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Displaying: 1-20 of 209 documents


part - i
1. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 28
Gordon Haist Derrida’s Différance as Examined through the Thought of Carvaka and Pyrrho
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Jacques Derrida’s use of “non-concepts” such as the trace and différance shifts the practice of philosophy away from the presuppositions of Western metaphysics, which he sought to deconstruct. This essay contends that this inspires a dialogue with ancient India’s skeptical tradition that flourished from Carvaka to Pyrrho. Following Heidegger’s question of being, Derrida’s deconstruction rethought time, consciousness, perception, etc., in ways that give it a secure footing in ancient skepticism’s usage of epochē, nominalism, etc., to steer between the extremes of nihilism and teleological overdetermination. In both, the meaning of being has to be understood through the “play of the trace,” not the reverse.
2. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 28
J. Randall Groves Indianization in Indonesia
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We typically think of globalization as a modern phenomenon, but globalization in more modest forms occurs much earlier in history. The spread of Greek culture into the Mediterranean and later Europe is one case. The Indianization of Southeast Asia is another, and we can learn from these earlier cases. Just as modern globalization is a mixed economic and cultural phenomenon, so was the Indianization of Indonesia. In this paper I will examine the intersection of trade, religion and art as Indian culture enters Indonesia in the early centuries of the first millennia.
3. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 28
Catherine Ann Lombard “The Eternal Stranger Calls”: The Spiritual Philosophies of Rabindranath Tagore and Roberto Assagioli
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The spiritual philosophies of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the Bengali poet and Nobel Prize winner of Literature in 1913, and Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974), Italian psychiatrist and founder of psychosynthesis, are remarkably similar in their fundamental understanding of the relationship between the Infinite Self and the personal self. Tagore and Assagioli met in 1926 during Tagore’s visit to Italy.  Both were universalists and humanists, emphasizing action as well as contemplation as essential elements to uniting our finite selves with the Infinite. Despite their diverse cultural inheritances, each one experienced a similar evolutionary process in the formation of their visionary understanding of the transcendental personality of humankind.  
part - ii
4. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 28
Gordon Haist Derrida’s Trace: Global or Local?
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Jacques Derrida held that globalization has resulted in worldlessness. The problem is how to work out of its ethnocentric and logocentric cults of power and positioning. Derrida coined the nonword/non-concept “trace” to deconstruct the metaphysics of presence and to assert the universalizing potential of pre-logical heterogeneities, necessary for undermining the binary structure of reasoning. This paper argues that his focus on saving the honor of reason relates across time to Gangesa’s counterfactual reasoning and Bartŗhari’s treatment of Brahman as the eternal word. Given this universalized context, overcoming worldlessness requires reasoning reasonably, not categorically. Reason, Derrida says, must be reasoned with.
5. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 28
Maria Lehtimäki, Tommi Lehtonen Globalization’s Effects on the Value Base of the Finnish Core Curriculum: Perspectives of Cultural Heritage and Cultural Diversity
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What traits characterize the Finnish Core Curriculum’s approach to globalization? To answer this question, we examine the value base of both the previous and the current curriculum, paying attention to the shift between them. To map the traits, we adopt a two-fold understanding of globalization as something that both enriches and impoverishes cultures and create two perspectives (framings) that view globalization from these extremes. We find out that the aim expressed in the value base has shifted from educating the learner on the diversity of the domestic culture to educating them on intercultural communication skills, paving the way to a supranational culture.
6. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 28
John Herold Auteur Michael Powell’s Path to Globalization
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Michael Powell's "Black Narcissus" (1947) suggests an individualist path, an alternative to progressive diversity as well as cultural resistance to globalization. While the Anglican nuns largely fail because their ideals prevent expression of their needs and desires, Dip Rai is a young non-binary Indian assimilating British values into his own culture as he finds both love and purpose.
7. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 27
Juyan Zhang Mapping the Intertextuality between the 41 Verses and the Sūtra of Mahā-prajñāpāramitā Pronounced by Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva
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Edward Conze suggested that the first two chapters of the Ratnaguṇa (hereafter “the 41 verses”) were the earliest Mahāyāna text. Yet the origin of the verses and their relationship with other prajñāpāramitā texts have been murky. Through five levels of analysis, this research argues that the 41 verses were most likely the verse section of the Sūtra of Mahā-prajñāpāramitā Pronounced by Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva (SMPMB) and later became independent and expanded. The five levels of analysis are as follows. First, the Mahāyāna origin narratives, the Mahāyāna sutras, and ancient Indian Buddhist art all point to Mañjuśrī as the most likely architect of the prajñāpāramitā doctrine. Second, as an early Mahāyāna text, the SMPMB’s narrative shows that Mañjuśrī pronounced prajñāpāramitā and the Buddha sanctioned it. Third, the Tibetan Ratnaguṇa bears the line “Homage to Holy Mañjuśrī” in its beginning, and the text is usually found in conjunction with “The Recitation of Mañjuśrī’s Attributes.” Lexical items also show high parallelism between the 41 verses and the SMPMB. Fourth, a semantic intertextual analysis demonstrates full and complete intertextuality between the two texts. That is, the two texts can fully annotate each other. Finally, a content analysis of the references to the “one four-line verse” (yi si ju ji 一四句偈) in Mahāyāna texts indicates that it is most likely a corrupted reference to the 41 verses. The research further notes that intertextuality between the 41 verses and other prajñāpāramitā sutras cannot provide explanations for the observations in the above analysis, thus excluding alternative explanations. Finally, the research notes that how to attain wisdom deliverance was a widely explored subject from the Buddha’s time to the early schools. Mañjuśrī’s prajñāpāramitā doctrine is the most sophisticated interpretation of the Buddha’s teaching on “see things as they really are” and thus constituted the foundation of early Mahāyāna Buddhism.
8. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 27
Shai Tubali A Dialogue of Life and Death: Transformative Dialogue in the Katha Upanishad and Plato’s Phaedo
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The Phaedo’s intense preoccupation with the notions of self-liberation and self-transcendence in the face of death is strikingly reminiscent of Hindu and Buddhist philosophies. It is therefore not surprising that comparative philosophers have shown great interest in comparing this particular Platonic work to various South Asian texts: The Phaedo has been compared to the philosophy underlying yoga and Patanjali, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta, the canonical account of the Buddha’s final days. Of particular relevance is the Katha Upanishad, which shares with the Phaedo enough common features, both textual and structural and thematic, for a comparative analysis to be fruitful. These striking resemblances enable me to bring important dissimilarities in the dialogical processes into focus— dissimilarities which have much to convey to us philosophically. These dissimilarities demonstrate that although the two traditions engaged in transformative ideas and practices that centered on the liberation of the soul, there is still a substantial difference between the nature of the philosophy celebrated by the Greeks and the mystical thought developed by the Upanishadic sages.
9. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 27
Steven Tsoukalas Sixfold Pramāṇic Method in Śaṅkara’s and Rāmānuja’s Vedānta: Same Instruments, Opposing Symphonies
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Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja were not solely textists; nor were they merely existential metaphysicians; nor were they a combination of both. Rather, their epistemologies involve a sixfold use of vitally important sacred and secular pramāṇa-s as instruments in orchestrated fashion where symphonies of their respective ontologies are given to their listeners. With the two Vedāntins, no pramāṇa is in every case the lead instrument. Rather, they employ any of the six as lead instrument at various times, depending on the pedagogic and/or apologetic context, while the others support the melody played by the lead. The result for both teachers is a melodic epistemological opposed-to-the-other composition characterized by careful thought and use of the six pramāṇa-s, all with the goal of defending their respective traditions of Vedānta as the truth of the matter at hand—knowledge of Brahman.
10. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 27
Kisor K. Chakrabarti Are Cognitive States Self-revealing?
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This paper is historical and is devoted to an old controversy in the Indian philosophical tradition with the Vedantins (and others) holding that cognitive states are self-revealing and the Nyaya taking the opposite position. I have summarized the major Vedantin arguments for their viewpoint and offered a critique from the Nyaya perspective. This throws light on a major philosophical controversy in the Indian tradition, a controversy that has not been studied in-depth in the Western tradition. Notably the problem of induction, a major problem in contemporary epistemology, has been studied in-depth in the Western tradition since its introduction by David Hume in the 18th century but the said problem has been studied deeply in Indian tradition for centuries earlier. I have argued in my Classical Indian Philosophy of Induction (2010) that the older Indian contribution on this problem is fully relevant for the very best that contemporary philosophers have offered on this. I hope that this paper will draw the attention of contemporary Western epistemologists who would get involved in this critically important epistemological debate and address a lacuna in the Western tradition.
11. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 26
Gordon Haist Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: Human Rights in the Aporia of Justice
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Are human rights negotiable? Jacques Derrida argued that it is necessary to negotiate the nonnegotiable to save the nonnegotiable. This paper defends this claim while arguing for what Calvin Schrag called an ethics of the fitting response and finding such a response in Amartya Sen’s realization-focused comparative approach to justice. For Derrida, the aporetic character of urgency produces decisions which must be made outside the institutional limits of decision theory. That calls for a deconstruction of the axiomatics of rights in institutional settings. It also makes urgent the need for a deinstitutionalized ethics undeceived by the challenge of making judgments in aporias. Using Ted Honderich’s humanism as counterfoil, the argument moves through Derrida’s concept of "contradictory coherence" to Schrag’s transverse rationality, which thinks with deconstruction in order to think against its negative outcomes. The paper ends by suggesting that Schrag's communicative praxeology forges an ethics compatible with Sen’s threshold conditions to determine rights through freedoms.
12. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 26
Michael Allen Gandhi’s Metaphysics as Encountering the 'Unreasonable': Liberal Multiculturalism, Self-Suffering, and the Comedy-Satyagrahi
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In this article, I reconsider Gandhi's relationship to liberal democracy. I argue that a properly Gandhian approach to this relationship should emphasize the role of the satyagrahi facilitating conflict resolutions and progress in truth. Above all, this approach calls upon courageous, exemplary individuals to pass over and join the viewpoints of 'unreasonables' marginalized by the liberal state. However, I also argue that contemporary Gandhians should explore cultural adaptations of the satyagrahi-role appropriate to highly materialistic, multicultural liberal-democracies. In these societies, the traditional figure of the ascetic or saint may lack popular cultural resonance. Moreover, moral learning and spiritual insight often derives from popular culture and entertainment as much as religious traditions, or devotional practices. Contemporary Gandhi’s scholars should thus consider the prospects for 'alternative satyagrahis' embracing some materialist values and cultural motifs, as appropriate sources spiritual growth and soul-force.
13. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 26
Rana P. B. Singh Environmental Ethics and Sustainability in Indian Thought: Vision of Mahatma Gandhi
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Religion (dharma) plays a vital role in the Hindu (Sanatana) quest for understanding and practicing harmony between nature and humanity that result into the formation of a cosmological awakening, i.e. 'transcending the universe.' The importance and applicability of such new consciousness is a sign in promoting global humanism in the 21st century, where environmental ethics and sustainability are the wheels of making the future more humane and peaceful. Arne Naess, who coined the term 'deep ecology' conceiving humankind as an integral part of its environment, gives credit to Gandhi. Gandhi’s contributions help to re-awaken the human spirit to self-realisation, finally leading to revelation promoting human coexistence with nature sustainably, mostly through re-interpretation of Vedantic thought. Under the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) the ideas of Gandhi are recognised as a path that makes human coexistence stronger, feasible and co-sharedness, sustainable in peace and harmony with nature. This essay presents ecospiritual contextuality and its vitality concerning a sustainable perspective in line with Gandhi's vision and way of life.
14. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 26
John Harold Tagore: Global Author Through A Pepperean Lens
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The global reach of Tagore’s achievement can be freshly understood through a theory of purposive behavior by the American philosopher, Stephen C. Pepper. Pepper proposed dividing human purposes in three categories: conative achievement, and affective. Tagore’s prose fiction can fill out the theory with more complex and problematic examples towards a cross cultural ethics. His novels about the emerging professional class in India reveal the tensions between traditional values of the family and religious observance against individual efforts to fulfil desire, find pleasure, and be productive outside or in home life. The last completed prose fiction of the Bengali master presents a distinct challenge for critics and filmmakers as his longstanding sympathy for the plight of women may cause us to misread the rollickingly satirical "Laboratory" in which a scientist's legacy is fought over by a thoroughly corrupt mother and daughter.
15. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 26
Sthaneshwar Timalsina Rasāsvāda: A Comparative Approach to Emotion and the Self
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This paper explores the philosophy of emotion in classical India. Although some scholars have endeavored to develop a systematic philosophy of emotion based on rasa theory, no serious effort has been made to read the relationship between emotion and the self in light of rasa theory. This exclusion, I argue, is an outcome of a broader presupposition that the 'self' in classical Indian philosophies is outside the scope of emotion. A fresh reading of classical Sanskrit texts finds this premise baseless. With an underlying assumption that emotion and self are inherently linked, this paper explores similarities between the Indian and Chinese approaches.
16. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 26
Leigh Duffy Yoga, Ethics and Philosophy
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While yoga has come to be seen as more of an exercise than anything else in the West, the roots of yoga are similar to those of philosophy and religion. There is a philosophically rich view on the nature of the world, being, the nature of humanity, how we ought to live, and our place in the world. The theoretical part of yoga has been called a religion as well as a philosophy and this paper argues that it should be treated as a philosophy. Yoga gives reasons for the theoretical views, reasons for the practice, and encourages practitioners to continuously study, reflect, and search for knowledge of "eternal truths". This paper focuses on the ethical restraints of yoga – the yamas – in order to show the connections to the Dualistic metaphysical view of the universe and the epistemological goals expressed in The Yoga Sutras.
17. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 26
Kisor Kumar Chakrabarti Annotated Translation of Udayana's Aatmatattvaviveka
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One approaching a thing from a distance may perceive it as existent, then as a substance, then as a tree and, finally, as a fig tree. Thus, the same fig tree can be the object of all these different perceptions. This shows, Udayana argues, that difference in cognitive states does not necessarily prove that their objects are different. This argument is in response to the Buddhist claim that since perceptual cognitive states and non-perceptual cognitive states are different, their respective objects are also different; unique particulars (svalakSaNa) that alone are real, are grasped in perception; general features (saamaanyalakSaNa) that are not real are grasped in non-perceptual cognitive states. The Buddhist objects: when the same thing appears to be the object of different cognitive states, only that cognitive state which leads to useful result is reliable. Udayana replies: More than one cognitive state in the above situation may lead to useful result; it is not justified to accept only one of them as reliable and reject the others. The Buddhist objects again: perceptual awareness is direct but non-perceptual awareness is indirect: hence their objects are different. Udayana replies: The same thing may be perceived when there is sensory connection with it and then inferred from an invariably connected sign when there is no sensory connection. Thus, the same thing may be the object of both direct and indirect cognitive states depending on different causal conditions.
18. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 25
Kisor Kumar Chakrabarti, Tommi Lethonen The Self, Karma and Rebirth
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The paper has two main parts. The first part is devoted to the traditional Hindu viewpoint on the existence and permanence of the self as an immaterial substance. Various arguments offered by Hindu philosophers against the materialist view that the body is the self as well as arguments against the Buddhist view of the self as a stream of constantly changing states are discussed critically with reference to recent philosophical perspectives. The second part is devoted to the doctrine of karma and rebirth. A number of traditional arguments for the doctrine are studied analytically and critically as well as relevance of the doctrine for addressing the problem of evil that for many is a serious issue facing the creationist position. Finally, the major arguments of Plato who also held that the self is eternal and goes through reincarnation are critiqued from a comparative standpoint.
19. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 25
Panos Eliopoulos Human Rights, Compassion and the Issue of the Pure Motive in the Ethics of Schopenhauer and Buddhism
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This paper focuses on a specific area of interest within the philosophical system of Schopenhauer and Buddhism which is human rights, the concept of compassion and the issue of the pure motive behind human action. Both theories express pessimism regarding the transitoriness of life and the pain caused, and how this deprives man of inner peace. The common acknowledgment of the fact that human life entails great suffering guides the two philosophies into an awareness of the need for salvation. In their metaphysics, there is a number of similarities that conclude to the point that moral truthfulness is a principal virtue in human life, practically indispensable for right living. In this particular context, while compassion is highlighted as the main ethical factor, it is a question of paramount importance in these doctrines whether the motive behind the action is a motive concentrated on the Self or purely on the Other.
collected works of katyayanidas bhattacharya
20. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion: Volume > 25
Katyayanidas Bhattacharya Religious Consciousness
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The basis of religion lies in the nature of man as a thinking self-conscious being. As a thinking being, I can make my individual self and the world, which is opposed to it, the object of my thought and have the capacity to transcend the opposition and rise to a higher unity in which both these -- the self and not-self are comprehended as elements. It is by thought that we transcend the limits of finitude and share in a life which is universal and infinite, in which religion may be said to consist. Thought or self-consciousness is a universal principle in us and being universal, enables us to rise above our particularity and participate in the universal and absolute life or God.