Thomas Taylor (1758 – 1835) was an English translator of the complete works of Plato, Aristotle and the Orphic fragments. Born in London, he was devotedly self-taught in the study of classics. After working as a bank clerk, he was appointed Secretary of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, the precursor of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), in which capacity he made friends with wealthy patrons who sponsored his many translations.
Taylor’s translations inspired Blake, Shelley, Wordsworth, possibly Coleridge, and Yeats. In American editions they were read by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Thomas Moore Johnson (founder of The Platonist journal), William Torrey Harris, the United States Commissioner of Education, and G. R. S. Mead, secretary to Helena Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society.
In a series of three lectures, we will discuss Thomas Taylor’s influence on a wide range of movements including Idealism, Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and into modernity, as we will revisit some of his most illustrious writings.
This event is being held in association with The Fintry Trust.
Saturdays: 11 January, 15 February, 8 March 2025
17.00 – 18.15 (London Time)
The goal of this lecture is to argue that the concept of yoga in the work of Jīva Gosvāmin is like the concept of virtue in Thomas Aquinas. Both thinkers developed their concepts in and through an examination of ancient sources such as the Upanishads and Aristotle, and both offered a hierarchical concept of yoga and virtue. I further argue that the translation of Sanskrit texts (and other texts not written in English) is an inherently and an unavoidably comparative project. The comparative arguments I make, then, are intended to demonstrate a new way of thinking about how Indian texts are best translated.
Lecturer Bio:
Jonathan Edelmann, DPhil, a Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion, has published widely on issues related to philosophy and theology in Sanskrit, and the theoretical issues involved in comparing and contrasting concepts from different traditions. Edelmann serves as Chair of the Dharma Academy of North America, and he is the manager of Scholar Path Consulting, LLC.
Saturday, 22 February 2025
17.00 – 18.30 (London Time)
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The eternal law has no beginning and no ending and it disappears by turns in several parts of the cosmos; in such fashion again and again ⟲ in the chequered course of time, it manifests itself anew, returning to where it vanished before. As such, the nature of circular movement appears-- all points in a circle are linked together, that you can find no place where the movement begins, for it is evident that all points in a line both precede and follow one another forever. And it is in this manner that time revolves. (Asclepius III, trans. Walter Scott 1924, 355)