Roy W. Perrett argues that the Hindu sage, like the western moral saint, seems precluded from pursuing non-moral ends for their own sakes. If he is precluded from pursuing non-moral ends for their own sakes, then he is precluded from pursuing non-moral virtues, interests, activities, relationships, and so on for their own sakes. A life devoid of every such pursuit seems deficient. Hence, the Hindu sage seems to forsake the good life. In response, I adapt a reply that (...) Vanessa Carbonell offers in the context of the moral saint. The Hindu sage might pursue non-moral virtues, interests, activities, relationships, and so on for their own sakes, so long as his motivation to pursue moksa is read de re rather than de dicto. Indeed, this reply is more convincing in the case of the Hindu sage than it is in the case of the moral saint. (shrink)

This book explores a larger family of saints—those celebrated not just by Christianity but by other religious traditions of the world: Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Confucian, African, and Caribbean. The essays show how saints serve as moral exemplars in the communities that venerate them.

Commentary on Amr̥tānubhava, work on Hindu philosophy by Jñānadeva, active 1290; includes Marathi text with English translation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.4 (2002) 349-351 [Access article in PDF] Mystical States or Mystical Life?Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu Perspectives Marek Marzanski and Mark Bratton THIS IS AN ORIGINAL and conceptually precise paper. It is a significant attempt to bring religion and psychiatry into conversation. With particular reference to three Oriental epistemologies—Tibetan and Zen Buddhism and Tantric Hinduism—Caroline Brett seeks to offer a means of differentiating mystical states (...) from psychotic ones. She is critical of reductionism in modern psychiatry that seeks either to elide religious experience into psychopathology, or seeks too sharp a distinction between them. Brett claims, by implication, to offer a more fundamental level of discrimination between religious experience and psychopathology than the "cognitive problem-solving model" that Jackson and Fulford propose (1997a).In both mystical and psychotic states, the author argues, there are radical alterations in the structure of experience. Psychotic states, however, result from failures to complete, or, at least, to negotiate smoothly, the transition from a commitment to an epistemology based on illusory reality to one structured according to ultimate reality—a reality that is brought into focus through an alignment of transcendent vision and mundane cognition. Although this epistemological "stuck-ness" can manifest itself in action as destructive behavior, for example, psychological isolation or social and occupational dysfunction, the basis of the distinction between mystical and psychotic states lies in real differences in the states themselves.In our view, there is a tendency in much psychiatric and theological literature to homogenize mystical states and to treat experiences that (arguably) occur on a number of different levels as if they were on the same level. It is still widely thought that a mystical consciousness can somehow be abstracted from the religious traditions out of which this consciousness emerges. It is assumed that we can talk about experience in abstraction from the shared consciousness produced by schooling in a specific historical religion (Shannon 1985, 493). Thus, the altered mystical state of a Zen Master or Saint Teresa of Avila in ecstasy are regarded as identical states of consciousness. Yet it is far from clear that mystical states can be talked about without explicit reference to the language and tradition in which the self is formed, or, in terms that would have different meanings in Abrahamic and Oriental religious traditions, un-selfed. [End Page 349]There is a related tendency to regard religious doctrines as attempts to interpret mystical experience, as second-order reflections on the language of experience, as if religious doctrines were local religious dialects into which core experiences could be translated. We suggest, rather, that there is an iterative relationship between a mystical experience and the religious framework out of which it emerges. Religious doctrines are better seen as sets of instructions designed to guide the movement of prayer, and the movement of prayer, in turn, exemplifies the religious doctrine that shapes it.So could mystical states within the framework of Tibetan and Zen Buddhism and Tantric Hinduism better be understood as exemplification's of the worldviews of those particular religious traditions? For example, the relinquishing of ego structures, the dissolution of subject/object boundaries, the yielding of the contrastive identity between experience and the world, and progress toward undifferentiated union of the self with the cosmic self, seem to exemplify the monist cosmology associated with some of those traditions. By the same token, the psychotic state could be interpreted as an exemplification of an existential stance that has for some reason defected from the movement toward transcendental cognition. The point is that the "real differences" Brett identifies in the two states cannot be understood apart from the religious epistemology and doctrines, which those states, positively or negatively, exemplify. "So far 'from mystical states' being a sort of paradigm of certainty, they have authority only within a frame of reference which is believed in on quite other grounds and are therefore properly to be tested according to their consistency with this" (Williams 1991, 149)The force of Brett's paper, like Jackson and Fulford, is to identify the boundaries... (shrink)

The Ālvārs are the seventh–ninth century Tamil poet saints whose works achieved the status of sacred canon in what became, after the time of the theologian Rāmānuja, the Śrīvaiṣṇava community and tradition of south India. Their poems are honored as excellent poetry, as expressive of the experience of the poets themselves and of their encounters with Nārāyaṇa, their chosen deity, and finally as revelation, the divine Word uttered in human words. This thematic issue of Sophia is interested in investigating (...) the transformations or adaptations that a human language — speaking, writing — undergoes when transmitting a divine message, a revelation expressed in human words. This essay suggests that exploring how traditions have thought and performed the divine in human language can be undertaken usefully; that spiritual charged poetry is a powerful medium of divine communication in human words that both fall short in speaking of God and yet, in that failure, speak eloquently; and that reading intertextually, even interreligiously, is a way to disclose powerfully that divine communication. This essay reflects on all this by studying closely verse 57 of the Tiruviruttam of Śaṭakōpan, the greatest of these poet saints. It aims to show how even the outside reader — ‘the pilgrim reader’ who is neither a native nor a tourist — can enter into the interpretive process and find, in the elusive poetic words, a point of access to the revelation of the tradition. Some brief comparison is made with the interpretation of the Song of Songs in Jewish and Christian commentarial tradition. (shrink)

t. 1. Des erreurs et de la vérité.--Ode sur l'origine.--Stances sur l'origine.

After Aquinas, Anselm is the most significant medieval thinker. Utterly convinced of the truth of the Christian religion, he was none the less determined to try to make sense of his Christian faith, and the result is a rigorous engagement with problems of logic which remain relevant for philosophers and theologians even today. This translation provides the first opportunity to read all of Anselm's most important works in one volume.

In this new translation the brilliant and impassioned descriptions of Augustine's colourful early life are conveyed to the English reader with accuracy and art. Augustine tells of his wrestlings to master his sexual drive, his rare ascent from a humble Algerian farm to the edge of the corridors of high power at the imperial court of Milan, and his renunciation of secular ambition and marriage as he recovered the faith that his mother had taught him. It was in a Milan (...) garden that Augustine finally achieved the act of will to Christian conversion, which he compared to a lazy man in bed finally deciding it is time to get up and face the day. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

‘Feminist logic’ may sound like an impossible, incoherent, or irrelevant project, but it is none of these. We begin by delineating three categories into which projects in feminist logic might fall: philosophical logic, philosophy of logic, and pedagogy. We then defuse two distinct objections to the very idea of feminist logic: the irrelevance argument and the independence argument. Having done so, we turn to a particular kind of project in feminist philosophy of logic: Valerie Plumwood's feminist argument for a relevance (...) logic. Plumwood's work serves as our primary case study as we turn to the project of considering three different ways we might understand her argument and revisionist arguments like it: as a priori theorizing, as ameliorative conceptual engineering, or as instances of anti-exceptionalist approaches to logic. After arguing that the anti-exceptionalist approach seems to provide the most promising means of understanding the kind of project undertaken in a feminist challenge to classical logic, we briefly address the consequences that this might have for logic instruction. Here, we argue for the perhaps unexpected conclusion that feminist programs ought to offer more, not less, instruction in logic for those who take interest. (shrink)

Virtue signaling—using public moral discourse to enhance one’s moral reputation—is a familiar concept. But, what about profile pictures framed by “Vaccines work!”? Or memes posted to anti-vaccine groups echoing the group’s view that “Only sheep believe Big Pharma!”? These actions don’t express moral views—both claims are empirical (if imprecise). Nevertheless, they serve a similar purpose: to influence the judgments of their audience. But, where rainbow profiles guide their audience to view the agent as morally good, these acts guide their audience (...) to view the agent as epistemically good. They are instances of epistemic virtue signaling. The first goal of this paper is to offer an account of epistemic virtue signaling. I argue that epistemic virtue signaling occurs through both behavioral and propositional signals, and serves purposes similar to those of moral virtue signaling across a wide variety of discourses. The second is to show that there is much work for this concept to do. In particular, this concept illuminates a double bind faced by those who suffer from and seek to overcome testimonial injustice. I close by demonstrating how this double bind arises in the dissolution of medical autonomy, focusing on the care gap faced by pregnant women of color in the United States today, as compared with their white counterparts. (shrink)

The idea that our epistemic practices can be wrongful has been the core observation driving the growing literature on epistemic injustice, doxastic wronging, and moral encroachment. But, one element of our epistemic practice has been starkly absent from this discussion of epistemic morality: attention. The goal of this article is to show that attention is a worthwhile focus for epistemology, especially for the field of epistemic morality. After presenting a new dilemma for proponents of doxastic wronging, I show how focusing (...) on attention not only allows us to defuse that dilemma, but also helps to substantiate accounts of what goes wrong in cases of doxastic wronging. (shrink)

On the philosophy of some Hindu saints from Tamil Nadu.

These new translations of two treatises dealing with the possibility and nature of knowledge in the face of skeptical challenges are the first to be rendered from the Latin critical edition, the first to be made specifically with a philosophical audience in mind, and the first to be translated by a scholar with expertise in both modern epistemology and philosophy of language.

It has been pointed out that Gettier case scenarios have deviant realizations and that deviant realizations raise a difficulty for the logical analysis of thought experiments. Grundmann and Horvath have shown that it is possible to rule out deviant realizations by suitably modifying the scenario of a Gettier-style thought experiment. They hypothesize further that the enriched scenario corresponds to the way expert epistemologists implicitly interpret the original one. However, no precise account of this implicit enrichment is offered, which makes the (...) proposal somewhat ad hoc. Drawing on pragmatic theory, I argue that the content of Grundmann and Horvath’s modified scenario corresponds to the default interpretation of the original scenario and that epistemological expertise is not required to access the deviance-proof interpretation. This Default Interpretation proposal offers thus a more general and independently motivated solution to the Problem of Deviant Realizations. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION1 ARELY HAS A GREAT AND INFLUENTIAL THINKER taken pains to let others look at his previous literary career through his very own eyes....

How does being a woman affect one’s epistemic life? What about being Black? Or queer? Standpoint theorists argue that such social positions can give rise to otherwise unavailable epistemic privilege. “Epistemic privilege” is a murky concept, however. Critics of standpoint theory argue that the view is offered without a clear explanation of how standpoints confer their benefits, what those benefits are, or why social positions are particularly apt to produce them. For this reason, many regard standpoint theory as being out (...) of step with epistemology more broadly. But this need not be so. This article articulates a minimal version of standpoint epistemology that avoids these criticisms and supports the normative goals of its feminist forerunners. This account serves as the foundation for developing a formal model in which to explore standpoint epistemology using neighborhood semantics for modal logic. (shrink)

For several centuries prior to the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875, individual 'theosophers' in Britain and Europe were quietly in touch with one another all seekers of the inward way. Theosophic Correspondence (1792 1797) is a series of inspiring letters, personal and philosophic, exchanged during the climactic days of the French Revolution between Kirchberger, member of the Sovereign Council at Berne, Switzerland, and Saint-Martin, whom Kirchberger regarded as 'the most eminent writer . . . and most profound of (...) his age'. (shrink)

Root, branch, and blossom, attention is intertwined with epistemology. It is essential to our capacity to learn and decisive of the evidence we obtain, it influences the intellectual connections we forge and those we remember, and it is the cognitive tool whereby we enact decisions about inquiry. Moreover, because it is both an epistemic practice and a site of agency, attention is a natural locus for questions about epistemic morality. This article surveys the emerging epistemology of attention, reviewing the existing (...) literature and sketching avenues for future investigation. It also argues for a reorientation of epistemology itself. This argument is the focus of Section 1. Section 2 briefly reviews philosophical accounts of attention, Section 3 focuses on issues in traditional, individualistic epistemology, and Section 4 turns to social epistemology. (shrink)

An accessible and solid entry into the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Santo Tomás de Aquino comenzó a redactar estos Comentarios a las correspondientes obras de Aristóteles en Roma (1268) y los terminó en París (1269). Son un complemento al tratado "Del alma" y dan por supuesto lo que este tratado explica sobre la esencia, las facultades y los actos del alma, especialmente los actos de los sentidos, tanto externos como internos. Aunque a lo largo de sus "Comentarios" Santo Tomás repite algunos rasgos básicos de la sensación expuestos en "Del alma", su (...) preocupación es explanar la psicofísica de tales actos en relación con sus objetos respectivos. Por lo que a la secuencia de estos libros se refiere, se aprecia un avance vital desde el comentario esquivo al "De sensu et sensato" al cautivante comentario al "De memoria et reminiscentia". Al traspasar la raya ideal que divide el mundo exterior y el interior, penetramos en un ámbito de luz orientadora y de ejercicio persuasivo. (shrink)

Foundational in its consideration of being and the transcendentals, the Metaphysics of Aristotle is a dense and difficult work on its own. This volume contains the first half of St. Thomas's commentary on the Metaphysics, beginning with discussing the views of Aristotle's predecessors and moving towards a discussion of being.

The De Malo represents some of Aquinas' most mature thinking on goodness, badness, and human agency. In it he examines the full range of questions associated with evil: its origin, its nature, its relation to good, and its compatability with the existence of an omnipotent, benevolent God. This edition offers Richard Regan's new, clear readable English translation, based on the Leonine Commission's authoritative edition of the Latin text. Brian Davies has provided an extensive introduction and notes. (Please note: this edition (...) does not include the Latin text). (shrink)

Parce que le Liber de causis etait au programme de l'enseignement universitaire parisien au XIIIe siecle, il etait naturel pour le professeur, frere Thomas d'Aquin, de composer un commentaire sur ce texte attribue alors a Aristote. Mais parce que, a ce moment meme, le dominicain Guillaume de Moerbeke venait de decouvrir les Elements de theologie de Proclus et de les traduire en latin (18 mai 1268), Thomas, enregsitrant aussitot cet apport nouveau, comprenait que le Liber de causis etait un sous-produit (...) des Elements de Proclus et devait donc etre retire a Aristote. Du meme coup, il saisissait la nature platonicienne de ce texte qui le rapprochait des doctrines du Pseudo-Denys et permettait d'evaluer son platonisme. C'est pourquoi le Commentaire de Thomas sur le Liber de causis offre une presentation des doctrines platoniciennes dans la construction theologiques des premiers principes. Dans l'elaboration de ce commentaire, Thomas se revele un veritable humaniste en avance de deux siecles sur les savants de la Renaissance. (shrink)

The Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritata constitutes Aquinas's most extended treatment of any single topic. Volume I (questions 1-9) discusses the nature of truth and divine and angelic intellects. Volume II (questions 10-20) deals with truth and human intellect. Volume III (questions 21-29) investigates the operation of the will.

This new English translation of St. Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law, found in Questions 90-108 of the First Part of the Second Part of the Summa Theologiae, is the only free-standing English translation of the entire Treatise, which includes both a general account of law (Questions 90-92) and also specific treatments of what St. Thomas identifies as the five kinds of law: the eternal law (Question 93), the natural law (Question 94), human law (Questions 95-97), the Old Law (Questions 98-105), (...) and the New Law (Questions 106-108). According to St. Thomas, law, far from supplanting virtue as a basic principle of action, serves as an independent principle of action that complements virtue and is itself capable of being factored into practical deliberation. The reason is that all of God's precepts, prohibitions, and punishments are aimed at promoting the good of the whole universe and, more particularly, the good for human beings, both individually and within the various forms of social life. Because of this, law serves as both a restraint on bad actions and a spur to good action, i.e., a restraint on actions that take us away from virtue and genuine human flourishing and a spur to actions that promote virtue and flourishing. There are many benefits of having the whole treatise rather than just the first few questions, as has been the standard practice in previous editions of the Treatise on Law. To mention just a few of these benefits, the question on the moral precepts of the Old Law (question 100) helps to illuminate in many different ways the earlier questions on natural law and human law (questions 94-97). Again, the questions on the ceremonial and judicial precepts of the Old Law (questions 101-105) demon-strate in depth the symbiotic relationship that St. Thomas takes to obtain between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The questions on the New Law provide an introduction to the Christian way of life that will be described in incomparable detail in the Second Part of the Second Part, the bulk of which is structured around the treatment of the three theological virtues and the four cardinal virtues. Book jacket. (shrink)

Aquinas occupies an extremely important position in the western philosophical tradition. His work contains influential contributions in logic, metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics and philosophy of religion, and his commentaries on Aristotle played a major role in the incorporation of the philosophy of Aristotle into the understanding of Christian doctrine and into western culture at large. Yet many people find it difficult to begin the study of Aquinas's work, daunted by its volume and by its being worked out within in (...) the context of Catholic doctrine, which must now be obscure to most readers. This book can help rectify this. (shrink)

Articles on the parents of Swami Vivekananda, 1863-1902, Hindu saint and philosopher, and their influence on him.