Nature and Man: The Hindu Perspectives - 2 Volumes

The present work is an important contribution towards understanding the cultural environment in which the concepts of man and nature were conceived in ancient India. This study has two principal objectives

1. To provide to the intellectuals presently involved in the search for a new "ecological" ethics a set of information regarding the traditional Indian conceptions of man and nature.
2. To review the philosophical values on which has intense intellectual and emotional resonance in the understanding of the present generation of university students, Since the author explains the ancient contemporary relevance, the book has the rare virtue of presenting the Hindu philosophical systems in a style which is clearly intelligible even for neophytes. At the same time has scholastic review of esoteric topics like the "Psychology of Samkhya" and the "Cosmology of Saivism" makes the book a significant reading also for authorities on Indology.

About the Author:

Stefano De Santis was born in Rome in the year 1957. By profession of cultural anthropologist, he has worked in India for more than five years as a development consultant for projects which aim at preserving the cultural and natural heritage while improving the economic standard of the people. "At a certain point of my life I realized that I could not understand the cultural values of Indian tradition without a deep study of the Hindu philosophical schools." So far five years he left his anthropological field work in the rural areas and went to study at Benares. There he took his second doctorate at the Benares Hindu University with a research on "The Relationship Between Man and Nature". He also directed the documentary film "Into Our Nature", proeduced by Sociecos for the Indian different countries and made his field of research popular to a wider international audience.