Abstract
In this paper I compare two very different deployments of love in ethics. Swami Vivekananda's concept of ethical love ties into the project of constructing an alternative masculinity for a colonized people; while feminist care ethics uses love to escape the perceived masculinity of traditional ethical theory. Using Kenneth Goodpaster's distinction between ‘framework questions’ and ‘application questions,’ I try to show that love in Practical Vedanta addresses the former while feminist care ethics concerns itself with the latter. Even though this difference, I suggest, could be a function of their varying historical-political contexts, the two issues need to be taken together for a more complete understanding of the ethical subject.
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Notes
Unless specified otherwise, all quotes from Vivekananda are from The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Mayavati Memorial Edition, (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1970) Henceforth CWSV. Vivekananda’s clarion calls to this effect are famous. For example, ‘You are the Pure One; awake and arise, O mighty one, this sleep does not become you’ (CWSV, Vol. II: 304); ‘Come up O Lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; You are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal…’ (CWSV, Vol. I: 9)
The transitions from a Classical metaphysical system/an indigenous spirituality to a ‘good society’ is clear in Vivekananda elaborates: ‘….Just as our religion (read: Vedanta) takes in all, so should our society. This is to be worked out by first understanding the true principles of our religion and then applying them to society.’ Letters of Swami Vivekananda (Calcutta; Advaita Ashrama, 1960) 178
Vivekananda himself gestures towards one: ‘Everything that makes for Oneness is truth. Love is truth, and hatred is false because hatred makes for multiplicity….. Love binds, love makes for that Oneness.’ (CWSV, Vol. II: 304)
‘There is a concern to show that the Vedanta offers more than an exercise in “intellectual gymnastics” …. Its “practicality” is seen to stem from its power to generate the realization of that truth’ Ibid, 212
Jen McWeeny’s comments enabled me to get clear on this point
Baier, Annette. ‘Unsafe Loves’ in Moral Prejudices. 32–50
Baier, ‘Unsafe Loves,’ 39. Of course, the soul being ‘sinful’ does not apply to Advaita
Ibid. 34
I am obviously not engaging with ‘internal objections’ to Practical Vedanta—the worry that the odd mix of Advaita metaphysics with bhakti and service that Vivekananda gives us is ultimately incoherent. My project here is to start with this reformulation of Vedanta (traced by Vivekananda himself more to the Upaniṣads than to Samkara) and bring it in dialogue with contemporary feminist theory
Vivekananda’s ambivalence towards women bordering on misogyny according to some (as of the Classical Hindu spiritual tradition in general) has been talked about extensively. I do not go into that here. See for example, Indira Chowdhury, The Frail Hero and Virile History, Chap, Chaps 4 and 5; Parama Roy, Indian Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) Chap. 4; Narasingha P. Sil, ‘Asceticism and Misogyny: Vivekananda’s Concept of Women,’ Asia Culture Quarterly XXV, 2 (Summer 1997) 37–53
Sister Nivedita, The Master As I Saw Him. Quoted in Parama Roy, Indian Traffic, 65
Vivekananda, himself, was clearly inclined towards Advaita but often showed impatience with scholarly disputes. His orientation was not so much towards Samkara but the Advaita of the Upaniṣads and of Sri Ramakrishna
It would be interesting to at Noddings’ attempts to establish the ethical ‘must’ in the light of our discussion here. See Noddings, Starting at Home
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A version of this paper was read at the SACP Conference at Asilomar, California in June, 2007. I am grateful for the helpful observations made by my commentator in the session, Ashby Butnor. I would also like to thank Arindam Chakrabarti and Jen McWeeny for their comments
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Dalmiya, V. The Metaphysics of Ethical Love: Comparing Practical Vedanta and Feminist Ethics. SOPHIA 48, 221–235 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-009-0094-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-009-0094-7