Religions in four dimensions: Existential and aesthetic, historical and comparative

by Walter Kaufmann

Book Overview

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0883491044
• ISBN13: 9780883491041
• Release Date: January 1976
• Publisher: Reader's Digest Press : distributed by Crowell
• Length: 490 Pages
• Weight: 3.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A spiritual reference which gets a bit wild

War is a major topic in this book, not merely in a historical sense, but as a spiritual component of religion which the most modern theologians have sought to surpass, and which was not foremost in the mind of Congress when a supreme being was considered the necessary first cause for anyone who wished to consider himself a conscientious objector, back when it was not too important what any herself would think on that topic. Americans have come to think of war as an exceptional situation which is subject to being *over* at some point, and it is a rare professor who can convince them that war is so typical that even a religious system might consider The Bhagavadgita, or Gita for short, a sacred scripture in which Krishna urges Arjuna to fight because it is a surefire way to acquire knowledge. "Therefore fight, O scion of Bharata! Whoever thinks that this slays and that that is slain, lacks knowledge. He is never born, nor does he die; nor having been once, does he cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, changeless, primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain." (p. 240).People who consider this kind of experience somewhat mystical usually have gotten more of an education from reading newspapers and policy journals than in school. Top policy experts who might expect religion to furnish little in their search for snappy intellectual comebacks which are decent enough to use in public, as well as those who crave world responsibility with an inflated sense of their own respectability, ought to see how these elements combine in this book.RELIGIONS IN FOUR DIMENSIONS by Walter Kaufmann, published in 1976, with 250 photographs taken by the author, was the product of a life of pondering a world in which America seemed to hold so many of the answers, but the rest of the world, as could be observed in the pictures, had many more people. As a professor of philosophy at Princeton University, Walter Kaufmann also had a background in American military intelligence during World War II, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1947. This period, and the pattern of government psychological preparation of American citizens for world responsibilities, is part of the background information covered in HARVARD AND THE UNABOMBER by Alston Chase. The effort to produce a general understanding of the situation is undercut by the research on the cutting edge of a sense of the concept, "the Dyad," which is explained in HARVARD AND THE UNABOMBER as "in fact a personal concept," (p. 243) that might be about as personal as what anyone would expect impeachment proceedings to be about, if another president is impeached like Bill Clinton was in 1999.RELIGIONS IN FOUR DIMENSIONS does not claim to be about any secrets, but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that secret weapons and deals have been one of the main factors in the triumph of anything which is successful on such a vast scale. Comparing beliefs in particular doctrines is similar to evaluating the stability of

Good overview of world religions

Honestly, I'm only about half the way through this book, but so far its proven to be a well done, interesting, and critical (not meant in the negative sense) overview of major religions and religious movements. I would have given this book 4.5 stars if the option was their. Kaufmann knows his stuff, and as a result of his backround as a philosophy proffesor at princeton, he poses good questions and relates religious thought to philosophers like Nietche (pardon my spelling) * note- he is pretty critical on about christianity.