Materialien zur Geschichte der Ramanuja-Schule IX: Der Atma als Subjekt in der Theologie Ramanujas (Veroffentlichungen Zu Den Sprachen Und Kulturen Sudasiens) Unknown - 2008

From the publisher

The ninth volume of the "Materialien zur Geschichte der Ramanuja-Schule" tries for the first time to systematically investigate Ramanuja's philosophical-theological teaching on the Atma as a sentient subject, which in his work is dealt with in various places and in the context of various issues. The investigation has revealed that Ramanuja adopts the reflections on the Atma as are taught by Yamunamuni in his Atmasiddhih, although these teachings have not been fully worked out. However, in integrating the Atma into his theological view of the Brahma, Ramanuja considers the Atma mainly as a relational prinicple in human beings that, in the end, becomes the "place" of possible revelation and thus the "place" of human "religion". It is noteworthy that the Atma thus becomes ontologicallyy a relational unit with the divine Atma, in which monism is avoided due to an "ontological difference" between the divine and human beings. The second section of the volume is devoted to the reception of Ramanuja's philosophical-theological reflections on the human subject. This section offers a translation of and commentary on the chapter about the Atma in Narayanarya's Nitimala (12th cent.) as well as portions of Meghanadarisuri's portrayal of the Atma in his Nayadyumanih. A paradigm shift can be seen thereby, due to their falling back on Yamunamuni's Atmasiddhih: a scholastic "treatise on the soul" was developed out of Ramanuja's philosophical-theological reflections on this subject.