Microsoft Word - Hinduism formatted.doc

WHAT IS HINDUISM?

deployed in these definitions, some of the central linguistic
dyads, dichotomies or dualisms they invoke:

MARXISM MOKSHA

European

Social

Secular

Atheistic

Modernistic

Historical

Universalistic

Communistic

Indian

Individual

Spiritual

Theistic

Post-Modern

Trans-Historical

Hindu Ethnic

Communalistic

Paradoxically of course, the last dichotomy shows that
Marxism is also and itself essentially a philosophy of
liberation or ‘Moksha’. The deeper purpose of this
tabulation of antonyms however, is that it allows us to
introduce a ‘third term’ besides the duality of Marxism and
Moksha, but one of no little significance in relation to them
both: ‘post-modernism’. For those unfamiliar with the
origins of this term, it is rooted in a model of language –
both language as such and specific languages or ‘modes of
discourse’ (not least philosophical, theological, scientific
and theoretical languages) as more or less selective
structures of mutually defining or opposing terms such as
‘true’ and ‘false’, ‘black’ and ‘white’, ‘higher’ and ‘lower’,
‘good’ and ‘evil’, ‘positive’ and ‘negative’, ‘creative’ and
‘destructive’, ‘phenomenon’ and ‘noumenon’,