ABSTRACT
Bimal Krishna Matilal was born in India in 1935, a dozen years before India gained its independence. By the time he passed away in 1991, he had a named chair at Oxford University. For those who work in Indian philosophy he is a figure that looms large, but for those working in other areas of philosophy he’s largely unknown. Matilal argues against cultural relativism, which he characterizes essentially as the view that there are no cross-cultural moral standards. Matilal’s insights about culture draw on an important concept from classical Indian philosophy, the Buddhist notion of emptiness. Matilal draws on this idea in claiming that it is impossible for any culture to be completely isolated and self-reliant. Matilal’s pluralism appears in an incipient form in the Indian notion of dharma. The term dharma is one of the most important in Indian philosophy; it is also one of the most complex, having many, many meanings.
