ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author provides the conceptual groundwork for this book. As mentioned earlier, the central argument advanced in this work is that Aurobindo's integral philosophy is best understood as a hermeneutical philosophy of religion. The author makes this argument by fulfilling three aims: first, the chapter reads three key Aurobindonian texts with a view to arguing that Aurobindo's enquiry into religion possesses the structure of traditionary-hermeneutics. However, in order to do this, we need to have a background understanding of Aurobindo and his texts. The intention here is not to give an intellectual biography or even a historical background, although a bit of both will be given, but primarily to inform our understanding of his integral philosophy. Since all his key texts are introduced in the chapters, they are engaged with respectively, only a brief introduction about the Aurobindonian corpus is given here.
