About the Book
This book comprises four lectures by the author which she was to deliver at IIAS. These four lectures under the general title of Circumstance and Dharma include Towards a phenomenology of Circumstance; The Concept of Commitment; The Concept of Multiple Allegiance; and The Concept of Dharma. The Lectures reflect personal belief of the author that advanced research needs to focus on matters of direct importance to conditions in India today.
About the Author
Margaret Chatterjee has been Chair in the Department of philosophy, Delhi University, and Director, India Institue of Advanced Study, shimla. Her other assignments include a professorship in Comparative Religion at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, and Visiting professorships at Drew and Calgary Universities. Shehas taught philosophy at Westminster College, Oxfort, and Bryn Mawr, given the Teape Lectures at Cambridge, and been Lady Davis Visiting professor at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Formerly president of the International Society for Metapysics, she has published widely in the fields of philosophy and religious studies, having at one time been spalding Visiting Fellow in Indian philosophy and Religion at Wolfson College Oxford. Her recent Publications include Studies in Modern jewish and Hindu Thought (Macmillan, London, 1997,) Hinterlands Horizons (Lexington Books, Md, 2002), and Lifeworlds, Philosophy and India Today (IIAS, Shimla, 2005).
Preface
These are the four lectures I had hoped to deliver at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla in response to Professor Peter Ronald deSouza’s gracious invitation to come as Visiting Professor in 2008. I am extremely disappointed that a complete breakdown in health has made this impossible and I deeply regret the loss of an opportunity to meet old friends and make new ones. The lectures, under the general title of Circumstance and Dharma, reflect my personal belief that advanced research needs to focus on matters of direct importance to conditions in India today.
The material included is either out of print or published abroad, as follows:
Lecture I
‘Towards a Phenomenology of Circumstance’ from Communication, Identity and Self-Expression, OUP, Delhi 1984.
Lecture II
‘The Concept of Commitment’, from History and Society, Essays presented to Dr. Niharranjan Ray, (ed.) Debiprosad Chattopadyaya, KP. Bagchi, Calcutta, 1978.
Lecture III
‘The Concept of Multiple Allegiance’, from The Religious Spectrum - Studies in an Indian Context, Margaret Chatterjee, Allied Publishers Private Limited, 1984.
Lecture IV
‘The Concept of Dharma’, from Facts and Values, M.C. Doeser and J.N. Kraay (eds), Festschrift for Cornelis van Peursen, Martinus Nijhoff, 1986. I acknowledge with thanks their permission to include it.
Contents
5
7
Towards a Phenomenology of Circumstance
23
The Concept of Commitment
43
The Concept of Multiple Allegiance
55
The Concept of Dharma
Vedas (1278)
Upanishads (478)
Puranas (599)
Ramayana (831)
Mahabharata (329)
Dharmasastras (161)
Goddess (477)
Bhakti (243)
Saints (1293)
Gods (1280)
Shiva (336)
Journal (133)
Fiction (46)
Vedanta (325)
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