Karl-Stéphan Bouthillette, "Dialogue and Doxography in Indian Philosophy" (Routledge, 2020)
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What is the focus of Karl‑Stéphan Bouthillette’s new book on Indian philosophical doxography?
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Welcome back to New Books in Hindu Studies. I'm your host, Dr. Raj Balkharan, and this morning uh I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Carl Stefan Boutiet from Ghent University on a uh very new, very recent publication, Hot Off the Presses. Dialogue and Doxography in Indian philosophy. Hello, Carl, and welcome to the program. Hi, thank you for inviting me. Oh, my pleasure. So why don't you tell us um a little bit about maybe the the the the publication series that this is part of? I think that would be quite relevant.
Yeah, well uh the book is published uh at Routledge in the series Dialogues in South Asian traditions, religion, philosophy. Literature and history, uh and Actually I feel that the topic of the book is quite appropriate for the series and that was also the idea of the uh one of the series um director. I'm pretty happy about it, uh 'cause it's I feel it's a series that has published quite a number of great titles, so I'm very um uh humbled um to be part of it.
Actually I felt sort of the same way. I had the good fortune of publishing with um Rutledge um both books now. The other one's out this week. Maybe at some point I'll do a flip interview on that one. But it's it is humbling. It's it's it's quite uh It's um quite a respected publisher. And so um your book is part of a series on dialogue. Um You know, before we even get into the book, you know, there may be um um readers, listeners out there who, however educated, may be slightly stumped by the word doxography and they may need to go look up doxography. So how about you tell us what doctorography is and perhaps how it applies to to your research and and and and how it informs your research and perhaps even how how your research informs the use of that term.
Yeah, well that's a good idea. Uh to begin with. That obviously doxography is not uh a common word, we're more more used to the term perhaps biography, right? Perhaps we can relate to the the two terms, like a biography is normally somehow of a a retelling of a bios, right? The telling of a life life story, um Whereas the doctography is Um let's say a text or uh content of a text which focuses on doxa, so on opinion, um views, especially in the Indian context, it's uh what we call doxographies are somehow compilations of views or Uh parts of text or full text again that uh discussed uh what the Sanskrit term uh dashana mainly covers, right? So I mean there are other terms with the similar semantic, but uh often actually doxographies in the Indian context have darshana.
in the title um Now what exactly is uh doxography? That's part of the job here in the book to elucidate that. Um the term itself doxography was coined um By uh Diels, Alexander uh Hermann Alexander Diels, if I remember properly.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the focus of Karl‑Stéphan Bouthillette’s new book on Indian philosophical doxography?
0:00–7:45
2
How does Bouthillette define “doxography” and why is the term important for his research?
7:45–16:25
3
Why does Bouthillette argue that doxographies function as spiritual exercises rather than mere historiography?
16:25–26:12
4
How does the whiskey‑tasting story illustrate the marketing strategies embedded in doxographical texts?
26:12–34:32
5
What are the three primary texts (Bhāviveka, Haribhadra, Śaṅkara) examined and how are they organized within the book?
34:32–42:38
6
In what way does Bouthillette view the structure of doxographies as a pedagogical tool for “jnana yoga”?
42:38–52:32
7
How does the concept of “lists of lists” shape Bouthillette’s approach to ritual, knowledge, and future research?
52:32–57:34
8
What are the next steps for Bouthillette’s research and how can listeners follow his work on Instagram?
57:34–58:32
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