Panentheism in Indian and Western Thought (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion)

For too long, scholars interested in panentheism have focused almost exclusively on Western approaches to the issue. This book offers the first in-depth study of a wide range of Indian paradigms of panentheism, both ancient and modern, and brings these paradigms into creative and constructive dialogue with Western traditions.

This volume features original essays written by leading international scholars. The volume discusses a broad range of Indian panentheistic traditions, including the Upaniṣads, Bhedābheda Vedānta, Rāmānuja’s Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, Yogācāra Buddhism, and the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda tradition. The chapters connect these traditions with Western panentheistic conceptions developed by thinkers such as Spinoza, Berkeley, Schopenhauer, Krause, Royce, Tononi and Koch, and Western process philosophers.

Panentheism in Indian and Western Thought will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of religion, Indian philosophy, comparative philosophy, and comparative religion.

Benedikt Paul Göcke, Dr. phil., Dr. theol., is Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Philosophy of Science at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. He is also a Research Fellow at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, University of Oxford, and a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. Göcke is the author of A Theory of the Absolute (2014), Alles in Gott? (2012), and The Panentheism of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (2018) and the editor of After Physicalism (2012) and The Infinity of God (2018), among other volumes. He has published articles in such journals as The International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Religious Studies, Zygon, Sophia, Faith and Philosophy, TheoLogica, The European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, and Theologie und Philosophie.

Swami Medhananda is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at the Vedanta Society of Southern California in Hollywood. He also serves as Hindu Chaplain at both UCLA and the University of Southern California. His current research focuses on Vedāntic philosophical traditions, global philosophy of religion, cosmopolitan approaches to consciousness, Indian scriptural hermeneutics, and the philosophies of Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo. He is the author of three books: Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism (2022), Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion (2018), and The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency: Revaluating German Aesthetics from Kant to Adorno (2013). He is also the editor of The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedānta (2020) and two special issues of the International Journal of Hindu Studies, one on "Vedāntic Theodicies" and one on "Swami Vivekananda as a Cosmopolitan Thinker." He has published over 30 articles in academic journals. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley, where he specialized in German aesthetics, and was also a Fulbright Scholar at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a Visiting Student at Oxford University.