"Verum est, certum et verissimum, quod est, superius naturam habet inferioram et ascendens naturam descendentis."

Although my education involved a serious number of western philosophy related subjects and I studied the great classic thinkers and philosophers of the West, I did not have the chance to get involved to the level of my interest, so a started a Philosophy Ph.D. program at the Central European University (CEU) in 2001. I saw my study at CEU as my chance of making up for what I have put aside a number of years before. Although I was turned down by the department and thus could not earn a degree, the effort was well worthwhile and covered many gaps in my knowledge of western thought.

As a teacher of both western and Hindu-Buddhist philosophy myself, I am aware of the differences in the approach and study of eastern and western philosophy. As a consequence I think that my understanding of the Eastern approach to the philosophical question in general is not a disadvantage in the case of Western philosophy, but the other way round, it can be turned into a great advantage. Also my cultural anthropology studies have enabled me to see theoretical questions in a slightly different way particularly with focus on the human factor, similarly to hermeneutics.

In the field of philosophy my main interest slowly shifted towards the problems of ontology and epistemology in the course of years. I have studied Hindu ontology and epistemology in detail – with focus on the Samkhya philosophy of Isvarakrisna and the Vedanta philosophy of Sankara. I have also studied Buddhist ontology and epistemology in detail – with focus on the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nagarjuna and the Yogacara philosophy of Vasubandhu, Dignaga and Dharmakirti. I have also studied the classic western philosophers on both the rationalist and empiricist side and the Idealist philosophy of Kant, and Hegel of course. Later I studied some of the phenomenalism of Comte and Spencer (also on the side of his anthropology related social theory) and the emergent evolution theory of Bergson. Most recently however, I tried to pick up the line of the Philosophy of Organism by Alfred Whitehead.

One of my possible aims in the study of philosophy would be to create a comparative study of transcendentalism (metaphysical idealism) with regard to both Eastern and Western philosophy. This area has a lot of connections with Eastern thought as I see it. So my main interest is in Metaphysics and the Theory of Knowledge where I am more than happy to learn about contemporary metaphysics and contemporary epistemology.  

The main purpose of the Department of Philosophy at the Central European University is to train researchers and teachers for universities. The program makes use of the unique opportunity offered by CEU, a university chartered in the United States but located in Central Europe. This dual character of CEU creates an ideal institutional background for a philosophy program, which attempts to combine historical and analytical approaches to philosophy. The program's curriculum guarantees that students of the department can attain graduation only by gaining serious education in each of the major fields of contemporary philosophy. Thus the alumni of the department will have the rare ability to conduct dialogue across the dividing lines occasionally fragmenting the philosophical discipline...

Name of course

Teacher

Philosophy of Action

Philosophy of Science

Philosophy of Language

Philosophy of Mind

Philosophy and Religion

Contemporary Epistemology

Conceptual Knowledge

Ancient Philosophy of Mind

Plato's Timaeus