This book is a commentary on Prabhuji’s work, Phenomenology of the Sacred: Foundations for a Retroprogressive Phenomenology. In his rigorous commitment to phenomenological experience, Prabhuji maintains that we cannot take anything as certain unless it has a manifesting correlate in consciousness. He situates himself within the rich history of phenomenology, clothing his already mature Retroprogressive Path in categories proper to this tradition. He seeks to demonstrate that the limitations of phenomenology arise from its commitment to the dualistic framework—māyā in Sanskrit. Although phenomenology attempted to overcome this duality, both Husserl’s reduction (epoché) and Heidegger’s Dasein (being-there) preserve the Cartesian assumption of the substantial autonomy of individual consciousness with respect to Being.
Later, Heidegger, especially in the Letter on Humanism, began to dissolve the “ego’s” claim to substantiality. His transphenomenal gaze exposed the phenomenological problems: namely, that there is no activity of the subject capable of suturing duality. It is precisely subjective activity that produces the subjectivity of the ego; therefore, how can duality be overcome by means of that very thing which generates it?
The answer examined and developed here is masterful: Retroprogressive Phenomenology. According to this, truth transcends mere discourse, becomes open, and expands into a mode of “receptivity” in which the previously opposed horizons of subject and object are fused. Jonathan Ramos invites us, with appreciation and erudition, to traverse this new page in the history of Western phenomenology, which will open an original path for being and thinking.
Dr. Jonathan Ramos is a professor of Philosophy of Language, a professor of History, an amateur theologian, a researcher, and a university lecturer at the Catholic University of Salta, Argentina. He received an honorary doctorate (Doctor Honoris Causa) from George Whitefield College. He is devoted to research and to the dissemination of science and philosophy. He is the author of philosophical, theological, and metapolitical works centered on classical and contemporary thought.