Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), at about the start of the nineteenth century, was advocat‐ ing that the study about religion has to be included in university‐level education in the East. The university he envisioned and founded (Visva‐Bharati) included in its curriculum such a study. Shortly a er India’s regaining independence in 1947 and becoming a secular state, that institution was inaugurated as a central university with an advanced institute for philosophy and the study of religion. This essay answers whether his understanding (...) of studying religion would accommodate the approach to the academic study of religion associated with the mod‐ ern Western research university. It also inquires the extent that the curriculum for the study of religion at Visva‐Bharati evidences such an approach. The answers it advances draw primarily on his two essays, Eastern University and Hindu University, which o er his vision of univer‐ sity level education; on commissioned reports for higher level education in the new India as a secular state; on developments in the academic study of religion in the West, especially the United States; on the relatively recent revised curriculum for such a study at Visva‐Bharati University; and on ideas of social imaginary and the comparative study of religion articulated by Western scholars. (shrink)

El tercer volumen de la obra estética de Kierkegaard publicada en 1843 reúne cuatro discursos que forman el objeto de estudio de este análisis. La intención es presentar una imagen del pensamiento religioso de Kierkegaard, mostrar la dimensiones temáticas de este tercer volumen, a la par de clarificar las interrelaciones de los discursos y ofrecer una herramienta que subraya las ideas principales por medio del listado de vocabulario de alta frecuencia de ocurrencias. Las preguntas principales que se atienden en este (...) trabajo son: ¿cuáles son las sesenta principales palabras utilizadas en el tercer volumen de los discursos de 1843? ¿cuáles son las tres dimensiones textuales primarias de este volumen? y ¿cuál es el núcleo o en qué se enfoca este volumen? El método que se utiliza en este análisis consiste en la construcción de una versión de los discursos legible para una máquina sobre la cual se aplican técnicas de análisis computacional que a partir de una lista de sesenta palabras anormalmente frecuentes en los cuatro discursos del tercer volumen genera una matriz que arroja porcentajes y estadísticas que ayudan al investigador a reconstruir el núcleo de la obra analizada, así como a identificar los argumentos principales y los puntos en común que el mapeo arroja de la comparación de las partes del texto. (shrink)

This paper examines a political theory implict in Kierkegaard's critique of the novel Two Ages. To achieve that aim, it views Kierkegaard as a political radical relative to modern liberalism and aristocratic conservatism of the 1840's in Denmark, by juxtaposing him to Locke. Basic to the theory is a notion of individuality which relies on three interlocking concepts: will, equality, and autonomy. That notion in turn supports ideas of authority and leadership that throw further light on Kierkegaard's understanding of the (...) relation between religion and politics and suggests what is central to the political logic operative in the critique in his publication Literary Review. (shrink)

This work is an exposition of Salighed, a concept at the heart of Kierkegaard's thought, and the dialectical starting point for his reflections on what it means to live a genuinely human life. Kierkegaard studies to date appear to have underestimated the importance of the word and the concepts that lie behind it—perhaps because the word appears easily translated into the English forms of "eternal happiness" or "blessedness." This, suggests Khan, does little justice to the concepts behind the word, and (...) does even less justice to the relationships of the concept of Salighed to other concepts crucial to Kierkegaard's thought. Khan's approach to this word/concept study has been greatly augmented by his use of the computer in analyzing word-relatedness, context, and frequency of occurrence, both within individual works and in comparing one work with a context of the Kierkegaard corpus. The volume will, of course, be of interest to students of Kierkegaard. It will also be of interest to those scholars intrigued by the possibilities of using computers in linguistic research and in literary studies. (shrink)

This book sets Kierkegaard's understanding of the ethical against ethics influenced by the "ideal of disengagement." It claims that this ideal created for ethics a problematic status by abstracting the individual from the social world to become a free self-conscious being. As a corrective, Kierkegaard's reflections redirect attention to an ethical demand that has an absolute character by virtue of religious beliefs held, and to an ethics that understands the individual to be rooted in society.

This paper presents a view of melancholy based on Kierkegaard's insight of the self, showing that this dimension of depression is anticipatory of threat to well-being. The view of self, contrasted with a view presuming a connection between two factors only — body and mind — has a third factor or ethico-spiritual element. Taken as an explanatory category, this factor allows for making a distinction between melancholy as crisis and melancholy as ailment, and has implication detecting and treating the latter. (...) That is, in the initial patient-physician dialogue, the physician might be expected to indicate whether she/he is open to consider the possibility of a third factor as an explanatory category in the formation of self-hood. Such indication would provide for patients with an inkling of their own condition, a basis for making a choice about whom they will accept as caregiver. (shrink)