Philosopher
Veṅkaṭanātha
c. 1269 – c. 1370
Also known as Venkatanatha, Vedānta Deśika, Vedanta Desika
South Indian polymath, known as Vedānta Deśika, whose more than 100 works in Sanskrit and Tamil reshaped Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and Śrī Vaiṣṇava thought.
Veṅkaṭanātha, called Vedānta Deśika, ‘teacher of Vedānta’, is traditionally dated 1269–1370, though the lifespans of early Viśiṣṭādvaita teachers were stretched to link them to one another. He wrote philosophy, religious works and poetry in Sanskrit, Tamil and Maṇipravāḷa, a Sanskritised literary Tamil: more than a hundred works are attributed to him.
He marks a turning point in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, the school that holds the Ultimate to be a personal God of whom everything else is a characteristic, and largely gave it its shape. His frequent engagement with earlier authors also preserves many quotations from works otherwise lost.
Key ideas
- Logic in the service of the Veda
- Veṅkaṭanātha followed the Veda supported by sound reasoning, and reasoning only where it agrees with the Veda, never reasoning alone, rejecting the independent logic of the Nyāya school.
- No human intuition of dharma
- To protect the unique authority of the Vedas, he denied that any human being could gain the intellectual intuition that would give direct access to dharma, while allowing that God has such knowledge.
- The world as God’s body
- The world, including all living beings, is God’s body, through which God experiences; and the Veda is a crystallisation of God’s permanent free will rather than a revelation that a later one could surpass.
Influences
Where these links come from
- Veṅkaṭanātha drew on Rāmānuja. Source: Elisa Freschi, Veṅkaṭanātha (Vedānta Deśika), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Key works
- Nyāyapariśuddhi
- Nyāyasiddhāñjana
Sources
- Elisa Freschi, Veṅkaṭanātha (Vedānta Deśika), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy