Religion and the Philosophy of Life

Religion and the Philosophy of Life considers how religion as the source of civilization transforms the fundamental bio-sociology of humans through language and the somatic exploration of religious ritual and prayer. Gavin Flood offers an integrative account of the nature of the human, based on what contemporary scientists tell us, especially evolutionary science and social neuroscience, as well as through the history of civilizations. Part one contemplates fundamental questions and assumptions: what the current state of knowledge is concerning life itself; what the philosophical issues are in that understanding; and how we can explain religion as the driving force of civilizations in the context of human development within an evolutionary perspective. It also addresses the question of the emergence of religion and presents a related study of sacrifice as fundamental to religions' views about life and its transformation. Part two offers a reading of religions in three civilizational blocks--India, China, and Europe/the Middle East--particularly as they came to formation in the medieval period. It traces the history of how these civilizations have thematised the idea of life itself. Part three then takes up the idea of a life force in part three and traces the theme of the philosophy of life through to modern times. On the one hand, the book presents a narrative account of life itself through the history of civilizations, and on the other presents an explanation of that narrative in terms of life.

Gavin Flood is Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Oxford, Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and Yap Kim Hao Visiting Professor of Comparative Religious Studies at Yale-NUS Singapore. His publications include The Truth Within: A History of Inwardness in Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism (2013), The Importance of Religion: Meaning and Action in Our Strange World (2012), and The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory, and Tradition (2004). He is also the General Editor of The Oxford History of Hinduism series.

- Introduction - Part I - The Theory of Life Itself - 1: Theory and Philosophy of Life - 2: The Emergence of Religion - 3: Sacrifice - Part II - Religious Civilizations - 4: The Sacrificial Imaginary: Indic Traditions - 5: The Chinese Traditions - 6: The Greek and Abrahamic Traditions - Part Three - Philosophies of Life Itself - 7: Philosophies of Life - 8: The Philosophy of Life as a Field of Immanence - 9: The Phenomenology of Life - 10: Bare Life and the Resurrection of the Body - 11: Religion and the Bio-Sociology of Transformation - Epilogue: Religion and the Post Human - Bibliography