Jan Olof Bengtsson

Here is the abstract of my paper ‘Christian and Vedantic Personalism: The Nature and Cause of the Difference’, which, in my absence (the Covid situation, chaos at European airports), was presented at the 16th International Conference of Persons in Mexico City in early August:

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What could perhaps, with proper explanations, be called “Vedantic personalism” has been introduced on a few occasions at the International Conference on Persons, and most fully in a panel at Lund in Sweden in 2013; it has also in fact been briefly mentioned by a few Western personalist thinkers ever since the 19th century. In this paper, I will point to what I find to be the central difference between western, Christian personalism and such Vedantic personalism, and provide a basic account of what I regard as its main historical cause, namely the specific features which define the general view of the human being in at least “exoteric”, orthodox Abrahamitic and, in some respects, specifically Christian religion and theology. This will be a kind of introduction to a further exploration of some manifestations of this difference and of its influence throughout the western theology and philosophy that have been relevant to personalism, an exploration which will also highlight points or moments which nonetheless, due in large part to the different influence of Greek idealism, to some extent approximate Vedantic personalism.

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Although I have continued to attend conferences, this is my first paper since, as I mentioned here, I had to leave the academy in 2015.