- Aujas Sohal
Sophia, the philosophy club of Manipal University Jaipur had organized the first lecture of the
academic year 2017-18 on the topic “Introduction to Philosophy and Metaphysics”, attended by the members who were curious as to
what philosophy was actually about. The speaker for the lecture was Dr. P.K.
Sinha, Professor of Philosophy, who had come for this guest lecture from
Ranchi.
Dr. Anthony sir, Professor of Philosophy and HOD of
Dept. of Arts, welcomed our guest lecturer and presented him a bouquet & gift. He then welcomed everyone with his motto, ‘The
shortest distance between two hearts passes through the stars’ making us all
feel comfortable.
The lecture started with a simple question, ‘What is
philosophy?’ love for wisdom, theory of knowledge and gaining absolute
knowledge. He then explained us the concept of knowledge as a whole and the
true meaning of absolute knowledge, which we could only come to understand by
realization and developing our faith. He then introduced us to the concepts of
Indian philosophy, which could further be divided into two parts Astik (Belief
in Vedas) and Nastik (Non – Belief in Vedas). The three schools of Indian
philosophy, Charvak, Buddhist and Jain were Nastiks and the rest 6 (Nyaya,
Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa and Vedanta) were Astiks. There are various ways to gain wisdom; through perception,
words, inference and many more. All the schools of Indian philosophy are
said to follow various kinds, only Charvak School of philosophy is said to believe that the only valid source of knowledge is
perception. Quoting the honored lecturer himself, “Wisdom is
absolute. Trying to understand the smallest things will ultimately help us in
understanding the bigger things in life.”
Dr. P.K. Sinha then introduced to us the three
branches of philosophy: Epistemology
(The theory
of knowledge), Metaphysics (The
study of elements) and Ethics (How to live in the human society). He then
explained to us that all three parts of philosophy correlated to one another,
giving us the example that metaphysics of various schools was based upon the
knowledge gained from epistemology of the same school. He then elaborated on
the topic Metaphysics. Element is the smallest part from which everything else
is created. Indian Philosophy believes in 5
elements, Sky, Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Every school of Indian philosophy
believes in all 5 elements, except Charvak, as they only believe in gaining
knowledge through perception because sky
cannot be perceived. He further
continued with the relation between the five elements, their five
qualities and our five sense organs. Then the questions that rose were, ‘What
is the nature of elements?’ and ‘How many number of elements there actually
are?’ He answered the
questions in order by introducing the notion that
we consider elements to be conscious, non – conscious, both
or neither. That gives rise to different theories such as Theory of
Materialism, Theory of Monolism, Theory
of Duality and Theory of Pluralism.The
elements are believed to be different in number, as each person has their own
concept, some say that there exists only one element, others say that it is 2
as a single element cannot make up everything and some say infinite just as the
number of things in the universe. He concluded this topic with the line that,
‘Without metaphysics, philosophy as a whole becomes boneless and does not
possess any structure’
Wisdom is non material, and is a truth which does not
change unlike knowledge which changes with every new discovery that is made.
True wisdom can be only be gained
through self realization; using
the right faith, right knowledge and right determination.
After the lecture was concluded, many curious students
led the interactive Q&A session. After which members of the Sophia Club
gave a vote of thanks for his time and the knowledge he imparted to us.
All the new comers were now intrigued as they started to understand the
concept of philosophy and their minds more
curious as to what lay ahead.
