This thesis argues that Friedrich Nietzsche???s notion of world and self as ???will to power and nothing besides??? offers a highly productive interpretive lens or ???grid of intelligibility??? for understanding the ethical implications of Michel Foucault???s middle and late works on power and subjectivity. For if the late modern era is marked by a sustained and pervasive incredulity toward metanarrative, it is also the historical site for the reappearance and widespread acceptance of a very ancient metanarrative ??? the Heraclitean view of material reality as continual flux. Inasmuch as Nietzsche???s will to power philosophy is grounded in this Pre-Socratic worldview, his works and those of his devotee Foucault may serve as a productive foundation for a late modern ethics. The scholarly implications of reading Foucault???s middle and late works through the interpretive lens of Nietzschean will to power in its two key manifestations, domination and dynamism, are multiple. In addition to providing new insights into the value of Nietzschean-Foucauldian philosophy for advancing a late modern ethics, such an analysis also illuminates important continuities in Foucault???s theory of power and how his works simultaneously extend and critique Nietzschean views on the role of asceticism in culture. The thesis then turns to a more futuristic exploration of how Foucault???s final texts, feminist critiques and extensions of these texts, and works from the separate discipline of feminist moral theory may advance a feminist form of will to power ethics. Feminist reflection upon the dualistic philosophical basis of modern androcentric power invites further speculation upon the utility of the nondual philosophies of yoga, including those found in Ved??ntic texts like the Bhagavad G??t??, for such an endeavour. Because yoga utilises asceticism-based practices of the self as its primary means for moulding moral subjects, it is comparable to the Greco-Roman will to power ethics described in Foucault???s final works. On the other hand, yoga???s nondual telos may present certain ethical possibilities that dualistic constructs like the Greco-Roman model cannot. Indeed, by practicing nonduality through yoga, contemporary women and others may be engaging in a practice of freedom in the most essential sense.

No description available.

This dissertation is divided into two parts. The first is a critical study of the Dravyasamuddeśa, a chapter from the Vākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari, a 5th-century Sanskrit philosopher of language. It also deals with the 10th-century commentary of Helārāja, which was highly influential in shaping the interpretation of the text by later authors. Although the Vākyapadīya is a treatise on Sanskrit grammar, and this particular chapter purports to deal with the grammatical category of dravya, in the Dravyasamuddeśa, Bhartṛhari is mostly concerned with establishing a non-dual theory of reality. Helārāja, five centuries later, defends this theory and attempts to re-interpret other schools of thought, namely Buddhism and Sāṃkhya, in its terms. The second part of the dissertation is a critical edition and annotated translation of the Dravyasamuddeśa and the commentary. It also describes the making of the edition - for this project, an open source software package was developed to automatically collate diplomatic transcriptions of manuscript witnesses in order to generate an apparatus variorum. The resulting apparatus forms part of an interactive, online digital edition of the text, from which the printed edition is generated.

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Thesis (Master of Arts)--Miami University, Dept. of Mass Communication, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], iv, 63 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 58-63).

Through perspectives from neuroscience, transpersonal psychology, and transcendentalist philosophy, the art of yoga is proposed as a supporting modality for healing through complex trauma. Personal narrative and original paintings further speak to a process of coming back Home. Where trauma strips one of self, yoga breeds connection back to Self. Yoga is union of individual consciousness with universal consciousness. Yogic philosophy invites one into a space of grey, somewhere between object and subject, physical and spiritual, tangible and ineffable. It is there one comes to find healing by sitting back as a pure observer. In the journey of trauma uncovery, one comes to meet an embodied sense of safety that prevails across levels of body, mind, and soul. The stars begin to shine once again in the universe held within.

The French Benedictine monk Henri Le Saux (Abhishiktananda) sought to establish an Indian Christian monasticism, emphasizing Hindu advaitic experience. He understood advaita as both nondual and non-monistic. Using phenomenology and comparative philosophy, this thesis explores his understanding and experience of advaita, comparing it to both traditional Hinduism and neo-Vedanta, as well as to Christianity and Zen Buddhism. Abhishiktananda's description of his experience is examined in relation to perception, thinking, action, ontology and theology. Special attention is given to comparing the views of the Hindu sages Ramana Maharshi and Gnanananda, both of whom influenced Abhishiktananda. Abhishiktananda believed that advaita must be directly experienced; this experience is beyond all words and concepts. He compares Christian apophatic mysticism and Hindu sannyasa. This thesis examines his distinction between experience and thought in relation to recent philosophical discussions. Abhishiktananda radically reinterprets Christianity. His affirmation of both nonduality and non-monism was influenced by Christian Trinitarianism, interpreted as an emanation of the Many from the One. Jesus' experience of Sonship with the Father is an advaitic experience that is equally available to everyone. Abhishiktananda believes that the early Upanishads report a similar experience. A monistic interpretation of advaita only developed later with the "dialectics" of Shankara's disciples. In non-monistic advaita, the world is not an illusion. Using ideas derived from tantra and Kashmir Saivism, Abhishiktananda interprets maya as the sakti or power of Shiva. He compares sakti to the Holy Spirit. Abhishiktananda distinguishes between a pure consciousness experience (nirvikalpa or kevala samadhi) and a return to the world of diversity in sahaja samadhi. Ramai:ia and Gnanananda make a similar distinction. Sahaja samadhi is the state of the jivanmukti, the one who is liberated while still in the body; it is an experience that is referred to in tantra and in Kashmir Saivism. Abhishikta:nanda never experienced nirvikalpa samadhi, but he did experience sahaja samiidhi. The appendix provides one possible synthesis of Abhishiktananda's understanding of advaita using the ideas of C.G. Jung. / Religious Studies and Arabic / Religious Studies and Arabic / D. Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies)

This paper examines the role played by death in the philosophy of Nishitani Keiji, through the nondual logic of contradictory identity developed by his teacher and founder of the Kyotoschool of philosophy, Nishida Kitarō. I explore Nishitani’s understanding of how Nothingness, nihility, through our awareness of death penetrates and nullifies existence itself, how the irreality of all being comes to the fore to make being itself unreal. The nullifying nothingness of nihility, however, is still nothingness represented as a something; it is a reified nothing, defined as the antithesis to being and thus still seen as a corollary of being itself. A truly absolute nothingness, what Nishitani calls Śūnyatā, emptiness, must be a nothingness so devoid of being as to not even be nothing; it must be absolutely nothing at all, and thus nothing else than being itself. The final chapter of my paper seeks to apply this nondual understanding of being and nothingness to the question of death itself; to understand the ontological meaning of death - the passage from being to non-being - when being and non-being have been one from the very beginning. The paper also seeks to blur the lines between what has traditionally been considered philosophy and religion, using the thinking of the Kyoto school to point to the deeper ties between the two in the borderland that is buddhist philosophy.

The French Benedictine monk Henri Le Saux (Abhishiktananda) sought to establish an Indian Christian monasticism, emphasizing Hindu advaitic experience. He understood advaita as both nondual and non-monistic. Using phenomenology and comparative philosophy, this thesis explores his understanding and experience of advaita, comparing it to both traditional Hinduism and neo-Vedanta, as well as to Christianity and Zen Buddhism. Abhishiktananda's description of his experience is examined in relation to perception, thinking, action, ontology and theology. Special attention is given to comparing the views of the Hindu sages Ramana Maharshi and Gnanananda, both of whom influenced Abhishiktananda. Abhishiktananda believed that advaita must be directly experienced; this experience is beyond all words and concepts. He compares Christian apophatic mysticism and Hindu sannyasa. This thesis examines his distinction between experience and thought in relation to recent philosophical discussions. Abhishiktananda radically reinterprets Christianity. His affirmation of both nonduality and non-monism was influenced by Christian Trinitarianism, interpreted as an emanation of the Many from the One. Jesus' experience of Sonship with the Father is an advaitic experience that is equally available to everyone. Abhishiktananda believes that the early Upanishads report a similar experience. A monistic interpretation of advaita only developed later with the "dialectics" of Shankara's disciples. In non-monistic advaita, the world is not an illusion. Using ideas derived from tantra and Kashmir Saivism, Abhishiktananda interprets maya as the sakti or power of Shiva. He compares sakti to the Holy Spirit. Abhishiktananda distinguishes between a pure consciousness experience (nirvikalpa or kevala samadhi) and a return to the world of diversity in sahaja samadhi. Ramai:ia and Gnanananda make a similar distinction. Sahaja samadhi is the state of the jivanmukti, the one who is liberated while still in the body; it is an experience that is referred to in tantra and in Kashmir Saivism. Abhishikta:nanda never experienced nirvikalpa samadhi, but he did experience sahaja samiidhi. The appendix provides one possible synthesis of Abhishiktananda's understanding of advaita using the ideas of C.G. Jung. / Religious Studies and Arabic / Religious Studies and Arabic / D. Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies)