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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Rammohun Roy

The West within the rest

05 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by Amod Lele in Death, Metaphilosophy, Modern Hinduism, Politics, Prejudices and "Intuitions", Vedas and Mīmāṃsā, Western Thought

≈ 10 Comments

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Edward Said, Jawaharlal Nehru, justice, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, modernity, Rammohun Roy, Śāntideva

In the previous post I discussed why academic philosophers have usually focused on the West, and pointed out reasons why some amount of Western focus remains valuable. Above all, I noted: “we are always already formed by some sort of philosophical tradition, whether we like it or not and whether we know it or not. And a great deal of what forms us is Western.” So exploring Western philosophy is important to understand our own thought better, where we are coming from.

There are at least two important objections to be made to that claim as I have phrased it. Continue reading →

Interview, part 2

14 Thursday May 2015

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Christianity, Early and Theravāda, German Tradition, M.T.S.R., Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Politics

≈ Comments Off on Interview, part 2

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Alasdair MacIntyre, Anagarika Dharmapala, Donald S. Lopez Jr., G.W.F. Hegel, Henry Steel Olcott, interview, intimacy/integrity, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Max Weber, Rammohun Roy, skholiast (blogger), Swami Vivekānanda, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas P. Kasulis

The second half of Skholiast‘s interview with me is now available, for anyone interested.

The blurry boundary between premodern and modern

26 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by Amod Lele in German Tradition, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Modern Hinduism, Modernized Buddhism, Politics, Roman Catholicism

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Andrew Nicholson, Brian Tierney, David McMahan, Donald S. Lopez Jr., G.W.F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger, Michel Villey, modernity, Rammohun Roy, rights, Wilhelm Halbfass, William of Ockham

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about two excellent books on very different topics, both of which I’ve written about at Love of All Wisdom before: Andrew Nicholson’s Unifying Hinduism, and Brian Tierney’s The Idea of Natural Rights.

The idea of human or natural rights has often been taken as something nearly eternal, dating back into antiquity. More careful scholarship, most notably that of Michel Villey, shows us it is not that. Villey takes the work of William of Ockham as a breaking point, a sharp rupture from the previous world that had no concept of rights, which brings in a very different metaphysics where rights now play an important role. The brilliance of Tierney’s work is to qualify this point, showing a gradual transition from the world before Ockham to the world after him. It preserves Villey’s basic point that rights do not go back to antiquity, but shows that the boundary between premodern and modern is much blurrier than previous scholarship had imagined.

The idea of Hinduism has often been taken as something nearly eternal, dating back into antiquity. More careful scholarship, most notably that of Wilhelm Halbfass and Heinrich von Stietencron, shows us it is not that. Halbfass takes the work of Rammohun Roy as a breaking point, a sharp rupture from the previous world that had no concept of Hinduism, which brings in a very different metaphysics where Hinduism now plays an important role. The brilliance of Nicholson’s work is to qualify this point, showing a gradual transition from the world before Roy to the world after him. It preserves Halbfass’s basic point that rights do not go back to antiquity, but shows that the boundary between premodern and modern is much blurrier than previous scholarship had imagined. Continue reading →

Is there Indian political philosophy?

15 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by Amod Lele in Confucianism, Epics, Islam, Metaphilosophy, Modern Hinduism, Monasticism, Politics, Vedas and Mīmāṃsā

≈ 4 Comments

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Anthony S (commenter), Arthaśāstra, Bhagavad Gītā, Disengaged Buddhism, Fred Dallmayr, Hitopadeśa, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahābhārata, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Pañcatantra, Rāmāyana, Rammohun Roy, Sayyid Qutb

On the Indian Philosophy Blog, commenter Anthony S asked an important and difficult question: what are good resources for thinking through Indian political philosophy?

. I’m interested not so much in comparative philosophy as comparative political thought/theory, specifically in terms of Indian and “Western” thought regarding the international/global. While I am happy comparative philosophy seems to be taking off in recent years, I wish the intensity was the same in political science/theory. If anyone has some good thoughts/resources regarding any of this, I’d be very appreciative.

I started replying in my own comments, but I think the topic deserves a post of its own. Continue reading →

Did Hinduism exist?

11 Tuesday Aug 2009

Posted by Amod Lele in Epicureanism, Greek and Roman Tradition, Islam, M.T.S.R., Modern Hinduism, South Asia

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

al-Biruni, Jayant Lele, Rammohun Roy, religion

My father, Jayant Lele, has often liked to say of Hinduism that it doesn’t exist. His view made a lot of sense to me when I first travelled around India – first encountering claims that Hindus were vegetarians because of their deep respect for animals, and then visiting the temple in Calcutta where the priest suggested I stick around to watch them sacrifice a goat. Could there be anything in common here?

I’ve moderated my own views on the subject a little. I think there is such a thing as Hinduism now; it’s just a relatively recent invention. The first person to use the word “Hinduism” was Rammohun Roy, a modern reformer who wanted to see a modernized, politically active Hinduism. I have no problem using the term “Hinduism” and “Hindu” to refer to modern Hindus who follow Roy’s example (like Gandhi, Aurobindo, the Arya Samaj, or Swami Vivekananda). Hinduism, then, is something closely parallel to Yavanayāna Buddhism: a modern reform movement that can be intellectually honest as long as it recognizes itself as such.

Before that, things get hazy. True, Muslims in India referred to non-Muslim Indians as “Hindu.” But it was a generic term for exactly that: non-Muslim Indians. When “Hinduism” is used to mean anything other than the 19th-century reform movement, it means little more than “miscellaneous Indian traditions”: Indians who are not Muslim or Christian, and in more recent cases not Buddhists or Jains or Sikhs. (Muslim chroniclers like al-Biruni would have been startled to hear Buddhists called anything other than Hindu.)

I’m fairly comfortable, then, in saying that premodern “Hinduism” doesn’t really exist. But let me be clear on this point, as it’s one of the things that’s got me into trouble with Hinduism’s would-be defenders before: this isn’t a criticism. I like the fact that in early India, “religious” boundaries were so porous: the same king might pay homage to Buddhist monks and Śaivite bhakta mystics. Early India is comparable more to “Greek and Roman religion,” or perhaps to “Chinese religion,” than it is to Judaism or Christianity: a set of philosophies, practices, supernatural beings moving around between traditions. If you were going to give yourself to a certain idea wholeheartedly (as a monk would do), your loyalty might have needed to be more absolute – as it would have been in Greece for those who wanted to follow Epicurus in his garden. For most people, though, it wasn’t, and the point strikes me as something worth learning from now. Wisdom can be found in many places, and we do well to look for it in as many of those places as possible, rather than refusing to look at ideas and practices that aren’t Christian – or are Christian, depending on where our allegiance has been declared.

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