Richard De Smet: Brahman and Person

Ivo Coelho, sdb is the editor of Brahman and Person: Essays by Richard De Smet, published by Motilal Banarsidas, Delhi. He is very keen on finding individuals who had studied with De Smet, as also seeking their notes taken during class, including those in Latin. Ivo may be reached at ivo.coelho@gmail.com. His blogs are MUSINGS and PHILOSOPHICAL MUSINGS.

Here is the first paragraph from the following link on Richard De Smet on Wiki. Richard De Smet, SJ, was a Jesuit Indologist and missionary to India. Born at Charleroi, Belgium, he came to India as a young student of theology in 1946. Upon completion of his theological studies, he studied Sanskrit in Calcutta under G. Dandoy, P. Fallon and R. Antoine, all members of the so-called "Calcutta School" of Jesuit Indologists. Provoked by a talk by Dr S. Radhakrishnan at a meeting of the Indian Philosophical Congress at Calcutta in 1950, where the famous professor claimed that Sankara was a purely rational philosopher, De Smet decided to show that he was, instead, a srutivadin, a theologian who subordinated reason to the revealed (apauruseya) scripture. De Smet went on to do his doctorate on The Theological Method of Samkaracarya, completing it at the Gregorian University, Rome, in 1953. Though he never got round to publishing this thesis, it became rather famous among Indologists and there are hundreds of copies in circulation.

From Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (Sponsored by North American Benedictine and Cistercian Monasteries of Men and Women). Richard De Smet (1916-1997) was a scholar of Hindu thought, Sankara, and his system of Advaita Vedanta.