Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Appreciation of Unfamiliar Arts.
We will begin by making two assumptions implicit in the beginning of this exposition, namely, (1) that, by choice or accident, we have before us something which has been artistically made, such as a picture or a garment of some strange kind, say Egyptian or Peruvian; and (2) that pleasure being always preferable to pain, […]
Publication of Coomaraswamy’s Metaphysical Essays
Text by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy in the Notebooks of Unity
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Unity Notebooks No. 27
Chapter XX of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy’s book: Yakṣas; Essays in the Water Cosmology edited by Paul Schoeder. 1993.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Metaphysical Essays
Many debates oppose Westerners on identity, the thurifers of the “universalism” of Human Rights clashing vigorously with those nostalgic for rooting in the particular. However, in his Metaphysical Essays collected by Max Dardevet at L’Harmattan, the art historian and metaphysician Ananda K. Coomaraswamy deploys, in the light of traditional doctrines and a privileged comparison of Christianity and […]
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Metaphysical Essays
The Vedic tradition views the journey ( yāna ) of the individual after death as a passage from one plane of being ( loka ) to another; and although there is the possibility of perpetuity ( stāyitā ) on a given plane until the End of Time ( kalpānta , Mahā-pralaya ), there is no conception of the possibility of a return to a past state. The […]