Exploring Hindu Philosophy - Ankur Barua
Finding a Home in the World
Exploring Hindu Philosophy - Ankur Barua
Ankur Barua [+]
University of Cambridge
Description
Across the multiple forms of Vedāntic philosophy, worldviews are developed through interplays between logical reasoning and scriptural exegesis. Perhaps when some scriptural texts declare the divine to be qualityless, this is a denial not of every attribute but only of human imperfections such as suffering, ignorance, and the like. Therefore, the divine should be seen as the abode of every supereminently perfect quality such as omnipotence and omniscience. Or perhaps such declarations should be read as the final word and they sublate all depictions of the divine as having a specific form or quality. Such motifs constitute the focal point of many of the rational disputes between Advaita and the theistic forms of Vedānta. In addition to these interpretive tussles, there is the conceptual challenge of articulating the relation between the finite world which is temporal and the non-finite centre which is eternal.