2. Is Yoga a Philosophy?
Yoga Studies in Five Minutes - Theodora Wildcroft
Karen O'Brien Kop [+]
King's College London
Karen O’Brien-Kop is Lecturer in Asian Religions at King’s College London and acquired
her PhD from SOAS University of London. She researches philosophy of mind, asceticism, and Sanskrit texts in Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Her books include: Rethinking ‘Classical Yoga’ and Buddhism: Meditation, Metaphors and Materiality (2022, Bloomsbury) and The Philosophy of the Yogasutra (2023, Bloomsbury) and the co-edited volume The Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies (2021, Routledge).
Description
We do not have to choose between the categories of philosophy and religion; yoga can simply belong to both. Specifically, yoga is found in the first systematised philosophy in South Asia, which was established between circa 2nd-century BCE and 2nd-century CE through formal treatises called śāstras and their concise distillations, sūtras.