Philosophical aspects of Rāmāyaṇa, classical Hindu epic by Valmiki; a study.

A delightfully straightforward and lyrical retelling of the ancient Indian epic of loyalty, betrayal, redemption, and insight into the true nature of life -- one of history's most sacred ethical works, rendered with completeness and sterling accuracy for the modern reader. Here is one of the world's most hallowed works of sacred literature, the grand, sweeping epic of the divine bowman and warrior Rama and his struggles with evil, power, duplicity, and avarice. The Ramayana is one of the foundations of (...) world literature and one of humanity's most ancient and treasured ethical and spiritual works. 'This new version is so simply and beautifully written -- it will stir the soul!' --David Lynch. (shrink)

Jābāli, one of the priest-cum-counsellors of king Daśaratha, has long been recognized as an odd character, preaching materialism in order to persuade Rāma to go back to Ayodhyā after the death of his father. The critical edition of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa reveals several stanzas interpolated in the vulgate so as to denigrate Jābāli and brand him as a rank opportunist. In spite of that, whatever remains of Jābāli’s speech addressed to Rāma evinces one of the basic tenets of (...) materialist ontology, i.e., denial of the existence of any other-world, and hence the futility of performing rites for the ancestors. However, nothing is said about the epistemology,, ethics, and metaphysics of materialism as it existed at the time when the Rāmāyaṇa was redacted. Considering all this it is better to call Jābāli a proto-materialist who speaks of a philosophy akin to the teachings of Ajita Kesakambala, a senior contemporary of the Buddha, whose doctrine has been dubbed as that of annihilation in the Tipiṭaka. Both of them belong to the pre-Cārvāka materialist tradition in India. (shrink)

In this paper moral philosophy of Mahrishi Valmiki discussed on the basis of his ideas in the Ramayana.

This paper looks at Vālmīki’s use and placement of his female characters as significant markers of religious identity. It argues that Vālmīki conceptualizes and creates specific types of female figures and carefully locates the episodes in which they appear to mark specific narrative transitions and real or imagined anxiety-inducing threats to the author’s idealized world. Moreover, Vālmīki provides his audience with potential resolutions to those threats. Thus, in addition to such major figures as Sītā, Kausalyā, and Kaikeyī, characters such as (...) Anasūyā, Śabarī, Svayaṃprabhā, and even the non-human characters Surasā and Nikumbhilā are demonstrated to have a specific and integrated function within the narrative and are argued to form part of a larger, gendered narrative frame in which the epic action occurs. Each of these characters, I contend, represents a particular level of the feminine intruding into the culture’s religious practices in an ever-increasing destabilization of the poet’s idealized vedic world or as the means for its reemergence as a stronger, more stable, and less corruptible one. Vālmīki’s creation and use of these intriguing figures provide further testament both to the author’s genius and the underlying unity of structure of his great epic. (shrink)

This descriptive exposition of Hindu ethics in the "Rāmāyaṇa", India's most celebrated people's classic, analyzes the Vālmīki version in terms of four ethical questions about mores, ethos, societal structures, and forms of ethical validation. The epic's life-affirming ethos, together with its moral education and esthetical persuasion through model characters, is viewed as a pluralistic alternative to forms of Hindu ethics more known in the West. The latter are those implied in Hindu non-dualistic philosophies, mysticism, and an ascetical ethos (...) of world-denial. Two appendices are provided: one on the classic's historical impact and related textual matters; another on the role of women in Indian society. (shrink)

The key event at the start of the Sanskrit Ramayana attributed to Valmiki is the death of a bird at the hands of a hunter. In Sanskrit, that bird is termed krauñca. Various identifications have been offered in the past but uncertainty persists. Focusing on the text of the critical edition and drawing on ornithological data regarding the birds commonly suggested, this article establishes beyond doubt that Valmiki's krauñca bird is the Indian Sarus Crane. It then considers a key verse (...) in the southern recension, omitted by the editors of the critical edition, which supports this identification. Finally, the article explores the significance of the Indian Sarus Crane for the epic scene. (shrink)

Values and ethics in the Ramayana of Valmiki.

This essay explores possible paths after postcolonial theory, with the after understood not as a negation, but as a form of inheritance and the creation of routes, such that an aftermath need not have a resentful or self-hating relation and nor simply an acceptance of given pictures of ‘western’ thought. The route explored here is neither fully secular nor religious, and nor from a radically alternative ontology, but rather prompted by three enduring concerns within the global humanities, explored in three (...) sections of this paper. The first section ‘Political Theologies as an Alternative to the Dichotomy of Religion and Secularism’, asks what the difference and proximity between theology and theory may be, if we acknowledge the at times less visible theological genealogies of ‘secular’ social and critical theory. Rather than taking such genealogies only to be an effect of Eurocentrism, or as the lasting hegemony of Protestant Christian assumptions, we examine other ways of navigating tentative movements across ontological borders. The second section, ‘Theory as Darsan (Pilgrimage/Path/School)’ suggests that rather than thinking of concepts as anchored entirely to given territories or identities or as tools of ‘generalization’, we might place the word theory in relation to its genealogical kin, theos and theoria/darsan, as the formation of contemplative styles that emerge through forms of recurrent journeying within and across territories, following the tracks of others. As an instance of such journeying, we focus on a particular thinker, Stanley Cavell, whose writing suggests ways of remapping geographies of thought, in ways that could be significant for global thought, across so-called western and non-western territories. How might such journeys be continued? Section 3: ‘A Darsan: the Killing of Birds, Some Centuries Apart’ offers one such journey, three minor coordinates of a world map, located in three poetically enshrined bird killings, in Valmiki’s Ramayana, in Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and in Richard Power’s The Echo Maker, each of which incants a curse of unsettlement, and a fault line in relation to being human. This article hopes to contribute to debates on decolonization, currently underway in universities across the world, and seeks to offer a possible alternative to static conceptions of west and non-west. (shrink)

En este artículo, busco exponer la relación que tiene la situación de confinamiento en la que nos encontramos, Internet y las múltiples consecuencias que puede tener la producción masificada de datos en diversos ámbitos de nuestra experiencia social. Esto implica problematizar el estatus que tiene Internet en nuestra vida cotidiana, cómo su arquitectura permite articularlo como dispositivo de poder y vigilancia, en que medida opera cómo fuente ilimitada de información de diversa índole y las posibles consecuencias que tiene esta extracción (...) en dimensiones tanto políticas como económicas en nuestra sociedad contemporánea. (shrink)

Las siguientes páginas versan sobre la idea del Estado en la obra de José Ortega y Gasset, mostrando los cambios que en torno a aquella idea se producen en su pensamiento. En un primer periodo de mocedad, Ortega idealiza el papel de Estado influido por la tradición del pensamiento clásico y germano. En un segundo momento, a partir de la programática fecha de 1914, se producirá un giro en su pensamiento, quedando el Estado al servicio de la sociedad o la (...) realidad nacional, y por lo tanto en una posición “subalterna” frente a la posición dominante que Ortega le concedía en sus primeros años como intelectual. (shrink)

Neste artigo, busco elucidar a noção de política segundo Hannah Arendt a partir de um questionamento proveniente da sociologia de Ulrich Beck. Na medida que H. Arendt pensa a política como uma condição dependente da continuidade material assegurada por um mundo artificialmente construído, e U. Beck identifica na modernidade de risco o surgimento de uma série de instabilidades naturais socialmente iniciadas, pergunto em que medida tal transformação do mundo humano afeta a política tal como foi pensada pela autora. A partir (...) disso, reconstruo a leitura de H. Arendt acerca da relação da política com a condição humana, buscando elucidar tanto o sentido ético da política enquanto atividade reguladora de nossa liberdade (como visualizado pela autora), quanto o que significa pensar o ser humano como um animal livre e condicionado ao mesmo tempo. (shrink)

Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy cuts to the heart of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and of today's science wars.At the start of the 21st Century, ...

O presente artigo é uma reflexão sobre o envelhecimento hoje, entendendo que neste momento coincidem a maior longevidade da população e um contexto ideológico de busca da “juventude para sempre”. Tal contexto é caracteristicamente midiático, fortemente marcado pelo consumo e contribui decisivamente para a soberania da imagem a partir do imperativo da constante busca pela aparência de juventude, através de grande quantidade e diversidade de produtos a serem consumidos. Para trabalhar o tema, foram utilizados textos de alguns autores que tratam (...) sobre envelhecimento e corporeidade, destacando-se o autor Le Breton e sua percepção da incidência das transformações da técnica sobre o corpo. Dialogamos com os autores a partir do ponto de vista fenomenológico e hermenêutico do conceito Husserliano de “Corpo Próprio”. (shrink)

Through several historical case studies from the last 300 years, Luis de Miranda shows how the phrase 'esprit de corps' acts as a combat concept with a clear societal impact. He also reveals how interconnected, yet distinct, French, English and American modern intellectual and political thought is.

La philosophie hédoniste de Michel Onfray est en son fond une philosophie tragique dont l’horizon métaphysique ultime est le néant. Ce thème et ses multiples résonances dans l’œuvre d’Onfray sera étudié ici à trois niveaux : le néant individuel de la mort, le néant des civilisations disparues et enfin l’horizon cosmique du néant. Un jour tout disparaîtra, y compris la pensée humaine que tout disparaîtra. De même que notre vie est une parenthèse entre deux néants, de même notre civilisation et (...) de même l’espèce humaine et l’univers dans son ensemble. Être philosophe, c’est pour Onfray savoir regarder cette vérité en face. (shrink)

Open Letter to Comrade Žižek is an attempt to question and highlight some incongruous points that Slavoj Žižek, one of the greatest critics of capitalism and its ideological effects in the contemporary world, expressed in his latest books about the Pandemics. The text focuses in the economic, political, social and cultural consequences of Žižek’s position and goes further in developing another position related to the spread of COVID-19 and the preventive measures to fight it.

O feminismo interseccional tem sido apontado como uma importante teoria na compreensão de como as opressões de gênero, classe e raça dentre outras, se relacionam entre si e interferem na vida de cada mulher, que acaba assim por experimentar a opressão de gênero a partir de um ponto de vista único. Além disso, a atuação de coletivos feministas tem sido fundamental na vida de mulheres, como espaços de empoderamento e de luta em prol de uma sociedade menos opressiva. Assim, apresentamos (...) nesse trabalho o processo de adoção do feminismo interseccional como ferramenta teórico-metodológica por um coletivo feminista da Bahia, Brasil. Para tanto, realizamos um relato das atividades desenvolvidas pelo grupo entre os anos de 2013 e 2017. Foi possível identificar o forte vínculo afetivo estabelecido entre as companheiras e como o discurso interseccional tem sido importante nesse processo e nas ações do Coletivo como um todo. Constatou-se, assim, que a utilização deste referencial pode ser poderosa no sentido de contribuir para diálogos mais inclusivos e assim mais transformadores. Corroborando, ainda, com a ideia da extrema relevância da articulação entre o feminismo acadêmico e a ação política, além de destacar os desafios da consolidação de coletivos que nascem no âmbito acadêmico. (shrink)

Le site d'éditeur indique : "Editam-se neste volume ensaios elaborados num período relativamente largo de algumas décadas. Apesar de escritos em tempo e com circunstâncias e fins diversos, a sua reunião num volume apresenta uma lógica não só de denominador comum - situam-se todos no campo da História das Ideias Políticas e do Direito -, mas de complementaridade, retoma e/ou desenvolvimento relativamente a aspectos abordados noutros estudos nossos no mesmo domínio. Integram-se, assim, na lógica do tempo próprio do autor.".

Resumo: Nas comemorações de 40 anos do curso “Hermenêutica do Sujeito”, somos provocados a pensar a potencialidade dessa obra para colocar sob investigação um problema que as atualiza constantemente: a relação entre a subjetividade, verdade e o cuidado de si. Pois foi respondendo a essa provocação que elegemos uma aula de Filosofia numa escola particular para problematizar essa relação. A aula se desdobrou num trabalho em que os alunos eram desafiados a saírem de suas “zonas de conforto” e, assim, entrarem (...) contato consigo mesmos num trabalho de tomar-se como objetos de investigação e de produção de discursos verdadeiros sobre si mesmos. Um trabalho em especial nos chamou atenção e ele que vamos trazer para explorar essas relações do cuidado de si que se renovam na atualidade. Palavras-chave: Subjetividade; Verdade; Cuidado de Si; Educação “I left my comfort zone for the first time without realizing it” – subjectivity, truth and self-care Abstract: In the celebrations of 40 years of the course “Hermeneutics of the Subject”, we are provoked to think about the potential of this work to put under investigation a problem that constantly updates them: the relationship between subjectivity, truth and self-care. Because it was in response to this provocation that we chose a Philosophy class in a private school to problematize this relationship. The class unfolded in a work in which students were challenged to leave their “comfort zones” and, thus, get in touch with themselves in a work of taking themselves as objects of investigation and production of true discourses about themselves. One work in particular caught our attention and we are going to bring it to explore these relationships of self-care that are renewed today. Keywords: Subjectivity; Truth; Self-Care; Education “Salí por la primera vez de mi zona de confort sin darme cuenta” – subjetividad, verdad y cuidado de sí Resumen: En los festejos de los 40 años del curso “Hermenéutica del Sujeto”, nos incita a pensar en las potencialidades de este trabajo para poner en investigación un problema que los actualiza constantemente: la relación entre subjetividad, verdad y cuidado de sí. Porque fue en respuesta a esta provocación que elegimos una clase de Filosofía en una escuela privada para problematizar esta relación. La clase se desenvolvió en un trabajo en el que se desafió a los estudiantes a salir de sus “zonas de confort” y así entrar en contacto consigo mismos en un trabajo de tomarse a sí mismos como objetos de investigación y producción de verdaderos discursos sobre sí mismos. Una obra en particular nos llamó la atención y la vamos a traer para explorar estas relaciones de autocuidado que hoy se renuevan. Palabra clave: Subjetividad; Verdad; Cuidado de Sí; Educación Data de registro: 23/01/2023 Data de aceite: 20/03/2024. (shrink)