Prakrit text with English translation on Jaina doctrines and ethics.

On the life and philosophy of Kundakunda, 2nd century exponent of Jainism.

Complete works of Kundakunda, 2nd century exponent of the Digambara sect in Jainism; Prakrit text with Hindi translation.

Treatise on Jaina philosophy and epistemology; includes Hindi translation.

Prakrit text, with Samayavyākhyā and Tātparyavr̥tti, Sanskrit commentaries on Jaina ontology and epistemology.

Trsatise on Jaina doctrines of self-realization; Prakrit text with Sanskrit commentary and Hindi verse and prose translation.

Prakrit text with grammatical interpretation and Hindi translation on Jaina doctrines and ethics.

We examine whether and when socially oriented shareholder activists use firms’ corporate social performance (CSP) to identify them as attractive targets for their activism. We build on the research in social movements theory and stakeholder theory to theorize how firms’ engagement with primary and secondary stakeholders reflected in their technical and institutional CSP respectively allows socially oriented shareholder activists to identify targets. We develop a theoretical model by identifying corporate targets’ degree of (1) receptivity to and (2) need to comply (...) with activist demands as two key dimensions of their corporate opportunity structure that explains the variance in firms’ attractiveness as targets for activist demands. We show that a firm’s technical and institutional CSP independently affect the likelihood of activists targeting the firm. We also show that our model has greater explanatory power at firms with high resource slack and from activists not identifying as socially responsible investment funds. Analysis of CSP and shareholder proposals data of 992 U.S. public firms over an 8-year window of observation largely supports our theory. (shrink)

For a long time, international relations scholars have adopted a narrow view of what is global order, who are its makers and managers, and what means they employ to realize their goals. Amitav Acharya argues that the nature and scope of agency in the global order - who creates it and how - needs to be redefined and broadened. Order is built not by material power alone, but also by ideas and norms. While the West designed the post-war order, (...) the non-Western countries were not passive. They contested and redefined Western ideas and norms, and contributed new ones of their own making. This book examines such acts of agency, especially the redefinitions of sovereignty and security, shaping contemporary world politics. With the decline of Western dominance, ideas and agency from the Rest may make it possible to imagine and build a truly global order. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Why did the popping of the housing bubble bring the financial system—rather than just the housing sector of the economy—to its knees? The answer lies in two methods by which banks had evaded regulatory capital requirements. First, they had temporarily placed assets—such as securitized mortgages—in off‐balance‐sheet entities, so that they did not have to hold significant capital buffers against them. Second, the capital regulations also allowed banks to reduce the amount of capital they held against assets that remained on (...) their balance sheets—if those assets took the form of AAA‐rated tranches of securitized mortgages. Thus, by repackaging mortgages into mortgage‐backed securities, whether held on or off their balance sheets, banks reduced the amount of capital required against their loans, increasing their ability to make loans many‐fold. The principal effect of this regulatory arbitrage, however, was to concentrate the risk of mortgage defaults in the banks and render them insolvent when the housing bubble popped. (shrink)

Many modern scholars working on the early Upaniṣads translate ādeśa as substitute, substitution, or the method or rule of substitution. The choice of this translation, which often affects the larger analysis of the text, started only in 1960s, with the late Paul Thieme who understood ‘substitute/substitution’ as the meaning of ādeśa in the Pāṇinian tradition and introduced that meaning to Upaniṣadic analysis. After carefully analysing all relevant passages in their contexts—not just the individual sentences in which the term occurs, this (...) paper rejects Thieme’s idea. It shows that the term never violates its etymological meaning of indication, and argues that ādeśa by itself does not mean substitute or replacement even in the Pāṇinian tradition. This paper further shows that ādeśa, usually used in the plural, was once the formal term referring to the class/genre of Vedic teachings now known as Upaniṣads. As it analyses different passages from the early Upaniṣads, this paper touches on the origin and composition of some of the Upaniṣads, for example arguing that the original Upaniṣadic teaching of the archaic Brāhmaṇa of the Vājasaneyas begins eleven sections before the formal beginning of the Bṛhad Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad. (shrink)

This volume explores Nietzsche's decisive encounter with the ancient philosopher, Epicurus. The collected essays examine many previously unexplored and underappreciated convergences, and investigate how essential Epicurus was to Nietzsche's philosophical project through two interrelated overarching themes: nature and ethics. Uncovering the nature of Nietzsche's reception of, relation to, and movement beyond Epicurus, contributors provide insights into the relationship between suffering, health and philosophy in both thinkers; Nietzsche's stylistic analysis of Epicurus; the ethics of self-cultivation in Nietzsche's Epicureanism; practices of eating (...) and thinking in Nietzsche and Epicurus; the temporality of Epicurean pleasure; the practice of the gay science, and Epicureanism and politics. The essays also provide creative comparisons with the Stoics, Hobbes, Mill, Guyau, Buddhism, and more. Nietzsche and Epicurus offers original and illuminating perspectives on Nietzsche's relation to the Hellenistic thinker, in whom Nietzsche saw the embodiment of the practice of philosophy as an art of existing. (shrink)

This paper critically reads and analyzes the first discourse of Āruṇi and Śvetaketu in the first half of the sixth chapter of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad. It argues that, except for a few interpolated lines in VI.2 and VI.3, the entire discourse constitutes one integrated whole with a specific indicatory knowledge at its core that indicates deeper truth underlying all realities, and its characterization and twofold elaboration with reference to macro- and microcosmos. In light of two cosmogonic accounts from the JaiminīyaBrāhmaṇa (...) and some other Vedic passages, this paper argues that Āruṇi’s cosmogony originally posited asat as the primordial entity, which has not yet acquired any phenomenal form. Incidentally it also demonstrates that in this discourse the term ādeśa cannot denote a ‘method of substitution’ as proposed by Thieme and taken over since then by several scholars. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to trace the transformations in Nietzsche's early thinking that led to the ideas published in Human, All Too Human, the first book of his mature philosophy. In contrast to his early works, in which he sides with art and philosophy in criticizing the scientific culture of his time, Nietzsche, in Human, All Too Human, hails the methodology of science as a way to overcome the metaphysical delusions of philosophy, art, and religion. However, in disagreement (...) with popular scholarly view, I show that Human, All Too Human does not represent a complete break with his earlier writings, but rather a shift in emphasis. I argue that the overall project connecting Nietzsche's early thought to Human, All Too Human is, first, the attempt to come to terms with the upheavals introduced into the cultural terrain by the Socratic turn, and second, to affirm a higher culture. (shrink)

This article presents newly discovered data that provides new insights into eighth- century Nepalese history. The data is based on a stone inscription dated to Licchavi Saṃvat 173 (748 ce), here edited and translated for the first time. The inscription not only attests to the continuity of Licchavi dynastic rule through to the middle of the eighth century CE, but additionally reveals a matrimonial and military alliance between the Licchavis and a dynasty called Rāṣṭrakūṭa, possibly the Rāṣṭrakūṭa family attested in (...) the Indragaḍh inscription dated Vikrama Saṃvat 767 (710–11 CE). In contextualizing the historical data that can be extracted from the surviving portions of the inscription, we examine and reassess some of the strategies used by the Licchavi Kingdom to negotiate its position in the tumultuous political landscape of greater North India during the seventh and early eighth centuries. In the introduction and annotations, the article also provides observations on the inscription text’s literary style and script, as well as on certain aspects of Licchavi- period religious culture as reflected in it. (shrink)

The collapse of the wavefunction is arguably the least understood process in quantum mechanics. A plethora of ideas—macro-micro divide, many worlds and even consciousness—have been put forth to resolve the issue. Contrary to the standard Copenhagen interpretation, objective collapse models modify the Schrödinger equation with nonlinear and stochastic terms in order to explain the collapse of the wavefunction. In this paper we propose a collapse model in which a particle’s wavefunction has a possibility of collapsing when it interacts with macroscopic (...) objects, without the intervention of a conscious observer. We propose four possible conditions of collapse of the wavefunction and make testable predictions which differ from standard quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Paul Raimond Daniels’s Nietzsche and The Birth of Tragedy is an engaging, instructive, and clearly written study of Nietzsche’s first book. It is a particularly fine achievement given the difficulties, in terms of both style and content, that Nietzsche’s text presents to the reader. Daniels’s aim is to present BT as an ideal introduction to Nietzsche’s philosophy, and, in light of its problematizing of the relation between art and truth, to argue that BT is crucial for evaluating the aims, successes, (...) and shortcomings of Nietzsche’s later philosophy. Furthermore, Daniels presents an “affirmative” interpretation, arguing that BT champions a life-affirming worldview that finds its highest expression in... (shrink)

“Civilization” is back at the forefront of global policy debates. The leaders of rising powers such as China, India, Turkey, and Russia have stressed their civilizational identity in framing their domestic and foreign policy platforms. An emphasis on civilizational identity is also evident in U.S. president Donald Trump's domestic and foreign policy. Some analysts argue that the twenty-first century might belong to the civilization state, just as the past few centuries were dominated by the nation-state. But is the rise of (...) civilization state inevitable? Will it further undermine the liberal international order and fuel a clash of civilizations, as predicted by the late Samuel Huntington? Or might ideas from East Asian and other non-Western civilizations contribute to greater pluralism in our thinking about world order and the study of international relations? (shrink)

This paper tries to trace the roots of the Śaiva Mantramārga concept of innate impurity. Since innate impurity is regarded as one of the three bonds fettering bound individual souls, this paper begins with the Pāśupata and early Śaiva views on these bonds. It examines the Buddhist logician Dharmakīrti’s criticism of the Śaiva idea that initiation removes sin, and discusses the Pāśupata concept of sin-cleansing and two different concepts of innate impurity found in two early Śaiva scriptures: the Sarvajñānottaratantra and (...) Svāyambhuvasūtrasaṃgraha. In search of the roots of these Śaiva conceptions of innate impurity, this paper then goes over some Vedic passages which speak of the removal of sin during the initiatory rite and identify it as the internal impurity. Putting all these points together, this paper concludes arguing that the Śaivas initially saw sin or the unseen force of merits and demerits as innate impurity, but later, under the pressure of criticism, they introduced the idea of innate impurity as a separate abstract substance affecting all souls with its multiple powers. (shrink)

Seminar papers; Study with special reference to Advaita philosophy of Śaṅkarācārya.

Two recent works will be considered that discuss Heidegger and Nietzsche in the context of the problem of overcoming metaphysics and the onto-theological tradition. A common criticism will be that these works in their attempt to retrieve a conception of religion, politics or faith beyond onto-theology and metaphysics tend to justify or idealize particular historically and culturally conditioned perspectives, which are not immune from further philosophical critique. Simon Oliai’s approach to countering the burgeoning fundamentalisms in our global age is ultimately (...) not very convincing, representing as it does, a Western, liberal, Eurocentric worldview. The author’s use of Nietzsche or Heidegger for this purpose is also not very compelling. The remainder of this review essay appraises the volume edited by Cimino and van der Heiden, which attempts to rethink faith beyond onto-theology in several interesting ways. Although meant to be a comparative study, several contributions subscribe to a general Heideggerian (or Heidegger-inspired phenomenological-hermeneutical) theoretical framework, which itself is not rigorously scrutinized. A problematic implication is that Nietzsche’s own critical and constructive views of philosophy, his critique of religion and history, and his positive appraisal of faith and divinity are not seriously considered on their own terms: they are either mostly ignored, or they are selectively interpreted through a Heideggerian lens, with the result that this volume puts forward a mostly unfavorable view of Nietzsche. Some of the conceptual moves credited to Heidegger in the volume have their equivalents in Nietzsche’s philosophy, which a comparative and evaluative study such as this one must seriously take into account by resisting the uncritical acceptance of Heidegger’s own view of Nietzsche. (shrink)

In standard theories of knowledge, issues like jokes, humour and laughter are not dealt with for the simple reason that these categories do not inhabit the world of true knowledge, and are hence not worthy of serious attention or study because these issues do not by their nature contribute to further generation of true knowledge. Taking a cue from Sigmund Freud, this article seeks to work on the possibilities of jokes, humour and even laughter, and their relation to the language (...) of the statement of truth. It may be seen that in spite of the superior claims of the so-called language of the statement of truth, and its not so veiled indignation at humour and jokes, one category is in dialogue with another in contexts and perhaps with itself. (shrink)

This paper argues that for Nietzsche it is only when the strong type decays on its own terms that it is possible for a weak type to come into dominance by inverting the values of the strong. It sets right a latent inconsistency in Deleuze’s work, Nietzsche and Philosophy , which traces back the origin of decadence to the subterranean struggle between reactive forces. I show that Deleuze’s reading runs contrary to his own contention that for Nietzsche the negative is (...) a result of activity. I argue that the decadence of the strong is a consequence of its very creative activity and abundant health. Relying on Nietzsche’s later works, I isolate and analyze four typical traits of the strong type which not only determine this type as what it is but also make it vulnerable to decadence. (shrink)