Varnadharma, Niskama...
Varnadharma, Niskama Karma and Practical Morality
A Critical Essay on Applied Ethics by: Rajendra PrasadThis work analyses some basic concepts of Indian ethics. It shows that a Varnadharma cannot be both natural and obligatory, the prescription of acting desirelessly makes any desireless action justified, the jivan-mukti concept is inapplicable, etc.
$20.00
ISBN: 9788124601259
Year Of Publication: 1999
Edition: 1st
Pages : xii, 291
Bibliographic Details : Bibliography
Language : English
Binding : Hardcover
Publisher: D.K. Printworld Pvt. Ltd.
Size: 23 cm.
Weight: 600
This book provides a bold, original and ciritical analysis of some basic concepts of Indian ethics, lifting them up from their regional roots to a general philosophical level, along with illuminatingly creative analysis of some practical issues of moral living. Professor Prasad shows, on logical grounds that a varnadharma cannot be both natural and obligatory, the prescription of acting desirelessly makes any desireless action justified, acting desirelessly itself cannot be a duty, the concept of jivanmukti is inapplicable, etc. In respect of ethical practice, he argues, with fair amount of rigour and originality, for moral anger and forgiveness as a conditional virtue, basing secularism on the primacy of the ethical, and preferring a morally good professional to one who is good as a professional or as a person. His plea for legitimacy of profit in business and non-hyperactivism in applying ethics throws useful light on business ethics. His down-to-the-earth approach makes the book a work on applied ethics and his conceptual openness makes it one on the basics. Its simple style makes it useful not only for students and teachers of philosophy but also for general readers with interest in Indian philosophy and culture.
From the General Editor
Preface
Part I
Some Basics of Indian Normative Ethics
1. Varnadharma as Natural and Obligatory: How Maintainable?
2. Prescription of Nishkama Karma: Moral or Non-Moral?
Teleological or Deontological?
3. Jivanmukti: Problems of Normativity and Instantiation
4. Dreamless Sleep as Empirical Analogue of Jivanmukti:
How Much Appropriate?
5. Commonly Presupposed Identity of Reality and Value: Aurobindos Renovated Characterisation Stated and Examined
Part II
Ethics in Practice
6. Inculcating Secularism: The Buddhist Way
7. Inculcating a General Dharma Forgiveness as Moral Cement: Wronging, Rupturing and Rejoining Social Relationships
8. Ethics in Professional Practice: Being a Good Professional, a Morally Good Professional, and a Morally Good Person
9. A Problem Area: Business Ethics and the Limits of Applied Ethics
Part III
The Background Conceptual wFramework
10. Acknowledgement, Application, and Morally Justified Violation of a Moral Principle
Bibliography of Authors Writings
- Sallekhana $40.00
Jainism regards life to be eternal. Recognizing that the soul can never die, but merely takes a new body, a careful tradition welcoming death through intentional fasting developed more than two thousand years ago. A legal challenge Rajasthan was put forward in 2013, suggesting that this practice is harmful and coercive and targets women in particular. For a short while Sallekhanā, which means the “thinning of existence,” was declared illegal. In response to this controversy, three conferences were convened by the International School for Jain Studies to explore the legal, religious, and medical aspects of this practice. Experts discussed the long history of the practice, attested to in epigraphs throughout India; the ways in which fasting to death has become an acceptable practice in the Western world; and contemporary instances of its observance in India. This volume presents an interdisciplinary approach to thinking about the end of life, from biomedical, historical, religious, and legal perspectives.
- An Intergrated Science of the Absolute (2 Vols. Set) $80.00
It is not just the magnum opus, but a truly monumental effort of a scientist-philosopher who has spent a whole lifetime to formulate a unitive science, wherein all disciplines of human questing could find a common ground a science where modern science and ancient spiritual wisdom could meet and merge like two opposite poles of a magnet. As a direct disciple of one of the great rishis of the modern age, Nataraja Guru discovers this common ground in Brahma-vidya, which he calls the Integrated Science of the Absolute, and which has, at its base, his Gurus Dars?ana Mala.
A string of hundred Sanskrit verses, composed by the mystic-poet, Narayana Guru (18541928), the Darsana Mala is the very epitome of all visions of truth inspired by his remarkable acquisitions of Upanisadic thought and, yet far more, by his own tapas (mystical discipline). Reproducing these highly significative verses in Roman script, along with English translations, word meanings, and extensive commentaries, Nataraja Guru not only spells out his mentors Visions of the Absolute in contemporary idiom, but also shows how these visions are fully validated by modern science.
Eclectic synthesis of varied scientific disciplines into a systematic whole is not all that Nataraja Guru accomplishes here. Rather, his book (now in third edition) is an attempt to reintroduce Brahma-vidya as the one Master Science that embraces every branch of science, every human interest. - Sex and Sex Worship $60.00
Mankind, when it gave expression to its first dawning of religious thoughts, wove a fabric of myths and theories about religion, the warp of which ran through from earliest historical times to our own days as threads of the warp of philosophies and theories about sex, male, female, love, passion, lust, desire, procreation, offspring, etc. The succeeding ages and civilizations wove into its warp the woof of the individual religions, myths and fables of gods and goddesses, so that the whole fabric of beliefs became refined as mankind itself advanced.
Sex and Sex Worship is the result of a long-time, arduous study of the concept of sex and the worship of phallus in various civilizations and in the development of different religions, modern and old, over a period of many millennia. The book makes one grasp a lot of topics associated with sex and sex symbols such as nature of sex and reproduction, status of women, cosmo-gonies, sex in man and animal, sexual relationship of gods and goddesses, virgin worship, phallic festivals, among many, while making it clear that the worship of generative organs was rather a use of representations of phallus and yoni as symbols for certain religious ideas which were embodied in nature worship.
It also vividly talks about the concept of sex and sex organs in art and ethics, sculpture, art anatomy, etc. The contents in toto lead one to the myriad aspects and concerns associated with sex and phallic worship. It is a must read for a scholar and a common man alike. - Action, Freedom and Responsibility $30.00
This book, a work on human doing, analyses and applies three central aspects of human life – Action, Freedom and Responsibility – in the wide spectrum of the Philosophy of Mind. Reflections on these issues and their interconnections have a significant effect on the Philosophy of Value and application of ethical theories in practical life. This book even reconstructs the conceptual connection between action and freedom, on the one hand, and that between freedom and responsibility, on the other.
It also puts the concepts of freedom and determinism to critical test and reinterprets them from different angles and perspectives. The conventional doctrine of karma, based on the teachings of the Bhagavadgātā, is relieved from its usual deterministic presentation and a logically reasonable explanation is offered.
Human actions and human agency are central concepts in the philosophy of mind and action. Free will and responsibility constitute the bedrock of the moral life of the human agents and the book pinpoints that freedom is meant to undertake the goal-oriented actions. It is, therefore, focused on the enquiry into the various aspects of philosophy of mind, as well as the philosophy of value. - Modern Civilization $32.00
The crisis of the age inheres in this, that notwithstanding the century’s mind-numbing disasters, it persists in subscribing to propositions which have logically led to the atomization of the whole cloth of human experiencing, and being. Great indeed is the value which is placed on the procedure of analytic dismemberment. While the method has certainly been result-producing, materially, in its wake it has brought immense suffering – both physical and spiritual. The price paid for a lopsided advance is thirty major wars – with their toll of one hundred and thirty million lives, and the irreparable destruction of the natural environment. The time demands a reappraisal of the basic paradigms of human existence, but the hegemony of well-entrenched vested interests – material or intellectual – would seem to preclude this.
The “advanced” people among the mankind of the day become suicidally specialized. For, if the mechanical model of thought has been of advantage in man’s preceding unfolding, the same, what may be called the “survival” paradigm, now creates dangerous dualities, binary oppositions (you–me, body–mind, East–West, etc). The model has outlived its usefulness merely enforcing dormancy on a major part of the human brain.
It behoves mankind to choose wisely right now – since parallel to the socio-economic, scientific and technological revolutions there has got to be the overdue radical psychic transformation. The first step towards clearing the fateful crisis would therefore be to be aware and end the hold of the linear, causal, mechanical thought orientation over the intellectual culture of the times.
Delving deep into the epistemological cum ontological causation of the emergency confronting the being and becoming of man, this volume provokes the thoughtful lay reader to a serious engagement with his or her self.
