Source on Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

“The tradition of the Rishi is alive in India even today. He was the twentieth century equivalent of the ancient Hindu Rishi; the inspired philosopher at whose feet the tempests lose their guile. When he first lit the lamp of Indian philosophy in the West it made the European savants blink. It also illumined his own face to the world. With him philosophy was not a bare catalogue of fatiguing facts and tiring theories of dead authors and their musty old writings but a fascinating story that grips the mind and enthrals the imagination. This modern Recording Rishi of Indian philosophy, unlike other historians, used his scholarship to wrest from philosophical watch-words the thoughts embedded in them and reset them like jewels in epigrams giving out a strange new brilliance.”

“He was not dull. A tall lanky virile Andhra, well-dressed and spic and span, he stood upright with an intense vitality filling his eyes welled with visions. His speech was pithy, — polished and precise. He studied philosophy as a scientist — not as a moralist.”

“He was a philosophicalbilinguist who acted as the liaison officer of Hinduism. He was equally well-versed in Western philosophical thought and in Eastern. And he expounded the East to the West and the Occident to the Orient. But it was no mere exposition — originality in philosophy, as in 'poetry, consists not in the novelty of the tale or the light and shade distributed over the canvas but the depth and subtlety made to dominate the details. In this sense, he was original in his exposition as a poet or a painter in expression. He had found a new technique in the presentation of Oriental philosophy. He presented ultimate truths of religion in the psychological idiom of this age.”

“In Kalki, or the Future of Civilization, he deals with the fact that although science has helped us to build up our outer life, we are not above the level of past generations in ethical and spiritual life. If anything, we have declined. Our natures are becoming mechanized. Void within, we are being reduced to mere members of a mob. There is a tendency to seek salvation in herds. For a complete human being we require the cultivation of the grace and joy of souls overflowing in love and devotion and the free service of a regenerated humanity.”

“In Indian Philosophy he not only laid a stone foundation surely and truly but also built an edifice that shall outlast any philosophic storm. It was not so much a history as an exposition, and the exposition was vivid, vital and gripping. It was full of feeling. It made an epoch by itself. It was the two volumes of Indian Philosophy in the "Library of Philosophy" that showed that there was hardly any height of spiritual insight or rational philosophy attained in the world that has not its parallel in the vast stretch he dealt with that lies between the early sages and the modern Naiyaikas [leaders].”

“Religion to him is essentially a concern of the inner self securing a spiritual certainty which lifts life above meaningless existence and dull despair, giving worth to values, meaning to life, confidence to adventure. He was impatient of the sorry scheme of things of the present day when the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. He thought of a day when the strong cease to be greedy and the weak learn to be bold. For things were never settled quite until they were settled right.”

“As an academic, philosopher, and statesman, he was one of the most recognized and influential Indian thinkers in academic circles in the 20th century. Throughout his life and extensive writing career, he sought to define, defend, and promulgate his religion, a religion he variously identified as Hinduism, Vedanta, and the religion of the Spirit.”

“[He] has been held in academic circles as a representative of Hinduism to the West. His lengthy writing career and his many published works have been influential in shaping the West’s understanding of Hinduism, India, and the East.”

“The implicit acceptance of Śaṅkara’s Advaita by the smarta tradition is good evidence to suggest that an advaitic framework was an important, though latent, feature of his early philosophical and religious sensibilities.”

“The theology taught in the missionary school may have found resonance with the highly devotional activities connected with the nearby Tirumala temple, activities that he undoubtedly would have witnessed taking place outside the school. The shared emphasis on personal religious experience may have suggested to him a common link between the religion of the missionaries and the religion practiced at the nearby Tirumala temple.”

“He attended Elizabeth Rodman Voorhees College in Vellore, a school run by the American Arcot Mission of the Reformed Church in America where he was introduced to the Dutch Reform Theology, which emphasized a righteous God, unconditional grace, and election, and which criticized Hinduism as intellectually incoherent and ethically unsound. This is where he encountered what would have appeared to him as crippling assaults on his Hindu sensibilities. He also would have witnessed the positive contributions of the social programs undertaken by the Mission in the name of propagation of the Christian gospel.”

“He inherited from his upbringing a tacit acceptance of Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedanta and an awareness of the centrality of devotional practices associated with the smarta tradition.”

“What Vivekananda, Savarkar, and Theosophy did bring to him was a sense of cultural self-confidence and self-reliance.”

“In 1904, he entered Madras Christian College was trained in European philosophy was introduced to the philosophies of Berkeley, Leibniz, Locke, Spinoza, Kant, J.S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, Fichte, Hegel, Aristotle, and Plato among others. He was also introduced to the philosophical methods and theological views of his MA supervisor and most influential non-Indian mentor, Professor A.G. Hogg.”

“Between 1914 and 1920, he continued to publish. He authored eighteen articles, ten of which were published in prominent Western journals such as The International Journal of Ethics, The Monist, and Mind. Throughout these articles, he took it upon himself to refine and expand upon his interpretation of Hinduism.”

“[He] was no longer content simply to define and defend Vedanta. Instead, he sought to confront directly not only Vedanta’s Western competitors, but what he saw as the Western philosophical enterprise and the Western ethos in general.”

“Tagore was his most influential Indian mentor. Tagore’s poetry and prose resonated with him. He appreciated Tagore’s emphasis on aesthetics as well as his appeal to intuition. From 1914 on, both of these notions — aesthetics and intuition — begin to find their place in his own interpretations of experience, the epistemological category for his philosophical and religious proclivities...he would repeatedly appeal to Tagore’s writing to support his own philosophical ideals.”

“He was for the first time out of his South Indian element — geographically, culturally, and linguistically when he took up the Calcutta and the George V Chair (1921-1931) in Philosophy at Calcutta University.”

“Throughout the 1920s, his reputation as a scholar continued to grow both in India and abroad. He was invited to Oxford to give the 1926 Upton Lectures, published in 1927 as "The Hindu View of Life", and in 1929 he delivered the Hibbert Lectures, later published under the title "An Idealist View of Life". His most sustained, non-commentarial work, "An Idealist View of Life", is frequently seen as a mature work and has undoubtedly received the bulk of scholarly attention to him.”

“In his mind, he had identified the “religious” problem, reviewed the alternatives, and posited a solution - An unreflective dogmatism could not be remedied by escaping from “experiential religion” which is the true basis of all religions.”

“While Hinduism (Advaita Vedanta) as he defined it best exemplified his position, he claimed that the genuine philosophical, theological, and literary traditions in India and the West supported his position.”

“[He] was knighted in 1931, the same year he took up his administrative post as Vice Chancellor at the newly founded, Andhra University at Waltair, served there for five years as Vice Chancellor. In 1936, not only did the university in Calcutta affirm his position in perpetuity but Oxford University appointed him to the H.N. Spalding Chair of Eastern Religions and Ethics. In late 1939, he took up his second Vice Chancellorship at Benares Hindu University (BHU), and served there during the course of the second world war until mid-January 1948, two weeks before Gandhi’s assassination in New Delhi.”

“During the 1930s and 1940s the issues of education and nationalism came together for him, and his vision was of an autonomous India. He envisioned an India built and guided by those who were truly educated, by those who had a personal vision of and commitment to raising Indian self-consciousness.”

“He was appointed by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as Indian Ambassador to Moscow, a post he held until 1952. It provided him the opportunity to put into practice his own philosophical-political ideals came with his election to the Raja Sabha, in which he served as India’s Vice-President (1952-1962) and later as President (1962-1967).”

“As an Advaitin, he embraced a metaphysical idealism. But his idealism was such that it recognized the reality and diversity of the world of experience (prakṛti) while at the same time preserving the notion of a wholly transcendent Absolute (Brahman), an Absolute that is identical to the self (Atman). While the world of experience and of everyday things is certainly not ultimate reality as it is subject to change and is characterized by finitude and multiplicity, it nonetheless has its origin and support in the Absolute (Brahman) which is free from all limits, diversity, and distinctions (nirguna). Brahman is the source of the world and its manifestations, but these modes do not affect the integrity of Brahman.”