Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion

(Dana P.) #1
236

V


VALUES. See AXIOLOGY.


VEDANTA. Sanskrit, “the end of the
Ve d a.” One of the six schools of orthodox
Hinduism, Vedanta privileges the Upani-
shads, which come at the end of the Veda.
There are three main schools of thought
within Vedanta: Advaita Vedanta, Vish-
ishtadvaita, and Dvaita.


VEDAS. Sanskrit, “knowledge” or “sacred
love.” The Vedas are the earliest Hindu
sacred texts and date back to the Vedic
period (c. 1500–700 BCE). Combined,
they contain over 10,000 verses in total.
Along with the Brahmanas, they are con-
sidered shruti, which means “that which is
heard,” i.e., revelation, as opposed to other
sacred texts, which are smriti (“that which
is remembered”). They were originally
transmitted orally using elaborate memo-
rization techniques, and there is no
scholarly consensus as to when they
were first written down. The emergence
of curses around the fifth century CE for
those who use the written Vedas suggests


that there must have been written copies
of at least parts of the Vedas by that time.
They were codified by at least the eighth
century BCE (although whether in
written or oral form is debated), so that,
remarkably, no textual variants exist
today. The Vedas are made up of four
main collections: the Rig-Veda (book of
hymns and prayers), the Ya j u r - Ve d a
(book of sacrificial procedures), the
Sama-Veda (book of chants to accom-
pany sacrifices), and the Athar-Veda
(book of magic and philosophical lore
and musings). The Vedas are considered
timeless and made up of wisdom that
neither God nor humans created.

VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE. In the
mid-twentieth century, philosophers in
the Vienna Circle proposed that if a prop-
osition is meaningful it has to be about
either formal, conceptual relations (e.g.,
a square has four right angles) or it had to
be verifiable in principle empirically. This
principle was used to expose as meaning-
less propositions in metaphysics (such as
the Absolute is timeless), ethics (lying is
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