Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism

by Swami Medhananda

Swami Vivekananda, the nineteenth-century Hindu monk who introduced Vedanta to the West, is undoubtedly one of modern India's most influential philosophers. Unfortunately, his philosophy has too often been interpreted through reductive hermeneutic lenses. Typically, scholars have viewed him either as a modern-day exponent of Sankara's Advaita Vedanta or as a "Neo-Vedantin" influenced more by Western ideas than indigenous Indian traditions. In Swami Vivekananda's Ved?ntic Cosmopolitanism, Swami Medhananda rejects these prevailing approaches to offer a new interpretation of Vivekananda's philosophy, highlighting its originality, contemporary relevance, and cross-cultural significance. Vivekananda, the book argues, is best understood as a cosmopolitan Vedantin who developed novel philosophical positions through creative dialectical engagement with both Indian and Western thinkers.

Inspired by his guru Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda reconceived Advaita Vedanta as a nonsectarian, life-affirming philosophy that provides an ontological basis for religious cosmopolitanism and a spiritual ethics of social service. He defended the scientific credentials of religion while criticizing the climate of scientism beginning to develop in the late nineteenth century. He was also one of the first philosophers to defend the evidential value of supersensuous perception on the basis of general epistemic principles. Finally, he adopted innovative cosmopolitan approaches to long-standing philosophical problems. Bringing him into dialogue with numerous philosophers past and present, Medhananda demonstrates the sophistication and enduring value of Vivekananda's views on the limits of reason, the dynamics of religious faith, and the hard problem of consciousness.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion

428 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 18, 2021

Reviews

[Anmol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is groundbreaking work, demonstrating how unduly neglected Vivekananda's lectures have been over the past century in terms of their philosophical depth. Vivekananda is often, unfortunately, dismissed as a product of either the late-nineteenth century American obsession with Oriental spiritualism in the West, or as a proto-nationalist spiritual/social reformer in his own homeland. Rejecting all such preconceived categories in which Vivekananda could be conveniently pigeonholed (perhaps Hindutva-vadi is also the newest erroneous category to force him in), Medhananda conceives Vivekananda in the way that every philosopher worth reading should be: as contributing to ongoing debates in contemporary philosophy in an original manner. Throughout this detailed and sharply argued work, Medhananda demonstrates that Vivekananda was ultimately a "Vedantic cosmopolitan": an independent synthesiser of East and West, and not a slave to the prevailing thought-currents of either side, either spiritualism or scientism. Above all, one can gauge the effort of the author in citing extensively from the 9 volumes of Vivekananda's Collected Works passages which apply directly to contemporary philosophical issues on the epistemology of spiritual experience and the hard problem of consciousness - this scholarly effort would ultimately be an offering to Vivekananda himself.

[Sanjay Banerjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book that I have read to understand Swami Vivekanand’s approach to religion at some level of detail. I had been intending to do so for sometime in the context of the current situation prevailing in the country where Modi and his party have been trying to highlight that their outlook of society and religion is in line with the thoughts and preachings of saints like Swami Vivekanand - a propaganda which appeared to intuitively appear to me to be not so. Swami Medhananda’s book is a great analytical study of the original a philosophy of Swami Vivekananda who was a preacher, mystic, orator and a cosmopolitan Vedantist. It is a pity that politicians (politics is in any case the last resort of a scoundrel), who would do well to emulate his teachings, are pursuing their narrow and divisive agenda unlike his teaching.

[Sachin Raj]

Academic Pratap Bhanu Mehta chose this book as his book of the year, calling it the best study of one of the most influential figures in modern India.