Concepts of Personal God and Arguments in Favor of His Existence in Different Cultural Traditions: Indian and Western Conceptions

DOI

10.2991/cesses-19.2019.290How to use a DOI?

Keywords

concept of personal God; theism; anti-theism; Ishvara; Ishvara-vada; nirishvara-vada; Nyaya; "Nyaya-kusumanjali" Vaisheshika; European scholastics; proofs of God`s existing

Abstract

The concept of personal God in different cultural traditions defines theism, or theistic thought. In India the most distinguished tradition of personal God discourse is known as ishvara-vada. Theistic thought appears to be one of the clue trends in history of world Philosophy and it gives the significant sense to the whole culture. The author of this paper deals with common and specific features of theism by interpreting one of the top ishvara-vada`s achievements "Handful of Blossoms (on the Tree) of Nyaya" ("The Nyaya-kusumanjali") wrote by Udayana (Udayanachacharya), eminent Hindus philosopher of X century and one of the last representatives of classical Nyaya (Hindus darshana). This crucial text defends the doctrine of Supreme personal God Ishvara. "The Nyaya-kusumanjali" is a highly skilful sophisticated tractate where many arguments and demonstration methods in favor of Ishvara's existing are summarized and synthesized over the whole Indian theistic tradition. Udayana holds severe polemics with nirishvara-vadins (anti-theists), i.e. Buddhists, Mimansakas and others, and finely conquers them successfully. General characteristics of both Indian and European theism are that God is conscious, loving Person, sustaining and caring His creatures. Meanwhile the author shows sharp differences between Indian and European theism among which are Demiurges' cosmogony of the former and creativeness ex nihilo of the latter, and others.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Elena N. Anikeeva
PY  - 2019/10
DA  - 2019/10
TI  - Concepts of Personal God and Arguments in Favor of His Existence in Different Cultural Traditions: Indian and Western Conceptions
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Ecological Studies (CESSES 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1309
EP  - 1312
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/cesses-19.2019.290
DO  - 10.2991/cesses-19.2019.290
ID  - Anikeeva2019/10
ER  -