Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worth reading twice!,
By
This review is from: Advaita Vedanta Perspective on Language (Studies in Indian tradition) (Hardcover)
What can't be known, can't be known. Ludwig Wittgenstein.This is a book about the language of religious discourse, with a particular emphasis upon the way in which Advaita Vedanta approaches this, with its `two-level' perspective. Its tone is academic (hardly surprising when it was originally submitted as a doctoral thesis) but, for the most part, it is perfectly readable, given an interest in the subject and a little concentration. And the effort is most definitely worthwhile. For me at least, this way of looking at the teaching of advaita was a novel one. And I found that it enables one to bring fresh understanding to some intrinsically difficult concepts. Much of the material is about religious discourse in general and the various arguments given by philosophers as to why it is or isn't meaningful. Initial discussions relate to the basic problem of how we can speak about a transcendent absolute reality, given our intrinsically dualistic language and what it can actually tell us that is meaningful. There is a section comparing the views of the various schools of Eastern philosophy to put Advaita into context and this is followed by a more in-depth study of Advaita's treatment of the scriptures as a source of knowledge. This also addresses the meanings of and relationships between words and sentences, knowledge, universals, primary and secondary meanings etc. And it explains the key differences between `descriptive' language or `existential' statements and `prescriptive' or `injunctive' ones. There is also a fascinating section about Western philosophers' thoughts on the subject. This is the most taxing part of the book but there are numerous opportunities for flashes of insight. It takes us from the `quasi-cognitive approach of analogical predication' (yes - I will have to read the book again to remember what this means!) to the `conceptual relativism' of D. Z. Phillips (ditto) and philosophers such as Ian Ramsey (who proposed that religious language is logically `odd'!). Much of the section revolves around the famous `challenge' of Anthony Flew who modified the `Gardener Parable' of John Wisdom, in order to argue that the problem with religious discourse is that it cannot be falsified. And, if a scriptural statement can be neither verified nor falsified, it is essentially meaningless. (See [...] But it is the section on the way in which Advaita itself uses its concept of vyavahAra versus paramArtha, in order to negate the dualistic and point to the non-dual reality, which makes the book particularly valuable from this reader's point of view. Grimes explains the traditional view on this and then argues that one can actually speak of an `Absolute Language', which points directly and immediately to the Absolute. This is effectively what Direct Path tries to do. It is one of those books that really does need to be read again in order fully to appreciate what is being said. But, unlike most books that fall into that category, this one actually does merit re-reading - and I will certainly do so! Dennis Waite, author of Back to the Truth: 5000 years of Advaita
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
