The Paradox of Being Human

Contents: Preface. Introduction. 1. Phenomenology and existentialism. 2. Man-and-the-world syndrome. 3. The subjective and the objective in knowledge. 4. Man as a restless being: existentialist sensibilities in Indian Philosophy. 5. The mystery of subjectivity. 6. Naturalism, physicalism, behaviourism, and the problem of human consciousness. 7. Being as the destination of human consciousness. 8. Uncertainty: the concept disguised in the fact of existence. Index.

"The main tenor of The Paradox of Being Human is philosophical aimed at empowering man to look upon the transcendental as the primordial essence of the human. An attempt is made here to develop the Samkhya and the Vedanta schools where the essence of Indian Philosophy is verbalized. Man is paradoxical--he is here in the world and yet not consumed by the fact of worldliness. The paradox is not arbitrary--it is woven within the very structure of human consciousness. The paradox is that man is worldly and otherworldly at the some time--it is objective and the subjective fused into the whole. The objective and the subjective or, as Sartre puts it, the en-soi and pour-soi, are two facets of the same humanness. They are to be justified vis-a-vis the ultimate being in which man is anchored. The intensification of the subjective is thus an opening into the ontology of being which is perennial to our metaphysical source." (jacket)