This book stands as a panegyric of the glories and grandeur of Indian philosophy without managing to embody or display those heights of attainment itself. In the few essays that are worthwhile, the author attempts to correct a number of misconceptions about Indian thought: that it is world-denying, that it promotes spiritual pessimism, that it bases its philosophical claims more on intuition than on rational argument, and that it is concerned more with inner than with outer reality. In support of (...) his claims, he sets forth what he believes to be the basic tenets of Indian philosophy, which are: the divine or spiritual nature of the universe, the ultimate moral order of the universe, the transmigration of the soul, the ultimate destiny of man through "the liberation of the soul from bondage to the body," and the implicit trust placed in the testimony of seer-saints "to whom they [truths] are supposed to have been revealed beyond doubt in their direct and immediate experience." In a chapter entitled, "Svapramanatva and Svaprakasatva: An Inconsistency in Kumärila's Philosophy," he presents a fairly informative and well-reasoned argument that the validity of cognitions cannot be verified on the basis of both the inherent quality of the senses which give immediate satisfaction and the quality of external conditions which must await subsequent investigation. Finally, he soundly criticizes R. C. Zaehner's The Comparison of Religions for interpreting and evaluating Hindu religion and philosophy through the spectacles of Catholic Christianity. But his own contention, reiterated again and again throughout the book, that "there is nothing in common between Hindu religion and philosophy," makes no sense. Surely, one thing which distinguishes Indian philosophy from Greek and modern philosophy in the western world is the continual insistence by Indian thinkers that philosophical reflection and rational argumentation are not ends in themselves but merely means to salvation, paths to Enlightenment.--J. B. L. (shrink)

Students of philosophy, East and West, will be benefited greatly by this reprint of Professor Raju's pioneering study of comparative philosophy, which is the outgrowth of a series of lectures presented in Saugor University during 1955. Even for comparative philosophy, man must be the leitmotif, the common denominator for analyzing and interpreting the diversity of philosophical traditions. In his attempt to contribute to the "sense of the basic oneness of humanity, the human solidarity in spite of differences," he interprets the (...) three great philosophical traditions in terms of their respective approaches to the inward and outward aspects of reality. The central meaning or thrust of these traditions is expressed in the titles of the major sections of the book: "Western philosophy and the struggle for the liberation of the outward," "Chinese philosophy and human mindfulness," and "Indian philosophy and explication of inwardness." Western philosophy accomplished primarily a "liberating of the object or outwardness from its entanglement with the subject or inwardness." Chinese philosophy, by trying to build an ethics and philosophy on the emotional rather than the rational nature of man, has struck an even balance between the extremes of inward and outward by establishing clear lines of relatedness between individual men, society, and nature. Indian philosophy has been characterized chiefly by a "reflective inwardness," an overriding concern for the nature of the ätman, the interrelationship between intellect and intuition and the way to ultimate liberation from the round of rebirth and redeath through the immediate, intuitive apprehension of the unity of all things. The final section is dedicated to a general overview of the three major traditions in which the author delineates some of the more obvious and central parallels and distinctions among them. While the book is filled with useful information, novices are sure to be misled and professionals disappointed by the attempts to reduce entire religio-philosophical traditions to a set of neat interpretative labels, such as: Judaism is ethical zeal, Christianity is neighborly love, Buddhism is compassion, Islam is social solidarity, and the Upanishads is divine communion.--J. B. L. (shrink)

This work should be quite useful as a problem guide to phenomenalist and dualist metaphysics. Professor Yolton is concerned that any system be read both from an internal and an external perspective keeping them as separate and distinct as possible. He also cautions that the external perspective should not presuppose another metaphysic for that has often resulted in gross misreadings of earlier authors. In the first section of the book, phenomenalism, he shows how, for example, D. M. Armstrong and G. (...) Warnock have misread Berkeley and attacks G. Warnock and J. Austin's principle which rules out use of a technical irreducible language by philosophers. Solipsism and idealism as well as Berkeley's sensory phenomenalism are treated. In the second section of the book, dualism, Professor Yolton argues that some "transcendent Meaning Principle" is necessary to make the non-sensual side of dualism intelligible, outlines Plato's dualism as against Protagorian monism, indicates what he considers B. Russell's dualism and tries to show that Russell's treatment of one side is partially completed by C. I. Lewis' treatment of what Professor Yolton considers the other side. In the third section on meaning and truth he tries to establish 1) that there is a large measure of intranslatability between philosophical systems; 2) that meaning involves referrent necessarily; 3) that truth is defined by ontological rules; and 4) that correspondence is the basic truth-relation. Brief discussion is given of certain aspects of the works of P. Strawson, B. Russell, J. S. Mill, G. Ryle, W. V. O. Quine, Meinong, and Eric Tom. Slightly over half of this book is comprised of papers, some slightly modified, published from 1949 to 1961.--J. B. L. (shrink)

With the increased tensions and frustrations created and fostered by the strains of life in a technological society, combined with an alarming loss of a sense of the dimensions of depth and transcendence in our lives, many people are turning to various types of group sensitivity training programs or meditation groups in hopes of relieving those tensions and finding more effective ways to cope with the demands of life. This book serves both as a study of and a manual for (...) "meditation." Its real merit is that it lacks the sort of pseudo-magical cant that one is accustomed to find in books on the occult. The author refuses to promise the reader a quick-and-easy road to happiness and financial success and instead, plots out a difficult and demanding program of reflection and mental discipline which if followed will foster the spiritual and intellectual progress that is needful to enrich our daily lives. Initiatory teachings for the novice concerning the nature and workings of the mind; the origin and control of the mental processes ; human destiny and the highest aims of life, are accompanied by a logical and scientific exposition of those exercises needed for the development of the meditative processes.--J. B. L. (shrink)

This is a highly original and readable work by an eminent teacher of philosophy and religion and a very gifted writer who is able to discuss the relationship between Indian and Western scholars without being either doctrinaire or dull. He has determined the exact position of Bengal Vaisnavism in relation to other systems of Indian philosophy, especially Advaita Vedanta, by bringing out important points of agreement and disagreement between it and them. After arguing in the first chapter that metaphysics is (...) logically prior to epistemology, he provides a psychological analysis of knowledge according to the three main spokesmen for Vedänta. Subsequent chapters treat God as the ground of physical and spiritual reality, causation, Krsna and his incarnations, and Bhakti or devotional faith as a means of God-realization. Two other chapters which merit a mention provide a comparative analysis of Bengal Vaisnavism and Kierkegaardian existentialism and of Vaisnavism and Christianity. While Kierkegaard and the Vaisnava spokesmen do differ at many points, they also share a good many ideas in common with respect to their respective understandings of God, the nature of man, and man's relationship to the outer world. This is one of the better books written on Indian Vedanta by a contemporary Indian scholar and appropriate for both specialist and layman who might wish a readable and comprehensive but manageable discussion of one of the major schools of Indian philosophy.--J. B. L. (shrink)

This is the second edition of a very imaginative collection of readings in aesthetics from Plato to the present. In this second edition, seven selections have been deleted and fifteen new selections have been added to greatly enhance its usefulness to beginning students in aesthetics. Additional readings on artistic creation and drama have been provided and a number of illustrations of works by Raphael, Giotto, Matisse, Dürer, Brancusi, Henry Moore, et al. have been included this time to illustrate relevant textual (...) materials. As in the first edition, the author's primary intention is to establish the field of aesthetics as having the same integrity and adventuresomeness as other areas of philosophical inquiry and debate. With this goal in view, he has organized the readings around "certain sets of basic problems that still seem worth debating and attempting to solve." Each section is centered around specific problems and issues in aesthetics, beginning with the broadest question, "What is Art?," and moving on to such issues as the nature of the various art forms, the nature of tragedy, the problem of response to art and, finally, the nature and goal of art criticism. Various readers and teachers in aesthetics no doubt, will find fault with or gaps in his selections of readings. But laying aside such parochial matters as ideology and personal taste, this volume puts in the hands of the student of aesthetics a compendium of essays on the major issues and areas of concern in aesthetics which can easily be supplemented by use of a xerox machine. The editor has included such scholarly aids as a brief introduction to each section, interpretative and cross-referential footnotes and a minimal bibliography.--J. B. L. (shrink)

The main purpose of this volume is the admirable one of preparing a series of volumes on the global history of philosophy. While the effort falls far short of what we might have hoped for, it must be judged as a good beginning in this area. The volume begins with a listing of introductory works dealing with the philosophies of major cultures: India, China, Japan, Islam, Russia and Latin America. The difficulties of launching into a study of world philosophy become (...) apparent at this point; the bibliographical categories are a mixture of geographical areas and religio-cultural traditions which overlap land-boundaries. The authors now depart from the geographical-cultural schema by organizing the material along a mixture of historical and topical structures--all taken from the western context. The list of historical segments include: Classical Period, Pan-Hellenistic-Bactrian Period, Early "Medieval" Period, The Great Summas, Late "Medieval" Period, "Renaissance" Period, Transition to the Modern Period, and Modern Period. The book concludes with a section dedicated to works concerning the Scientific Revolution and the Philosophy of International Law. In a pocket on the back cover the reader will find two large fold-outs which present "A Synchronological Chart to the Global History of Philosophy."--J. B. L. (shrink)

The scholar who translated The Edicts of Ashoka into English has now set out to present and critically analyze some of "The Great Ideas of Indian Culture." While apparently engaging in a search for the ever-elusive "Perennial Philosophy" by invoking Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, et al., the author's comparative statements come off as being little more than decorative paraphernalia. He submits too completely to the mystique of the Socratic dialogue in claiming that "the outstanding characteristic of Indian thought is dialogue". (...) We can agree that one does find a type of verbal exchange which might merit the designation of "conversation," but not dialogue. At no place in either the Upanisads or Gïta does the student ever feel the slightest compulsion to question or contradict the words of his guru. Nikam also commits the grave philosophical indiscretion of using Platonic language about "universals" to speak of the Vedäntin "Universal Absolute,". This sort of cross-cultural comparison is extremely misleading in cases where the ideas being compared are similar or identical in appearance but dissimilar in substance. Even so, the book is extremely informative, and, in places, inspiring, in its illumination of the subtler dimensions of Indian thought. Western philosophers and interested lay-students should find this small volume most helpful in gaining a succinct but comprehensive presentation of the "Great Ideas of Indian Culture."--J. B. L. (shrink)

This book deals with the impact of science on Chinese intellectual life and the contribution of its bastard daughter, scientism, to the change in official ideology from individualistic Confucianism to collectivist Marxism. "Scientism" might be defined, in shorthand, as a positivistic, mechanistic, utopian materialism derived by illicit generalization from the method and assumptions of science. Kwok traces the history of this dogma, outlining the career and thought of leading proponents: Wu Chih-hui, "philosophical materialist"; Ch'en Tu-hsiu, "dialectical materialist"; and Hu Shih, (...) "empiricist." He also discusses a geologist, a mathematician, and a psychologist-empiricists who advocated science as the basis for morality and a life of true spirituality. Extensive quotation exhibits the character of the debates, which was aphoristic and often polemical. The empiricists who understood science, were pragmatic and moderate, and made science respectable. In time they lost ground on the right to the Nationalists, who rejected scientism, and on the left to the materialists, who tended to be political journalists and to understand neither science nor the philosophical issues. The materialists became increasingly dialectical and wrote endlessly on the stages into which a science of society might analyze Chinese history. The Communist theoreticians were their heirs and the revolution was the triumph of a developed scientism. Since Kwok has written a chronicle, and since the disputants applied labels and stated conclusions rather than developing arguments, the book is of little interest philosophically. It has value as an account of the influence of the West on Chinese thought and as a manifestation of the limits of that influence.--J. B. L. (shrink)

Vaisnavism in Bengal is justifiably renowned for its remarkable elaboration of the philosophy and cult of Divine Love as the essential expression of the nature of the God, Visnu-Krsna. This text, the first of six constituent parts expounding the philosophy of Bengal Vaisnavism, critically analyses the eight traditional bases of knowledge as a means of discovering the nature of Ultimate Reality. The author rejects most of the traditional pramänas as inadequate and false in providing "right cognition" of Ultimate Reality: namely, (...) perception inference, comparison, postulation, quantitative reasoning and tradition. Like both Mïmämsäka and Vedänta, he declares that, in the final analysis, only Sruti or Scripture serves as an infallible source of knowledge. But against the Vedänta of Sankara he rejects the notion that Bhagavat-Krsna, the Creator, Sustainer and Destroyer of the universe, can be fully apprehended through mystical intuition and claims that the non-phenomenal or spiritual nature of God is accessible only through devotional love and personal surrender. The devotional path to God encompasses but transcends both the paths of mystical knowledge and ascetic mortification. The highest aspect of the "power of essential selfhood" is personified in Krsna's eternally youthful consort, Rädhä. It is through the mystical realization of Ultimate Reality as the Divine Duality-in-Union as Rädhä-Krsna, that one experiences absolute Being, Consciousness and Bliss which is Brahman of the Upanisads and Vedänta. Sanskrists and students of Indian religion and philosophy will welcome the publication of this most valuable text which attempts for the first time to present the entire philosophy and theology of Gaudiya Vaisnavism of Bengal in systematic form and comprehensive manner.--J. B. L. (shrink)

The notion underlying Upanishadic and Vedäntin philosophy that Reality is unified, unique, and indivisible and that the world of plurality and multiplicity is unreal, has puzzled both Indian philosophers and students of Indian thought in the West. Many Western students of Vedänta have been misled by the idea that, in relation to the Ultimately Real, the phenomenal world is unreal or illusory. They have tended to read such terms as "unreal," "illusory," and "dreamlike" literally and thus have condemned Vedäntins to (...) the wholly untenable and unthinkable position of believing the empirical world to be absolutely non-existent. This most literate and erudite book explores the ontological status of the world of empirical and rational existence in the Upanishads and Shankara, the 9th century systematizer of Advaita Vedänta. Briefly, the argument of the author is that the phenomenal world is merely the tangible manifestation of primal nescience. Ignorance arises and persists because of man's tendency to superimpose the characteristics of one thing as it is recollected upon another thing as it is perceived. The traits of appearance are superimposed upon Reality, the non-Self upon the Self. The most common example used by Vedäntins is the act of mistakenly identifying the rope as a serpent. Only Brahman is real in an absolute and unqualified sense. Vyävahärika is the "world of names and forms based upon ignorance"; it is "the scene of our common endeavors which exhibits intelligible connections and is full of meaning and purpose" when viewed on its own terms and within its own limits. However, its indeterminable ontological status does not take away from its significance to the seeker after truth and Liberation. Perception, inference, intellection, and meditation all can serve as conductors along the path to salvation, provided they are not employed as ends in themselves. In the end, ratiocination must give way to intuitive insight, knowledge about must be superceded by knowledge of.--J. B. L. (shrink)

The author brings to the study of the two concepts of "religious" and "secular" the same intellectual honesty and analytical rigor that we met in his early work Pacifism: An Historical and Sociological Study. This is a "book of demolition" which attempts to eliminate the term "secularization" from the vocabulary of sociology due to the simple-minded fashion in which the word has been applied to describe the decline of religious faith in the present day. He tries to show that the (...) term is not monolithic and cannot be used legitimately merely to support some ideological perspective. It is rooted in various ideologies of utopianism and betrays many elements which were derived from Christianity. Certain identities of structure which he calls "an ontological privileged strata" are present--Israel as the Chosen People, Intelligentsia, Proletariat-who think of themselves as "seers" who bear the truth on behalf of the world. He mentions such examples as scientific messianism and Marxist messianism which have tried to translate the monism of nature into the monism of society so as to collapse certain dialectical opposites in Judaism and Christianity--e.g., God and Man, Heaven and Earth, Church and State--and to convert certain undefensible metaphysical views into technical issues which can be subjected to the strategies spun out by rational planning. Having pointed out the complementary relationship between the "religious" and the "secular," Martin proceeds to examine so-called secularization in music, theology, and sociology. In conclusion, Martin indicates that the application of these two concepts can be made only if the institutional setting and historical background is kept firmly in view, and he shows convincingly that it is not "a simple convergent process consequent on industrialism and the scientific and technological revolution."--J. B. L. (shrink)

The launching of this first full-length study of the films of Ingmar Bergman by the Director of the Institute of Astro-theology, should have put everyone into orbit. Instead, the book has left all who have read it on the launching pad, smarting under the pain of wooden and stilted summaries, incorrect grammatical constructions, and for everyone not acquainted with the vocabulary of Astro-theology, interpretative phrases which inhibit the light of reason and understanding. The prose, gutted with non sequiturs and opaque (...) jargon, may be operational in outer space where the air is thin but here, we earth readers, like Mother Nature, abhor a vacuum. This book is a minuscule step forward for Astro-theology and a giant step backwards for the study of Ingmar Bergman--J. B. L. (shrink)

Here we go again--yet another testimony of disaffection with the western religious and philosophical tradition by a western philosopher who thinks he has found the answer to mankind's deepest longings and questionings in the "mystic east." He writes a somewhat verbose treatise on the transition from the state of confusion in the realm of language to the state of clarity in the realm of silence. Why is it that those who assert a firm belief in the benefit of remaining silent, (...) by and large, fail to practice what they preach? If he must speak, then he should speak clearly and coherently. Such sentences as this--"America is close to Oriental thought as much because she is a continent as otherwise"--simply will not do! Still despite its occasional verbosity and opacity, the book does contain some useful and intriguing accounts of one westerner's encounter with and training in the disciplines of Zen meditation. The author describes the experience of Zen as the physical and spiritual training of the whole man. He portrays the daily temple routine, the proper position for meditation, steps in the regulation of the breath, reflection upon koans and the frequent interviews with the master. In his own words, "the main direction of this philosophic essay is a movement from abstract intellectualism to the particular and to the real." He provides a brief and somewhat simplistic account of the development of recent philosophical movements and attempts to show how certain western philosophical trends which parallel Zen thought can contribute toward a fuller understanding of Zen philosophy. The recent trend which interests him is the tendency in Dewey, James, and Wittgenstein to speak more about the use of language and less about its meanings. This judgment, too, is simplistic but not entirely indefensible, given his purposes.--J. B. L. (shrink)