Disenchanting India
Disenchanting India

Author: Johannes Quack

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2011-11-22

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 0199812608

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India is frequently represented as the quintessential land of religion. Johannes Quack challenges this representation through an examination of the contemporary Indian rationalist organizations: groups who affirm the values and attitudes of atheism, humanism, or free-thinking. Quack shows the rationalists' emphasis on maintaining links to atheism and materialism in ancient India and outlines their strong ties to the intellectual currents of modern European history. At the heart of Disenchanting India is an ethnographic study of the organization ''Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti'' (Organization for the Eradication of Superstition), based in the Indian State of Maharashtra. Quack gives a nuanced account of the Organization's specific "mode of unbelief." He describes the group's efforts to encourage a scientific temper and to combat beliefs and practices that it regards as superstitious. Quack also shows the role played by rationalism in the day-to-day lives of the Organization's members, as well as the Organization's controversial position within Indian society. Disenchanting India contributes crucial insight into the nature of rationalism in the intellectual life and cultural politics of India.

Rationalist Spirituality
Rationalist Spirituality

Author: Bernardo Kastrup

Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

Published: 2011-03-16

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 1846947359

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Why does the universe exist and what are you supposed to do in it? This question has been addressed by religions since time immemorial, but popular answers often fail to account for obvious aspects of reality. Indeed, if God knows everything, why do we need to learn through pain and suffering? If God is omnipotent, why are we needed to do good? If the universe is fundamentally good, why are wars, crime, and injustice all around us? In modern society, orthodox science takes the rational high-ground and tackles these contradictions by denying the very need for, and the existence of, meaning. Indeed, many of us implicitly accept the notion that rationality somehow contradicts spirituality. That is a modern human tragedy, not only for its insidiousness, but for the fact that it is simply not true. In this book, the author constructs a coherent and logical argument for the meaning of existence, informed by science itself. A framework is laid out wherein all aspects of human existence have a logical, coh

A Companion to World Philosophies
A Companion to World Philosophies

Author: Eliot Deutsch

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 1991-01-16

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 9780631213277

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This outstanding volume offers students, teachers and general readers a complete introductory survey of the major non-western philosophical traditions.

The Rationalist Manifesto
The Rationalist Manifesto

Author: Diwankar Saxena

Publisher:

Published: 2021-07

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781637541708

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The Rationalist Manifesto is the observation of the divided Indian Society. It gives way for another perspective for the Indian People, that doesn't talk about supremacy, divisions or preservation, but reminds them about the hopes that the future generation of India has from them. The book is for those who have grown tired of the political and social dichotomy of the Indian State, and still have hope for their great nation and its people. Ideologies and myths have been broken down in this book in simple language so as to make people understand the deep rooted problems of our great country, problems that are often brushed under the carpet. This book sends a message that is time for India to rise to this occasion and make changes for itself in which the youth of this nation works for the prosperity of it and not take out time to solve its many problems. To understand the changes in our political regimes, our social and political identity, this book leaves no point untouched and covers everything dedicatedly."It is the people who have the most power, but unlike power knowledge, wisdom and truth are kept at bay. Power without truth, wisdom or knowledge is the personification of vulnerability, destruction and chaos. The state of Indian politics is never going to change until and unless the state of Indian society changes, it is where will, power and mandate resides-with the people. And by mere knowledge, one can't attain the truth as knowledge is a sword with wisdom as it's hilt, without the hilt none can use that sword."

Teranesia
Teranesia

Author: Greg Egan

Publisher: Gollancz

Published: 2010-12-30

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0575105461

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As a young boy, Prabir Suresh lives with his parents and sister on an otherwise uninhabited island in a remote part of the Indonesian peninsula. Prabir names it Teranesia, populating it with imaginary creatures even stranger than the evolutionarily puzzling butterflies that his parents are studying. Civil war strikes, orphaning Prabir and his sister. Eighteen years later, rumours of bizarre new species of plants and animals being discovered in the peninsula that was their childhood home draw Prabir's sister back to the island - Prabir cannot bear for her to have gone out alone and he follows, persuading a pharmaceutical researcher to take him along as a guide.

Advaita as a Global International Relations Theory
Advaita as a Global International Relations Theory

Author: Deepshikha Shahi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-07-11

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1351018019

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The academic discipline of International Relations strives to attain a ‘global’ spirit to narrow the cognitive gaps between the West and the Rest. On the one hand, there is the hegemonic presence of mainstream universalist Eurocentric IR theories, and on the other the counter-hegemonic presence of particularist Post-colonial and De-colonial non-Eurocentric IR theories. Nevertheless, both theoretical traditions endorse ‘epistemological dualism’ that essentially separates the ‘theorizing-subject’ from the ‘theorized-object’; thereby failing to bridge the gaps. This book uses the monist schema of ‘subject-object merger’ in the ancient Indian philosophy of Advaita to inaugurate a Global IR theory. In the global theoretical schema of Advaitic monism, the apparent particularist reality is supplemented (not contradicted) with the hidden universalist reality – the net result of which is a reconciliation of dualism with monism at the theoretical-practical level. The possibilities of this reconciliation have not been estimated at either level and as such, this untapped intellectual strategy stands to enrich both Eurocentric IR and non-Eurocentric IR. Shahi establishes Advaita as an alternative epistemological-methodological tool to re-imagine the complex realities of contemporary international politics. This fully fledged Global International Relations Theory will appeal to students of international relations, political theory, administrative theory and philosophy.

The Law of Possession
The Law of Possession

Author: William Sturman Sax

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 019027574X

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Rituals combining healing with spirit possession and court-like proceedings are found around the world and throughout history. For example, a person suffers from an illness that cannot be cured, and in order to be healed he performs a ritual involving prosecution and defense, a judge and witnesses. Divine beings give evidence through human oracles, spirits possess their human victims and are exorcized, and local gods intervene to provide healing and justice. Such practices seem to be the very antithesis of modernity and many modern, secular states have systematically attempted to eliminate them. Why are such rituals largely absent from modern societies, and what happens to them when the state attempts to expunge them from their health and justice systems, or even to criminalize them? Despite the prevalence of rituals involving some or all of these elements, The Law of Possession represents the first attempt to compare and analyze them systematically. The volume brings together historical and contemporary case studies from East Asia, South Asia, and Africa, and argues that, despite consistent attempts by states to discourage, eliminate, and criminalize them, such rituals persist and even thrive because they meet widespread human needs.