Monday, September 10, 2012

Another Amazon review on a Mīmāṃsā book

I wrote a nex Amazon review on a Mīmāṃsā book, namely Lars Göhler's Reflexion und Ritual in der Pūrvamīmāṃsā.
Why?
  1. 1.  Because I would like to try to exploit all means, even more widely accessible ones, to initiate discussions on Indian philosophy.
  2. 2. Because I would like to help readers in getting a first impression of whethere they might be interested in buying/reading the book.

As for the content of my reviews, I always try to:
  1. 1. be as short as possible (after all, it is not a real review and no one cares about my detailed opinion),
  2. 2. describe the target readership (so that one immediately knows whether she is interested in the book or not)
  3. 3. add a link for further discussions.
During the last IIGRS conference, I could discuss this project with some colleagues. Some of their objections were:
  1. 1. Why should you care, since you are surely not going to gain any prestige out of it?
  2. 2. Are not you afraid of getting new enemies?
Objection no. 1 is sound and I would sound naïve in trying to say that "the future of the discipline is important for me". Let me then just say that the healthier Indology is, the more likely it is for all of us not to die of starvation.
As for objection no. 2, one can safely write anonymous reviews.

Can you think of other reasons for writing or not writing short reviews on Amazon, Philpapers and so on?

On my project of using Amazon and similar websites, see this post and this one.

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