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Books > Philosophy > Non-Western philosophy
Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) popularised Vedanta in the West and
reformed Hinduism in India. He also inspired the mass movement that
made India a modern nation. In showcasing his life and work, this
Reader balances the two main aspects of his life: the religious and
the secular, the spiritual and the practical, the devotional and
the rational. Included here are the most significant and
representative texts from every major genre and phase - selections
from his speeches, essays, letters, poems, translations,
conversations, and interviews - arranged for easy reading and
reference. With a scholarly Introduction highlighting his
contemporary relevance, separate section introductions and a
detailed biographical Chronology, this volume provides a rare
insight into one of India's greatest minds. This volume will
interest scholars and students of modern Indian history, religion,
literature, and philosophy as well as general readers.
This book compiles some of the finest writings of Sri Aurobindo
(1872-1950) - the nationalist, visionary, poet-philosopher. It
reflects the range, depth and outreach of the moral, intellectual
and spiritual vision of this versatile and multifaceted genius. It
aims at providing, at one place, access to the key concepts,
tenets, and the spirit of the extraordinary range of texts authored
by him. Although concretely grounded in contemporary times - with
its location in a specific socio-cultural matrix - this work
projects a body of writings that is certain to have lasting value.
In particular, the compilation brings forth Sri Aurobindo's social
vision and his role as a cultural critic: his views on ethnicity,
his exposition of the key role language plays in the formation of
communitarian identities, his crucial understanding of
self-determination which has incidentally become an important
aspect of human rights discourse today. Situating the writings in a
specific intellectual, spiritual and historical context, this
collection will enable readers to appreciate the overall vision of
Sri Aurobindo, in what can be conceived as a caravan of history of
ideas in terms of a common heritage of humankind, and recent
developments in theory and disciplinary practice, especially those
pertaining to consciousness and future studies.
This volume of newly commissioned essays provides comprehensive
coverage of African philosophy, ranging across disciplines and
throughout the ages.
Offers a distinctive historical treatment of African philosophy.
Covers all the main branches of philosophy as addressed in the
African tradition.
Includes accounts of pre-colonial African philosophy and
contemporary political thought.
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Gandhi and the World
(Hardcover)
Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, Yashwant Pathak; Contributions by Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, Yashwant Pathak, Johan Galtung, …
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The book revisits Gandhi in this era of turbulence. As rigidly held
notions and practices fall to pieces, and as mechanisms of violence
and politicking fail, Gandhi comes to picture. If Gandhi could
change the course of history, there must be elements in his thought
and action, which need re-examination for the benefit of human
society. This collection of essays seeks to address the question:
Is it possible to generate Gandhian optimism and faith in truth and
nonviolence in the contemporary world? It argues that there is a
need for sustained efforts to make an in-depth study of Gandhian
principles to address global problems. The book is a useful
addition to the literature in political science and international
relations, economics, history, sociology, conflict and peace
studies, and a guide for the advocates of peaceful means of
conflict resolution.
"Mystical Prayers of Poetic Beauty" - In the tradition of the great
lyric mystics of all religions, Paramahansa Yogananda's "Whispers
from Eternity" offers a window on the devotional experience of
ecstasy. Sharing prayers and affirmations directly inspired by his
high state of God-communion, this beloved spiritual master helps
modern seekers achieve their own mystical relationship with the
Divine. Now with a contemporary new look, these universal prayers
and prose poems offer daily inspiration for seekers of all faiths.
A uniquely devotional offering in the spirit of Yogananda's
best-selling "Metaphysical Meditations," this popular collection
will inspire a new legion of readers seeking a nonsectarian,
experiential relationship with God.
Zombies have gained phenomenal popularity over the last two
decades, but have been a mainstay of horror fiction for decades.
Originating in Haitian folklore inspired by the real-life
experiences of slavery and oppression, the zombie has followed a
long and winding road through the American popular imagination.
George A. Romero is credited with adapting the zombie myth to
modern sensibilities, establishing the core "rules" of zombiedom in
1968's Night of the Living Dead. With the increased popularity of
the zombie, many scholars have begun to consider just why it has
captured the attention of audiences today. In this text, the zombie
can be viewed as a meditation on death, a memento mori that can
help us learn to live with the fact of our own individual
mortality. America has long been described as a death-denying
culture, but the zombie forces us to confront death not only by its
threat but by its very form-the rotting, decaying, shambling
corpse. In looking to the zombie as a sign for guidance, the author
has found Buddhist philosophy to be especially relevant. Dharma of
the Dead is the first book to examine the zombie through the lens
of Buddhist thought and to describe it as a thing not to fear but
to consider, just as we ought not fear death but instead seek to
accept it as a fact of human experience. That so many other
scholars have viewed the zombie in terms of social
critique-sometimes it is seen to embody consumerism run amok, the
effects of racism, or the fear of terrorism-also point to the fact
that the zombie, like recognizing our own mortality, can help us to
learn how to live without selfish fears of death.
This book is a comparative study of Gandhi's philosophy and
analyzes his relevance to modern political thought. It traces the
intellectual origins of Gandhi's nonviolence as well as his
engagement with Western thinkers - ancient as well as his
contemporaries. The author discusses Gandhi's exchanges with
eminent thinkers like Tolstoy and Thoreau, and looks at his vision
of pluralism, democracy, and violence through the lens of
philosophers like Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Cornelius
Castoriadis. Further, it explores Gandhi's association with Abdul
Ghaffar Khan and the Khilafat Movement. Finally, the book examines
Gandhian thought in the light of his global followers like Martin
Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela. An invaluable resource for the
contemporary mind, this book will be of great interest to scholars
and researchers of politics, political thought, Gandhi studies, and
philosophy.
The unforeseeably complex socio-economic and environmental
challenges of the 21st century must be tackled by placing faith in
the power of mankind to integrate established wisdom and new
knowledge, and in our ability to collaborate for a sustainable
future. Departing from this, a global 2011 conference debating
papers devoted to the impact of ancient philosophy, focusing on
Confucius and Aristotle, in modern leadership and management was
organized by Hanban, the Athens University of Economics &
Business, and the University of International Economics &
Business, Beijing, China. A rich sourcebook for a broad audience,
this unique volume presents the wide array of conference
contributions by international thought-leaders. Departing from a
foundation of general concepts of ethics and leadership the book
then delves into questions about how philosophy shape emerging
economic and business systems, to end with direct lessons from
ancient philosophy for contemporary business challenges.
This book deals with the philosophy of Ibn Sina - Avicenna as he
was known in the Latin West- a Persian Muslim who lived in the
eleventh century, considered one of the most important figures in
the history of philosophy. Although much has been written about
Avicenna, and especially about his major philosophical work,
Al-Shifa, this book presents the rationalist Avicenna in an
entirely new light, showing him to have presented a theory where
our claims of knowledge about the world are in effect just that,
claims, and must therefore be underwritten by our faith in God. His
project enlists arguments in psychology as well as in language and
logic. In a sense, the ceiling he puts on the reach of reason can
be compared with later rationalists in the Western tradition, from
Descartes to Kant -though, unlike Descartes, he does not deem it
necessary to reconstruct his theory of knowledge via a proof of the
existence of God. Indeed, Avicenna's theory presents the concept of
God as being necessarily presupposed by our theory of knowledge,
and God as the Necessary Being who is presupposed by an existing
world where nothing of itself is what it is by an intrinsic nature,
and must therefore be as it is due to an external cause. The
detailed and original analysis of Avicenna's work here is presented
as what he considered to be his own, or 'oriental' philosophy.
Presenting an innovative interpretation of Avicenna's thought, this
book will appeal to scholars working on classical Islamic
philosophy, kalam and the History of Logic.
The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy of Language
presents a systematic survey of philosophy of language in the
Indian tradition, providing an up-to-date research resource for
better understanding the history and future direction of the field.
Each chapter addresses a particular philosophical problem from the
viewpoint of seminal traditions and specific thinkers. Covering the
philosophical insight on language found in the mainstream
philosophies of Vyakarana, Mima?sa, Nyaya, Vedanta, Buddhism, and
Alankarasastra, the chapters tackle crucial semantic and pragmatic
questions such as the relation of the speaker to reality, the use
of metalanguage, the distinction between sentences, elliptic
statements, and figurative usages, and the impact of textual
structures on the philosophical message. Complete with further
reading suggestions and an annotated bibliography, this collection
makes an important contribution to both Eastern and Western
contemporary philosophy of language.
This book examines democracy in recent Chinese-language
philosophical work. It focuses on Confucian-inspired political
thought in the Chinese intellectual world from after the communist
revolution in China until today. The volume analyzes six
significant contemporary Confucian philosophers in China and
Taiwan, describing their political thought and how they connect
their thought to Confucian tradition, and critiques their political
proposals and views. It illustrates how Confucianism has
transformed in modern times, the divergent understandings of
Confucianism today, and how contemporary Chinese philosophers
understand democracy, as well as their criticisms of Western
political thought.
"Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages" presents an overview of the
formative period of medieval Jewish philosophy, from its beginnings
with Saadiah Gaon to its apex in Maimonides, when Jews living in
Islamic countries and writing in Arabic were the first to develop a
conscious and continuous tradition of philosophy. The book includes
a dictionary of selected philosophic terms, and discusses the Greek
and Arabic schools of thought that influenced the Jewish thinkers
and to which they responded. The discussion covers: the nature of
Jewish philosophy, Saadiah Gaon and the Kalam, Jewish
Neo-Platonism, Bahya ibn Paqudah, Abraham ibn Ezra's philosophical
Bible exegesis, Judah Ha-Levi's critique of philosophy, Abraham ibn
Daud and the transition to Aristotelianism, Maimonides, and the
controversy over Maimonides and philosophy.
Jarrod L. Whitaker examines the ritualized poetic construction of
male identity in the Rgveda, India's oldest Sanskrit text, arguing
that an important aspect of early Vedic life was the sustained
promotion and embodiment of what it means to be a true man. The
Rgveda contains over a thousand hymns, addressed primarily to three
gods: the deified ritual Fire, Agni; the war god, Indra; and Soma,
who is none other than the personification of the sacred beverage
soma. The hymns were sung in day-long fire rituals in which
poet-priests prepared the sacred drink to empower Indra. The
dominant image of Indra is that of a highly glamorized, violent,
and powerful Aryan male; the three gods represent the ideals of
manhood.
Whitaker finds that the Rgvedic poet-priests employed a fascinating
range of poetic and performative strategies--some explicit, others
very subtle--to construct their masculine ideology, while
justifying it as the most valid way for men to live. Poet-priests
naturalized this ideology by encoding it within a man's sense of
his body and physical self. Rgvedic ritual rhetoric and practices
thus encode specific male roles, especially the role of man as
warrior, while embedding these roles in a complex network of
social, economic, and political relationships.
Strong Arms and Drinking Strength is the first book in English to
examine the relationship between Rgvedic gods, ritual practices,
and the identities and expectations placed on men in ancient
India."
Confucius is a key figure not only in Eastern thought and philosophy but in world history as well. The Analects, the sayings attributed to him, is a classic of world literature. Nonetheless there is a great dispute about how to approach and understand both him and his work. This is the first anthology of critical writings on this crucial and influential work. The contributors come to the Analects from a variety of perspectives - including philosophical, philological, and religious - and address a host of key topics. Rigorous yet highly accessible, the volume will also include a general introduction and an exhaustive bibliography on English-language works on Confucius.
Stephen Skinner outlines the history and philosophy of Feng Shui,
showing how it can be applied, on a large or small scale, to
enhance the quality of life.
The Upanisads are among the most sacred foundational scriptures in
the Hindu religion. Composed from 800 BCE onwards and making up
part of the larger Vedic corpus, they offer the reader "knowledge
lessons" on life, death, and immortality. While they are essential
to understanding Hinduism and Asian religions more generally, their
complexities make them almost impenetrable to anyone but serious
scholars of Sanskrit and ancient Indian culture. This book is
divided into five parts: Composition, authorship, and transmission
of the Upanisads; The historical, cultural, and religious
background of the Upanisads; Religion and philosophy in the
Upanisads; The classical Upanisads; The later Upanisads. The
chapters cover critical issues such as the origins of the
Upanisads, authorship, and redaction, as well as exploring the
broad religious and philosophical themes within the texts. The
guide analyzes each of the Upanisads separately, unpacking their
contextual relevance and explaining difficult terms and concepts.
The Upanisads: A Complete Guide is a unique and valuable reference
source for undergraduate religious studies, history, and philosophy
students and researchers who want to learn more about these
foundational sacred texts and the religious lessons in the Hindu
tradition.
What are the still-unknown horizons of world thought? This book
brings together prominent scholars from varying disciplines to
speculate on this obscure question and the many crossroads that
face intellectuals in our contemporary era and its aftermath. The
result is a collection of "manifestos" that contemplate a potential
global future for thinking itself, venturing across some of the
most marginalized sectors of East and West (with particular
emphasis on the Middle Eastern and Islamicate) in order to dissect
crucial issues of culture, society, philosophy, literature, art,
religion, and politics. The book explores themes such as as
universality, translation, modernity, language, history, identity,
resistance, ecology, catastrophe, memory, and the body, offering a
groundbreaking alignment of texts and ideas with far-reaching
implications for our time and beyond.
This book offers the first comprehensive collection of essays on
the key concepts of Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945), the father of
modern Japanese philosophy and founder of the Kyoto School. The
essays analyze several of the major philosophical concepts in
Nishida, including pure experience, absolute will, place, and
acting intuition. They examine the meaning and positioning of
Nishida's philosophy in the history of philosophy, as well as in
the contemporary world, and discuss the relevance of his philosophy
in the present context. The book next looks at the significance of
Nishida's philosophy in the wider contexts of science, arts, and
religion. The book includes a glossary of key terms that have been
translated in a unified manner throughout the volume.
This book brings together the political thought of Gandhi and
Tagore to examine the relationship between politics, truth and
conscience. It explores truth and conscience as viable public
virtues with regard to two exemplars of ethical politics,
addressing in turn the concerns of an evolving modern Indian
political community. The comprehensive and textually argued
discussion frames the subject of the validity of ethical politics
in inhospitable contexts such as the fanatically despotic state and
energised nationalism. The book studies in nuanced detail Tagore's
opposition to political violence in colonial Bengal, the scope of
non-violence and satyagraha as recommended by Gandhi to Jews in
Nazi Germany, his response to the complexity of protest against the
Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and the differently constituted
nationalism of Gandhi and Tagore. It presents their famous debate
in a new light, embedded within the dynamics of cultural
identification, political praxis and the capacity of a community to
imbibe the principles of ethical politics. Comprehensive and
perceptive in analysis, this book will be a valuable addition for
scholars and researchers of political science with specialisation
in Indian political thought, philosophy and history. Gangeya
Mukherji is Reader in English at Mahamati Prannath Mahavidyalaya,
Mau-Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Shoma (Masatake) Morita, M.D. (1874-1938) was a Japanese
psychiatrist-professor who developed a unique four stage therapy
process. He challenged psychoanalysts who sanctioned an unconscious
or unconsciousness (collective or otherwise) that resides inside
the mind. Significantly, he advanced a phenomenal connection
between existentialism, Zen, Nature and the therapeutic role of
serendipity. Morita is a forerunner of eco-psychology and he
equalised the strength between human-to-human attachment and
human-to-Nature bonds. This book chronicles Morita's theory of
"peripheral consciousness", his paradoxical method, his design of a
natural therapeutic setting, and his progressive-four stage
therapy. It explores how this therapy can be beneficial for clients
outside of Japan using, for the first time, non-Japanese case
studies. The author's personal material about training in Japan and
subsequent practice of Morita's ecological and phenomenological
therapy in Australia and the United States enhance this book.
LeVine's coining of "cruelty-based trauma" generates a rich
discussion on the need for therapy inclusive of ecological
settings. As a medical anthropologist, clinical psychologist and
genocide scholar, LeVine shows how the four progressive stages are
essential to the classic method and the key importance of the first
"rest" stage in outcomes for clients who have been embossed by
trauma. Since cognitive science took hold in the 1970s, complex
consciousness theories have lost footing in psychology and medical
science. This book reinstates "consciousness" as the dynamic core
of Morita therapy. The case material illustrates the use of Morita
therapy for clients struggling with the aftermath of trauma and how
to live creatively and responsively inside the uncertainty of
existence. The never before published archival biographic notes and
photos of psychoanalyst Karen Horney, Fritz Perls, Eric Fromm and
other renowned scholars who took an interest in Morita in the 1950s
and 60s provide a dense historical backdrop.
The East-West dialogue increasingly seeks to compare and clarify
contrasting views on the nature of consciousness. For the Eastern
liberatory models, where a nondual view of consciousness is
primary, the challenge lies in articulating how consciousness and
the manifold contents of consciousness are singular. Western
empirical science, on the other hand, must provide a convincing
account of how consciousness arises from matter. By placing the
theories of Jung and Patanjali in dialogue with one another,
Consciousness in Jung and Patanjali illuminates significant
differences between dual and nondual psychological theory and
teases apart the essential discernments that theoreticians must
make between epistemic states and ontic beliefs. Patanjali's
Classical Yoga, one of the six orthodox Hindu philosophies, is a
classic of Eastern and world thought. Patanjali teaches that
notions of a separate egoic "I" are little more than forms of
mistaken identity that we experience in our attempts to take
ownership of consciousness. Carl Jung's depth psychology, which
remains deeply influential to psychologists, religious scholars,
and artists alike, argues that ego-consciousness developed out of
the unconscious over the course of evolution. By exploring the work
of key theoreticians from both schools of thought, particularly
those whose ideas are derived from an integration of theory and
practice, Whitney explores the extent to which the seemingly
irremediable split between Jung and Patanjali's ontological beliefs
can in fact be reconciled. This thorough and insightful work will
be essential reading for academics, theoreticians, and postgraduate
students in the fields of psychology, philosophy of science, and
consciousness studies. It will also appeal to those interested in
the East-West psychological and philosophical dialogue.
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