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S. Radhakrishnan: ‘Saving the Appearances’ in East-West Academy

Article  in  Sophia · March 2019

DOI: 10.1007/s11841-018-0691-4

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12/6/2018 S. Radhakrishnan: ‘Saving the Appearances’ in East-West Academy | SpringerLink

S. Radhakrishnan: ‘Saving the
Appearances’ in East­West Academy
Sophia

pp 1–17 | Cite as

Purushottama Bilimoria (1) (2) Email author (pb1@unimelb.edu.au)

1. School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne, , Melbourne,

Australia
2. Dharma Studies, Graduate Theological Union and UC: Berkeley, , Berkeley, USA

Article
First Online: 04 December 2018

5 Downloads

Abstract

Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, clearly one of the early modern doyens of Indian
Philosophy, remained much enamored of Western thought—of which he took the ancient
to classical tradition as his model—and he spent a good part of his speculative life
attempting to reconfigure Indian thought to fit the vesture, maybe the toga, of his Greek
heroes, namely Plato and Plotinus, and to an extent of Hegelianism that came across via
F. H. Bradley: Occidental in form, and Indian in content. (Incidentally, an adage or
motto that was also used to ground modernism in Indian art.) It was as if this ‘fusion’ or
‘harmonization’ was easy of making without compromising what since Max Müller has
come to be called ‘Indian Philosophy’ (a trope coined to mimic the dominant movement
of Western or Occidental Philosophy). The paper intends to demonstrate this worrisome
yet compelling motif by advancing an analysis of certain representative texts and
arguments from Radhakrishnan’s prolific writing on Indian Philosophy and East-West
Thinking; particularly as these relate to the question of the ‘appearances’
(māyā/avidyā), their alignment with Platonic ‘shadows,’ while finding their redemption
in the realism propelled by modern empirical science (that was taken to be coterminous
with scientific realism). The paper traces the justification for Radhakrishnan’s variegated
moves to ‘save the appearances’ through his strained reading of the Upaniṣadic texts and
under-standing of Śaṅkara’s nondualism, leading to the argument that although the
world is brought about by māyā, it is not an illusion or nonexistent, or unhinged from
the Absolute, but rather naïvely real. There may have been a supplementary political
motivation as well inspired by the burgeoning nationalist spirit, after Gandhi, and the
need for India to become culturally and morally strong in its own terms (svadeshi
svarāj).

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Keywords
Radhakrishnan  Twentieth century Indian philosophy  Plato  Neoplatonism 
Upaniṣads  Śaṅkara  Appearances  Māyā  Avidyā  Brahman  Idealism  Realism 

The present paper is a revised and updated version of an earlier publication: ‘Saving the
Appearance in Plato’s Academy.’ In Rama Rao Pappu (ed.). New Essays in the
Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Delhi: Indian Books Centre, 1995, pp. 327–
344.

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Notes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for Sophia whose constructive comments have
helped improve the current reworking over the earlier (rather defective) version; and of
course, more literature has come to light since then on Radhakrishnan, philosophy in
colonial India, imperial idealism, and the ‘Scientific Temper.’ I also thank my colleague
and co-editor of Sophia, Mr Patrick Hutchings Esquire, with whom I have had hearty
conversations about Hegel, Neoplatonism, and Radhakrishnan; indeed, Mr Hutchings
during a visit to (then dry) India a good while back happened to be a guest at the abode of
the then President, who personally saw to it that Mr Hutchings, no tea-tootler himself,
got served the best vodka from Moscow—by none other than Dr Radhakrishnan himself:
“Thank you, Shri President Sahib; you must have known this Irishman was thirsty!”

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