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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Non-Western philosophy > Oriental & Indian philosophy
Daya Krishna (1924-2007) was easily the most creative and original
Indian philosopher of the second half of the 20th century. His
thought and philosophical energy dominated academic Indian
philosophy and determined the nature of the engagement of Indian
philosophy with Western philosophy during that period. He passed
away recently, leaving behind an enormous corpus of published work
on a wide range of philosophical topics, as well as a great deal of
incomplete, nearly-complete and complete-but-as-yet-unpublished
work.
Daya Krishna's thought and publications address a broad range of
philosophical issues, including issues of global philosophical
importance that transcend considerations of particular traditions;
issues particular to Indian philosophy; and issues at the
intersection of Indian and Western philosophy, especially questions
about the philosophy of language and ontology that emerge in the
context of his Samvada project that brought together Western
philosophers and Nyaya pandits to discuss questions in the
philosophy of language and metaphysics.
The volume editors have organized the volume as a set of ten
couplets and triplets. Each draws together papers from different
periods in Daya Krishna's life: some take different approaches to
the same problem or text; in some cases, the second paper
references and takes issue with arguments developed in the first;
in still others, Daya Krishna addresses very different topics, but
using the same distinctive philosophical methodology. Each set is
introduced by one of the editors.
These couplets are framed by two of Daya Krishna's finest
metaphilosophical essays, one that introduces his approach, and one
that draws some of his grand morals about the discipline. Daya
Krishna's daughter, Professor Shail Mayaram of the Center for the
Study of Developing Societies contributes a preface, and Professor
Arindam Chakrabarti, a longtime colleague of Daya Krisha and a
collaborator on some of his most important philosophical ventures
has written the introduction.
Life History of Shirdi Sai Baba was originally written in Telugu by
Ammula Sambasiva Rao, and translated into English by Thota Bhaskara
Roa. The book delves deep into the details of the life of Shirdi
Sai Baba right from his birth till his attainment of Samadhi. The
author has expounded Sai Tatwa or Sai philosophy in a simple
language, interspersed with engrossing anecdotes in the life of Sai
devotees.
Reflecting the currently growing eco-movement, this book presents
to western readers Tao Yuanming, an ancient Chinese poet, as a
representative of classical oriental natural philosophy who offered
lived experience of "dwelling poetically on earth." Drawing on
Derrida's specter theory, it interprets Tao Yuanming in a
postmodern and eco-critical context, while also exploring his
naturalist "kindred spirits" in other countries, so as to urge the
people of today to contemplate their own existence and pursuits.
The book's "panoramic" table of contents offers readers a wonderful
reading experience.
The single most influential work in Chinese history is Lunyu, the
Confucian Analects. Its influence on the Chinese people is
comparable to that of the bible on the Western world. It is neither
a tract of prosaic moralism contained in the fortune cookies in
Chinese restaurants nor a manual of political administration that
prescribes do's and don't's for new initiates. A book claiming a
readership of billions of people throughout the history in China
and East Asia and now even in the Western world must be one that
has struck a chord in the readers, one which appears to arise from
the existential concerns that Confucius shared: How can one
overcome the egoistic tendency that plagues life? How does one see
the value of communal existence? What should be one's ultimate
concern in life?These questions call for a line of inquiry on the
Analects that is explicitly existential. An existential reading of
the Analects differs from other lines of inquiry in that it not
only attempts to reveal how the text spoke to the original audience
but also to us today. It is not only a pure academic exercise that
appeals to the scholarly minded but also an engagement with all who
feel poignantly about existential predicaments.In this existential
reading of the Analects, the author takes Paul Tillich as an
omnipresent dialogical partner because his existential theology was
at one time very influential in the West and currently very popular
in Chinese academia. His analysis of ontological structure of man
can be applied to the Analects. This conceptual analysis reveals
that that this foundational text has three organically connected
levels of thought, proceeding from personal cultivation through the
mediation of the community to the metaphysical level of Ultimate
Reality. Few scholarly attempts like this one have been made to
reveal systematically the interconnectedness of these three levels
of thought and to the prominence to their theological
underpinnings.This existential reading of the Analects carries with
it a theological implication. If one follows the traditional
division of a systematic theology, one will find that the Analects
has anthropological, ethical, and theological dimensions, which
correspond to the three levels of thoughts mentioned. If one
understands soteriology more broadly, one will find the Analects
also has a soteriological dimension. The Analects points to the
goal of complete harmony in which a harmony within oneself, with
the society and cosmos are ensured.If one is to construct a
theology of the Analects, the existential reading enables the
drawing of certain contrasts with Paul Tillich's existential
theology. The Confucian idea of straying from the Way differs from
the symbol of fall. The Confucian reality of social entanglement
differs from the reality of estrangement. The Confucian paradoxical
nature of Heaven differs from trinitarian construction of God. The
most important contribution of this study is that it reveals the
religious or theological dimension of the Confucian Analects.This
is an important book for those engaged in the study of the
Confucian Analects, including those in Chinese studies as well as
comparative theology and religion.
This book is based on the study of the traditional Chinese
philosophy, and explores the relationship between philosophy and
people's fate. The book points out that heaven is an eternal topic
in Chinese philosophy. The concept of heaven contains religious
implications and reflects the principles the Chinese people
believed in and by which they govern their lives. The traditional
Chinese philosophy of fate is conceptualized into the "unification
of Heaven and man". Different interpretations of the
inter-relationships between Heaven, man and their unification mark
different schools of the traditional Chinese philosophy. This book
identifies 14 different schools of theories in this regard. And by
analyzing these schools and theories, it summarizes the basic
characteristics of traditional Chinese philosophy, compares the
Chinese philosophy of fate with the Western one, and discusses the
relationship between philosophy and man's fate.
An alternative, fallibilist model of moral reasoning rooted in the
American Pragmatic tradition. Additional resources drawn from
Chinese philosophy, Jain epistemology, modern philosophy of
mathematics, and the Gadamerian hermeneutical tradition serve both
to corroborate the argumentation and to provide examples of
continuities in reasoning that cross the boundaries of disparate
traditions.
This collection of twenty-one essays constitutes the first history
of modern Japanese aesthetics in any language. It introduces
readers through lucid and readable translations to works on the
philosophy of art written by major Japanese thinkers from the late
nineteenth century to the present. Selected from a variety of
sources, the essays cover topics related to the study of beauty in
art and nature.
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