The cross-disciplinary studies in this volume are of special interest because they link human purpose to the present debate between religion and the process of secularization. If that debate is to be a creative one, the notion of the 'human orderer' must be related significantly both to the sacred and secular realms. In fact, if man were not a purposive being, he would have neither religious nor secular problems. Questions about origins and destiny, divine purposiveness and the order of human development, would not arise as topics of human concern. It would appear, then, that few would deny...

My first year in graduate school marked by initial expo sure to Heidegger and some of his important early essays. At tha time, disenchanted with the state in which "religious thought" lay, I was quickly struck by the potential Heidegger presented for breaking new ground in a field that had seeming ly exhausted itself by reworking the same old issues and answers. That insight, along with the conviction that Heideg ger had been misused and misunderstood by theologians and religious thinkers ever since he burst upon the intellectual scene with the publ ication of Sein und Zei t, grew throughout...

It would probably be generally admitted that Vedanta is the apex of the Indian (or Eastern) religious philosophies. Yet today it com mands so little attention, in part, no doubt, because the modem mood in scholarship refuses anchoring and centering of thought. The present work seeks to address modem thought though not in the modem mood. It is nevertheless motivated by the belief that there are times when the timeless is most timely. It is possible that the sources of a tradition such as Vedanta, if approached propefIy, will yield somethIng which can be brought within the ambience of the...