World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 549

search for fundamental rapport and the potential for a dialogue in this most crucial but problematic area of religious thought. One of Hacker's essays brings forth his comparison of Shankara's notion of cit' with the concept of soul in Aquinas and with ‘nous' in Plotinus. These comparisons are indicative of an intense need to understand Christianity in the West. Or to put it differently, "whatever Hacker's disagreements with classical, traditional Advaita Vedanta may be, he certainly respected it in its genuine authentic otherness as a challenge against which he had to rediscover and reaffirm his own identity." 10.
When Hacker turns to what he calls Neo-Hinduism and to NeoVedantins like Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan in the remaining five essays included in the third part, the respect which he showed in the part II for Shankaracharya and other classical Advaitins despite his differences with them, seems to be absent. The third part covers the following five Essays: i. Aspects of Neo-Hinduism as contrasted with Surviving Traditional Hinduism; ii. The Concept of Dharma in Neo-Hinduism; ii. Schopenhauer and Hindu Ethics; iv. Vivekananda's Religious Nationalism, and v. A Prasthanatrayi Commentary of Neo-Hinduism - Remarks on the work of Rashakrishnan. With these essays, I think that Hacker has raised several controversial issues on which people may take different stands, and one is likely to think that it is quite possible that there may be something vicarious and not entirely genuine in Hacker's own philological and historical denunciation of the authenticity of Neo-Vedanta. All these essays are characteristically thought-provoking. As a feature of colonial history and Indian renaissance he attempts to see if Indian thought since 1900 A.D. could be shown to be integrally and internally related to ancient Indian heritage as interpreted by Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan- the two stalwarts who claimed themselves to be Advaita Vedantins. Both these thinkers are great in their own ways; one as social worker interested deeply in the removal of evils of ignorance and abject poverty of Indian masses, the other absorbingly interested in historical documentation of ancient Indian heritage and glory. We cannot overlook the fact that Vivekananda's social reform movement was rooted in India's tradition and intellectual heritage as also the fact that Radhakrishnan was interested in building bridge between the East and the West. The phenomena of Indian Renaissance since 1900 needs to be distinguished from the phenomena of Indian Freedom struggle, although they are not totally unrelated. Both those phenomena have taken place in the midst of several social, political and intellectual changes which have brought about revolutions in our philosophical understanding of man and his world. 20th century has witnessed unprecedented revolutions in the field of Logic, Linguistics, Knowledge and communications with the result that ancient and modern philosophies, especially metaphysical systems and moral ideologies have
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