Abstract
In the opening lines of his essay “Karma-Yoga,” Swami Vivekananda claims that knowledge is the one goal of humankind. It is clear from the context of this claim that Vivekananda means to count knowledge—and spiritual knowledge in particular—as a final goal of humankind. His claim, then, is that spiritual knowledge is the one final goal of humankind. This claim seems inconsistent, however, with claims in other passages that count spiritual pleasure, freedom, and mokṣa itself as additional final goals. One interpretive strategy is to invoke Vivekananda’s kinship with Śaṅkara and count these states as ultimately identical. This interpretive strategy is problematic, however, for at least two reasons. First, several scholars advance convincing arguments against the view that Vivekananda’s nondualism is aligned with Śaṅkara. Second, reading Vivekananda as a nondualist in this context precludes further analysis that might be philosophically productive. The claim that spiritual knowledge is spiritual pleasure, for example, might be analyzed in terms of a part-whole relation. Part of spiritual knowledge is knowledge of the eternal bliss of ātman-brahman. To know the eternal bliss of ātman-brahman is to experience it, and to experience the eternal bliss of ātman-brahman is to attain spiritual pleasure. Part of spiritual knowledge, then, is spiritual pleasure. Other arguments might be advanced in support of the identity of spiritual knowledge and spiritual freedom as well, without simply assuming that Vivekanada disregards distinctions among these states.
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Notes
Vivekananda makes similar claims at CW 3: 20 and elsewhere. In some passages, he references the knowledge—or realization—of God and self, in particular. “The knowledge of Brahman is the one goal of all beings” (CW 7: 192). “Realising my own real nature is the one goal of my life” (CW 5: 253). Throughout this article, citations to Vivekananda’s Complete Works follow this format: CW volume number: page number.
Throughout this article, I treat the claim that “the goal of mankind is knowledge” as a normative claim. It is a claim about what people ought to pursue, rather than what people in fact pursue. The claim here is that knowledge is a legitimate or justified goal of humankind.
More generally, to say that something has instrumental (or extrinsic) value is to say that it has value as a means to further ends. To say that something has intrinsic value is to say that it has value as an end, independent of the value of the further ends to which it is a means.
Compare CW 1: 122.
Rambachan is almost perfectly ambiguous on an important matter here. On the one hand, he argues that the elimination of ignorance, in particular, is the essential means to liberation. “For Vivekananda…knowledge alone can confer freedom” (1994: 64). This language of “conferring” freedom implies that knowledge is a means to liberation. In the same passage, he describes the relevant knowledge as the “knowledge that frees” (64). This too implies that he takes there to be an instrumental relation between knowledge and liberation. A person attains knowledge, and this knowledge causes freedom. This suggests that he means to explain the value of knowledge in terms of its instrumental value. On the other hand, Rambachan claims that “knowledge alone is freedom” (63) and “knowledge [is] equivalent to freedom” (65). This suggests that he takes knowledge and liberation to be the same state. If knowledge and liberation are the same state, however, then presumably he assigns intrinsic value to knowledge. (In section four (“Knowledge as a Constituent of Mokṣa”) below, I argue for this on the grounds that knowledge is a constituent of mokṣa.) Which view Ramabachan accepts, however, is crucial to whether he counts knowledge as an intermediate or final goal. If he counts knowledge as intrinsically valuable, then presumably he counts it as a final goal of humankind.
Compare CW 2: 260.
This claim too is normative. People ought not see pleasure as a goal of humankind, even though they in fact do. See footnote 2 above.
It is worth pointing out that this part of Vivekananda’s argument assumes that a final goal must be especially important—and perhaps among the most important goals that a person might pursue. This might be true, but it isn’t obviously true. In ordinary life, it doesn’t seem odd or problematic that a person would pursue some small pleasure, like the pleasure of a leisurely morning walk, for example, for its own sake. Even if this pleasure is not especially important, this does not imply that the person must walk for the sake of some further end (like longevity)—or should not walk at all. This consideration has made me wonder whether Vivekananda does not mean to qualify the word “goal” in the first quotation of the article with “highest” rather than “final.” The subsequent part of the passage that discusses pleasure, however, explicitly focuses on the means-end relationship between pleasure and knowledge. This suggests that Vivekananda has the distinction between intermediate and final goals in mind after all.
This claim too is normative. People ought to understand pleasure and pain as means to knowledge, rather than vice versa.
Vivekananda immediately notes, however, that pleasure is not even an especially good means to knowledge: “I dare say, in the vast majority of cases, it would be found that it was misery that taught more than happiness, it was poverty that taught more than wealth, it was blows that brought out their inner fire more than praise” (CW 1: 27). Here, he makes the seemingly straightforward point that pain often does more to cultivate the personal character of a person than pleasure does. This might seem true in any context, but it seems especially plausible when the relevant knowledge includes the knowledge that the world is more painful than pleasurable, that pleasure is fleeting, and so on.
Below, I offer a supplement to this portion of the argument that might make it more convincing. Please see my explanation of subsection (4) below.
See Swami Medhananda’s article “From Good to God: Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Virtue Ethics” in this volume for a careful analysis of Vivekananda’s arguments against utilitarianism.
Compare CW 2: 66.
This version of the argument would read:
Premise: Knowledge is impermanent.
Premise: If knowledge is impermanent, then knowledge is not especially important.
Premise: If knowledge is not especially important, then knowledge is not a goal of humankind.
Conclusion: So knowledge is not a goal of humankind.
Vivekananda uses this terminology in several places (CW 3: 4, 3: 133, 4: 433–34, and so on). In “Raja-Yoga,” Vivekananda describes the distinction in terms of “metaphysical and transcendental knowledge” (CW 1: 183).
Compare CW 2: 83, 4: 128.
See CW 6: 91, 7: 20, 8: 156, among many others.
I reconsider those passages that describe ātman-brahman as sat-cit-ānanda in some detail in section six (“The Identity of Spiritual Knowledge, Pleasure, Freedom, and Mokṣa”) below.
Vivekananda uses this term at CW 1: 336–37, 3: 148, and 3: 238.
The argument for this conclusion will parallel argument (7) and (8) above.
These premises, again, read: “If mokṣa is a final goal and if spiritual pleasure is an essential constituent of mokṣa, then spiritual knowledge is a final goal” and “If mokṣa is a final goal and if spiritual freedom is an essential constituent of mokṣa, then spiritual knowledge is a final goal,” respectively.
In each quotation, the emphasis on “one goal” or “one end” is added.
I use the phrases “Śaṅkara nondualist” and “Śaṅkara Advaita” to distinguish the kind of nondualism that Śaṅkara asserts from the forms of nondualism that others assert. Especially important here is the distinction between Śaṅkara nondualism and what Medhananda describes as Vivekananda’s “Integral Advaita.” According to Medhananda, Vivekananda’s Integral Advaita accepts the claim that everything is Brahman, but allows both that the world is a real manifestation of God and that the personal conception of God is just as real as the impersonal conception. See Swami Medhananda 2022, especially Chapter two.
Long, like most scholars, equates Advaita and Śaṅkara Advaita. See footnote 23 above.
References
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Long, Jeffrey D. 2008. “Advaita and Dvaita: Bridging the Gap—The Ramakrishna Tradition’s both/and Approach to the Dvaita/Advaita Debate.” Journal of Vaishnava Studies 16, 2: 49–70.
Swami Medhananda. 2021. “Asminnasya ca Tadyogaṃ Śāsti: Swami Vivekananda’s Interpretation of Brahmasūtra 1.1.19 as a Hermeneutic Basis for Samanvayī Vedānta.” In Rita D. Sherma, ed., Swami Vivekananda: His Life, Legacy, and Liberative Ethics, 11–32. London: Lexington Books.
Swami Medhananda. 2022. Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Swami Medhananda. 2023. “From Good to God: Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Virtue Ethics.” In this Issue.
Rambachan, Anantanand. 1994. The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda’s Reinterpretation of the Vedas. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Swami Satprakashananda. 1978. Swami Vivekananda’s Contribution to the Present Age. St. Louis: The Vedanta Society.
Swami Vivekananda. 2006–7 [1957–97]. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Mayavati Memorial Edition. 9 volumes. Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to two anonymous referees who provided helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this article. Special thanks to Swami Medhananda, who patiently advised me at crucial stages of the writing process and on whose important work on Swami Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna I depended heavily.
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Framarin, C.G. Swami Vivekananda and Knowledge as the One Final Goal of Humankind. Hindu Studies 27, 149–171 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-022-09333-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-022-09333-y