A Death-Blow to Śaṅkara's Non-Dualism? A Dualist Refutation
Many of us, and I am no exception, have been led to assume, almost un-consciously, that Sankara is India's greatest philosopher and that the non-dualist philosophy he consolidated, Advaita Vedānta, is the supreme spiritual philosophy of India, if not of the whole world. Dualist (Dvaita) opponen...
| Published in: | Religious studies |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
[1976]
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| In: |
Religious studies
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Many of us, and I am no exception, have been led to assume, almost un-consciously, that Sankara is India's greatest philosopher and that the non-dualist philosophy he consolidated, Advaita Vedānta, is the supreme spiritual philosophy of India, if not of the whole world. Dualist (Dvaita) opponents like Madhva, on the other hand, have usually been appreciated very little, if at all. Several of my colleagues think of Madhva as a reactionary, if brilliant, theist whose philosophy best serves as a foil to Sankara's. Madhva, it almost seems, is studied not for his own philosophical virtues but as a means the better to appreciate Sankara's. I believe that we must weigh more carefully the dualist position, particularly its trenchant critique of non-dualism. We may discover in the process that Sankara, whatever else he was - brilliant stylist, mystic par excellence, deft polemicist - was not the originator or consolidator of anything like an internally consistent metaphysics. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-901X |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religious studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0034412500009379 |