Abstract
This chapter discusses the issue of standpoint in sociological discourse as well as in the dynamics of social life. It begins with a discussion of the work of André Béteille, creative social theorist from India, about the plurality of standpoints in the sociological discourse of society as well as in social dynamics. Béteille has consistently been a champion of a plural approach in the study of society, but his discussion of plural standpoints raises further questions which call for further collaborative search and reflections. For example, what is the nature of standpoint in these plurality of standpoints—is it partial or absolute? Do these different standpoints communicate among each other? Is it a responsibility for sociology to understand and contribute to communication among plural standpoints? The present author thinks the same as Béteille on these questions and discusses further the challenge of pluralization that emanates from Béteille’s reference to plurality of standpoints. The issue of the relationship between sociology and theology as between sociology and ideology is discussed. This is followed by a discussion of the issue of empirical and normative aspects of social reality, and the author argues that sociology needs to go beyond the dualism of the empirical and normative in order to understand the normative strivings and struggles at work in the very heart of social reality itself.
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Notes
- 1.
As, for example, in his M.N. Roy memorial lecture on “Marxism, Pluralism and Orthodoxy” presented near three decades ago Béteille (1982) argued how Marxism is not a singular and monolithic ideological system and consists of plural streams of reflections and practices.
- 2.
It must be noted here that cultivating plurality of standpoints and facilitating communication among them is also part of the dialogue philosophies and works of our times. There is a long genealogy of multiplicity of standpoints in philosophy and other fields as exemplified, for example, in the works of Martin Buber (1958). There is also attention to plurality of standpoints beyond absolutism in the work of Karl Mannheim (1936), the pioneer of sociology of knowledge. John Clammer also here draws our attention to the work of John Paul Lederach in peace studies and Marjorie Green in philosophy (personal communication).
- 3.
In his Ideology and Utopia Mannheim (1936: 75–76) writes:
It may be true that every form of expression, in which we clothe our thoughts, tends to impose upon them an absolute tone. In our epoch, however, it is precisely the function of historical investigation […] to analyse the elements that make up our self-assurance, so indispensable for action in immediate, concrete situations, and to counteract the bias which might arise from what we, as individuals, take for granted. This is possible only through incessant care and determination to reduce to a minimum the tendency to self-apotheosis. Through this effort the one-sidedness of our point of view is counteracted, and conflicting intellectual positions may actually come to supplement one another. (ibid.: 75–76)
- 4.
Here Marcus Bussey insightfully comments: “Phenomenologically they are experienced as absolute until some event shatters the illusion—transformation requires such a disjuncture so that identity can shift to incorporate multiplicity” (personal communication).
- 5.
This is also true of M.N. Srinivas, whose sociological approach to religion Béteille celebrates. Srinivas did not study any other religion except Hinduism. Even his essay, “The Social Significance of Religion in India,” does not discuss much the work and dynamics of non-Hindu religions in India (cf. Srinivas 2009; Giri 2010).
- 6.
I draw this distinction from Nitasha Kaul’s (2009) very illuminating discussion on the need for new kind of knowledge creation, which seeks to put different parts, especially forgotten and excluded parts, together. For Kaul, “[…] modernist knowledge needs to be haunted by a post-colonial memory, a re-membering, which can be instigated by placing the question of difference at the heart of the story. When one re-members, one does not simply recall—to re-member is to put it altogether again”. As an example, the standpoint of knowledge participation and generation is a project, “not an inheritance”.
- 7.
In her reflections on standpoint theory in epistemology, for example feminist standpoint epistemology, Ahlstrom Kristoffer (2005: 88) tell us: “As standpoint theorists often emphasize (Harding included), a standpoint is an achievement. Women do not automatically accept a feminist standpoint just by virtue of being women, a standpoint has to be achieved, and the way to achieve it is to raise one’s consciousness.”
- 8.
In this context, Shiv Visvanathan’s description of the main character Jagannatha in the novel Bharatipura by U.R. Ananthamurthy shows us how one can embrace and grow into plural standpoints. What Visvanathan (2011: 70) writes deserves our careful consideration:
I think the genius of the book lies in the flat land called Jagannatha. He is a middling character […] Yet Jagannatha is a seed that grows in power because of the humus of characters around him. In every chapter, he almost absorbs another point of view. His self grows as he discovers the richness of the other he wants to change.
- 9.
As Connolly writes: “A conventional pluralist celebrates diversity within settled contexts of conflict and collective action […] But what about the larger contexts within which the pattern of diversity is set? How plural or monistic are they? To what extent does a cultural presumption of normal individual or the preexisting subject precede and confine conventional pluralism?” (Connolly 1995: xiii).
- 10.
As Mannheim (1936: 20) writes: “The world of external objects and psychic experience appears to be in a continuous flux. Verbs are more adequate symbols for this situation than nouns.” What Connolly (1995: xxi) writes here provides us pathways of pluralism as multi-dimensional verbs:
A pluralizing culture embodies a micropolitics of action by the self on itself and the small-scale assemblage upon itself, a politics of disturbance through which sedimented identities and moralities are rendered more alert to the deleterious effects of their naturalization upon difference, a politics of enactment through which new possibilities of being are propelled into established constellations, a politics of representational assemblages through which general policies are processed through the state, a politics of interstate relations, and a politics of nonstatist, cross-national movements through which external/internal pressure is placed on corporate and state-centered priorities.
- 11.
We can note here the title of Béteille’s (1998) essay “Comparative Method and the Standpoint of the Investigator.” Béteille is a proponent of the comparative method, but this also raises the question whether comparative method from the standpoint of an observer would be same as one from the experiential perspective of participants.
In a related note, Amartya Sen also seems to look at the human condition from the point of view of the observer, which is different from that of a participant. Sen, whose ideas have been presented above, talks about positional objectivity, but this objectivity is that of an observer: “[…] positionally dependent observations, beliefs, and actions are central to our knowledge and practical reason. The nature of objectivity in epistemology, decision theory and ethics has to take note of the parametric dependence of observation and observation on the position of the observer” (1994: 126). But here again there is the need of pluralization of the model and working of agents not only as observers but also participants. Sen talks about the need for positional objectivity, but once the agents are not only observers but also participants the objectivity that emerges is not only objective but also intersubjective and transsubjective. So we need to explore transpositional subject-objectivity—one which emerges out of pluralization of the subjects, border-crossing transmutations among positions and transformative cultivation of the objective and the subjective, including intersubjective and transsubjective.
- 12.
We can look at the significance of the public sphere in both the modern as well as the pre-modern world, in terms of varieties of spaces of meeting as well as working together to seek to bring people from different backgrounds together amidst continued challenges of exclusions. In terms of the possibilities that sitting together offers, my student Rajakishore Mahana in his work on tribal movements in Orissa shares an insightful lesson from his fieldwork. In his fieldwork, Harabati, one woman tribal leader from Raigarh Orissa told him that when there was intractable conflict between the visiting police and tribals of the village she asked all of them, police and the tribals, to sit down, and it helped to calm the situation.
- 13.
We have many moving meditations on the significance of walking in human life and for our expanding self and world-realizations. For anthropologist Tim Ingold, “[…] walking is not the behavioral output of a mind encased within a pedestrian body. It is rather, in itself, a way of thinking and knowing—‘an activity that takes place through the heart and mind as much as through the feet’” (Ingold 2011: S135). In his study of political processions in Tamil Nadu which is modeled on religious processions, Bernard Bates (2011) uses the term “walking utopia,” which while creating the condition of fellowship among participants does not necessarily enable them to go beyond their initial religious and political standpoints. But we see this in other modes of walking, such as in the Warkari movement in Maharastra, which has a cross-caste dimension. As Dallmyr writes: “[…] periodic pilgrimages to Pandarpur are central to the Warkaris’ life, but not in the same way as pilgrimage to other holy places such as Banaras or Dwarka. In the general Hindu tradition, the focus is typically on the destination of the pilgrimage, the sacred center of worship. But in the case of the Warkaris, the accent is not so much on the destination as on the journey itself” (Dallmayr 2007: 56). What Dallmayr suggests is that in the journey there is an openness to others which is different from one’s location at home. This openness emerges in other occasions of journey and encounters as well. In the same book, where Dallmayr writes about the Warkari movement, he also presents us the following experience of a woman that he talked to after a train journey and the encounter that happened:
[…] I talked to another Indian woman, the wife of a senior professor of English at the University of Baroda. She told me the story of a strange happening—an event that startled her and left her wondering and amazed: She was traveling with her son by train from Delhi to Shillong, a journey of some twenty hours. In her compartment was a young man, a soldier in the Indian army. Given the long train ride, a conversation developed between them, starting at first haltingly and almost absentmindedly and then turning more serious. The woman had been raised in the Vaishnava tradition and had never devoted much thought to Muslim beliefs and practices. During the conversation, it emerged that the young man was a Muslim—deeply religious and knowledgeable Muslim. Prodded by her questions, the young man began to talk about the Islamic faith, the long history of Islam, and the deeper meaning of Quranic passages. It was as if he illuminated from within a building that had always seemed to her dark and uninviting. As she confessed to me, she was profoundly moved by this sincere (and nonproselytizing) disclosure of faith, and something happened to her on that train ride that she had not planned or anticipated. Somehow—and she was not quite sure how—the encounter had transformed her, and opened her heart to new possibilities and a new dimension of human relations. (Dallmayr 2007: 257–258)
In his autobiography, A Living Faith: My Quest for Peace, Harmony and Social Change, Ashgar Ali Engineer also narrates a similar insight emerging during a meeting in walking:
Here, I would like to narrate an interesting encounter with a postman when I was in the 8th standard. In hindsight, I feel the postman was a very humble person but with a good understanding of religion. I was, on the contrary, very orthodox with the conviction that Islam was the only true religion. One day, the postman met me on the road and began to talk to me. He said in a very philosophical way that all paths, though they differ from each other, lead to God and that all paths are true. I protested and said that that could never be. For example, idol worship can never be a true path and it can never lead one to God. Islam believes only in one God and everything contrary to it is false. I remember the postman smiling at me and saying that if one has shraddha (faith) in idols that can also lead to God. I, however, stuck to my point and the postman left it at that. But whenever he met me, he smiled in a charming way.
I also used to read Sufi poetry, especially of the noted Sufi poet Mir Dard. His beliefs were of the kind that affirmed the truth of what the postman used to tell me. I could not quite fathom the stand he took […] This would leave me quite perplexed. (Engineer 2011: 11–12)
The above two narrations show how, in complex ways, walking does add an element of pluralization to our ontology and epistemology of standpoint. But to this condition of pluralization of walking and sitting on a train, we can also invite the experience of “sitting on a boat.” It reminds us of the symbol of Noah’s boat described in the Bible and also of the way in which Jesus and his followers sat on the boat and crossed over to the other side of the sea to meet people there who were considered other. Since our present discussion involves the border-crossing dialogue between sociology and theology, what theologian Vinayraj writes about the significance of sitting on a boat deservers our careful attention:
Sea, for Jews is a symbol of chaos. The land across this sea is pictured as a terrific land as we used to tell in the fairy tales. It is the abode of evils […] It is a place of violence and terror. In our society we use these imageries to talk about Dalit/Tribal colonies! By exhorting the disciples to “go across to the other side,” Jesus asks them to deconstruct their subjectivity conceptions and move beyond to an existence of fraternity. Jesus shows his interest to talk to them by “sitting in the boat.” The “boat” symbolizes the reconciliation between “shores.” […] Here “crossing” means “bridging” and that is why it was a stormy journey for them. It was a symbolic journey from “hostility” to “hospitality”. (Vinayaraj 2010: 50)
To the above experience we can add the recent effort of Freedom Flotilla, where activists protesting at Israel’s blockade of Gaza were on a ship that was crossing over to Gaza. But the ship was brutally attacked by Israel and many activists from Turkey were killed.
- 14.
During his walk in Noakhali to bring about peace among Hindus and Muslims, Gandhi said that the greatness of a person lies not only in the one or two spectacular things that one does in one’s life but how much “dust” one collects on one’s feet.
- 15.
Management thinker and poet Subhash Sharma calls it omega circle, and is doing work on creating dialogues across this circle. See Sharma (2008).
- 16.
For Marcus Bussey, “Sadhana as a quest, striving, struggle involves tapasya—a sacrificing of one’s veil of certainty—and opening to dialogue via vulnerability and inner reflection” (personal communication).
- 17.
What Mohanty (2000: 24; emphases added) writes helps us to understand the proposed multi-valued logic of autonomy and interpenetration:
The ethic of non-injury applied to philosophical thinking requires that one does not reject outright the other point of view without first recognizing the element of truth in it; it is based on the belief that every point of view is partly true, partly false, and partly undecidable. A simple two-valued logic requiring that a proposition must either be true or false is thereby rejected, and what the Jaina philosopher proposes is a multi-valued logic. To this multi-valued logic, I add the Husserlian idea of overlapping contents. The different perspectives on a thing are not mutually exclusive, but share some contents with each other. The different ‘worlds’ have shared contents, contrary to the total relativism. If you represent them by circles, they are intersecting circles, not incommensurable, [and it is this model of] intersecting circles which can get us out of relativism on the one hand and absolutism on the other.
This multi-valued logic also resonates with what J.P.S. Uberoi (2002), building on Goethe, Gandhi and the Hermetic tradition of Europe, calls “the four-fold logic of truth and method.” In the paragraph above, Mohanty refers to the Jaina tradition of Anekantavada, about which what BP Singh writes deserves our careful attention:
Anekantavada wad directly related to Mahavira’s philosophy of non-violence. We have to recognize that ordinarily violence is rooted in dogmatic and mistaken knowledge claim that fail to recognize other legitimate perspectives. Anekantavada provides us with an alternative epistemology to support dialogue among people of diverse viewpoints. It does not mean conceding that all views are valid. It does, suggest, however, that logic and evidence determine the validity of a given view. Anekantavada allows us to accept a pluralistic approach to reality. (Singh 2008: 96–97)
K.S. Singh, the heart-touching anthropologist and seeker of pluralism, also writes the following about Anekantavada, which is insightful:
It should be noted that while diversity of perceptions, approaches, and practices are recognized by some schools including those of the idealist philosophy, it is Anekantavada described by S. Radhakrishnan as a doctrine of realistic pluralism that tries to explore diversity logically and in depth.
[…] there are three tenets of Anekantavada. One, that there is a possibility of many perceptions of an object; two that everything is relative and multi-dimensional; and three, that there is an in-built co-existence of opposites, that one dimension is possible as another and it is only in relation to other factors like time, place, and context that one dimension gains predominance over another. All this is subsumed under the doctrine of syadavada or saptabhangi. From the acceptance of the multi-dimensional nature of objects and their probability is derived the moral imperative of ahimsa or non-violence. (2011)
- 18.
In this context, what philosopher Ashok Gangadean tells us deserves our careful attention: “Spirituality is a philosophical point of view concerning the rational awakening that enables you to break free of your ego perspective, your closed view, the egocentric point of view, and become, instead dialogical, open to multiple views. And it helps you to negotiate them. You become a more mature, awakened rational being” (Gangadean et al. 2000: 287). Mrinal Miri also talks about the need to overcome “egocentricity,” which “distorts, to a greater or less extent, most of our perceptions of reality, and this is especially true of our perception of human reality” (2003: 42). Egocentricity also distorts our efforts to know another person; thus the need to overcome it. But for Miri,
[…] the overcoming of ego in attending to another person is never an isolated phenomenon; to be able to transcend one’s ego is also to be able to achieve true humility; and with humility comes the realization of the infinite difficulty of being just to another person, the realization, in other words, of the ever-present possibility that one has blotted out, from one’s attention, vital, if subtle aspects of the other person’s behaviour. A natural accompaniment of such a realization on the way to achieving the true emotion of love, or what Gandhi might have meant by ahimsa. And it is the possibility of ahimsa in this sense that makes knowledge of the other as a person possible. (ibid.: 43)
Thus overcoming egocentricity helps one realize humility and ahimsa in one’s knowledge of and relationship with the other, which also contributes to overcoming one’s one-sided standpoint. In a related move, philosopher Peter Singer, who has also urged us to go beyond the anthropocentric standpoint and realize the suffering and pain of non-human beings, challenges us to cultivate “the point of view of the universe,” “thereby transcending not only our individual point of view but the point of view of our society and species. Of course, Singer doesn’t believe that the universe has a point of view, but he thinks that this is an apt metaphor for the human capacity to take up a standpoint of impartial and equal concern for the welfare of all sentient beings” (Nagel 2010: 26).
- 19.
This is also the approach of Giddens and Beck (Beck et al. 1994).
- 20.
In this context, what the Dalai Lama (2011: 19), writes is an inspiring example of how to understand religion other than one’s own:
For some people, then, the concept of a Creator, God, is very helpful. I once asked an old Christian monk why Christianity does not believe in previous lives. He said, ‘Because this very life is created by God. Thinking that gives a feeling of intimacy with God. This body comes from our mother’s womb and so we have a feeling of closeness and comfort with our mother. So. the same is the case with God. The closer one feels, the stronger the intention to follow God’s advice, which is love, compassion.’ Therefore, the theistic approach is very powerful and much more helpful for many people than a non-theistic approach.
It must be noted here that many streams in Buddhism do not have a theistic approach, and the Dalai Lama is able to understand and appreciate the need for the theistic approach in Christianity. He also does not want anybody to convert from one religion to another, for example from Christianity to Buddhism. What he writes below is also an example of how one can go beyond oneself in understanding the religion of another person:
It is better to keep one’s own religious tradition […] The best is to have information. This helps to develop respect. Therefore, keep your Christian tradition, if you are a Christian, but gain understanding and knowledge of other traditions. As for methods, all teach the same practice—love, compassion, tolerance. Since the practice is shared in common, it is alright to adopt some methods from Buddhism. But as for the Buddhist concept of no absolute—this is strictly Buddhist business. It is not helpful for others to learn. One Christian father asked me about emptiness, voidness, and I told him that this is not good for him. If I teach complete interdependence, this might harm his strong faith in God. So it is better for such people not to listen to talk about voidness. (ibid.)
While the above passage shows the remarkable generosity of the Dalai Lama, it leaves us with further questions. Are concepts from a religious tradition, such as emptiness from Buddhism, meant to be limited to the believers and practitioners of these traditions? Are they not universal? Even if they unsettle believers in other traditions, is there a responsibility to share and learn on the part of people in interaction. In interreligious interaction is there not a necessity to go beyond one’s tradition and explore paths of seeking in emergent ways? Is it not possible to realize God even in Christian tradition not only as fullness but emptiness? The Dalai Lama and proponents of such view may note what Felix Wilfred and Bede Griffiths write below. For Wilfred (1999: xiii),
The Christian attempts to cross over to the other, to the different, has been made by and large from the pole of being or fullness. This naturally creates problems, which can be overcome by activating also to cross over from the pole of nothingness or emptiness. The central Christian mystery of Jesus Christ offers the revelation of both fullness and nothingness—the total self-emptying. Many frontiers which are found difficult to negotiate and cross over could be crossed by making use of the other pole represented in the Christian mystery of emptiness as self-abnegation, so as to reach a deeper perception of the mystery of God, the world and the self. Perhaps here lies something that could become an important program for Christianity and its theology at the turn of the millennium.
For Griffiths, “[…] We often find that the Christian concept of God becomes personal that it needs to be corrected by the impersonalism of Buddhism” (Griffiths 1976: 86).
- 21.
Borrowing the language of Weber, Béteille (2002) pre-sets his approach to religion as that of the “religiously unmusical”.
- 22.
Tillich (1957: 20) writes in his Dynamics of Faith:
The doubt which is implicit in every act of faith is neither the methodological and skeptical doubt. It is the doubt which accompanies every risk. It is not the permanent doubt of the scientist, and it is not transitory doubt of the skeptic, but it is the doubt of him who is ultimately concerned about a concrete context. One would call it the existential doubt, in contrast to the methodological and skeptical doubt. It does not question whether a special proposition is true or false. It does not reject every concrete truth, but it is aware of the element of insecurity in every existential truth. At the same time, the doubt which is implied in faith accepts this insecurity and takes into itself in an act of courage. Faith includes courage.
Tillich speaks about doubt in the act of faith which finds a resonance in Iqbal’s approach to Islam. According to Ayesha Jalal, “[…] Iqbal asserted that the principle of doubt was the beginning of all knowledge. And the opening word in the Muslim creed, la—literally ‘there is no God’—was a statement of that doubt. Without the power of negation in the la, the affirmation of God in illaha ilallah loses its true in meaning” (Jalal 2009: 461).
Tillich is a source of inspiration to critical practitioners of faith in Islam, such as Amina Wadud, who has fought against the religion’s patriarchal structures. In her words:
I have fought the gender jihad to remove the blinkers that see only the illusion of fragmentation and then build structures and formulate systems to sustain the perception that it is real, and then to give divine sanction to the illusion of human independence from transcendent peace and unity […] The significance of Tillich’s work was simply that it expressed itself in response to the moral-spiritual dilemma of modern consciousness. I ran up against a scarcity of information in response to such dilemmas from modern Muslim thinkers. They were obsessed with realitic politique (everything was power, authority, and control) through the medium of legal operation. (Wadud 2006: 258–259)
This also shows how critical theological work transcends religious boundaries, as a woman in Islam who is struggling for gender justice is drawing inspiration from a Christian theologian.
- 23.
Habermas shared this in his now famous dialogue with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who became Pope Benedict XVI) held on January 19, 2004 at the Catholic Academy in Munich, in which both agreed that: “Religions and secular rationalities need to engage in a mutual process of dialogue in order to learn from each other and to protect the planet from the destructive potential of the uncoupling of faith and reason” (Bellah 2008; Habermas and Ratzinger 2007; Eder 2007).
Apart from this celebrated dialogue with the pope, Habermas had a long dialogue with the great theologian Johannes B. Metz from Germany that is relevant here. Metz has a critical-practical approach to theology as he writes: “It is surely true that the frontiers of modern theology runs across confessional boundaries. In this case, how could theology itself determine the distinctive unity of what it is concerned with? The quest, its dwelling place is not pure theology but […] faith in practice” (1970: 82).
In his dialogue with Habermas, Metz had argued that reason cannot just continue the tradition of critical thought from Athens, that is from Greek tradition, it also must be open to the other tradition of reason what Metz calls “anamenestic reason,” a reason which remembers the memory of struggle for self and spiritual transformation. For Metz, this is the tradition of Israel. For Metz, for a fuller realization of reason there should be interpenetration of both the tradition of Athens and the tradition of Israel. But Habermas in this dialogue, a decade ago, was reluctant to open the tradition of argumentative reason to the tradition of “anamenestic reason” of Israel. But with his contemporary rethinking of faith and reason in which Habermas argues that both sides should go beyond their absolutist claims, he may now be more open to such a foundational border-crossing, which has also deep implications for border crossing between traditions of critical sociology and liberation theology.
- 24.
For Vinayaraj, doing theology involves a “new journey of re-understanding of our faith, theology and ontology. […] doing theology means reconstituting our ontology. Faith is a total commitment to the ongoing journey of finding ourselves dialogically” (2010: 32).
- 25.
Another example of possible border crossing between sociology and theology is the simultaneous moves such as public sociology from sociology and public theology from theology which challenges both these disciplines to be much more communicative with and responsible to the public (see Clawson et al. 2007; Wilfred 2010). In an Indian context, Dalit theology is an aspect of emergent public theology, but it is not asserting Dalit identity in an exclusionary way. Rather it is a “political theology that re-locates the ‘missionized’ as the social agents of a democratic civil society and envisage a dialogical community where everyone celebrates together their differentiated identities” (Vinayaraj 2010: 73). It would be insightful to explore further Dalit theology and Dalit sociology together.
- 26.
Clammer is not shy of arguing that when sociologists have lost a sense of the whole it is the theological approach which constantly challenges us to not to forget that we are part of a bigger whole. In the words of Clammer:
While in a secularized and globalised world in which many faiths contend for attention, as do the insidious demands of the consumerist culture of neo-liberal capitalism, theology (understood in its specifically Christian context) may well appear to have lost its status as ‘Queen of the Sciences.’ But perhaps not, since not only is (Christian) theology in a globalised world necessarily forced to confront the reality of other faith traditions and to enter into dialogue with them, but it also remains, even today, the most integral of the disciplines, containing as it does history, linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, textual criticism, sociology, psychology and the applied dimensions of these fields in pastoral care, counseling, development and social work, as well as its specifically ‘religious’ dimensions and their expressions in such areas as liturgy. With the rising perception that the roots of our current crisis are essentially spiritual, theology takes on a new salience, as witnessed by the number of students world-wide who enter the discipline with no intention of ever taking up a pastoral career. In a world in which new models of education are urgently needed, theology, when informed and permeated by an Earth-spirituality (the definition of which in a Christian context is itself a challenge and an adventure), stands poised to renew itself and as such to provide a renewing force in the wider world, far outside the boundaries of the narrowly defined faith community. (Clammer 2010: 226; emphases added)
As sociologists we need to pursue the meaning and working of a bigger whole in our lives and society, though this whole is not necessarily the theistic whole of the theologian nor the systematic whole of the believer. The whole that invites both the sociologist and theologian is what philosopher Vattimo (1999) calls a “contingent whole” and Simogy Varga (2009) calls a “limited whole.”
- 27.
We may note here that in his insightful essay on M.N. Srinivas, T.N. Madan (2011) talks about the possibility of “transempirical understanding.”
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Giri, A.K. (2018). With and Beyond Plurality of Standpoints: Sociology and the Sadhana of Multi-Valued Logic and Living. In: Giri, A. (eds) Beyond Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6641-2_10
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