What are the preconditions of interreligious dialogue? How do philosophical reflections help today a religiously plural society to live in harmony, peace and sustainable development? In this paper I deal with these questions in the light of Swami Vivekananda’s concept of Universal Religion and try to search for a philosophical model of interreligious dialogue. Vivekananda propounds that we are to go beyond tolerance, and accept other religions as good as our own. Vivekananda’s interpretation has also the implication of transcending various (...) commonly known worldviews in the context of religion and culture. It strengthens the application of the principle of “live and let live.” This model of understanding does not regard the existence of other religions as a hindrance to worldly progress and peace. This attitude is rather guided by a practical plan which does not allow for questioning the encountering of religion. It does not destroy the individuality of any man in religion and at the same time shows him a point of union with all others. Our analysis will develop the significance and relevance of this view. (shrink)

There is no greater threat today to the security of life on this earth than environmental degradation covering all aspects of Nature—plants, animals and human. It is imperative to take interest in a future which lies beyond the boundary of our short-sighted outlook and self-interests. Non-western and indigenous cultural approaches to environmental issues are relevant today. Following Buddhist Ethics we can extend love, compassion, and non-violence in practice and limit our greed, and also we can take interest in protecting the (...) right to happiness of future generations. In the light of the ethical teachings contained in the texts of Buddhism, I propose two different methodological models, namely the “Honey-Bee Model” and “Mother-Child Model,” for addressing an ideal relation between humans and Nature. The Buddhist approach to environmental issues is based on the law of Dependent Origination and the theory of Not-Self or Relational Self. I shall also argue that Buddha’s teaching integrates all aspects of the ecosphere—individuals and general species—in terms of mutual interdependence, which in a sense an attempt to institutionalize care and welfare ethics beyond the human domain to also reach the animal and plant worlds. This paper is an attempt to address current ecological problems from the moral perspective of Buddhism. (shrink)

This special issue on Indian logic consists of nine research papers dealing with different aspects of Indian logic by nine distinguished authors. It is divided into three sections, such as Nyāya logic, Buddhist logic and Jaina logic. The papers deal with the issue of inference and allied concepts from both historical and conceptual considerations. Indian logic followed linguistic model and thereby in India it gives the foundation of epistemology and the development of philosophy of language.

Study of the last chapter of Tattvopaplavasiṁha, text on Cārvāka school of philosophy; includes text with English translation.

Violence, as a concept, has shaped most of human history and discourse. Over the centuries, the concept has gone through dynamic evolutions and should be understood in relation to diverse agents such as nation, nostalgia, and culture. Modern society’s tendency to impede and constrain overt forms of violence has paved the way for covert forms to exist in socio-cultural spheres. Cultural violence is one such realization where aggression gets exercised covertly through heterogenous mediums such as language, regulations, mass media, and (...) most importantly cultural practices. Its topological structures can be traced in national imagination and a sense of cultural nostalgia originating out of it, that ultimately formulates cultural “otherness.” In Gandhian philosophy, the absence of physical aggression is insignificant, if not complemented with the eradication of violence from the cultural and intellectual strata. Gandhi’s critique of exclusive nationalism and narrowness is reflective of a distinct kind of cultural topology that generates structural violence and with the due course of history it gets legitimacy to exert power over the cultural binary it constructed. The fundamental questions of the paper are associated with assessing the role of national imagination and cultural imperatives in germinating the structures of violence in culture, exclusive nationalism, and Gandhian reconsideration of peace in the context of covert violence in the material and intellectual realms. (shrink)

The book is full of insights for undergraduate, post-graduate and research students of Philosophy and all those who are interested in the Philosophy of religion and ethics of Wittgenstein.

Commentary on Avayava, portion of Tattvacintāmaṇi dealing with syllogism (avayava) work of the Navya-nyaya school in Indic philosophy by Gaṅgeśa, 13th cent.

No one in twentieth-century analytic philosophy was more preoccupied with the issues of ethics and religion than Ludwig Wittgenstein. In an age when religion has remained a prominent force, contrary to what some would have thought a hundred years ago, it is not surprising to see a book on Wittgenstein's concern with ethics and religion by a group of Indian philosophers. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Ethics and Religion, edited by Kali Charan Pandey—a collection of fifteen essays, some of which were presented (...) at a conference—is divided into three sections; the first provides a broad outline while the other two deal with the issues of ethics and religion, respectively. The editor has written a detailed introduction to the .. (shrink)

Teachings of the various leaders of the Radhasoami Satsang.

There are two major ways in which Buddhist logic is developed. The first one is represented by Nāgārjuna-Candrakῑrti tradition through the use of dialectics and the second way of development is found in the works of Diṅnāga and Dharmakῑrti through the use of hetu (probans). This second way of logic has further been developed by the works of Jinendrabuddhi and Ratnakῑrti. The paper is an attempt to show the historical development of epistemic logic as developed by the Buddhist philosophers and (...) their relevance for our time. (shrink)

Rasa, Dhvani and Rasa-Dhvani are the major critical terms in Sanskrit poetics that developed during the post-Vedic classical period. Rasa is used by a sage named Bharata to denote the aesthetic experience of a theatrical audience. But Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta intermedialize this experience by extending it to a reader of poetry. They argue that rasa is also generated by a linguistic potency called dhvani. Some critics like Bhoja also proposed generation of rasa by pictorial art, and further, some modern critics (...) propose to trace dhvani property in non-verbal arts such as dance and music pleading thereby that these non-verbal arts also generate rasa. The present essay examines these arguments and concludes that generation of rasa is confined to only the audio-visual and verbal arts such as the theatre and poetry, and, dhvani as a specific linguistic potency, is strictly confined to the verbal arts. Its intermedialization is a contradiction in terms. (shrink)

Contributed articles presented at the National Seminar "Vaisnavism as a Religio-Philosophical Movement" held on April 1999 at Institute of Orissan Culture, Bhubaneswar, India.

Research papers outcome of a seminar organised by the Asiatic Society, Kolkata on 18-19 February 2008.

Ocherk 1. Voprosy ontologii -- Ocherk 2. Voprosy ėtiki i ėstetiki -- Ocherk 3. Voprosy gnoseologii i aksiologii.

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people suffer (...) according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own thought processes. Yanofsky describes (...) simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve; perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense; different levels of infinity; the bizarre world of the quantum; the relevance of relativity theory; the causes of chaos theory; math problems that cannot be solved by normal means; and statements that are true but cannot be proven. He explains the limitations of our intuitions about the world -- our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there. (shrink)

Study of Hans-Georg Gadamer's and Julius Stenzel's interpretations of Plato.