S.Radhakrishnan. The True Philosopher Son of India.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. (1888-1975)

A philosopher and a statesman, he was the first Vice President and the second President
of India after Dr.Rajinder Prasad.

His Birthday 5th September is being celebrated as Teacher’s Day.
He was awarded with Bharat Ratna, the highest Indian award in 1954.
He had his early education in Tamilnadu.
In 1918 he was appointed as a professor of Philosophy in Mysore University.
His first book was “Philosophy of Rabindra Nath Tagore.”
He believed Tagore’s philosophy to be the genuine manifestation of Indian Spirit.

He wrote books on Indian Philosophy according to western academic standards
and compelled the rigid western philosophers to give serious consideration
to the Indian Philosophy.

In his book “Idealistic view of life”, he made a
powerful case for the importance of intuitive thinking as opposed to purely
intellectual norms of Thought.

He is well-known for his commentaries on “Prasthana Trayi” namely the Bhagvata Gita, Upanishads and Brahma Sutras.

“It is not God that is worshipped, but the authority who claims to speak in His name.
Sin becomes dis-obedience to authority and not violation of Integrity.”

As a philosopher, and statesman, he was one of the most recognized and influential Indian thinkers in academic circles in the 20th century. He sought to define, defend, and promulgate our religion, a religion he variously identified as Vedanta, and the religion of the Spirit. He sought to demonstrate that Hinduism was both philosophically coherent and ethically viable.

His concern for experience and his extensive knowledge of the Western philosophical and literary traditions has earned him the reputation of being a bridge-builder between India and the West. He often appears to feel at home in the Indian as well as the Western philosophical contexts, and he has been held up in academic circles as a representative of Hinduism to the West. His lengthy writing career and his many published works have been influential in shaping the West’s understanding of Hinduism, India, and Indians.


“Hinduism, accepts all religious notions as facts and arranges them in the order of their more or less intrinsic significance”
“The worshippers of the Absolute are the highest in rank; second to them are the worshippers of the personal God; then come the worshippers of the incarnations like Rama, Krishna, Buddha; below them are those who worship ancestors, deities and sages, and the lowest of all are the worshippers of the petty forces and spirits”
He uses his distinctions between experience and interpretation, between religion and religions, to correlate his brand of Hinduism that is, Advaita, Vedanta with religion itself.
“Religion, a kind of life of experience.”
It is an insight into the nature of reality, or experience of reality. It is “a specific attitude of the self, itself and not other.” In a short, he characterizes religion in terms of “personal experience.” It is “an independent functioning of the human mind, something unique, possessing and autonomous in character. It is something inward and personal which unifies all values and organizes all experiences. It is the reaction to the whole of man to the whole of reality. It may be called spiritual life, as distinct from a merely intellectual or moral or aesthetic activity or a combination of them.”
For him, integral intuitions are the authority for, and the soul of, religion. Personal intuitive experience and inner realization are the defining features of Advaita, Vedanta, and those same features are the “authority” and “soul” of religion.
“The Vedanta is not a religion, but a creed itself in its most universal and deepest significance.”
Hinduism at its Vedantic best is religion. Other religions, are subordinate forms of Hinduism, are interpretations of Advaita Vedanta . Religion and religions are experience and interpretation. The various religions are merely interpretations of Vedanta.

In a sense, he “Hinduizes” all religions. “We have spiritual facts and their interpretations by which they are communicated to others, śhruti or what is heard, and smṛiti or what is remembered. Śaṅkara equates them with pratyakṣa or intuition and anumana or inference. It is the distinction between immediacy and thought. Intuitions abide, while interpretations change.”
The apologetic force of this brief statement is clear. The intuitive, experiential immediacy of Advaita Vedanta is the genuine authority for all religions, and all religions interpretations derive from and must ultimately refer to Advaita, Vedanta .
“While the experiential character of religion is emphasized in the Hindu faith, every religion at its best falls back on it.”


“While no tradition coincides with experience, every tradition is essentially unique and valuable. While all traditions are of value, none is finally binding.”
Moreover, the value of each religion is determined by its proximity to his understanding of Vedanta.
Hinduism, is a scientific religion. “If philosophy of religion is to become scientific, it must become empirical and found itself on religious experience.”
True religion, remains open to experience and encourages an experimental attitude with regard to its experiential data. Hinduism more than any other religion exemplifies this scientific attitude.

“The Hindu philosophy of religion starts from and returns to an experiential basis.”
“Unlike other religions, which set limits on the types of spiritual experience, the Hindu thinker readily admits of other points of view than its own, and considers them to be just as worthy of attention.”

What sets Hinduism apart from other religions is its unlimited appeal to and appreciation for all forms of experience. Experience and experimentation are the origin and end of Hinduism.
A scientific attitude has been the hallmark of Hinduism throughout its history.
“The truths of the rishis are not evolved as the result of logical reasoning or systematic philosophy but are the products of spiritual intuition, vision. They are not so much the authors of the truths recorded in the Vedas as the seers who were able to discern the eternal truths by raising their life-spirit to the plane of universal spirit. They are the pioneer researchers in the realm of the spirit who saw more in the world than their followers. Their utterances are not based on transitory vision but on a continuous experience of resident life and power. When the Vedas are regarded as the highest authority all that is meant is that the most exacting of all authorities is the authority of facts.”




If the ancient seers are, “pioneer researchers,” the Upanishads are the records of their experiments. “The chief sacred scriptures of the Hindus, the Vedas register the intuitions of the perfected souls. They are not so much dogmatic dicta as transcripts from life. They record the spiritual experiences of souls strongly endowed with the sense of reality. They are held to be authoritative on the ground that they express the experiences of the experts in the field of religion.”
His understanding of scripture as the scientific records of spiritual insights holds not only for Hinduism, but for all religious creeds. Correctly understood, the various scriptures found in the religions of the world are not an infallible revelation, but scientific hypotheses.

“The creeds of religion correspond to theories of science. “Intuitions of the human soul should be studied by the methods which are adopted with such great success of a positive science.” The records of religious experience, of integral intuitions, that are the world’s scriptures constitute the “facts” of the religious endeavour. So, “just as there can be no geometry without the perception of space, even so there cannot be philosophy of religion without the facts of religion.”
Religion is there for the testing. It ought not to be taken as authoritative in and of itself, for only integral intuitions validated by the light of reason are the final authority on religious matters.

“It is for philosophy of religion to find out whether the convictions of the religious seers fit in with the tested laws and principles of the universe.”

“When the prophets reveal in symbols the truths they have discovered, we try to rediscover them for ourselves slowly and patiently.”



The scientific temperament demanded by “Hinduism” lends itself to affirmation of the advaitic Absolute. The plurality of religious claims ought to be taken as “tentative and provisional, not because there is no absolute, but because there is one. The intellectual lot become barriers to further insights if they get hardened into articles of faith and forget that they are constructed theories of experience.”
The marginalization of intuition and the abandonment of the experimental attitude in matters of religion has lead Christianity to dogmatic status.

“It is an unfortunate legacy of the course which Christian theology has followed in Europe that faith has come to connote a mechanical adherence to authority. If we take faith in the proper sense of truth or spiritual conviction, religion is faith or intuition.”
The religious cul de sac in which Europe and Christian theology find themselves testifies to their reluctance to embrace the Hindu maxim that “theory, speculations, dogma change from time to time as the facts become better understood.”
For the value of religious “facts” can only be assessed “from their adequacy to experience.”
Just as the intellect has dominated Western philosophy to the detriment of intuition, so too has Christianity followed suit in its search for a theological touchstone in scripture.

His appeal to institutions underlies his vision for an ethical Hinduism, Hinduism free from ascetic excesses. The ethical potency of institution affirms the validity of the world. “Asceticism is an excess indulged in by those who exaggerate the transcendent aspect of reality.” Instead, the rational mystic “does not recognize any antithesis between the secular and the sacred. Nothing is to be rejected; everything is to be raised.”
His ethical mystic does not simply see the inherent value of the world and engage in its affairs. Rather, the ethical individual is guided by an intuitive initiative to move the world forward creatively, challenging convention and established patterns of social interaction. This ethically integrated mode of being presents a positive challenge to moral dogmatism. The positive challenge to moral convention is the creative promotion of social tolerance and accommodation. Hinduism rejects absolute claims to truth and the validity of external authority, so too Hinduism “developed an attitude of comprehensive charity instead of a fanatic faith in an inflexible creed.”

He affirms that the caste system, correctly understood, is an exemplary case of ethical tolerance and accommodation born out of an intuitive consciousness of reality.

“The institution of caste illustrates the spirit of comprehensive synthesis characteristic of the Hindu mind with its faith in the collaboration of races and the co-operation of cultures. Paradoxical as it may seem, the system of caste is the outcome of tolerance and trust.”

Based not on the mechanical fatalism of karma, as suggested by Hinduism’s critics, but on recognition of Hinduism’s spiritual values and ethical ideals, caste affirms the value of each individual to work out his or her own spiritual realization, a spiritual consciousness, in terms of integral experience. The ranking of religions as affirming the relative value of each religion in terms of its proximity to Vedanta, the institution of caste is a social recognition that each member of society has the opportunity to experiment with his or her own spiritual consciousness free from dogmatic restraints.
Here lies the ethical potency and creative genius of integral experience. Caste is the creative innovation of those “whose lives are characterized by an unshakable faith in the supremacy of the spirit, invincible optimism, ethical universalism, and religious toleration.”

There are numerous criticisms that may be raised against his philosophy.
What follows is not an exhaustive list, but three of the most common criticisms which may be levied are:
The first is a criticism regarding the locus of epistemic authority. Does the test for knowledge lie in scripture or in experience? His view is that knowledge comes from intuitive experience (anubhava). he makes this claim on the basis of scripture, namely the Upaniṣads. The Upaniṣads, according to him, support a monistic ontology.
He makes this claim on the basis that the Upaniṣads are the records of the personal experiences of the ancient sages. Thus, the validity of one’s experience is determined by its proximity to that which is recorded in the Upaniṣads. Conversely, the Upaniṣads are authoritative because they are the records of monistic experiences. There is circularity here. But this circularity is one with which he himself would likely not only acknowledge, but embrace. After all, he might argue, intuitive knowledge is non-rational. An intuitive experience of Reality is not contrary to reason but beyond the constraints of logical analysis.



A second criticism of his views surrounds his characterizations of the “East” and the “West.” He characterizes the West, as well as Christianity, as inclined to dogmatism, the scientific method whose domain is limited to exploration of the outer natural world, and a reliance upon second-hand knowledge. The East, by contrast, is dominated by openness to inner experience and spiritual experimentation. The West is rational and logical, while the East is predominantly religious and mystical. As pointed out by numerous scholars working in the areas of post-colonial studies and orientalism,
His constructions of “West” and “East” (these categories themselves being constructions) accept and perpetuate orientalist and colonialist forms of knowledge constructed during the 18th and 19th centuries. Arguably, these characterizations are “imagined” in the sense that they reflect the philosophical and religious realities of neither “East” nor “West.”

A separate but related criticism that might be levied against his views has to do with his theory of religious pluralism and his treatment of the religious traditions with which he deals.
First, he minimizes the contributions of the monistic philosophers and religious mystics of the West. While he acknowledges the work of such thinkers as Henri Bergen, Goethe, and a variety of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim mystics, he seems to imply that such approaches to religious and philosophical life in the West are exceptions rather than the rule. In fact, he goes to suggest that such figures are imbued with the spirit of the East, and specifically Hinduism as he understands it.
Second, while he readily acknowledges the religious diversity within “Hinduism,” his treatment of Western traditions is much less nuanced. In a sense, he homogenizes and generalizes Western traditions. In his hierarchy of religions, one or another form of Hinduism may be located within each of his religious categories monistic, theistic, incarnation, ancestral, and natural. By contrast, he seems to imply that the theistic and the incarnation categories are the domains of Unitarian and Trinitarian Christianity respectively.