Śaṅkara · Philosophy Atlas

Intellectual setting

Śaṅkara worked in early medieval India, contending against rival interpretations of Vedānta such as Bhedābheda ("difference-and-non-difference"), against Sāṃkhya-Yoga dualism, and against Buddhist schools (Madhyamaka and Yogācāra) whose critiques of a permanent self his non-dualism had to answer. Traditional hagiographies, most notably Mādhava's later "Śaṅkara-Digvijaya," credit him with travelling and debating across the subcontinent and founding monastic institutions (maṭhas) at Śṛṅgeri, Dvārakā, Purī, and Jyotirmaṭh that helped institutionalize the Advaita tradition after his death.

Key ideas

Non-duality (advaita) of ātman and brahman

Śaṅkara taught that the innermost self (ātman) is identical to the impersonal, attributeless brahman, and that liberation (mokṣa) consists in directly recognizing this identity through knowledge (jñāna) rather than through ritual action or devotion alone.

Two standpoints and the doctrine of superimposition (adhyāsa)

He distinguished a conventional standpoint (vyavahāra), from which the world of difference, agency, and ritual duty operates as practically valid, from an ultimate standpoint (paramārtha) from which such difference is a superimposition (adhyāsa) of attributes onto the single reality of brahman - explaining the world's apparent plurality without granting it final reality.

Legacy

Advaita Vedānta became one of the most influential schools of classical Indian philosophy, shaping centuries of subsequent Vedāntic debate (including the rival theistic Vedānta of Rāmānuja and Madhva) and decisively influencing modern Hindu thought and neo-Vedānta, including nineteenth- and twentieth-century figures such as Vivekananda and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan who presented it to a global audience. The historical extent of Śaṅkara's authentic corpus, and the relationship between the legendary and historical Śaṅkara, remain subjects of ongoing scholarly research.

Scholarly notes

Dates and the attributed corpus · contested

Several different dates are ascribed to Śaṅkara. Early scholarship placed him at 788–820 CE, Nakamura argues for 700–750, and other reconstructions differ again. Hundreds of texts carry his name, but the authorship of most is questionable and they were likely composed later by monastic heads holding the Śaṅkarācārya title.

Connections

Influenced by Dharmakīrti (documented influence): Dharmakīrti is named with Vasubandhu among the Mahāyāna philosophers whose account of self-revealing cognition Śaṅkara criticises; the engagement is with named positions rather than with a school in general.

Influenced by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (documented influence): Kumārila's thought was decisively influential for the Advaita Vedānta of Śaṅkara, above all his defence of the intrinsic validity of cognition and of Vedic authority; Śaṅkara nevertheless rejects the ritual reading of the Veda that Mīmāṃsā exists to defend.

Influenced Madhva (documented influence): Madhva often vociferously attacked Śaṅkara's Advaita, reading the same Upaniṣads, Bhagavadgītā and Brahmasūtras to establish a difference between brahman and all else; his idiosyncratic rendering of tat tvam asi is the emblem of that reversal.

Influenced Rāmānuja (documented influence): Rāmānuja's Viśiṣṭādvaita is set out through negative criticism of Advaita Vedānta and of the Bhedābheda position closest to it, so Śaṅkara's monism supplies the argument he is answering; he is widely acknowledged as the most influential Vedāntin after Śaṅkara.

Influenced Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (documented influence): Radhakrishnan inherited a tacit acceptance of Śaṅkara's Advaita Vedānta from the smarta devotional milieu of his upbringing, and later wrote on intellect and intuition in Śaṅkara's philosophy; his restatement is addressed to an Anglophone audience and reads Advaita alongside Western idealism.

Influenced Vijñānabhikṣu (probable influence): Vijñānabhikṣu is the last major Bhedābheda thinker of pre-modern India, and Bhedābheda authors define themselves by refuting Advaita and calling Advaitins crypto-Buddhists; the entry places him in that line without setting out his own reading of Śaṅkara.

Influenced by Vasubandhu (documented influence): Śaṅkara argues explicitly against the Mahāyāna position, held by Vasubandhu among others, that a cognition can reveal itself and its object at once; the Buddhist idealism he attacks is close enough to his own nondualism that opponents later called Advaitins crypto-Buddhists.

Sources

Śaṅkara , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Classical Indian Philosophy , Coverage of Śaṅkara and the surrounding tradition, Oxford University Press

Library of Congress Name Authority File record n79073884 , Authorized and variant name forms, including original-script headings, Library of Congress