Western academics not only produce critical editions of dharma texts but determine the very categories of the discourse, the manner in which complex words and situations are contextualized, what is included as interesting and relevant (and what is left out), which social theories and textual hermeneutics are to be used, and who the authorities are in matters of interpretation. Engaging in sweeping generalizations, the Western academy routinely passes judgement on whether Hinduism is a legitimate religion, how and when it should be discussed (if at all), and who its authorized spokespersons are. All of this causes many in the dharmic traditions to doubt the legitimacy of their culture, especially in relation to the established, prevailing taxonomy.
Rajiv MalhotraRelated topics
academy authorities complex critical culture discourse doubt hermeneutics hinduism interpretation left legitimacy legitimate manner produce relation religion should social sweeping taxonomy western judgement words dharma dharmic academicsRelated quotes
Offending and insulting, is different from expressing an opinion that can be analyzed, argued on, and can eventually be accepted or rejected [therefore offending others is not acceptable] ... But in addition to the west, we ourselves also have problems in this regard. Instead of logical criticism or debate, we only keep saying offensive things about liberalism, democracy and modernism. I had told some of our elders before, that the religion of the today's world is 'liberalism' and we have no right to make insults about it. We should not keep using phrases such as "the corrupt culture of the west" etc. in our words. As it's also said in the Holy Koran, "Do not insult the gods of others, otherwise you are indirectly insulting your God."
Mohammad Khatami
Each form of the sacrosanct was regarded by members of the culture which gave rise to it as a revelation of the Truth; at Byzantium it was not a mere hypothesis that was sponsored by the majesty of the Byzantine style. To us, however, these forms make their appeal as forms alone - in other words, as they would be were they the work of a contemporary (and, since this actually is unthinkable, they affect us in a puzzling manner); or else as so many grandiose vestiges of a faith that has died out. We look at them from outside; they are still emotive, but they are no longer true. Thus we deprive them of what was their most vital element; for a religious civilization that regarded what it revered as a mere hypothesis is inconceivable.
André Malraux
I don't have a specific picture in my mind's eye. I want to end up with a picture that I haven't planned. This method of arbitrary choice, chance, inspiration and destruction may produce a specific type of picture, but it never produces a predetermined picture. Each picture has to evolve out of a painterly or visual logic: it has to emerge as if inevitably. And by not planning the outcome, I hope to achieve the same coherence and objectivity that a random slice of nature (or a ready-made) always possesses. Of course, this is also a method of bringing in unconscious processes, as far as possible. I just want to get something more interesting out of it than those things that I can think out for myself.
Gerhard Richter
The lesson of the past century has been that where the dignity of the individual has been trampled or threatened - where citizens have not enjoyed the basic right to choose their government, or the right to change it regularly - conflict has too often followed, with innocent civilians paying the price, in lives cut short and communities destroyed.
The obstacles to democracy have little to do with culture or religion, and much more to do with the desire of those in power to maintain their position at any cost. This is neither a new phenomenon nor one confined to any particular part of the world. People of all cultures value their freedom of choice, and feel the need to have a say in decisions affecting their lives.
Kofi Annan
Nevertheless. among all the temptations I will have to resist today. There would be the temptation of memory: to recount what was for me. and for those of my generation who shared it during a whole lifetime. The experience of Marxism. The quasi-paternal figure of Marx, the way it fought in us with other filiations, the reading of texts and the interpretation of a world in which the Marxist inheritance was-and still remains, and so it will remain-absolutely and thoroughly determinate. One need not be a Marxist or a communist in order to accept this obvious fact. We all live in a world, some would say a culture, that still bears, at an incalculable depth, the mark of this inheritance, whether in a directly visible fashion or not.
Jacques Derrida
