition: Naturalizing Political Norms . 2023 [4] Bratman, 2014; Gilbert, 2006; Velleman, 2000 [5] Bratman, Planning and Its Function in Our Lives , Volume41, Issue1 Special Issue:Society for Applied Philosophy Annual Lecture 2023 Symposium , p-1-15, feb 2024. [6] Gilbert, 2006. References Bratman, Michael. (2014). Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. —- Planning and Its Function in Our Lives , Volume41, Issue1. Special Issue:Society for Applied Philosophy Annual Lecture 2023 Symposium , p-1-15, feb 2024. Gilbert, Margaret. (2006). A Theory of Obligation Membership, Commitment, and the Bonds of Society . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Velleman, David. (2000). The Possibility of Practical Reason . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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Review of Bhaskarjit Neog's Book Abhishek Anant Nowbagh Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Jadavpur University Book Review # May 16, 2024 Book review of Bhaskarjit Neog’s book What Responsibility? Whose Responsibility? Intention, Agency, Emotions of Collective Entities (Routledge 2024). The author, Bhaskarjit Neog, in the prologue of this book, provides instances of collective wrongdoing, along with the observation that "one of the reasons behind the disappearance of moral resentment from public memory is the fact that we do not always have a clear understanding of the simple question - who is responsible when a group or collective is held responsible?" (Neog, 2024, p. xiii). The author brings forth the difference between the idea of attributing moral properties to groups and collectives in general everyday moral vocabulary, easily understood in general terms, and the analytical understanding of collective responsibility, which poses serious conceptual problems. When the philosophical analysis of collective responsibility is attempted through the concept of individual moral responsibility, the idea of collective responsibility begins to emerge as a concept that needs extensive discourse. It is this discourse that the author initiates. The book has seven sections: a prologue, five chapters, and an epilogue. The sections take us through an extensive discussion related to collectivizing responsibility through collective intentions, collective agency, and collective emotions. In the first chapter, the author looks into how the structure of moral responsibility, based on the actor’s knowledge and control in individual acts, can be ascribed to collective contexts. Analysing the concept of collectives, he argues that both structured and unstructured collectives can be brought under the concept of moral responsibility. He searches for wider criteria for moral agential status for the collective beyond the argument that does not ascribe moral status to a collective. The second chapter brings forth two approaches to collective responsibility. The first is the collectivist position, which is committed to the reality of collective responsibility. The second is an individualist position that is somewhat non-committal concerning collective responsibility. The author then draws our attention to two specific issues that need to be addressed further: first, concerning the distribution of responsibility among the members of the collective and second, the relationship between individual responsibility on the one hand and the responsibility of collectives on the other. Here, the author proposes an account that "argues for a space where one is required to see things from the collective's point of view without thereby neglecting how things appear for the individuals within the collective concerned" (Neog, 2024, p. 35). He refers to this account which is neither fully collectivistic nor fully individualistic as a quasi-collectivist or non-individualist account. The author then elaborates on the justification of the proposed quasi-collectivist account from three perspectives concerning a collective: intention, agency, and guilt, which leads us to the next three chapters. The third chapter deliberates upon the intentional make-up of collectives. The author discusses the viewpoints of John Searle, Micahel Bratman, Raimo Tuomela, and Margaret Gilbert who have approached collective intentions without any metaphysical entity in their explanation; he expresses his apprehension whether such a view can encompass the understanding of collective moral action or collective moral responsibility. Firstly, he elaborates on the common-sense views about collective intentionality. Secondly, he asks the pertinent question: where does this collective intention, which drives collective action, reside? He addresses this issue by identifying two ways of approaching this concern: taking individuals as a group or taking them as a group of individuals . The author acknowledges that this is a contentious issue that has no easy answers. Thus, he analyses the views of Bratman, Searle, Tuomela, and Gilbert to draw a comprehensive picture of collective intentionality. In this context, the author takes into consideration collectivity, which he terms as the "essence that makes a particular intentional state inherently collective" (Neog, 2024, p. 59), further contemplating upon interrelationality and the collectivity of collective intentions. He argues that genuine collective intentions shall firstly not be overpowered by an authority that takes control over individuals. Secondly, collective intentions shall not completely be dissociated from the individual’s intentions that constitute that collective. This leads to the quasi-collectivist account of collective responsibility. The author explains collective intentions as the intentions of the collective . He argues for collective responsibility as "an independent normative fact with its own sui generic character, and not just an aggregation of the responsibility of the participating individuals", moving towards justifying collective responsibility as the responsibility of collectives. The fourth chapter concerns itself with collectives with an agency of their own. In the previous chapter, he points out that with regard to an individual it is the individual agency that precedes individual intention, but with regard to the collective it is the other way round. Collective agency has been looked through the prism of moral responsibility as being a collective self-being primarily responsible for its actions or outcomes. The author argues for formulating such a collective agency in this chapter. He makes a detailed analysis of the philosophical discourses concerning agency, individual and collective. In his book he argues for a collective agency that is different from the shared agency, which is a single agential unit consisting of multiple individual agents. The author further explains that shared agency is a concept of unity with diversity , but collective agency is unity in diversity . He further connects the normative point raised in the previous chapter with collective agency. This collective agency, the author claims, is crucial for recognizing collective responsibility as the responsibility of the collective per se. The author also considers emotional attitude, with respect to sharing the moral burden, of the collective agency that shall bring forth the complete moral character. This forms the basis of the next chapter. The fifth chapter emphasizes the relationship between morality and emotion. The dominant view in early philosophy was that morality concerns itself with reason, and emotion has no role to play in it. However, recent discussions in philosophy have pointed towards a more intimate relationship between morality and emotion. The author focuses on the emotion of guilt in this chapter to understand how guilt affects moral collective responsibility. There are philosophical approaches that argue that there is no strong connection between an individual’s guilt and her ability to be moral. Another argument categorizes guilt as a negative emotion that has no positive role in shaping morality. The author disagrees with such approaches, stating that "the nature of guilt and its proximity to our moral conscience needs to be understood in a wider context" (Neog, 2024, p. 105), and not based on individual instances. Further, Neog examines the feeling of collective guilt and compares and clarifies its distinction with collective shame: shame is driven by agent-centric reconstruction, but guilt is driven by action-centric reconstruction . Confusion of guilt with regret may occur when we consider collective wrongdoing, but for Neog, regret is a feeling that can occur beyond the direct involvement of an agent in the wrongdoing. He observes that the three approaches to collective guilt feeling , (i) a summation of individual guilt feelings, (ii) a feeling of membership guilt , and (iii) collective feeling of guilt, are not adequate. He offers a fourth alternative to collective guilt that takes into consideration the singularity of agency and the plurality of the experiencing subjects and tries to reconcile these two. It is such an endeavor where collective guilt is, in the singularity context, a feeling of guilt for wrongdoing committed in the name of the collective, and on the other hand, in the plurality context, it is the plurality of the individual members experiencing guilt as contributors to the collective. He terms it as positional guilt feeling that "on the one hand, retains the phenomenological elements in its constitution, on the other, recognizes the importance of collectivity by maintaining a distinction between the singularity of the agency of wrongdoing and the plurality of the experiencing subjects" (Neog, 2024, pp. 117-118). Neog finally argues that when we consider the collective agency, as discussed in the previous chapter, we can very well locate a collective moral agency, with respect to positional guilt feeling. This account of positional guilt feeling helps us understand collective responsibility. The epilogue of the book touches upon a possible assumption on the part of critics that he is subscribing to a conceptual isomorphism between individual wrongdoing and collective wrongdoing. He responds to this criticism by arguing that there can be collective wrongdoings without there being any collective intention. For him an affirmative claim can be made that collective responsibility can be understood through collective intention: given his take on collective intentionality recognises the significance of individuating the phenomena of collectivity so that keeping it away from being an overarching metaphysical superstructure and also tagging along individual intentional attitudes of the members of the collective. This leads the collective to an internal evaluation towards executing a common goal, which results in the collective agency. This collective agency is able to form emotional responses, as articulated by the discussion on guilt. As he puts it, collective guilt is "an emotional state where the referred agent behind the collective wrongdoing is the collective agent itself, although the subjects of such a feeling are the individual members" (Neog, 2024, p. 128). Neog does consider that there may be certain cases where collective wrongdoing does not have a collective intention, such as the problem of global warming. But this does not stop us from taking a retrospective stand on such issues. The book also considers instances where there is no pre-existing collective agent. The example cited is that random strangers helping a person in trouble. For Neog, in such cases, the moral demand for coordinated action can help in forming collective intentional agency, which develops through an internal evaluative perspective that develops a normative standpoint. He claims that philosophical discourse has laid forth the complexity of collective responsibility and his book attempts to "handle some of the knots and tangles of the yarn" (Neog, 2024, p. 132). Collective agency and collective responsibility are issues of utmost significance to philosophers and social scientists, since human existence as a social animal depends upon intricacies related to them, this book deliberates upon issues that matter in the perspective of understanding human co-existence. The extensive detail in which the author has looked into philosophical literature concerning responsibility, intention, agency, and guilt both in the context of the individual and the collective makes this a comprehensive account that is a must-read for everyone interested in individual-collective discourse. The quasi-collectivist account proposed in the book takes this discourse a step further. The wide-ranging use of anecdotes and instances from movies and literature about every pressing issue that this book concerns itself with helps us form a clear understanding of the complex philosophical debates in the backdrop. In this respect, this book can be considered a starting point for unversed readers in the individual-collective debate.

Review of "Quick and Concise: Philosophy" Shivangi Shanker Independent Scholar, PhD from JNU Book Review # Jul 22, 2025 Book review of Shamik Chakravarty's Quick and Concise: Philosophy (Hachette India, 2025). Writing an introductory book to a discipline as rich and diverse as philosophy is profoundly challenging. Quick and Concise: Philosophy (Hachette India, 2025) by Shamik Chakravarty not only overcomes this challenge but also broadens the scope of the genre, despite its compact size. It is a pocket-sized book with themes including both Indian and Western traditions of Philosophy. The book offers a discourse on the fundamental questions of philosophy concerning meaning, free will, morality, knowledge, personal identity, and art. Shamik’s endeavour stands out as an attempt to present a comprehensive philosophical dialogue which reflects philosophical inclusivity on two levels: conceptual and contextual. Conceptual inclusivity is evident in Shamik’s incorporation of non-Western philosophy, while contextual inclusivity emerges through the integration of culturally familiar situations, names, and cities into deeper philosophical enquiries. The use of familiar Indian backdrops, such as the workplace dilemma (p.74) in a corporate context or the affirmative action (p. 71) example, makes it especially relatable to the Indian readers. What distinguishes the text further is that it does not bridge the gap between different knowledge systems through mere exposition but an application of the Socratic (Blondell 2018) and the Hegelian Dialectical methods (Houlgate 2024) [i] . In the analogy between Buddhism, deontology, and utilitarianism, or Buddhism and virtue ethics. Or its comparative analysis with Kantian ethics, which puts forth a reconciled ethical position from the point of view of Buddhism. (Chakravarty 2025, 64-70). The process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis [ii] is evident. Shamik selects a broad range of topics as compared to Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy (Russell 2020), Thomas Nagel’s What Does It All Mean (Nagel 1987), and Edward Craig’s Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Craig 2002). As far as the structure of Quick and Concise: Philosophy is concerned, it resembles Nagel’s What Does It All Mean and Edward Craig’s Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. But the curation of topics and the execution of the discussions surrounding it is wider and more inclusive in Shamik’s book. While Shamik includes a range of classical Indian views, Craig focuses mainly on Buddhism. All of these texts either ignore or mention in passing the discussion on the notion of art. Whereas, Quick and Concise: Philosophy not only elaborates on it, but discusses Indian Philosophy of art— Nāṭyaśāstra . Suggesting that art and aesthetics are not peripheral topics but central to philosophy. Shamik shows a shift from traditional metaphysical speculation to recent philosophical and psychological integration, bringing out an intersection of ethics, psychology, metaphysics, and applied philosophy. He discusses how Psychology deals with the dichotomy of choosing the right over the wrong by applying psychological mechanisms (pp. 68-70). The notion of free will includes an extended reference to determinism, compatibilism, agent causation, AI, neuroscience (p. 89), and ethical psychology, along with other interdisciplinary enquiries. He presents a more critical than expository outlook to the problems, which sometimes may feel overwhelming to beginners in Philosophy. But his writing eliminates this obstruction with various shifts in the tone. Given that Russell, Nagel, and Shamik write in different eras, there are differences in how they approach their work. The Problems of Philosophy offers 20th-century analytical and epistemological views, which makes it denser and limited in scope. Shamik’s work overcomes these challenges by employing a conversational style where he speaks to the readers (p. 1) [iii] . He simplifies complicated ideas, recognising the significance of critical thinking in the learning process. The book is a reflection of interactive teaching-learning techniques. Its examples and questions are relatable to the wider audience. The application of both pedagogical and philosophical methods makes the book comprehensible for general readers as well as students of philosophy. The book has eight chapters (excluding references and index), which reflect the diverse scope that the author has created. The chapters are structured thematically to make reasoned analysis, back-and-forth through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, excelling in the pedagogical spirit. Each chapter explores a fundamental question or a theme within philosophy and presents the diverse philosophical views and critical analysis under sub-themes. The initial four chapters provide a clear orientation to its readers. It includes topics like what philosophy is. What do philosophers do? And introduces the readers to the main branches of Philosophy (p. 20), that is, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ontology, and Logic. In these chapters, the author explores the questions: What is the meaning of life, and meaning in life? What is morality? What is free will and determinism? The latter four chapters enquire into scepticism, what constitutes personal identity, the role of determinism in free will, whether people are responsible for their acts, what is art and how it relates to expression, rasa , value, and emotion. Throughout the book, the author discusses answers to these questions, then the responses are either challenged or supported by other views. The chapter’s structure reflects the integration and application of the Hegelian Dialectical (Houlgate 2025), Socratic [iv] , and philosophical argumentation (inductive and deductive) methods. For example, in the first chapter, the author explains that the job of a philosopher is to seek truth through systematic argumentation. He then questions the nature of truth itself and presents the idea of relativism of truth (p. 15). In the second chapter, the discussion on the meaning of life begins with an investigation of what meaning is [v] , rather than assuming a theory of meaning. Thereafter, it presents a thorough integration of philosophies from different traditions to show how each framework evaluates or creates meaning. For instance, the elucidation of the dilemmas in the Bhagavadgitā, that one faces amid the process of understanding the metaphysical and the ontological meaning of life, is explained through the concept of yoga ( jñāna, karma, bhaktī ). Or the snake and rope example, and in its analogy with Descartes’ dream argument. In this, the author shows the relationship between Nyāya and Descartes’ scepticism, and the reference to Vātsyāyana’s (p. 144) commentary on the Nyāya Sūtra and highlights the views of opponents of the Nyāya school. These explanations offer an integration of primary and secondary literature in a much-synthesised manner. The author intends to inform their readers about the wide-ranging concepts, opposing views, and the evolution of the philosophical debate. When he explains the notion of cultural relativism, in the third chapter, and points out the problem in accepting this view. He first creates a sense of awareness that there are subjective moral beliefs, which means there are no universal moral principles acceptable to all cultures. Then, through a representation of the problems posed by cultural relativism, the author makes the reader question the notion of moral subjectivity. Interestingly, the discussions about relativity and the presentation of a discourse on it point out the interdisciplinary nature of philosophical inquiry. Relativism is a philosophical idea, but the notion of “cultural relativism” (p. 45) is studied often by anthropologists, sociologists, linguists, philosophers and psychologists. Every discipline approaches an issue from a specific vantage point and methodology. Disciplines are said to draw from philosophical methods and concepts, and vice versa. It highlights that concepts are interconnected (pp. 2-3), thereby signifying the relevance of an interdisciplinary approach. The book explicates that Philosophy is multidimensional and that the truth of a philosophical matter revolves around a debate. Structurally, the book offers an integrated study of concepts and continuity, as we see in the sixth chapter on scepticism. The discussion on Descartes’ philosophy develops into the discussion of contemporary externalist responses, including the debate over the dream argument and the application of the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment (pp. 118, 129-130). What could have otherwise come across as a literature survey, mentioning multiple philosophers and concepts in quick succession, develops into a dialectical exploration. It gives away that the author’s intent is not to find settling answers but to inform the readers about the overall debate. For example, in the seventh chapter on Personal Identity, epistemological and metaphysical discussions are made concerning several philosophers: Derek Parfit, Sydney Shoemaker, John Locke, David Hume, and Buddhist philosophy. The dialogue between Milinda and Nāgasena (pp. 167-168) on the questions of personal identity goes beyond knowing “who am I”. And the chapter ends with an unanswered question on the nature of the soul. A similar integration is evident in the eighth chapter, which explores art from a vantage point of expression, representation, flow, meaning, pleasure, and aesthetics. The author presents the formalist, expressivist, aesthetic, and rasa theories of art, capturing the integration of philosophical subdisciplines: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics—and thereby, rounding off the broader enquiry that initially begins with the mind-body problem and the questions of meaning and life. While the book’s scope is broad, there are certain areas whose inclusion may have added to its expansive nature. Such as the theory of Justice from the aegis of philosophers like Plato, John Rawls, and Amartya Sen. The book does not include the discussions of Philosophy of language, which is central to Epistemology, Logic, Ethics and various other disciplines. An introduction to the central figures like Wittgenstein, Frege, Austin, Searle, or Putnam may have provided a meta-enquiry of the notion of meaning. While we are introduced to Sartre’s view on meaning, Nietzsche’s contributions to understanding meaning in life are missing. The references to other orthodox schools of Indian Philosophy, and the modern Indian thinkers like Sen, Aurobindo, Vivekananda, Mohanty and others may have complemented the book’s scope. Still, the text compensates for its limitations as seen in the eighth chapter—“What is art”, though introductory in tone, explores intersecting domains: experience, emotion, rasa , value, and flow. The chapter draws on Plato’s (p. 173) and Wittgenstein’s direct and indirect contributions (p. 189) to understanding the meaning of art, informing the reader about the wider scope of their philosophical viewpoints. Another remarkable strategy is the blending of the classical Indian Philosophy and the attempts to overcome the limitations of philosophical parochialism (Konstantinović 2021) [vi] , usually prominent in the introductory level texts. Be it the integration of Buddhist ethics or the Bhagvadgītā’s teachings (p. 38), the Nyāya Philosophy (p. 143), or the Rasa theory from Natyasastra (p. 198). Alongside its philosophical inclusivity, the book employs effective pedagogical tools which engage the learner through culturally relevant (Rattanawong and Thongrin 2023) [vii] puzzles and prompts, for the initiation of a relatable understanding of concepts. Some of the culturally familiar examples or cases that the author creates in the book are worth noting. Such as the description of the experiment by Joshua Greene and Michael Koenigs (pp. 70-71), in the chapter on morality. He demonstrates the probable application of the experiment in the Indian system of Affirmative Action policies. The experiment used moral dilemmas like the trolley problem and the crying baby scenario to depict the difference that people show in emotional and cognitive responses when faced with personal moral dilemmas versus impersonal dilemmas. This experiment showed that the synthesis of deontological and utilitarian ethics can solve larger practical problems. It also helps the Indian readers to comprehend the theory in resonance with a familiar context. The author creates engaging philosophical dialogues to help the readers build an understanding step by step. The question, “If the soul isn’t the subject of experience, what is? It’s time for you, the subject of experience, to start thinking at time t 1 and come up with an answer at t 2 !” (p. 171), demands that the reader pause, think, and reflect. This approach is visible in the questions he raises: whether the comedian with a banana and duct tape produces art? And the contemplation around free will. What is more important in these endeavours is the embedding of the Socratic style that invites the readers to think independently and critically. The way the author eases philosophical perplexities with a deft shift in the tone and strategic placement of provocative phrases shows the application of an integrative teaching and learning style. In the opening chapter, the debate surrounding the mind-body problem is framed using views of several philosophers. Before the chapter gets too dense with the debate, the author lowers the intensity of the discourse with a discussion on relativism about truth. Shifting to a more familiar topic, especially one illustrated through examples like jackfruit ice cream and cultural subjectivity, eases the reader back into conceptual clarity. Even though there is a shift to a slightly casual tone, the philosophical message is never diluted, but rather enriched. For instance, “But hang on with me. There is an evil demon who is deceiving you…so you think you have hands but you don’t” (p. 117). These deliberate stylistic techniques, which maintain a balance between the academic and the casual tone, keep the readers hooked throughout the reading process. Complex discussions are eased out with similar acts by saying, “Now try to apply this to Descartes’ demon argument and the brain-in-a-vat argument and see whether it begs the question or not. Sweet dreams!” (p. 144). This sort of closing to a topic as complex as scepticism leaves the readers smiling but unsettled, forging critical reflection. Overall, the book offers both relevance and depth through the contextualisation of foundational problems in philosophy. It presents broad concepts and recent philosophical developments. The book can be beneficial for a diverse range of audiences, including undergraduate or master’s students, lay people, and young scholars. For the latter, it may serve as a useful starting point for research when supplemented with further readings. Owing to its expansive scope and pedagogically conscious style, Quick and Concise: Philosophy is a significant contribution to introductory-level philosophical literature. Footnotes [i] Refer to the discussion by Stephen Houlgate, on “Hegel's Dialectics”, The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy , ed. Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2024 Edition, accessed July 12, 2025. [ii] A way to understand the evolution of the ideas and how integration of opposing views can lead to its further development. [iii] “One of the reasons I became a philosopher…..is to argue.” [iv] Ruby Blondell, The Socratic Method: Plato's Use of Philosophical Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). [v] Different views culminate into a meta discussion on meaning of life. [vi] Mostly books in the genre of introduction to philosophy has for long ignored the discussion on Indian Philosophy. See parochialism in Radomir Konstantinović, The Philosophy of Parochialism , trans. Ljiljana Nikolić and Branislav Jakovljević, ed. Branislav Jakovljević (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021). [vii] There is a strong relationship between the learner’s thinking process and the cultural context. References Blondell, Ruby. The Socratic Method: Plato’s Use of Philosophical Drama . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Chakravarty, Shamik. 2025. Quick and Concise: Philosophy . Bangalore: Hachette India Craig, Edward. Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Houlgate, Stephen. Hegel’s Dialectics.” The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy . Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Summer 2024 Edition. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Accessed July 12, 2025. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/hegel-dialectics/ . Konstantinović, Radomir. 2021. The Philosophy of Parochialism . Translated by Ljiljana Nikolić and Branislav Jakovljević. Edited by Branislav Jakovljević. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Nagel, Thomas. What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy , New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Rattanawong, Amonrat, and Saneh Thongrin. “An Exploration of Culture in Listening and Speaking Materials from an English as an International Language Perspective.” LEARN Journal: Language Education and Acquisition Research Network 16, no. 1 (January-June 2023): 652–75. Russell, Bertrand. The Problems of Philosophy . Mumbai: Sanage Publishing House, 2020. Originally published in 1912.

Review of Muzaffar Ali's book by Richa Shukla Richa Shukla Assistant Professor, IIT Bhubhaneswar Book Review # Nov 13, 2023 Book review of Muzaffar Ali's India, Habermas and the Normative Structure of Public Sphere (Routledge, 2023) This text called India, Habermas and The Normative Structure of Public Sphere is an attempt by Muzaffar Ali, a contemporary Indian political philosopher, to make us revisit the hidden ambiguity behind Indian Public Sphere in reference to Habermas’s idea. He points to this ambiguity by making us think the public sphere is a space that makes us think and question. The book submits a proposition that public spheres and its institutions go hand in hand. He also mentions three criteria for calling a public space. I couldn’t help but notice a tension that Ali wants to point out between his method on how he would do Philosophy vs how ideally Indian philosophy has been done so far. The larger arguments reminded me of Hannah Arendt’s proposition while she discusses the nature of Philosophy, i.e., it's important to think about what we are doing in Philosophy.[1] The book consists of 5 chapters, excluding a preface and acknowledgements. It begins by pointing out a reflection as well as a theoretical concern on how the contemporary Indian situation is a possible glitch in the theorization of Habermas’s public sphere. Rather, it proposes ‘Samvada’, (संवाद) as a method of further analysis. The philosopher here submits that there is a coherence between contemporary Indian philosophy and Indian political theory which can very well be used to theorise the native idea of the Indian Public Sphere. It not only presents a picture of Habermas’s Public Sphere but also, brings in Indian philosophers, political theorists, and a few feminist scholars as well. The first part of the book dwells on a reflective theoretical need: Can we ever think of a native theory of the Indian Public Sphere? The book attempts to not only answer this theoretical concern but also create a 'theoretical toolbox' [2] for the same. Additionally, it revisits and re-reads old debates in Indian political theory and Indian philosophy. This, Ali suggests, can help us in rebounding the normative foundations of the Indian Public Sphere. I couldn’t help but notice that the book takes a good philosophical lurk from the past, present and future of the Indian public sphere in terms of establishing theoretical discourses. It makes an attempt to understand the timeline behind these discourses. The book concerns how one can do Indian political theory considering we no longer can use Western frameworks as it's incapable of capturing Indian reality. He has referred to political thinkers like, Aakash Singh Rathore, Gopal Guru, Sundar Sarukkai, Aditya Nigam and many others to set the theoretical tone of Indian political theory. For instance, along the lines of these thinkers, he argues that we need to understand the audience, the Indian audience horizontally as well, as so far, we have been burdened by the Western way of doing Indian Philosophy. We have been colonised in our approach to Indian Philosophy at times. While he re-visits the concept of ‘Samvada’ in this manner, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between this and Upanishad saying: वादे वादे जायते तत्त्वबोधः which implies that it's through diverse opinions that we get to know the truth. The book while, analysing Habermas’s concept of the public sphere, critically analyses key elements from the Indian domain as well whether it's the Indian debates on religion, caste, lived experience or the corporeal body. He writes, "The conceptualized Indian situation throws up two essential markers regarding the inadequacy of the Habermasian public sphere. At the social level, the hyper-presence of religion within Indian society needs a multi-pronged instrument of public debate rather than a unilateral notion of rationality to shoulder real and true public opinion."[3] At a time when globally, the phenomenology of the public sphere is altering, this text makes a few pertinent interventions while keeping in mind Indian lived realities. While trying to establish caste as a ‘unique public lived reality’, one can look at movies like Article 15, Mulk, Sairaat, Masaan and shows like Made in Heaven , Kota factory , and Class which capture the Indian essence and the complicated relationship which we share between religion, caste and Indian public sphere. Ali looks at religion as an important aspect of India’s social context. He establishes that the role of religion cannot be underestimated in evaluating the political and social contexts of Indian societies. This has been established by drawing from political thinkers like B.R. Ambedkar, and Valerian Rodrigues. In the Indian domain, while deconstructing caste and religion, Gopal Guru argues the same.[4] He writes caste has wings, it can fly, and that’s why it reaches a place before we reach it. These aspects have lived experience to their credit too. I could think of Feminist Philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir’s description of lived experience, in her book, The Ethics of Ambiguity . She takes the example of glue and paper. The way we put paper on glue and it becomes impossible to separate them, in a similar manner, it's impossible to detach 'lived experience', from human existence and our social reality. The book walks on a thin rope of some pertinent theoretical concerns, visible criticism of Habermas’s concept and an alternative that Ali is trying to provide for the same. [1] Dolan, M. Frederick. "Arendt on Philosophy and Politics". https://philarchive.org/archive/DOLAOP [2] Term used by Ali for the same. [3] Ali, India, Habermas And The Normative Structure of Public Sphere , page no. 111. [4] Guru, Gopal. "Dalits from Margin to Margin." India International Centre Quarterly , 27: 111-116.

IPN Blog IPN blo g is a platform for philosophers and others to write about philosophy in India and also to express philosophically informed opinions. Given the aim of the IPN blog is to enable a dialogue between philosophers and the public, both philosophers and the public can submit articles. See the submission guidelines . What Responsibility? Whose Responsibility? Read the article Bhaskarjit Neog Feb 7, 2024 Review of Venusa Tinyi's book by Aribam Uttam Sharma Read the article Aribam Uttam Sharma Dec 28, 2023 Traditional vs Colonial: Navigating Dichotomies of Philosophy in India Read the article Ankita Kushwaha and Megha Kapoor Dec 14, 2023 Review of Meera Baindur's novel by Manish Sharma Read the article Manish Sharma Nov 24, 2023 Review of Muzaffar Ali's book by Richa Shukla Read the article Richa Shukla Nov 13, 2023 Review of Muzaffar Ali's book by Satya Javvaji Read the article Satya Javvaji Oct 26, 2023 Philosophy Education and Job Competencies Read the article Nishant Kumar Nov 6, 2022 Translating philosophy: DR Nagaraj's Allamaprabhu Read the article N S Gundur Jul 3, 2022 A Word of Caution to 'the Uniformist' and 'the Reformist' Read the article Ariba Zaidi Feb 22, 2022 The Karnataka Hijab row is about Right to Education, not Freedom of Religion Read the article Sania Ismailee Feb 22, 2022 Back to Liberal Basics Read the article Danish Hamid Feb 22, 2022 Can women decide for themselves? Read the article Hina Mushtaq Feb 22, 2022

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