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In this lecture, Soraj Hongladarom will present a narrative of the reception of Western philosophical ideas into Thailand (formerly Siam) from the middle part of the seventeenth century to the end of the twentieth century. The first wave of the reception occurred in the middle decades of the seventeenth century, when the Thai King at that time began to gather foreign advisers around himself and sent out diplomatic missions to western countries, resulting in contact, for the first time, between indigenous and western scientific, religious, and possibly philosophical ideas. However, this first wave was cut short, only to start again in the middle part of the nineteenth century, this time for good. Thailand received western philosophy as part of the package of western education, and the process produced a number of western-trained philosophers who wrote original works.

After World War II, philosophy became professionalised and became a regular part of university curricula. More Thai philosophers went abroad to study and started to make original contributions to the field. The neoliberal autonomisation of universities brought a wholesale change in how professional philosophers work. Furthermore, he will also touch upon the situation of intellectualism in Thailand, the role of public intellectuals, and including the understanding of the clash between western philosophy and the traditional Thai belief system, which includes Buddhism, and how this will likely turn out in the near future.