WHAT IS HINDUISM?
‘Between’ or ‘Inter-Human’ (das Zwischenmenschliche).
And what is mediated ‘through the word’, whether
conceived dialectically or lived dialogically, can be
understood as nothing less than relationality as such.
Relationality in turn can be understood as the very essence,
both of ‘Dialectics’ and ‘Advaita’. For whether we posit a
relation of duality or non-duality between any two or more
elements, or even a relation of duality and non-duality, we
still imply an initial set of elements whose relation is to be
determined or posited as ‘dual’, ‘non-dual’, neither or both.
Yet what if relationality as such is more primordial than any
elements we seek to place in relation, whether a relation of
separation or unity, duality or non-duality? What if
relationality is what first distinguishes and unites the poles
of any relation? What if, to use the expression of
philosopher and physicist Michael Kosok, all identifiable or
distinguishable elements of experience are not elements ‘in’
relation but of relation? In contrast, to simply posit or
oppose a relation of duality or non-duality between any two
things is to imply that they are not already dual elements or
poles of a singular non-dual relation – like two sides of a
coin. In this way we miss the essential point that ‘duality’
and ‘non-duality’ are themselves but dual aspects of
relationality as such.
Relationality lies at the very core, not just of Dialectics
but of Marxist theory as a whole, in a way which makes it
entirely misleading in principle to think of it as a form of