FRITS STAAL. Rules Without Meaning: Ritual, Mantras and the Human Sciences. Toronto Studies in Religion, Vol. 4. New York and Bern: Peter Lang, 1989 xxii+490.
In order to set the tone of this review article, let me begin straightway with a confession: I have been a closet admirer of Frits Staal ever since I discovered his writings in 1987. The reasons that undergird my attitude are several: …
Today, there are multiple images of India current in the West. There is the mystic India, an image that the German Romantics created and the ‘flower children’ of the sixties made popular. There is the third world India with enormous poverty and suffering, which the developmental workers have projected. There is also the India, the centre of IT outsourcing, which the developments in the last decade …
My book is not about India but about the western culture. It is a study of the western culture using one thread, namely, religion. To the extent I talk about India, I do so using some of the ‘facts’ that Indologists (and others) have so far used. My use of their facts (to show the opposite of what they believe they have shown) illustrates the consensus in the philosophies of sciences (of the last …
Whether or not we observe ‘commonalities’ has to do with the descriptive framework we use. Things might share common properties in one description; at the same time, share nothing common in another description. Both could be true descriptions of the same set of objects. ‘Perception of similarity’ is (at the moment our knowledge is in) is extremely difficult to analyze and understand. On the one …
It is partly a term of the art (in the philosophy of sciences) and partly retains the commonsense usage. When one compares theories (in order to choose the best one among the rivals), one compares them with respect to the important properties that theories should have. What these properties are depends upon the philosophy of science one subscribes to. For instance, one might think that a theory …
All works of Balagangadhara make use of use-mention distinction . Please get familiarized with this distinction.
In logic the words ‘use’ and ‘mention’ are sometimes used in a technical sense to mark an important distinction, which is explaind by example:
‘London’ is a word six letters long. London is a city. In 1 the word ‘London’ is said to be mentioned; in 2 the word ‘London’ is said to be used …
What did the theory of gravitation do? Apart from describing the fall of bodies on earth, it also tied the motion of planets and the ebb and tide in the sea to each other. This theory allowed us to predict the motion of the planets and helped us discover a new planet in the solar system. In other words, it provided a theory that unified phenomena. Until that stage, we did not know that these …
The English word ‘Hinduism’ not only carries multiple meanings it also appears to refer to many different things. If the context of the discussion were to help us disambiguate the reference of this word, it might not pose many problems for a serious discussion. Unfortunately, the context itself gets muddled. Each understands the question ‘Does Hinduism Exist? ’ in a different fashion. As though …
Let me focus on the citation “Ours is the true religion because, above all, it…stands up… to tell and to declare to the nations who are mere children of yesterday in comparison with us Hindus - who own the hoary antiquity of the wisdom, discovered by our ancestors here in India.”
Two things are striking in this citation: the “truth” of a religion is directly linked to its “antiquity” and to its …
To take German language, let us look at how Heidegger talks about ‘being’: there is the ‘big Being’ (‘Sein’) and there is the ‘small being’ (‘Dasein’ meaning ’there-being’ or ‘so-being’). And then there is ‘Sein’ and ‘Seindes’. All these are translated by the word ‘being’.
To jump back a couple of hundred years, and pick up another philosopher with the same alphabet and the same language, we have …
1: Atheism is a phenomenon that came into being in the western culture at around the time of the so-called Enlightenment. The West claims that it liberated itself from the dogmas of the Christian religion in this Enlightenment, and those who call themselves atheists mean by this that they belong to the enlightened people who “have escaped from the dogmatic illusions of religion.” Now, as it has …
The logical steps that inevitably make the claim that God revealed His Will in Jesus Christ into an unconditional and exclusive truth claim are fairly simple:
(a) Christianity says that the universe was created by God, and that this universe is the perfect embodiment of His will or plan;
(b) Furthermore, it claims that this God has revealed His Will to humankind, and that this revelation is the …
The ascription of professional competence to oneself when one does not have that. Each is in a position to say what ’the Caste System’ is, what ’ethics’ is, what ‘corruption’ is, what ‘religion’ is, what ‘Hinduism’ is… Why does one need to build new social science, when ’every Hindu specimen’ is an authority on these subjects? I suppose one can also be a physicist, biologist and chemist on these …
It is in the nature of a rhetorical text that the author uses linguistic ’tropes’ (metaphors, similes, analogies, imagery, etc) to persuade a reader about the reasonableness of a specific standpoint. It does not build arguments that systematically lead to a stand point but instead tries to convince the readers (or listeners) by using the abilities built into natural languages. Such texts do not …
Dear Patrick Hogan,
It is jolly good of you, as the British say, to contribute to the ’literary landscapes’ column in Sulekha at this particular juncture. I am glad too that you put across some thoughtful considerations without being polemical, and that can only help generate a stimulating discussion among all the concerned parties. However, the way you frame your points make the task an exercise …
The first striking thing is their presumption of knowledge at several levels. Yet, they display abysmal ignorance.
(a) Christianity has not just had a two thousand years’ history. It has also had two thousand years of doctrinal development. In the latter, every notion that has been employed here has been continuously discussed, refined, contested and so on. Their meanings, as they apply to …
Imagine that I were to say the following: Christ and Ganesha are manifestations of the same divinity; Christ came about 2000 years ago in the Middle East, whereas Ganesha is how he has appeared in India some 4000 years ago. Now no one can forbid me from saying this and calling myself a Christian. Question: what should a theory about Christianity do? Show how anyone who decides to call himself a …
Criticism: You are spreading hate by citing Deschner’s work–Kriminalgeschichte des Christentumsand ANY idiot knows even the title is stupid.
I have not cited a single atrocity that Christianity has committed in order to incite hate towards Christianity. In fact, I have not even discussed any specific theological doctrine of any kind of Christianity, except to speak of the Christological dilemma. …
Question: One thing that Balu says is that propping up legislations against tricky proselytizations reflects the weaknesses of Indian culture needs to be explained though. How is it a weakness? How is it not a strength?
In both the theory of rights and in discussions about liberty (or freedom), the following two ways of conceptualizing the issues have been present. One could see rights as an …
Consider the thought that ‘meanings’ (leave aside the distinction between words and sentences on the one hand and concepts and categories on the other) do not exist outside historical contexts. What exactly does this thought say? Begin with ‘historical context’. Either every situation that an individual human being finds himself is a ‘historical context’ (because human beings are always ‘in a …
