Hinduism the group of religious and philosophical traditions of India that accept the doctrinal authority of the Vedas and Upanishads, comprising the schools Mimamsa, Sankhya-Yoga, Nyaya-Vaishesika, and Vedanta (six in number, with the connection within pairs of schools, indicated by hyphenation, based on historical and conceptual linkages). Most of the standard issues in Greco-European philosophy receive independent discussion in classical Indian thought. Perhaps the closest Indian term to ‘philosophy’ is darsana (seeing); the goal of philosophy is typically taken to be not simply understanding, but enlightenment (moksha), which involves escape from the reincarnation cycle and from karma. All of the orthodox schools formally accept the doctrines that the individual Atman beginninglessly transmigrates from body to body unless it attains enlightenment and that in each lifetime the Atman acts and hence accumulates consequences of its actions that will accrue to it in future lifetimes (karma), though some schools (notably Advaita Vedanta) hold metaphysical views that radically alter any meaning that the doctrines of transmigration and karma can have. The ‘seeing’ typically involves embracing the content of the sacred texts and being transformed by it. In the same general cultural and intellectual context as Hinduism, Carvaka rejects any such notion of philosophy, and Jainism, Buddhism, and some varieties of Hinduism reject monotheism though all but Carvaka accept some sort of religious perspective and center on some notion of enlightenment. Metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and ethics are richly represented in Hinduism. As is typical in Greco-European philosophy, apart from (e.g.) some of the medieval Scholastics and contemporary symbolic logicians, study of deductive inference and probability is not sharply distinguished from epistemology, though in Hinduism it is typically marked off from psychological considerations. There are debates about the success of natural theology, with versions (e.g.) of teleological and contingency arguments and discussions of the problem of evil, the latter typically being related to a consideration of justice and karma. Monotheistic views typically regard the world as everlastingly dependent on Brahman rather than as having been created after a period in which nothing dependent existed or as a condition of there being time at all. Typically, the universe is seen as oscillating between states in which atoms have come together into bodies that provide embodiment for transmigrating souls and states in which atoms come apart and souls remain inactive. Disputes occur concerning the nature of persons and personal identity, pluralism versus monism, and a personal Deity versus an Absolute. Advaita Vedanta apparently holds that it is logically impossible for B to depend upon A and for B also to be an individual distinct from A, whereas the other varieties of Vedanta hold (in different ways) that dependence does not rule out distinct individuality. The former assumption is compatible with (though it does not entail) monism and the latter allows for (but does not require) monotheism. There are pluralistic (thus non-monistic) schools that are not monotheistic. Schools differ about whether the variety of conscious and self-conscious states belongs intrinsically to souls or only to soul-body composites; those holding the former view think of persons or minds as transmigrating from life to life, whereas those holding the latter view have a thinner notion of the traveler. There are debates among schools of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism over whether a substantival or an event or state account of persons and objects is more defensible. For some schools, immaterial souls and material atoms exist both beginninglessly and independently. For others they exist beginninglessly and dependently. For still others, no such things exist at all.
Epistemology, logic, and philosophy of language flourish. Questions concerning evidence are discussed along the lines of what counts as a valid source of knowledge (e.g., perception, inference, testimony). Indian grammarians developed techniques of reducing complex expressions to simple ones and developed a use–mention distinction. Mimamsa philosophers were concerned with the logical analysis of prescriptions. Vaishesika thinkers were concerned to classify the meanings of words, offering the categories of substance, quality, action, universal, ultimate difference, inherence, and absence, and found the result of both logical and ontological significance.
Ethics is also richly represented, typically within a perspective in which the highest good (moksha, enlightenment) is viewed as escape from the beginningless cycle of rebirth and the clutches of karma, with the content of the highest good being very diversely conceived. Sometimes enlightenment is conceived as involving retention of personal identity, sometimes as involving loss thereof; sometimes a view is held that denies that there is anything to preserve. Thus moral philosophy is typically done in the light of explicitly religious, or at least metaphysical, doctrines. The Carvaka perspectives, at least as interpreted by their opponents, either accept hedonism or eschew ethics entirely. For some metaphysical and religious views, morality has to do only with those activities that one must engage in or refuse to engage in to achieve an enlightenment that contains no moral component and perhaps involves nothing along the lines of one’s identity as a person; in such contexts, moral values serve religious values that themselves contain no moral element. In other perspectives, the status of persons is such that their continued existence as distinct persons is required in order for enlightenment to occur and moral elements enter intrinsically into the nature of the highest good. The classical Hindu philosopher typically in effect accepts some such proposition as the following: The Hindu scriptures contain the truth about the nature of what is ultimately real, about the nature of the human self, and about how to obtain the highest good. Some critics – including Indian unorthodox materialists – argue that there cannot be any genuine philosophy in Hinduism. (Similar questions are raised concerning Jewish, Christian, and Muslim medieval philosophers.) The acceptance of the indicated proposition does not tell one what the truth about ultimate reality, the self, or the highest good is; various quite different accounts of these matters are presented within the Hindu scriptures. This creates a problem: since the texts are authoritative their teachings must be true. Inconsistent propositions cannot be true; showing that your opponent’s views are self-contradictory is a refutation within philosophical Hinduism as much as in Anglo-American analytic circles. Hence the teachings of the texts must be consistent, and so not everything in them can be read literally. In sum, it is not obvious what in the authoritative texts is to be read literally and what non-literally, but since patently contradictory doctrines are offered if one reads everything literally, something must be read non-literally (or as provisional, the best that some people can understand until they become more capable). Thus if one accepts the indicated proposition one must decide which of the textual accounts is the right one – the one ex hypothesi intended by the texts to be taken as their literal doctrine. Deciding this typically is not a matter of simple exegesis. Thus one must decide what grounds are required in order to establish that it is one rather than another of these views that is intended literally. Often the de facto answer is that the intended view is the true view, with the issue as to which view is true being decided in substantial part by reference to reason and experience and by ‘how the argument goes.’ Further, the views presented in the authoritative text, once one has decided what they literally are, will likely have various philosophical implications. (For example, perhaps surprisingly, Ramanuja’s theory of perceptual error relates intimately to his views on the divine attributes.) Some of these implications may seem false, and if this happens there is a modus tollens consideration that leads to asking again what the text really means. But even if no such consideration arises, the philosophical implications of a position are likely themselves to need explication if they are to be clearly understood.
In Hinduism philosophy typically is done in a commentarial setting, though (as in European medieval contexts) once the commentator is doing philosophy he often goes on to topics very far indeed from the views discussed in the texts. Of course, the more wide-ranging a commentary is, the less unnatural it is that a commentary on that commentary be even more wide-ranging; thus a relatively independent philosophical tradition arises. The result is a very considerable body of philosophical literature and tradition in India that can be approached without assuming anything about the indicated proposition, one way or another.
See also ATMAN, BRAHMAN, KARMA, UPAN- ISHADS , VEDA. K.E.Y.