About Book
Dialectics is the implicit method of Upanishadic literature. It is also used as a critique for yielding a superior unitive understanding in works like the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga-Vasishistha. In the West, dialectical methodology originated around the fifth century bce, and has been used in varying ways by classical thinkers, later Christian theologians, and modern philosophers like Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The writings of Nataraja Guru provide an integrated vision of the Eastern and Western traditions of dialectics. As such, he offers an unitive understanding of philosophy by way of a more comprehensive methodology of dialectics. In the book, Nataraja Guru explains the basics of dialectical methodology, and applies it towards a superior understanding of the relation between man and woman, between proto-language and meta-language (bearing reference to Indian iconography), and between romance and tragedy as found in literature. He also applies dialectics in order to study social problems, but in a way that varies from Hegel, Marx and Engels.
He further reveals the significance of the value system found in small, primitive communities, and upholds the eternal values of coexistence, unity and collective security. In particular, this volume provides a window for examining Nataraja Guru's overall position as a philosopher and his unitive teachings in general. In this regard it will be valuable for philosophers and scholars as well as the general reader.
About Author
Nataraja Guru is the disciple-successor of Narayana Guru (1854-1928), whose dialectical revaluation and restatement of Sankaracarya's Advaita Vedanta conformed for the first time to the requirements of a normative or experimental science, to the extent that will probably ever be possible. Sankara himself may be said to be a continuator of Vyasa, who in his turn revised and restated the wisdom of the Upanishads as understood in his time. Nataraja Guru is thus a representative of the same pure, direct and vertical line of succession of philosophical revaluators extending back through time to the most ancient phase of the recorded history of human thought. The Guru may thus be seen to be uniquely qualified to undertake the present work, which he did at the instance of Narayana Guru himself.
Sent by Narayana Guru to study in the West, Nataraja Guru was awarded the D. Lit. degree from the University of Paris. In 1923 he established the Narayana Gurukula, with headquarters at Varkala in Kerala State, a Guru-disciple foundation which welcomes all who seek the wisdom of the Absolute in open and living terms. The Guru has translated into English and commented on all of the major works of Narayana Guru, and has written on a wide variety of subjects, employing throughout a protolinguistic or structural approach which could be said to be his unique contribution to the perennial wisdom heritage of mankind.