From Plato to Panini to Levinas

This volume offers an innovative exploration of Western social and religious thought and bridges the expression of a regional imagination with several planetary conversations. It reconnects Plato and philosophy to the issue of theology and religion and the limits of language as an instrument in engaging both disciplines. While beginning with the language problem as Socrates lays it out in Plato's Cratylus, it wends its way through the Panini-inspired discussion of language across Western thought and turns to an examination of the idea of theodicy-the justice of God in its relationship to humans: how do the innocent suffer-for example, during the Holocaust-in a world made by God? The book ultimately turns arouand to consider how particular contemporary Indian thinkers have taken up both Western thought and the issue of language and its applicability to philosophy and theology. It thus offers new horizons in the Western World and India by connecting Plato's Cratylus to the works of Saussure, Wittgenstein, Barthes, Derrida, Levinas, as well as to Panini, Aurobindo, Ranjan Dass, Giri, and the Gita. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of philosophy, linguistics, and religion.

Ori Z. Soltes teaches at Georgetown University across a range of disciplines, from art history and theology to philosophy and political history. He is the former Director of the B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum. He has authored or edited 31 books and several hundred articles and essays. Among these are Searching for Oneness: Mysticism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam and The Problem of God and How Humans Have Tried to Solve It Across History.

Introduction: The Cratylus and Its Problems 1. The Problem of Defining Terms 2. The Issue of F-s-----µ-- 3. The idea of Etymology amd Etymologies in the Cratylus 4. Characters and Contexts in and beyond the Cratylus: from Prodikos to the Peloponnesian Wars 5. From the -p---a at the End of the Cratylus to Panini 6. Language Study and Linguistic Thinking from the Stoics to the End of the Nineteenth Century 7. From Wittgenstein to the Cratylus 8. From Saussure to Barthes: Langue, Langage, Parole, Signs, Semiology and Cratylean Concepts 9. The Cratylus in the Passage from Derrida's Deconstruction to Levinas' Ethical Conundrum 10. Ethical and Linguistic Issues from Aurobindo to Giri Conclusions: Language and Ethics from Within the Cratylus to Beyond the Theological Implications of the Holocaust