Who was Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan? Source: www. He was the second son of Veera Samayya, a tehsildar in a zamindari. In one of his major works he also showed that Indian philosophy, once translated into standard academic jargon, is worthy of being called philosophy by western standards. And so, he had earned lots of respect in Indian philosophy. And in when India became Independent, Dr. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly of India and later became the first Vice-President and finally the President of India from Amazing thing is that he was a very humble person.
When he became the President of India, Rashtrapati Bhavan was open for everyone and people from all sections of the society can meet him. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan passed away on 17 April, On this day, students look forward with a lot of anticipation, for the sheer spirit of the occasion. Acting as teachers, they get a fair idea of the responsibility, so efficiently burdened by their teachers. They bring gifts for their most admired teachers as well.
It is an equally special day for teachers, as they get to know how much they are liked and appreciated by their students. Are you worried or stressed? Click here for Expert Advice. Comment 2. First, it was here that Radhakrishnan was trained in European philosophy. Radhakrishnan was also introduced to the philosophical methods and theological views of his MA supervisor and most influential non-Indian mentor, Professor A.
Hogg was a Scottish Presbyterian missionary who was educated in the theology of Albrecht Ritschl and studied under the philosopher Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison. As a student of Arthur Titius, himself a student of Albrecht Ritschl, Hogg adopted the Ritschlian distinction between religious value judgments, with their emphasis on subjective perception, and theoretical knowledge, which seeks to discover the nature of ultimate reality.
Religious value judgments give knowledge which is different from, though not necessarily opposed to, theoretical knowledge. For Ritschl, and subsequently for Titius and Hogg, this distinction led to the conclusion that doctrines and scriptures are records of personal insights and are therefore necessary for religious, and specifically Christian, faith. Upon the completion of his MA degree in , Radhakrishnan found himself at both a financial and professional crossroads.
His obligations to his family precluded him from applying for a scholarship to study in Britain and he struggled without success to find work in Madras. The following year, with the assistance of William Skinner at Madras Christian College, Radhakrishnan was able to secure what was intended to be a temporary teaching position at Presidency College in Madras. At Presidency College, Radhakrishnan lectured on a variety of topics in psychology as well as in European philosophy.
As a junior Assistant Professor, logic, epistemology and ethical theory were his stock areas of instruction. At the College, Radhakrishnan also learned Sanskrit. During these years, Radhakrishnan was anxious to have his work published, not only by Indian presses but also in European journals. As well, his edited lecture notes on psychology were published under the title Essentials of Psychology. However, the security of a permanent academic post in Madras eluded him.
For three months in he was posted to Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, and in he was transferred yet again, this time to Rajahmundry. Only after spending a year in Rajahmundry did Radhakrishnan find some degree of professional security upon his acceptance of a position in philosophy at Mysore University.
This hiatus in his occupational angst would be short lived. His most prestigious Indian academic appointment to the George V Chair in Philosophy at Calcutta University in February of would take him out of South India for the first time only two and a half years later.
Between and , Radhakrishnan continued to publish. He authored eighteen articles, ten of which were published in prominent Western journals such as The International Journal of Ethics , The Monist , and Mind. Throughout these articles, Radhakrishnan took it upon himself to refine and expand upon his interpretation of Hinduism. There is a strong polemical tenor to many of these articles. Radhakrishnan was no longer content simply to define and defend Vedanta. In Calcutta, Radhakrishnan was for the first time out of his South Indian element — geographically, culturally, and linguistically.
However, the isolation Radhakrishnan experienced during his early years in Calcutta allowed him to work on his two volume Indian Philosophy, the first of which he began while in Mysore and published in and the second followed four years later. While Radhakrishnan enjoyed a growing scholarly repute, he was also confronted in Calcutta with growing conflict and confrontation. The Khalifat movement splintered the Indian Muslim community, and aggravated the growing animosity between its supporters and those, Muslim or otherwise, who saw it as a side issue to swaraj self-rule.
But the racial paternalism of the Simon Commission prompted a resurgence of nationalist sentiment. Indian political consensus, much less swaraj, proved elusive.
Communal division and power struggles on the part of Indians and a renewed conservatism in Britain crippled the London Round Table Conferences of the early s, reinforcing and perpetuating an already highly fragmented and politically volatile India. With the publication of An Idealist View of Life , Radhakrishnan had come into his own philosophically. Rather, a recognition of the creative potency of integral experience tempered by a critical scientific attitude was, Radhakrishnan believed, the only viable corrective to dogmatic claims of exclusivity founded on external, second-hand authority.
Moreover, while Hinduism Advaita Vedanta as he defined it best exemplified his position, Radhakrishnan claimed that the genuine philosophical, theological, and literary traditions in India and the West supported his position. Radhakrishnan was knighted in , the same year he took up his administrative post as Vice Chancellor at the newly founded, though scarcely constructed, Andhra University at Waltair.
Sir Radhakrishnan served there for five years as Vice Chancellor, when, in , not only did the university in Calcutta affirm his position in perpetuity but Oxford University appointed him to the H. Spalding Chair of Eastern Religions and Ethics.
The growing communalism Radhakrishnan had witnessed in the s was further intensified with the ideological flowering of the Hindu Mahasabha under the leadership of Bhai Parmanand and his heir V. This claim was given recognition at the Round Table Conferences in London early that decade.
If the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms had in the s served to fracture already fragile political alliances, its progeny as the Government of India Act with its promise for greater self-government further crowded the political stage and divided those groups struggling for their share of power. During these years, the spectrum of nationalist vision was as broad as Indian solidarity was elusive. The issues of education and nationalism come together for Radhakrishnan during this period.
For Radhakrishnan, a university education which quickened the development of the whole individual was the only responsible and practical means to the creation of Indian solidarity and clarity of national vision. Throughout the s and s, Radhakrishnan expressed his vision of an autonomous India. He envisioned an India built and guided by those who were truly educated, by those who had a personal vision of and commitment to raising Indian self-consciousness.
The closing years of the s were busy ones. Radhakrishnan saw during his terms in office an increasing need for world unity and universal fellowship. The urgency of this need was pressed home to Radhakrishnan by what he saw as the unfolding crises throughout the world. At the time of his taking up the office of Vice-President, the Korean war was already in full swing. Moreover, the Cold War divided East and West leaving each side suspicious of the other and on the defensive.
Radhakrishnan challenged what he saw as the divisive potential and dominating character of self-professed international organizations such as the League of Nations. Instead, he called for the promotion of a creative internationalism based on the spiritual foundations of integral experience. Only then could understanding and tolerance between peoples and between nations be promoted. Radhakrishnan retired from public life in He spent the last eight years of his life at the home he built in Mylapore, Madras.
Radhakrishnan died on April 17, Radhakrishnan located his metaphysics within the Advaita non-dual Vedanta tradition sampradaya. And like other Vedantins before him, Radhakrishnan wrote commentaries on the Prasthanatraya that is, main primary texts of Vedanta : the Upanisads , Brahma Sutra , and the Bhagavadgita As an Advaitin, Radhakrishnan embraced a metaphysical idealism.
Brahman is the source of the world and its manifestations, but these modes do not affect the integrity of Brahman. For Radhakrishnan, maya ought not to be understood to imply a strict objective idealism, one in which the world is taken to be inherently disconnected from Brahman, but rather maya indicates, among other things, a subjective misperception of the world as ultimately real. It begins with a general survey of the variety of terms as well as the characteristics Radhakrishnan associates with intuition.
It then details with how Radhakrishnan understands specific occurrences of intuition in relation to other forms of experience — cognitive, psychic, aesthetic, ethical, and religious. Radhakrishnan associates a vast constellation of terms with intuition. First, intuition is integral in the sense that it coordinates and synthesizes all other experiences. It integrates all other experiences into a more unified whole. Second, intuition is integral as it forms the basis of all other experiences.
In other words, Radhakrishnan holds that all experiences are at bottom intuitional. Third, intuition is integral in the sense that the results of the experience are integrated into the life of the individual. For Radhakrishnan, intuition finds expression in the world of action and social relations. As Radhakrishnan understands it, all progress is the result of the creative potency of intuition. For Radhakrishnan, intuition is a distinct form of experience. Intuition is of a self-certifying character svatassiddha.
It is sufficient and complete. Intuition entails pure comprehension, entire significance, complete validity IVL It is both truth-filled and truth-bearing IVL Intuition is its own cause and its own explanation IVL It is sovereign IVL Intuition is a positive feeling of calm and confidence, joy and strength IVL Intuition is profoundly satisfying IVL It is peace, power and joy IVL Intuition is the ultimate form of experience for Radhakrishnan.
It is ultimate in the sense that intuition constitutes the fullest and therefore the most authentic realization of the Real Brahman. The ultimacy of intuition is also accounted for by Radhakrishnan in that it is the ground of all other forms of experience. Intuition is a self-revelation of the divine. Intuitive experience is immediate. Intuition operates on a supra-conscious level, unmediated as it is by conscious thought.
One might object here that Radhakrishnan has conflated the experience itself with its subsequent interpretation and expression. Finally, intuition, according to Radhakrishnan, is ineffable. While the experience itself transcends expression, it also provokes it IVL The provocation of expression is, for Radhakrishnan, testimony to the creative impulse of intuition.
All creativity and indeed all progress in the various spheres of life is the inevitable result of intuition. Radhakrishnan recognizes three categories of cognitive experience: sense experience, discursive reasoning, and intuitive apprehension. For Radhakrishnan all of these forms of experience contribute, in varying degrees, to a knowledge of the real Brahman , and as such have their basis in intuition.
In this sense, sense perception may be considered intuitive, though Radhakrishnan does not explicitly describe it as such. Discursive reasoning, and the logical knowledge it produces, is subsequent to sensory experience perception.
There is a paradoxical element here. Radhakrishnan seems to be suggesting that the direct proximity to an external object one encounters in sense perception is compromised when the perception is interpreted and subsequently incorporated into a more systematic, though presumably higher, form of knowledge through discursive reasoning. For Radhakrishnan, discursive reasoning and the logical systems they construct possess an element of intuition.
Radhakrishnan argues against what he sees as the prevalent Western temptation to reduce the intuitive to the logical. While logic deals with facts already known, intuition goes beyond logic to reveal previously unseen connections between facts. Intuition not only clarifies the relations between facts and seemingly discordant systems, but lends itself to the discovery of new knowledge which then becomes an appropriate subject of philosophical inquiry and logical analysis.
Claiming to take his cue from his former adversary Henri Bergson, Radhakrishnan offers three explanations to account for the tendency to overlook the presence of intuition in discursive reasoning. First, Radhakrishnan claims, intuition presupposes a rational knowledge of facts. The successful practice of intuition requires previous study and assimilation of a multitude of facts and laws. Second, the intuitive element is often obscured in discursive reasoning because facts known prior to the intuition are retained, though they are synthesized, and perhaps reinterpreted, in light of the intuitive insight.
Finally, intuition in discursive reasoning is often overlooked, disguised as it is in the language of logic. In short, the intuitive is mistaken for the logical. Perhaps what Radhakrishnan means is that logic is the only valid means by which we are able to organize and systematize empirical facts. Conversely, Radhakrishnan offers a positive argument for the place of intuition in discursive reasoning.
A purely mechanical account of discursive reasoning ignores the inherently creative and dynamic dimension of intuitive insight. Intuition is not the end, but part of an ever-developing and ever-dynamic process of realization. Mere intuitions are blind while intellectual work is empty. All processes are partly intuitive and partly intellectual. Radhakrishnan accounts for such experiences in terms of a highly developed sensitivity to intuition.
Rather, they are the products of carefully controlled mental experiments. In fact, they are evidence of the remarkable heights to which the undeveloped, limited intellect is capable. They are, for Radhakrishnan, accomplishments rather than failures of human consciousness. However, the artistic experience should not be confused with its expression.
While the experience itself is ineffable, the challenge for the artist is to give the experience concrete expression. For Radhakrishnan, true art is an expression of the whole personality, seized as it was with the creative impulse of the universe. Artistic intuition mitigates and subdues rational reflection. For Radhakrishnan, artistic expression is dynamic. Having had the experience, the artist attempts to recall it.
The recollection of the intuition, Radhakrishnan believes, is not a plodding reconstruction, nor one of dispassionate analysis. To put the matter somewhat differently, the emotional vibrancy of the aesthetic experience gives one knowledge by being rather than knowledge by knowing IVL There is a concordance of agendas in art and science.
The artist is engaged in a similar task. Despite this synthetic impulse, Radhakrishnan is careful to explain that the two disciplines are not wholly the same. The difference turns on what he sees as the predominantly aesthetic and qualitative nature of artistic expression. Presumably, Radhakrishnan means that, unlike the universal laws with which science attempts to grapple, art is much more subjective, not in its creative origin, but in its expression.
The former is the language of mystery, of devotion, of religion. For Radhakrishnan, ethical experiences are profoundly transformative. The experience resolves dilemmas and harmonizes seemingly discordant paths of possible action. For Radhakrishnan, an ethical transformation of the kind brought about by intuition is akin to religious growth and heightened realization. Of course, not all ethical decisions or actions possess the quality of being guided by an intuitive impulse.
Radhakrishnan willingly concedes that the vast majority of moral decisions are the result of conformity to well-established moral codes. However, it is in times of moral crisis that the creative force of ethical intuitions come to the fore.
The sound player has a sense of right and feels that, if he does not follow it, he will be false to himself. By definition, moral actions are socially rooted. As such the effects of ethical intuitions are played out on the social stage. There is a sense of urgency, if not inevitability, about this. The impulse to share the moral insight provides an opportunity to test the validity of the intuition against reason. The moral hero, as Radhakrishnan puts it, does not live by intuition alone. The intuitive experience, while it is the creative guiding impulse behind all moral progress, must be checked and tested against reason.
Those whose lives are profoundly transformed and who are guided by the ethical experience are, for Radhakrishnan, moral heroes. In a sense, there is very much an art and science to ethical living. Like the artist, the moral hero does not turn his back on the world. Radhakrishnan believes that ethical intuitions at their deepest transcend conventional and mechanically constructed ethical systems. The contribution of ethically realized individuals is their promotion of moral progress in the world.
For the sake of clarity, we must at the outset make a tentative distinction between religious experience on the one hand and integral experience on the other. At its most basic, religions, for Radhakrishnan, represent the various interpretations of experience, while integral experience is the essence of all religions.
But the interpretations should not be confused with the experiences themselves. For Radhakrishnan, the creeds and theological formulations of religion are but intellectual representations and symbols of experience. It follows here that religious experiences are, for Radhakrishnan, context relative and therefore imperfect. They are informed by and experienced through specific cultural, historical, linguistic and religious lenses. Because of their contextuality and subsequent intellectualization, experiences in the religious sphere are limited.
Radhakrishnan is explicit and emphatic in his view that religious intuition is a unique form of experience. Religious intuition is more than simply the confluence of the cognitive, aesthetic, and ethical sides of life. However vital and significant these sides of life may be, they are but partial and fragmented constituents of a greater whole, a whole which is experienced in its fullness and immediacy in religious intuition.
Philosophical, artistic, and ethical values of truth, beauty, and goodness are not known through the senses or by reason. Are you worried or stressed? Click here for Expert Advice. Comment 0. Post Comment. Disclaimer: Comments will be moderated by Jagranjosh editorial team. Comments that are abusive, personal, incendiary or irrelevant will not be published. Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name, to avoid rejection. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan: He was a philosopher, author, and the second President of India.
His birthday is celebrated as Teachers Day across the country. Let us have a look at some interesting facts about Dr. This website uses cookie or similar technologies, to enhance your browsing experience and provide personalised recommendations. By continuing to use our website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy. Home 20 Trending Quiz Feedback Add to home. Why is Teachers Day celebrated on 5th September?
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