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Thesis The West’s picture of ‘Indian philosophy’ is Vedanta-shaped, and it has hidden everyone else

Arvind Poojary Fellow
· 6 replies
Religions comparedIndianModern EuropeanPersianCarvakaVedantaArthur SchopenhauerMatilalVivekananda#indian-philosophy#orientalism#reception-history#schopenhauer
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Where it stands

You can probably guess where I stand on most metaphysics. But this isn't an attack on Vedānta. It's a complaint about how Indian philosophy got packaged.

The thesis: what reaches Western readers as "Indian philosophy", or worse "Eastern philosophy", is overwhelmingly Vedāntic in shape: the self is one with the absolute, the world is appearance, liberation is realisation. And that packaging has hidden the rest.

The history is interesting. Schopenhauer read the Upaniṣads in Anquetil-Duperron's Latin version, made from a Persian translation produced under the Mughal prince Dārā Shikoh, and built a system with them in it. Vivekananda's addresses at the Chicago Parliament of Religions in 1893 presented Vedānta as the heart of Hindu thought. Later, academic presentations in the mid-twentieth century often did the same.

Meanwhile the Cārvākas argued for thoroughgoing materialism; Nyāya built one of the most sophisticated logics in history; Mīmāṃsā developed a philosophy of language and interpretation; Buddhist epistemologists argued about perception and inference with real technical rigour. Ask a philosophy graduate in Europe to name an Indian logician and watch the silence.

The result is a picture of India as "spiritual" and the West as "rational", which is false on both sides. Defend the packaging if you can.

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6 replies

For the thesis 3

  1. Reza Tehrani

    For Fellow

    For the thesis, with a Persian twist. Dārā Shikoh wasn't a neutral translator. He wrote a book, The Confluence of the Two Seas, arguing that Sufism and Vedānta express the same truth. So what reached Europe was Vedānta already read through Sufi monism. The "mystical East" was a double filter: Mughal mysticism, then German Romanticism.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Meera Kulkarni

    For Fellow

    For the thesis. Among the students I know, Nyāya was treated as a specialist niche. B. K. Matilal spent his career at Oxford trying to show analytic philosophers that Indian epistemology and logic were doing work they'd recognise. He was respected, and still the general picture barely moved. That's evidence of how strong the packaging is.

    Helpful · 2
  3. Kenneth Lam Chi-ho

    For Fellow

    For the thesis, and it's not only India. Chinese thought reached many Western readers as Daoist mysticism, and Buddhism largely as Zen, in a form shaped by a few influential interpreters. In each case the most "mystical" strand became the brand and the logicians, the Mohists, the Buddhist epistemologists, vanished.

    Helpful · 3

Against the thesis 2

  1. Arjun Iyer

    Against Fellow

    I'll defend Vedānta, if not the packaging. Śaṅkara's commentaries are full of Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā and Buddhist positions, stated fairly and answered in detail. You can't understand Advaita without them. So the problem isn't Vedānta, it's popularisation, which strips out the argument and keeps the conclusions. A properly read Śaṅkara is your best evidence that Indian philosophy was argumentative.

  2. Govinda Prasad Upadhyaya

    Against Fellow

    Against, partly. The neglect isn't only Western. Mīmāṃsā is sidelined even in India, including in places where it was once central; my students want exam marks, not hermeneutics. Blaming Europe lets us off too lightly. We packaged ourselves too.

    Helpful · 1

Other replies

  1. Arvind Poojary

    Fellow

    Arjun, I accept the distinction: the target is the popular package, not the tradition. And Reza's point about the double filter is new to me. I'd add, to be fair to Vivekananda, that he was answering a Western audience that knew almost nothing; he chose the strand he thought would travel. The trouble is it travelled too well.