Human liberation has become an epochal challenge in today’s world, requiring not only emancipation from oppressive structures but also from the oppressive self. It is a multidimensional struggle and aspiration in which knowledge – self, social and spiritual – can play a transformative role. ‘Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations’ undertakes such a journey of transformation, and seeks to rethink knowledge vis-à-vis the familiar themes of human interest, critical theory, enlightenment, ethnography, democracy, pluralism, rationality, secularism and cosmopolitanism. The volume also features a Foreword by John Clammer (United Nations University, Tokyo) and an Afterword by Fred Dallmayr (University of Notre Dame).

Many people of all ages today continue to be attracted to sociology and other social sciences because of their promise to contribute to better political, social, and moral understandings of themselves and their social worlds-and often because they hope it will help them to build a better society. In a world of new movements and deepening economic inequality following the Great Recession, this new edition is vital. It features dozens of new examples from the latest research, with an emphasis on the next generation of liberation sociologists. The authors expand on the previous edition with the inclusion of sections on decolonisation paradigms in criminology, critical speciesism, and studies of environmental racism and environmental privilege. There is an expanded focus on participatory action research, and increased coverage of international liberation social scientists. Work by psychologists, anthropologists, theologians, historians, and others who have developed a liberation orientation for their disciplines is also updated and expanded.

This book explores varieties of spiritual movements and alternative experiments for generation of beauty, dignity and dialogues, in a world where the rise of the religious in politics and the public sphere is often accompanied by violence. It examines how spirituality can contribute to human development, social transformations and planetary realizations, urging us to treat each other, and our planet, with evolutionary care and respect. Trans-disciplinary and trans-paradigmatic to its very core, this text opens new pathways of practical spirituality and humanistic action for both scholarship and discourse and offers an invaluable companion for scholars across religious studies, cultural studies and development studies.

'Manav Dharma' that is Basic natural Religion of human beings or Humanism. That religion is practiced spontaneously without any effort for mind-development and human development. The surest way to a better life. 'MahaDharma' is the embodiment of this abstract natural human religion~ 'Manav Dharma'. MahaDharma has emerged to bring people back to their normal religion for real human development and peace. ​Summary: “Because you have a conscious mind~ you are human. But your (conscious) mind is not yet developed enough. To become a well-developed human being, you need to develop this mind. And that is your primary religion." ​"You were born as a human being, so the first and foremost goal of your life is to become a full-fledged human being. With the goal of life: to know yourself and this worldly system, always try to be alert. Be diligent to make yourself a real and all-round developed human being.” ​"Whether you belong to a conventional religion by birth or intention, your first identity is that you are a human being. As a human being, your main and fundamental religion is natural human religion (ManavDharma). And this normal human religion is the MahaDharma. The main thing is to develop the human mind with overall well-being.” ​"We are here on an educational journey. Gaining high to higher consciousness is the underlying purpose of human life. Here, the more we become conscious through knowledge-experience, the more we will benefit. From a spiritual point of view, nothing will go with us when we leave here, except the consciousness." First of all we have to understand - what this 'MahaDharma' really is 'MahaDharma' is natural human religion, our basic religion - the religion of building people. This religion is not comparable to any other conventional religion. God and faith are not the foundation of this religion. It is based on logic and spiritual science (reasonable spirituality). MahaDharma is completely different from the conventional religions.

This book presents contemporary perspectives of scholars working on different aspects of the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo- the idea of evolution, integral yoga, the transformation of the individual, society and earth, theories of nation and human unity, philosophy of emotions and ethics of the environment. Contributors examine Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy, its close conceptual relationship to classical Indian philosophy and its relevance. It sheds light on how his philosophy deals with the twenty-first century's fundamental problems and offers possible solutions. The book brings out the modern debate in Western philosophy involving thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze, and their predecessors, such as Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche. This book is an exercise in comparative Philosophy,one that unpacks the mind of Sri Aurobindo in the context of Indian, European and Anglo-American philosophical discourse. It is of great relevance for a new generation of students, scholars of Indian philosophy, politics, religious studies and those interested in knowing the thought and practice of the twentieth-century Indian, thinker and yogi, Sri Aurobindo.

This book shows the importance of knowledge production using requisite terms and frameworks to the broader scheme of epistemic liberation in Africa. The text considers what this veritable direction to knowledge production would mean to other areas of concern in African philosophy such as morality, education and the environment. These contributions are important because the success of decolonising projects in African countries depend upon the methods that underpin envisioned liberative knowledge production in light of Africa’s historical and present condition. This volume appeals to students and researchers working in epistemology and African philosophy.

In this book on higher education the contributors make The Black Lives Matter (#BLM) their focus and engage in contemporary theorizing around the issues central to the Movement: Black Deprivation, Black Resistance, and Black Liberation. The #BLM movement has brought national attention to the deadly oppression shaping the everyday lives of Black people. With the recent murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd from state-sanctioned violence by police, the public outrage and racial unrest catapulted #BLM further into the mainstream. Institutional leaders (e.g., provosts, department heads, faculty, campus administrators), particularly among white people, soon began realizing that anti-Blackness could no longer be ignored, making #BLM the most significant social movement of our time. The chapters included in this volume cover topics such as white institutional space and the experiences of Black administrators; a Black transnational ethic of Black Lives Matter; depictions of #BLM in the media; racially liberatory pedagogy; campus rebellions and classrooms as sites for Black liberation; Black women’s labor and intersectional interventions; and Black liberation research. The considerations for research and practice presented are intended to assist institutional leaders, policy-makers, transdisciplinary researchers, and others outside higher education, to dismantle anti-Blackness and create supportive mechanisms that benefit Black people, especially those working, learning and serving in higher education. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.

This book brings together over 25 years of Arindam Chakrabarti's original research in philosophy on issues of epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. Organized under the three basic concepts of a thing out there in the world, the self who perceives it, and other subjects or selves, his work revolves around a set of realism links. Examining connections between metaphysical stances toward the world, selves, and universals, Chakrabarti engages with classical Indian and modern Western philosophical approaches to a number of live topics including the refutation of idealism; the question of the definability of truth, and the possibility of truths existing unknown to anyone; the existence of non-conceptual perception; and our knowledge of other minds. He additionally makes forays into fundamental questions regarding death, darkness, absence, and nothingness. Along with conceptual clarification and progress towards alternative solutions to these substantial philosophical problems, Chakrabarti demonstrates the advantage of doing philosophy in a cosmopolitan fashion. Beginning with an analysis of the concept of a thing, and ending with an analysis of the concept of nothing, Realisms Interlinked offers a preview of a future metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind without borders.