Hindu Philosophy: Understanding the Self

Hindu philosophy begins with the self. The Upanishadic question ko’ham, ‘who am I?’, marks what is most distinctive about Indian thought, and from it flow the great debates about God, time, language, and liberation.

This course follows the question of the self through the six classical systems of Hindu philosophy and into the modern world.

We begin with the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita, which lay the foundations for the systematic schools:

• Mimamsa, the philosophy of sacred action and language;
• Vedanta, the school of knowledge, from Shankara’s non-dualism to Ramanuja and Madhva;
• Samkhya, the enumeration of self and matter that lies behind Patanjali’s yoga;
• and Nyaya-Vaisheshika, with its logic and its arguments for the existence of God.

Later sessions turn to non-dual Shaiva philosophy, the new thinking of Chaitanya and the Bengal schools, the nineteenth-century Hindu Renaissance, and the connections between Indian philosophy and modern Phenomenology.

The course is written and tutored by Prof. Gavin Flood FBA, Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion at Oxford University and Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. It runs over eight weeks, with four hours of video lectures, a 200-page coursebook, and an essay assessment.