Department of Philosophy

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The Department of Philosophy, University of North Bengal has been awarded Special Assistance by UGC to carry on research on ‘The Problem of Meaning in Classical Indian Philosophy and Contemporary Western Philosophy’ including translation of Sanskrit texts into regional language.
Department of Philosophy, North Bengal University, Siliguri, is one of the very accomplished centers of learning and research in Philosophy. Siliguri is surrounded by four countries and the nearest Bagdogra airport is five KM, and the New Jalpaiguri railway station is 18 KM away from University campus. We pride ourselves in being a department where equal emphasis is placed on quality research as well as on development and training of students through teaching/learning and extensive teacher-student interaction.

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Author: search.filters.author.Thoibisana, AkoijamStart date: 2022

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    The Mapping of Posthumanism: A Philosophical Study
    (University of North Bengal, 2024-03) Thoibisana, Akoijam
    Posthumanism designates a series of reactions to the idea of the study of man in terms of humanism. The studies of posthumanism, like any other studies with the same prefix ‘post’ namely postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, etc. include in itself the studies of humanism, modernism, structuralism, colonialism, and the like. The term ‘post’ has also been often used in two senses, one in terms of time frame, that is historically, and the other, as a style of thought. Posthumanism also includes within itself the studies of man’s relation to machines or technology on the one hand, and animals or non-human on the other hand. Lyotard for example used the term ‘inhuman’ in his essay Postmodern Fable to discuss the nature of posthumanism. Posthumanism has also been approached from many different aspects from literature to art to science- fiction. The paper, however, confines its discussion on the philosophical discussion of the same. Accordingly, the paper is divided into three sections. First, give a brief overview of the philosophy of (hu)man, the question of Being, and humanism. Second, is an attempt to present the postmodernist (or rather the poststructuralism) account of understanding man or rather the end of man. The crux of the paper is the mapping of the philosophy of posthumanism through the lens of deconstructing humanism. This will be explicitly discussed in the third section of the paper. Keywords:
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    ItemOpen Access
    Re-reading descartes’ cogito: a study
    (University of North Bengal, 2022-03) Thoibisana, Akoijam
    The issues and problems surrounding the Cogito have fascinated humans for many centuries. It has influenced all kinds of modern philosophy, as well as literature, art, social science, and religion. It was introduced first by Descartes in his Discourse on Method which was published in French as Je pense, donc je suis (1637) and later appeared in Latin as Cogito, Ergo Sum in his Principles of Philosophy. (1644) Husserl took up Descartes‘ Cogito to give the form of transcendental; Heidegger directly assaulted it as an isolated subject that even fail to address the metaphysical question of subject itself; Sartre‘s existential philosophy however was founded on a different version of Cogito whose certainty was never clear and distinct; Lacan‘s, on the other hand, gave an obsessional psychoanalytical reading of modern subject in terms of the truth of Descartes‘ Cogito. There is also the (in)famous debate between Foucault and Derrida on the idea of Cogito and Madness, at the end of the twentieth century, that drifted apart the two thinkers. The Cogito has also been a topic of interest among other thinkers like Ryle, Wittgenstein, Russell, Willaims, and many more. The paper seeks to bring out the most complicated debates of Descartes‘ Cogito, which otherwise is also taken to be very simple, clear, and distinct. It is divided into three sections. First, is the preamble to the ‗Cogito‘ in terms of ‗a thinking thing‘. Second, seeks to re-read Descartes‘ Cogito as opening the era of the modern subject, or the Cartesian subject. Third, is an attempt to give some insight on the contemporary debate centering around the same. The crux of the paper is to give an appraisal of the various readings of Descartes‘ Cogito.