The Mahabharata Of Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa Santi Parva Pt 1 2

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Democracy and political violence can hardly be considered conceptual siblings, at least at first sight. Democracy allows people to route their aspirations, demands, and expectations of the state through peaceful methods; violence works outside these prescribed and institutionalized channels in public spaces, in the streets, in the forests and in inhospitable terrains. But can committed democrats afford to ignore the fact that violence has become a routine way of doing politics in countries such as India? By exploring the concept of political violence from the perspective of critical political theory, Neera Chandhoke investigates its nature, justification and contradictions. She uses the case study of Maoist revolutionaries in India to globalize and relocate the debate alongside questions of social injustice, exploitation, oppression and imperfect democracies. As such, this is an important and much-needed contribution to the dialogue surrounding revolutionary violence.

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. It is an epic narrative of the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kauravas and the Pandava princes as well as containing philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four goals of life. Here we have Santi Parva, the twelfth, featuring the crowning of Yudhisthira as king of Hastinapura and the instructions of Bhishma for the newly anointed king on society, economics and politics. Vyasa is a revered figure in Hindu traditions. He is a kala-Avatar or part-incarnation of God Vishnu. Vyasa is sometimes conflated by some Vaishnavas with Badarayana, the compiler of the Vedanta Sutras and considered to be one of the seven Chiranjivins. He is also the fourth member of the Rishi Parampara of the Advaita Guru Parampar of which Adi Shankara is the chief proponent.

Being Philosophical guides readers through the perplexing initial moments of meeting philosophy by taking them inside philosophical thinking as an activity. In a beginner-friendly voice, Stephen Hetherington elucidates how intellectual ‘tools’ from a diversity of traditions, East and West, can enable us to start doing philosophy – that is, to think ‘from scratch’ in a philosophical way. He explores many classical topics and issues that have preoccupied philosophers from Plato, early Buddhists and Confucius to Karl Marx and beyond – selves, souls, identity, will, knowing and reasoning, acting morally, and more – and presents possible methods for responding to different theories. Inviting and conversational, Being Philosophical is the book needed by every new philosophy student – or anyone wondering whether they might want to explore the world of philosophy.