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Sankara, Ramanuja, and the Function of Religious Language
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Extract
In the opening sections of his Brahma-sutra-bhasya, Ramanuja makes a very forceful assault on Sankara's Advaita theory. This assault anticipates in a striking way modern western attacks on metaphysical religious positions, attacks which stem from Hume and are associated today with names like A. J. Ayer and Antony Flew. In this paper I wish to argue that certain aspects of Sankara's position, as enunciated in his Brahma-sutra-bhasya, suggest that Ramanunja's assault, and therefore by implication a modern western attack on Sankara also, depends for its success on a misinterpretation of Sankara's views. I wish then to suggest a possible alternative interpretation of Sankara's Advaita in terms viable for today, drawing, though indirectly, on such writers as R. B. Braithwaite and R. M. Hare. An incidental implication of this paper is that these two philosophers of religion would meet less opposition from the religious if they were Hindu rather than Christian! A more important implication is that light could be thrown on the present religious controversy in the west by a study of Indian philosophy of religion, if only we were more disposed to treat it as a living tradition which might teach us something, rather than as an antique.
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References
page 59 note 1 Sacred Books of the East (SBE) Vol. XXXVIII, p. 165Google Scholar (commentary on 3.2.21).
page 61 note 1 S.B.E., Vol. XLVIII, p. 39 (I.I.I.).
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page 66 note 1 I am assuming that when we give expression to a value judgment or a moral commitment we are not primarily attempting to convey information: though, as with a religious utterance, a complex of factual assertions is usually presupposed or implied.
page 68 note 1 It is along there lines that I would answer Antony Flew when he says ‘I simply do not believe that they [religious utterances] are not both intended and interpreted to be or at any rate to presuppose assertions’. (New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Flew and MacIntyre, p. 108); and J. S. K. Ward when be quotes this sentence of Flew's and goes on to comment on it (Religious Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 461). It would require another article to do this answer justice, but I would note that I doubt either could be so confident about this if they had in mind a religious context wider than that of Christianity alone.