Editing Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (section)

==Philosophy==
Radhakrishnan tried to bridge eastern and western thought,<ref name=Schillp>{{Cite book | last =Schillp | first =Paul Arthur | year =1992 | title =The Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan | publisher =Motilall Banarsidass | isbn=9788120807921|page=ix}}</ref> defending Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism",<ref name=brown153/> but also incorporating Western philosophical and religious thought.<ref name=sharf1998/>

===Advaita Vedanta===
Radhakrishnan was one of the most prominent spokesmen of [[Neo-Vedanta]].{{sfn|King|2001}}<ref>{{Cite book | last =Hacker | first =Paul | year =1995 | title =Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedanta | publisher =SUNY Press | isbn=9780791425817|page=8}}</ref><ref name=fort179/> His metaphysics was grounded in [[Advaita Vedanta]], but he reinterpreted Advaita Vedanta for a contemporary understanding.<ref group=web name="IEP">{{Cite web|url=https://www.iep.utm.edu/radhakri/|title=Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli &#124; Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy|website=www.iep.utm.edu|access-date=5 September 2018|archive-date=5 September 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180905175842/https://www.iep.utm.edu/radhakri/|url-status=live}}</ref> He acknowledged the reality and diversity of the world of experience, which he saw as grounded in and supported by the absolute or Brahman.<ref group=web name="IEP" />{{refn|group=note|Neo-Vedanta seems to be closer to [[Bhedabheda|Bhedabheda-Vedanta]] than to Shankara's Advaita Vedanta, with the acknowledgement of the reality of the world. Nicholas F. Gier: "Ramakrsna, Svami Vivekananda, and Aurobindo (I also include M.K. Gandhi) have been labeled "neo-Vedantists," a philosophy that rejects the Advaitins' claim that the world is illusory. Aurobindo, in his ''The Life Divine'', declares that he has moved from Sankara's  "universal illusionism" to his own "universal realism" (2005: 432), defined as metaphysical realism in the European philosophical sense of the term."<ref>{{Cite journal |first =Nicholas F. |last =Gier |year=2012  |title=Overreaching to be different: A critique of Rajiv Malhotra's Being Different  |journal=[[International Journal of Hindu Studies]] |volume=16 |issue=3 |pages=259–285  | doi =10.1007/s11407-012-9127-x|s2cid =144711827 }}</ref>}} Radhakrishnan also reinterpreted [[Adi Shankara|Shankara]]'s notion of ''[[Maya (illusion)|maya]]''. According to Radhakrishnan, maya is not a strict absolute idealism, but "a subjective misperception of the world as ultimately real."<ref group=web name="IEP" />

===Intuition and religious experience===
{{See also|Mysticism#Mystical experience|l1=Mystical experience|Religious experience}}

"Intuition",<ref group=web name="IEP" /> synonymously called "religious experience",<ref group=web name="IEP" /> has a central place in Radhakrishnan's philosophy as a source of knowledge which is not mediated by conscious thought.<ref name=sharf1998/> His specific interest in experience can be traced back to the works of [[William James]] (1842–1910), [[F. H. Bradley]] (1846–1924), [[Henri Bergson]] (1859–1941), and [[Friedrich von Hügel]] (1852–1925),<ref name=sharf1998/> and to [[Vivekananda]] (1863–1902),<ref name=Rambachan1994/> who had a strong influence on Sarvepalli's thought.{{sfn|Murty|Vohra|1990|p=179}} According to Radhakrishnan, intuition is of a self-certifying character (''svatassiddha''), self-evidencing (''svāsaṃvedya'') and [[self-luminous]] (''svayam-prakāsa'').<ref group=web name="IEP" /> In his book ''An Idealist View of Life'', he made a case for the importance of intuitive thinking as opposed to purely intellectual forms of thought.<ref group=web >{{cite web|url=http://orissa.gov.in/e-magazine/Orissareview/2010/September/engpdf/1-4.pdf|title=The Great Indian Philosopher : Dr.Radhakrishnan|publisher=State Govt. Of Orissa|access-date=28 November 2013|archive-date=3 December 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203090008/http://orissa.gov.in/e-magazine/Orissareview/2010/September/engpdf/1-4.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> According to Radhakrishnan, ''intuition'' plays a specific role in all kinds of experience.<ref group=web name="IEP" />

Radhakrishnan discernes eight sorts of experience:<ref group="web" name="IEP" />
# Cognitive Experience:
# Sense Experience
# Discursive Reasoning
# Intuitive Apprehension
# Psychic Experience
# Aesthetic Experience
# Ethical Experience
# Religious Experience

===Classification of religions===
For Radhakrishnan, theology and creeds are intellectual formulations, and symbols of religious experience or "religious intuitions".<ref group=web name="IEP" /> Radhakrishnan qualified the variety of religions hierarchically according to their apprehension of "religious experience", giving Advaita Vedanta the highest place:<ref group=web name="IEP" />{{refn|group=note|This qualification is not unique to Radhakrishnan. It was developed by nineteenth-century Indologists,{{sfn|King|1999|p=169}}<ref name=sweetman/> and was highly influential in the understanding of Hinduism, both in the west and in India.Hinduism Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History | publisher =Columbia University Press| title-link =Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History }}
# The worshippers of the Absolute
# The worshippers of the personal God
# The worshippers of the incarnations like Rama, Kṛiṣhṇa, Buddha
# Those who worship ancestors, deities and sages
# The worshippers of the petty forces and spirits

Radhakrishnan saw Hinduism as a scientific religion based on facts, apprehended via intuition or religious experience.<ref group=web name="IEP" /> According to Radhakrishnan, "if philosophy of religion is to become scientific, it must become empirical and found itself on religious experience".<ref group=web name="IEP" /> He saw this empiricism exemplified in the Vedas:

{{blockquote|The truths of the ṛṣis are not evolved as the result of logical reasoning or systematic philosophy but are the products of spiritual intuition, dṛṣti or vision. The ṛṣis are not so much the authors of the truths recorded in the Vedas as the seers who were able to discern the eternal truths by raising their life-spirit to the plane of universal spirit. They are the pioneer researchers in the realm of the spirit who saw more in the world than their followers. Their utterances are not based on transitory vision but on a continuous experience of resident life and power. When the Vedas are regarded as the highest authority, all that is meant is that the most exacting of all authorities is the authority of facts.<ref group=web name="IEP" />}}

From his writings collected as The Hindu View of Life, Upton Lectures, Delivered at Manchester College, Oxford, 1926: "Hinduism insists on our working steadily upwards in improving our knowledge of God. The worshippers of the absolute are of the highest rank; second to them are the worshippers of the personal God; then come the worshippers of the incarnations of Rama, Krishna, Buddha; below them are those who worship deities, ancestors, and sages, and lowest of all are the worshippers of petty forces and spirits. The deities of some men are in water (i.e., bathing places), those of the most advanced are in the heavens, those of the children (in religion) are in the images of wood and stone, but the sage finds his God in his deeper self. The man of action finds his God in fire, the man of feeling in the heart, and the feeble minded in the idol, but the strong in spirit find God everywhere". The seers see the supreme in the self, and not the images."

To Radhakrishnan, Advaita Vedanta was the best representative of Hinduism, as being grounded in intuition, in contrast to the "intellectually mediated interpretations"<ref group="web" name="IEP" /> of other religions.<ref group="web" name="IEP" />{{refn|group=note|''Anubhava'' is a central term in Shankara's writings. According to several modern interpretators, especially Radakrishnan, Shankara emphasises the role of personal experience (''anubhava'') in ascertaining the validity of knowledge.<ref name=Rambachan1991/> Yet, according to Rambacham himself, ''sruti'', or textual authority, is the main source of knowledge for Shankara.<ref name=Rambachan1994/>}} He objected against charges of "quietism"{{refn|group=note|Sweetman: "[T]he supposed quietist and conservative nature of Vedantic thought"<ref name=sweetman/>}} and "world denial", instead stressing the need and ethic of social service, giving a modern interpretation of classical terms as ''tat-tvam-asi''.<ref name=fort179/> According to Radhakrishnan, Vedanta offers the most direct intuitive experience and inner realisation, which makes it the highest form of religion:
{{blockquote|The Vedanta is not a religion, but religion itself in its most universal and deepest significance.<ref group=web name="IEP" />}}

Radhakrishnan saw other religions, "including what Dr. S. Radhakrishnan understands as lower forms of Hinduism,"<ref group=web name="IEP" /> as interpretations of Advaita Vedanta, thereby Hinduising all religions.<ref group=web name="IEP" />

Although Radhakrishnan was well-acquainted with western culture and philosophy, he was also critical of them. He stated that Western philosophers, despite all claims to [[objectivity (philosophy)|objectivity]], were influenced by [[theology|theological]] influences of their own culture.<ref>Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli and Moore, Charles (eds.) (1989) ''A Source Book in Indian Philosophy'', Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 610–639. {{ISBN|0691019584}}</ref>