The Dvaita Philosophy Resource Centre (DPRC), Manipal University, will celebrate the World Philosophy Day 2017 with a special seminar at the Department of European Studies at 4 p.m. on Thursday.
A release issued by DPRC here on Wednesday said that Nirmalya Guha, scholar, will speak on “The intellectual duties of the King: An Indian perspective”. Dr. Guha is an Associate Professor at Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities and a scholar in both Indian and Western Philosophy.
Srinivasa Kumar N. Acharya, Assistant Professor and DPRC coordinator, said that the Shantiparva of the Mahabharata is loaded with debates and discussions on politics, economics, warfare, sociology, culture, ethics. The centre, which is working on the Computational Analysis Mahabharata Research Project, has been organising the Mahabharata lecture series, which began with an inaugural lecture by scholar Bannanje Govindacharya, recently.
The Mahabharata, especially the Shantiparva, offers a unique perspective on how the king must prepare himself intellectually. The procedure assumes that the king is a fallible and (both physically and intellectually) a vulnerable human being. Within the limits of vulnerability, the king must always keep heightening his intellectual pedestal by reasoning. The reasoning method is based on a comparative evaluation of duties. These ideas of the Mahabharata deeply influenced the political philosophers of ancient India. The lecture will briefly review the evolution of the royal wisdom, the release said.
