Violence and Non-Violence Across Time: History, Religion and Culture

ISBN-13: 9781138203297 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 314 str.

Sudhir Chandra

Opis

This book probes the complex interweaving, across time and cultures, of violence and non-violence from the perspective of the present. One of the first of its kind, it offers a comprehensive examination of the interpenetration of violence and non-violence as much in human nature as in human institutions with reference to different continents, cultures and religions over centuries. The essays cover a wide cultural–temporal spectrum — from Vedic sacrifice, early Jewish–Christian polemics, the Crusades, and medieval Japan to contemporary times. They explore themes such as war, jihad, death, salvation, religious and philosophical traditions, texts, and ethical imperatives.

 

Spis treści

Preface 1. Violence and Non-Violence Across Time: An Abiding Puzzle 2. The Negation of Violence in the Vedic Sacrifice 3. Is Violence Intrinsic to Religious Confrontation? The Case of Judeo-Christian Controversy, second to seventeenth Centuries 4. What Inspires Non-Violence and Violence in Islam? Some Religious and Historical Factors 5. Buddhism and ‘Violence’: Reading the Medieval War Chronicle The Tales of Heike  6. Between Military Strength and Non-Violence: Experience and Symbolic Use of Elephants in European Cultures 7. Violence in the Philosophy of Saint-Simon 8. Non-Violence, Identity, Sympathy: A Meditation 9. Some Unfashionable Observations on Non-Violence 10. Being the Object of Others: Social Distancing and Non-Violence: The Conditionalities of Dalits and Slums 11. Representations of Violence and Non-Violence in Palestinian Society  12. War against Disease without Violence to Clinical Trial Participants? 13. Being Truthful to ‘Reality’: Grounds of Non-Violence in Ascetic and Mystical Traditions

O autorze

Sudhir Chandra is a historian based in Delhi, India. He has been associated with several universities and centres of advanced learning, such as the Nantes Institute for Advanced Studies; Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla; Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Edinburgh; Banaras Hindu University; Aligarh Muslim University; Jamia Millia Islamia; Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris; Melbourne University; Bellagio Study and Conference Center; University of Chicago; Cornell University; Tokyo University of Foreign Studies; Indian Council of Historical Research; and Indian Council for Social Science Research, New Delhi. Among his publications are Gandhi: An Impossible Possibility (2017), The Oppressive Present: Literature and Social Consciousness in Colonial India (2014/1992) and Enslaved Daughters: Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (1998). His works seek to understand the kind of social consciousness that developed in India under the colonial impact and the idea of non-violence.