Religion and the Philosophy of Life considers how religion as the source of civilization transforms the fundamental bio-sociology of humans through language and the somatic exploration of religious ritual and prayer. Gavin Flood offers an integrative account of the nature of the human, based on what contemporary scientists tell us, especially evolutionary science and social neuroscience, as well as through the history of civilizations. Part one contemplates fundamental questions and assumptions: what the current state of knowledge is concerning (...) life itself; what the philosophical issues are in that understanding; and how we can explain religion as the driving force of civilizations in the context of human development within an evolutionary perspective. It also addresses the question of the emergence of religion and presents a related study of sacrifice as fundamental to religions' views about life and its transformation. Part two offers a reading of religions in three civilizational blocks-India, China, and Europe/the Middle East-particularly as they came to formation in the medieval period. It traces the history of how these civilizations have thematised the idea of life itself. Part three then takes up the idea of a life force in part three and traces the theme of the philosophy of life through to modern times. On the one hand, the book presents a narrative account of life itself through the history of civilizations, and on the other presents an explanation of that narrative in terms of life.". (shrink)

This book argues that understandings and explanations of religion are always historically contingent.

The Importance of Religion reveals the significance of religion in modern times, showing how it provides people with meaning to their lives and helps guide them in their everyday moral choices Provides readers with a new understanding of religion, demonstrating how in its actions, texts and world views religion is enduring and vividly engages with the mystery of the world Offers striking arguments about the relationship of religion to science, art and politics Engagingly written by a highly respected scholar of (...) religion with an international reputation"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This 2004 book is about the ascetic self in the scriptural religions of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. The author claims that asceticism can be understood as the internalisation of tradition, the shaping of the narrative of a life in accordance with the narrative of tradition that might be seen as the performance of the memory of tradition. Such a performance contains an ambiguity or distance between the general intention to eradicate the will, or in some sense to erase the self, (...) and the affirmation of will in ascetic performance such as weakening the body through fasting. Asceticism must therefore be seen in the context of ritual. The book also offers a paradigm for comparative religion more generally, one that avoids the inadequate choices of either examining religions through overarching categories on the one hand and the abandoning of any comparative endeavour that focuses purely on area-specific study on the other. (shrink)

While there are overt philosophies of the person in both dualistic and non-dualistic Śaivism that developed their doctrines explicitly in relation to each other and to non-Śaiva traditions, especially Buddhism, many Śaiva texts exemplify what might be called a pre-philosophical discourse. Such works contain philosophical ideas but do not present systematic arguments and are often regarded as divine revelation. It is this layer of the articulation of concepts linked to practices that the paper exposes, which the arguments of the later (...) philosophers reflect upon and from which they develop. The claim here is that through an analysis of pre-philosophical literature, texts such as the Netra-tantra, we can build a picture of the conceptual universe of the early medieval period that forms the basis for the development of thinking by the later philosophers. One way of doing this is through the micro-study of particular textual passages and from that to build a larger picture of pre-philosophical discourse. (shrink)

While Ricoeur wishes to relate the concept of narrative to identity and ethics, Girard sees the development of ethical conscience in myth. This paper examines this difference, arguing that the implicitly universal human nature that he posits, driven by mimetic desire, compromises subjectivity as narrative identity, as developed in Ricoeur's work. This paper attempts to read Girard alongside Ricoeur, in order to suggest that there is a problematic tension implicit in Guard's work between subjectivity and drive. To do this, I (...) describe Ricoeur's understanding of mimesis and how this is related to truth and narrative identity. Then turning to Girard, I show how his linking of violence to truth repudiates the possibility of the attestation of truth as subjectivity. (shrink)

The Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā: The Earliest Surviving Śaiva Tantra, vol. 1: A Critical and Annotated Translation of the Mūlasūtra, Uttarasūtra and Nayasūtra. Edited by Dominic Goodall in collaboration with Alexis Sanderson and Harunaga Isaacson with contributions of NiraJan Kaflr, Diwakar Acharya, and others. Collection Indologie, no. 128, Early Tantra Series, no. 1. Pondichéry: institut Français de Pondichéry, Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient, Hamburg: Asien-Afrika-Institut, Universität Hamburg, 2015. Pp. 662. Rs. 1200, €52.

The Teachings of the Odd-Eyed One: A Study and Translation of the Vīrūpakṣapañcāśikā with the Commentary of Vidyācakravartin, by David Peter Lawrence, provides a critical translation and a philosophical and historical introduction to a work of the nondualistic Śaiva tradition of Kashmir, the Virūpakṣapañcasikha (VAP) with a commentary (Vivṛti) by Vidyācakravartin. The text was composed sometime during the twelfth century, probably in Kashmir judging from the Śārada manuscripts that remain, the terminus a quo being suggested by the use the text (...) makes of Abhinavagupta (ca. 950-1020 C.E.) and the terminus ad quem being the twelfth-century Mahārtha-mañjarīparimala by Maheśvarānanda, who quotes it. The text proclaims .. (shrink)

Early Tantric Vaiṣṇavism: Three Newly Discovered Works of the Pañcarātra, the Svāyambhuvapañcarātra, Devāmṛtapañcarātra and Aṣṭādaśavidhāna, Critically Edited from Their 11th and 12th Century Nepalese Palm Leaf Manuscripts. Edited with an introduction and notes by Diwakar Acharya. Collection Indologie, vol. 129, Early Tantra Series, vol. 2. Pondichéry and Hamburg: Institut Français de Pondichéry, École Française d’Extrême-Orient, Asien-Afrika-Institut, Universität Hamburg, 2015. Pp. lxxxvi + 229. Rs. 700, €30.

Book reviews: FLOOD, Gavin. Uma introdução ao Hinduísmo. Tradução de Dilip Loundo e Fernanda Winter. Juiz de Fora: Ed. da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, 2014, 428p. Book of English Gavin Flood, director of Hindus Studies Center at the University of Oxford, with translation by Dilip Loundo to Portuguese.

The problem of change recurs across Frantz Fanon's writings. As a philosopher, psychiatrist, and revolutionary, Fanon was deeply committed to theorizing and instigating change in all of its facets. Change is the thread that ties together his critical dialogue with Hegel, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche and his intellectual exchange with Césaire, Kojève, and Sartre. It informs his analysis of racism and colonialism, négritude and the veil, language and culture, disalienation and decolonization, and it underpins his reflections on Martinique, Algeria, the (...) Caribbean, Africa, the Third World, and the world at large. Gavin Arnall traces an internal division throughout Fanon's work between two distinct modes of thinking about change. He contends that there are two Fanons: a dominant Fanon who conceives of change as a dialectical process of becoming and a subterranean Fanon who experiments with an even more explosive underground theory of transformation. Arnall offers close readings of Fanon's entire oeuvre, from canonical works like Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth to his psychiatric papers and recently published materials, including his play, Parallel Hands. Speaking both to scholars and to the continued vitality of Fanon's ideas among today's social movements, this book offers a rigorous and profoundly original engagement with Fanon that affirms his importance in the effort to bring about radical change. (shrink)

A first in English, this book engages with the ways in which Hegel and Sartre answer the difficult questions: What is it to be human? What place do we have in the world? How should we live? What can we be?

This book explores the diverse understandings of the archaeological record in both historical and contemporary perspective, while also serving as a guide to reassessing current views. Gavin Lucas argues that archaeological theory has become both too fragmented and disconnected from the particular nature of archaeological evidence. The book examines three ways of understanding the archaeological record - as historical sources, through formation theory, and as material culture - then reveals ways to connect these three domains through a reconsideration of (...) archaeological entities and archaeological practice. Ultimately, Lucas calls for a rethinking of the nature of the archaeological record and the kind of history and narratives written from it. (shrink)

Prince of Networks is the rst treatment of Bruno Latour speci cally as a philosopher. Part One covers four key works that display Latour’s underrated contributions to metaphysics: Irreductions, Science in Action, We Have Never Been Modern, and Pandora’s Hope. Harman contends that Latour is one of the central gures of contemporary philosophy, with a highly original ontology centred in four key concepts: actants, irreduction, translation, and alliance.

Big Data has been variously defined in the literature. In the main, definitions suggest that Big Data possess a suite of key traits: volume, velocity and variety, but also exhaustivity, resolution, indexicality, relationality, extensionality and scalability. However, these definitions lack ontological clarity, with the term acting as an amorphous, catch-all label for a wide selection of data. In this paper, we consider the question ‘what makes Big Data, Big Data?’, applying Kitchin’s taxonomy of seven Big Data traits to 26 datasets (...) drawn from seven domains, each of which is considered in the literature to constitute Big Data. The results demonstrate that only a handful of datasets possess all seven traits, and some do not possess either volume and/or variety. Instead, there are multiple forms of Big Data. Our analysis reveals that the key definitional boundary markers are the traits of velocity and exhaustivity. We contend that Big Data as an analytical category needs to be unpacked, with the genus of Big Data further delineated and its various species identified. It is only through such ontological work that we will gain conceptual clarity about what constitutes Big Data, formulate how best to make sense of it, and identify how it might be best used to make sense of the world. (shrink)

By means of a chapter-by-chapter textual analysis of the Proslogion, Ortlund makes the case that Anselm's goal, far more than an argument for God's existence, is a meditation on God as the chief happiness of the human soul.

This book explores 'difficult conversations' in feminist theory as an integral part of social and theoretical transformations. Focussing on intersectionality within feminist theory, this book critically addresses questions of power and difference as a central feminist concern, rather than assuming that the needs and experiences of elite women apply to all women. It presents ethical, political, social, and emotional dilemmas while negotiating difficult conversations, particularly in terms of sexuality, class, 'race', ethnicity, and cross-identification between the researcher and researched. Topics covered (...) include challenging cultural relativism; queer marginalisation; research and affect; and feminism and the digital realm. This book is aimed primarily at students, lecturers and researchers interested in epistemology, research methodology, gender, identity, and social theory. The interdisciplinary nature of the book is aimed at reaching the broadest possible audience, including those engaged with feminist theory, anthropology, social policy, sociology, psychology, and geography. (shrink)

Cohen’s (2023) mapping exercise of possible bioethical issues emerging from the use of ChatGPT in medicine provides an informative, useful, and thought-provoking trigger for discussions of AI ethic...

We give an overview of the practice of developing and using complex climate models, as seen from experiences in a major climate modelling center and through participation in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. We discuss the construction and calibration of models; their evaluation, especially through use of out-of-sample tests; and their exploitation in multi-model ensembles to identify biases and make predictions. We stress that adequacy or utility of climate models is best assessed via their skill against more naïve predictions. The (...) framework we use for making inferences about reality using simulations is naturally Bayesian, and has many points of contact with more familiar examples of scientific epistemology. While the use of complex simulations in science is a development that changes much in how science is done in practice, we argue that the concepts being applied fit very much into traditional practices of the scientific method, albeit those more often associated with laboratory work. (shrink)

Today’s bodies are akin to ‘walking sensor platforms’. Bodies either host, or are the subjects of, an array of sensing devices that act to convert bodily movements, actions and dynamics into circulative data. This article proposes the notions of ‘disembodied exhaust’ and ‘embodied exhaustion’ to conceptualise processes of bodily sensorisation and datafication. As the material body interfaces with networked sensor technologies and sensing infrastructures, it emits disembodied exhaust: gaseous flows of personal information that establish a representational data-proxy. It is this (...) networked actant that progressively structures how embodied subjects experience their daily lives. The significance of this symbiont medium in determining the outcome of interplays between networked individuals and audiences necessitates that it is carefully contrived. The article explores the nature and function of the data-proxy, and its impact on social relations. Drawing on examples that depict individuals engaging with their data-proxies, the article suggests that managing a virtual presence is analogous to a work relation, demanding diligence and investment. But it also shows how the data-proxy operates as a mode of affect that challenges conventional distinctions made between organic and inorganic bodies, agency and actancy, mortality and immortality, presence and absence. (shrink)

This paper explores the embedding of data producing technologies in people's everyday lives and practices. It traces how repeated encounters with digital data operate to naturalise these entities, while often blindsiding their agentive properties and the ways they get implicated in processes of exploitation and governance. I propose and develop the notion of ‘data doxa’ to conceptualise the way in which digital data – and the devices and platforms that stage data – have come to be perceived in Western societies (...) as normal, necessary and enabling. The ‘data doxa’ concept also accentuates the enculturation of many individuals into a data sharing habitus which frames digital technologies in simplistic terms as panaceas for the problems associated with contemporary life, figures of progress and convenience, and mediums of knowledge, pleasure and identity. I suggest that three types of data-based relations contribute to the formation of this doxic sensibility: fetishisation, habit and enchantment. Each of these relations come to mediate public understandings of digital devices and the data they generate, obscuring the multifaceted nature and hidden depths of data and their propensity to double up as technologies of exposure and discipline. As a result of this situation, imaginative educational programs and revamped regulatory frameworks are urgently needed to inform individuals about the contribution of data to the leveraging of value and power in today's digital economies, but also to protect them from experiencing data-based harms. (shrink)

Addresses the connections between self-love and self-governance in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and defends three related theses. Accordingly, the book provides a systematic account of Aquinas's thoughts on the nature of a person's self-experience and the role that experience plays in self-governance.

In 2006, a WHO survey found evidence of a substantial increase in patient-led litigation against health authorities and funders over access to medicines around the world. New Zealanders have seldom litigated denials of access to health care. Part of the explanation lies in the fact that New Zealand has a legislated patients' "bill of rights", with enforcement through a complaints mechanism. Although the separate regime does not afford patients substantive legal protection in respect of complaints about lack of access to (...) care, this form of alternative, low-level resolution of health care disputes does condition disgruntled patients not to turn to the courts for legal redress in relation to their rights. But given the increasing need for prioritization arising from serious concern about the sustainability of the public health system, as well as a trend towards greater explicitness when it occurs, increased disappointment on behalf of patients and the public when care is denied or limited seems inevitable. This may well translate into increased patient-led litigation against health boards and funders. Part 1 provides an overview of the New Zealand health system, with a focus on the points at which resource allocation decisions are made, the identity of the decision-maker, and the methods by which priority-setting occurs. Part 1.1 describes inequalities between population groups in New Zealand, both in health outcomes and in access to health care. Part 2 describes the legal framework surrounding the health and disability sector, and discusses the lack of legislated rights to health and the limited right of access to health care in legislation, despite the existence of a legally enforceable Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers' Rights. (shrink)