A Time of Novelty

Samuel Wright's A Time of Novelty: Logic, Emotion, and Intellectual Life in Early Modern India, 1500-1700 C.E. (Oxford UP, 2021) argues that a philosophical community emerges in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century India that crafts an intellectual life on the basis of intellectual and emotional responses to novelty in Sanskrit logic (nyāya-śāstra). As the book demonstrates, novelty was a primary concept used by Sanskrit logicians during this period to mark the boundaries of a philosophical community in both intellectual and emotional terms.  By retaining space for emotion when studying intellectual thought, this book recovers not only what it means to 'think' novelty but also what it means to 'feel' novelty. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com.