March 01, 2016

Integrative evolutionism and metapsychology of Sri Aurobindo

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=8171000282
Sheojee Pandey - 1987 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions Sri Aurobindo and Whitehead agree on the point that the evolution is emergent. Both theories of evolution admit that higher and ... Owing to the integrated form of matter all levels of existence take birth. As Sri Aurobindo says, "An integration of ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=1136484663
C. Mackenzie Brown - 2012 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions Providing new insights into the contemporary creationist-evolution debates, this book looks at the Hindu cultural-religious traditions of India, the Hindu Dharma traditions.12. The Integrative Evolutionism of. Sri Aurobindo Ghose. The development of Indian political activism in the waning decades of the nineteenth century was to play a significant role in Hindu ... 
1 For details of Aurobindo's biography, I have largely relied on Peter Heehs (1989). 2 The transformation does not mean a radical break in Aurobindo's ideals and values. As Robert ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=1462883621
Thomas Lombardo, Ph. D. - 2011 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions The ideas of evolution and progress can even take a spiritual form, such as in the writings of the Hindu philosopher and Yoga master, Sri Aurobindo.Aurobindo weaves together evolution with Hinduism in a holistic system, rejecting both the ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=8120819373
K. R. Sundararajan, ‎Bithika Mukerji - 2003 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions (15:251) III From his original base in Hindu religion and society in The Foundations of Indian Culture, through a ... Aurobindo's metapsychology, with a dash of evolution in a new key, finally goes beyond spirituality to the Supramental. Here is a ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=8120790634
Karan Singh - 2011 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions While at Baroda Sri Aurobindo had begun following some yogic practices, and during the Bengal agitation he was arrested in the ... can be called spiritual nationalism, Sri Aurobindo's general philosophy can well be called spiritual evolution.

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=1136634177
James W. Haag, ‎Gregory R. Peterson, ‎Michael L. Spezio - 2012 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions Each species has its own inherent nature modifiable only within small limits, an early Hindu instance of anti-macroevolutionism. For Aurobindo, spiritualevolution seemed destined to result in Supermanhood, but the teleological implica- tions ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=1570034494
Arvind Sharma - 2003 - ‎Preview Dhanpati Pandey, The Arya Samaj and Indian Nationalism, P. A. Parpullil, Swami Dayananda Saraswati's ... For a discussion of Aurobindo's evolutionary theory, see Rama Shanker Srivastava, Sri Aurobindo and the Theories of Evolution.

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=0230372856
M. Chatterjee - 2016 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions Bergman's own ideas about evolution can be found in his paper “The Need for a Courageous Philosophy' which contains ... He goes on to mention Sri Aurobindo “who made the theory of mutual ascent from below and descent from above, the ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=0199718253
Ariel Glucklich Professor of Theology Georgetown University - 2008 - ‎Preview- ‎More editions Hindu Culture in Historical Perspective Ariel Glucklich Professor of Theology Georgetown University ... According to Aurobindo, this is a failure to understand that the new theology ''expressed a deeper truth and a larger range of religious experience, ... and one cannot avoid the impression that the standard, the telos, toward which Aurobindo's evolution is conceived to move was the product of an India ...

https://books.google.co.in/books?isbn=8178357186
Rajeev Verma - 2009 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions In his vision of new evolution, Sri Aurobindo even foresees the seem ance of a totally new species on earth, which shall ... Swami Dayananda Saraswati As per the Swami Dayananda Saraswati was an significant Hindu religious scholar born ...

Aug 4, 2012 - Sri Aurobindo seems to have foreseen this German defeat. ... The day must inevitably come when he will be able even to originate no less than ...

Fulfilling the Human Aspiration For a Deeper Meaning to Existence - The material life in the world, presented to the human individual as the reality within which he has to live, strive and survive, is not the entirety of ex...

Makarand R. Paranjape, Aparajita Mukhopadhyay, and Brainerd Prince - The Integral Philosophy of Aurobindo: Hermeneutics and the Study of Religion (Routledge Hindu Studies Series) Oct 8, 2016 by Brainerd Prince (Author) Sri A...

Rights are instrumental - The key reason I have turned to MacIntyrean tradition-based inquiry is to make progress on the ethical inquiries that have … Continue reading →

BRILLIANT FICTIONS OF A PLAYWRITE - Dave Begel, contributing writer, reviews a play, ”The Invisible Hand" at The Rep which is described as an unflinching and unique look at the influence of capitalism. (27 February) by Pulitzer Prize playwright, Ayad Akhtar, HERE
The problem with Ayad Akhtar’s theme for his play is that it is based on and albeit common fallacy, not of Adam Smith’s, but of the modern 20th-century economists who misinterpreted Smith’s correct use of metaphors in what he decribed as his “perspicuous writing”. Among the offenders there was Paul Samuelson from 1948 onwards (and, later, several other Nobel Prize winners) who invented a narrative, partly in celebration of booming modern US capitalism and its political celebrations, when flushed with victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, apparent amidst the post-war economic boom that they believed heralded the victory of capitalist economic policies over the failures of rigid state-run Soviet socialism.
Investipedia’s account is quite spurious. 
Smith’s Wealth of Nations is full of detailed criticism of the actual behaviours of “merchants and manufacturers”. He did not enunciate such a role for the “inivsible hand” metaphor, and he definitely saw a role for government intervention by regulations to protect consumers and the population from misguided citizens and governments in an economy, though nothing like on the scale of intervention common today and certainly he was highly critical of government sponsorship of “mercantile political economy” as operated in 18th-century Britain.
Smith did not describe a ‘perfectly competitive’ economy nor did he suggest we could do without government interventions (“party walls” in buildings to prevent the spread of fires; actions to mitigate the spread of of “noxious diseases”; sponsorship of school education in “every parish”; construction of roads; public cleansing of towns; light houses for navigation; and many other interventions.

The “invisible hand” metaphor was not about the sufficiency of “economic self-interest” “to guide us”. That is a modern construction and not Adam Smith’s. POSTED BY GAVIN KENNEDY AT 8:19 PM

Andrew Carl Bosworth at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, posts on “Multipolar Future”:complexity, national autonomy, individual sovereignty, neutrality, balance of civilizations” HERE 
“Olde-tyme classical economists often talked about the wisdom of the market, the “invisible hand.”
Quote: “In economics, the invisible hand is a metaphor used by Adam Smith to describe unintended social benefits resulting from individual actions. The phrase is employed by Smith with respect to income distribution (1759) and production (1776).”
Comment
This a false hypothesis. The fact is that the “invisible hand: was hardly mentioned by “classical economists” who lived after Smith died in 1790. Indeed, the invisible hand” metaphor was not mentioned by anybody while Smith was alive and when his two books, Moral Sentiments (1759) and Wealth of Nations(1776) were published and circulating in Europe and North America. 
Most readers appear not to have noticed his use of the fairly common expression of the “invisible hand”, circulating among theologians and preachers in the 17th and 18th centuries (see the great Calvinist orator, the preacher, Thomas Chalmers, in 1836, who, almost alone mentions Smith’s use of the IH. 
For Smith, though, he used the invisible hand as metaphor, not as a descriptive proper noun. The first mentions of the IH and Adam Smith appear in the 1870 (5 mentions) amd later from the 1890s, mentions appeared intermittingly until Paul Samuelson included the IH in his famous textbook on economics (19 editions and 5 million sales to 2010). From then on the modern phenomenon of linking Adam Smith to the modern version of the IH, took off exponentially, to many hundreds of thousands per year and continues daily today.
The quote from a classical textbook is a modern construction of events and not an historical one. ‘Providence’ reported Smith in TMS divided the land between humans; history records a different sequence of events, reported more accurately by Richard Cantilon: “It does not appear that Providence has given the right of possession of Land to one man preferably to another; the most ancient Titles are founded on violence and Conquest” (Cantillon: Essay on the Nature of Commerce, 1730-34/1931). 
Far from a supposedly heavenly arrangement, the agricultural systems that flourished for millennia up to Smith’s times were based on the mutual, often violent, dependence of the landowners on their serfs, slaves, peasants, and labourers - who were the source of their “greatness’ - and their labourers depended on their oppressive Lords - the source of their sustenence from a share of the products of their labour. Without serfs, the landlords would soon perish; without landlords, the serfs would soon starve. But their mutual dependence worked, subject to events - invasions, plagues, famines, wars and environmental disasters. Moreover, Smith drew the conclusion that the long-term consequence was one of the “propagation of the species”. 
Turning to the IH in Wealth of Nations we find a too general interpretation of Smith’s use of the IH metaphor by Andrew Carl Bosworth: He writes: the “phrase” (?) describes “the unintended social benefits resulting from individual actions.” This is far too general an interpretation, though very common in modern textbooks and lectures.
In WN, Smith is discussing a singular case of a merchant who is concerned about the risks to his capital if it is sent abroad, out of his sight and control, and into the hands of a foreign legal system of which he is unsure of its probity. In response, this merchant invests his capital locally where he is surer of the integrity of the legal system, where he knows the other merchants with whom he deals and is confident of the independence of outcome if he has cause to seek legal redress.
However, by acting to protect his interests he intends only his security but in doing so he unintentionally also adds his capital to “domestic revenue and employment”, which is a “public benefit”, albeit outwith his singular intentions.
There is nothing about the IH describing the “unintended social benefits resulting from individual actions” as a general rule. This is an extraordinary and unwarranted assertion by Andrew Carl Bosworth (and by those who generally assert Smith’s singular example into a general rule). 
Indeed, Book 4 of WN, containing the singular use of the IH metaphor in the above example, there are several dozen examples of the intended motivated actions of merchants (and government ministers) in which the outcomes, documented by Adam Smith, are clearly against the interests of consumers, and other merchants, and actually present a mortal threat to the broader interests of the society of which they are members, including inter-country relations and escalating tensions leading to retaliatons, blockades, and outright warfare, which were all too common in the 18th century. 

Smith regarded his analysis in Book 4 as a “violent” criticism of his country’s foreign trade mercantile policy. The invisible hand metaphor did not “describe unintended social benefits resulting from individual actions” as a general rule. Individual actions could and still can provoke violent responses and widespread social suffering too, hence it could not have been a “general rule” of Adam Smith's. POSTED BY GAVIN KENNEDY AT 2:49 PM SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2016

No comments:

Post a Comment