Dear Jeyamohan,
I appreciate that you are organizing classes on Western philosophy. Until now, I had assumed that your programs focused only on Indian philosophy, yoga, and related subjects. While those traditions are closely connected with religion and ritual, Western philosophy largely developed outside a religious framework. In many of its major streams, it is skeptical of religion and often explicitly atheistic.
I believe that an engagement with Western philosophy is important for young people today. It can help them move beyond faith-based and emotionally driven ways of thinking and enter the intellectual world of modernity, where reason, inquiry, and critical thought play a central role.
S. Stephen George
