SOURCE: "Indian Philosophy, Western Philosophy, and the Problem of Intelligibility" in Transformative Philosophy: A Study of Sankara, Fichte, and Heidegger, University of Hawaii Press, 1983, pp. 27-67.

In the essay below, Taber argues that understanding Sankara's theory as transformative philosophy is an essential element in making his notions of the self and self-consciousness "intelligible" to western minds.

After more than a hundred years of research in Indian philosophy by Western philologists, the prevailing attitude toward Indian philosophy among Western philosophers—I mean especially Anglo-Saxon philosophers—is still one of disregard. The following remarks by A. J. Ayer, though perhaps intended as off-the-record, are typical: "[Eastern philosophies] have some psychological interest, but nothing more than that.… For the most part they are devices for reconciling people to a perfectly dreadful earthly life. I believe there were one or two seventh-century Indians who contributed a few ideas to mathematics. But that's...