Anthropological Problems In Classical Indian Philosophy

Author(s): Wilhelm Halbfass
Publisher: Wilhelm Halbfass

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Anthropological Problems in Classical Indian Philosophy
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may be his soteriological privilege would, in fact, undermine and destroy it. Sankara is quite explicit on this point41: Whatever we may discover as man's "wordly competence" (sāmarthyam laukikam) is in itself alone not sufficient to explain and justify his adhikāra for liberating knowledge42-Man alone can discover himself, but he discovers himself not as man; and if he has any privileged soteriological position, it is the freedom to transcend that very context to which he owes this privilege, and in which he is man.
Nevertheless, there is a keen awareness of and interest in questions of intelligence and self-awareness; the empirical world is often seen in terms of a gradation, a hierarchy of knowledge and self-mastery, i.e. of transparency or manifestness of the ātman43. Moreover, there is a constant implicit presence of "anthropological" motives in Advaita Vedānta, and more than once Sankara, like other Vedāntins, turns out to be an insigthful anthropologist malgré lui. P. Hacker has called attention to the anthropological implications of an important passage in Sankara's commentary on the Bịhadāranyaka-Upanişad", where Sankara, for exegetical and pedagogical reasons still speaking the language of vyavahāra, shows how the human being "exists as a unity by virtue of the spiritual self pervading all his bodily and psychic constituents and functions"45. — Yet, there is at the same time an almost deliberate way of not systematically pursuing these anthropological questions and motives. In conclusion, we may say that the story of Indian philosophizing about man as manusya, as homo sapiens or animal rationale, is not merely a story of absences or non-occurrences. Man as thinking, planning, future-oriented animal-this classical theme of Greek thought“, which has accompanied Western thought into its later developments, becoming even more prominent since the Renaissance, and which is still very much alive in an exemplary work of modern philosophical anthropology
41 Qn I, 3, 34: sāmarthyam api laukikam kevalam na adhikārakāraṇam bhavati. 42 Cf., however, the discussion on the adhikārakārana for the Gods in the commentary
on I, 3, 26. 43 Cf., e.g., Sankara on Brahmasūtra, I, 3, 30: ...jñānaiśvaryādyabhivyaktir api pareņa
parena bhūyasi bhavati.-The evaluation of the "wordly" factor may differ in the
case of other Advaitins. 44 IV, 3, 7. 45 P. HACKER, A Note on Sarkara's Conception of Man. German Scholars on India.
Contributions to Indian Studies, I, Varanasi 1973, 105. 46 Cf. M. LANDMANN, De homine. Der Mensch im Spiegel seines Gedankens, Freiburg/
München 1962.-For an interesting contrast between the Indian and the Egyptian traditions cf. S. MORENZ, Agyptische Ewigkeit des Individuums und indische Seelenwanderung. Asiatica. Festschrift F. Weller, Leipzig 1954, 414-427.