Articles
(Total 34)
Can Consciousness Have Blind Spots? A Renewed Defence of Sri Aurobindo's Opaque Cosmopsychism (2024)
Journal of Consciousness Studies 31.9–10 (2024), pp. 113-131
This article defends the cosmopsychist doctrine of the Indian philosopher-mystic Sri Aurobindo, arguing that it has distinct advantages over rival panpsychist positions. After tracing the dialectical trajectory of recent philosophical debates about panpsychism up to the present, I bring Aurobindo into dialogue with Miri Albahari, who has defended a form of panpsychist idealism based on the classical Advaita Vedānta philosophy of Śaṅkara. I critique Albahari's panpsychist idealism from an Aurobindonian standpoint, arguing that its Śaṅkaran metaphysical commitments and eliminativist implications make it an unsatisfactory account of consciousness. I then summarize Aurobindo's cosmopsychism and explain its distinctive solution to the individuation problem, which is widely considered to be the most serious problem for all forms of cosmopsychism. According to Aurobindo, Divine Consciousness individuates into multiple creaturely consciousnesses through the twin processes of 'self-limitation' and 'exclusive concentration'. I conclude the paper by addressing several potential objections to Aurobindo's cosmopsychism.
In Vaiṣṇava Concepts of God: Philosophical Perspectives, eds. Ricardo Silvestre, Alan Herbert, Benedikt Paul Göcke (London: Routledge, 2024), pp. 184–200.
The Bengali mystic Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886) was raised in a Vaiṣṇava household and engaged in numerous Vaiṣṇava practices throughout his lifetime. In light of Ramakrishna’s strong Vaiṣṇava leanings, the question arises: what are the similarities and differences between Ramakrishna’s teachings on God and Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava conceptions of God? Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava theologians hold that the Supreme Reality is the personal God Kṛṣṇa whose “peripheral effulgence” is the impersonal Brahman. Although Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava thinkers grant equal reality to the personal God and the impersonal Absolute, they nonetheless hold that the realization of Kṛṣṇa is of infinitely greater value than the Advaitic realization of the impersonal Brahman. By contrast, Ramakrishna, on the basis of his own varied spiritual experiences, maintained that the impersonal Brahman-Ātman and the personal Śakti are the static and dynamic aspects respectively of one and the same Infinite Divine Reality. Accordingly, he held that jñānīs, yogīs, and bhaktas all realize one and the same Divine Reality in different forms and aspects, none of which can be said to be superior to any of the others. Ramakrishna, this chapter argues, thereby harmonized personalist and impersonalist conceptions of the ultimate reality without hierarchically subordinating the latter to the former.
In Panentheism in Indian and Western Thought: Cosmopolitan Interventions, eds. Benedikt Paul Göcke and Swami Medhananda (London: Routledge), pp. 195–213 , 2023
This chapter critically examines the Harvard philosopher Josiah Royce’s understanding of the Upaniṣads. Following the German scholar Paul Deussen, Royce claimed that the Upaniṣads propounded a subjective idealist metaphysics and held that the Absolute is unconscious. Medhananda argues, however, that Royce was misled by Deussen’s translation and interpretation of the Upaniṣads. In fact, the Upaniṣads can be seen to uphold a panentheistic metaphysics remarkably similar to Royce’s own preferred absolute idealism.
In John Hick's Religious Pluralism in Global Perspective, edited by Sharada Sugirtharajah (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillian, 2023), pp. 157–178.
This chapter explores the interrelation of religious pluralism and eschatology in the thought of John Hick and brings him into dialogue with the nineteenth-century Hindu mystic Sri Ramakrishna. According to Hick's mature position, various world religions are equally capable of leading to salvation, since all the various religious conceptions of ultimate reality are different culturally conditioned ways of conceiving one and the same unknowable Real an sich. The contemporary Christian theologian S. Mark Heim convincingly argues that Hick's theory of religious pluralism is less pluralistic than it appears, since Hick conceives the final postmortem state of salvation in vague and monolithic terms, thereby failing to honor the variety of specific religious fulfillments taught by the world religions. Building on Heim's critique of Hick, I make the case that Ramakrishna's experientially-grounded theory of religious pluralism has significant philosophical advantages over Hick's theory, since Ramakrishna accepts the equal reality and value of both theistic and non-theistic forms of salvation. According to Ramakrishna's expansive eschatology, some souls choose to eat sugar by remaining in eternal loving communion with the personal God, while other souls prefer to become sugar by merging their individuality in the impersonal Absolute
Religious Studies 59, pp. 67–81, 2023
This article outlines and defends an 'Integral Advaitic' theodicy that takes its bearings from the thought of three modern Indian mystics: Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo. Their Integral Advaitic theodicy has two key dimensions: a doctrine of spiritual evolution and a panentheistic metaphysics. God has created this world as an arena for our moral and spiritual evolution in which evil and suffering are as necessary as good. The doctrine of spiritual evolution presupposes karma, rebirth, and universal salvation. The doctrines of karma and rebirth shift moral responsibility for evil from God to His creatures by explaining all instances of evil and suffering as the karmic consequence of their own past deeds, either in this life or in a previous life. The doctrine of universal salvation also has important theodical implications: the various finite evils of this life are outweighed by the infinite good of salvation that awaits us all. After outlining this Integral Advaitic theodicy, I address some of the main objections to it and then argue that it has a number of comparative advantages over John Hick's well-known 'soul-making' theodicy.
International Journal of Hindu Studies 27, pp. 67–96, 2023
In this article, I will argue that the modern Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) developed a distinctively Vedāntic form of virtue ethics that deserves a prominent place in contemporary philosophical discussions. Sections 1 and 2 set the stage by showing how Vivekananda motivated his own ethical standpoint through a critique of rival ethical theories. Section 1 discusses his criticisms of ethical theories based on “objective duty,” which bear a resemblance to deontological theories. Section 2 outlines Vivekananda’s criticisms of utilitarian ethics, especially that of John Stuart Mill. Section 3 outlines the main features of Vivekananda’s Vedāntic virtue ethics and his arguments in support of it. Finally, section 4 compares the differing approaches to the problem of moral luck adopted by Vivekananda and by the contemporary philosopher Michael Slote. By means of this comparison, I identify some of the potential philosophical advantages of Vivekananda’s Vedāntic virtue ethics over other ethical theories.
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14.2, pp. 187–208, 2022
The German philosopher K.C.F. Krause (1781-1832) found deep conceptual parallels between his panentheistic system and the Indian philosophy of Vedānta. This article critically examines Krause's understanding of Vedānta and popular Hindu religion. I argue that while Krause was correct in viewing the mystical panentheistic doctrine of Vedānta as a precursor to his own philosophy, he was also frequently misled by unreliable translations and secondary texts. Krause, I suggest, was mistaken in characterizing the Hindu practice of image worship as polytheism and idolatry, and I contend, from a Vedāntic standpoint, that Krause's denial of the divinity of Jesus is inconsistent with his own panentheistic metaphysics.
The Monist (Oxford UP), vol. 105 (2022): 92–109
This article argues that the Indian philosopher-mystic Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) espoused a sophisticated form of cosmopsychism that has great contemporary relevance. After first discussing Aurobindo’s prescient reflections on the “central problem of consciousness” and his arguments against materialist reductionism, I explain how he developed a panentheistic philosophy of “realistic Adwaita” on the basis of his own spiritual experiences and his intensive study of the Vedāntic scriptures. He derived from this realistic Advaita philosophy a highly original doctrine of evolutionary cosmopsychism, according to which the Divine Saccidānanda is “involved” in everything in the universe and gradually manifests itself at each stage of the evolutionary process from matter to life to mind, and ultimately, to Supermind—the final stage that is yet to come, upon the attainment of which we will attain knowledge of our true divine nature as Saccidānanda. I then reconstruct Aurobindo’s novel solution to the individuation problem, according to which the Divine Saccidānanda individuates into various distinct consciousnesses by playfully limiting itself through a process of “exclusive concentration.” Finally, I highlight the continued relevance of Aurobindo’s evolutionary cosmopsychism by bringing him into conversation with Itay Shani, a contemporary proponent of cosmopsychism.
International Journal of Hindu Studies 25, pp. 229–257, 2021
This essay reconstructs Sri Aurobindo’s multifaceted response to the problem of evil. While a number of scholars have already discussed Sri Aurobindo’s theodicy, I highlight the significance of three aspects of his theodicy that have been largely neglected. First, I emphasize the crucial theodical role of the “psychic entity,” Sri Aurobindo’s term for the evolving, reincarnating soul within each of us. Second, I reconstruct the subtle chain of reasoning underlying his various theodical arguments, including a skeptical theist position that bears affinities with the views of some contemporary analytic philosophers of religion. Third, I argue that Sri Aurobindo’s approach to the problem of evil may very well have been influenced by Sri Ramakrishna, whose teachings anticipated most of the key tenets of Sri Aurobindo’s own theodicy. I also suggest that there are conceptual resources within Sri Aurobindo’s thought for responding to some of the most serious objections scholars have leveled against his theodicy.
International Journal of Hindu Studies 25.1–2, 2021
This is my response to the Book Symposium on my book, Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018), which has been published in the International Journal of Hindu Studies (Springer). Contributors to the symposium include Michael S. Allen, Christopher Bartley, Francis X. Clooney, Jonathan B. Edelmann, Benedikt Paul Goecke, Jonathan C. Gold, Julius Lipner, Jeffery D. Long, Ethan Mills, Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Amiya P. Sen, Arvind Sharma, and Michael Williams.
This article proposes to examine in detail Aurobindo’s searching—and often quite original— criticisms of Advaita Vedānta, which have not yet received the sustained scholarly attention they deserve. After discussing his early spiritual experiences and the formative influence of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda on his thought, I outline Aurobindo’s philosophy of “realistic Adwaita”. According to Aurobindo, the sole reality is the Divine Saccidānanda, which is not only the static impersonal Brahman but also the personal, dynamic Cit-Śakti (Consciousness-Force), which manifests as everything in this universe. At various points in his corpus, Aurobindo criticizes Advaita Vedānta on three fronts. From the standpoint of spiritual experience, Aurobindo argues that Śaṅkara’s philosophy is based on a genuine, but partial, experience of the Infinite Divine Reality: namely, the experience of the impersonal nondual Absolute and the corresponding conviction of the unreality of everything else. Aurobindo claims, on the basis of his own spiritual experiences, that there is a further stage of spiritual experience, when one realizes that the impersonal-personal Divine Reality manifests as everything in the universe. From a philosophical standpoint, Aurobindo questions the logical tenability of key Advaitic doctrines, including māyā, the exclusively impersonal nature of Brahman, and the metaphysics of an illusory bondage and liberation. Finally, from a scriptural standpoint, Aurobindo argues that the ancient Vedic hymns, the Upaniṣads, and the Bhagavad-Gītā, propound an all-encompassing Advaita philosophy rather than the world-denying Advaita philosophy Śaṅkara claims to find in them. This article focuses on Aurobindo’s experiential and philosophical critiques of Advaita Vedānta, as I have already discussed his new interpretations of the Vedāntic scriptures in detail elsewhere. The article’s final section explores the implications of Aurobindo’s life-affirming Advaitic philosophy for our current ecological crisis.
Religions 12 (2021), pp. 1–14.
Contemporary scholars, this article argues, stand to learn a great deal from Sri Aurobindo’s sophisticated hermeneutic approach to the Vedāntic scriptures. After identifying the strengths and weaknesses of traditional and modern hermeneutic approaches to the scriptures, I summarize Sri Aurobindo’s neglected essay, “The Interpretation of Scripture” (1912), where he outlines a timely hermeneutic method that combines elements from both traditional and modern approaches. I then focus on the Īśā Upaniṣad as a test case, critically comparing the commentaries of the traditional Advaita Vedāntin Śaṅkara, the modern Indologist Paul Thieme, and Sri Aurobindo. I make the case that Sri Aurobindo’s interpretive approach to the Īśā Upaniṣad has significant advantages over the approaches of Śaṅkara and Thieme. Finally, I call for an Aurobindonian hermeneutics of śraddhā, which combines historico-philological inquiry with interpretive charity and an openness to the transformative possibilities of scripture.
Kantian Review 26.1, pp. 105–111, 2021
This article critically examines some of the main arguments of Stephen Palmquist's book, Kant and Mysticism (2019). While I agree with Palmquist that Kant admits the possibility of certain indirect forms of mystical experience, I argue that Palmquist makes Kant out to be more of a mystic than he actually was. In particular, I contend that Palmquist fails to provide convincing justification of two of his main claims: (1) that Kant was a mystic or at least had strong mystical tendencies and (2) that some of the experiences that are central to Kant's philosophy are best understood as mystical experiences.
In Ayon Maharaj (ed.),The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedānta (London, Bloomsbury), pp. 309–340 , 2020
This chapter examines the Bengali philosopher-mystic Sri Aurobindo’s highly original and sophisticated commentary on the Īśā Upaniṣad—which was first published in 1924—and brings him into dialogue with both traditional and modern commentators. Militating against the reductive view that he simply read his own mystical experiences into the Īśā Upaniṣad, the author argues that Sri Aurobindo consciously strove to avoid eisegesis by adopting a “hermeneutics of mystical immanence.” According to Sri Aurobindo, the fundamental principle of the Īśā Upaniṣad is the reconciliation of opposites. This chapter makes the case that Sri Aurobindo’s distinctive reading of the Īśā Upaniṣad in the light of this principle provides new ways of resolving numerous interpretive puzzles and difficulties that have preoccupied commentators for centuries. Drawing on the hermeneutic insights of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Francis X. Clooney, the author demonstrates that Sri Aurobindo combines a traditional commitment to the transformative power of scripture with a historico-philological method favored by recent scholars. On this basis, the author contends that Sri Aurobindo’s unduly neglected commentary on the Īśā Upaniṣad deserves a prominent place in contemporary scholarly discussions.
Was Swami Vivekananda a Hindu Supremacist? Revisiting a Long-Standing Debate (Religions)
Religions, 2020
In the past several decades, numerous scholars have contended that Swami Vivekananda was a Hindu supremacist in the guise of a liberal preacher of the harmony of all religions. Jyotirmaya Sharma follows their lead in his provocative book, A Restatement of Religion: Swami Vivekananda and the Making of Hindu Nationalism (2013). According to Sharma, Vivekananda was "the father and preceptor of Hindutva," a Hindu chauvinist who favored the existing caste system, denigrated non-Hindu religions, and deviated from his guru Sri Ramakrishna's more liberal and egalitarian teachings. This article has two main aims. First, I critically examine the central arguments of Sharma's book and identify serious weaknesses in his methodology and his specific interpretations of Vivekananda's work. Second, I try to shed new light on Vivekananda's views on Hinduism, religious diversity, the caste system, and Ramakrishna by building on the existing scholarship, taking into account various facets of his complex thought, and examining the ways that his views evolved in certain respects. I argue that Vivekananda was not a Hindu supremacist but a cosmopolitan patriot who strove to prepare the spiritual foundations for the Indian freedom movement, scathingly criticized the hereditary caste system, and followed Ramakrishna in championing the pluralist doctrine that various religions are equally capable of leading to salvation.
In Panentheism and Panpsychism, eds. Göcke, Brüntrup, & Jaskolla (Brill Mentis), pp. 273–301, 2020
This article provides the first detailed examination of the views on consciousness of Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), the famous nineteenth-century Indian monk who introduced Hinduism and Vedānta to the West. Section 1 presents Vivekananda’s metaphysical framework of panentheistic cosmopsychism, according to which the sole reality is Divine Consciousness, which manifests as everything in the universe. As we will see, his panentheistic cosmopsychism combines elements from the classical Indian philosophical traditions of Sāṃkhya and Advaita Vedānta as well as the teachings of his guru Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886). Section 2 reconstructs his sophisticated arguments in favor of panentheistic cosmopsychism. I argue that Vivekananda’s panentheistic cosmopsychism, in light of its distinctive features and its potential philosophical advantages over rival theories of consciousness, deserves to be taken seriously by contemporary philosophers of mind and religion.
In Rita Sherma, ed., Swami Vivekananda: His Life, Legacy and Liberative Ethics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), pp. 11–32, 2021
It is not widely known that Swami Vivekananda remarked to his disciple Swami Shuddhananda that he should try to understand the “true intention” of the author of the Brahmasūtras instead of relying on the biased interpretations of traditional commentators such as Śaṅkara. In the same conversation with his disciple, Vivekananda himself furnished a striking example of such an independent approach to the Brahmasūtras: he suggests that sūtra 1.1.19 (asminnasya ca tadyogaṃ śāsti)—translated as “The scriptures teach the union of the jīva and Brahman”—supports “both Advaita and Viśīṣṭādvaita.” This essay aims to explore and develop Vivekananda’s provocative—if all too brief—reading of Brahmasūtra 1.1.19 by placing it in the context of his broader hermeneutic speculations and showing how his reading of 1.1.19 might help explain other relevant sūtras from the Brahmasūtras. For Vivekananda, I argue, 1.1.19 not only captures the essence of the original non-sectarian Vedānta of the Upaniṣads but also provides the hermeneutic key to interpreting the entire prasthānatraya in a liberal and non-eisegetic spirit. In Part I, I will outline briefly some of the fundamental principles of Vivekananda’s scriptural hermeneutics and their basis in the life and teachings of his guru Sri Ramakrishna. This will set the stage for Part II, where I will develop Vivekananda’s unique interpretation of Brahmasūtra 1.1.19. As we will see, while both traditional and modern commentators have tended to explain 1.1.19 in terms of a particular philosophical sect, Vivekananda suggests—quite radically—that the author of the Brahmasūtras deliberately employs the capacious and open-ended language of yogam (union) in 1.1.19 in order both to harmonize a variety of apparently conflicting scriptural passages concerning the jīva’s relation to Brahman and to accommodate numerous sectarian interpretations of these passages. From Vivekananda’s perspective, 1.1.19 serves as an ideal hermeneutic framework for honoring and reconciling the various types of union with the Divine expressed in the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā, ranging from the Advaitic union of absolute identity with Brahman to the Viśiṣṭādvaitic unity of part and Whole, the Bhedābheda unity of difference and non-difference, and the Dvaitic unity of servant and Master.
Journal of Dharma Studies 2, pp. 175-87, 2020
This essay reconstructs Sri Aurobindo’s multifaceted response to the problem of evil. While a number of scholars have already discussed Sri Aurobindo’s theodicy, I highlight the significance of three aspects of his theodicy that have been largely neglected. First, I emphasize the crucial theodical role of the “psychic entity,” Sri Aurobindo’s term for the evolving, reincarnating soul within each of us. Second, I reconstruct the subtle chain of reasoning underlying his various theodical arguments, including a skeptical theist position that bears affinities with the views of some contemporary analytic philosophers of religion. Third, I argue that Sri Aurobindo’s approach to the problem of evil may very well have been influenced by Sri Ramakrishna, whose teachings anticipated most of the key tenets of Sri Aurobindo’s own theodicy. I also suggest that there are conceptual resources within Sri Aurobindo’s thought for responding to some of the most serious objections scholars have leveled against his theodicy.
In Alan Race & Paul Knitter, eds., New Paths for Interreligious Theology: Perry Schmidt-Leukel’s Fractal Interpretation of Religious Diversity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis), pp. 100-114, 2019
In his thought-provoking book Religious Pluralism and Interreligious Theology (2017), Perry Schmidt-Leukel breaks new ground in highlighting the pluralist tendencies in various religions and in developing an intriguing fractal paradigm for understanding religious diversity. This essay tries to identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of Schmidt-Leukel's views on religious pluralism and interreligious theology. Part I argues that his account of the pluralist and inclusivist strains in modern Hinduism is based on a selective and somewhat inaccurate interpretation of the views of Sri Ramakrishna and his famous disciple, Swami Vivekananda. Contrary to Schmidt-Leukel, I contend that both Ramakrishna and Vivekananda championed a full-blown doctrine of religious pluralism that has immense contemporary relevance. Part II turns the tables on Schmidt-Leukel by critically examining his fractal model of interreligious theology from the pluralist standpoint of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.
Philosophy East and West 70.1, pp. 136–54, 2020
This essay critically examines Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s doctrine of collective salvation (sarvamukti) by focusing on its complex metaphysical underpinnings. According to Radhakrishnan, liberated individuals retain their individuality in order to help others achieve liberation. Once everyone attains liberation, the universe—along with all the liberated souls and the personal God Himself—lapse into the non-dual Absolute. I argue that there a number of ambiguities and tensions in Radhakrishnan’s sarvamukti doctrine which stem from its aporetic metaphysical foundations.
Journal of World Philosophies 3 (Winter 2018), pp. 24–48
This essay reconstructs the sophisticated views on free will and determinism of the nineteenth-century Hindu mystic Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886) and brings them into dialogue with the views of three Western philosophers—namely, the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Lord Kames (1696-1782) and the contemporary analytic philosophers Saul Smilansky and Derk Pereboom. Sri Ramakrishna affirms hard theological determinism, the view that God determines everything we do and think. At the same time, however, he claims that God, in His infinite wisdom, has endowed ordinary unenlightened people with the illusion of free will for the sake of their moral and spiritual welfare. Kames, I suggest, defends a theological determinist position remarkably similar to Sri Ramakrishna's. However, I argue that Sri Ramakrishna's mystical orientation puts him in a better position than Kames to explain why a loving God would implant in us the illusion of free will in the first place. I then show how certain aspects of the views of Smilansky and Pereboom resonate with those of Sri Ramakrishna.
Kant on the Epistemology of Indirect Mystical Experience (Sophia)
Sophia 56.2 (June 2017), pp. 311-336
While numerous commentators have discussed Kant’s views on mysticism in general, very few scholars have examined Kant’s specific views on different types of mystical experience. I suggest that Kant’s views on direct mystical experience (DME) differ substantially from his views on indirect mystical experience (IME). In this paper, I focus on Kant’s complex views on IME in both his pre-critical and critical writings and lectures. In Section 1, I examine Kant’s early work, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766), where he defends the possibility that the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg’s alleged visions of the spirit-world are veridical cases of IME. In Section 2, I discuss Kant’s views on IME during his critical period. In 2.1, I argue that the epistemology of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason accommodates the possibility of IME. In 2.2, I examine Kant’s views on Swedenborgian visions in his lectures from the 1770s to the 1790s and argue that his critical views on Swedenborg are largely continuous with his pre-critical views in Dreams. In 2.3, I examine passages in Kant’s late works, Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone (1793) and The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), where he discusses three non-Swedenborgian types of IME. In Section 3, I explore briefly how Kant’s views on IME relate to contemporary debates among analytic philosophers of religion regarding the nature and possibility of mystical experience.
Philosophy East and West 67.4 (Oct. 2017), pp. 1191-1221.
This essay discusses Swami Vivekananda’s unduly neglected critical remarks on Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy, which are contained primarily in lectures delivered in America and England between 1895 and 1896. I argue that Vivekananda, one of the first commentators to critique Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the will from a Vedāntic standpoint, occupies a unique place in the late nineteenth-century reception of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. To set the stage, I outline briefly in Part I the interpretations of two of Vivekananda’s contemporaries, Paul Deussen and Max Hecker, the pioneers in the field of Schopenhauer’s relation to Indian thought. In Part II, I discuss Vivekananda’s critical remarks on Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the will and place them in dialogue with the views of Deussen and Hecker. In contrast to Deussen and Hecker, Vivekananda claims that Schopenhauer equates the will with the noumenal thing in itself. According to Vivekananda, Schopenhauer’s conception of the will as the noumenal reality is mistaken for two main reasons: first, the will is at least subject to time and hence cannot be identified with the Kantian thing in itself beyond time, space, and causality; second, Schopenhauer’s conception of the will as the noumenal thing in itself conflicts with the soteriological thesis that the will can be transcended through self-denial and asceticism. Vivekananda also reproaches Schopenhauer for misinterpreting Vedānta, which conceives the noumenal reality not as the evil will but as the transcendental Ātman/Brahman beyond all willing and suffering. In Part III, I argue that many of Vivekananda’s views on Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the will and its relationship to Vedānta and Buddhism find echoes in recent scholarly interpretations of Schopenhauer’s philosophy.
History of European Ideas 43.5, pp. 474–493, 2017
In a letter written in 1927, the French writer Romain Rolland asked Sigmund Freud to analyse the “oceanic feeling,” a religious feeling of oneness with the entire universe. I will argue that Rolland’s intentions in introducing the oceanic feeling to Freud were much more complex, multifaceted, and critical than most scholars have acknowledged. To this end, I will examine Rolland’s views on mysticism and psychoanalysis in his book-length biographies of the Indian saints Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, which he wrote just after he mentioned the oceanic feeling to Freud in 1927. I will argue that Rolland’s primary intentions in appealing to the oceanic feeling in his 1927 letter to Freud—intentions less evident in his letters to Freud than in his biographies of Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda—were to challenge the fundamental assumptions of psychoanalysis from a mystical perspective and to confront Freud with a mystical “science of the mind” that he felt was more rigorous and comprehensive than Freud’s psychoanalytic science.
Journal of Religion 97.2 (April 2017), pp. 181-213
I argue that contemporary philosophers have unduly ignored Sri Ramakrishna’s pioneering views on religious pluralism. The Bengali mystic Sri Ramakrishna (1836-1886) taught the harmony of all religions on the basis of his own spiritual experiences and his diverse religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. Part I reconstructs the main tenets of Sri Ramakrishna’s model of religious pluralism. Part II explores how Sri Ramakrishna addresses the problem of conflicting religious truth-claims. Part III addresses some of the major criticisms leveled against Sri Ramakrishna’s views on religious pluralism.
Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa's Philosophy of Vijñāna Vedānta (International Journal of Hindu Studies)
International Journal of Hindu Studies 21.1 (2017), pp. 25-54
The philosophical teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, the nineteenth-century Bengali mystic, have been a source of lively interpretive controversy. Numerous commentators have interpreted Sri Ramakrishna’s views in terms of a particular philosophical sect, such as Advaita, Viśiṣṭāḍvaita, or Tantra. Militating against this sectarian approach to Sri Ramakrishna’s teachings, I argue that Sri Ramakrishna’s philosophy is best characterized as “Vijñāna Vedānta,” a resolutely non-sectarian philosophy—rooted in the spiritual experience of what Sri Ramakrishna calls “vijñāna”—that harmonizes various apparently conflicting religious faiths, sectarian philosophies, and spiritual disciplines. Part I outlines five interpretive principles that should govern any attempt to determine Sri Ramakrishna’s philosophical views on the basis of his recorded teachings. With this hermeneutic groundwork in place, Part II attempts to reconstruct from Sri Ramakrishna’s philosophical teachings the six main tenets of his Vijñāna Vedānta. Part III begins to explore how Sri Ramakrishna’s teachings on religious pluralism can be brought into dialogue with John Hick’s influential theory of religious pluralism.
Philosophy East and West 65.4 (October 2015), pp. 1209-1233
"This essay argues that Sri Aurobindo’s unduly neglected Essays on the Gita (1916-20) develops a radically new hermeneutic approach to the Gītā, which helps account for crucial aspects of the Gītā’s philosophical and theological teachings that have baffled commentators for centuries. Rejecting the eisegetic practice of traditional commentators such as Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja, Sri Aurobindo strives to interpret the Gītā on its own terms. Sri Aurobindo’s key move is to foreground and reinterpret the mysterious concept of “vijñāna,” which occurs at five places in the Gītā. In IX.1 of the Gītā, for instance, Lord Kṛṣṇa refers to the “highest secret” as “jñāna combined with vijñāna.” By situating these two key concepts within the Gītā’s broader philosophical framework, Sri Aurobindo makes a convincing case that jñāna is the realization of the impersonal “Ātman,” the eternal non-dual “Self” common to all, while vijñāna is the still higher realization of God as the impersonal-personal “Puruṣottama,” the “Supreme Person.” Upon the attainment of vijñāna, one realizes that the infinite God is at once the impersonal Ātman and the supreme Lord of the universe, at once immanent in the universe and transcendent to it.
According to Sri Aurobindo, the concept of vijñāna is the hermeneutic key to understanding the Gītā’s entire thought-structure, including its complex account of the nature of God and its persistent privileging of devotion (bhakti). Sri Aurobindo further demonstrates how vijñāna furnishes the conceptual basis for the Gītā’s unique syncretic conception of spiritual practice, which combines devotion, knowledge, and selfless action. I conclude the essay by gesturing toward how Sri Aurobindo’s radical reinterpretation of the concept of vijñāna in the Gītā opens up exciting possibilities for interreligious dialogue and provides a fertile basis for exploring new directions in comparative theology."
Philosophy East and West 64.1 (January 2014), pp. 82-108
This essay identifies salient points of affinity and divergence in the monistic metaphysics and skeptical methodologies of the German idealist Hegel and the Indian Advaitin Śrī Harṣa. Remarkably, both Śrī Harṣa’s Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya (c. 1170) and Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) attempt to defend a monistic standpoint exclusively by means of a sustained critique of non-monistic philosophical positions. I will argue, however, that Śrī Harṣa and Hegel diverge sharply in their specific views on the powers and limits of philosophy and on the precise nature of monistic reality. In stark contrast to Hegel, Śrī Harṣa rejects the very possibility of a philosophical justification of monism, since he claims that the non-dual reality of Brahman lies beyond reason. Moreover, while Hegel drives a wedge between thought and empirical praxis, Śrī Harṣa insists that how we think and reason depends on the nature of our mind, which is itself conditioned by how we live.
Journal of Indian Philosophy 41 (2013), pp. 57-78
This article examines Swami Hariharānanda Āraṇya’s unique interpretation of smṛti as “mindfulness” (samanaskatā) in Patañjali’s Yogasūtra I.20. Focusing on his extended commentary on Yogasūtra I.20 in his Bengali magnum opus, the Pātañjaljogdarśan (1911), I argue that his interpretation of smṛti is quasi-Buddhistic. On the one hand, Hariharānanda’s conception of smṛti as mindfulness resonates strongly with some of the views on smṛti advanced in classic Buddhist texts such as the Satipaṭṭhānasutta and Buddaghośa’s Papañcasūdanī. On the other hand, he also builds into his complex account of the practice of smṛti certain fundamental doctrines of Sāṃkhyayoga—such as mindfulness of the Lord (“īśvara”) and mental identification with the Puruṣa, the transcendental “Self” that is wholly independent of nature—which are incompatible with Buddhist metaphysics. I will then bring Hariharānanda’s quasi-Buddhistic interpretation of smṛti of Yogasūtra I.20 into dialogue with some of the interpretations of smṛti advanced by traditional commentators. Whereas many traditional commentators, such as Vācaspati Miśra and Vijñānabhikṣu, straightforwardly identify smṛti of I.20 with “dhyāna” (“concentration”)—the seventh limb of the aṣṭāṇgayoga outlined in Yogasūtra II.28-III.7—Hariharānanda argues that smṛti is the mental precondition for the establishment of dhyāna of the aṣṭāṇgayoga.
Why Poetry Matters: The Transpersonal Force of Lyric Experience in Ezra Pound's The Pisan Cantos
Arizona Quarterly 66.4, pp. 71-92, Jan 1, 2010
Hegel contra Schlegel; Kierkegaard contra de Man (PMLA, 2009)
PMLA 124.1, pp. 107-126, Jan 1, 2009
At the turn of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Schlegel developed an influential theory of irony that anticipated some of the central concerns of postmodernity. His most vocal contemporary critic, the philosopher Hegel, sought to demonstrate that Schlegel’s theory of irony tacitly relied on certain problematic aspects of Fichte’s philosophy. While Schlegel’s theory of irony has generated seemingly endless commentary in recent critical discourse, Hegel’s critique of Schlegelian irony has gone neglected. This essay’s primary aim is to defend Hegel’s critique of Schlegel by isolating irony’s underlying Fichtean epistemology. Drawing on Søren Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony in the final section of this essay, I argue that Hegel’s critique of irony can motivate a dialectical hermeneutics that offers a powerful alternative both to Paul de Man’s poststructuralist hermeneutics and to recent cultural-studies-oriented criticism that tends to reduce literary texts to sociohistorical epiphenomena.
The Specter of Hegel in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria (Journal of the History of Ideas, 2007)
Journal of the History of Ideas 68.2, pp. 279-304, Jan 1, 2007
Coleridge rarely mentions Hegel in his philosophical writings and seems to have read very little of Hegel's work. Yet I argue that Coleridge's criticisms of Schelling's philosophy—as recorded in letters and marginalia—betray remarkable intellectual affinities with his nearly exact contemporary Hegel, particularly in their shared doubts about Schelling's foundationalist intuitionism. With this background in place, I seek to demonstrate that volume one of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria is a radically self-undermining text: its philosophical argument, far from slavishly recapitulating Schelling's philosophy, remains haunted by a quasi-Hegelian skepticism toward intuition even as it advances intuition as the foundation of its theoretical edifice.
Gingko Tree Review 4.1 (2007), pp. 25-46
This essay argues that John Ashbery’s postmodern poem, “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” should be read as a sustained effort to come to terms with the legacy of modernism. Modernist poets remained haunted by a fundamental dilemma: the more they emphasized the redemptive potential of ecstatic lyric moments, the closer they came to dismissing quotidian existence as a tragic fall from the intensities of aesthetic experience. Ashbery’s poem not only registers forcefully this modernist predicament as the problem of “pathos vs. experience” but also strives to overcome it. Ashbery copes with this problem by invoking the dialectical notion of convexity, which proves to be the poem’s governing principle. By drawing on some core doctrines in Hegel’s philosophy, I clarify the convex logic of Ashbery’s postmodern poetics.
Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 11.1 (Fall 2006), pp. 225-255
This essay argues for a distinctly post-Kantian understanding of Hegel's definition of freedom as "being at home with oneself in one's other." I first briefly isolate the inadequacies of some dominant interpretations of Hegelian freedom and proceed to develop a more adequate theoretical frame by turning to Theodor Adorno. Then I interpret Hegel's notion of the freedom of the will in the Philosophy of Right in terms of his speculative metaphysics. Finally, I briefly examine Hegel's treatment of agency in the Phenomenology of Spirit in order to establish important continuities between the early and late Hegel.
Wallace Stevens Journal 29.2, pp. 249-262, Jan 1, 2005