Dr Radhakrishnan's contribution to Indian Philosophy: Teacher's Day Special

Dr Sarvapelli Radhakrishnan, whose birthday we celebrate as Teacher’s Day, was a philosopher, academician, politician, the first Vice President of India and the second President of India. He was confereed Bharat Ratna in the year 1954. Born in 1888, in the town of Thiruttani in Tamil Nadu, Dr Radhakrishnan wrote his thesis on Comparative Religion and defended Indian Philosophy against uninformed Western Critics.
Based on Sanskrit sources, he wrote two volumes on Indian Philosophy, a humongous work that continued to educate and inform generations of philosophers in India. Such a standard encyclopedia of Indian Philosophy requires not only special aptitude and absolute devotion, but also wide culture and intelligent cooperation. This book professes to be a general survey of Indian thought and follows the footsteps of Madhavacharya’s Sarvadarshanasamgraha. It has exposition of ‘Six systems of Indian philosophy, namely, Vaisesika, Nyaya, Yoga, Samkhya, Poorva Mimansa and Vedanta followed by a chapter on Shaiva, Sakta and later Vaishnava theistic schools, capped by a brilliantly written concluding chapter. Three chapters are devoted to Vedanta: One on Vedantasutra, and other two on Advaita Vedanata of Sankaracharya and the theism of Ramanuja, respectively.
The term for Indian Philosophy, “darshana” comes from the word drush, to see. This seeing may be either perceptual observation or conceptual knowledge or intuitional experience. It may be inspection of facts, logical inquiry or insight of soul. Darsanas so applies to all views of reality taken by the mind of man. A darshana is a spiritual perception, a whole view revealed to the soul sense. So, the highest triumphs of philosophy are possible only to those who have achieved in themselves a purity of soul. This purity is based upon a profound acceptance of experience, realized only when some point of hidden strength within man, from which he can not only inspect but comprehend life, is found. From this inner source, the philosopher reveals to us the truth of life. The vision is produced almost as naturally as a fruit from a flower out of the mysterious centre where all experience is reconciled.
Indian philosophical systems are completely free from traditional religion and bias. The Samkhya is silent
about the existence of God, though certain of its theoretical indemonstrability. Vaisesika and Yoga,
while they admit a supreme being, do not consider him to be the creator of the universe, and Jaimini
refers to God only to deny his providence and moral government of the world. The early Buddhist
systems are known to be indifferent to God, and we have also the materialist Carvakas, who deny God,
ridicule the priests, revile the Vedas and seek salvation in pleasure. The supremacy of religion and of
social traditions in life does not hamper the free pursuit of philosophy. That is why the heretic, the
sceptic, the unbeliever, the rationalist and the freethinker, the materialist and the hedonist all flourish in
the soil of India. The Mahabharat says: ‘There is no Muni who has not an opinion of his own.’
Yet the uninformed Western critic has many points of criticism against Indian Philosophy, viz, It is
pessimistic, dogmatic, indifferent and even unprogressive. To this, Dr Radhakrishnan has answered that
Indian thinkers are pessimistic in so far as they look upon the world order as evil and a lie; they are
optimistic since they feel that there is a way out of it into the realm of truth which is also goodness. It is
in accordance with the spirit of Indian culture to think that the several currents of thought flowing in its
soil will discharge their waters into the one river whose flood shall make for the City of God.
From the beginning, the Indian felt that truth was many sided,
and different views contained different aspects of truth which no one could fully express. He was
therefore tolerant and receptive of other views. He was fearless in accepting even dangerous doctrines
so long as they were backed up by logic. He would not allow to die, if he could help it, one jot or title of
the tradition but would try to accommodate it all.
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