This article is about a spiritual response to environmental crisis, an emerging field of ethics that joins ecology and environmentalism with the awareness of sacred within the creation2. It investigates into the Vedic texts for finding out the philosophical attitude about the earth and our spiritual obligations and responsibilities to the planet in resolving environmental issues. In the vedic-tradition3, it is the course of experiencing nature as spiritual presence and the awareness to it about our conduct as the moral and (...) rational being. It is a world view that values all that in totality is called “nature” that is, generally, taken as “other” in contrast to human, as existence or spirit. The ethics of respect to “others”, against the effects of imperialistic, ideological conflicts, religious terrorism, industrial, atomic and corporate pollutions, must be worked out as a remedy. The basic argument of spiritual ecology lies in the view that we can find no God more than the spirit abiding in all units of the globe. One must have the view of spirit as ubiquitous principle in treating with and enjoying our needs with the things that the nature permeates as gifts of his care to it. Thus, spiritual ecology of the Vedic tradition has a therapeutic importance; it helps in cultivating our conduct and overcoming the fear of a risk against living on the earth. I am of the view that the rationality of a man and that of a nation is to be determined in proportion to the cultivation and progress of attitude and treatment with “other” but not the vice versa. (shrink)

Sanskrit research articles on Hindu philosophy and controbution of Assam to Sanskrit literature.

Fifty-five documents in a western-Himalayan language dealing with land, pilgrimage, legality and temple-economy are presented. They explicate how ‘lesser states’ patronized numerous shrines and the role of Nath-Siddha-ascetics in creating consent-to-rule, and constructing hybridity between the Hindu and Tibetan-Buddhist traditions.

ZusammenfassungDer Artikel untersucht die vielfältigen Bemühungen des Akademikers Devendra Nath Bannerjea im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, durch die Bereitstellung von nützlichem Wissen für den Staat, Arbeit zu finden. Bannerjea, der aus dem Punjab im Nordwesten Indiens stammte, war über London, Genf und Rom nach Berlin gekommen. Er lässt sich nur schwer (politisch) verorten: weder war er ein nationalsozialistischer Wissenschaftler, noch kann er vorrangig als indischer antikolonialer Nationalist verstanden werden. In den mehr als vier Jahrzehnten, die er in Europa verbrachte, nahm (...) er ganz verschiedene Rollen, als antikolonialer Rebell, falscher Diplomat, Wissenschaftler oder Professor, ein. Trotz seiner Anstellungen in verschiedenen Bildungsinstitutionen, seiner Publikationen und politischen und wissenschaftlichen Netzwerke blieb Bannerjea ein akademischer Außenseiter und politischer Aktivist der zweiten Reihe. Seine radikalen Ideen und sein Anspruch auf intellektuellen Egalitarismus, und mehr noch seine ‚kreativen‘ Bemühungen die eigenen prekären Lebensumstände zu verbessern, führten zu wiederholten Konflikten, zunächst mit britischen und später mit deutschen Behörden.Bannerjea’s Leben und Arbeit werden hier herangezogen, um die Beziehung zwischen Wissensproduktion und Politik des nationalsozialistischen Staates zu untersuchen. Dabei fokussiert der Beitrag auf den Austausch von Ressourcen zwischen Bannerjea und den nationalsozialistischen Behörden und fragt unter Einbezug seiner Lebensumstände, welches konkrete Wissen Bannerjea lieferte und was er für seine Expertise vom Regime erhielt. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Globally, family firms are the dominant organizational form. Family involvement in business and unique family dynamics impacts organizational strategy and performance. However, family control of business has rarely been adopted as a discriminating variable in the organizations and the natural environment (ONE) research field. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior we develop a conceptual framework of the drivers of proactive environmental strategy (PES) in family firms. We argue that family involvement in business influences the attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived (...) behavioral control of a firm’s dominant coalition. Together these factors determine the extent of the dominant coalition’s intentions to undertake PES. Further, family firms with lower levels of relationship conflict within the controlling family will be more successful in translating the dominant coalition’s intentions to allocate resources for the pursuit of PES. Research implications of the theory are discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Globally, family firms are the dominant organizational form. Family involvement in business and unique family dynamics impacts organizational strategy and performance. However, family control of business has rarely been adopted as a discriminating variable in the organizations and the natural environment (ONE) research field. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior we develop a conceptual framework of the drivers of proactive environmental strategy (PES) in family firms. We argue that family involvement in business influences the attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived (...) behavioral control of a firm’s dominant coalition. Together these factors determine the extent of the dominant coalition’s intentions to undertake PES. Further, family firms with lower levels of relationship conflict within the controlling family will be more successful in translating the dominant coalition’s intentions to allocate resources for the pursuit of PES. Research implications of the theory are discussed. (shrink)

The western consensus is that obese women are considered attractive by Afro-Americans and by many societies from nonwestern developing countries. This belief rests mainly on results of nonstandardized surveys dealing only with body weight and size, ignoring body fat distribution. The anatomical distribution of female body fat as measured by the ratio of waist to hip circumference (WHR) is related to reproductive age, fertility, and risk for various major diseases and thus might play a role in judgment of attractiveness. Previous (...) research (Singh 1993a, 1993b) has shown that in the United States Caucasian men and women judge female figures with feminine WHRs as attractive and healthy. To investigate whether young Indonesian and Afro-American men and women rate such figures similarly, female figures representing three body sizes (underweight, normal weight, and overweight) and four WHRs (two feminine and two masculine) were used. Results show that neither Indonesian nor Afro-American subjects judge overweight figures as attractive and healthy regardless of the size of WHR. They judged normal weight figures with feminine WHRs as most attractive, healthy, and youthful. The consensus on women’s attractiveness among Indonesian, Afro-American, and U.S. Caucasian male and female subjects suggests that various cultural groups have similar criteria for judging the ideal woman’s shape. (shrink)

The first question of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae makes the argument that sacred doctrine is an Aristotelian science and, furthermore, the most certain of the sciences. According to Aristotle, this means that the first principles of sacred science must be certain. The normal modes of grasping the certainty of principles are either by demonstrating them by a higher science or by a direct grasp of them by the natural light of the agent intellect. Both of these avenues, however, are closed (...) to sacred science. It would seem, then, that if sacred doctrine is a science, it can have no scientists in the wayfaring state. Aquinas unties this knot by proposing a third way of grasping the certainty of the first principles, namely, by faith. Only by the supernatural and graced assent of faith can the articles of faith be known as certain and allow sacred doctrine to fit into the mold of an Aristotelian science. (shrink)

The first question of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae makes the argument that sacred doctrine is an Aristotelian science and, furthermore, the most certain of the sciences. According to Aristotle, this means that the first principles of sacred science must be certain. The normal modes of grasping the certainty of principles are either by demonstrating them by a higher science or by a direct grasp of them by the natural light of the agent intellect. Both of these avenues, however, are closed (...) to sacred science. It would seem, then, that if sacred doctrine is a science, it can have no scientists in the wayfaring state. Aquinas unties this knot by proposing a third way of grasping the certainty of the first principles, namely, by faith. Only by the supernatural and graced assent of faith can the articles of faith be known as certain and allow sacred doctrine to fit into the mold of an Aristotelian science. (shrink)

In Xenophon’s Socratic literature, there is repeated emphasis on the utility the friends provide one another. One extended passage, _Memorabilia_ 2.6, shows that Socrates takes a good person to care about a friend both for the benefits to be gained for oneself and for the sake of the other’s welfare. Genuine friendship, for Socrates, is not transactional or self-interested but rather rooted in the mutual benefit that only good people can provide one another.

Sentiment analysis is the field of natural language processing to analyze opinionated data, for the purpose of decision making. An opinion is a statement about a subject which expresses the sentiments as well as the emotions of the opinion makers on the topic. In this paper, we develop a sentiment analysis tool namely SENTI-METER. This tool estimates the success rate of social campaigns based on the algorithms we developed that analyze the sentiment of word as well as blog. Social campaigns (...) have a huge impact on the mindset of people. One such campaign was launched in India on October 2, 2014, named Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Our tool computes an elaborated analysis of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, which examines the success rate of this social campaign. Here, we performed the location-wise analysis of the campaign and predict the degree of polarity of tweets along with the monthly and weekly analysis of the tweets. The experiments were conducted in five phases namely extraction and preprocessing of tweets, tokenization, sentiment evaluation of a line, sentiment evaluation of a blog and analysis. Our tool is also capable of handling transliterated words. Unbiased tweets were extracted from Twitter related to this specific campaign, and on comparing with manual tagging we were able to achieve 84.47 % accuracy using unigram machine learning approach. This approach helps the government to implement the social campaigns effectively for the betterment of the society. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of body fat distribution as measured by waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) on the judgment of women’s physical attractiveness. It presents evidence that WHR is correlated with a woman’s reproductive endocrinological status and long-term health risk. Three studies were conducted to investigate whether humans have perceptual and cognitive mechanisms to utilize the WHR to infer attributes of women’s health, youthfulness, attractiveness, and reproductive capacity. College-age as well as older subjects of both sexes rank female figures with normal (...) weight and low WHR as attractive and assign to them higher reproductive capability. The study concludes that WHR is a reliable and honest signal of a woman’s reproductive potential. The adaptive significance of body fat distribution and its role in mate selection is also discussed. (shrink)

Comments on: JRE Focus on The 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights, Journal of Religious Ethics 26.2 “Rethinking Human Rights: A Review Essay on Religion, Relativism, and Other Matters” by David Little, Journal of Religious Ethics 27.1.

Comparative study of Indic philosophy and religion, from Jaina viewpoint.

On the fundamentals of Jaina philosophy.

Machine generated contents note: Foreword ix -- Preface xi. -- Introduction xiii -- CHAPTER I -- The Concept of God 1 -- CHAPTER I -- The Case for God 15 -- CHAPER m -- The Case Against God 31 -- CHAPTER IV -- God, Suffering and Human Beings 37 -- CHAPTER V -- Revelation, Faith and Knowledge 47 -- CHAPTER VI -- Epistemology and Ontology 63 -- CHAER VII -- Religious Language 77 -- CHAPTER v -- Religious Language and Truth (...) 89 -- CHAPTER IX -- The Problem of Religious Pluralism 109 -- CHAPTER X -- Human Destiny: Western Perspectives 121 -- CHAPTER XI -- Human Destiny: Indic Perspectives 135 -- Recommended Reading .153. (shrink)

The dissertation analyzes the ontological and epistemological arguments that motivate Plato's theory of Forms.

The phenomenon of dreamless sleep and its philosophical consequences, particularly deep sleep's relevance to such issues as Self, Consciousness, Personal Identity, Unity of Subject, and Disembodied Life, are explored through a discussion, in varying detail, of certain noted doctrines and views--for example of Advaita Vedānta, Hegel, and H. D. Lewis. Finally, with a cue from Leibniz and McTaggart, the suggestion is made that at no stage during sleep is the self without some perceptions, however indeterminate. Support for this hypothesis is (...) claimed from the current psychoanalytic opinion that mental activity does not cease during any part of sleep and that human beings continue to dream even in the so-called dreamless state. (shrink)

This chapter examines the case for health care policies aimed at holding obese individuals responsible for their weight and for obesity-related health issues. In particular, it considers the merits of two arguments for policies that would seek to make obese individuals bear some of the higher health care costs associated with being that way. On the fairness argument, it is claimed that such policies would serve the interests of fairness by holding obese individuals to account for irresponsible lifestyle choices that (...) are linked to their higher weight and its associated health risks. On the public health promotion argument, it is claimed that adopting such policies could produce impressive public health benefits: encouraging people to make healthier lifestyle choices, reducing obesity rates, and reducing obesity-related health care spending. Both arguments face serious objections. Contrary to the fairness argument, policies aimed at holding obese individuals responsible for their weight or for related health problems would neither treat people as they deserve to be treated nor make the distribution of health care resources fairer. And contrary to the public health promotion argument, those policies would not produce better health outcomes for society at large. Indeed, they would tend to do just the opposite. Reflection on the shortcomings of those arguments reveals that their conclusion is false: society should not adopt policies aimed at holding obese individuals responsible for their weight or for obesity-related health problems. (shrink)

Given the popularity and success of the Hindu-Right in India's electoral politics today, how may one study ostensibly 'Western' concepts and ideas, such as the secular and its family of cognates, like secularism, secularisation and secularity in non-Western societies without assuming them simply as derivative, or colonial legacies or contrast cases of Western societies? While recognizing that the dominant language of political modernity of Western societies is not easily translatable in non-Western societies, The Secular Imaginary elaborates upon an intellectual history (...) of secularity in modern India by focusing on the two most influential political leaders – M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. It is an intellectual history of both idea(s) and intellectuals, which sheds light on Indian narratives of secularity – the Gandhian sarva dharma samabhava, Nehruvian secularism, and unity in diversity. It revisits this dominant narrative of secularity of the twentieth century that influenced and shaped the imagination of the modern nation-state. (shrink)

Most of the papers presented at the worshop held at Calcutta.

The role of various organizational pressures in influencing performance of firms has been an interesting research topic in a variety of fields and has received the attention of researchers working in the field of environmental strategy. Although there are previous studies that have looked at the influence of various pressures in influencing firms’ environmental strategies, our study provides a more holistic analysis considering a variety of such pressures in a single framework. We discuss a research study to analyze how pressures (...) from internal and external stakeholders of a firm, economic pressures, environmental regulations, and pressures of environmental compliance have affected environmental performance of firms using data collected from manufacturing firms in the United Kingdom. We have found that internal stakeholders provide the greatest impact in shaping environmental performance of firms, closely followed by economic pressures, environmental regulations, and external stakeholders in that order. Fears of penalties due to environmental compliance have the least impact, although this pressure also has a positive and significant impact on environmental performance. (shrink)