Milind Wakankar

Courses taught: Interdisciplinary Phd seminars on Nietzsche, Freud and Hegel; Hegel repeated twice with a gap of ten years; Nietzsche twice. Undergrad: Indian philosophy; World History (Antiquity); Intro to Lit.

Areas of Interest:
The Philosophy of Religion;

History and Sociology of the State over Three Millennia (Special Focus on Max Weber's Entire Corpus); Political Philosophy (with a focus on Hegel, Schmitt, Rosenzweig); Jewish history, religion and politics; Phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger, Scheler, Henry);

History of Aesthetics between German Idealism and German Romanticism; German Philosophy circa 1800 (Hoelderlin, Schelling, Hegel); German Romanticism; Kant's Three Critiques;

Historical Sociology of Power;

Buddhism (Yogacara; Vasubandhu, Dignaga, Dharmakirti, Sthirmati); studies in ancient Hindu ritual (via Kumarila, 'Tantravarttika'; Mandana Misra and Vacaspati Misra);

Hindu Philosophical Schools: Vaisesika; Sankhya (with a special interest in the history of the bhashyas on the Sankhyakarika); Vijnanabhiksu; Vacaspati Misra; Udayana-acarya's 'isvar-kalpana'; Yoga (Yoga-sutra with bhasyas by Vyasa, Vacaspati, Bhoja and Vijnanabhiksu)

Bhasyakaras on the Brahmasutra (Sankara, Ramanuja, Nimbarka, Madhava, Vallabha);

Mimansa (especially Kumarila Bhatta and his debate with Dharmakirti);

the collected writings of the German Indologist Erich Frauwallner;

KC Bhattacharya;

Kashmir Saivism (Utpaldeva, Abhinava) and Tantra (Mallinivijayotara Tantra, Abhinava's Tantraloka);

Modern Hindi and Marathi social, political and literary debates; The History of Bhakti (Hindi and Marathi over seven hundred years with interest in Dnyandeva, Tukaram, Namdeva and Eknath; Kabir over the Millennium.

Madhusudan Saraswati;

Venkatanatha (Vedanta Desika);

Use of Nyaya vocabulary in Ramanuja-acarya's Sarirabhasya;

Studies in Nyaya and Navya-Nyaya.

Between F. Stcherbatsky and Gopinath Kaviraj: a study of two careers

The Modern European Lyric (German and French); Modern Hindi and Marathi Lyric (focus on Indira Sant; Shamsher; Nirala) ;

Greek Philosophy between Parmenides and Aristotle; Hellenic Philosophy; the Stoics; the NeoPlatonists; Augustine; Christian Theology and Mystical Traditions (Eckhart); History of Russia; History of China; Studies in African History;

World History as a History of Capitalism (Marx; Marathi Marxism; Japanese Marxism; Karatani; Wallerstein; Mann); Ancient Rome/India/China.

Corpuses to be read in their ENTIRETY (collected works):

Plato, Aristotle, Marx, Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Weber; Durkheim, Mauss, Heidegger, Henry, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze; Madhusudan S; Sankaracarya; Ramanuja; Vedanta Desika; Vasubandhu; Dharmakirti; Freud;
Shakespeare; Blake; George Eliot; Wordsworth, Coleridge; Hoelderlin, Trakl; Kafka; Hazari Prasad Dwivedi; Ramchandra Shukla; Shamsher; Mardhekar; Iravati Karve; Ghurye; Brahmibhoot Kevalananda Saraswati; Indira Sant; Dhasal; Phule; Tarkateerth LS Joshi.

The History of Vedic Thought (Tarkateerth L S Joshi)

Early Upanisads

History, Time and Consciousness in the Puranas (special focus on the Vishnu and Bhagawat P);

Students have written or are writing theses on: Three Thousand Years of the Chinese Construct of the Rural; Aristotle; Husserl and Scheler; Augustine; Hegel; Assamese Bhakti; Kabir and the Figure of Work; Whitehead; Ekhart; Dignaga-Dharmakirti; Utpaldeva-Abhinava.