India, Philosophies of

The Upanishads

The Upanishads proposed a nontheistic formulation of the nature of the metaphysical substratum of reality. In the Upanishadic posture, the metaphysical structures of the human person along with the nature of objective world reality were fundamentally thematized. This formulation proceeded to provide one of the most important hermeneutic arcs under which much of the later developments in Indian philosophy would unfold. The Upanishads, collectively naming multiple texts, had as one of its central aim the postulation and elaboration of the concepts of Brahman and Atman.The former points to an underlying metaphysical substance that, unpresentable to everyday cognition, provides the foundation of world presentation to experience. The latter is the underlying reality that allows for the ontological constitution of the empirical self. In other words, in the Upanishadic worldview, an underlying metaphysical substance anchors both the subjective and the objective orders of phenomenal experience. These notions, though transcendent to phenomenally conceived subject and object, categorically do not have any theistic resonance and thus cannot be conflated with the idea of a personal theistic God sustaining the empirical order. Indeed, for the Upanishads, Brahman, the underlying metaphysical substance of the world, is nongendered and cannot be conceived as being invested with a personality. Furthermore, in defining Brahman and Atman negatively as Neti Neti (not this, not that), the Upanishads summon the notion of ineffability by positing that Ultimate Reality escapes the significations of language. The Upanishads also consider the relationship that can possibly obtain between Ultimate Reality construed objectively (Brahman) and subjectively(Atman). In the famous formulation “tattvamasi” (“thou art that”), the nondualist thesis is suggested whereby in the final analysis, the distinction between the subject and the object dissolves at the transempirical, metaphysical level. The issue concerning the relation between these two orders of reality attains central significance in the later philosophical developments of Vedanta, one of the schools of classical Indian philosophy.

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