Lecture tag: Philosophy
The Anthropology of Islamic Prayer (MT 14)
The idea of prayer in Islam is vague in the sense that it ranges from the mandatory to the most optional and spontaneous. This lecture will deal with the issue of prayer from an anthropological perspective.
Dr Mohammad Talib is lecturer at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. He has taught Sociology at Jamia Millia Islamia University (Delhi), from 1979 to 2001. In 2002, he came to Oxford as the Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz fellow in the Anthropology of Muslim Societies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic studies. His research in the anthropology of Islam focuses on Sufi groups, and madrassahs. His current research work: Madrassahs in the Recent History: An Alternative view between Anthropology and International Relations is a critical examination of the state of social science scholarship on Islam in the contemporary world after 9/11. Among his publications are Writing Labour: Stone Quarry Workers in Delhi (2010), Delhi, Oxford University Press, ‘Modes of Overcoming Social Exclusion through Education: Analysis of two Accounts from Pre-and Post Independent India’ in K N Panikkar and M Bhaskaran Nair (eds.) Emerging Trends in Higher Education in India: Concepts and Practices (New Delhi: Pearson Education India, 2011), ‘Predicaments of Serving Two Masters: Anthropologists between the Discipline and Sponsored Research’ in Raúl Acosta et. al (eds.) Making Sense of the Global: Anthropological Perspectives on Interconnections and Processes. (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), and ‘Sufis and Politics’ in The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Modern Islamic World, John Esposito (ed). Oxford University Press, New York (2008).
Readings in Phenomenology: Session Two (MT 14)
Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on Theology and Religious Studies. The reading group seeks to engage with some of the fundamental concepts of phenomenology that underlie much work in Theology and the Phenomenology of Religion. This term we will be reading Paul Ricoeur Oneself as Another (trans Kathleen Blamey, University of Chicago Press, 1992). Week 1 we will discuss Chapter one, ‘Person and Identifying Reference, a Semantic Approach.
Readings in Phenomenology: Session One (MT 2014)
Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century that has had a deep impact on Theology and Religious Studies. The reading group seeks to engage with some of the fundamental concepts of phenomenology that underlie much work in Theology and the Phenomenology of Religion. This term we will be reading Paul Ricoeur Oneself as Another (trans Kathleen Blamey, University of Chicago Press, 1992). Week 1 we will discuss Chapter one, ‘Person and Identifying Reference, a Semantic Approach.’
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.
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.
What is Still Living in the Life and Work of Gandhi?
This lecture aims at a rigorous assessment of Gandhi’s ongoing relevance to a comprehensive culture of peace, which includes, among other matters, peace and human rights, interfaith harmony, and ecosophy.
Joseph Prabhu is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at California State University, Los Angeles and occasional Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. He is active as both a scholar and a peace activist. He has edited The Intercultural Challenge of Raimon Panikkar (Orbis Books, 1996) and co-edited the two-volume Indian Ethics: Classical Traditions and Contemporary Challenges (Ashgate Publishing Co, 2007; Springer and Oxford University Press, India, 2016).He has authored Raimon Panikkar as a Modern Spiritual Master (Orbis Books, 2015). He has been a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University and of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago. He has also been co-editor of ReVision from 1995-2003, and a contributing editor of Zygon. He is the past President of the international Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, 2008-2010, and the Program Chair for the Melbourne Parliament of the World’s Religions, 2009. He served on the Board of Trustees and the Executive Committee of the Council of a Parliament of the World’s Religions from 2005-2011. He has lectured and taught at more than seventy universities either as visiting professor or as guest lecturer in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe and the United States.