Acknowledgments
A Note on Sanskrit and Bengali Transliteration
Abbreviations of Primary Texts
Introduction
PART ONE: THE INFINITUDE OF GOD
Chapter 1
Sri Ramakrishna's Harmonizing Philosophy of Vijñana Vedanta
Chapter 2
A Cross-Cultural Inquiry into Divine Infinitude: Sri Ramakrishna,
Paraconsistency, and the Overcoming of Conceptual Idolatry
PART TWO: RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
Chapter 3
"All Faiths Are Paths": A Reconstruction and Defense of Sri
Ramakrishna's Vijñana-Based Model of Religious Pluralism
Chapter 4
John Hick's Vedantic Road Not Taken?: Hick's Evolving Views on
Religious Pluralism in the Light of Sri Ramakrishna
PART THREE: MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
Chapter 5
Beyond Perennialism and Constructivism: Sri Ramakrishna's
Manifestationist Model of Mystical Experience
Chapter 6
A Cross-Cultural Defense of the Epistemic Value of Mystical
Experience: Sri Ramakrishna, Self-Authentication, and the Argument
from Experience
PART FOUR: THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
Chapter 7
Sri Ramakrishna's Multidimensional Response to the Problem of Evil:
Skeptical Theism, Saint-Making Theodicy, and the Panentheistic
Standpoint of Vijñana
Chapter 8
A Cross-Cultural Approach to the Problem of Evil: Sri Ramakrishna,
the Rowe-Alston Debate, and Hick's Soul-Making Theodicy
Methodological Postlude
Bibliography
Index
Ayon Maharaj is Assistant Professor and Head of Philosophy at
Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute
in West Bengal, India. He is also an ordained Brahmacarin, with the
name of Buddhacaitanya, in training to be a Sannyasin monk of the
Ramakrishna Order. Holding a doctorate from the University of
California at Berkeley, he has published over a dozen articles on
Indian, German, and cross-cultural philosophy. He is the
author of The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency: Revaluating German
Aesthetics from Kant to Adorno (2013) and the editor of the
forthcoming Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta.
"We should be grateful for Maharaj's work to construct such a
stable cross-cultural intellectual basis from which to reinterpret
Sri Ramakrishna's contemporary relevance. Teachers and students of
religious studies, comparative theology, interreligious dialogue,
and contemporary analytic philosophy will be drawn to this text;
and owing to what I consider Maharaj's devotion-as-scholarship,
they will be enticed to encounter more deeply the matchless Sri
Ramakrishna." -- Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies
"Maharaj has given the world of religious literature a historically
important work that situates Sri Ramakrishna as a philosopher in
his own right. Maharaj's work brings home the urgency to actively
engage with Indian thought that is often hidden in the precepts of
saints and mystics. A pioneering and comprehensive scholarly work,
Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality is highly readable and would
serve as a great resource for scholars of religious studies,
philosophy, hermeneutics, theology, Indian studies, and Sri
Ramakrishna." -- Swami Narasimhananda, Reading Religion
"Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality is a pathbreaking work. It is a
philosophically astute, textually scrupulous, and imaginatively
subtle reconstruction of Ramakrishna Paramhansa's teachings...
Infinite Reality is a delight to read: clear, accessible,
fair-minded and rigorous. Its philosophical charms are complemented
by a musicality about experience." -- Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Vice
Chancellor of Ashoka University in India, The Indian
Express
"Ayon Maharaj's Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna
and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion is a ground-breaking
study of the Bengali mystic Sri Ramakrishna. This volume will
become a central work in our understanding of Sri Ramakrishna, who
was a source of inspiration to numerous figures of Hindu
modernities such as Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, and so
on. Maharaj deftly combines exegetical work on the Bengali
source-texts
with debates in cross-cultural philosophy of religion, indicating
lines of conversation between Ramakrishna and various contemporary
western thinkers such as Benedikt Paul Göcke, John Hick, and
others. The
arguments are erudite, and display extensive, careful, and
sensitive readings of the philosophers whose views are
discussed."-- Ankur Barua, Lecturer in Hindu Studies, Faculty of
Divinity, University of Cambridge
"Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality is a fascinating and admirably
lucid book. Ayon Maharaj's knowledge of both Western philosophy and
Vedanta enables him to offer unique insights into Sri Ramakrishna's
distinctive views and their relevance for cross-cultural philosophy
of religion. It has my wholehearted recommendation."-- Paul Lodge,
Professor of Philosophy, University of Oxford
"With this most welcome book, Ayon Maharaj explicates and develops
the philosophy of religion found in the teachings of Sri
Ramakrishna. Not only is this philosophy an important one, urgently
needed in our current era of runaway sectarianism, bigotry, and
fanaticism, it is also one that has long been neglected by
scholars, who have tended either to try to lock Sri Ramakrishna's
thought into one or another sectarian box, or to deny that it
involves a coherent
philosophy at all. Maharaj, with admirable skill, philosophical
acumen, and deep familiarity with the relevant textual sources,
articulates Ramakrishna's philosophy with clarity and power. This
should
become the definitive book on Ramakrishna's thought." --Jeffery D.
Long, Professor of Religion and Asian Studies, Elizabethtown
College
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