Philosophy and Philosophers English 2010

The lofty level at which Professor R. K. Das Gupta's scholarship rests, waits for no conventional introduction. At once versatile and highly specialized, he has been regarded as the teacher of teachers for several generations. What prompted us to venture into garnering a few gems from the vast treasure house of his writings may be traced to a particular trait in them which seemed to offer a strikingly new approach to study philosophers and their works. It marks a rare attempt to see philosophical legacy in the light of literary values with a humanistic appeal. Professor Das Gupta's works are numerous and so wide-ranging that one can put them into many different baskets on the thematic link one likes to find in each. Quite a good number of these are now available in print but many more, perhaps running into scores and scores, have yet to reach the reading public. The present collection contains just a few chosen on the thematic preference for that special literary approach to philosophical works, which is, remarkably, Professor Das Gupta's very own. Even these selected few include certain papers which would have remained inaccessible, if not untraceable, unless they were made available in a handy collection like the present one.