Today we live in a world of unimaginable change and undeniable progress. No generation earlier has seen so much development in so short of time. How does the development that we see around us affect us? How is it related to our rootedness or freedom? How does it enhance our freedom? How can we foster a development that is rooted in tradition and open to the new? Can we dream of a humane and all-inclusive development that does justice to humanity? These are some of the questions that we take up in this volume, which tries to relate human development to freedom.
The articles in this volume are contextual, hermeneutical and philosophical. Since they are contextual, we deal with the issues mainly from Indian perspectives. So the articles are necessarily multi-disciplinary. It takes into account the cultural and religious diversity and ambiguities of contemporary India. It is also hermeneutical, since most of the articles attempt at appropriating the perennial wisdom of India for the current situation. These articles are philosophical, since they analyse, critique the situation of tradition, freedom and development. These articles reflect on the depth of tradition that India is proud of, the vigour and vitality of its democratic spirit and the longing for its integrated and holistic development. It is hoped that these articles will contribute to the ongoing discourse on modernity, development, tradition and freedom prevalent in the academic circles in India.
Dr Kuruvilla Pandikattu SJ (born 1957-) is Chair Professor of JRD Tata Foundation for Business Ethics at XLRI, Jamshedpur and was professor of Physics, Philosophy and Religion at Jnana Deepa, Institute of Philosophy and Theology, Pune, India. He has been actively involved in the dialogue between science and religion. Author/Editor of more than 45 books and 240 academic articles, Pandikattu is a Jesuit priest belonging to Dumka-Raiganj Province, India. Main topics of his research are: Ethics (incl. business and applied), anthropology, artificial intelligence, life-management and transhumanism.
Today we live in a world of unimaginable technological growth and undeniable scientific progress. No earlier generation has experienced so much development in such a short time. How does the development affect us as individuals and society? How is it related to our rootedness or sense of belongingness? How does it enhance our freedom? How can we foster a development that is rooted in tradition and open to the new? Can we dream of a humane and all-inclusive development that does justice to the whole of humanity, including the deprived and marginalised? These are some of the questions that we take up in this volume, which tries to relate human development to individual and social freedom.
The articles in this volume are contextual, hermeneutical and philosophical. Since they are contextual, they deal with the issues mainly from Indian perspectives. So the articles are necessarily multi-disciplinary. They take into account the cultural and religious diversity and ambiguities of contemporary India. As hermeneutical, most of the articles attempt to appropriate the perennial wisdom of India, interpret them and make them relevant for the contemporary situation. Finally, these articles are also philosophical, since they analyse, critique and enhance the rich and related notions of tradition, freedom and development. The authors hope to offer alternative or deeper and enriching ways of looking at the phenomena of freedom, tradition and development.
The next paper by Victor Ferrão, Former Dean of Philosophy, Rachol Seminary, Goa, problematizes the notion, as well as the process, of development so that we can arrive at profound and authentic alternatives to contemporary understandings. Here the author strives to be attentive to the politics of one-sided, imperial development, which could be equated to colonization, or crony capitalism. Development springs from a power relation between the developed (or over-developed) and the under-developed. Uneven power relationships and authority are growing all over the globe in the name of development. Indeed, under-development is produced by the discourses and the practices of development. As expanding development has become a power that has global sway, a political decolonization of the same has become an urgent necessity. Indeed, our task has become urgent because the term development, intertwined with crony capitalism, has come to connote a 'good life that is seen as logically desirable and naturally innocent. In fact, the lines of separation between crony capitalism and lopsided development are blurred, and so we are accustomed to treat capitalism itself as development. In order to deconstruct this condition, we shall try to take up a historico-graphical approach and arrive at an understanding of the processes that have allowed us to view crony capitalism as development. This condition, the author notes, is neither transhistorical nor trans-spatial. It is, in fact, both time and space specific. Its roots have spread from what we regard as a modernity/coloniality symbiosis. The world that is under the spell of capitalist driven development is divided into different spatial units separated by different stages of development.
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