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writing that can best be described as "commentarial" or "exegetical." |
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Working with this specifically theological character of Advaita discourse clearly in mind, Clooney develops his own interpretation of the Advaita/Sankara tradition that is both original and compelling. Using as background his previous studies of the earlier Mimamsa tradition on which Sankara and the later Advaitins built, he provides the best available discussion of the content of the Advaita doctrine, the character of Advaita soteriology, and the style of Advaita argument.
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Important as Clooney's Indological contribution is, the most significant breakthrough that he achieves in Theology After Vedanta concerns the theory and practice of comparison. Building on the work of Lee Yearley in Mencius and Aquinas, Clooney sets forth and implements his own approach in which he highlights the theological dimension in a way that Yearley did not. Clooney begins with an explicit recognition of his own personal "location" within an ongoing tradition of Roman Catholic theology. He then undertakes an intense reading of the Advaita text(s) that concern him, taking seriously into account not only the intellectual context in which they were written, but also the kind of involved theological reading that they themselves presuppose and commend. After Clooney's own theological orientation and modes of reasoning have been challenged and enriched by this process, he then proceeds to undertake a new reading of what he considers to be the most comparable text(s) within his own Roman Catholic traditionin this case Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae and the commentaries associated with it. |
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Clooney's distinctively theological approach is characterized by a very high level of hermeneutical sophistication. His perspective is a modest one in the sense that he neither presumes nor attempts to construct any kind of "God's eye view" (or any kind of "view from nowhere") that would enable him to arrive at a synthesis between the two texts or traditions that he is "comparing," or to render any definitive evaluations that would rank either one above the other. What is more, the methods that he does use are highly sophisticated adaptations and |
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