Epistemological and Metaphysical Development in Advaita Vedanta

Gaudapada, the grand teacher of Sankara, admits the transcendental reality only. Duality is mere illusion. Gaudapada leads us from gross reality to subtle reality. In meditation also there is a gradual unfolding of subtlety. Sankara deals with both Advaita metaphysics and epistemology. According to him, the source of cognition (pramana is a mental mode (antahkaranavrtti). It removes the ignorance of the object. Brahmakara antahkaranavrtti is the final mental mode. In Advaita epistemology there is a gradual unfolding of mental mode. Sankara advocates three levels of reality- the transcendental reality, empirical reality and apparent reality. All objects, Sankara holds, are real in their own levels of existence. His philosophy teaches us the gradual unfolding of reality.

Entanglement as a Hermeneutic Tool for Interpreting Humanities Texts: The Case of Oedipus the King and The Book of Job

The essay seeks to develop the foundations of a general hermeneutics, by which I mean a strategy of interpretation that not only encompasses the sciences and the humanities, but also seeks to integrate them. More specifically, certain classic texts in the humanities (i.e., those deemed representative of certain cultural traditions) are accordingly interpreted by way of categories derived from physics. In the present case, categories associated with quantum entanglement are applied to the classic or foundational humanities texts: Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and the Old Testament Book of Job. The main categories brought to bear in this experiment in hermeneutics are the following: (1) entanglement itself, (2) locality-non-locality, (3) realism-non-realism, (4) latent and manifest levels of reality, and (5) internality-externality. After an introductory section defining the foregoing categories, the second section applies them to the texts in question with a view to redefining the relationship between two major components of the ancient world: the Greco-Roman and the Hebraic. The final section concludes the essay by outlining the framework of a general hermeneutics whereby schemas and objects of interpretation are structured in terms internality and externality. The former pertains to mind and culture while the latter is associated with a non-conscious materiality. Thus, four interpretive strategies can be deployed to give a comprehensive understanding of the world: (1) externalist schemas of interpretation applied to internalist objects of interpretation; (2) internalist schemas applied to externalist objects; (3) externalist schemas applied to externalist objects, and (4) internalist schemas applied to internalist objects. Received: 8 July 2021 / Accepted: 19 August 2021 / Published: 5 September 2021

Issues of Definition and Potentialities of Transdisciplinary Approach in Post-non-classical Science

The main task of the article is an in-depth theoretical analysis of the transdisciplinarity phenomenon. To accomplish it, we carried out a comparative analysis of the main integrative forms of modern scientific knowledge. The basic approaches to the definition of transdisciplinarity are considered. We explored two dominant areas that stand out in Western European transdisciplinary research and methodological works: ontological and methodological. The analysis of B. Nicholescu’s onto-epistemological approach led to the conclusion that, unlike particular disciplines that study specific fragments or levels of reality, a transdisciplinary strategy is an attempt to understand the dynamics of the process at several levels of reality at the same time. That is why it crosses the boundaries of specific disciplines and creates a universal picture of the process under study. The methodological framework of transdisciplinary research is outlined and its specific purpose is defined. The realization of this purpose is possible only if the respective requirements are met.

Naming and Taming the Truth: Dana Gioia’s Transformative Poetry

This essay attempts to trace the ways in which Dana Gioiaʼs use of form relates to, and simultaneously differs from Romanticism, Modernism and postmodernism. His particular brand of formalism takes up the notion of a connection between truth and beauty, without presuming to identify one with the other, and, at the same time, resisting both the Modernist obsession with dissolution and fragmentariness and postmodernism’s skepticism towards grand narratives. Form becomes a coalescing agent, uniting different aspects and levels of reality, and narratives are instrumental in shaping both the individual and the social body. The power to name (point to and describe) and to tame (to translate dark or incomprehensible aspects of reality), inherent in language, is the means by which poetry shapes our social and cultural world.

Interpretations of the Relationship Between Theatre and Crisis

The paper aims to analyse the relationship between theatre and crisis from the viewpoint of the role played by the theatre in exploring and presenting extreme situations, namely crisis situations. The impact of crisis on theatre determines the apparition of different theatrical viewpoints which are not meant to offer concrete solutions to the crisis, but which may contribute to the identification of possible ways of solving it due to its capacity to reveal certain aspects of the crisis which manifests itself on different levels of reality. At the same time, this relationship is viewed from the perspective of Antonin Artaud, The Living Theatre, Jerzy Grotowski and Samuel Beckett. Moreover, the paper makes reference to the fact that, in the current pandemic, the theatre performance faces a specific crisis, that is the crisis of audience.

Quantum Organizations with Islamic way forward

Firstly, this paper describes a phenomenon of transnational organization and general condition of world and ‘man in the world’. For developing a comprehensive framework, it presents authentic literature review beginning from modernity to post modernity using the hermeneutic-interpretivism research tradition to show the similarities between modernism and post modernism. By revealing the missing link in the quantum paradigm of ralph Kilmann (scholar of quantum organization) on one hand, it develops the possibility of reviving revealed knowledge back into the main frame knowledge of organization theory, on the other hand. By raising and addressing the question of how can the revealed knowledge addresses the current economic dilemma, the paper describes the three lenses available used to understand natural world, socio economic world and behavioral world in Newtonian verses quantum assumptions on organization theory along with their implications. For cross fertilization of ideas and better understanding of God, cosmos and human it presents an alternative of Islamic way forward suggested by scholarly views from East and West. To further substantiate, it presents the stunning insights from the renowned wisdom traditions (pragmatic civilizations) to highlight why religions matter to show (the levels of reality and levels of selfhood as well as relationship between Necessity being and contingent being), responding the situation of power and domination prevalent in organizing world by suggesting historical/civilizational ethical mode and adopting psycho, spiritual-pragmatic approach with holistic world view (Big picture).

COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown and Religious Mediatization of Social Sustainability. A Case Study of Romania

This article presents an empirical study on the institutional audiovisual mediatization of social sustainability made by the eighteen religious denominations officially recognized in Romania during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic onset. Research is undertaken based on the mediatization theories. Specifically, it highlights and discusses the conditions for producing the meaning of social sustainability as a result of religious mediatization during the months of March, April and May 2020, a period with strong religious connotations since it involved the dates of the major annual feasts celebrated by the three majority monotheistic religions, i.e., the Christian Easter, the Muslim Ramadan and the Jewish Passover. As a result, we noticed that the production of meaning in terms of social sustainability was simultaneously anchored in the accumulation of four contextual “social worlds”: (a) that of social transformation induced by mediatization, (b) that of the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that is neither social, economic, or environmental, but with consequences on the three levels of reality mentioned above, (c) that of spirituality during the time of the great monotheistic religious feasts and (d) that of the national culture of Romania, statistically the most religious country of the European Union.

The Nature and Ontological Status of Appearances

It is shown that things in themselves and appearances are numerically distinct existents whose primary difference consists in that the former are mind-independent while the latter are mind-dependent, in a sense that is explicated in detail. On the proposed reading, the world, understood as the sum total of everything that has reality, comprises several levels of reality, most importantly, a mind-independent, transcendental level, at which things in themselves exits, and a mind-dependent, empirical level, at which appearances exist. Appearances are identified to be intentional objects of experience. The nature and ontological status of appearances is further investigated by way of an examination of Kant’s account of perception and his theory of experience, including a detailed consideration of the formal and material conditions of experience and of the implications of the mathematical antinomies for the specific flavor of Kant’s idealism about appearances.

Concluding Postscript: The World According to Kant

This completes my account of Kant’s critical idealism, understood as an ontological position, as developed in the Critique and associated theoretical writings. According to Kant, the world, understood as the sum total of everything that has reality, comprises several levels of reality, most importantly, the transcendental level and the empirical level. The transcendental level is a mind-independent level at which Kantian things in themselves exist; the empirical level is a mind-dependent level at which Kantian appearances exist. Things in themselves are mind-independent, appearances are fully mind-dependent. Things in themselves and appearances are numerically distinct and do not ontologically overlap in any way. Kantian outer appearances essentially are intentional objects of outer experience; Kantian inner appearances essentially are intentional objects of inner experience. Empirical objects are Kantian outer appearances, empirical space and time are constituted by the spatial and temporal determinations of outer appearances, pure space and time are (nothing but) forms of sensibility, and empirical selves, or empirical minds, are Kantian inner appearances. In contrast to other intentional objects, such as the intentional objects of fictions, dreams, hallucinations, illusions, and perceptions, Kantian appearances genuinely exist, that is, they exist from the point of view of fundamental ontology. This is due both to the special character of experience, in particular, the special character of outer experience and its conformity to Kant’s formal conditions of objectivity, and to the grounding of Kantian appearances in things themselves. Kantian things in themselves transcendentally affect sensibility and thereby bring about sensations, which provide the ‘matter’ for Kantian appearances and underwrite their existence. Kantian things in themselves are supersensible, non-spatial, and non-temporal, as well as distinct from God and thus finite. Each inner appearance is grounded in a unique Kantian thing in itself that is a human transcendental mind, and all outer appearances are grounded in Kantian things in themselves that are distinct from all human minds. What we commonly call ‘the external empirical world’ exists, including empirical space and time. Accordingly, there is also at least one Kantian thing in itself that is not a human mind. Moreover, there is at least one human being, that is, an entity whose ontologically basic parts include, minimally, a body (which is an empirical object), an empirical self (which is an empirical mind), and a transcendental self (which is a human transcendental mind). Since other intentional objects that are not Kantian appearances, although not genuine existents, are not nothing but have some reality and being, it is useful to conceive of Kantian reality as including yet another mind-dependent level to provide a home for these other fully mind-dependent entities—even if this conception goes beyond the direct textual evidence and may also go beyond Kant’s private, explicitly articulated thoughts on the matter. The ultimate basis for Kant’s case for transcendental idealism is the finitude of the human mind and, more specifically, its fundamentally uncreative nature in which this finitude manifests ...

The World According to Kant

The World According to Kant offers an interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s critical idealism, as developed in the Critique of Pure Reason and associated texts. Critical idealism is understood as an ontological position, which comprises transcendental idealism, empirical realism, and a number of other basic ontological theses. According to Kant, the world, understood as the sum total of everything that has reality, comprises several levels of reality, most importantly, the transcendental level and the empirical level. The transcendental level is a mind-independent level at which things in themselves exist. The empirical level is a fully mind-dependent level at which appearances exist, which are intentional objects of experience. Empirical objects and empirical minds are appearances, and empirical space and time are constituted by the spatial and temporal determinations of appearances. On the proposed interpretation, Kant is thus a genuine idealist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space and time. But in contrast to other intentional objects, appearances genuinely exist, which is due both to the special character of experience compared to other kinds of representations such as illusions and dreams, and to the grounding of appearances in things themselves. This is why, on the proposed interpretation, Kant is also a genuine realist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and empirical space and time. This book develops the indicated interpretation, spells out Kant’s case for critical idealism thus understood, pinpoints the differences between critical idealism and ‘ordinary’ idealism, such as Berkley’s, and clarifies the relation between Kant’s conception of things in themselves and the conception of things in themselves by other philosophers, in particular, Kant’s Leibniz-Wolffian predecessors.