Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi took pride in calling himself a Sanatani Hindu. He lived by what he professed. Indeed, he spiritualized his entire political existence and his very opinion, world view and discourse was weighted with morality and ethics born of Hindu Dharma. This timely compilation of Mahatma Gandhi's views on Hindu Dharma is a remarkable and systematically arranged compendium of his ideas on every aspect of India's social and political life. Gandhi's views - disseminated through many short essays in Harijan and other journals of his time - on Sanatan Dharma, idol worship, Rama as a God, compulsory teaching of Gita in schools, conversion, cow-slaughter and protection, varnashramas, untouchability and other aspects are presented here in his own words. This volume is indispensable for scholars of Modern South Asian History, Gandhian Thought, Colonialism and Religious Studies. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Aesthetics and Politics of Space in Russia and Japan: A Comparative Philosophical Study examines the parallels between Russian and Japanese philosophies and religions by revealing a common concept of space in Russian and Japanese aesthetics and political theories. Thorsten Botz-Bornstein shows points of convergence between the two traditions regarding the treatment of space within the realm of identity (both individual and communal), and in formulations of the relationship between regionalism, localism and globalism. Russian and Japanese philosophers like Nishida, Watsuji, Trubetzkoy, and the Eurasianists transformed the traditional notion of communal space, which has always been seen as an organic time-space unity, into a sophisticated element very well described as "time-space development." Botz-Bornstein's comparative study also leads to an analysis of contemporary themes. Reflections on Noh-plays and icons, for example, permit him to untangle the relationships between the virtual, the dream, the imaginary, and reality. Virtual reality, as an environment that pulls users into itself, makes use of strategies that are also common in Noh-plays and icons, both of which share a particular conception of space. The "non-Western" alternatives presented in Aesthetics and Politics of Space in Russia and Japan can be considered as useful additions to contemporary political and aesthetic discourses.

Eva-Marie Dubuisson provides a fascinating anthropological inquiry into the deeply ingrained presence of ancestors within the cultural, political, and spiritual discourse of Kazakhs. In a climate of authoritarianism and economic uncertainty, many people in this region turn to their forebearers for care, guidance, and advice, invoking them on a daily basis. This "living language" creates a powerful link to the past and a stable foundation for the present. Through Dubuisson's participatory, observational, and lived experience among Kazakhs, we witness firsthand the public performances and private rituals that show how memory and identity are sustained through an oral tradition of invoking ancestors. This ancestral dialogue sustains a unifying worldview by mediating questions of faith and morality, providing role models, and offering a mechanism for socio-political critique, change, and meaning-making. Looking beyond studies of Islam or heritage alone, Dubuisson provides fresh insights into understanding the Kazakh worldview that will serve students, researchers, GMOs, and policymakers in the region.

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.

First published in 1981. Martin Buber has been acclaimed as one of the major philosophical and religious thinkers of the twentieth century with his influence and achievements spanning numerous fields - however in each of these areas his work has also been severely criticised and his influence called into question. This volume brings together in a systematic arrangement all the significant material by and about Martin Buber published in English up to the centenary of his birth in 1978. To make the bibliography as useful as possible, the critical material was annotated and various indexes were constructed, including an extensive subject index to both Buber's works and the criticism.

This book provides a diverse contextualization of Popper's critical rationalism concerning knowledge and his generalized attitude of criticism on appropriate social and political reforms in contemporary Africa. The book evaluates how best to address contemporary political problems, especially in politically very troubled parts of the world. To address these contemporary problems, especially as it relates to Africa, the authors found the political philosophy of Popper as suitable. The discussion of Popper's political philosophy engages us directly with all the particularities of socio-economic and political problems within contemporary Africa. In other words, it presents the truth of the present socio-political reality in Africa where the question of what kinds of political ideas and concepts can be offered as appropriate to a political environment, which so greatly faces facets of developmental issues. Although the issues and events that informed the writings of Popper's The Poverty of Historicism as well as The Open Society and Its Enemies, were among others, the rise of fascism and communism in Europe, the inventiveness of this work is how happily scholars in non-liberal societies, such as in Africa, can pick up Popper's insights and usefully work with them to offer appropriate social reforms for their society. This volume is a critical juxtaposition of Popper's ideas in a bid to make good sense of social and intellectual conditions in Africa, particularly as it relates to the scale and speed of social change that is needed in most African nations that are often ridden by corruption. The book is suitable for studies in political philosophy, economic and development studies, African Studies and Indigenous Knowledge systems.

Indian ethics is one of the great traditions of moral thought in world philosophy whose insights have influenced thinkers in early Greece, Europe, Asia, and the New World. This is the first such systematic study of the spectrum of moral reflections from India, engaging a critical cross-cultural perspective and attending to modern secular sensibilities. The volume explores the scope and limits of Indian ethical thinking, reflecting on the interpretation and application of its teachings and practices in the comparative and contemporary contexts. The chapters chart orthodox and heterodox debates, from early classical Hindu texts to Buddhist, Jaina, Yoga, and Gandhian ethics. The range of issues includes: life-values and virtues, karma and dharma, evil and suffering, renunciation and enlightenment; and extends to questions of human rights and justice, ecology and animal ethics, nonviolence and democracy. Ramifications for rethinking ethics in a postmodern and global era are also explored. Indian Ethics offers an invaluable resource for students of philosophy, religion, human sciences and cultural studies, and to those interested in South Asian responses to moral dilemmas in the ostcolonial era.

Times of prolonged conflict spur great minds to seek a lasting peace. Thus was the case of Warring States China, which saw the rise of the Hundred Schools of Thought, including the Doadejing and the Han Feizi, and Renaissance Italy, which produced Niccolo Machiavelli. Witnessing their respective societies fall prey to internal corruption and external aggression, all three thinkers sought ways to produce a strong, stable state that would allow both the leader and the populace to endure. Fortune and the Dao: A Comparative Study of Machiavelli, the Daodejing, and the Han Feizi demonstrates where the shortcomings of each theory lie, with emphasis on the similarities among Machiavelli, Laozi, and Han Feizi. Jason P. Blahuta ultimately argues that if Machiavelli's philosophy, the most comprehensive of the three theories, were supplemented by aspects of the Daodejing, the revision would potentially overcome the deficiencies of the original.

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.

This book presents a fascinating examination of modern Indian philosophical thought from the margins. It considers the subject from two perspectives - how it has been understood beyond India and how Indian thinkers have treated Western ideas in the context of Indian society. The book discusses the concepts of the self, the other and the border that underline various debates on modernity. In this framework, it proposes the notion of the other as an enabler in taking cue from the lives of Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. It focusses on the nature and compulsions of the colonised self, and its response to the body of unfamiliar and sometimes oppressive ideas. The study traces these themes with allusion to the works of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon and Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya and the Bhagavad Gita. The author exposes the limitations in existing theories of self, the incompatibility between the slavery of self and svaraj in ideas, how the premodern village intersects modern city and democracy, the radical challenges that confront society with its accumulated social evils, inequality, hierarchy and the need for reform and non-violence. This engaging work will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Indian philosophy, social and political philosophy, Indian political theory, postcolonialism and South Asian studies.

This book aims to interpret 'Jewish Philosophy' in terms of the Marrano phenomenon: as a conscious clinamen of philosophical forms used in order to convey a 'secret message' which cannot find an open articulation. The Marrano phenomenon is employed here, in the domain of modern philosophical thought, where an analogous tendency can be seen: the clash of an open idiom and a secret meaning, which transforms both the medium and the message. Focussing on key figures of late modern, twentieth century Jewish thought; Hermann Cohen, Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Jacob Taubes, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, this book demonstrates how their respective manners of conceptualization swerve from the philosophical mainstream along the Marrano 'secret curve.' Analysing their unique contribution to the 'unfinished project of modernity,' including issues of the future of the Enlightenment, modern nihilism and post-secular negotiation with religious heritage, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers with an interest in Jewish Studies and Philosophy.

Maqalid al-'ulum (Keys to the Sciences) is a significant source on definitions of Arabic scientific terms in the post-classical period. Composed by an anonymous author, it contains over eighteen hundred definitions in the realm of twenty-one religious, literary, and rational sciences. The work was dedicated to the Muzaffarid Shah Shuja', who ruled over Shiraz and its neighbouring regions from 759/1358 to 786/1384. The present volume contains a critical edition of Maqalid al-'ulum based on its three extant manuscripts. In the introduction, the editors review previous scholarship on the text, present an overview of patronage at the court of Shah Shuja' and identify some of the sources used by the author of the work. They suggest that the work in its structure mirrors Abu 'Abdullah Khwarazmi's Mafatih al-'ulum, completed in 366/976.

First Published in 2001. This is Volume five of the selected works of I.A. Richards from 1919 to 1938, and focuses on Mencius' thinking on the mind written in 1932.

Vaisesika is one of the six systems of Hindu philosophy. It represents a pluralistic realism and is usually held to be an atomistic, metaphysical theory. This book explores the basic tenets of the Vaisesika classical school of Indian philosophy from a new perspective. It argues that it reveals an epistemological formulation of its own, which was diminished due to later developments in the history of Indian philosophical tradition. Focusing on the principles of knowable objects and the processes of knowing as propounded by the Vaisesika school of Indian Philosophy, the book offers a fuller appreciation of the theories. Providing a balanced approach by examining earliest available material in the original sources of Vaisesika and concentrating on the epistemological pattern adopted therein, it presents an authentic and comprehensive understanding of Vaisesika concepts. This is the first introductory sourcebook in English for the authentic study of Vaisesika, and is of use to students and scholars of World Religion and Philosophy.

This book considers the Chinese conception of beauty from a historical perspective with regard to its significant relation to human personality and human existence. It examines the etymological implications of the pictographic character mei, the totemic symbolism of beauty, the ferocious beauty of the bronzeware. Further on, it proceeds to look into the conceptual progression of beauty in such main schools of thought as Confucianism, Daoism and Chan Buddhism. Then, it goes on to illustrate through art and literature the leading principles of equilibriumharmony, spontaneous naturalness, subtle void and synthetic possibilities. It also offers a discussion of modern change and transcultural creation conducted with particular reference to the theory of the poetic state par excellence (yi jing shuo) and that of art as sedimentation (ji dian shuo).

This book, first published in 1957, is the study of 14th-century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, who founded a special science to consider history and culture, based on the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and their Muslim followers. In no other field has the revolt of modern Western thought against traditional philosophy been so far-reaching in its consequences as in the field of history. Ibn Khaldun realized that history is more immediately related to action than political philosophy because it studies the actual state of man and society. He found that the ancients had not made history the object of an independent science, and thought it was important to fill this gap. A factual acquaintance with the conclusions of Ibn Khaldun's reflections on history is not the same as the full comprehension of their theoretical significance. When these fundamental questions are answered, it becomes possible to pose the specific question of the relation of Ibn Khaldun's philosophy of history, or his new science of culture, to other practical sciences and, particularly, to the art of history. After an exposition of the major trends of Islamic historiography, part of this book attempts to answer this question through the analysis of the method and intention of the sections of the 'History' where Ibn Khaldun himself examines the works of major Muslim historians, shows the necessity of the new science of culture, and distinguishes it from other practical sciences.

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.

This careful analysis of early Buddhist thought opens out a perspective in which no permanent Self is accepted, but a rich analysis of changing and potent mental processes is developed. Explores issues relating to self-development, moral responsibility and the between-lives period, and more.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays highlights the relevance of Buddhist doctrine and practice to issues of globalization. From various philosophical, religious, historical, and political perspectives, the authors show that Buddhism arguably the world s first transnational religion is a rich resource for navigating today's interconnected world. Buddhist Responses to Globalization addresses globalization as a contemporary phenomenon, marked by economic, cultural, and political deterritorialization, and also proposes concrete strategies for improving global conditions in light of these facts. Topics include Buddhist analyses of both capitalist and materialist economies; Buddhist religious syncretism in highly multicultural areas such as Honolulu; the changing face of Buddhism through the work of public intellectuals such as Alice Walker; and Buddhist responses to a range of issues including reparations and restorative justice, economic inequality, spirituality and political activism, cultural homogenization and nihilism, and feminist critique. In short, the book looks to bring Buddhist ideas and practices into direct and meaningful, yet critical, engagement with both the facts and theories of globalization."

Maimonides was not the first rabbinic scholar to take an interest in philosophy, but he was unique in being a towering figure in both areas. His law code, the Mishneh torah, stands with Rashi's commentary on the Babylonian Talmud as one of the two most intensely studied rabbinic works coming out of the Middle Ages, while his Guide of the Perplexed is the most influential and widely read Jewish philosophical work ever written. Admirers and critics have arrived at wildly divergent perceptions of the man. We have Maimonides the atheist or agnostic, Maimonides the sceptic, Maimonides the deist, Maimonides the Aristotelian, the Averroist, or proto-Kantian. We have a Maimonides seduced by the blandishments of 'accursed philosophy'; a Maimonides who sowed the seeds that led to Spanish Jews' loss of faith and mass apostasy and who was therefore responsible for the demise of Spanish Jewry; a Maimonides who incorporated philosophical elements into his rabbinic works and wrote the Guide of the Perplexed not to propagate doctrines to which he was personally committed but in order to rescue errant souls seduced by philosophy; a Maimonides who was the defender of the faith and defined the articles of Jewish belief for all time. In his own estimation, Maimonides was neither exclusively a dedicated philosopher nor exclusively a devoted rabbinist: he saw philosophy and the Written and Oral Torahs as a single, harmonious domain, and he believed that this view was similarly fundamental to the lives of the prophets and rabbis of old. In this book, Herbert Davidson examines Maimonides' efforts to reconstitute this all-embracing, rationalist worldview that he felt had been lost during the millennium-long exile.

The subject of "human free-will" versus "divine predestination" is one of the most contentious topics in classical Islamic thought. By focusing on a theme of central importance to any philosophy of religion, and to Islam in particular, this book offers a critical study of the intellectual contributions offered to this discourse by three key medieval Islamic thinkers: Avicenna, al-Ghazali and Ibn 'Arabi. Through investigation of primary sources, Free Will and Predestination in Islamic Thought establishes the historical, political and intellectual circumstances which prompted Avicenna, al-Ghazali and Ibn 'Arabi's attempts at harmonization. By analysing the theoretical and linguistic 'techniques' which were employed to convey these endeavours, this book demonstrates that the three individuals were committed to compromise between philosophical, theological and mystical outlooks. Arguing that the three scholars' treatments of the so-called qada wa'l-qadar (decree and destiny) and ikhtiyar (free-will) issues were innovative, influential and fundamentally more complex than hitherto recognized, this book contributes to a fuller understanding of Islamic intellectual history and culture and will be useful to researchers interested in Islamic Studies, Religion and Islamic Mysticism.

In this study, Olberding proposes a new theoretical model for reading the Analects. Her thesis is that the moral sensibility of the text derives from an effort to conceptually capture and articulate the features seen in exemplars, exemplars that are identified and admired pre-theoretically and thus prior to any conceptual criteria for virtue. Put simply, Olberding proposes an "origins myth" in which Confucius, already and prior to his philosophizing knows whom he judges to be virtuous. The work we see him and the Analects' authors pursuing is their effort to explain in an organized, generalized, and abstract way why pre-theoretically identified exemplars are virtuous. Moral reasoning here begins with people and with inchoate experiences of admiration for them. The conceptual work of the text reflects the attempt to analyze such people and parse such experiences in order to distill abstract qualities that account for virtue and can guide emulation.

Grappling with the place of Jewish philosophy at the margin of religious studies, Robert Erlewine examines the work of five Jewish philosophers-Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Joseph Soloveitchik-to bring them into dialogue within the discipline. Emphasizing the tenuous place of Jews in European, and particularly German, culture, Erlewine unapologetically contextualizes Jewish philosophy as part of the West. He teases out the antagonistic and overlapping attempts of Jewish thinkers to elucidate the philosophical and cultural meaning of Judaism when others sought to deny and even expel Jewish influences. By reading the canon of Jewish philosophy in this new light, Erlewine offers insight into how Jewish thinkers used religion to assert their individuality and modernity.