Secularism and Religion in Multi-faith Societies: The Case of India by Ragini Sen, Wolfgang Wagner, and Caroline Howarth Book Review Prabuddha Bharata December 2015

In this book, Muthuraj Swamy discusses how conflicts are usually caused by factors other than religious factors at the grassroots level, and how dialogue is an elitist phenomenon that does not percolate to the grassroots, who do not need it in the first place.

Psychoanalysis and its father in the West, Sigmund Freud, have often been seen as the antitheses of religion and faith. This book seeks to dispel this misconception and place Freud and psychoanalysis as hopes to the faithful and the hedonist alike. Ethics and morality do not get compromised and unethical and immoral behaviour do not get free…[Read more]

St Teresa of Avila is one of the most studied and emulated Christian mystic. She is an extraordinary role model to be followed by a monastic religious, because she not only gives step-by-step instructions for the ‘interior’ life, but also guides life in a monastic community. She is one of the very few mystics who have recorded in detail their exp…[Read more]

Through this work, François Laruelle looks at non-philosophers from various angles. He seeks to look at them from a humane perspective and as ‘subjects of knowledge’ (25). He argues that ‘non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist’ (26).

Religious leaders often come together for a statement of their respective beliefs seeking a false satisfaction that they are working for world peace by a disparate series of talks meant to only emphasize differences among faith traditions. This book is a welcome departure from such meaningless exercises and hopes to create a tradition of…[Read more]

Translating a Sanskrit text is a highly challenging task. The difficulty only gets compounded if it is a Vedic text, because the Vedas use a Sanskrit that is quite different from the Sanskrit used in other literature. To translate the Rig Veda into English requires great patience and great scholarship. Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton…[Read more]

Tensions among differing theoretical frameworks are often observed within the philosophy of religion, largely given disparate scientific, analytic, and continental approaches. New Models of Religious Understanding is a serious and timely reexamination of scientific and analytic perspectives, and questions the very need for these approaches. Edited…[Read more]

Galloway critically examines how François Laruelle’s non-standard philosophy subverts the digital question. Clarifying the philosophical nature of the digital concept, Galloway proceeds to show that non-standard philosophy is an attempt to come out of the authoritarian stance that traditional philosophy takes and to show that there could be a no…[Read more]

There are two kinds of academic writing, if we classify the work by the nature of the author’s expertise. The first one, the most prevalent, is the kind of writing that is born out of the scholarly work of the author and is primarily based on research and teaching experience. The second kind, comparatively harder to come by, is the writing of a s…[Read more]

Interreligious comparisons have been an interesting subject for both religious individuals and academics. The language of comparison has been contested by almost all who rely upon it, from some Western scholars who started such comparisons at the turn of the twentieth century, to phenomenologists and postmodernists. This range of disparate views…[Read more]

This book is the first of three volumes of ‘autonomous works, coordinated by the material of their themes and objects and unified by their practice of thought’, which François Laruelle calls the ‘Triptych’ (ix). Intended to be a philosophico-religious treatment of the ‘heretic’ question that theology and religious studies apparently raise but fa…[Read more]

This book is a collection of the English translations of François Laruelle’s writings, mainly from the first two stages of the five-stage development of his thought of non-philosophy. The tone of the book is set by the wonderful introduction by the editor, Robin Mackay, who brings out the dissatisfaction of Laruelle that propelled him to re…[Read more]

François Laruelle’s non-standard philosophy adopts an approach that is not just novel but abstruse and not based on anything that philosophy has known till now. That is why it becomes necessary that the concepts are defined and what could be better than the proponent of this philosophy, Laruelle himself, working to this end.

François Laruelle calls this book a ‘faith experiment’ (xi) and presents the problem that led to such an experiment: ‘The war of religion continues, and there will be no Christian return of Christ. If Christianity is the religion of the exit from religions, Christ is the exit from Christianity itself’ (ix). He proceeds to apply the ‘Algebra…[Read more]

Minimal Theologies by Hent de Vries Book Review Prabuddha Bharata February 2015

Man in Search of Immortality Testimonials from the Hindu Scriptures by Swami Nikhilananda Book Review Prabuddha Bharata January 2013

God Without Being by Jean-Luc Marion Book Review Prabuddha Bharata February 2015

Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahayana Daniel Boucher Book Review Prabuddha Bharata August 2014

Beyond Sacred Violence: A Comparative Study of Sacrifice by Kathryn McClymond Book Review Prabuddha Bharata February 2015