1st Edition
Panentheism in Indian and Western Thought Cosmopolitan Interventions
For too long, scholars interested in panentheism have focused almost exclusively on Western approaches to the issue. This book offers the first in-depth study of a wide range of Indian paradigms of panentheism, both ancient and modern, and brings these paradigms into creative and constructive dialogue with Western traditions.
This volume features original essays written by leading international scholars. The volume discusses a broad range of Indian panentheistic traditions, including the Upaniṣads, Bhedābheda Vedānta, Rāmānuja’s Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, Yogācāra Buddhism, and the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda tradition. The chapters connect these traditions with Western panentheistic conceptions developed by thinkers such as Spinoza, Berkeley, Schopenhauer, Krause, Royce, Tononi and Koch, and Western process philosophers.
Panentheism in Indian and Western Thought will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of religion, Indian philosophy, comparative philosophy, and comparative religion.
1. Introduction Benedikt Paul Göcke and Swami Medhananda
2. Abhinavagupta’s Panentheism in Dialogue with Contemporary Neuroscience: Vimarśa and Integrated Information Theory (IIT) Loriliai Biernacki
3 Embodying the Boundless: The Logic of the Infinite in the Cosmologies of Ibn ‘Arabī and Rāmānuja Ankur Barua and Hina Khalid
4. Viśiṣṭādvaitic Panentheism and the Liberating Function of Love in Weil, Murdoch, and Rāmānuja Raja Rosenhagen
5. Roots of Reality: The Philosophy of Foundation in Spinoza’s and Śrīnivāsa’s Monisms Jessica Frazier
6. Divine Minds: Idealism as Panentheism in Berkeley and Vasubandhu Sebastian Gäb
7. Replacing Pantheism: The Principles behind the Principium Individuationis, the pañcaupādānakkhandha and the paṭicca samuppāda, with Reference to Arthur Schopenhauer and K.E. Neumann Stephan Atzert
8. Indian in Spirit? Karl Christian Friedrich Krause’s Panentheism and the Vedic Traditions Benedikt Paul Göcke
9. How to Do Things with Vedānta: Josiah Royce’s Absolute Idealism and His Misinterpretation of Upaniṣadic Panentheism Swami Medhananda
10 Process and Vedāntic Panentheism: The Panentheistic Models of Alfred North Whitehead, David Ray Griffin, Sri Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda Jeffery D. Long
11. Panentheism, the Necessity of the Cosmos, and Divine Time Ryan T. Mullins
12. Beyond Panentheism: An Advaita Conversation with Christian Panentheism Anantanand Rambachan
Biography
Benedikt Paul Göcke, Dr. phil., Dr. theol., is Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Philosophy of Science at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. He is also a Research Fellow at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, University of Oxford, and a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. Göcke is the author of A Theory of the Absolute (2014), Alles in Gott? (2012), and The Panentheism of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (2018) and the editor of After Physicalism (2012) and The Infinity of God (2018), among other volumes. He has published articles in such journals as The International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Religious Studies, Zygon, Sophia, Faith and Philosophy, TheoLogica, The European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, and Theologie und Philosophie.
Swami Medhananda is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at the Vedanta Society of Southern California in Hollywood. He also serves as Hindu Chaplain at both UCLA and the University of Southern California. His current research focuses on Vedāntic philosophical traditions, global philosophy of religion, cosmopolitan approaches to consciousness, Indian scriptural hermeneutics, and the philosophies of Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo. He is the author of three books: Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism (2022), Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion (2018), and The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency: Revaluating German Aesthetics from Kant to Adorno (2013). He is also the editor of The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedānta (2020) and two special issues of the International Journal of Hindu Studies, one on "Vedāntic Theodicies" and one on "Swami Vivekananda as a Cosmopolitan Thinker." He has published over 30 articles in academic journals. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley, where he specialized in German aesthetics, and was also a Fulbright Scholar at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a Visiting Student at Oxford University.
"Engaging in a fruitful dialogue between various Indian traditions and various flavors of Western panentheism, this book provides a new, relevant, creative, and highly-anticipated contribution to the expanding field of global philosophy of religion."
Oliver Li, Center of Religion and Society, Uppsala University, Sweden
