Citizendia

Western & Indian Philosophy
20th-century philosophy
Balagangadhara at Rethinking Religion in India 2008
Name
S. See also [[Analytic philosophy]] and [[Continental philosophy]] The 20th century brought with it upheavals that produced a series of conflicting developments within Philosophy N. Balagangadhara
BirthJanuary 3, 1952, Bangalore, India
School/traditionVergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap, Comparative Science of Cultures
Main interestsReligious Studies
Cultural Studies
Post-colonial Studies
Orientalism
Ethics
Political Philosophy
History of ideas
South Asian Studies
Notable ideasExplanatory Intelligible Account
Colonial Consciousness
Indian Renaissance


Professor S. Events 1431 - Joan of Arc is handed over to the Bishop Pierre Cauchon. Year 1952 ( MCMLII) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Bangalore ( officially Bengaluru ( Kannada: ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು) is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. India, officially the Republic of India (भारत गणराज्य inc-Latn Bhārat Gaṇarājya; see also other Indian languages) is a country Religious studies, or Religious education, is the academic field of multi-disciplinary Secular study of religious beliefs behaviors and institutions Cultural studies is an academic discipline which combines Political economy, Communication, Sociology, Social theory, Literary theory Postcolonialism ( postcolonial theory, post-colonial theory) is an intellectual discourse that holds together a set of theories found among the texts and Orientalism refers to the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers designers and artists and can also refer to a sympathetic stance Ethics is a major branch of Philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life Political philosophy is the study of questions about the City, Government, Politics, Liberty, Justice, Property, Rights The history of ideas is a field of Research in History that deals with the expression preservation and change of human Ideas over time Indology refers to the academic study of the languages texts History and Cultures of the Indian subcontinent, and as such a subset of Asian studies N. Balagangadhara (aka Balu) was a student of National College, Bangalore and moved to Belgium in 1977 to study philosophy at Ghent University, where he obtained his doctorate under the supervision of Prof. National College is an educational institutions in Bangalore and has two branches namely Basavanagudi and Jayanagar The Kingdom of Belgium is a Country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters as well as those Ghent University (in Dutch Universiteit Gent, abbreviated UGent) is one of the three large Flemish universities. Etienne Vermeersch. Etienne Vermeersch ( Sint-Michiels - Brugge, 2 May 1934) is a Belgian (moral Philosopher, Skeptic, His doctoral thesis (1991) was entitled Comparative Science of Cultures and the Universality of Religion: An Essay on Worlds without Views and Views without the World. Presently, he is professor at Ghent University and directs the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cutuurwetenschap (Comparative Science of Cultures). Ghent University (in Dutch Universiteit Gent, abbreviated UGent) is one of the three large Flemish universities. Prof. Balu has been researching the nature of religion. His central area of inquiry has been the study of Western culture against the background of Indian culture. [1] His research programme is called in Dutch "Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap," which translates into "Comparative Science of Cultures. " Prof. Balagangadhara has held the co-chair of the Hinduism Unit at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and gives lectures to a wide audience, from the European, American and Indian classrooms, through the scholarly conference halls, to the Hindu temples. Hinduism is a religious tradition that originated in the Indian subcontinent. The American Academy of Religion is the world's largest association of Scholars in the field of Religious studies and related topics


Contents

Research

From the 1980s onwards, S. N. Balagangadhara has been developing the research programme Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap (“Comparative Science of Cultures”) to study the cultural differences between Asia and Europe. He analyses western culture and intellectual thought through its representations of other cultures, with a particular focus on the representations of India. He studies how and to what extent the Christian religion shaped the West and the conceptual framework through which it understands India. Christianity ( Greek Χριστιανισμός from the word Xριστός ( Christ)is a monotheistic Religion centered on the life and teachings A conceptual framework is used in research to outline possible courses of action or to present a preferred approach to an idea or thought Given the conceptual limitations that this has generated in the human sciences in general and the study of Indian culture in particular, Balagangadhara attempts at developing alternative descriptions of the Indian culture and its traditions. They provide an alternative way to access the Indian traditions and make their insights available for the development of new theories in the human sciences. As such, Balagangadhara attempts at translating the knowledge embodied by the Indian traditions into the conceptual language of the twenty-first century. [2]

Title Page "The Heathen in his Blindness..."
Title Page "The Heathen in his Blindness. . . "

In his early work, Balagangadhara focused on religion, culture and cultural difference. [3] In scholarly circles, he is mainly known for the controversial claim that religion is not a cultural universal. He started with the following observations: most intellectuals agree that Christianity had a profound influence on western culture; that members from different cultures experience many aspects of the world differently; and that the empirical and theoretical study of both culture and religion emerged within the West. Balagangadhara proposed to think these ideas through, and argued that religion is important to the West because the constitution and the identity of western culture are tied to the dynamic of Christianity as a religion. He argued that the analytical tools with which the West has understood other cultures like India, are intrinsically shaped by Semitic and Christian theology. The doctrine that God gave religion to the humankind, Balagangadhara argued, lies at the heart of the originally ethnographic belief in the universality of religion:

In the name of science and ethnology, the Biblical themes have become our regular stock-in-trade: that God gave religion to humankind has become a cultural universal in the guise that all cultures have a religion; the theme that God gave one religion to humanity has taken the form and belief that all religions have something in common; that God revealed himself to humankind is sanctified in the claim that in all cultures and at all times there is a subjective experience of religion which is fundamentally the same; the idea that God implanted a sense of divinity in Man is now a secular truth in the form of an anthropological, specifically human ability to have a religious experience . . . And so the list goes on, and on, and on. Theme after theme from the pages of the Bible has become the ‘but of course!’ of intellectuals—whether Jew, Muslim, Dinka, or Brahmin. [4]

Balagangadhara proposes therefore a novel analysis of religion, the Roman ‘religio’, the construction of ‘religions’ in India and the nature of cultural differences. Ancient Roman religion encompasses the collection of Beliefs and Rituals practised in Ancient Rome in the form of Cult practices He is currently working on two monographs, the first on the evolutionary explanations of religion, and the second on Indian traditions and the ethical domain. The historical origins of religion are to be distinguished from their psychological or social origins Ethics is a major branch of Philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life


Projects


Selected Publications

Books

Book Chapters

Articles


External links

References

  1. ^ The Hindu, Online edition of India's National Newspaper, Sunday, Dec 09, 2007
  2. ^ See for instance Balagangadhara, S. N. (2005). "How to Speak for the Indian Traditions". Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73 (4): 987-1013. ISSN 0002-7189
  3. ^ Balagangadhara, S. N. (1994). "The Heathen in his Blindness. . . " Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion. Leiden, New York: E. J. Brill
  4. ^ Ibid. , pp. 226-27.
  5. ^ The Hindu, Online edition of India's National Newspaper, Monday, Aug 13, 2007
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