World Philosophies - Hardcover

Smart, Ninian

3.84

25 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415184665 ISBN 13: 9780415184663

Publisher: Routledge, 1999

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World Philosophies is a comprehensive survey of the world's philosophical and religious traditions by one of our foremost religious thinkers. Ninian Smart discusses notable figures such as Plato and Kierkegaard in the West, the Buddha and Mao Zedong in Asia, Tempels and Knibanga in Africa, and Rodo and Royce in America. Covering a wide range of topics including Indian ideas of testimony and evidence, Chinese notions of moral development, Buddhist concepts of cosmology and Latin American critiques of materialism, Smart sheds new light on the astonishing diversity of philosophies that have developed throughout history.

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About the Author:

Ninian Smart is Chairperson of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of numerous books, including most recently, Reflections in the Mirror of Religion (1997) and The Religious Experience (1996).

Review:

In a work of amazing breadth and cogency, the acknowledged master of the study of world civilization leads us through the philosophies that have guided some corners of humanity and today lay claim to a hearing everywhere. Ninian Smart has studied languages and histories, philosophies and literatures, east and west, north and south, and with panache and verve he introduces in a profound way worlds that, before our time have rarely collided. This is a masterpiece of lucid description, analysis, and interpretation of the ways people have made sense of things - choices that today face us all.
–Jacob Neusner, University of South Florida and Bard College

Ninian Smart is one of the few public religious intellectuals who can be compared to the late Joseph Campbell.
–Library Journal

I thought this was an excellent book. All the chapters are both interesting and of an equally high standard. There is a lot of interest in nowadays, especially in the US, in world philosophy...Ninian Smart is one of the best writers on the topic working today.
–Oliver Leaman, Liverpool John Moores University

Ninian Smart has once again brought his considerable skills--philosophy, phenomenology of religion, cross-cultural comparisons, and theology--to bear on a much needed compendium on philosophies of the world. And all the more urgent as we move towards a fecundation of global civilizations. It indeed is a garland woven out of the differing flowers of many traditions
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–Purushottama Bilimoria, Editor of Sophia

As a work of reference, this will be invaluable. Smarts analysis of such crucial thinkers as Buddha, Confucius, Descartes and Derrida is impeccable.
–The Times

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