Anukul Chandra Mukerji

Anukul Chandra Mukerji (1888–1968) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Allahabad. His career reflects a preoccupation with the history of philosophy, and his systematic work is always situated both in the Western and Indian philosophical traditions. In the West his work focuses on the philosophy of Kant and Hegel. Mukerji approached Indian idealism through Advaita Vedānta. Mukerji, a specialist in the philosophy of mind and psychology, was a committed naturalist, in that he saw the deliverances of empirical psychology as foundational to an understanding of the mind. He paid close attention especially to the psychologists William James, John B. Watson, and James Ward. Mukerji wrote two substantial monographs: Self, Thought and Reality (1933) and The Nature of Self (1938). In each, Mukerji emphasizes the rational intelligibility of the world and the foundation role that consciousness and self-knowledge play in the edifice of knowledge more generally.