Hick and Radhakrishnan on Religious Diversity: Back to the Kantian Noumenon

We shall examine some conceptual tensions in Hick’s ‘pluralism’ in the light of S. Radhakrishnan’s reformulation of classical Advaita. Hick himself often quoted Radhakrishnan’s translations from the Hindu scriptures in support of his own claims about divine ineffability, transformative experience an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sophia
Main Author: Barua, Ankur 1977- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Netherlands [2015]
In: Sophia
RelBib Classification:AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism
AX Inter-religious relations
BK Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism
CC Christianity and Non-Christian religion; Inter-religious relations
TK Recent history
Further subjects:B John Hick
B Pluralism
B S. Radhakrishnan
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:We shall examine some conceptual tensions in Hick’s ‘pluralism’ in the light of S. Radhakrishnan’s reformulation of classical Advaita. Hick himself often quoted Radhakrishnan’s translations from the Hindu scriptures in support of his own claims about divine ineffability, transformative experience and religious pluralism. However, while Hick developed these themes partly through an adaptation of Kantian epistemology, Radhakrishnan derived them ultimately from Sa?kara (c.800 CE), and these two distinctive points of origin lead to somewhat different types of reconstruction of the diversity of world religions. Our argument will highlight the point that Radhakrishnan is not a ‘pluralist’ in terms of Hick’s understanding of the Real. The Advaitin ultimate, while it too like Hick’s Real cannot be encapsulated by human categories, is, however, not strongly ineffable, because some substantive descriptions, according to the Advaitic tradition, are more accurate than others. Our comparative analysis will reveal that they differ because they are located in two somewhat divergent metaphysical schemes. In turn, we will be able to revisit, through this dialogue between Hick and Radhakrishnan, the intensely vexed question of whether Hick’s version of pluralism is in fact a form of covert exclusivism.
ISSN:1873-930X
Contains:Enthalten in: Sophia
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s11841-015-0459-z