topics: |  philosophy | india |

In colonial times and beyond, western scholars would cite only other western scholars, and ignore all work done by indians. Radhakrishnan was the first to break this apartheid in a major way; since then many others have broken through this glass ceiling. SR was also the first to really reach out and establish a dialogue with western philosophy.

This book attempts to show us a bit of his persona, as revealed in a short autobiographical writeup. However, a much more colourful tale is told in S. Gopal's Radhakrihsnan: A biography - despite being his son, Gopal manages to come across with a frank and critical view.

Things were very different under the british raj when SR first published his two volume indian philosophy in 1923. Much of his work in the early decades was a rebuttal of various charges brought against Hinduism primarily by christian missionaries. As McDermott says:

	Radhakrishnan’s determination to defend Indian philosophy
	and the Vedantic system provided his work with
	a coherence and forcefulness that the subject desperately
	needed at the time, but it also bore an apologetic tone from
	which his writings are never entirely free.

McDermott goes on to observe that his master’s thesis from Madras
Christian College (1908) was "intended to be a reply to the charge
that the Vedanta system had no room for ethics".  Radhakrishnan
himself observes that
	The Philosophy courses for the B.A. and M.A. degrees in the
	Madras University did not demand any acquiantance with
	Indian systems of thought and religion.  Even today [writing
	in 1937], Indian philosophy forms a very minor part of
	philosophical studies in Indian Universities. ... p.40
		from Radhakrishnan, Vergilius Ferm, Religion in Transition 1937


McDermott:  
	virtually all of his subsequent writing are an attempt to
	establish idealism and Hinduism as a solution to the
	conflict of philosophical and religious ideals.

The same text was published by Jaico books (1972) with the title
"Basic Writings of S. Radhakrishnan".  While I was living in the
US, I had picked up a copy of that volume as well.  This is the
US edition is an earlier purchase, bought second-hand in Texas,
and though the binding is better, the paper is turning brittle and
the spine may not last much longer...

Excerpt

Preface

The work of S. Radhakrishnan has been the most important single
factor in the genesis and development of India and Western
comparative studies. Since shortly after the turn of the century,
Radhakrishnan has been working creatively for a greater synthesis of
Indian and Western values, and in so doing has helped to establish
the data, problems, and a method for the comparative study of Indian
and Western philosophical, religious, and cultural ideas. This
volume contains a representative selection of Radhakrishnan’s most
significant writings in these areas.

The selections have been drawn from volumes that are not readily
available to the nonspecialist in Indian studies. Each essay and
chapter is reprinted in its entirety; there is no internal editing
of Radhakrishnan’s text, excepts for the omission of many footnotes,
especially in Chapter 3 and 4. The selections are arranged so as to
insure maximum continuity and coherence. The glossary of important
Names and Terms should provide additional assistance to those
unfamiliar with the Indian tradition. It is hoped that the entire
volume will be intelligible to the beginning as well as to the
accomplished student of Indian and comparative philosophy.

Introduction

Radhakrihnan’s life work as philosopher interpreter of Hinduism, and
exponent of universal community is traceable to the challenge of
Christian critics which led him to make a study of Hinduism and find
out what is living and what is dead in it (p.40) Radhakrishnan began
this study in the first decade of the twentieth century when
philosophy in Indian was exclusively British primarily neo-Hegelian;
but during the two decades between the publication of his master’s
thesis on the Ethics of the Vedanta (1908) and the completion of his
two volume history of Indian philosophy (1923-27) he established the
respectability word.

Radhakrishnan’s determination to defend Indian philosophy and the
Vedantic system in particular provided his work with a coherence and
forcefulness that the subject desperately needed at the time, but it
also bore an apologetic tone from which his writings are never
entirely free. Just as his master’s thesis was intended to be a
reply to the charge that the Vedanta system had no room for ethics
(p.40) virtually all of his subsequent writing are an attempts to
establish idealism and Hinduism as a solution to the conflict of
philosophical and religious ideals.

Despite its awkwardly self-conscious tone, my search for truth
suggests the basic attitude and broad outline of Radhkrishnan’s
proposed solution to the conflict of certain philosophical and
religious values. Some of the more significant factors in the
formation of his system are cited in turn: the pervasive Indian
sense of the eternal and the tenuous status of the empirical words
the more humanistic direction of Indian religious thought typified
by Rabindranath Tagore, the influence of Bergson’s argument for
intuition, the ideal of integral experience based on the model of
the Indian mystic and finally the belief in universal salvation. The
concluding section of the essay contains some of Radhakrishnan’s
typical reflections on and hopes for the human condition.

In presenting and extending the idealist and Vedantist position
Radhakrishnan effectively draws on the works of Rabindranath Tagore
and Henri Bergson. Radhakrishnan’s first two books the philosophy of
Rabindranath Tagore (1918) and The Reign of Religion in Contemporary
philosophy (1920) are not especially insightful on either Tagore or
Bergson, but they do signal the author’s dual commitment to the
humanism and spiritualism of Tagore’s poetic vision and to Bergson’s
philosophical defense of intuition. Radhakrishnan’s major work such
as An Idealist View of Life eastern religions and western Thought
and commentaries on the Upanishads and Brahma-sutra consistently
based on intuition.

Significantly, in Radhkrishnan’s system intuition is equally the
source of philosophical and of religious insight; further, the
source and goal of both philosophy and religion are integral
experience of the integrated life. Combining the insight; of a long
line of Indian mystic personalities with Bergson claims for the role
of the religious or integrated personalities in the evolution of
consciousness, Radhakrshnan’s entire system is based on the ideals
of integration within the self and the integration of the Universal
Self or Atman. The philosophical and philosophical ad religious
selection in this book are intended to explicate the expression of
this ideal.

In writing on the difficulties of the historical interpretation of
Philosophy some thirty years after the publication of the Indian
Philosophy (1923; 1927), Radhakrishnan acknowledged that the writer
may at times allow his personal bias to determine his
presentation. His sense of proportion and relevance may not be
shared by others. His work at best will be a personal interpretation
and not an impersonal survey. This caution is warranted in the case
of his monumental and highly interpretive two volume history of
Indian philosophy. When Radhakrishnan introduces Indian thought by
stating that Philosophy in Indian is essentially spiritual (6.69) he
suggests the extent to which he is following he Vedantist point of
view. The same preference for the Vedantic position especially the
Advaita (nondual) Vedanta of Sankara is operative in his
Characterization of Indian philosophy:

If we put the subjective interest of the Indian mind along with its
tendency to arrive at a synthetic vision, we shall see how monistic
idealism becomes the truth of things. To it the whole growth of
Vedic thought points; on it are based the Buddhistic and Brahmanical
religions; it is the highest truth revealed to India. Even systems
which announce themselves as dualistic or pluralistic seem to be
permeated by a strong monistic character (pp. 77-76).

This rendering of the Indian tradition can give the impression that
the considerable variety within Indian Philosophy consists in
variations of the Vedanta system. Radhakrishnan frequently claims to
ne offering an entirely faithful account of non-vedantic systems,
but he nevertheless seems to find remarkable corroboration for his
won idealistic monism in systems that seem to be emphasizing
something quite different.

Specifically the entire theistic tradition including the theistic
passages in the Upanishads, the predominantly theistic meaning of
the Bhagavadgita and the explicitly theistic philosophy of Ramanuja
tend to be absorbed into an all-encompassing idealist or Vedantic
synthesis. Similarly Radhakrishnan does not give sufficient weight
to the pluralist and dualist strains in the Indian tradition, and
his interpretation of Buddhist philosophy is notoriously and his
interpretation of Buddhist philosophy is notoriously inadequate.

By contrast Radhkrishnan’s commentaries on the Upanishads and the
Brahma-sutra, and his exposition of Sanskara’s Advaita, Vedanta
(whi9ch occupies more than 200 pages in the second volume of his
Indian Philosophy), are as accurate and as incisive as any
interpretation to date. Furthermore his highly positive reading of
the Vedanta position and the rest of the Indian tradtion in light of
Vedanta have served as the most effective case for the fact that
Indian philosophy is not Western not is it nonsense, throughout his
writing Radhakrishnan has tried to show that the wisest course for
Indian thinkers is to synthesize the best of the Indian and Western
tradition. With Gandhi Tagore, Aurobindo, and Bhagavan Das,
Radhakrishnan’s seeks to draw from the West and from the fountains
of humanist idealism in India’s past’ (p.107).

Overall, Radhkrishnan’s wrtings are still the most intelligible
introduction to Indian philosophy, especially to the Upanishads, the
Brahma-Sutra, and Sankara, the three key elements in Vedanta, the
dominant school in Indian philosophy. The selections in the third
part of this volume present Radhakrishnan’s Indian idealism and the
components of the Vedantic system at their best.

Philosophy is everyday life in India

	[while one must admire the lyricism of the prose and the
	high ambition in the following thought, i am not sure i
	subscribe to the view that the upaniSads and the gItA are
	"not remote from popular belief."  the man on the street may
	have some ideas related to re-birth and mokSa and mAyA, but
	aren't these just a few centrifugal bits, at some remove
	from the central concerns of the upaniSadic seer?

	certainly, the indian mind has been raised with the stories
	of the purANas and the epics, but whether these are intended
 	to serve up "the truth dressed up in myths and stories, to
	suit the weak understanding of the majority" i am not so
	sure of.

	perhaps ak ramanujan is more on the right track when he
	talks of the "little" and "great" traditions in indian
	spiritual life - see the fascinating introduction to his
   	speaking of siva (1973).
	]


philosophy in india is essentially spiritual. it is the intense
spirituality of india, and not any great political structure, or
social organisation that it has developed, that has enabled it to
resist the ravages of time and the accidents of history.

external invasions and internal dissensions came very near crushing
its civilisation many times in its history.  the greek and the
scythian, the persian and the mogul, the french and the english have
by turn attempted to suppress it, and yet it has its head held
high. india has not been finally subdued, and its old flame of
spirit is still burning. throughout its life it has been living with
one purpose. it has fought for truth and against error. it may have
blundered, but it did what it felt able and called upon to do. the
history of indian thought illustrates the endless quest of the mind,
ever old, ever new.

the spiritual motive dominates life in india. indian  philosophy has
its interest in the haunts of men, and not in supra-lunar solitudes.
it takes its origin in life and enters back into life after passing
through the schools whilst echoing a deep spiritualism in its all
sense.

the great works of indian philosophy do not have that ex cathedra
character which is so prominent a feature of the latter day
commentaries. the bhagavadgItA and the upaniSads are not remote from
popular belief. they are the great literature of the country, and at
the same time vehicles of the great systems of thought. the purANas
contain the truth dressed up in myths and stories, to suit the weak
understanding of the majority. the hard task of interesting the
multitude in metaphysics is achieved in india.

the founders of philosophy strive for a socio-spiritual reformation
of the country. when the indian civilisation is called a brAhmanical
one, it only means that its main character and dominating motives
are shaped by its philosophical thinkers and religious minds, though
these are not all of brAhmin birth.

the idea of plato that philosophers must be the rulers and directors
of society is practised in india. the ultimate truths are truths of
spirit, and in the light of them actual life has to be refined. p.69
		[from Indian Philosophy, v.1. Introduction p. 24-25]

contents

preface	7
introduction by robert a. mcdermott	13
chronology	27
abbreviations

part I : autobiographical

my search for truth 35

part II : the historical view : indian philosophy

general characteristics	69
past and present 94

part III : the idealist view : the upaniSads and vedAnta

the upaniSads as the vedAnta	111
ultimate reality : brahman	114
ultimate reality : Atman	132
brahman as Atman	136
the status of the world: mAyA and avidyA	138
the individual self	148
intellect and intuition: vidyA (knowledge) and avidyA (ignorance)	153
ethics	161
karma and rebirth	169
life eternal 173

part IV : the hindu view : dharma and yoga

dharma: the individual and the social order in hindustan	187
yoga: karma, bhakti, dhyAna 221

part V : the universal view: india and the world community

rabindranath tagore	247
mahatma gandhi : his message for mankind	257
nehru	278
religion and religion	285
creative religion	297
the world community 309