The Human Condition: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project - Paperback

by Robert Cummings Neville (Editor), Peter L. Berger (Foreword by)

Explores the human condition in a range of world religions and discusses the issue and philosophical implications of comparison itself.

This multi-authored collaborative work on the idea of the human condition as a comparative category cuts across major religious traditions and cultures. Extensive essays by distinguished specialists examine Chinese religion, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Together the essays provide a multi-cultural approach to the human condition, discussing both broad sensibilities of religious traditions as well as specific texts. In addition the volume contains an introduction to a sophisticated theory of comparison for religious ideas, including explicit comparisons based on the specialized essays.

Contributors include Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Malcolm David Eckel, Paul Fredriksen, S. Nomanul Haq, Joseph Kanofsky, Livia Kohn, Robert Cummings Neville, Hugh Nicholson, Anthony J. Saldarini, Tina Shepardson, John Thatamanil, and Wesley J. Wildman.

Author Biography

Robert Cummings Neville is Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at Boston University, and Dean of the School of Theology. He has written many books, including most recently, Behind the Masks of God: An Essay Toward Comparative Theology; Normative Cultures; The Truth of Broken Symbols; and Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World, all published by SUNY Press.