The Metaphysical Foundations of Indian Culture

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

The Present work seeks to establish the foundations of Indian culture in metaphysics. It makes two significant. observations at the outset. First, how metaphysics gives us a comprehensive and unified world-view in terms of conceptual scheme and how it draws concepts or categories from the empirical field of experience in which the entire cultural activities subsist and, second, how it raises the concepts beyond the limitions of the empirical world and deals with the Ultimates using the concepts or categories of Being, Reality, Self, God etc. viewed in these perspectives metaphysics may be taken to mean a blending of empirical and meta-empirical worlds of experience with more emphasis on the meta-empirical for it is not merely an intellectual and objective survey of things, rather it raises us towards Reality beyond the empirical and approach. it more closely. Thus the roors of metaphysics lie deep in the foundational ideas of Indian Culture, for Indian culture subsists in the formal and ideal tools of thought, which is capable of abstracting into and sometimes building forms and patterns out of the empirical, into a realm beyond the empirical.

Dr. K. P. Verma (b. 1936). Obtained M.A. and Ph. D. degrees in philosophy from the University of Bihar, Muzaffarpur. Has brilliant academic career to his credit and has 37 years of teaching experience of graduate and Post graduate level. Has been a very successful teacher and has clear cut conception of the subject matter of Philosophy. Dr. Verma retired as University Professor and Head, from the University Department of Philosophy. L. N. Mithila University, Darbhanga. He is author of a book entitled 'F. H. Bradley and the Concept of Reality' with a foreword by Professor K. Satchidanand Murty an eminent scholar and ex Vice Chairman of UGC, New Delhi. Dr. Verma has also served as a Principal Investigator on a U.G.C. Major Research Project in Philosophy. He has been a life member of the Indian Philosophical Congress and Akhil Bhartiya Darshan Parishad since 1980. He is also a life member and the Regional Representative of the International Society for Neo-Platonic studies (Headquarter in the University of Virginia, America). He has been presenting paper i conferences, U. G. C. sponsored Seminars, National Seminars, Symposiums, Colloqums held in India and abroad since 1976 till date. Also presented papers and took active part in discussions in the World Congress of Philosophy held at Montreal, Canada on 24th and 25 August Has delivered Lectures as a resource person in the University of Allahabad, in Bihar University, Muzzaffarpur and in K.S.D.S. University, Darbhanga to name a few. Has been guiding research scholars at Doctoral and Post-Doctoral level since 1980 till date.

My main aim in this work in to explore and establish as to how metaphysics is the foundations of Indian culture. It is true that the terms 'Metaphysics' and 'Culture' can not and denote different levels of our enquiry about the nature of being and things. While metaphysics is concerned with the study of Being transcending nature, viz., existing separately from nature and having more intrinsic reality and value than the beings and things of this nature; culture on the other hand, is concerned with the study of things and beings of this empirical world in which we live. So it seems difficult to establish the former as the foundation of the latter. However, in this work sincere efforts have been made to establish as to how the Being of the transcendental or non-empirical world of metaphysics is the foundation of things and beings of this empirical world.

In my opinion the foundations of Indian culture consist in the study of man, man's place in the cosmos, the power of the Being and Reality which is the source and support of everything we see and the spiritual asset of an individual and spiritual elements involved in the entire spectrum of Indian culture - its language and literatures, art and architecture, sculpture and painting, music, dance and drama, religion, morality and science and in all sorts of social customs and manners, rites and rituals, etiquette and behaviour, dress, food and drink etc.

Starting from the basic positions that Indian philosophy in general and metaphysics in particular is man-centered and that man is the creature of culture and tradition, I have first evaluated man's role as a rational being; then I have focused on man's place in the cosmos and his search for Reality which is the source and support of everything and in the end I have given an exhaustive account of spirituality or spiritual elements involved in the entire spectrum of Indian culture showing therein that metaphysics is a sciences of spirituality or a search for spiritual elements as the basic foundations inherent in all forms of cultural expressions.

**Contents and Sample Pages**