Aleksandar Uskokov: Deciphering the Hidden Meaning, Gebunden

Klappentext

Deciphering the Hidden Meaning presents a transformative history of one of the most significant ideas in Indian philosophy: liberation. Taking the great philosopher äkara as the focal point, Aleksandar Uskokov analyzes the relationship between liberation, language, and scripture.

While modern portraits of äkara often cast him as a mystic or a religious reformer, the book paints a more complex portrait of the historical äkara. As a theologian of liberation, äkara was a maverick within the prevailing Brahmanical ideology of his time. In an intellectual landscape dominated by Mms ritualists and Vedntic practitioners of meditation, äkara introduced a radical claim: that the parä reyas ("highest good") is attained not through action, ritual, or prolonged meditation, but through the immediate, intellectual understanding of the Upaniadic identity statements. Uskokov shows that the birth of the mah-vkya or "great statement"--such as tat tvam asi ("You are That")--was not the work of äkara himself, but rather his tenth-century follower Sarvajñtman who used the structural logic of the Mms school. The book meticulously traces the evolution of this soteriological model, exploring how early Advaitins navigated complex debates over language, ritual causality, and the nature of the Self. In doing so, it argues that äkara's most significant contribution was his intervention against Vedic theologians who viewed scripture as a guide for action and meditation rather than primarily informative.

An open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence.