Vishishtadvaita Vedanta

The claim

Brahman is the only reality, and selves and matter are real modes of it — genuinely distinct as a body is distinct from its soul, and genuinely inseparable for the same reason.

What it held

Ramanuja's objection to Advaita is that it makes the world's reality depend on ignorance, and then cannot say whose ignorance it is. If there is only Brahman, and Brahman is pure awareness, ignorance has no possible location. He sets out seven objections along these lines, and Advaitins have been answering them ever since.

His alternative keeps non-dualism and drops the illusion. There is one reality, but it has parts that are genuinely different from each other while being inseparable from the whole — as a body is from the soul that animates it. That analogy does the entire metaphysical work: a body is not the soul, is not independent of it, and is not unreal.

The consequence for religious life is decisive. If selves are real and permanently distinct, devotion is not a preliminary stage to be discarded on the way to identity. A relationship needs two parties, and Ramanuja's system guarantees them. That is why this became the philosophy of a major devotional tradition and Advaita did not.

He also argues that pure undifferentiated being is not a possible object of knowledge at all — every cognition is of something as something.

How it argued

Commentary on the Brahma Sutras written explicitly against Shankara's, with a sustained epistemological attack on the possibility of the Advaitin's undifferentiated Brahman.

What it was arguing against

Advaita, at every point, and especially on maya and on the locus of ignorance. Also Sāṃkhya's independent matter and Nyaya's God who is external to the world.

Where it disagreed with itself

Whether the body-soul analogy really preserves both difference and non-difference or quietly favours one. The later Tenkalai and Vadakalai split over whether grace requires any effort at all — the cat carrying its kitten, or the monkey's baby holding on.

Common misconceptions

That it is a devotional softening of Advaita. It is a technical philosophical position with a developed epistemology, and its objections to Advaita are arguments rather than preferences.

How it began

Ramanuja inherited a Tamil devotional tradition and a Sanskrit philosophical one and had to make them speak to each other.

What became of it

Living. The philosophical foundation of Srivaishnavism, with a continuous institutional and commentarial tradition.

Lasting influence

Every later Vedanta had to position itself between Shankara and Ramanuja. Its account of the whole-part relation influenced Indian theology broadly.

Why it still matters

The problem it presses — where ignorance can be located in a strict monism — is a real difficulty rather than a sectarian complaint.

Put another way

A body and the soul that animates it: two, not separable, and neither one an illusion.

Where to start

The Vedartha Sangraha. The Sri Bhashya is enormous and assumes you already know what it is arguing against.

The surprising bit

He is said to have climbed a temple tower and shouted a secret mantra to the crowd below, having been told he would go to hell for revealing it, and answered that he was glad to go if everyone else could be saved.

In their own words

Connections

Answers

Advaita Vedanta, Purva Mimamsa

Opposed by

Advaita Vedanta

Influenced

Dvaita Vedanta, Bhedabheda Vedanta

The verdict

The most serious philosophical challenge Advaita ever faced, made by someone who wanted the world to be real.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy