Diving Deep: Engaging Religious Symbols in Interfaith Dialogue. Robin S. Seelan SJ. ISPCK. New Delhi, 2025. Rs. 325. PP. 123.
The book under review is indeed about symbols as its title suggests. The book’s style is simple and easily accessible. And therein lies the genius of the author. On the one hand he forwards the discourse of Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and what came to be known as anthropological epistemology; on the other hand, he forwards the current theological discourse of historical embodiedness he has inherited as a Jesuit. The Jesuit magis demands a constructive action in the world which Habermas in a different context mapped in his book, Knowledge and Human Interests. 
Seelan wants us to see the symbol as ‘exoterikos’; that is, as he points out in page 50 of his book, an exterior movement “for the general public”. But this book, which is structured as a manifesto, is not always for the general public. It is a career philosopher writing for other career philosophers trained in theo-political discourses. He repeatedly returns to the function of the symbol as a means to transcendence in all the human sciences and diverges from Habermas when he speaks of pilgrimages, identifying shared spiritual meanings among many other tropes. Even this emphasis on spirituality does not reduce his importance as a philosopher who searches for the numinous in the midst of systemic violence. Seelan, in his own way, seeks for what Michel Foucault termed ‘political spirituality’ in another context. Like Habermas and Foucault, he does not agree with the Marxist analysis of symbols. But like them, he does not reject Marxist critiques of ahistorical readings of society. Everything can and should be scrutinized and interrogated. But this is only one aspect of Seelan’s pragmatism. As will be seen, he transcends his own pragmatism and aligns himself with Neo-Platonists.
The danger with this book is that one might be beguiled by the activism of Seelan. More so, since he sees “[s]ymbols…[as]…socially determined”(43); yet he goes on to also write that symbols “are metaphysically oriented”(45). The key to this non-Lacanian understanding of the symbol is the symbolic gesture of Seelan himself. He recapitulates Plato when he writes: “Symbols also represent and participate in the symbolized…symbols [Neo-platonically] represent in concrete terms the abstract concept of ideas”. It is this metaphysicality of symbols deriving from the Platonic sphere of Ideas that Seelan wants to actualise in the here and now. Therefore, he provides tangible steps which can coalesce his training as a philosopher schooled in Habermas and his training as a Jesuit. It is through this cultural work that Seelan addresses the problems which anthropological epistemology gives rise to in the real world and his book is an answer to epistemic injustices effected through such infamous use of symbols, as the Swastika. This book should be read as a part of a much broader project which unfolds in his corpus — the project of solving epistemic injustices. His book, therefore, is a theodicy of sorts. In page 81 of his earlier book, Venturing Together: The Role of Interreligious Dialogue Today, he wrote at length of “a crisis created by us [humans]”. Diving Deep is an effort by the author to rescue us and himself from this crisis.
Subhasis Chattopadhyay Ph.D. divides his time between the cremation ground at Tarapith and Kolkata. He is an ex-Judge, Sahitya Akademi. He is a student of comparative religions.