CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

In the beginning was the Word …

The Gospel According to Saint John1

I calmly write: “In the beginning was the Deed!

Wolfgang Goethe2

Words are deeds.

Ludwig Wittgenstein3

The Problematic4 of Religious Language

The term ‘religious language’ means the use of

natural, ordinary language in contexts that are enmeshed with what one

1 The Holy Bible (1980) (Revised Standard Version), The Gospel According to Saint

John 1:1.2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2001), Faust, 2nd edition, trans. Walter Arndt and ed.

Cyrus Hamlin, New York / London, W.W. Norton and Company, p.34.3 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1980), Culture and Value, amended 2nd edition, ed. G.H. von

Wright, trans. Peter Winch, Oxford, Basil and Blackwell, p.46e.4 I use the word ‘problematic’ in the original German sense [problematik] to denote a

set of interrelated problems and not in the sense found in Kant, Althusser, Kuhn or

Foucault – see “problematic” in Thomas Mautner (1996) A Dictionary of Philosophy,

Oxford / Cambridge, Blackwell Publishers Ltd, p. 342.

2

might call religious character. The employment of this term can possibly

be misconstrued in two senses. First, it should not be taken to mean that

one is here speaking of a language peculiar to religion as in the case of

the varieties of languages we employ in our linguistic activity like

English, German, Hindi etc. That means the question, ‘Do you speak

English or German?’ makes perfect sense whereas the question ‘Do you

speak religious?’ makes no sense at all. Second, it is mistaken to think

that religion is restricted to any particular type of natural language like

Sanskrit, the language of the Veda; Hebrew and Greek, the language of

the Bible; PÀli, the language of the Buddhist TripiÇakas; or Arabic, the

language of the Quran. A conceptually more focused and linguistically

sharpened term would be the ‘religious use of language’.

In the domain of the religious uses of language, one encounters

enormous multiplicity and pointed diversity. As William Alston has

rightly pointed out:

Utterances made in religious contexts are of

many sorts. In the performance of public and

private worship men engage in acts of praise,

petition, thanks, confession, and exhortation. In

sacred writings we find historical records,

dramatic narratives, proclamations of law,

3

predictions, admonitions, evaluations,

cosmological speculations, and theological

pronouncements. In devotional literature there

are rules of conduct, biographical narratives,

and introspective descriptions of religious

experience.5

Symbiotically woven into the fabric of religious language, an important

and related category that arouses much philosophical interest is that of

language. In a very primary sense ‘language’ symbolizes self-

embodiment. Further it may be seen as the vehicle for the expression,

exchange and transmission of thoughts, concepts, emotions, knowledge

and information. In a significant way it also embodies silence which is a

fundamental category in religious language. And as such it is to be

differentiated from other possible languages such as animal

communication and artificial languages.6 In that sense language is

5 William P. Alston (2006a), “Religious Language” in Donald M. Borchert (ed.)

Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Second Edition, Detroit / New York, Thomas Gale,

Vol.8, p.411. See also Keith E. Yandell (2006), “Religious Language [Addendum]” in

ibid., pp. 417-19 and William P. Alston (1998a), “Religious Language” in Edward

Craig (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London and New York,

Routledge,Vol.8, pp. 255-60 and James Ross (1998), “Religious Language” in Brian

Davies (ed.) Philosophy of Religion. A Guide to the Subject, London, Cassell, p.106.6 See Hadumod Bussmann (1996), Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics,

London, Routledge, p.253.

4

essentially communicative in nature and can be both verbal and non-

verbal. Hence religious language too is both verbal and non-verbal.7 In

recent approaches to the study of language, one finds a sort of Homeric

struggle between the theorists of communication–intention (e.g. Paul

Grice, John Austin and the later Wittgenstein) and theorists of formal

semantics (e.g. Noam Chomsky, Gottlob Frege and earlier Wittgenstein).8

In our discussion, the focus would be on the instantiation of religious

language in its verbal (not to be seen as the binary opposite to the

category of gesture and silence!), linguistic and communicative

dimension. In that restrictive sense, I take ‘religious language’ to be

synonymous with ‘religious utterances’. I also keep in mind the

soteriological motif that characterizes the domain of religious narrative

and religious experience that forms the bedrock of such a narrative.9

In philosophical literature, usually the terms ‘religious language’

and ‘religious speech’ are used synonymously. However, in philosophy

7 For a critique of the attempt to focus the analysis of religious language exclusively

on its verbal dimension see Margaret Chatterjee (1984), The Religious Spectrum,

Delhi, Allied Publishers, p.13ff.8 See P.F. Strawson (1990), “Meaning and Truth” in A. P. Martinich (ed.) The

Philosophy of Language, 2nd edition, New York / Oxford, Oxford University Press,

pp. 91-92.9 For an interesting discussion on picturing religion as narrative see Gavin Flood,

Religion as Narrative, Internet source: http://www.lhs.se/nfred/flood.html, pp.1-13.

5

of language, a distinction can be drawn between ‘language’ and ‘speech’.

Speech is said to comprise the totality of concrete verbal behavior that

takes place in a given community. And language is taken to be the

abstract system of identifiable elements and the laws that govern their

combinations, instantiated in a given concrete verbal, linguistic activity.

In this sense, religious language would mean religious use of language,

that is, ‘religious speech’.10 To my mind, any serious and worthwhile

inquiry into the nature, meaning and significance of religious language

cannot be done in isolation from two other philosophical disciplines,

namely, ‘philosophy of language’ and ‘hermeneutics’.

I am aware that a philosophical discussion on the problematic11 of

‘religious language’ and its connection with ‘philosophy of language’ and

‘hermeneutics’ is bound to give rise to what is often called the ‘label

polemics.’ It also evokes sharp differences generated by the purported

thesis of ‘incommensurability’ among the main currents in contemporary

philosophy, namely, continental and analytical traditions, non-western 10 See William P. Alston (2003), Philosophy of Language, Indian reprint, New Delhi,

Prentice Hall of India Private Limited, pp.60-61.11 I use the this word in the original German sense of problematik to denote a set of

interrelated philosophical problems and not in the other senses found in the writings

of Kant, Althusser, Kuhn and Foucault – see Thomas Mautner (1996), A Dictionary of

Philosophy, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers Ltd., p.342.

6

and western philosophical weltanschauung, etc. It is beyond the scope of

the present discussion to go into the details of this debate. Though

without minimizing the significance of varied ways and methods of

philosophizing, what is important to note here is that the labels we

employ are meant to be a heuristic device and are indicative of certain

academic arbitrariness. To my mind, if one were to go beyond the

polemics and politics of labeling and venture to understand philosophia in

a very fundamental sense as critical reflection on human experience, that

is, the logos of the anthropos, then one can successfully resist the

temptation of turning a blind eye to the socio-cultural reality of

philosophical and religious pluralism that gives rise to cross-cultural

semblances as well as differences and the resultant mutual fecundity of

ideas and concepts. Such a view together with its varied nuances can be

found in the writings of thinkers like Karl-Otto Apel, Van A. Harvey,

Dagfinn Follesdal, Wilhelm Halbfass, J.N. Mohanty, Ramchandra

Gandhi, Daya Krishna, A.K. Ramanujan, Raimon Panikkar, Gerald James

Larson, Eliot Deutsch, J.L. Mehta, Michael Krausz and Raul Fornet-

Betancourt.12

12 Karl-Otto Apel (1973), Towards a Transformation of Philosophy, London,

Routledge; Van A. Harvey (2005) “Hermeneutics” in Lindsay Jones (ed.)

Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, Detroit / New York, Thomas Gale, Vol. 6,

7

One can approach the linguistic edifice of religious discourse and

more particularly the soteriological predication about reality in many

ways. Heuristically, one may speak of the metaphysical, the

pp. 3930-36; Dagfinn Follesdal (1996) “Analytic Philosophy: What is it and why

should one engage in it?” Ratio, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 193-208; Wilhelm Halbfass (1990),

India and Europe. An Essay in Philosophical Understanding, 1st Indian edition, ,

Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, pp.160-70, 263-309, 378-402;

J.N. Mohanty (1993) Essays on Indian Philosophy, ed. Purushottama Bilimoria,

Delhi, Oxford University Press, p.215; Ramchandra Gandhi (1976) The Availability of

Religious Ideas, London, The Macmillan Press Ltd.; Ramchandra Gandhi (1984) I am

Thou: Meditations on the Truth of India, Pune, University of Poona; Daya Krishna

(1989) “Comparative Philosophy: What It is and What It ought to Be” in Gerald

James Larson & Eliot Deutsch (eds.), Interpreting Across Boundaries, Delhi, Motilal

Banarsidass Publishers Pvt. Ltd., pp.71-83; A.K. Ramanujan (1990) “Is There an

Indian Way of Thinking? An Informal Essay” in Mckim Marriot (ed.) India Through

Hindu Categories, New Delhi, Sage Publications, pp.41-58; Raimon Panikkar (1993)

“The Threefold Linguistic Intra-Subjectivity” in R. Balasubramanian and V.C.

Thomas (eds.) Perspectives in Philosophy, Religion and Art, New Delhi, ICPR,

pp.34-48; and Raimon Panikkar (1998) The Cosmotheandric Experience, Delhi,

Motilal Banarsidass; J. L. Mehta (1985) India and the West: The Problem of

Understanding; J.L. Mehta (1990) “Problems of Understanding” JICPR, Vol. VI, No.

2, pp.85-95; Andreea Deciu Ritivoi (ed.) (2003) Interpretation and Its Objects:

Studies in the Philosophy of Michael Krausz, Amsterdam / New York, Rodopi and

Raul Fornet-Betancourt (1999) Quo vadis, Philosophie? Antworten der Philosophen,

Aachen, Internationale Zeitschrift fur Philosophie. I have discussed some of the

related issues elsewhere – see Devasia M. Antony (2009) “Indian Hermeneutics and

Philosophy of Language” in E.P. Mathew (ed.) Hermeneutics: Multicultural

Perspectives, Chennai, Satya Nilayam Publications, pp.108-31.

8

epistemological and the semantic approaches.13 In the metaphysical

approach, the crux of the matter is how ‘reality is conceived’ and if one

embraces naturalistic metaphysics according to which ‘reality’ is

confined to the ‘natural’ order, then religious statements about realities

like ‘God’, ‘soul’ become problematic. In the epistemological approach,

the main issue is whether one has sufficient grounds for taking religious

assertions to be true. In the semantic approach, the objective is to analyze

the meaning of the words employed in a given religious discourse. In

other words the idea is to decipher the cognitive meaning. And for this,

one may take recourse to the verifiability criterion of meaningfulness

according to which a sentence has factual meaning only if it is in

principle possible to verify or falsify it on the basis of observations.

Philosophers like Antony Flew who subscribe to such an approach

conclude that religious statements are pretend-statements because they

are immune to empirical testability.14 Another response to the semantic

approach took shape in what is called the non-assertive construals of

religious statements. Accordingly religious utterances are interpreted as

expressions of attitudes and emotions or as descriptive of a policy of

13 See William P. Alston (2003) Philosophy of Language, p.11. See also William P.

Alston (1966) “The Quest for Meanings”, Mind, Vol. 75, pp.79ff.

14 See William P. Alston (1998a) “Religious Language”, pp.256ff.

9

action rather than as statements of facts. What is of significance here is

that religious beliefs are construed as life-orienting or life-directing in

their mythical and narrative forms. Another way of making sense of

religious statements in this approach is to conceive them as symbolizing

the ultimate reality that is transcendent and hence not amenable to any

attempt at conceptualization.

Further it is important to note that most of the philosophical

literature, particularly in the analytic tradition, has focused on the

problem of literal description, meaning and interpretation of theological

predication, and the assertive-nonassertive character of utterances about a

transcendent reality. William P. Alston and John Hick have tried to bring

out the multifaceted dimensions of this problem.15 Further, Arthur C.

Danto clearly presents the problematic of theistic predication in this way:

Suppose I am told of a new theological

discovery, namely that Brahma wears a hat.

And then I am told that it is divine hat and

worn infinitely, since Brahma has neither head

15 See William P. Alston (2006a) “Religious Language”, p.411 and John Hick (2005)

Philosophy of Religion, 4th edition, 2nd Indian reprint, Delhi, Pearson Prentice Hall,

pp.92ff.

10

nor shape. In what sense then is a hat being

worn? Why use these words? I am told that

God exists but in a “different sense” of exists.

Then if he doesn’t exist (in the plain sense)

why use that word? Or that God loves us – but

in a wholly special sense of love. Or God is a

circle whose center is everywhere and

circumference nowhere. But this is then to have

neither a center nor a circumference, and hence

not to be a circle. One half of the description

cancels out the other half. And what is left over

but just noise?16

In his most celebrated work The Varieties of Religious Experience,

William James, applying C.S. Peirce’s standard in developing a thought’s

meaning by determining what conduct it is fitted to produce and further

taking that conduct as its sole significance, engages the employment of

the metaphysical attributes of God in natural theology. His conclusion is

that the metaphysical attributes are devoid of any intelligible significance.

In his own words:

Take God’s aseity for example; or his necessariness;

his immateriality; his ‘simplicity’ or superiority to

16 Arthur C. Danto (1974) “Faith, Language, and Religious Experience: A Dialogue”,

in Sydney Hook (ed.) Religious Experience and Truth, 3rd printing, New York, New

York University Press, p.147.

11

the kind of inner variety and succession which we

find in finite beings, his indivisibility, and lack of

the inner distinctions of being and activity,

substance and accident, potentiality and actuality,

and the rest; his repudiation of inclusion in a genus;

his actualized infinity; his ‘personality’, apart from

the moral qualities which it may comport; his

relation to evil being permissive and not positive; his

self-sufficiency, self-love, and absolute felicity in

himself: - candidly speaking, how do such qualities

as these make any definite connection with our life?

And if they severely call for no distinctive

adaptation of our conduct, what vital difference can

it possibly make to a man’s religion whether they be

true or false?17

On the other hand, if for a moment one were to picture religious

utterances as constituting the body of a text, that is, a literary text, then

the attempt at theorizing meaning becomes all the more labyrinthine.

Certainly, as Fredric Jameson has pertinently observed, the theoretical

discourse regarding the construction, dissemination and practice of

meaning has ceased to be the exclusive domain of the discipline of

17 William James (1987) The Varieties of Religious Experience, 5th printing, New

York, The Library of America, p. 428.

12

philosophy or that of religion.18 Interestingly, the theory project has

become inter-disciplinary as well as trans-disciplinary in nature and

consequently the very idea of meaning has become a contentious concept.

Contemporary literary theory engages the construction and appropriation

of ‘meaning’ by using various models such as reader-oriented theories

stemming from phenomenology, structuralist theories, Marxist theories,

feminist theories, poststructuralist theories, postmodernist theories, post-

colonialist theories and finally what has come to be known as gay, lesbian

and queer theories.19 The point that I want to emphasize here is the wide

spectrum of issues and debates generated by the multi-pronged inquiry

into the hermeneutic understanding and meaning in religious language.

Religious Language and the Category ‘Religion’

One might, and rightly so, argue that such an understanding of

religious language is logically and conceptually tied to a given

philosophical description and understanding about the category called

religion. But the problem is that of logically demarcating the realm of the

religious and there by conceptually clarifying the contours that determine

18 Raman Selden et al (2006) A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 5th

edition, Delhi, Pearson Education, p. 12.19For an interesting discussion on these theoretical models see Raman Selden et al

(2006) A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, pp.15ff.

13

the character of the universe of religious discourse. In other words, the

crux of the matter is to identify and delineate the constituent conceptual

contours that make up what is called ‘the religious view’. Here I am

aware that one is entering into arguably the most difficult problematic in

the domain of philosophical thinking about religion. In this context, it is

very significant to take note of what William James has said:

…the very fact that [religions] are so many and

so different from one another is enough to

prove that the word ‘religion’ cannot stand for

any single principle or essence, but is rather a

collective name.…[L]et us rather admit freely

at the outset that we may very likely find no

one essence, but many characters which may

alternately be equally important in religion.20

Perhaps the most articulate and comprehensive discussion on the crucial

problem of definability versus non-definability regarding the category

‘religion’ is found in Russell McCutcheon, Winston L. King, and

20 William James (1987) The Varieties of Religious Experience, p.32.

14

Gregory D. Alles.21 Some other thinkers who have engaged with this

problem in a significant way are W.D. Hudson, John Bowker, Wilfred

Cantwell Smith and John Hick.22 Concluding his critical review of the

contemporary literature on religion and laying bare the presupposed

ideological framework, McCutcheon quoting Waardenburg observes:

“the current debate about the concept of religion is not as innocent as it

may seem.”23 I think, the challenge before the theorists of religion is, as

Mircea Elidae has succinctly pointed out, to grasp the religious

phenomenon as something religious. In his own words:

21 Russell T. McCutcheon (1995) “The Category “Religion” in Recent Publications: A

Critical Survey” Numen, Vol. 42, No.3, pp.284-309; Winston L. King (2005)

“Religion [First edition]” and Gregory D. Alles (2005) “Religion [Further

Considerations]” in Lindsay Jones (ed.) Encyclopedia of Religion Second Edition,

Detroit / New York, Thomson Gale, Vol. 11, pp.7692-7706.22 See W.D. Hudson (2003) “What makes religious beliefs religious?” in Charles

Taliaferro and Paul J. Griffiths (eds.) Philosophy of Religion. An Anthology, Malden /

Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, pp.7-20; John Bowker (ed.) (1997), The Oxford

Dictionary of World Religions, Oxford / New York, Oxford University Press, pp. xv-

xxiv; Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1978), The Meaning and End of Religion, London,

SPCK, pp. 119 ff.; and John H. Hick (1989), An Interpretation of Religion, London,

Macmillan.23 Russell T. McCutcheon (1995) “The Category “Religion in Recent Publications: A

Critical Survey”, Numen, Vol. 42, No. 3, p.306.

15

…a religious phenomenon will only be

recognized as such if it is grasped at its own

level, that is to say, if it is studied as something

religious. To try to grasp the essence of such a

phenomenon by means of physiology,

psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics,

art or any other study is false; it misses the one

unique and irreducible element in it –the

element of the sacred. Obviously there are no

purely religious phenomena… Because religion

is human it must for that very reason be

something social, something linguistic,

something economic – you cannot think of man

apart from language and society. But it would

be hopeless to try and explain religion in terms

of anyone of those basic functions… 24

Simultaneously, one should be cautious, I believe, to ward off any

attempt at converting a given theory of religion per se into a totalizing

ideology or a grand meta-narrative. In the words of Richard Rorty: “we

must be content … not to seek a God’s-eye view.”25

24 Mircea Eliade (1958) Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed,

New York, New American Library, p, xi.25 Richard Rorty (1991) Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, New York, Cambridge

University Press, p. 7.

16

An important dimension that constitutes the category of religion

and God-talk is the framework of ‘transcendence’. In the matrix of

Western philosophy, the notions of ‘transcendent reality’ and ‘God’ are

most often seen as identical terms and they are taken to signify “that

which exceeds the realm of human experience and empirical knowledge,

the unconditioned, the Absolute.”26 A look at the contemporary debates

about the nature and significance of religious discourse or God-talk

shows that philosophers are sharply divided on this issue. Bernard

Williams claims that religion is “incurably unintelligible.”27 And Richard

Rorty pointedly sums up the mood of the militant atheists like Richard

Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris when he says that

religion is a conversation stopper. For, according to Rorty, “Many people

think that we should just stop talking about God.”28 But to my mind,

26 Stephen Mulhall (2007) “The Presentation of the Infinite in the Finite: The Place of

God in Post-Kantian Philosophy” in Brian Leiter and Michael Rosen (eds.) The

Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p.

494; “Transcendence” in Anthony C. Thiselton (2006) A Concise Encyclopedia of the

Philosophy of Religion, 1st South Asian Edition, Oxford, Oneworld Publications, p.

310.27 Bernard Williams (1997). Morality: An Introduction to Ethics, Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press, p. 72.28 Richard Rorty (2002) “Cultural Politics and Arguments for God” in N. K.

Frankenberry (ed.) Radical Interpretation in Religion, Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, p. 54. By ‘militant atheists’ I mean those thinkers who take recourse

17

Rorty himself commits the fallacy of reductionism by proposing the

bifurcation between political philosophy and natural theology. In his own

words:

Debate over … concrete political questions is

more useful for human happiness than debate

of the existence of God. They are the questions

which remain once we realize that appeals to

religious experience are of no use for settling

what traditions should be maintained and which

replaced, and after we have come to think

natural theology pointless.29

to the dogmatic and intolerant philosophical position that atheism is absolutely true

and that the claims of religion are patently false. Further they claim that modern

science with its halo of cognitive superiority has discredited theism and therefore

religion ought to be thrown on to the rubbish pile of history. The underlying claim is

that to be rational means to avoid beliefs, activities and institutions that are not

grounded in scientific truth. For example, Christopher Hitchens claims that “religion

poisons everything”. According to Richard Dawkins “… even mild and moderate

religion helps to provide the climate of faith in which extremism naturally flourishes”.

And Sam Harris makes the claim that religious tolerance is nothing but “respect for

the unjustified beliefs of others …[and] is one of the principles driving us toward the

abyss.” For a detailed discussion of these views see Christopher Hitchens (2007) God

Is Not Great, New York, Twelve; Richard Dawkins (2006) The God Delusion,

Boston, Houghton Mifflin; and Sam Harris (2004) The End of Faith, New York,

Norton. Significantly the conceptual co-relate of this type of ‘militant atheism’ would

be ‘militant theism’ which incarnates itself as religious fundamentalism.29 Richard Rorty (2002) “Cultural Politics and Arguments for God”, p. 76.

18

But then philosophers like Charles Taliaferro have shown that such kind

of bifurcation between political philosophy and natural theology is open

to question. For a peep into the history of religious discourse shows that

religious experience and natural theology have privileged concrete

political questions and further, the debate over God’s existence has been

conceptually tied to the notion of human happiness. A bird’s eye-view of

the writings of classical religious philosophers like Augustine, Anselm,

and Aquinas would corroborate the truth of this claim.30

A possible way out of this dilemma is to look at the possibility of

conceiving religion rather ploythetically and not monothetically. The idea

is to resist the temptation to define religion essentially in terms of

singular or plural properties. Instead the attempt is to conceive religion in

terms of an explicit or implicit conjunction of characteristic features. In

monothetic definitions all the characteristic properties of religion are seen

to be necessary and further having taken them as a whole it is perceived

to be a sufficient and necessary condition to define what religion is. To

my mind, a classic case of monothetic definition is the one given by

30 Charles Taliaferro (2003) ‘Review of Radical Interpretation in Religion” Notre

Dame Philosophical Reviews, University of Notre Dame, p. 2. Accessed online on

24/10/2011.

19

Clifford Geertz in his celebrated essay ‘Religion As a Cultural System’

where he engages ‘religion’ as a culturally sensitive category:

“…a religion is (1) a system of symbols which

acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and

long-lasting moods and motivations in men by

(3) formulating conceptions of a general order

of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions

with such an aura of factuality that (5) the

moods and motivations seem uniquely

realistic.”31

It is interesting to note that such universalist definitions of religion have

been critiqued by scholars like Talal Asad. In his celebrated essay

‘Religion as An Anthropological Category’, Asad discusses the problems

that come up when one takes a critical look at the widely acclaimed

universalist definition given by Geertz. For Asad, Geertz’s universalist

definition engages religion as a culturally sensitive category, but excludes

how the authoritative function and status of religious myths, rituals,

institutions, texts etc. are “products of historically distinct disciplines and

31 Clifford Geertz (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures, New York, Basic Books Inc.

Publishers, p. 90. Italics in the original.

20

force.”32 This remark of Asad indicates the implied Foucaultian sense of

the disciplinarian associations, discourse, presuppositions etc. What is

important to note here is the presupposition which governs Asad’s

criticism. It is that the presumed sui generis status of religion and the

popular “theoretical search for an essence of religion invites us to

separate it conceptually from the domain of power.”33

Contrary to the monothetic definition of religion, in polythetic

definition, one encounters what I call hermeneutic vagueness and fluidity

woven into the very conceptual fabric of ‘religion’. And in hermeneutic

understanding, vagueness is seen as a desirable semantic feature of a

term. Further it denotes a plurality of relevant conditions that constitute

its meaning and it is not to be taken in the sense of an undesirable feature

of a given piece of discourse.34 On this view of vagueness as a semantic

characteristic of the term ‘religion’, one sees no particular property

necessary or essential to religion. Instead what is considered is a

collection of properties understood in the sense of the Wittgensteinian

metaphor ‘family resemblances.’ The significance of this conception is

that it does not succumb to the craving for generality by holding on to the 32 Talal Asad (1993) Genealogies of Religion: Disciplines and Reasons of Power in

Christianity and Islam, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, p. 54.33 Ibid., p. 29.34 See William P. Alston (2003) Philosophy of Language, pp. 86-90.

21

view that there must be something essentially common to all the instances

of a given concept. Instead it inaugurates a new paradigm of

understanding in employing a given concept. That is, what holds the

concept together and gives shape to its unity is not something like the

single thread that runs through all the cases where the concept is

employed. Rather it is the spectrum of the overlapping of different fibres

as in the case of a rope.35 Employing such an understanding, William

Alston has enumerated a list of what he calls ‘religion-making

characteristics’:

1) Beliefs in supernatural beings (gods); 2) A

distinction between sacred and profane objects;

3) Ritual acts focused on sacred objects. 4) A

moral code believed to be sanctioned by the

gods. 5) Characteristically religious feelings

(awe, sense of mystery, sense of guilt,

adoration), which tend to be aroused in the

presence of sacred objects and during practice

of ritual, and which are connected in idea with

gods. 6) Prayer and other forms of

communication with gods. 7) A world view …

35 See Ludwig Wittgenstein (2001) Philosophical Investigations, The German Text,

with a revised English translation, 3rd edition, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, Oxford,

Oxford University Press, Part 1, no. 67.

22

a general picture of the world as a whole and

the place of the individual in it.36

Further Alston says that the presence of any of them or a cluster of these

characteristics in a given cultural practice would make it a religion. It is

in this sense of conceiving religion polythetically and not monothetically

that I use the term ‘religion’ and its categorical correlates such as ‘the

religious view’ and ‘religious language’. What is important here is to

recognize that the universe of religious discourse is one of the domains of

imaginative construction of meaning entertained by the humans. And this

meaning constructing activity is primarily symbolic in nature and is

intertwined with in a community of shared understanding.

Hermeneutic Character of Understanding and Meaning

From what is discussed above, it is evident that the most crucial

question of understanding the meaning of the words employed in

religious statements is logically tied to the very conceptual architecting of

the category ‘religion’. The problem becomes all the more complex when

we analyze religious utterances against the background of everyday,

36 William P. Alston (2003) Philosophy of Language, p.88. For a detailed discussion

see William P. Alston (1967a) “Religion” in Paul Edwards (ed.) The Encyclopedia of

Philosophy, New York, The Macmillan Company, Vol. 7, pp.141-42.

23

mundane linguistic behaviour. To explicate this matter further, consider

the following three groups of sentences:

A) 1. Thomas opened the door.

2. Alice opened her eyes.

3. The carpenters opened the wall.

4. Anjali opened her book.

B) 1. The cat is on the mat.

2. The cat scratched the dog.

3. The cat loves milk.

4. ‘Cat’ has three letters.

C) 1. ‘tat tvam asi’(Thou art That)37

2. ‘O °nanda, be ye lamps unto yourselves’38

3. ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’39

4. ‘God give me strength! Amen! …May the spirit enlighten

me.’40

37 ChÀndogya UpaniÈad VI.8.7

38 MahÀparinibbÀnasutta, 2.3639 The Holy Bible, The Psalms, Psalm 23:1.40 When confronted with death during the War, this Christian prayer was said by

Wittgenstein, ‘the man with the Gospels’, - See Brian McGuinness (1988)

Wittgenstein: A Life, Duckworth, p. 221.

24

In the group A sentences, the literal meaning of ‘open’ is the

same, but it is understood differently in each case. The main issue is that

in each case the truth conditions marked by the word ‘open’ are different.

That is to say that what constitutes opening one’s eyes is quite different

from what constitutes opening a wall. To understand these sentences

literally means understanding each of them differently, even though

‘open’ has the same semantic content throughout. In group B sentences,

the meaning of the noun ‘cat’ alters significantly from context to context:

a mere physical object, an unpredictable animal with claws, a domestic

pet, a word in English language.41 In group C sentences, we have what I

call paradigm cases of religious utterances and the focal point of my

research is to analyze critically the problems one encounters in

understanding and interpreting religious utterances such as these.42

Usually in the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions

undertaken by the discipline called semantics one can identify three levels

of meaning. By expression-meaning what is meant is the meaning of a

41 See John Taber (1989) “The Theory of the Sentence in PÂrva MÁmÀÚsÀ and

Western Philosophy”, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 17, p. 413.42 Elsewhere I have made an attempt to interpret the religious utterances as felicitous

speech acts - see Devasia M. A[ntony] (1991) Some Hermeneutic Reflections on

Religious Speech Acts.

25

simple or complex expression taken in isolation. In utterance-meaning,

the emphasis is on the meaning of an expression when used in a given

context of utterance. And communicative meaning implies the meaning

of an utterance as a communicative act in a given socio-cultural setting.43

William Alston speaks of three types of meaning: referential, ideational,

and behavioural.44 And G.H.R. Parkinson rightly observes that we use the

words ‘mean’ and ‘meaning’ in a variety of senses and these give rise to

complex philosophical questions. On the question of meaning, he makes a

distinction among denotation theory, image theory, causal theory, picture

theory, verification theory, and use theory.45 Here it is significant to note

that A.J. Ayer in one of his celebrated works goes on to claim that those

who engage in metaphysical and religious discourse are disobeying the

rule which govern the significant use of language. For him the

metaphysical and religious assertions have their origin in linguistic

confusions and are devoid of any literal significance at all!46 On the view

of some other thinkers, since there is no privileged or ‘correct’ meaning

43 See Sebastian Lobner (2002) Understanding Semantics, London, Arnold, p.11.44 See William P.Alston (2003) Philosophy of Language, p.11.45 See G.H.R. Parkinson (1970) The Theory of Meaning, Reprint Edition, Oxford,

Oxford University Press, pp.1-14. 46 See A.J. Ayer (1967) Language, Truth and Logic, 17th Impression, London, Victor

Gollancz, pp. 34-35, 102-119.

26

of an utterance, the most fundamental question that crops up while

engaging religious discourse is ‘whose meaning is the meaning of the

meaning?’47

Significantly in the world of scriptures itself, this question of

understanding and meaning is a very closely argued and debated one.

UddÀlaka has to make a strenuous effort to clarify the meaning of the

utterance ‘tat tvam asi’ to Œvetaketu who was already well read in the

Vedas! For the Buddha, the wrong grasping of the scriptures is analogous

to the man who catches a big water snake by the body or by the tail only

to be stung to death! The Jesus of the Gospels is seen emphasizing the

right understanding and meaning of his parabolic sayings.48 It is here one

comes to grip with the problematic of the hermeneutic character of

understanding and meaning.

The Conception of Hermeneutics

The term ‘hermeneutics’- in Greek hermeneia - is derived from

the Greek verb hermeneuiein and it means to interpret, explain, express’

47 John Bowker (1997) The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, p. 424.48 See S. Radhakrishnan (ed. & trans.) (1998a) The Principal Upanisads, 6th

Impression, New Delhi, HarperCollins Publishers India, pp. 446ff; E.W. Burlingame

(1994) Buddhist Parables, Indian edition reprint, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, p. 185;

The Holy Bible, The Gospel According to Saint Mark 4:13 and The Gospel According

to Saint Luke 12:54-59.

27

etc. And by ‘hermeneutics’ what is meant is the intellectual discipline that

probes into the nature and presuppositions of the interpretation of human

expressions. The history of the Greek term hermeneia traces the

etymological connection with the Greek God Hermes, the messenger of

Gods.49 For some thinkers, this is related to the threefold structure of the

act of interpretation:

i) a sign, message or text that needs

ii) an interpreter

iii) to convey it to some audience.

One encounters here the major conceptual issues with which

hermeneutics deals:

i) the nature (sitz-im-leben) of a text,

ii) what does it mean to understand (verstehen) a text, and

iii) how the presuppositions and beliefs (horizon, weltanschauung) of

the interpreter determine understanding and interpretation.

49 For a detailed discussion on this see Michael Inwood (1998) “Hermeneutics” in

Edward Craig (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London & New York,

Routledge, Vol.4, p. 385; Van A. Harvey (2005) “Hermeneutics” in Lindsay Jones

(ed.) The Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition Vol.6, pp. 3930ff; ‘Hermeneutics’

in John Bowker (ed.) (1997) The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, p. 424; and

Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (ed.) (1986) The Hermeneutics Reader, Oxford, Basil

Blackwell, p.1.

28

And as I see, interpretation is fundamental to all the intellectual

disciplines. The predominant notion is that all human experience is

fundamentally interpretative and that all understanding and meaning take

place within a context of interpretation mediated by language, life and

world beyond which one cannot go. Hence the focus of our discussion is

on the hermeneutic character of understanding and meaning in the

religious use of language. Here one can critique the so-called privileged

or correct meaning of an utterance. And the basic hermeneutic problem

can be summarized in this question, ‘whose meaning is the meaning of

the meaning?’

Further, one can identify, as a heuristic device, four distinctive

yet related ways of conceiving the basic problem of hermeneutic

understanding and meaning.50 These four ways of conceiving

hermeneutics can be briefly indicated as follows.

i) Hermeneutics can be conceived as an inquiry into the

interpretation of texts. This we find in Friedrich Schleiermacher

(1768-1834), the “Kant of hermeneutics”. For him the most crucial

theoretical issue that confronts one is the nature of language

50 See Van A. Harvey (2005) “Hermeneutics”, pp. 3931 ff.

29

because one can get access to another person’s meaning only

through the medium of language.

ii) One can also conceive hermeneutics as the foundation for the

human sciences. Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) embodies this

approach. He makes a sharp distinction between understanding

(Verstehen) in cultural sciences and explanation (Erklarung) in

natural sciences.

iii) Hermeneutics can also be pictured as reflection on the conditions

of all understanding. This approach finds its embodiment in

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-

2002). For Heidegger, human beings already find themselves in a

world made intelligible to them by virtue of what he called the

fore-structure of our understanding. It is the assumptions,

expectations, and categories that we pre-reflectively project on

experience and that constitute any given particular act of

understanding. And every interpretation is already shaped by a set

of assumptions and presuppositions about the whole of experience.

Heidegger calls this the hermeneutic situation. Following

Heidegger, Gadamer argues that interpretation also assumes a

context of intelligibility and that the presuppositions and

assumptions - Gadamer calls them prejudices - of the interpreter

30

are precisely what enable understanding as well as

misunderstanding. In that sense one cannot think of a

presupposition-less understanding. Here the stress is on the

analysis of the inherent structure of understanding itself.

iv) One can also conceive hermeneutics as an analytic and mediating

practice. Here the objective is a piecemeal investigation

emphasizing any one or more of the following concerns: To

analyze, to clarify, and if possible resolve conceptual issues

surrounding explanation and interpretation in the various contexts

in which they are employed; to establish the logical connection

between meaning, truth and validity; to discover the various uses

of language; and to ascertain what is meant by rationality and

irrationality.

In a very broad sense, I shall be taking recourse to this conception of

hermeneutics as analytic and mediating practice in our discussion.

From the foregoing discussion, one should not assume that the

discipline of hermeneutics is of a monolithic and homogenous character.

Rather it should be borne in mind that the very conception of

hermeneutics in its origin, history and development does not always carry

a precise and univocal meaning in the western philosophical tradition. As

one author has comprehensively put it:

31

‘Hermeneutics’ is a term… that is now used in so

many different contexts with so many different

meanings that it no longer has a univocal

meaning. …for hermeneutics represents not so

much a highly honed, well-established theory of

understanding or a long standing well-defined

tradition of philosophy as it does a family of

concerns and critical perspectives that is just

beginning to emerge as a program of thought and

research. … both a casual acquaintance with the

widespread use of the term and a deeper grasp of

the philosophical issues behind it indicate that

hermeneutics wields considerable critical power

indeed.51

Besides being indicative of a family of concerns and critical perspectives,

‘hermeneutics’, to my mind, necessarily evokes a symbiosis between

understanding, language and historicity. In an important sense, one can

say that understanding, meaning, language and historicity constitute the

fulcrum of hermeneutics. The nature and texture of this symbiosis and the

emphasis on its various aspects may vary from one hermeneutic thinker

51 Brice R. Wachterhauser (ed.) (1985) Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy,

Albany, State University of New York Press, p. 5.

32

to another and from one school or style of thought to another.52 For the

purpose of our discussion, as I have already indicated, I shall take

‘hermeneutics’ broadly to mean the philosophic-analytic practice of

understanding and interpreting the meaning of religious discourse.

Conceptual Contours and Presuppositions

It is this conception of hermeneutics as an analytic practice that

constitutes the conceptual contours of our inquiry. It means to analyze, to

clarify and to resolve conceptual issues connected with understanding and

meaning when we use words in religious contexts. And further I want to

show that this method would enable us to clarify the logical connections

between meaning, truth and validity in religious language. Some of the

presuppositions that constitute the contours of our inquiry may be

highlighted as follows.

The phenomenon called ‘religious language’ is primarily the

logos of the anthropos and in that anthropological in character. That is to

say, it is the human person who employs religious language; not gods,

goddesses or spirits. As one author has rightly pointed out, even God

cannot get around language. If God is to communicate, then God has to

52 For a comprehensive discussion on the classification of hermeneutics as method,

philosophy and critique see Josef Bleicher (1987) Contemporary Hermeneutics:

Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy, and Critique, London, Routledge.

33

use some human language. And in that sense even God cannot escape

language.53 By this I do not mean to say that religious language is

necessarily anthropocentric or anthropomorphic or androcentric in

character. What I want to emphasize is this: it is the homo sapiens who is

homo loquens as well as homo religiosus.

The human person who uses religious language is an embodied

being in the given world. That is to say that the phenomenon of religious

language has to be situated in the triad of language, life and world. And

what we encounter in this triad are complex interconnections and

contours. That means the stress on the human linguistic behaviour is to be

seen in its rootedness in life and world. And one way of capturing its

complexity is to analyze the various paradigms that are at work in the

linguistic praxis of the humans. Heuristically, as one author has rightly

pointed out, one can make a distinction among three paradigms at work

here. First, the scientific paradigm with the formula ‘S is P’; second, the

poetic (artistic) paradigm with the formula ‘thou art’; and third, the

philosophic (mystic) paradigm with the formula ‘I am’.54

53 See Richard Mason (1997) “Getting Around language”, Philosophy, Vol. 72, p.

259.54 See Raimon Panikkar (1993) “The Threefold Linguistic Intra-Subjectivity”, pp.

35ff.

34

°di ŒaÚkara, Wittgenstein and Derrida: A Trinitarian Ladder

In investigating the problem of hermeneutic understanding and

meaning in religious language, I propose to engage some chosen writings

of °di ŒaÚkara (c.788-820), Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and

Jacques Derrida (1931-2004). Here one might contest this proposal and

radically question its logical appropriateness by stating that the

philosophers mentioned above are embedded in different, heterogeneous,

and even incommensurable philosophical traditions. Again one might be

tempted to label them as ‘unholy trinity’. That is to say, if °di ŒaÚkara

constructed the strong and coherent foundational edifice of the non-

dualistic philosophical school called the kevalÀdvaita (absolute non-

dualism) tradition in the horizon of Indian philosophical thinking55 then

Wittgenstein is said to have heralded ‘the linguistic turn’ in Western

philosophy, cementing the movement called ‘the analytic tradition’.56

And Jacques Derrida has become almost synonymous with ‘différance

55 See R. Balasubramanian & S. Bhattacharyya (eds.) (1989) Perspectives of

ŒaÚkara, Department of Culture, MHRD Government of India, pp. 24 ff.56 See P.M.S. Hacker (1996) Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth-century Analytic

Philosophy, Oxford / Massachusetts, Blackwell Publishers, pp. 258ff.

35

and deconstruction’ in the Continental tradition.57 There might be some

merit in this question. But, my contention is that in grappling with the

problem of hermeneutic understanding and meaning in religious

language, the conceptual issues they raise have a sort of ‘family

resemblance’ and in that they do provide us with a heuristic device, the

‘trinitarian ladder’ in our investigation. And to justify my use of the

neologism the ‘trinitarian ladder’ for the trinity of °di ŒaÚkara, Ludwig

Wittgenstein and Jacques Derrida, I give the following reasons.

First, to contextualize the use of the neologism, I believe one

has to take into account the incommensurability debate. As I have

indicated earlier, it is illogical and unwarranted to presume two or more

philosophical traditions to be either completely commensurable or

incommensurable. A look at the contours of the incommensurability-

commensurability debate in contemporary philosophy shows that there

exists a fundamental tension between the “myth of the given’ and the

claim that there is an objective ‘world’ that has some meaning

57See “Editor’s Introduction” in Jacques Derrida (2007) Jacques Derrida: Basic

Writings, ed. Barry Stocker, London & New York, Routledge, pp. 1-25; Andrew

Cutrofello (I998) “Derrida, Jacques (1930- [2004])” in Edward Craig (ed.) Routledge

Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 2, pp. 896-901 and Christopher Norris (1998)

“Deconstruction” in Edward Craig (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.

2, pp. 835-839.

36

independent of any mode of conceptual description. Donald Davidson in

his celebrated essay ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’ engages

this multifaceted problem. In this essay, Davidson calls into question the

intelligibility of the idea of a conceptual scheme, a framework or a

paradigm that is often presupposed without critically examining it. He

shows the incoherence of the thesis that a given conceptual framework in

which we use sentences is presumed to be radically incommensurable

with alternative conceptual schemes. For him, there is no intelligible basis

on which one can say that the employed conceptual schemes are radically

different. At the same time it does not imply that all speakers of language

share a common scheme and ontology. That means “if we cannot

intelligibly say that [conceptual schemes] are different, neither can we

intelligibly say that they are one.”58 Davidson goes onto challenge the

dualistic ‘dogma of scheme and reality’ and the resultant radical notion of

conceptual relativism according to which different people might have

mutually un-interpretable beliefs. The point I want to note in the

Davidsonian argument is this: there is neither perfect commensurability

implying easy parallelisms nor radical incommensurability denoting

58 Donald Davidson (1984) Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford, Oxford

University Press, p. 198.

37

closed, arbitrary and impenetrable conceptual schemes.59 This, argument,

I believe will nullify the force of the counter argument that the use of the

neologism ‘trinitarian ladder’ makes no sense because the three

philosophers it signifies are radically incommensurable.

Second, my use of the neologism the ‘trinitarian ladder’ is not

to be taken as a mere juxta-positioning of three disparate philosophers.

Neither am I comparing them. Rather my intention is to elucidate the

hermeneutic character of understanding and meaning in religious

language by showing the contours of the conceptual logic that emerge

from the texture that is available in these three philosophers’ engagement

with the problematic of religious language. Further, I want to argue for

the case that there is a thematic unity that manifests itself as a fulcrum in

the chosen writings of this trinity of philosophers and this renders the

neologism the ‘trinitarian ladder’, to my mind, thought provoking and

significant. Here, the implied sense of hermeneutics, as I have discussed

earlier, is that of analytic and mediating practice. And the contours of the

link among them and the thematic unity will become evident as we

progress in our investigation. And my contention is that this attempt will

give rise to the trajectories of a fresh interpretation of understanding and

59 See “Relativism, epistemological” in Ted Honderich (ed.) (1995) The Oxford

Companion to Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 757.

38

meaning in religious language. In the concluding chapter, I shall focus on

this resultant epiphany of a fresh hermeneutic understanding and meaning

in religious language.

Third, and more importantly, if philosophia is seen

fundamentally as an attempt at civilizational dialogue of the humans in

their local as well as global predicament, then such a dialogical

conversation among various philosophical and religious traditions should

not be seen as a mere luxury of the mind but a necessity in life. This is all

the more significant when one wrestles with the problem of

understanding and meaning in the domain of religious language. For

religion is a human phenomenon which instantiates itself in diverse forms

both locally and globally.

Here, parenthetically, I wish to add two important things before I

proceed to Chapter One. First, as a philosophical inquirer my attempt is

not to privilege any one particular philosophy and its allied religio-

cultural system whether it is Western or Indian, Continental or Anglo-

Saxon, Abrahamic or Indic, Occident or Orient. Second, the operative

conceptual framework at work in this thesis is qualified by its

commitment to philosophical pluralism, religious diversity and the

dialogical imperative. In all this the underlying conception of

philosophical enterprise is that of a critical, creative and cross-cultural

39

universe of discourse in which one encounters the polyvalent fabric of

religious narratives that humans have woven symbiotically to tell their

own stories, and there by constructing, reconstructing and celebrating

their own world-views.60

60 In my intellectual engagement, I have attempted consistently to draw and to re-draw

the hermeneutic contours of such a philosophical and religious framework required

for a civilizational dialogue among the humans. And in this Ph.D. Thesis,

emphasizing such a dialogical imperative, I have revisited some of the ideas presented

elsewhere in my earlier writings. See Devasia M. Antony (2001) Some Hermeneutic

Reflections on Religious Speech Acts; (2002) Toward a Hermeneutic of Religious

Language, Unpublished paper presented in the Second Summer Course in

Phenomenology at Pondicherry University; (2005a) “Subalternity and the

Hermeneutic of Religious Language” in George Thadathil (ed.) Subaltern

Perspectives: Philosophizing in Context, Bangalore, Asian Trading Corporation, pp.

101-18; (2005b) “Christian Faith, Inter-Faith Harmony and Social Cohesion”

Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection, Vol. 69, No.8, pp. 592-601; (2006) “The

Frontiers of Revelation (Œruti) and Reason (tarka) : Hermeneutic Contours of

Brahman-Inquiry in °di ŒaÚkara” Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection, Vol.

70, No. 6, pp. 433-47; (2007a) “Walking on Nothing but Air: Hermeneutic Contours

of the Religious Turn in Wittgenstein” in K. C. Pandey (ed.) Perspectives on

Wittgenstein’s Unsayable, New Delhi, Readworthy Publications, pp. 79-98; (2007b)

“Hermeneutics of Religious Language in °di ŒaÚkara …” in George Karuvelil (ed.)

Romancing the Sacred? Towards an Indian Christian Philosophy of Religion,

Bangalore, Asian Trading Corporation, pp. 423-45; (2008) Interpreting Religious

Language: Between Sense and Nonsense, Unpublished paper presented at CPDHE,

University of Delhi; (2009a) “Self and the Subaltern in the Advaitic Religious

Language” Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection, Vol. 73, No. 4, pp. 266-74;

(2009b) “Indian Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Language” in E.P. Mathew (ed.)

Hermeneutics: Multicultural Perspectives, Chennai, Satya Nilayam Publications, pp.

40

Now I move on to the first step of this ‘trinitarian ladder’, that is, °di

ŒaÚkara.

108-31; (2009c) The Questioning of Ethics and the Ethics of Questioning,

Unpublished paper presented at Gargi College, University of Delhi; (2010a)

“Advaita” in Johnson J. Puthenpurackal (ed.) ACPI Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.

1, Bangalore, Asian Trading Corporation, pp. 24-29; (2010b) “VedÀnta” in ibid., Vol.

II, pp. 1484-92; (2010c) “UpaniÈads” in ibid., pp. 1464-69; (2010d) “OÚ/AuÚ” in

ibid., pp. 986-88; (2010e) A Note on the Metaphysics of Consciousness in Advaita

VedÀnta, Unpublished paper presented at the Centre for Philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru

University, New Delhi; (2010f) On Agape: The Ethical Challenge of being a

Christian, Unpublished paper presented in the 4th IASR Conference, University of

Delhi, Delhi ; (2010g) Engaging the Domain of Religion: Discovering the Svadharma

of Being ‘Indian’ and ‘Religious’, Unpublished paper presented at Bharat Mata

Ashram, Kurukshetra, Haryana; (2010h) The Nature of Brahman in the Advaita

Vedanta of °di ŒaÚkara, Unpublished paper presented at the World Development

Foundation, New Delhi; (2010i) The Agony and Ecstasy in the Garden, Unpublished

paper presented at the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature, New Delhi; (2011a)

Religious Ethics and the Conception of Divine Command Theory, Unpublished paper

presented in the International Conference on Science, Spirituality and Humanity,

University of Delhi, Delhi; (2011b) On Resurrection: The Advaita of Kenosis and

Kairos, Unpublished paper presented at the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature,

New Delhi; (forthcoming) “Toward a New Hermeneutic of Self-Inquiry” in Shail

Mayaram (ed.) Philosophy as SaÚvÀd and SvarÀj, New Delhi, Sage Publications

India Pvt. Ltd.; and (forthcoming) “The Ethical as the Religious: On the Paradigm of

Agápé in Christianity” in Deepa Nag Haksar (ed.) Ethical Values and Practice:

Essays in the Indian Context.