Jag har kort förklarat mitt principiella förhållningssätt (som också implicerar förklaringen av hur ett sådant, d.v.s. det självt, är möjligt) till den omfattande, hårda och detaljerade personliga kritik som författare och tänkare av Bruntons slag åtminstone tidigare nästan undantagslöst blev föremål för. Det är möjligt att jag bör återkomma med en utförligare redovisning av det.
Dålig bokbild denna gång, med ljusreflexer.
Oxford University Press, 2022
Publisher’s Description:
Swami Vivekananda, the nineteenth-century Hindu monk who introduced Vedanta to the West, is undoubtedly one of modern India’s most influential philosophers. Unfortunately, his philosophy has too often been interpreted through reductive hermeneutic lenses. Typically, scholars have viewed him either as a modern-day exponent of Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta or as a “Neo-Vedantin” influenced more by Western ideas than indigenous Indian traditions. In Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism, Swami Medhananda rejects these prevailing approaches to offer a new interpretation of Vivekananda’s philosophy, highlighting its originality, contemporary relevance, and cross-cultural significance. Vivekananda, the book argues, is best understood as a cosmopolitan Vedantin who developed novel philosophical positions through creative dialectical engagement with both Indian and Western thinkers.
Inspired by his guru Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda reconceived Advaita Vedanta as a nonsectarian, life-affirming philosophy that provides an ontological basis for religious cosmopolitanism and a spiritual ethics of social service. He defended the scientific credentials of religion while criticizing the climate of scientism beginning to develop in the late nineteenth century. He was also one of the first philosophers to defend the evidential value of supersensuous perception on the basis of general epistemic principles. Finally, he adopted innovative cosmopolitan approaches to long-standing philosophical problems. Bringing him into dialogue with numerous philosophers past and present, Medhananda demonstrates the sophistication and enduring value of Vivekananda’s views on the limits of reason, the dynamics of religious faith, and the hard problem of consciousness.
Reviews:
“I conclude that Medhananda has done an excellent job presenting the thought of Vivekananda and locating it in the debates of both his Indian and British contemporaries.”
Peter Forrest, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion
“Swami Medhananda’s most recent book promises to revolutionize the study of the thought of Swami Vivekananda. In this volume, Medhananda, among other things, argues that Swami Vivekananda, like his revered guru, Sri Ramakrishna, was a highly original thinker who did not simply restate Advaita Vedānta, but put forth a radically new model of religious pluralism whose implications are not yet fully grasped or appreciated by philosophers of religion today … Swami Medhananda’s is the first which has been attentive to the chronology of Swami Vivekananda’s writings and lectures. When these materials are viewed chronologically, one can see an unfolding of Swami Vivekananda’s thought in a way that is not otherwise possible.”
Jeffery D. Long , Samvit
“In his lucid and accessible book, Swami Medhananda expounds Vivekananda’s philosophy, locating it in both the Indian and Western intellectual debates, and establishing his originality and enduring relevance … Medhananda is a meticulous scholar, engaging not merely with those in the canon, such as Kant and John Stuart Mill, but many other philosophers, such as William Hamilton and Herbert Spencer, who are not as widely read as they should be … Medhananda exhibits Vivekananda as an original epistemologist anticipating later trends … In the last section … Medhananda makes a good case that contemporary epistemologists of religion should take note of Vivekananda’s contributions … Medhananda has done an excellent job presenting the thought of Vivekananda and locating it in the debates of both his Indian and British contemporaries. Even when his philosophy is open to objection it is original and thought-provoking.”
Peter Forrest, University of New England, Australia
“Medhananda also demonstrates that Vivekananda makes vital contributions to current philosophical debates … He offers an original solution to the hard problem of consciousness.”
J. M. Fritzman, CHOICE
“Swami Medhananda’s Swami Vivekananda’s Vedantic Cosmopolitanism (Oxford University Press) is an extraordinary achievement. A brilliant, deep and searching exploration of Swami Vivekananda, this may be the best book in English on philosophical debates in modern Hinduism, and philosophy of religion more generally.”
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Princeton University
“This is the first, and by far the best, analytical study of the original philosophy of Swami Vivekananda – who was not just a preacher, mystic, and orator, but a critical Kantian Vedāntist. Meticulously engaging with cutting-edge twenty-first century epistemological debates on testimony of spiritual experiences and with late nineteenth-century metaphysical debates about the relation between God and the world, this work establishes Vivekananda as a major modern systematic philosopher and perhaps the first ‘fusion philosopher’ of the world. Combining profound textual scholarship with lucid, argument-rich writing, it should become a must-read textbook of world philosophy.”
Arindam Chakrabarti, Stony Brook University
“In Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism, Medhananda brilliantly spearheads a fresh appreciation of Vivekananda, a key member in a group of extremely insightful and innovative Indian philosophers active in the eve of Independence. Medhananda challenges the simplistic classification of these thinkers as ‘Neo-Hindu’ or ‘Neo-Vedāntic,’ demonstrating instead how Vivekananda is a pioneering voice in cosmopolitan philosophy, a creative intellectual who develops new philosophical theories inspired by both Indian and European materials.”
Jonardon Ganeri, University of Toronto
“Swami Vivekananda was not only an enormously influential religious leader; he was one of the pre-eminent Vedānta philosophers of the Indian renaissance. He offered a vision of Vedānta continuous with its classical history and in dialogue with modernity, and in doing so demonstrated how Indian philosophy could be pursued in a cosmopolitan voice. Swami Medhananda presents us with the first detailed exploration of Vivekananda’s entire philosophical program, setting it both in the context of classical Indian philosophy, and in the context of Indian renaissance thought. He shows that Vivekananda has a great deal to contribute to contemporary debates in the philosophy of religion and metaphysics. This book is erudite, clear, and compelling. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about global philosophy or religion.”
Jay Garfield, University of Melbourne
“Medhananda’s work is one of the very few that locates Vivekananda in the context of important intellectual trends of his time and examines his engagement with thinkers that include Immanuel Kant, Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and others … This is a welcome contribution to Vivekananda studies and Medhananda, immersed in both traditional and Western learning, is aptly qualified for such work…they certainly contribute to our better understanding of his Vedāntic commitments in a global intellectual context.”
Anantanand Rambachan, Philosophy East & West
“The book is well-written and valuable to the contemporary understanding of Vivekananda’s philosophy. It traverses vast scholarly literature from diverse philosophical schools, both classical Indian and modern western.”
A. Raghuramaraju, Journal of World Philosophies
“Medhananda’s Swami Vivekananda’s Vedantic Cosmopolitanism is an exceptional combination of scholarship, philosophical acumen, and cross- cultural philosophical sensitivity, which finally presents an appreciative account of Vivekananda as a representative of Hindu philosophy at its finest.”
George Adams, Nova Religio
“Swami Medhananda’s vigorous interpretations represent a new era in the academic study of Vedanta and appraisal of Vivekananda’s legacy … The insights he extracts from the persuasive examination of a wide range of topics and sources have far-reaching implications beyond the religious studies department. His rigorous and unbiased approach invites interdisciplinary dialogue across various fields and society.”
Patrick Horn, Reading Religion
About the Author:
Swami Medhananda (Ayon Maharaj) is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at the Ramakrishna Institute of Moral and Spiritual Education in Mysore, India. He is the author of Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018) and The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency: Revaluating German Aesthetics from Kant to Adorno (Bloomsbury, 2013). He is also the editor of The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta (2020). He received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and studied at Oxford University and Humboldt University in Berlin.
The 1994 Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham
Oxford University Press, 1996
Back Cover:
“The most comprehensive and intelligent treatment of its topic that has been written … Nasr is one of the major intellects of our day.”
Huston Smith, University of California, Berkeley
The current ecological crisis is a matter of urgent global concern, with solutions being sought on many fronts. In this book, Seyyed Hossein Nasr argues that the devastation of our world has been exacerbated, if not actually caused, by the reductionist view of nature that has been advanced by modern secular science. What is needed, he believes, is the recovery of the truth to which the great, enduring religions all attest; namely that nature is sacred.
Nasr traces the historical process through which Western civilization moved away from the idea of nature as sacred and embraced a world view which sees humans as alienated from nature and nature itself as a machine to be dominated and manipulated by humans. His goal is to negate the totalitarian claims of modern science and to re-open the way to the religious view of the order of nature, developed over centuries in the cosmologies and sacred sciences of the great traditions. Each tradition, Nasr shows, has a wealth of knowledge and experience concerning the order of nature. The resuscitation of this knowledge, he argues, would allow religions all over the globe to enrich each other and cooperate to heal the wounds inflicted upon the Earth.
About the Author:
One of the world’s leading experts on Islamic science and spirituality, Seyyed Hossein Nasr is University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University. Previously, he taught at Tehran University, where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Letters and as Vice Chancellor. He was also president of Aryamehr University. In 1974 Dr. Nasr founded The Iranian Academy of Philosophy, serving as its president until he immigrated to the United States in 1979. He is author of numerous books, including Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (1989) and Knowledge and the Sacred (1989).
Socialisten, men också brahmaisten, buddhisten och teosofen.
Det kristna dogmsystemet och vår tid (1914)
Brahmaismen, buddhismen och teosofin: Tre föreläsningar vintern 1922 (1923)
Viktig kännare av den mystiska (eller mystika) teologins tradition, som under sin tid som kansler för Parisuniversitetet konsoliderade det av Dionysios Areopagita lanserade begreppets användning och formaliserade traditionen som en akademisk disciplin skild från den rationellt-spekulativa skolastiken.
The Single Transcendental Truth Taught by the Great Sages of Buddhism and Advaitism – As Revealed by The Avataric Great Sage, Adi Da Samraj
Dawn Horse Press, 2006
Below the subtitle on the Title Page:
The Quintessential Wisdom of Gotama Sakyamuni, Nagarjuna, Shankara, and the Sages of the Devikalottara and the Ribhu Gita
From the Back Cover:
The writings of Adi Da Samraj is the most doctrinally thorough, the most philosophically sophisticated, the most culturally challenging, and the most creatively original literature on radical nonduality currently available in the English language.
Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religious Studies, Rice University, Author, Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna
The traditional texts presented by Me in this Book are only a few in number, but they are outstanding among the most important texts ever written. They are so much to the point that they are profoundly Illuminating – not sufficient for the Awakening of Transcendental Realization Itself, but potentially sufficient to bring anyone to practice at the feet of a true Master.
The Avataric Great Sage, Adi Da Samraj
To understand the great religions in a new light, one has only to read Adi Da Samraj. Anyone who has an open mind cannot help feeling that His description of the Supreme Yoga of the seventh stage of life is true. Intuitively you will be convinced that Adi Da Samraj knows what He is talking about because of His unique Realization.
Roger Savoie, PhD, Philosopher, writer and translator, Author, La Vipère et le Lion: La Voie radicale de la Spiritualité
JOB’s Comment:
Jones
Contemplative Science, Philosophy, Literature, and Art
State University of New York Press, 2017
Publisher’s Description:
Restores the Platonic history and context of mysticism and shows how mysticism helps us understand more deeply the humanities as a whole, from philosophy and literature to art.
In Platonic Mysticism, Arthur Versluis clearly and tautly argues that mysticism must be properly understood as belonging to the great tradition of Platonism. He demonstrates how mysticism was historically understood in Western philosophical and religious traditions and emphatically rejects externalist approaches to esoteric religion. Instead he develops a new theoretical-critical model for understanding mystical literature and the humanities as a whole, from philosophy and literature to art. A sequel to his Restoring Paradise, this is an audacious book that places Platonic mysticism in the context of contemporary cognitive and other approaches to the study of religion, and presents an emerging model for the new field of contemplative science.
Reviews:
“Arthur Versluis’ latest book seeks to reinstate the critical importance of Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought within multiple fields of academic study: literature, painting and fine art, philosophy, religious studies and, importantly, consciousness studies. In pursuit of this central agenda, Versluis provides the reader with an interesting overview of the current state of academia in regard to these fields.”
Nova Religio
“Arthur Versluis’ brief but powerful, comprehensive and very accessible book is a major contribution to the history and interpretation of Platonic mysticism and a much needed corrective to the tendency to dismiss Platonism in all its forms that has been growing steadily over the past 100-200 years … But overall, this is a beautifully produced book, written by a master scholar who brings a vast amount of knowledge from different traditions to bear upon a really important subject.”
International Journal of the Platonic Tradition
“In Platonic Mysticism, Arthur Versluis clearly and tautly argues that mysticism must be properly understood as belonging to the great tradition of Platonism … this is an audacious book that places Platonic mysticism in the context of contemporary cognitive and other approaches to the study of religion, and presents an emerging model for the new field of contemplative science.”
Magonia Book News
“An important work on the mystical experience delving deep into its history, particularly from the Platonic perspective. An essential text for anyone interested in mysticism and its relationship to philosophy and creative expression.”
Andrew Newberg, author of How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain: The New Science of Transformation
“The present work, the latest from the pen of Arthur Versluis, provides a trenchant, learned, and illuminating analysis of the origins of Western mysticism in the Platonist tradition, relayed through such figures as Plotinus and Dionysius the Areopagite, down through Meister Eckhart and others, while suitably excoriating the attempts of certain modern philosophers and sociologists of religion to ‘deconstruct’ it from a materialist perspective. I found it a rattling good read!”
John Dillon, author of The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347–274 BC)
Jan Olof Bengtsson 