Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism

Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism
Author: Swami Medhananda
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2022
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0197624464

"Swami Vivekananda, the nineteenth-century Hindu monk who introduced Vedåanta to the West, is undoubtedly one of modern India's most influential philosophers. Unfortunately, his philosophy has too often been interpreted through reductive hermeneutic lenses. Typically, scholars have viewed him either as a modern-day exponent of âSaçnkara's Advaita Vedåanta or as a "Neo-Vedåantin" influenced more by Western ideas than indigenous Indian traditions. In Swami Vivekananda's Vedåantic Cosmopolitanism, Swami Medhananda rejects both of these prevailing approaches to offer a new interpretation of Vivekananda's philosophy, highlighting its originality, contemporary relevance, and cross-cultural significance. Vivekananda, the book argues, is best understood as a cosmopolitan Vedåantin who developed novel philosophical positions through creative dialectical engagement with both Indian and Western thinkers. Inspired by his guru Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda reconceived Advaita Vedåanta as a nonsectarian, life-affirming philosophy that provides an ontological basis for religious cosmopolitanism and a spiritual ethics of social service. He defended the scientific credentials of religion while criticizing the climate of scientism beginning to develop in the late nineteenth century. He was also one of the first philosophers to defend the evidential value of supersensuous perception on the basis of general epistemic principles. Finally, he adopted innovative cosmopolitan approaches to long-standing philosophical problems. Bringing him into dialogue with a galaxy of contemporary philosophers, Medhananda demonstrates the sophistication and enduring value of Vivekananda's views on the limits of reason, the dynamics of religious faith, and the hard problem of consciousness"--

Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism

Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism
Author: Swami Medhananda
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2022
Genre:
ISBN: 9780197624494

"Swami Vivekananda, the nineteenth-century Hindu monk who introduced Vedānta to the West, is undoubtedly one of modern India's most influential philosophers. Unfortunately, his philosophy has too often been interpreted through reductive hermeneutic lenses. Typically, scholars have viewed him either as a modern-day exponent of Śaṅkara's Advaita Vedānta or as a "Neo-Vedāntin" influenced more by Western ideas than indigenous Indian traditions. In Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism, Swami Medhananda rejects both of these prevailing approaches to offer a new interpretation of Vivekananda's philosophy, highlighting its originality, contemporary relevance, and cross-cultural significance. Vivekananda, the book argues, is best understood as a cosmopolitan Vedāntin who developed novel philosophical positions through creative dialectical engagement with both Indian and Western thinkers. Inspired by his guru Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda reconceived Advaita Vedānta as a nonsectarian, life-affirming philosophy that provides an ontological basis for religious cosmopolitanism and a spiritual ethics of social service. He defended the scientific credentials of religion while criticizing the climate of scientism beginning to develop in the late nineteenth century. He was also one of the first philosophers to defend the evidential value of supersensuous perception on the basis of general epistemic principles. Finally, he adopted innovative cosmopolitan approaches to long-standing philosophical problems. Bringing him into dialogue with a galaxy of contemporary philosophers, Medhananda demonstrates the sophistication and enduring value of Vivekananda's views on the limits of reason, the dynamics of religious faith, and the hard problem of consciousness"--

Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality

Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality
Author: Ayon Maharaj
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2018-10-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190868244

Sri Ramakrishna is widely known as a nineteenth-century Indian mystic who affirmed the harmony of all religions on the basis of his richly varied spiritual experiences and eclectic religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. In Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality, Ayon Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna was also a sophisticated philosopher of great contemporary relevance. Through a careful study of Sri Ramakrishna's recorded oral teachings in the original Bengali, Maharaj reconstructs his philosophical positions and analyzes them from a cross-cultural perspective. Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual journey culminated in the exalted state of "vijñana," his term for the "intimate knowledge" of God as the Infinite Reality that is both personal and impersonal, with and without form, immanent in the universe and beyond it. This expansive spiritual standpoint of vijñana, Maharaj contends, opens up a new paradigm for addressing central issues in cross-cultural philosophy of religion, including divine infinitude, religious pluralism, mystical experience, and the problem of evil. Sri Ramakrishna's vijñana-based religious pluralism--when grasped in all its subtlety--proves to have major philosophical advantages over dominant Western models. Moreover, his mystical testimony and teachings not only cut across long-standing debates about the nature of mystical experience but also bolster recent defenses of its epistemic value. Maharaj further demonstrates that Sri Ramakrishna's unique response to the problem of evil resonates strongly with Western "soul-making" theodicies and contemporary theories of skeptical theism. A pioneering interdisciplinary study of one of India's most important philosopher-mystics, Maharaj's book is essential reading for scholars and students in philosophy of religion, theology, religious studies, and Hindu studies.

Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda
Author: Makarand R. Paranjape
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2015-06-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317446372

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.

Panentheism in Indian and Western Thought

Panentheism in Indian and Western Thought
Author: Benedikt Paul Göcke
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2023-08-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000932109

For too long, scholars interested in panentheism have focused almost exclusively on Western approaches to the issue. This book offers the first in-depth study of a wide range of Indian paradigms of panentheism, both ancient and modern, and brings these paradigms into creative and constructive dialogue with Western traditions. This volume features original essays written by leading international scholars. The volume discusses a broad range of Indian panentheistic traditions, including the Upaniṣads, Bhedābheda Vedānta, Rāmānuja’s Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, Yogācāra Buddhism, and the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda tradition. The chapters connect these traditions with Western panentheistic conceptions developed by thinkers such as Spinoza, Berkeley, Schopenhauer, Krause, Royce, Tononi and Koch, and Western process philosophers. Panentheism in Indian and Western Thought will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of religion, Indian philosophy, comparative philosophy, and comparative religion.

Sree Narayana Guru, a Critical Study

Sree Narayana Guru, a Critical Study
Author: Vijayalayam Jayakumar
Publisher: D.K. Print World Limited
Total Pages: 482
Release: 1999
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

The Book Reconstructs The Life Of The Legendary Saint-Reformer, Sree Narayana Guru And The Entire Scenario Of His Activity Covering A Century Of Kerala S History. It Focuses On His Life, Historical Background, Socio-Cultural Milieu, Spirituality, Etc.

Minds Without Fear

Minds Without Fear
Author: Nalini Bhushan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190457597

Minds Without Fear is an intellectual and cultural history of India during the period of British occupation. It demonstrates that this was a period of renaissance in India in which philosophy--both in the public sphere and in the Indian universities--played a central role in the emergence of a distinctively Indian modernity. This is also a history of Indian philosophy. It demonstrates how the development of a secular philosophical voice facilitated the construction of modern Indian society and the consolidation of the nationalist movement. Authors Nalini Bhushan and Jay Garfield explore the complex role of the English language in philosophical and nationalist discourse, demonstrating both the anxieties that surrounded English, and the processes that normalized it as an Indian vernacular and academic language. Garfield and Bhushan attend to both Hindu and Muslim philosophers, to public and academic intellectuals, to artists and art critics, and to national identity and nation-building. Also explored is the complex interactions between Indian and European thought during this period, including the role of missionary teachers and the influence of foreign universities in the evolution of Indian philosophy. This pattern of interaction, although often disparaged as "inauthentic" is continuous with the cosmopolitanism that has always characterized the intellectual life of India, and that the philosophy articulated during this period is a worthy continuation of the Indian philosophical tradition.

Conceiving Cosmopolitanism

Conceiving Cosmopolitanism
Author: Steven Vertovec
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2003
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0199252289

In questioning what we share as human beings and whether we can ever live in peace with one another, the contributors to this study consider the multiple meanings of the term cosmopolitanism in the past and present. They then develop new ways of conceiving cosmopolitanism for the 21st century and beyond.

Veer Savarkar

Veer Savarkar
Author: Dhananjay Keer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2019
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9788179919767

SWATANTRYAVEER SAVARKAR needs no introduction to the Indian public, neither does his biography. Long ago, Asaf Ali described Savarkar as the spirit of Shivaji and the late Srinivas Sastri said of him that"" he was a great and fearless patriot and volumes could be written about his yeoman services in the cause of Indian Freedom"". This is, however, too small a volume to describe that spirit and those services adequately. Savarkar's life has already appeared in almost all Indian languages, and in his twenties it has appeared in almost all European languages. But excepting the great Marathi bio-graphy by S. L. Karandikar, who wrote it about seven years ago, no book has dealt exhaustively with the various facets of his life. Hence this is a humble attempt to give in detail the my riad sides of Savarkar's life in its proper historic perspective. This book provides a fuller survey of Savarkar's revolutionary, literary, political and social activities and movements. It also deals with his personal life, and covers his life upto the present moment. I have made a faithful attempt to present a true and correct picture of the various events and incidents that occurred in the life of Savarkar, and also the trends of thoughts and opinions entertained in those times. Most of them do not necessarily reflect my personal views. But they are narrated to record matters of mere history. To quote Sir Edmund Gosse, I have attempted ' to give a faithful portrait of a soul in its adventures through life'. Savarkar's life is romantic, epic and volcanic and so it is full of flashes and flames. Bharat has just shed her revolutionary shell, and entered an evolutionary phase. And a revolutionary realist as he is, Savarkar now in Free India naturally insists on the adoption of peaceful, constitutional and democratic means by the people for attaining their objectives. This was only a logical corollary to Savarkar's ideal as proclaimed in his historic work on ' 1857 '. My earnest appeal, therefore, to all lovers of Indian Freedom and true democracy is that they should go through this book

Indian Philosophy and Yoga in Germany

Indian Philosophy and Yoga in Germany
Author: Owen Ware
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2023-10-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1003807453

This book sheds new light on the fascinating – at times dark and at times hopeful – reception of classical Yoga philosophies in Germany during the nineteenth century. When debates over God, religion, and morality were at a boiling point in Europe, Sanskrit translations of classical Indian thought became available for the first time. Almost overnight India became the centre of a major controversy concerning the origins of western religious and intellectual culture. Working forward from this controversy, this book examines how early translations of works such as the Bhagavad Gītā and the Yoga Sūtras were caught in the crossfire of another debate concerning the rise of pantheism, as a doctrine that identifies God and nature. It shows how these theological concerns shaped the image of Indian thought in the work of Schlegel, Gunderrode, Humboldt, Hegel, Schelling, and others, lasting into the nineteenth century and beyond. Furthermore, this book explores how worries about the perceived nihilism of Yoga were addressed by key voices in the early twentieth century Indian Renaissance – notably Dasgupta, Radhakrishnan, and Bhattacharyya – who defended sophisticated counterreadings of their intellectual heritage during the colonial era. Written for non-specialists, Indian Philosophy and Yoga in Germany will be of interest to students and scholars working on nineteenth-century philosophy, Indian philosophy, comparative philosophy, Hindu studies, intellectual history, and religious history.