Sublime

Modern universalisms seek to justify their vision as non-particularistic as well as non-transcendent. Let us start by assessing whether this ambition can be sustained and if so whether their effectiveness can be retained.

It is in this context that we will later try to grasp how older universalisms sustained their ideals, even if the reality fell far short of the rhetoric.

Three developments in the present century frame my study: the rise of Asia – in particular, China; the crisis of planetary sustainability; and the decline of transcendent and universalist ideals. To what extent are Chinese and Indian intellectuals and activists beginning to address these issues? I

In the Hegelian view, histories were expressed by particular nationalities but expressed through the records of the state which embodies reason. Thus, by this time, linear histories appear to be established (of course, for Hegel, it was not secular in the strict sense of the word). But what is less understood is how these histories became bound as

I do, however, take some comfort in the democratic diversity and prominence of Gandhian environmentalism in India. It has the potential to become a locally bred expression of dialogical transcendence in our times.

With the Ottoman Empire reigning in the newly named Istanbul, the ancient silk routes and sea routes to Asia were at risk.

The rise of Asia, and China in particular, has been accompanied by the need to project a new, more just vision of the world that is not simply a new hegemony.

Academic theories of transcendence have been most developed by the tradition of historical sociology known as…

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is now the established view that, contrary to the writings of earlier generations of historians, the eighteenth century was not a ‘Dark Age’ in India. The political decline of the Mughal imperium resulted, rather, in an economic resurgence in other parts of the subcontinent, and much recent academic research has been dedicated to deepening our unde