Matter is one of most familiar yet obscure concepts in the modern western account of the world: it is widely taken to explain the very nature of existence, and it has become a pillar of the secular-scientific worldview. Nevertheless the history of ‘matter’ reveals a complicated genealogy of classical concepts concerning atoms, energy, and substance, combined with theological debates about the mysterious status of the reality that surrounds us. Through three short papers and an open discussion, this seminar will explore the concepts and controversies that surround the notion of matter. Spanning western and Indian cultures, and touching on the disenchantment of the world, the disjunction of secular and sacred reality, we will seek to reconsider the pivotal position of materiality in our understanding of the world.
Lecture tag: Hinduism
Making the Implicit Explicit: Emplotment as Saṃsāra and Soteriological Method in Advaita Vedānta (TT 16)
In this paper I explore emplotment as a means of re-framing the Advaita Vedāntin account of soteriology and enworlded subjectivity. I argue that there is a narrative hermeneutical framework and self-reflexive theological method implicit in the Advaita Vedāntic tradition, particularly as articulated by Vidyāraṇya, a fourteenth century Śaṃkarācārya from Śṛṅgeri. In conversation with contemporary cognitive narratology, I draw out the Advaita Vedāntic understanding of saṃsāra and soteriology on narrative grounds, or what I call emplotment1 and emplotment2. I argue that this approach is engendered by the tradition itself and provides a way of not merely thinking about the Advaitin project but on terms with it. This conceptual framework serves as my own method to understanding the theological enterprise of Vidyāraṇya, who, I argue elsewhere, utilizes narrative methods across the theological modalities of his Jīvanmuktiviveka.
James Madaio is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at New Europe College in Bucharest and was recently awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester.
Is it ‘Intolerant’ to ‘Convert’ Other People? Revisiting a vexed debate in Hindu–Christian dialogue
A recurring theme in Hindu and Christian conversations over the last hundred years or so is the ‘intolerance’ of the very attempt to produce conviction in other people to move across religious boundaries. I argue that an examination of these conversations reveals that crucial terms such as ‘tolerance’, ‘conversion’, and others are often not carefully defined, so that these encounters have become a dialogue of the deaf. However, when these terms are located in the distinctive Hindu and Christian theological universes, it becomes clear that the necessity or the impossibility of conversions is related to deep metaphysical disputes over what, in fact, is the true Religion. Therefore, from a philosophical perspective, the real debate lies not only over the political structures of ‘toleration’ but also over the epistemic reach of reason to settle the most famous (and lamentably blood-splattered) question in the entire religious history of humanity: what is, in truth, the nature of the divine?
Dr Ankur Barua is Lecturer in Hindu Studies, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. He was raised by a Roman Catholic aunt and Vaishnavite Hindu parents, and the question of ‘conversion’ across Hindu-Christian theological boundaries has remained a matter of deep existential concern, and, of course, a central focus of much of his published work. His articles have appeared in the International Journal of Hindu Studies, Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Journal of Hindu Studies, The Heythrop Journal, The Journal of Ecumenical Studies, and Sophia.
Hinduism 2: Hindu Traditions (Paper 21): Lecture 8 (HT 16)
Beginning with the early medieval period, this paper traces the development of Hinduism in devotional (bhakti) and tantric traditions. The paper examines the development of Śaiva, Śākta, and Vaiṣṇava traditions along with ideas about liberation, ritual, asceticism, yoga and devotion. There will be some exploration of Hinduism and Modernity and there may also be reference to major schools of Hindu philosophy such as Vedānta.
Nyaya Ethics (HT 16)
I shall give a survey of major developments in Nyaya ethics beginning with the Nyayasutra, the founding work of the Nyaya philosophical school and the Nyayabhasya, the earliest available commentary on the Nyayasutra. I shall also elaborate on the disagreement between Prabhakara ethics and Nyaya ethics and show the latter’s relevance for modern moral discourse with reference to the ethical theories of Aristotle, Kant and Mill and such issues as minority rights and ethical absolutism.
Professor Kisor Kumar Chakrabarti is the President of the Institute for Cross Cultural studies and Academic Exchange. He is a former Provost and Dean of the faculty and Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Distinguished Scholar in residence of the Davis and Elkins College, the Sarah B. Cochran Professor of Philosophy of the Bethany College and Forrest S. and Jean B. Williams Distinguished Professor of Humanities of the Ferrum College. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Calcutta, etc. He has received the Doctoral Fulbright, the Post-doctoral Fulbright and the Senior Fulbright awards and held fellowships at the University of Pittsburgh, the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla, the Australian National University and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has studied classical Sanskrit philosophical texts under the guidance of eminent Hindu pundits for many decades. He has also studied Greek philosophical texts in the original and taught Greek philosophy, modern philosophy, logic and Indian philosophy in colleges and universities in India and the USA for forty five years. He has authored seventy eight research papers and articles mainly on the topics of logic, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, Indian philosophy and comparative philosophy. His books include Definition and Induction, University of Hawaii Press, 1995, Classical Indian Philosophy of Mind, State University of New York Press, 1999, Classical Indian Philosophy of Induction, Rowman and Littlefield, 2010 and Major Doctrines of Hinduism and Buddhism, Magnus Publications, 2012. He has been a Visiting Professor or invited to give lectures in about a hundred colleges and universities in Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia and the USA.
Hinduism 1: Sources and Development – Lecture one (MT15)
This lecture series provides some basic material for Theology FHS Paper 20, “Hinduism 1: Sources and Development.’ These lectures offer a thematic and historical introduction to the sources and early development of ‘Hindu’ traditions from their early formation to the early medieval period. We will explore the formation of Hindu traditions through textual sources, such as the Vedas, Upaniṣads and Bhagavad Gītā, along with the practices and social institutions that formed classical Hindu traditions. The course will include an introduction to Hindu philosophy. A detailed reading list will be supplied at the start of the lectures, which will be based loosely around Gavin Flood’s Introduction to Hinduism (CUP 1996).
Hinduism 1: Sources and Development – Lecture two (MT15)
This lecture series provides some basic material for Theology FHS Paper 20, “Hinduism 1: Sources and Development.’ These lectures offer a thematic and historical introduction to the sources and early development of ‘Hindu’ traditions from their early formation to the early medieval period. We will explore the formation of Hindu traditions through textual sources, such as the Vedas, Upaniṣads and Bhagavad Gītā, along with the practices and social institutions that formed classical Hindu traditions. The course will include an introduction to Hindu philosophy. A detailed reading list will be supplied at the start of the lectures, which will be based loosely around Gavin Flood’s Introduction to Hinduism (CUP 1996).
Hinduism 1: Sources and Development – Lecture three (MT15)
This lecture series provides some basic material for Theology FHS Paper 20, “Hinduism 1: Sources and Development.’ These lectures offer a thematic and historical introduction to the sources and early development of ‘Hindu’ traditions from their early formation to the early medieval period. We will explore the formation of Hindu traditions through textual sources, such as the Vedas, Upaniṣads and Bhagavad Gītā, along with the practices and social institutions that formed classical Hindu traditions. The course will include an introduction to Hindu philosophy. A detailed reading list will be supplied at the start of the lectures, which will be based loosely around Gavin Flood’s Introduction to Hinduism (CUP 1996).
Hinduism 1: Sources and Development – Lecture four (MT15)
This lecture series provides some basic material for Theology FHS Paper 20, “Hinduism 1: Sources and Development.’ These lectures offer a thematic and historical introduction to the sources and early development of ‘Hindu’ traditions from their early formation to the early medieval period. We will explore the formation of Hindu traditions through textual sources, such as the Vedas, Upaniṣads and Bhagavad Gītā, along with the practices and social institutions that formed classical Hindu traditions. The course will include an introduction to Hindu philosophy. A detailed reading list will be supplied at the start of the lectures, which will be based loosely around Gavin Flood’s Introduction to Hinduism (CUP 1996).
The Mammoth, Multi-faith Kumbh Mela: A Place of Practical Plurality amid Colossal Chaos
This lecture is based on the 2013 Maha-Kumbh Mela held in Allahabad, in which Kalpesh Bhatt conducted field research as a part of the Harvard Kumbh Workshop. Recognized as the largest religious gathering in the world, the Kumbh Mela is a mammoth, multi-faith event that hosts around 100 million pilgrims from diverse and at times antithetical Hindu traditions ranging from polytheistic to monotheistic to atheistic. Even a few Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, and other South Asian traditions also participate in the Kumbh, making it an intricately convoluted convergence of manifold beliefs, practices, and rituals. The enthusiasm of and differences among the millions of laypersons and ascetics who flock to the Kumbh occasionally culminate into a fierce commotion arising from mundane issues such as space allocation, crowd control, unchecked competition, and crass commercialization.
Despite embodying such a colossal chaos, the Kumbh Mela provides an example of practical pluralism by effecting a mostly harmonious confluence of diverse belief systems and practices. Drawing from textual sources as well as his ethnographic fieldwork in the 2013 Kumbh Mela, Allahabad, India, Bhatt examines how does the spirit of sacrifice embedded in the spatial and spiritual vastness of the Kumbh engender the active seeking of understanding across lines of differences without leaving one’s identities and commitments behind? Although grounded in disparate theological, philosophical, and sociocultural foundations, millions of lay people, religious leaders, wandering sadhus, and solitary ascetics coexist and coalesce, albeit temporarily, in this month-long event. How we can extrapolate this ecumenical model of the Kumbh Mela to embrace pluralism pragmatically in a larger context.
Kalpesh Bhatt joined the collaborative doctoral program at Department for the Study of Religion, Centre for South Asian Studies, and Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto, after completing Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. Prior to that, fusing his interests in science, religion, and art, Kalpesh led a number of creative projects, including the production of an IMAX film, Mystic India, and a high-tech water spectacular, Sat-Chit-Anand, based on the Upaniṣadic story of Naciketā. Kalpesh’s doctoral project is to do modern Hindu theology from pre-modern Hindu texts such as the Bhagavad Gītā and study its role in Indian diaspora’s grappling with everyday personal and socioeconomic struggles.