Raimon Panikkar

Raimon Panikkar i Alemany ( born November 3, 1918 in Barcelona, † 26 August, 2010 Tavertet, province of Barcelona) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest, professor of philosophy of religion and important representative of interreligious dialogue. International fame he achieved as an author of numerous books that deal with spiritual and mystical themes.

Biography

His mother was a Catholic from the Catalan bourgeoisie; his father was a Hindu and originated from South India and worked as a foreign representative of a German company in Barcelona. After attending a Jesuit school Panikkar studied chemistry and philosophy at the universities of Barcelona, Bonn and Madrid, and Catholic theology in Madrid and Rome. He had three Ph.D. in Philosophy ( 1945), Chemistry ( 1958) and in theology (1961, Pontifical Lateran University in Rome). In 1946 he was ordained priest.

From 1946 to 1953 Raimon Panikkar was a professor of philosophy at the University Complutense of Madrid. From 1953 he worked on Indian philosophy and Hinduism at the Universities of Mysore and Varanasi ( Benares ). At this time he began to get involved in Christian- Hindu dialogue. Following a professorship in Rome ( 1962-1963 ), he taught from 1967 to 1971 at Harvard University (USA), and from 1971 to 1978 at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Most recently, he lived in Tavertet, in the mountains of Catalonia, near Barcelona. Panikkar has written over 30 books and over 900 articles.

His brother Salvador Paniker is also a well known author, philosopher and publisher.

Work

Intercultural dialogue

Raimon Panikkars work is in many ways a mediation between the different "worlds ". First, many of his writings attempt an understanding between the Christian and the Hindu tradition to convey by making clear similarities. Here, Panikkar focuses more on the esoteric part of the religions in contrast to Hans Küng, the more views the ethical foundations and similarities. Panikkar always sees the religious dialogue in the entire context of the culture, philosophy and especially of spirituality.

A real dialogue is therefore only possible if one can be opened in "Love and sympathy" to each other and thereby shares the experience of reality of the other. Panikkar wants to refer to the boundaries, which brings a purely intellectual dialogue with them, as some basic philosophical assumptions that are of European intellectual history, of course, many other cultures are alien. This leads him to "return to the myth ," the intellectually and linguistically can not be described exhaustively, and reduced and thereby a connecting because comprehensive element between people and cultures. Thus, for Panikkar reality richer than any philosophical or religious concept and each intercultural understanding should therefore be based on the direct experience of the reality of life and not on intellectual concepts.

This is not about him to a mixing of cultures and religions. It is also necessary for anyone to convert to another religion. Rather Panikkar emphasizes the possibility for everyone to find their own "liberation " in his ancestral religion.

Theology

Panikkar speaks of a Trinitarian nature of reality consisting of man, God (or divine principle ) and the cosmos. Neither is possible without the other. It is therefore aimed against a purely anthropocentric understanding of the world, in which man appears as the sole ruler and the people. A consequential, comprehensive crisis - even the third world war - he already sees in the living conditions of the urban poor of the third world. The solution could be only a holistic " cosmotheandric " to establish view that the "world" as well as the human rights zubilligt. The practical way to get there is a whole experience, as she was still some cultures of course.

Philosophy and Oekosophie

Based on his work on intercultural dialogue criticized Panikkar unilaterally Western standards for a comparative philosophy. A meaningful comparison would have to be drawn up by a superhuman point of view, as the culture-specific, philosophical standpoint can not be separated from the people.

As Arne Naess coined Raimon Panikkar also the term Oekosophie. For Panikkar Oekosophie refers to the art of dealing with nature. " Oekosophie " is a holistic view of nature, people, animals and plants consider as parts of creation or as co-creation. Nature is in ökosophischer perspective not an object but a subject. The needs and manifestations of life of nature are therefore perceive by people and taken into account. After Francis D' Sa is what the Ökosopie for the people is to recognize the wisdom of nature. So could then be entered into a symbiotic relation. In ökosophischer perspective, the world is seen as a fabric that is woven out of three dimensions, namely, the divine, the human and the cosmic.

Works

German

• Mystery cult in Hinduism and Christianity. A contribution to comparative religion theology, Karl Alber, Freiburg and Munich 1964.
• Return to the myth. Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1985. ISBN 3- 458-14241 -X.
• The wisdom of an apartment ready. Kösel, Munich, 1991; revised and abridged edition in 2002 as an introduction to the wisdom of Freiburg: Herder spectrum. ISBN 3-451-05256-3.
• God's silence. The answer of the Buddha for our time. Übers from the chip. by Susanne Schaup, Kösel, Munich 1992. ISBN 3-466-20359-7.
• Trinity. About the center of human experience. Übers from the chip. by Susanne Schaup, Kösel, Munich 1993. ISBN 3-466-20378-3.
• God, man and the world: The three- unity of reality. Publishing Via Nova, Peter Berg, 1999. ISBN 3-928632-40- X.
• Christophany. Experience of the sacred as a manifestation of Christ. Übers from the chip. by Ruth Heimbach. Herder, Freiburg, 2006. ISBN 978-3-451-29097-8.