Well yes but hasn’t this been done ? Indeed, for the scholar or the student but not very much for the individual seeker for whom the topic has become a live option and who wants a conspectus not a close analysis. The assessment ‘accessible’ is the faint praise that allows rejection which is unfair to a book which lays out a program of styles of inwardness that acutely observes their differences. That can bring illumination to doctrines which are accepted as central to the various traditions. On that point his mentioning of Nagarjuna’s rejection of the concept of self-luminous cognition which I took to be a tenet of Buddhist epistemological theory was interesting. He does not develop a revised view which might skew towards Vedanta; controversion and alternative theorising is not a goal.
The manifestations of Self as multiply realised that are part of the Western tradition brings him into the domain of Kierkegaard and Passoa. Is this simple role playing or neurotic withdrawal from commitment with faulty epistemology as a foundation? Is it enriching elaboration? Ganeri allows the individual palate to decide and rightly so. No special doctrine is urged and the short chapters allow the timid to edge along the springboard. You have for example:
Libraries Lined with memories (Augustine’s theory)
Rashomon’s Effect (perspectives and illusion)
Self-illuminating Being (Buddhist theory and Nagarjuna)
Hidden Layers Within (Passoa and his personas)
Troubles with Doubles (Kierkegaard and the aspectual self)
This is a short book running to 122 pages. Less is more.
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