Microsoft Word - Hinduism formatted.doc

takes the form of contradictions, antitheses or dualities
progressively unfolding from one another in historical life
through the emergence of a transcendent ‘third’ term – one
which is no mere synthesis’ of thesis and antithesis – for it
no sooner arises than it becomes the first or ‘thetic’ terms
of a new antithetical duality. In the Indian tradition it is the
Sanskrit-based concepts of ‘dvaita’ (duality) and its
counterpart (‘a-dvaita’ or non-duality) and the duality and/or
non-duality of both that is the central, albeit de-historicised
issue. One is reminded here of both Hegel, with his
dialectical principle of the ‘identity of non-identity and
difference’, and its advaitic equivalent – the non-duality of
duality and non-duality. Before we stray too soon in the
one-sided direction of either a dehistoricised or over-
detailed historical analysis of both Dialectics and Advaita,
let us first of all simply take note of their clearly apparent
similarity (or ‘similarity-in-difference’) and the way in
which, in and of itself, this implies a dimension of hidden
‘unity’ or ‘non-duality’ between ‘Marxism and ‘Moksha’
themselves, an interstice of European and Indian thought
that opens up a rich but still almost wholly unexplored vein
of exploration – both philosophical and historical, religious
and political. To begin with however, let us stick with the
dimension of opposition and duality which the summary
descriptions of the two world-views were intended to
highlight – and simply tabulate, from the very words