 Hello, I'm JJ Joachim and welcome to this special episode of Philosophy and What Matters, where we discuss things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Now today, we will start a series of episodes that focus on philosophies in Southeast Asia and why they matter. For this episode, we will look at philosophy in Thailand. Now Thailand is the land of the free and it's the only country in Southeast Asia that has not been colonized by a Western power. It was established as the Kingdom of Siam in 1238 C.E. And it's known for its culture, tourist attractions and of course, it's excellent PCs. But what of its philosophy? What sorts of philosophical ideas are found in Thailand? To discuss philosophy in Thailand, we have my good friend, Sarajan Bladeram, Professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Center for Science and Technology in Society at Shulalongkorn University Bangkok, Thailand. Professor Saraj is also the President of the Philosophy and Religion Society of Thailand. So hello, Professor Saraj, welcome to Philosophy and What Matters. Hi JJ, nice to meet you again. Okay, before getting into our main topic, let's first discuss your philosophical background. How did you get started in philosophy? No. How did you get started in philosophy? Oh, it's a long story, but to make it short, I did not major in philosophy in college at the bachelor's level. I started out studying English language and literature. So you can hear me well, right? I started out majoring in English and then my minor was in philosophy. At first I intended, I thought that I would be teaching English, both language and literature to students. That was my first kind of aspiration, first. And then after I finished college, I went to the US to further my studies for the master's degree in English. And then there was kind of a, you can call a fortunate turn of events. My father contacted me and then he told me that there was an opening for a scholarship for a professor in philosophy. So my university at that time, they offered a scholarship for students to study abroad for the PhD. And the opening at that time was in philosophy, not in English. But my father thought that they were kind of the same or whatever. My father asked me whether I was interested in applying, sitting for an examination for this scholarship. And then at that time my father was supporting me for my study in the US. And I thought, oh, that would be a good chance to support myself. And I didn't have to bother my parents too much. So I said, okay. Because my minor was in philosophy anyway. And then luckily I got the scholarship. So I went back to Indiana University where I had studied earlier. And then I applied for a change of major. It was possible to do that in the US. It's still not possible to do that in Thailand. You have to resign and then reapply in order to change your major. But it was possible. So I transferred all my credits that I had studied in English to the philosophy program. So it was not like I was interested in philosophy so much from the beginning that I intended to be a professional philosophy from the beginning. No, but there was something that I did not intend and something for to reach us, so to speak, that happened. However, it does not mean that I did not have any interest at all in philosophy. As I told you, I minored in philosophy. But in high school I was also interested in philosophy together with literature. I read some of the books which were available in Thai language at that time. Not very many of them, but I got hold of some of them. And then I became interested also in philosophy. So the two subjects kind of intertwined and they still do. Even right now I am still teaching a course in philosophy and literature. Okay. So who influenced you to pursue a career in academic philosophy? Who influenced you? Oh, many. When I was a high school student, I read something about Plato and I think this was through to many people who became professors or became interested in philosophy afterwards. And I was hooked by the theory of forms. And I actually believe, believe it or not, at that time I still remember when I was in high school, a teenager, I actually believed that there was such a heaven. And the heaven was populated by the forms like form of white, form of black and so on. And I actually believe that in a, you know, kind of thought that the world that people live in and in which people perceive and do business was not the real world and the real world was in the heavens, you know, as Plato described. I started to change my mind about this and not very long after I started teaching the university after I finished my PhD. And I thought that, oh, this is just, you know, kind of a fairy tale or something, but... But I cannot deny that Plato was one of the most influential figures in my development. So was Emmanuel Kahn because I wrote my PhD dissertation about Kant's theory of imagination, which is a key concept in the critique of theories and in his ideology. Good. Okay, so now onto our main topic. So could you give us an overview, a brief overview of Thailand, its history, culture, religion and intellectual heritage? Yeah, this topic alone can take like, you know, a whole course, you know, a whole semester. But to make a long story short, the culture was, has been, I'm sorry, influenced quite a lot, very significantly by Indian culture. So the language, many of the words are borrowed from Pali and Sanskrit, which are the main languages in India. Pali is the main language of Buddhism and Sanskrit is the main cultural high society language, Brahmin language from India. So the culture was influenced quite a lot by Indian culture. So the art and especially Buddhism the intellectual tradition, the worldview and you know, many such things have been heavily influenced by India. And that is also influenced from China because Thai people according to the most recent kind of archeological and ethnographic research originated from the south of China. And they migrated downwards because during the, as you said, during the 13th century, the Mongols came to China and they defeated the Chinese dynasty of the Song and then they established their own dynasty, they ruled all of China. And due to that pressure, Thai people migrated southward from the south of China from the provinces of Yunnan. And there is a province, the province, which is beyond Hong Kong right now populated mostly by Thai people, but they migrated downwards. So they came to the area where they live today that we can see on the map. The area had already been populated by other people, especially the Khmer and the Mong. So they mixed together quite a lot and they were a lot of exchanges in many ways. And we borrowed many words from Khmer also because they had a very advanced civilization at that time. So, and then the Thai people managed to drive out the Khmer and the Mongs and they were successful at setting, establishing their own kingdoms and those kingdoms developed into the modern nation state of Siam that you see on the map. And the country's name was changed to Thailand during World War II, I think in 1942 because at that time, there was kind of a movement of ethno nationalism. The land that you see on the map belonged to the Thai people. So we should not call the country Siam because Siam refers to the land, not the people. As far as I was told in history lessons. So in order to emphasize the fact that this land belonged to our people, to us, the government decided to change the name of the country to Thailand. So it reflects kind of the nationalistic mindset that were prevalent at that time. So you have the beginning of World War II and at that time World War II was still being fought all over the world, as we know. And then after, oh, by the way, the country became an ally of the Japanese. I don't know if you had already known about this during World War II because Japan came and they would like to attack Singapore and Malaysia. Malaysia nowadays was called Malaya at that time via Thailand, so they would like to come from the north of Malaysia, Malaya down to Singapore. And they asked the Thai government for a permission for them to pass through the land in the south of the country. The government, the people themselves fought the Japanese for a few hours because they suddenly appeared on the beaches and they tried to invade the people. And then there was an negotiation between the Thai government and the Japanese government. And the Thai government just, they didn't want to fight. Even though the people wanted to fight, the government did not. So they signed a deal and they decided to become an ally of the Japanese and they had a big ceremony signing treaty of friendship and so on. However, in the end, at the end of World War II, after the Japanese surrendered, there was a change in government in Thailand. And the new government did not recognize the declaration of war that the previous government declared. So they declared, the new government said that the previous government did all this under duress, under, you know, they were forced to do so by the Japanese. So the treaty of friendship with Japan and the declaration of war against the allies, the US and the UK became null and void. And the US bought this, I mean, they accepted our, this government's version. The UK did not, but the UK had to listen to the US anyway. So we were not treated as a defeated country after World War II, because of this incident. And the Japanese did not like this quite a bit. So they thought that, you know, we were kind of, you know, being too diplomatic, you know, were very good at finding a way not to become a defeated nation. And after World War II, things became quite normal. So we developed and there were a lot of national development plans and then things, especially the economy, but, you know, quite advanced, you know, at least more advanced than at the beginning or at the end of World War II. So basically that is the story. And of Thailand, okay. But what is it like being a philosopher in Thailand? How many universities offer philosophy courses? How many professional philosophers do you have? Yeah, this is a very good question. As of now, philosophy is kind of being threatened and I could say that by many factors, one of which is the movement of neoliberalistic thinking that is sweeping all over the world. I'm sure in the Philippines also. The universities, instead of regarding themselves as, you know, the repository of thinking and knowledge and wisdom, they start to think of themselves as corporations and that's true, especially here. They start to think of themselves as, you know, enterprises, business enterprises. So they have to do their own accounting and, you know, expenses and income and they have to report how much they make or how much they lose in a year to the governing body of the university. We call them the university council. I think you might call them differently, the highest governing body of the university. And this has put pressure on philosophy because according to the administrators, philosophy does not make money. We have the same problem. And it seems to continue to spend money because, you know, the university has to pay for professors and so on. And this has resulted in, for July, for July for my university is still okay. I mean, we are still here. The department is still here. The programs are still here. But for other universities, especially the smaller ones in the countryside, they are having a hard time because philosophy departments have been kind of dissolved and lumped together with other departments, for example, literature and history and psychology and whatnot. So they were put together under the same department, the same organizational unit in order to save cost. And many programs have been kind of shut down. So the association, as you mentioned, I am president of the PARST, the main philosophy association in the country. We have listened to our colleagues talk about this a lot. And we are looking for ways to kind of promote philosophy among the public. So that could be a right spot if you think of it because due to the pressures that I have talked about, many teachers in philosophy, including many students in philosophy, you know, on the very encouraging side, they are trying to bring philosophy out of the academia, out of the university. And they try to start movements of discussion, debates, talks about philosophy in philosophy through the social media and through kind of the various venues of meetings, for example, in coffee shops and things like that. And they advertise their activities through like Facebook or Twitter. And many groups are opening up YouTube channels where they talk about the content. I mean, the content is quite good. In fact, philosophy. And this is mostly done by students. Okay, that's interesting. The professors kind of, you know, they are more quiet. Okay, but what sort of philosophy can be found in Thailand? What significant philosophical ideas have Thai philosophers offered? Yeah, most of us would like to compare Buddhism and other aspects in Western philosophy. So this is because Buddhism is professed by 95% of the people, 94 to 95% of the people. The rest are Christians, Muslims, and a very small number of Hindus and Sikhs. So if you talk about the most outstanding characteristic of, you know, if you talk about the most outstanding characteristic of, you know, it's a controversial matter whether there is such a thing as Thai philosophy. I wrote a paper about this, as you see on screen. The title is How is Thai Philosophy Possible? So I bypassed the question of whether there is Thai philosophy and I titled the paper how Thai philosophy is possible and I said, you know, put out the conditions of possibility for there being Thai philosophy and it's characterized. If you talk about the content by Buddhism, but not only Buddhism, otherwise Thai philosophy would be indistinct vegetable from Buddhist philosophy and thus it would lose its identity. So there has to be such a thing as Thai philosophy but it's kind of controversial or fluid as you said. So on the one hand, Thai philosophy could be regarded as whatever philosophy done by Thai people. And, you know, not only myself talking like that, but we can certainly talk about like Polish philosophy because, you know, there's certainly philosophy in Poland, for example, and of course there is Polish philosophy and you have to interpret what it really means by talking about Polish philosophy. We know about German philosophy, of course, it's a very large, very strong tradition in Western philosophy. So it's French philosophy. So perhaps in the same vein, we can talk about Thai philosophy. Only that the number, I'm sorry, only that the number of people working in philosophy in Thailand is very small, especially when compared with those in Germany. And this is something that I am thinking about because if you look at the number of population, Thailand has about 66 million. So I think it's a bit more than the population of France and a bit less than the population of Germany. However, there are numerous, you know, very many philosophical associations in Germany, a lot of them and much more people in philosophy in Germany and France in each country than people working in philosophy in Thailand. So the big question is how that is the case and in order to be able to answer this question, it will help us a lot when we think about how to develop the infrastructure of education and research. Not only in philosophy, but when we talk about the works of the university and research institutes as a whole and the academic life as part of culture. So what do the rest of the Thai people do? I mean, the members of the AISD of the Thai Philosophy Association is only 150 and the other main organization of philosophy in the country. There are so many, I don't know how many, but much more associations in Germany, each of which I think has more than 150 or 200. And a lot more people are working in philosophy, teaching, studying in Germany and France than in Thailand. So what are Thai people doing? The number of farmers are dwindling and it's not like in the past because we can use the technologies and so on. So this is a big problem that could be a research proposal. Yeah, but what are some unique features or salient features of Thai philosophy? Yeah, you can see on the slide that I put connection with Buddhism and as I have said, this is... Well, there is a kind of Buddhism in Thailand which is rather unique and people call it Thai Buddhism and it is very much connected with the peculiar aspects of Thai culture. In that sense, we might be able to call it a unique feature of Thai philosophy. So it's imbued with Buddhism, but it's not the same kind of Buddhism that you have in India or Sri Lanka or Burma. It's unique to Thailand. In one way, that is rather hard to say. It has more to do with how the thinking is done and how many of my colleagues are working. What I have in mind is that the last point on the screen, they tend to be parochial and this can be a negative aspect because philosophy is the same as other academic disciplines. We have to get in touch with one another and otherwise we may think that we are the best but some of my colleagues, not all, not all, I have to emphasize this, some of my colleagues don't know much English and their horizon is kind of limited because when they write any research work, 90%, 80%, at least, of their cited works in Thai language. As I said earlier, the whole scene of Thai philosophy or philosophy in Thailand is not so large to begin with. So the number of literature in philosophy in Thai language is very limited and these people, my colleagues, a portion of them do not cite English literature. So it's something that can be improved later on and this is tied up with the proposal to improve or to expand the infrastructure of research and teaching, academic atmosphere in general. So, yeah. Yeah, so where do you think is philosophy in Thailand heading in the near future? Yeah, very good point. And you can see on the screen here, more openness and I'm not saying this as a wish. I am reporting a changing fact of fact there has been more openness, especially among the students. In what way? The culture itself is opening up instead of confining oneself as my colleagues are doing, as I said earlier, the younger generations of philosophy students and students in general are trying to break through and this can be a literal meaning to break through the lid whatever that encloses the space of Thai culture that has been there for a long, long time. So they are trying to find a breakthrough and you can see this structure for breakthroughs in the various protest movements and I am sure that you have come across news reports of what is happening in Thailand when a lot of protests has been so far. Many years, but this year is special in that the students have joined the protests and we are not talking about only university students. We are talking about high school students or even middle school students. That's interesting. 14-year-olds come to the protests and they join the protestants and they are creating a lot of disruptions in their schools. They are, you know, talking out loud to their teachers arguing with their teachers. This is a no-no has been when I was young. It's unthinkable to argue with your teacher. Whatever the teacher tells you, you have to accept it. But not so for this generation of students so it can be a good sign for including, you know, for philosophy and other subjects as a whole. And the future is also very much connected to globalization of higher education. What I mean is that well for philosophy, it means that more, or I think there should be more. I mean, I'm putting my wish into what I am reporting. There should be more professors and students presenting their findings, their research works in English to international audience. And there are two factors, one of which is the pressure from the administration as I have said. And the other direction is from the internal logic of academic work in the country. What I mean is that in order to excel, in order to become excellent at what you are doing, you cannot just limit yourself to Thai language, writing and reading and sighting. You have to open yourself. And more people realize that and then they try to improve themselves. So they try to become more globalized. So influence of neoliberalism. And we have talked about philosophy being squeezed out. There is a profound demographic change. I don't know about the Philippines, but in Thailand, more, no fewer, fewer children are being born. So as a result, because of the demographic change, the shape of the population is like this, where people at my generation, 40 and 50 years old, represent the largest percentage of population. And then population of Thailand from zero to 10 years old, like 70% of people 50 or 60 years old. So a lot of gap between the younger generations and much fewer of them when compared to people of my age. So as a result, fewer students apply to the primary schools and the secondary schools. And many schools have found a hard time looking for students and they have to close. And this has already affected the university. So in the past, when I was a student, there were more students than seeds, available seeds in the university in the country. But right now there are more seeds than students. Yes, yes, yes. So students can choose. And they're supposed to go to more prestigious schools. So my university, as of now, is still doing quite okay. But the smaller ones in the countryside are struggling. Used to accept 100 students in their program. But right now they have to do with like 15 or 20 students only. But the program is designed to accommodate 100 students each year. So you can see the picture. And so as a result of this, there has been a movement, conscious movement, and I think including kind of spontaneous movement of bringing, taking philosophy out of the academy, as I have said. So in the future, we can see something like how should I put it, less professional philosophy. Because when you talk about the professional philosophy, you talk about philosophers who are already professors, who receive their salary and whose working life consists in teaching and doing research. But it is possible. And the movement is still on right now. And I don't know about quality control or whatever. People in general are really interested in philosophy. I mean the general public. They write to me to my Facebook inbox channel. Asking all sorts of questions in philosophy, basic questions. But they have not been trained in philosophy. They want to know about philosophy and they have been reading a lot of books and they ask me what books should I read and so on. So this is part of the future of philosophy in Thailand. Less professional, more philosophy on social media including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. More spontaneous groupings. Like, you know, if I want to start a group, I can just open up a page on Facebook and attract members. So things like this are growing in my country. And not only in philosophy but in other history and literature and all kinds of things. And there are more people who are interested in philosophy. But as for the PhD program, I think they are still there. I don't think the administrator at my university are going to close down the PhD program in philosophy here at July. It won't be an embarrassment to the outside world. They won't do that for their time being. So the formal part, the professional part, will still be around for a foreseeable amount of time. But what we are experiencing is this kind of flowering, spontaneous movement of philosophical activities, you know, talking, arguing, discussing outside of the academy. Okay, speaking of your professional life, what's your advice for those who want to get into professional philosophy, especially people there in Thailand? Yeah, and I have thought about this and you can see here quite a lot. This is mostly for students, like graduate students in philosophy, but I think it can be applied to students in other fields also, including members of the public. But the number one is be realistic. I mean, having said all this, you can see the picture. If you want a job as a philosophy professor in Thailand, I have to be realistic and I have to tell you that things do not look good at the moment. Unless you want to be your own YouTuber and open up your YouTube channel in philosophy, podcast channel, then it's up to you when you are responsible for yourself. But if you want to work in a university, it's still possible, it's still possible. I have to emphasize that it's not that everything is closed up, but it's not as easy as perhaps 20 or 30 years ago. You have to be really good. If you are good enough, then you can get a job. No problem about that. So if you have to search yourself and after searching, if you find out that you are born, I mean some people do like myself. If you search yourself and you find out that I know, I know I am born to be a professor. So if you are that confident, then go for it. Because studying for the PhD and looking for a job and what not takes time and effort. A lot of patience. So you have to be realistic about that. But as I said, it's not that everything is open. There are openings, but they are only for those who are really, really determined. So pick one area where you can excel. And this is very important. This is very important. I have told you that my dissertation was on Kant's epistemology, a very small aspect in a very few pages of the critique of pure reason. Just a small number of pages. And then I wrote 270 pages, augmenting on like three or four pages in the critique of pure reason. Very, very kind of narrow. My point is this. As for myself, when I finished my PhD and started working in Thailand, at that time there was no internet. It was in the early years of the 1990s. The internet was just being started. And I could not get the books and articles that I needed in order to continue my research on Kant's epistemology. So I was at a loss. I did not want to abandon my research. But there were a lot of precious duties, assignments from my senior professors. They asked me to teach those and this and that. So I had to change my area of research. Otherwise it was not possible at that time to continue to write papers on Kant's epistemology. And I was lucky in a way in that I came to know colleagues in other areas. A colleague in the faculty of medicine came to me and we kind of got along with each other. And he invited me to join his research circle in bio and medical ethics. And that is my first foray into applied fields of philosophy. So from then on it was kind of no looking back. I still regard myself as a Kant scholar. I still want to do that. But from that moment on, a few years after I started teaching, I almost all everything that I wrote and did research was on applied areas in philosophy, medical ethics, bio ethics, and then information ethics. So yeah, and then my background in Kant's epistemology and in ethical theories in Kant and in ancient Greeks helped a lot in helping my colleagues in other fields. So that is one area that philosophers can do to contribute to kind of more interdisciplinary collaboration with colleagues in other areas. So my advice would be that if you are a graduate student in philosophy, it would not hurt if you come and attend meetings, conferences in other fields such as sociology, or even medicine when they talk about those things that are not technical, like, you know, social and ethical implications of whatever they do. You can, you know, as philosophers, you have the necessary vocabulary anyway. So that is my suggestion. So go to conferences, make yourself known. That's important. To make yourself known is very important because you can like, you know, when you apply for a job, oh, I have heard of this name before. I have come across one of his papers here and there. It's good. So submit papers to journals, of course, you know, and write book proposals, you have to aim high. It's not an easy task writing a book, but philosophers still, many of them anyway, they still prefer books, novels and journals, articles in journals. For them, you can spend like one week or two weeks. I mean, some philosophers, some more traditional people, they think like that. It's not a big deal, but if you have a book, you have a whole volume, a monograph, a monograph in a single author book, it's a big deal and you can count quite a bit. So is the career worth it? Is the career philosophy worth it? Is the career in academic philosophy worth it? I'm sorry. Is the career in academic philosophy worth it? Dr. It's the career, your professional career. Oh, yeah. Is the career philosophy worth it? Yes, of course, yes, yes, yes. Otherwise, you know, I am coming to retirement. I mean, I'm coming to the period of time in my life when I have to consider my retirement, because everybody at Chulalongkorn has to retire at 60, and I am 58. So I have two more years left working here. And I don't know what I will do. I know that I will have to do something because I still can. But I don't know what because the university, the dean has told me clearly that he has no money to hire me after I am 60 years or in two years time. Because according to the rules of my university, before I'm 60, the university gets money from the government. But after I am 60, the government won't give money to the university to hire me. And if the university wants to hire me further, they have to find their own money. And the dean said to me, he doesn't have money. So it's good in a way. It can be heartbreaking if they don't see my significance. But I don't think of it that way. I think that it provides me with an opportunity, an open space where I can decide for myself what to do after I am 60. So yes, it's worth it. It's very satisfying. You have the freedom as university professor to do whatever you want to do. I mean, if you look at other careers, like working in the business or industry, you don't have the freedom. You don't have the time, the block of time for three or four, two or three months. During the summer where you don't have to teach, you have the block of time needed to write a book, write a proposal or finish the book, or do whatever that you would like to do. So in that case, it's very satisfying. So what I said there is that only if you are fully committed because if you don't like to have free time and thinking about what to write or what to read, that's not good enough. This is not the life for you. No. Okay, so I'll just entertain some questions from our audience. Okay, so one question. In the Philippines, philosophy of the human person is taught in values, education, subjects in elementary and high school. Does the Thai government give opportunities like this for philosophers? Unfortunately, no. There is no philosophy teaching at the high school level. And that is a big problem because it has been recognized in many places by many, many circles that philosophy, education at the high school level. And even at the primary school level can be very good for the students. It is very good when you want to develop critical thinking skills in the students. And most importantly, philosophy, and I love to talk about this, philosophy talks about non-existent things. And I can think of no other academic disciplines where they love to talk about non-existent things. You talk about this to a historian. He says nonsense. History must be about the truth, the fact what has already happened. No, no. We would like to talk about counterfactuals. What could have happened but has not. It is fascinating to give students, especially high school and primary school students, the opportunity to think about what could have happened. What could have happened if such and such speaker in history did not do what they did but what if they had done something else? What would have happened if? The audience does not like to talk about that. They say nonsense, waste of time, but no, it's not a waste of time. It's very useful. Can exercise the imagination and everything. This is one thing that philosophy can help a lot in high school. Critical thinking, of course, you don't accept anything unless you have a different reason. Here's another question. If someone who wanted to read or undertake thigh philosophy, what are the books you can recommend for us to read? This is a difficult question. Thai people in general, I have to admit this, are not that good in English. It's due to several factors. One of which is what you have already mentioned. People as a nation have not had much exposure to foreigners. It's kind of a quirk in history that happened to us. Only those who have the job of dealing with foreigners, like those working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, diplomats, or those who work in important exports or who work with tourists, have any exposure to foreigners. Thai people in general, most of them, they don't need to interact with foreigners or to talk in English or to write or read anything in English in order to get ahead in their career. That is why English is not prevalent. The reason I'm saying this is that if you from outside of Thailand want to study Thai philosophy, there are some literature in English, mostly done by sociologists and anthropologists. They study Thai culture and historians, they write quite a bit about Thai history. But that is not the same as philosophy. You can go to the literature in Buddhist philosophy, but that is more general Buddhist philosophy. Not particularly the Thai version of philosophy, of Buddhist philosophy. There are a few scholars, international scholars, for example, Donald Swarer at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. He's a scholar of Thai Buddhism and not many in the world who are like him. So if you want to start out, you can go to Swarer's words, Donald Swarer's. You can search using keywords Thai Buddhism. And then I think the bibliography, you can find Donald Swarer's words. So that can be a starting point. But if you want to get serious into studying Thai culture or Thai philosophy, you have to start to study Thai language. Before you get into the philosophy. Okay, here's the last question. So from our friend, Joseph Martin Jose, don't you think that looking for a unique flavor of a philosophy like the fineness or the Filipino-ness of a philosophy is detrimental to the activity of philosophizing itself? Do you see any problems with such focus? Is it not more fruitful for philosophers in philosophy instead? Yeah, yeah, it's a very good question. And this is the question I grappled with in my paper. The paper was more than 20 years old. The paper on how is Thai philosophy possible. I think you can search for it on Google. Just type the title of the paper, how is Thai philosophy possible? And I discussed this very problem, and this pulled into opposite directions between philosophy in Thailand on the one hand and Thai philosophy on the other hand. Philosophy in Thailand means philosophy done in Thailand, in Thai universities, Thai people. And the content doesn't have to be uniquely Thai, right? So you can study Kant or Hegel or Quine or Davidson in Thai universities. And in fact, these people are being studied in Thai universities. So if you would like to know about the level of achievements of Thai university professors who study the works of Donald Davidson, for example. Yes, they are there. And then some of my colleagues at my department in analytic philosophy is doing works on philosophy of language. So she has done works on Davidson, Quine, and Quine. But she is Thai, so that's philosophy in Thailand. Thai philosophy is something unique that you ask about where the content cannot be found anywhere else. In the paper, I argued that the one collapsed into the other. By that, I mean Thai philosophy kind of collapses into philosophy in Thailand. You cannot find, because this is the matter of principle, of logical principle, because philosophy, after all, searches for the truth the same way as mathematics, search for mathematical truth. So philosophy searches for philosophical truth, whatever it is just supposing there is such a thing. So the search for philosophical truth cannot be limited to any particular culture. Otherwise, we have different kinds of truth, which is self-defeating, self-contradictory. So in the end, it collapses. But having said that, it does not mean that the unique characteristics are not very important. It can be important, especially if you want to know the sociological condition. We have spent most of the time we have discussed here in this episode. We have been talking about the sociological condition of philosophy in Thailand. Yes, it's a viable field of study, but it's not the same as the content, the very content, the very search for answers to the universal questions in philosophy, like what is truth or what is reality. Okay, so on that note, thanks again, Professor Sorej for sharing your time with us. For you guys, join me again for another episode of philosophy and what matters, where we discuss things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Cheers.