Cirpit Review n. 6 - 2015

Five of the six papers below were presented at a symposium in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in San Diego on November 21, 2014. The AAR meeting has for long been an annual feature, where scholars of religion gather from around the world to discuss various aspects of religion across time and space and culture. In conjunction with the Society of Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP), members of both societies have thought the AAR meetings a good opportunity to hold an annual meeting of Panikkar scholars On this particular occasion, Young-chan Ro and Joseph Prabhu invited contributions to two panels, one for more senior scholars and the other for scholars and researchers, who engaged with Panikkar either as part of their doctoral dissertations or as part of their ongoing research. The papers by Mark Banas, Erik Ranstrom, Anselm Min, Peter Phan, and Young-chan Ro represent revised versions of the presentations made in the San Diego symposium. Some parts of the paper by Joseph Prabhu were presented at the AAR/SACP symposium, but the full paper provided here draws on an essay presented at another Panikkar conference.The idea both of the call for papers and the decision to publish some of them is at least three-fold: 1. to encourage collaboration and dialogue between more senior scholars and those who are starting out on their study of Panikkar; 2. to make available some of the fruits of such research and publication; and 3. to develop, in general, the field of Panikkar Studies. Those who have worked in the field know that Panikkar is a challenging author both because of the complexity of his ideas spanning many disciplines, times, and cultures, and also because of his equally complex mode of expression. It is encouraging to note that interest in Panikkar’s thought is indeed growing and these papers are one indication of that interest.What follow are short thematic introductions to each of the papers.