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The book presents the understanding of different Indian philosophers on some of the basic problems of religion. Considering diverse schools and systems of Indian philosophy, it examines the significance of the arguments presented by the philosophers for grasping the relevance of religious theories and concepts. In the process, it reformulates some of them to make them less technical.
This is work in a significant area of Indian philosophy on which very little work has been done. Most of the Indian philosophers, to whatever school or tradition they belong, have shown concern for understanding the basic claims of religion and for most of them the problems of religion are those that are generated by shruti tradition of Hinduism. Instead of taking any philosophical position in approaching and understanding the problems of religion, this work tries to be comprehensive, and seeks to present and discuss the understanding of different Indian philosophers of some of the basic problems of religion. The arguments presented in this work are taken from different schools or systems of Indian philosophy, and in certain cases they are reformulated to make them less technical. This book will be of immense use to both the students and researches in Indian philosophy of religion and also to general readers.
The two volumes present a comprehensive study of political, cultural and religious history of Indonesia. Of encyclopaedic significance, they take up a whole gamut of themes relating to history, politics, religion, literature, art and architecture, and sculpture of Indonesia. The volumes will immensely benefit scholars of political history, religion and culture specialising in South-east Asia and its links with other regions of Asia.
The two volumes present a comprehensive study of political, cultural and religious history of Indonesia. Of encyclopaedic significance, they take up a whole gamut of themes relating to history, politics, religion, literature, art and architecture, and sculpture of Indonesia. The first volume is on political history of Indonesia. It covers all dynasties/rulers of Indonesia from the earliest Sailendras of Srivijaya to the political scene in current times including the rise of President Sukarnoputri in the recent past. It covers a very wide range of aspects: struggles of dynasties, establishment of empires by the Sailendras, the Indo-Javanese empire of the kingdoms of Mataram, Kadiri, Singhasari and others, emergence of new cultures, decline and fall of the Hindu kingdom, colonial invasions and growth of nationalism. The second volume begins with the history of East Timor. It makes an in-depth survey of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam in Indonesia, covering their establishment, contacts with other places owing to their religious links, modes of religious worship and rituals. The art, architecture and sculpture of the country symbolising Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic traditions are surveyed meticulously. A detailed account of Indonesia’s literature involves study of writers and their works, and languages and characteristics of the literature at various times. The volume discusses chronicles, historical writings, writings on medicine and on numerous miscellaneous topics, throwing light on their contents and styles of expression. The volumes will immensely benefit scholars of political history, religion and culture specialising in South-east Asia and its links with other regions of Asia.
The book is an analytical study of the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo with special reference to his ideas on socio-political issues, nationalism, morality and stateless society besides the dangers of imposed uniformity with disregard for difference.
The book is an in-depth study of the integral philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. It throws light on his fundamental ideas on socio-political issues and concepts relating to Yoga and knowledge. The well researched writings pointedly examine Sri Aurobindos views on nationalism, Western imperialism, morality, stateless society, human relations and education among other such subjects. Quoting liberally from Sri Aurobindo the volume delves deep into his understanding of the divine and the human; the nation as characterized by spirituality; and spiritual transformation relying on the brotherhood of all humans as multiple expressions of the same godhead. His philosophy of integral monism and the way Aurobindo makes frequent references to Hindu scriptures: the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Puranas has been highlighted in particular. How Sri Aurobindo stresses throughout on the dangers of imposed uniformity with total disregard for difference has been brought into focus.
Based on an analytical study of Sri Aurobindos philosophy and offering fresh approaches, the volume will interest both, the students and scholars of modern Indian philosophy and Indology in general.
This book traces the development of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his characters from dreams to maturity. It shows how he utilised his own experience to represent the national and the human experience in his novels.
The novels of F. Scot Fitzgerald reflect the life he lived. They can, in fact, be seen as the records of a pilgrim in his progress from innocence to experience. Almost as a rule all the heroes in Fitzgeralds novels mature as they encounter the real world. All his major works illustrate an agonized search for the true inner self, a quest for individuality. This book traces the development of Fitzgerald and his characters from dreams to maturity. It shows how all the heroes in Fitzgeralds novels from Amory Blaine in This Side of Paradise to Monroe Stahr in The Last Tycoon, in their search for different ideals, represent mans quenchless desire to affirm the perennial moral values of life. In recording the journey of all his dreamers from Amory Blaine to Monroe Stahr, he depicted a longing for a unified selfhood that enjoys a universal appeal in the context of the contemporary realities of life. The book shows how Fitzgerald utilized his own experience a tragic experience on the whole to represent the national experience and ultimately the human experience. Almost as a rule, all of them start their journey as innocents with an explicit faith in life and the pre-conceived notions about the goodness of man. Experience comes to them through their confrontation with reality both social and moral which do not conform to their idealistic faith. Since they are powerless to change the reality they live in, they brood, they suffer. The overwhelming impression is of disillusionment and suffering. But Fitzgerald bestows a positive value on suffering. His wise and tragic sense of life imparts an enduring quality to his works. The book justifies how Fitzgeralds works finally transcend the time he lived in and establish him as a major American writer.
This work focuses on Kants concern with the problem of moral motivation. It argues that there is a gap between objectively conceived principle and subjective motivation, and aesthetic experience of the sublime phenomenon of utmost existential importance fills this gap.
Kant’s Concept of the Sublime: A Pathway to the Numinous focuses attention on Kant’s concern with the problem of moral motivation, the significance of the aesthetic experience, particularly the experience of the Sublime in terms of his overall concern with morality. As the Sublime is considered in the context of moral motivation, this is a new approach. The work argues that the importance of knowledge of the existence of a supersensible ground of ourselves and our actions lies in its role as motivation. There is a gap between objectively conceived principle and subjective motivation. The aesthetic experience of the Sublime provides an experience that helps fill this gap. There is a moral feeling that precedes the Categorical Imperative in spite of the second Critique’s argument that the feeling of respect follows from awareness of the moral law. The aesthetic experience is a phenomenon of the utmost existential importance. For Kant the aesthetic experience specially the experience of the Sublime, is phenomenologically important to him, as it helped in pursuing his life long moral project. The Kantian corpus heightens his concern with the problem of moral motivation and his thought on feeling a motive capable of moving the existing individual to subordinate the fulfillment of the subjective desire in favour of the objectively conceived universal law. Once this concern is properly understood, Kant’s importance to the connection between the feeling of the Sublime and our awareness of our known supersensible faculty becomes clear. The publication of this book coincides with the commemoration of 200 years of Kant’s death.
This work is a collection of papers dealing with the problems concerning the relation between language and mind. It focuses on the recent developments in the philosophy of language and mind, particularly with regard to the computational approach to this subject. This is the first of a two-volume project dealing with language and mind.
This work is a collection of papers dealing with the problems concerning the relation between language and mind. It focuses on the recent developments in the philosophy of language and mind, particularly with regard to the computational approach to this subject. The computational approach defended by Fodor and others has changed the very concept of language and mind thus ushering in a new philosophy in recent years. But, not unsurprisingly, there has been a vehement opposition to this approach led by Searle and others which has exposed the limitations of computationalism as a philosophical theory. The controversy regarding language, mind and meaning between the computationalists and their opponents is the main theme of this book. Besides these differing ideologies the book also highlights the general issues regarding meaning, intentionality, necessity, a prioricity, etc. which have an important place in the philosophy of language. This is the first of a two-volume project dealing with language and mind. This book deals exclusively with the Western perspective of the problems of language and mind, while Volume II will deal with the classical Indian approach.
This is a two-volume project which throws light on the various problem and debates on the relation between language and mind. They analyse both the classical Indian perspective as well as the Western perspective, stating that mind is behind all the linguistic activities.
The relation between language and mind is a fascinating area in both the Western and the Indian philosophical modes of thinking. Indian philosophers of language raise the question: How does the hearer derive knowledge from the speakers utterances? In the process of finding an answer, they developed some important insights into language and cognition, language generated awareness, etc. In many of their formulations the concept of mind is assumed as the background of linguistic activity. This volume throws light on various debates concerning the relation between language and mind as conceived in the Classical Indian Tradition. Papers in this volume have been arranged in three groups based on their thematic composition: (1) the inadequacy thesis proposed by the Madhyamika school of Buddhism and the Vedantins which suggests that language fails to express certain experiences; (2) the identity thesis held by the Grammarians which suggests that language is the Reality; and (3) the adequacy thesis supported by the Naiyayikas which suggests that whatever exists is capable of being known and whatever is known is capable of being expressed in language. This book is the second of a two-volume project dealing with language and mind. The first dealt with the Western perspective and the present work deals with the Classical Indian Perspective.
The book focuses on the structure and limits of linguistic representations from both the Indian and Western perspectives. From communicative meaning to meaning in trzuth-based semantics and also in hermeneutic interpretation of language, there are a wide range of issues which have been discussed in detail.
The essays in this volume deal with the nature of linguistic representations as distinguished from other types of representations, including mental representations. These study language and linguistic representations, examining crucial questions like nature of language and language as a source of knowledge, accommodating linguistic representations within the broad framework of truth-based semantics and hermeneutic interpretation of language. The essays focus on the structure and limits of linguistic representations from both the Indian and Western perspectives. The semantic problems of meaning, reference and truth constitute the main issues facing any theory of linguistic representations and, therefore, these issues have been discussed in-depth. Besides, there has been an effort to understand how to locate the language-reality relationships within a broad representationalist framework. The essays take up many specific topics, examining theories of linguistic representations, such as the anti-representationalist stand of Wittgenstein and Derrida, Grice’s theory of meaning, and perspectives of Indian classical schools such as the Naiyayikas’ perspective on testimonial knowledge. The essays specially focus on the Indian theories of grammar and linguistic representations to highlight how philosophy of language, whether classical or contemporary, can hardly get rid of the semantic locus of meaning and truth.
The volume will prove invaluable to scholars of philosophy, especially those concerned with language and linguistic representations.
The book unravels the glorious past of Kashmir, discussing its importance as the centre of Sanskrit learning in the bygone eras. It highlights the regions achievements in music, dance, drama, sculpture, language and literature, and philosophy marked by the artistic and literary contributions of Jayaditta, Bhatta, Jayadhara, Pingala and Abhinavagupta, and many others.
The Land of Kashmir, celebrated as paradise on earth for its scenic beauty, has an equally enchanting historical and cultural past: this is the place symbolising Indias cultural unity, where different cultures have prospered at different times, where scholars from all over India and the distant lands of Mesopotamia, Persia and China converged to imbibe learning in ancient times. The author, S. Sapru here unravels the glorious past of Kashmir; he discusses its importance as the centre of Sanskrit learning in the bygone eras; its achievements in music, dance, drama, sculpture, language and literature, and philosophy marked by the artistic and literary contributions of eminent men like Jayaditta, Bhatta, Jayadhara, Pingala and Abhinavagupta. Referring to various historical works and combining facts with legend, folklore and impressions from oral traditions, he presents a graphic picture of life and times in the valley in the past that deals with a range of themes like the lands mythology, statecraft, trade links, urban centres, tax system, system of crime and punishment and an ancient tourists impressions of the valley. Through a smooth?flowing narrative that makes the book extremely readable, the author points out that there is more to Kashmir than the present?day spate of violence; the land and its people have an essential Indianness common to other people of India and Kashmirs links with the rest of India cannot be severed.
The work examines the early history of the Marwari community its social, religious, cultural and caste identities and its commercial activities in the eastern region of India, mainly its industrial activities and cultural and political contributions. Based on surveys and references to government records, it highlights qualitites of the Marwaris that have helped them achieve success in their pioneering efforts.
The migration of a community to a specific region and its prosperous growth there, is dependent on a number of socio-economic factors that require in-depth research to understand the nuances of change and complexities of the communitys interaction with the society, economy and polity of the region. This book attempts a study on these lines with respect to the settlement and growth of the Marwari community in the northern districts of West Bengal, throwing light on different aspects of their development as an important business community in the region. Based on surveys and references to district gazetteers, government records as well as articles in newspapers and magazines, the work covers the early history of the Marwari community including its social, cultural, religious and caste identities. It goes into the nature of the Marwari peoples commercial pursuits in the districts under study: their industrial activities, and cultural and political contributions. It deals with significant changes on their part, like their switchover from money-lending to money-investing business, in order to flourish in the settled region and studies the role of the Marwari merchants and entrepreneurs in trade and commerce activities in the region, particularly in import and export. It also highlights their philanthropic nature, power of adaptability, broad outlook and other aspects that have helped them mingle with the locals and achieve success in their pioneering efforts.
This book is a compilation of research papers which explore the various dimensions of morality and social justice and their intersection with justice, human rights, reservation and reverse discrimination, rights of children, etc. with a view to creating a society comprising peace and ordered liberty.
The highly stratified Indian society, with a history of domination by a few on all the sections of the society, is going through a predicament. There is a crisis for justice in every section of the society, particularly in those who have been tormented for centuries. In spite of many giant thinkers and much ameliorating process at the governmental level, social harmony has been on a constant decline.
In view of such a social situation, the modern concept of social justice appears to be complex. In a bid to provide social justice, attempts have been made to synthesize the meritarian and egalitarian elements, but the chaos at the distribution level of goods and services has led us to a long, dark tunnel, seemingly with no way out!
The ICPR-sponsored national congress on Morality and Social Justice convened at Patna, January 2729, 2008, explored the various dimensions of morality and social justice in an apparent attempt to find a way out of the quagmire. Presentations from the seminar have been collected in the volume, which addresses the intersection of morality and social justice with justice, human rights, reservation and reverse discrimination, rights of children, religion, development, and many more.
The comprehensive volume includes contributions from such well-known scholars of social philosophy as editor Abha Singh and a host of others from multi-disciplines across India. The volume is an unprecedented examination of social situation prevailing in India, an honest assessment of how social harmony can either be destroyed or be preserved, and a thorough exploration of what steps might be necessary for the much-needed moral energy and social imagination in order to create a society comprising peace and ordered liberty.
This book analyses various aspects of Vedic culture, exploring the origin of the concepts of rastra (nation) and rastrabhakti (patriotism). It presents the salient features of nation and nationalism in ancient Indian culture culture- based and not political which helped India to emerge successful.
The concepts of nation and nationalism are generally considered as having their genesis in western modes of thought. However, in this book, Dr. Shiva Acharya attempts to show that the theories of nation and nationalism can be traced to the Vedic era on the basis of a painstaking study of the Vedic culture and civilization. The book analyses the social, political, civil and military, economic, religious and philosophical aspects of the Vedic culture to explore the origin of the concepts of rashtra (nation), motherland and rashtrabhakti (patriotism), parliaments, the notion of all-round development, democratic educational system, equality of peoples and economic growth for prosperity in Vedic times. Citing from the Vedas and other Vedic literature and a host of modern scholarly researches on the subject, it presents the salient features of the nation and nationalism theories as found in ancient Indian culture such as their stress on culture-based nationalism rather than political. It points out that these features have enabled India to continue with its past traditions and culture and emerge as a successful nation in modern times. The volume will prove indispensable to all students and scholars of Indology and general readers as it unravels the immense contributions of ancient Indian thought to ideas and philosophies that hold great sway in modern times.
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