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Signe Cohen, The Classical Upaniṣads: A Guide (Guides to Sacred Texts), Oxford University Press, 2024, 280pp., $24.95 (pbk), ISBN 9780197654163.
Reviewed by Parimal G. Patil, Harvard University
Not every book of interest to philosophers is itself a work of philosophy; nor does every such book have to be about a work of philosophy. Signe Cohen’s The Classical Upaniṣads: A Guide is such a book. It is an excellent historical study of the thirteen classical Upaniṣads, a genre of text that the Sanskrit tradition classifies as scripture (śruti) and not as philosophy. Nevertheless, the Upaniṣads were of great interest to Sanskrit philosophers and theologians, modern Indian intellectuals, and European philosophers such as Hegel, Schelling, and Schopenhauer. As Cohen’s study makes clear, the Upaniṣads prefigure worldviews, concepts, and lines of arguments that were developed and debated by Sanskrit philosophers for centuries and, in some cases, are taken to be authoritative by contemporary Sanskrit philosophers and…
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