Rediscovering God With Transcendental Argument: A Contemporary Interpretation of Monistic Kashmiri Saiva Philosophy (Suny Series): A Contemporary ... Toward a Comparative Philosophy of Religions) - Softcover

Lawrence, David Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791440583 ISBN 13: 9780791440582

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1999

Synopsis

Rediscovering God with Transcendental Argument provides a comparative philosophical study of the Pratyabhijña system of the medieval Kashmiri Shaiva thinkers Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta. Beginning with intensive descriptive and prescriptive reflections on the nature of philosophy itself, the book examines the special characteristics of the Pratyabhijña discourse as both philosophical apologetics and spiritual exercise. Lawrence situates the Pratyabhijña speculation within the larger context of Hindu and Buddhist deliberations about the role of interpretation in experience, and gives a groundbreaking exposition of the epistemology and ontology of Shiva's self-recognition. He observes the similarities and differences of the Pratyabhijña with Christian understandings of the divine logos, and argues that the Shaiva philosophy elucidates a cogent way of demonstrating the reality of God against contemporary relativism, deconstructionism and other forms of skepticism.

About this title

Review

"Other scholars have written on Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta, and other philosophical giants in the tradition of monistic Shaiva thought. But there is very little on this system of thought written by a scholar so well-read in Western philosophy and so versed in the issues pertaining to comparative philosophy as is Lawrence. His wide horizon invites readers to a fuller and more expansive understanding of Pratyabhijña in particular and of the philosophical structure and dynamics of transcendental logic in general, both in India and in the West.

"I like many things about this excellent work, which presents and interprets a profoundly thoughtful and systematic monistic philosophical religious stance from medieval India from a genuinely comparative perspective." -- William K. Mahony, author of The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination

Synopsis

A comparative study of the Pratyabhinjna system of the medieval Kashmiri <'S>aiva thinkers Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta. Looks at its characteristics both as philosophical apologetics and spiritual exercise, and situates it within the larger context of Hindu and Buddhist thought about the role of interpretation in experience. Comparing the system w

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0791440583
• ISBN 13: 9780791440582
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 330